Unless you’re a gymnast, chances are it’s been a good many years since you’ve done a headstand. What you may be surprised to learn, though, is that this common childhood activity actually offers a number of health benefits that are worth considering as an adult. From delaying hair loss to aiding digestion, here are five surprising health benefits of doing a headstand every day.
Unless you’re a gymnast, chances are it’s been a good many years since you’ve done a headstand. What you may be surprised to learn, though, is that this common childhood activity actually offers a number of health benefits that are worth considering as an adult. From delaying hair loss to aiding digestion, here are five surprising health benefits of doing a headstand every day.
Reduce Back Pain
Inversion methods have long been used to help treat chronic back pain, and standing on your head is one simple inversion method that research has shown to help treat common causes of back pain.
Aiding Digestion
Standing on your head quite literally turns every organ in your body upside down, including your digestive tract. This shift in the pull of gravity is able to stimulate your intestines in a way that will aid digestion.
Improving Blood Circulation
Standing on your head reverses your blood flow, and studies have shown that reversing your blood flow in this manner is able to improve circulation as well as bring more oxygen into your blood.
Delaying Hair Loss
One of the most common causes of hair loss is poor circulation to the scalp. Standing on your head, though, forces much more blood into your scalp, which will improve the health of your hair and scalp and help delay any hair loss that you might be experiencing.
Drain Fluid from Your Feet
Standing on your head allows any fluid that has gathered in your feet to drain in addition to improving blood circulation to your feet – both of which are able to help prevent and delay the onset of varicose veins in your legs and feet.
Boosting Mood
In addition to stimulating blood flow to your scalp, doing a handstand stimulates blood flow to your brain as well, including your brain’s pituitary and hypothalamus glands. These glands are vital to both your mood and overall wellbeing, making a headstand an effective way to boost your mood by improving the functionality of your brain’s most important glands.
Promoting Better Gland Health
In addition to boosting your mood, flushing your brain’s pituitary and hypothalamus glands with fresh, oxygenated blood by standing on your head can also help improve the health of other glands in your body. Since these glands are considered the master glands and regulate all other glands in the body – including the thyroid, pineal, and adrenal glands – boosting the health of your pituitary and hypothalamus glands by doing a headstand each day is a great way to boost the health of all of your other important glands as well.
Improving Your Skin Health
Doing a headstand each day is able to improve the health and beauty of your skin in two key ways. For one, standing on your head allows your skin to hang in the opposite direction for a time, which can help reverse the effects of gravity on your skin. Standing on your head also flushes the skin in your face with oxygenated blood, which can promote a healthy, glowing effect.
Strengthening Core Muscles
At the most basic of levels, a headstand is a useful exercise that can strengthen your body’s core muscles. Even if all the other benefits of standing on your head are ignored, the exercise alone that this activity provides is worth considering.
Turn Yourself Upside Down to Turn Your Health Around In a surprising variety of ways, standing on your head for just a few minutes each day is something that offers considerable health benefits. If you are looking for a simple and arguably enjoyable way to improve both your physical and mental health, it may be time to get in touch with your childhood roots and start standing on your head once more.
