03/10/2025
🫀 Heart Health, Holistically
Trained at UCL and Yale, Dr Pradip Jamnadas is a cardiologist and longevity advocate who bridges mainstream cardiology with preventative lifestyle medicine. He is widely respected for connecting the dots between metabolism, fasting, stress, movement, and breath.
With cardiovascular disease still the world’s number one killer, his approach is worth exploring if it resonates with you .....
✨ 1. Rethinking Heart Health
For Dr Jamnadas, heart health isn’t just cholesterol or blood pressure — it’s an ecosystem. Stress, poor sleep, inflammation, and metabolic imbalance are key drivers of disease. Medication and surgery have their place, but lifestyle needs to come first.
✨ 2. Resistance & Movement
In a recent interview, Dr Jamnadas said:
“You do floor exercises. You use your own body weight as resistance. Planks, leg lifts … and you can do HIIT.”
He emphasises that long hours of cardio are less important than strength, functionality, and short bursts of intensity. Yoga offers many of these same body-weight resistances: plank, side plank, chair posture, bridge, warriors, balances, boat posture, and isometric holds that preserve muscle and metabolism.
✨ 3. Breath as Medicine
Dr Jamnadas describes breathwork as foundational. It regulates the nervous system, supports oxygen delivery, and calms the heart. Yoga pranayama (the original breathwork) - from diaphragmatic breathing to alternate nostril practice - offers exactly this: a daily tool to reduce stress and protect heart health.
✨ 4. Yoga as the Bridge
Yoga doesn’t totally replace resistance training, but it complements it beautifully. It combines strength, mobility, breath, and awareness. And beyond the body, it restores the nervous system, settles the mind, and creates inner stillness — the antidote to modern stress.
For many people, especially in midlife and beyond, diving straight into heavy weights can lead to tendon injuries and overuse problems. Tendons and connective tissue adapt more slowly than muscles, so they need gradual, mindful loading. This is where yoga shines: it builds strength through isometric holds (like plank, side plank, or chair posture), slow controlled movements, and functional, whole-body integration. These postures strengthen not just muscles, but also the stabilisers and fascia that protect joints and tendons.
Yoga creates the foundation that makes resistance training safer and more effective, while also offering its own form of bodyweight resistance work that’s often enough to preserve strength, support bone health, and maintain mobility without strain.
✨ 5. Stress & Sleep
Dr Jamnadas warns that even the best exercise routine will falter if stress and sleep are ignored. Yoga Nidra, restorative practices, and mindful relaxation are powerful ways to reset the system and support true recovery.
🌿 Why This Matters for Us
Dr Jamnadas’s advice reinforces what yoga has always taught:
1. Breath is foundational.
2. Movement should be functional and sustainable.
3. Rest is essential, not optional.
4. Yoga and breathwork aren’t “extras” — they’re preventive medicine.
If you’d like to explore this in practice, join us at Breathe Yoga & Wellness 💚 — where strength, breath, and stillness come together to support your heart and your whole being.
If you’d like to hear more from Dr Jamnadas, you can explore his free talks on his YouTube channel:
