Yoga and the Spine

Did you know that every evening we are a little shorter, due to water loss in our inter-vertebral disks? During sleep the disks re-hydrate and expand again. Stretching exercises, s.a. Yoga speed up the oxygen uptake into these inter-vertebral disks (because they rely on blood-vessels from the bodies of the vertebraes), increase circulation and remove waste. And by the way, people don’t get shorter because their inter-vertebral disks flatten permanently, they get shorter due to bone-loss in the vertebraes itself!