Book Review: "The Subtle Body: The Story of Yoga in America," by Stefanie Syman

People have been debating yoga’s purpose, its scope, and how to practice it for centuries. So not surprisingly, the history of yoga in America is also convoluted and complicated. Stefanie Syman, in "The Subtle Body: The Story of Yoga in America" (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010), makes a great effort to explain yoga's place in America by focusing on some of the principal practitioners. 

The title of the book refers to suksma-sarira (some of the letters in the Sanskrit words in this post should have accents, slashes and other marks that go with Sanskrit transliterations, but I can’t seem to find how to do them in HTML).  In Hatha Yoga, the “subtle body” is a network of invisible, internal channels (called nadis) and vortices (called chakras). By manipulating the physical body, you manipulate the subtle body.  The idea of the subtle body is somewhat esoteric, so for the sake of argument, let's use the term at a placeholder for parts of yoga that influence the invisible and/or the unconscious. And I must admit that this esoteric philosophy is the kind of thing in the book that makes my head spin a little bit.

With a few exceptions, each chapter focuses on one or two people, using their story to provide a framework to which other elements and supporting characters can be attached as needed.  The writing style is newspaper-like, with many short paragraphs, perhaps a result of Syman's long experience as a journalist writing for many publications, including Yoga Journal.

Two Pillars of American Letters Look to India 
Syman starts the story with a pillar of American Letters, Ralph Waldo Emerson, a literary giant whose writings are studied by most high school students in America. Emerson’s interest in Hinduism began with the Bhagavad Gita as early as 1845 (when his notebooks made mention of the Hindu epic) and culminated in his poem Brahma, which was published in the first issue of The Atlantic in 1857 (you can find the full text at Wikipedia). Most readers at the time, Syman writes, did not get the Eastern references in the poem.

The next character in the book was a colleague of Emerson, another pillar of American Letters:  Henry David Thoreau. It was Emerson who was exposed Thoreau to Indian literature and sacred texts, but Thoreau took the knowledge a few steps further.  Syman sees Thoreau as an authentic Yogi, because he "read these Indian books – and particularly a handful of Hindu ones – as instruction manuals," lived an ascetic life at Walden Pond, and even had a meditation practice.  Thoreau  described his practice in Walden: "Sometimes, in a summer morning, having taken my accustomed bath, I sat in my sunny doorway from sunrise till noon, rapt in a revery, amidst the pines and hickories and sumachs, in undisturbed solitude and stillness " (via Project Gutenberg)

Theo Bernard, the "White Lama"
Theos Bernard was the half nephew of the famous American yogi Pierre Bernard (who receives an entire chapter in the book) and found fame as an explorer. On numerous occasions, Bernard traveled in India and Tibet seeking yogis who could give him first-hand training in the fundamentals, and later wrote books about his travels. The exotic nature of his writing, and other factors brought him attention from the popular press in the late 1930s, including a few covers of Family Circle magazine (here’s one cover in an Ebay listing). Bernard earned a Ph.D. from Columbia in 1943 with a dissertation was called "Hatha Yoga: The Report of a Personal Experience," a document that contained some of the first published photos of an American in yoga postures (several years later, his dissertation was adapted into a book with the same title, and it might be available in a university library or from a used book web service like Abebooks).

Kukkutasana, New York Herald, March 27, 1898

In the 1940s and 1950s, Bernard operated studios in several places, gave lectures, and wrote more books about yoga. His intensity and devotion to yoga might have been his downfall, however, as he married a rich woman in part for her money, but then spent so much time on his practice and teachings that his marriage fell apart, leaving him financially destroyed and wrecking his studios. (Pierre Bernard's downfall was also partially related to his overly intense devotion to his practice and search for enlightenment.)

