document/management/General health of mid-career leaders an objective and subjective observation through Yoga conv.txt



International Journal of Education & Management Studies, 2014, 4(3), 187-190
http://www.iahrw.com/index.php/home/journal_detail/21#list


© 2014 Indian Association of Health, Research and Welfare
ISSN-p-2231-5632-e-2321-3671


General health of mid-career leaders: An objective and subjective observation through yoga

Padmavati Maharana, Sanjib Patra, T. M. Srinivasan and H. R. Nagendra Division of Yoga and Management, SVYASA University, Bangalore

Role and responsibility of a leader is vital in every industrial sector. For the sake of responsibilities, they compromise with their physical and mental health. The study is aimed at assessing the general health of mid-life leaders in addition to conventional physiological parameters. Eighty four leaders (mean age 52.01±5.73) underwent Self-management of Excessive Tension (SMET) intervention for 5 days and were assessed with General Health Questionnaires and medical parameters. GHQ change was found to be significant at p<0.001. Similarly, the trend in other clinical variables such as SBP(expand all these) (p<0.001), PR (p<0.001), RR (p<0.001) and weight (p<0.05) were lower whereas DBP(p>0.05) was higher. The general health was significantly improved for top level leaders and is suggestive of better leadership development through SMETintervention.

Keywords: general health, mid-life leaders, yoga, SMET


Role and responsibility of a leader is vital in every industrial sector. For the sake of responsibilities, they compromise with their physical and mental health. It is quite evident that stress occurs in leaders when the targets are not achieved and issues are not addressed. Fifty percent of the employees of an organization are exposed to adverse psychosocial work environment (Kivima, Virtanen & Eloyainio, Et. al (2006), and these psychosocial stressors at work are relatively common (Allvin & Aronsson, 2001). Leadership is often viewed as highly stressful. Stress burn-out has been a major threat to the leaders across the world and more so in a country like India as they need to show higher outputs with minimum inputs (Sharma, 2007). Over time their psychological stress becomes either acute or chronic and invites many health related issues. Chronic stress is associated with enhanced vulnerability to diet-related metabolic risk viz., abdominal adiposity, insulin resistance, and oxidative stress (Aschbacher et al., 2014). Obesity is associated with job-associated stress viz., tension and anxiety, and these stress related disorders have been found to lead to an increased risk of Cardio Vascular Disorder (CVD) and mortality (Nishitani & Sakakibara, 2006; Valtonen et al., 2012). Recent studies have reported that 77% overweight and obesity rates in high-stress professionals who respond to the customer instantly for resolving their issues (Franke et al., 2002; Hsu et al., 2007; Tsismenakis et al., 2009; Ramey et al., 2009). Importantly, obesity has been shown to disturb cardiovascular responsivity to acute mental stress (Hamer et al., 2010), which may associate with stress-related endothelial dysfunction. Furthermore, in response to acute mental stress, Ghiadoni et al. (2000) have also shown that diabetic patients have a lower impairment of brachial artery flow-mediated dilation (FMD) compared to control subjects. Psychological stress can also interfere with carbohydrate metabolism, especially in the liver and skeletal muscle, and can lead to insulin resistance (Depke et al. 2008). Stress is also an environmental factor that has been associated with several immunological diseases, e.g. inflammatory bowel  disease  (Mawdsley  &  Rampton,  2005),  allergic  disease (Montoro et al., 2009), and atopic dermatitis. Psychological stress has a direct effect on a variety of immunological mechanisms,

Correspondence should be sent to Padmavati Maharana, Division of Yoga and Management, SVYASA University, Bangalore


including the functional profile of T-cells and several immune-inflammatory  markers  (Marshal  et  al.,  1998).  These  findings suggest that the challenges of the stress experienced by high-stress occupations  may  lead  to  an  increased  risk  of  wide  range  of psychosomatic  ailments.  Acute  stress  has  an  impact  on  high cognitive functions viz., working memory, attention and learning. It is quite evident that stress impairs subsequent attention and memory. Studies carried out largely over the past two decades have supported idea that stress and stress induced hormones impair hippocampal dependent forms of memory (Sapolsky, 1992). Stress hormones are known to influence the prefrontal cortex (PFC), a brain region that controls high level "executive" functions such as working memory and decision making. Previous work has shown that chronic stress impairs  PFC-mediated  behaviors,  like  mental  flexibility  and attention (Eunice et al., 2012).
Yoga, with its holistic approach to improve overall quality of life, offers several self-regulatory practices that aim at correcting these psychological factors that contribute to low QOL(Quality of Life). Integrated Approach to Yoga Therapy (IAYT) conceptualized at Swami Vivekananda Yoga Anusandhana Samsthana, that includes practices at physical, breathing, mental, intellectual and emotional levels is found to be beneficial in improving the health in several chronic conditions such as asthma (Singh et al., 2012), diabetes mellitus (Shantakumari, Sequeira, EI deeb, 2013), fibromyalgia (da Silva, Lorenzi-Filho & Lage, 2012), rheumatoid arthritis (Haslock et al., 1994) and cancer (Raghavendra et al., 2008). Health based stress management practices being a key component of Yoga has been found to be effective on emotional stability (Kumari, 2010).
General health is an individual's physical and mental health which includes a collection of physical signs, anxiety and insomnia, social dysfunction, and depression (Ansari, 2006). The World Health Organization (WHO) defines health as physical, mental, social welfare and not just lack of diseases and disability. SMET (Self Management of Excessive Tension) practice is found beneficial in improving the scores of general health (Tikhe & Nagendra, 2011). Since the sample size was small and study was limited to mangers the current study is aimed at assessing the general health of mid life
leaders in addition with conventional physiological parameters.