Indra Devi Wows Hollywood 
In January 1947, Indra Devi opened the first serious Hatha Yoga studio in the Los Angeles area, at 8806 Sunset Blvd. Born Eugenie Peterson in Latvia in 1899, Devi used persistence and a connection with a local leader to secure a position with Krishnamacharya in India (Krishnamacharya also taught T.K.V. Desikachar, B.K.S. Iyengar, and K. Pattabhi Jois). At her studio and in other settings, Devi taught movie stars like Gloria Swanson ("Sunset Boulevard"), Greta Garbo, and Jennifer Jones. While discussing yoga’s popularity in Hollywood, Syman throws in some fun trivia, like that Gary Cooper liked the shoulder stand (always striving to keep his legs pointed to “High Noon,” I suppose) and that Marilyn Monroe made a short movie about working out, and her routine included some yoga-like postures, such as halasana (A few photos of Monroe in yoga-like postures can be found on this tumblr page by Yogabeautiful).

As a student of Krishnamacharya in India, it’s certain that Devi was exposed to the deeper elements of yogic philosophy, but her first book published in the U.S. was all about the health benefits of yoga. It is likely that she knew what Americans in the conservative and materialistic 1950s wanted, and her later works would address philosophy along with physical work.

Other Characters
The sixties was a rich decade for yogic philosophy and practice. Leading thinkers from the counterculture, including Timothy Leary, Alan Watts, and Richard Alpert (later Ram Dass) were engaged in deep discussions and a wide range of experimentation that included meditation, physical asana practice and psychedelic drugs. The leaders of the movement, Syman writes, “stole yoga from the health seekers and weight-conscious and they put it back in the temple, where they believed it belonged.”

In other chapters, Syman writes about quite a few other prominent figures, including Swami Vivekananda (see this post on my blog for a summary of his contributions), Sarah Chapman Bull and Sarah Jane Farmer, Pierre Bernard (originally Perry Baker), the Vedanta society Hollywood (whose members included Aldous Huxley and Christopher Isherwood), and two recent luminaries, Bikram Choudhury and Sri K. Pattabhi Jois. B.K.S. Iyengar, however, receives little attention, despite his major role in making yoga accessible to all through inventive use of props and through his many teaching and demonstration tours of the United States.
 

"Pachimasana," New York Herald, March 27, 1898

What is Yoga?
The question “What is yoga?” permeates the book, resulting in both a fascinating debate and a morass of confusing terminology. I was often baffled by the numerous prefixes – Raja, Tantrik, Hatha, etc. – and specialized terms, and so an appendix or glossary with summaries would have been helpful when I got lost.  A tablet version or eBook would be greatly enhanced by instant access to definitions of the yogic paths, as well as definitions for unfamiliar (or quickly forgotten) terms.

If you see yoga strictly as a series of postures, strictly as exercises that improve your posture or stop your aching back or calm your mind, The Subtle Body is a excellent introductory survey of the broad expanse of yogic philosophy and practice as it has been practiced in America. Through the lives of the characters, you’ll get a sense of how controlled breathing, chanting, meditation, postures, mantras, and other yogic elements fit – or don’t fit, depending on the practitioner – into a path to enlightenment or a better life.

Yoga and America
To conclude, let's go back to the introduction of Syman's book:

In a country as vast and diverse as ours, yoga has had this going for it: it's not a unified system, nor even a tree with many branches. It might be three or five trees of different species, each with many branches. Or it's a city, it's New York or Bombay, where the contrasts between neighborhoods are sharp, where you can get lost in its vastness, and which changes anyone who stays but not in the same way or for the same reasons.
Yoga is so massive and complicated, so contradictory and baroque, that American society has been able to assimilate any number of versions of it, more or less simultaneously.

The process hasn't been smooth or continuous. It has got caught up around a number of issues, often the same ones, over and over, as several generations of Americans have tried to make sense of yoga and put it to use in their lives.

Image Credits: Book cover downloaded from the publisher, drawings of yoga asanas from New York Herald, March 27, 1898 (public domain).

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Random link from the archive:  From My Rasoi: Winter

Maple Syrup Flavors in Two Wild Mushrooms

Some time ago I heard about a mushroom that smells like maple syrup, and given my interest in fenugreek’s maple aroma (1, 2), I had to find out more.

A quick search in the UC Berkeley libraries led me to papers about two fungi that are in the Lactarius genus that have maple syrup aromas or flavors. One is Lactarius helvus, which is native to Europe, and the other is Lactarius fragilis var. rubidus, which also known as “candy cap” and grows in northern California. (Full citations for the papers are at the bottom of this post)

1881 painting of L. helvus

Fungus 1: Lactarius helvus
Interestingly enough, the Encyclopedia of Life page for L. helvus gives “Fenugreek milkcap” as the common name, so there’s a long-standing connection between fenugreek and the mushroom. The mushroom is considered to be poisonous (see this page in the River Cottage Mushroom Book for details).

In the research article, the team describe a search for volatile components using solvent extraction and gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (GC/MS). Dried, ground mushroom was rehydrated and treated with diethyl ether to stop enzymatic activity. A concentrate of the organic extract was fed into the GC/MS analyzer, whereupon thirty-eight volatile compounds were found. For a dry L. helvus sample that was described as smelling like fenugreek, the machines found sotolon, the chemical that is prominent in fenugreek and also used as an artificial maple syrup flavor. After a bunch of chemistry talk, the authors note that a previous article said that “the characteristic smell of fenugreek occurred during the dehydration process of [fenugreek] seeds. Thus, the drying process produced the fenugreek odor in both L. helvus (Basidiomycota) and T[rigonella] foenum graecum (Fabaceae).” The study might have practical implications, as this was the first identification of sotolon in Basidiomycota fungi, which could lead to using fungi to produce “natural” flavor compounds (i.e., perhaps someone can grow the fungus and extract the sotolon).

L. rubidus

Fungus 2: Lactarius fragilis var rubidus (Candy Cap)
The candy cap mushroom* has a sweet aroma that is reminiscent of maple syrup, butterscotch or burnt sugar, and consequently is used to flavor desserts, while also adding some novelty (“Wow! This ice cream is really made with mushrooms?”).  As with L. helvus, candy cap mushrooms do not have much odor when fresh, and drying is required to make their characteristic aromas appear.
For their analysis of L. fragilis var rubidus, the research team gathered the “headspace volatiles” from dried mushrooms*. The team used GC/MS to identify the compounds in the headspace, and did not find sotolon. They found other chemicals that have maple syrup odors, however, including quabalactone III. Of note is that the quabalactone III compound can form sotolon when it reacts with water, as would happen when candy cap mushrooms are cooked or when the volatiles meet moisture in the nasal cavity.

Unfortunately, the authors aren’t terribly specific about the practical or esoteric motivations behind the study, so this one was simply about expanding the range of knowledge.

The "Blond Mystique" dessert contains candy cap mushroom

Candy Cap Mushrooms in Restaurants
To give some examples of how candy cap mushrooms are used in restaurants, I searched a few of my favorite food sites, and here are some of the results (in no particular order):

• The Tablehopper’s 707 Scout from February 8, 2013 has a report on a candy cap ice cream in a blue corn crepe at Mateo’s Cocina Latina in Healdsburg, California (the 707 area code covers this area, hence the name).
• Tablehopper has a photo of a candy cap mushroom ice cream sandwich at San Francisco’s Americano, with the recipe for said sandwich available at 7x7 magazine.
• A description of a cocktail that uses candy cap mushrooms from the Tablehopper in 2008: “Or how about the Mushroom Hunter: Old Overholt Rye infused with locally foraged candy cap mushrooms, plus Cossart Gordon Rainwater Madeira, Aperol, orange bitters, thyme tincture, and flamed orange for garnish. Again, dude. The earthy note of the mushrooms was so funky-cool, reminded me of a truffle grappa I had in Venice when I was 20. (Yes, a while ago.) Talk about an intersection of culinary and cocktail! ”
• An update by San Francisco Chronicle food editor and chief restaurant critic Michael Bauer at the Inside Scoop SF blog:  “At Fifth Floor I was impressed with the persimmon pain perdu ($12) with  kiwi sorbet (When was the last time you saw this fruit? Maybe it’s time for a comeback) and a cheesecake puree. Pastry chef Francis Ang always includes a savory ingredient in his desserts; this time it was the earthy candy cap mushrooms.”
• A 2010 review of P-30 in Sebastapol, California by Carey Sweet in the San Francisco Chronicle starts with this: “They had me at candy cap mushroom ice cream. The fanciful fungus, plentiful across California's north coast, has a distinctive fragrance of maple syrup and is delicious in desserts, but is rarely seen on menus.” 

Notes
* The name “candy cap” is also used for several other species, including L. camphoratus and L. fragilis var. fragilis.
** Headspace volatiles are the gases that are emitted above from sample, like the aromas of a hot bowl of soup or fragrant bowl of strawberries. They are often collected by flavor chemists, so that they can isolate the key chemicals and synthesize them in the lab for use in their products. An interesting 2009 article in the New Yorker explained how they do it (subscription required).

References
“The Fenugreek Odor of Lactarius helvus”, by Sylvie Rapior, Françoise Fons and Jean-Marie Bessière, Mycologia, Vol. 92, No. 2 (Mar. - Apr., 2000), pp. 305-308.  Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3761565

“The maple syrup odour of the ‘candy cap’ mushroom, Lactarius fragilis var. rubidus”, by William F. Wood, Jay A. Brandes, Brian D. Foy, Christopher G. Morgan, Thierry D. Manna, Darvin A. DeShazer, Biochemical Systematics and Ecology 43 (2012) 51–53. DOI: 10.1016/j.bse.2012.02.027.

Image Credits
Drawing of Lactarius helvus from Wikimedia Commons, extracted from "Handbook of British Fungi," by Mordecai Cubitt Cooke; published 1881, in public domain.  Photo of Lactarius rubidus from natashadak's Mushroom Observer collection, subject to a Creative Commons License, downloaded from Wikimedia Commons.  Photo of "blond mystique" dessert containing candy cap mushroom from YVRBCbro's flickr collection, subject to a Creative Commons License.

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Random link from the archive:  Sponge or Vegetable? The Ridged Gourd

Using Arduino in Bread Making at Home

“Let rise at room temperature” is a common instruction in bread recipes, with “room temperature” being about 70 F (21.1 C)*. For various reasons, however, this temperature can be hard to find in my apartment in Berkeley, California, and so my bread doughs sometimes rise far too slowly.

One day, I realized that my Arduino Uno microcontroller could help solve this problem.  I had earlier configured it to measure milk temperature during yogurt making, and realized that would be a short leap to use it to control the air temperature inside a container, thereby creating a stable and warm location for dough fermentation and proofing (a "proofing box").  My idea was simple: an incandescent light bulb in a clip-on lamp as the heat source, a temperature sensor, a switch that turns the light bulb on and off, and the Arduino to control the switch. Basically, as one person who heard my plan put it, “It’s an Easy-Bake Oven!”

But how would I switch the light bulb on and off using the low voltage, low current digital outputs on the Arduino? A relay could be wired in and the lamp could be hacked, but that would be bothersome and potentially dangerous.  Then I learned about the Powerswitch Tail II. This easy-to-use device allows your Arduino or other controller to switch on and off an A/C powered device, like a lamp, coffee maker, hot plate, and so on. By connecting a digital output line and ground from the Arduino to the + and – inputs of the Powerswitch Tail, the connected device can be switched on and off. No cutting, soldering or taping required, just connect and go.

After the jump, I'll detail the parts that make up my air temperature controller and show some results from two batches of bread.

Recipe: Kale and bean soup

With a thick broth, plump beans, and pleasingly bitter kale, this Tuscan classic is one of my favorite soups. And it’s probably one of the most nutritious dishes that I make, full of healthy ingredients like beans and kale, light on fat, heavy on fiber. Although I’ve been making Italian vegetable soups of various types for a long time, I ran across this particular preparation in Paula Wolfert’s excellent Mediterranean Grains and Greens.

The featured vegetable is Lacinato kale (a.k.a. dinosaur kale), which might be expanding its range from farmers markets to grocery stores all over, as it’s a pretty hot vegetable right now – I hear of kale salads making the menu of some of the hottest restaurants in S.F. and L.A.  If you can’t find it, Wolfert recommends using one-half chard leaves and one-half savoy cabbage. The soup would be different, to be sure, but I expect that it would still be quite tasty.

A first glance at the recipe looks like a fairly standard vegetable soup. But one line – the pinch of cinnamon, clove and nutmeg  – makes this soup distinctive. The warm spices bring some exotic flavors and high notes to an otherwise earthy soup.

Wolfert calls this “Tuscan Bread and Kale Soup,” with the bread part referring to the serving method, in which a slice of garlic-rubbed toasted or grilled country bread is placed in the bottom of the bowl before the soup is ladled on top. The broth breaks down the bread, further enriching the soup.

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Recipe:  Kale and Bean Soup  
Adapted from Mediterranean Grains and Greens by Paula Wolfert

Ingredients
The Beans
1 T. olive oil
1 small onion, minced
1 clove garlic, minced fine
1 cup dried cannellini or borlotti beans
3 cups water
1 sprig fresh rosemary
1 bay leaf
1/2 T. salt

The Soup Base
1/4 oz. dried porcini mushroom (optional)
1/2 c. tomato puree (about 125 g)
1/3 pinch each: ground nutmeg, ground cinnamon, ground cloves
1/4 c. olive oil
1 medium onion, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced fine
1 bunch Lacinato kale, stems removed, leaves cut into bite-size pieces
3 medium carrots, sliced 1/4" thick
4 medium potatoes, in 3/8" cubes
A few cups of water or stock
2 t. salt, or to taste

To serve (optional)
Slices of dense bread, grilled or toasted, then rubbed with a garlic clove
Grated Parmesan cheese

(unit conversion page)


Method 

Prepare the beans:
Soak the beans if you like, and drain the water before cooking.  Sauté the minced onion in olive oil over medium heat until soft, then add the garlic and cook for 30 seconds.  Pour in the beans, water, rosemary sprig and bay leaf. Bring to a boil, let boil for one minute, then reduce heat so beans are at a very gentle simmer (or put them in a slow cooker or solar oven).  Cook, partially covered. When beans are tender, add the salt. Remove the bay leaf and rosemary branch. Put half of the cooked beans into a bowl, and puree the remaining beans to give the broth extra body. (Or, if you are skilled with an immersion blender, just use that to puree about half of the cooked beans.)

Prepare the soup base:
Put the dried mushrooms in about 1 cup of hot water, and let them rehydrate for 10 minutes or so. Fish out the mushroom pieces with a fork or slotted spoon, then give them a quick rinse to dislodge any grit that remains.  Pour the soaking liquid through a coffee filter. Add the liquid to the tomato puree.  Chop the rehydrated mushrooms into small pieces (~1/8”) and add to the tomato puree.  Add the spices to the tomato puree.

In a large sauce pan or Dutch oven, heat 1/4 c. olive oil over medium heat.  Cook the onions until soft, then add the garlic and cook for 30 seconds or so, being careful not to burn it. Add the kale and cook for 2 minutes, stirring frequently. Add the carrots and potatoes, stir a few times, and then pour in some water to slow down the cooking. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat to medium and cook, covered, until the potatoes and carrots are just about tender.

Add the tomato-mushroom-spice mixture and cook over low heat for 10 minutes. Add the beans, pureed beans, and cooking liquid.  Add the salt. Adjust the thickness of the soup with more water or stock as needed. Bring to a boil, then lower heat and simmer for 20 minutes, covered (or uncovered, if you think the soup is too thin).

To serve with bread, place a piece of bread in a bowl and ladle the soup on top. Garnish with grated Parmesan cheese.

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Image Credit: Photo of lacinato kale from Wayne Surber's flickr collection, subject to a Creative Commons License.

Random link from the archive:  A Mound of Soup -- Sopa Seca

When Fenugreek Leads to a False Diagnosis

Fenugreek

It's a busy night in the maternity ward, babies being delivered left and right. While changing the diaper of a newborn, one of the nurses smells maple syrup, an unusual occurrence. And after a few seconds of memory searching, mental alarm bells go off:  "It must be Maple Syrup Urine Disease!  This is a big deal!"*

Indeed, despite its quirky name, Maple Syrup Urine Disease (MSUD) is a big deal: it’s an inherited central nervous system disorder that prevents proper metabolism of certain amino acids, and if left untreated can cause neurological damage and mental retardation. The prevalence rate is around 1 in 200,000 in the general public, but much more frequent in certain relatively closed populations (notably the Mennonites of Pennsylvania). (A detailed overview of MSUD can be found at Medscape.)

Back in the hospital, tests are ordered to confirm the nurse’s olfactory diagnosis. And they come back negative. So the doctors and nurses start questioning the mother, and ideally will ask: "Have you consumed any fenugreek seeds or leaves recently?" If the answer is yes – perhaps the mother ate a paste of fenugreek seeds that is purported to ease labor, or ate the seeds some time after delivery to improve breast milk production – then that’s the likely cause of the maple aroma. Fenugreek (Trigonella foenum-graecum L.), it turns out, contains a chemical called sotolon (or sotolone or 3-hydroxy-4,5-dimethyl-2[5H]-furanone) that has a strong maple-syrup-like aroma, and those who eat it will exude the aroma of fenugreek and/or maple syrup for some time. Sotolon is so similar, in fact, that it is used as an artificial maple flavoring (see my previous post on fenugreek for more on this). If the mother ate the fenugreek before delivery, the baby most likely absorbed the maple-syrup-chemical in utero, which led to the urine with a maple syrup aroma.

Medical Commentary on Fenugreek’s Maple Aromas  
Several articles have been written for medical journals about the MSUD-fengreek connection.

One article (reference 1) discusses some cases of what they call “pseudo-MSUD” and notes that there is a tell-tale difference between true MSUD and pseudo-MSUD from fenugreek:  when the mother ate fenugreek soon before delivery, the odor of the baby’s skin and his or her urine is strongest a few hours after birth and diminishes over a few days. When it is really MSUD, though, the odor doesn't appear until one or two days after birth because it takes a certain amount of protein ingestion to trigger the maple emissions. In much of the world, the authors write, hospital workers don't know the aroma of maple syrup, and therefore are unable to identify MSUD, and these pseudo-MSUD events can train staff how to recognize the aroma of true MSUD. But in many non-maple-syrup-familiar places, the aroma of fenugreek might be well known, so perhaps a local name could be adopted along with clear protocols for testing and differentiating between real and pseudo-MSUD.

A letter to the New England Journal of Medicine (reference 2) recounts the case of 9-day old infant who was brought to the hospital because of diarrhea and vomiting. The staff smelled maple syrup, and their initial thought was MSUD. Test results were negative, and it turns out that his mother had given the infant a tea made from fenugreek seeds as a "folk remedy" to ease his digestive troubles.

Sweat Analyzed by Fancy Equipment and Trained Noses
A group of researchers from Europe and North Africa published two papers that detail their attempts to develop analytical methods for detection of fenugreek by-products in human sweat and urine (references 3 and 4). According to the authors, no one has determined which compounds are emitted in human sweat after eating fenugreek, and such knowledge would help in “development of methods able to eliminate or reduce the presence of this strong odour” (perhaps we'll see an anti-fenugreek odor pill similar in concept to Beano?).  In both studies, they had subjects wear specially prepared gauze pads under their arms for many hours to collect sweat, and used analytical techniques to identify the chemicals absorbed by the pads and also to separate the sweat into a number of individual chemicals that could be smelled by trained human assessors.  The assessors provided commentary on the compounds, e.g. neryl acetate, a chemical found in the sweat only after fenugreek ingestion was described as “fruity, blackcurrant, floral,” and β-Caryophyllene was described as “musty, spicy, woody, pungent.” The researchers end up detecting eight compounds that were in the subjects’ sweat after eating fenugreek. Interestingly, none of these were sotolon, and the compound that the sensory panel described as smelling of “fenugreek” was unidentified because its concentration was below the analysis machine’s limit of detection. The authors propose that the fenugreek-y chemical is a metabolite of sotolon. 
 
Notes
* It wasn’t Northrax, a fictional chemical agent which was mentioned several times in Season 2, Episode 6 of 30 Rock (via Gothamist).

Drawing of fenugreek (Trigonella foenum-graecum) from Wikimedia Commons. Photo of Sugar maple leaf from tlindenbaum's flickr collection, subject to a Creative Commons License.

References
1. Korman, S.H., Cohen, E., and Preminger, A., "Pseudo-maple syrup urine disease due to maternal prenatal ingestion of fenugreek," J. Paediatr. Child Health (2001) 37: 403–404. DOI: 10.1046/j.1440-1754.2001.00617.x

2. Bartley, G.B., Hilty, M.D., Andreson, B.D., Clairmont, A.C., Maschke, S.P., "'Maple-syrup' urine odor due to fenugreek ingestion (Letter)," New England Journal of Medicine (1981) 305(8): 467. Link to PubMed.

3. Mebazaa, R., Mahmoudi, A., Rega, B., Cheikh, R.B., Camel, V., "Analysis of human male armpit sweat after fenugreek ingestion: Instrumental and sensory optimisation of the extraction method", Food Chemistry 120 (2010) 771–782.  DOI: 10.1016/j.foodchem.2009.11.009
 
4. Mebazaa, R., Rega, B., Camel, V., "Analysis of human male armpit sweat after fenugreek ingestion: Characterisation of odour active compounds by gas chromatography coupled to mass spectrometry and olfactometry", Food Chemistry 128 (2011) 227–235. DOI: 10.1016/j.foodchem.2011.02.063

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Random link from the archive:  Tokyo, City of Culinary Marvels and Mysteries

Survey of Yoga Students Correlates Home Practice with Health and Happiness

In his legendary "The Physiology of Taste", Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin writes "Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you what you are."  A recent survey of Iyengar yoga students* has a similar idea:  Tell me about your home practice, and I will tell you about your general health, mindfulness, and more.  A clever comparison, to be sure, but probably an overstatement, as I'll explain below.

Researchers from the University of Maryland School of Nursing and the National Institutes of Health Clinical Center contacted 15 Iyengar yoga studios to obtain email addresses of 4,307 subjects, who were invited to take an on-line survey.  Only 1,045 of the invitees completed the 65-item survey, which asked about items that included basic personal information (age, gender, etc.), yoga practice (frequency; what components make up their practice, e.g., poses, breath work, meditation, and study of yogic philosophy), sleep disturbance, subjective well-being (happiness), fruit and vegetable consumption, and more.  The authors specifically chose to work with Iyengar studios because of the size of the network (900 teachers, 100+ studios) and because of the "strict standardization of teaching that would likely contribute to consistent instruction."

Survey Says...
If we assume that the respondents are a representative sample of Iyengar yoga practitioners (a big, and probably unwarranted assumption), the results offer a snapshot of the Iyengar yoga family. The respondents were 84.2% female with a mean age of 51.7 (the standard deviation, abbreviated as SD below, was 11.7, meaning that 68.2% of the population was within 40 and 63.4, assuming a normal distribution).  On average, the respondents had practiced for 11.4 years (SD 7.5), attended 6.1 classes per month (SD 5.1), and practice outside of class 12.2 days per month (SD 9.7). This last variable -- practice outside of class -- stood out to the researchers, and they noted that "frequency of home practice was the practice variable that most often predicted aspects of health." (It's important to note here that the word "predicted" refers to the predictions of their mathematical models, not causality.)  In other words, if you tell me how often you practice at home, I can roughly estimate your level of mindfulness, subjective well-being, how many fruit and vegetable servings you eat each day, and whether you are a vegetarian relative to someone with a different practice.  People with a more frequent home practice were found to have greater mindfulness, better subjective well-being (happiness), and a lower body-mass index (BMI).  Each day of practice per month, the statistics showed, led to a decline of 0.17 in BMI.

Overall, the results show that when it comes to yoga practice and its association to good physical and mental health, what matters is not how many years you have practicing, but how often you practice.**  Each category of physical poses (standing, vigorous, inversions, gentle) relates to one or more aspects of health, mostly physical. Breathing and meditation work, in contrast, are related to mindfulness and subjective well-being. Practice of gentle poses at home was associated with 3 aspects of eating behavior and food cravings: with practitioners of gentle poses eating more fruits and vegetables, being more likely to be vegetarians, and consuming less alcohol. This result suggests to the authors that a potential yoga-based weight loss regimen should combine physically demanding poses for strength and calorie burning with gentle poses for craving reduction.

Some Giant Caveats
Before jumping to any conclusions about home practice or philosophy study and health, at least two big questions need to be addressed.  First, did the survey have any selection bias?  That is, were those who are healthiest, happiest and most enthusiastic about yoga the most likely to respond?  And second, was the better health and happiness caused by the home practice, or are healthier and happier people more likely to have a vigorous home practice ("causality")? Poor health, depression, and exhaustion can be intense enemies when it comes time to roll out the mat and get out the blocks before work or after work (and even on the weekend).

The authors are clearly aware of the issues of selection bias and causality. And so, like most good researchers, they recommend further study. They write: "Randomized clinical trials are needed to examine causal relationships between the different aspects of yoga practice and aspects of health. For instance, does an intervention focusing on gentle poses positively affect feeding behaviors? Does an intervention focusing on vigorous poses effect sleep better than an intervention focusing on gentle poses?"

Notes
* Ross, Alyson, Friedmann, Erika, Bevans, Margaret, and Thomas, Sue, "Frequency of Yoga Practice Predicts Health:  Results of a National Survey of Yoga Practitioners," Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine, Volume 2012 (2012), Article ID 983258, doi: 10.1155/2012/983258.  Full-text available on-line. The article appears in a special issue of Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine called "Yoga as Therapeutic Intervention," which currently contains ten other open-access articles with the promise of additional articles in the future. 
** Worth mentioning is Sutra 1.22 from Patanjili (translation by I. K. Taimni in "The Science of Yoga"):  "A further differentiation (arises) by reason of the mild, medium and intense (nature of means employed)."

Image credit:  Public domain drawing of man in kukkutasana from the March 27, 1898 New York Herald (published before January 1, 1923).

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Random link from the archive:  Mexican Sopes

More fun items from the March 27, 1898 New York Herald

The software on the microfilm reader made me a little scan crazy, so I grabbed a few more fun bits from the March 27, 1898 edition of the New York Herald while my USB drive was working well with the microfilm reader's software (something that didn't happen the first time I visited the newspaper room).

I like this advertisement for a bicycle light, which burns kerosene:

The left-hand column of text below the drawing (with original capitalization preserved and my notes in square brackets):

Simple to understand. Easy to Handle.
   RIGID BRACKET Adjustable at Any Angle on the Front Post, Handle Bar post (outside[?] brake does not interfere) and Either Side Fork of Any Bicycle.
   HINGED FRONT DOOR. Finest Crystal Glass
   ALUMINUM PARABOLA REFLECTOR. Removable
   OUTSIDE OIL FILLER. Seldom necessary to remove Oil Fount from Lamp.
   NEW SLIDING LOCK. To hold Oil Font in Lamp. Simple and effectual.
   GOSSAMER HOOD. To protect Lamp when on the wheel in daytime.
BURNS KEROSENE and is well known. KEEPS LIGHTED.
With the Reflector increased in size (a compomise between the "STANDARD AND TANDEM" of last year) the 1898 Model "20th CENTURY" more than sustains its universal reputation as being The GREATEST LIGHT on Wheels.

The right-hand column of text below the drawing (with original capitalization preserved and my notes in square brackets):

. . . IMPORTANT . . .

The "1898 20TH CENTURY" Lamps are much improved in mechanical construction and are readily distinguished in appearance from those of other years, and each lamp is also stamped [illegible] MODEL," and further the packing boexes are of an entirely different pattern and are plainly printed "THE 1898 MODEL."

All of our advertisements will read "THE 1898 20TH CENTURY." Dealers who catalogue or otherwise advertise this year's Lamps, should always state "THE 1898 20TH CENTURY."

Any advertisements appearing as only "20TH CENTURY" at lower than market prices are quite sure to refere to Lamps of other years and not "THE 1898 20TH CENTURY."

The text below the advertisement for "The 20th Century CYCLOMETER" reads

Latest in design + mechanism
Small, kandoenel[?], accurate in miles + kilometers
reliable
Price $1.00

Two more images are after the jump.