ABSTRACT
Background: Extreme environments are inherently stressful and are characterized by a variety of physicaland psychosocial stressors, including, but not limited to, isolation, confinement, social tensions, minimalpossibility of medical evacuation, boredom, monotony, and danger. Previous research studies recommend adaptation to the environment to maintain optimal function and remain healthy. Different interventions have been tried in the past for effective management of stress. Yoga practices have beenshown to be beneficial for coping with stress and enhance quality of life, sleep and immune status.Objective: The current article describes preparation of a Yoga module for better management of stressorsin extreme environmental condition of Antarctica.Materials and methods: A Yoga module was designed based on the traditional and contemporary yogaliterature as well as published studies. The Yoga module was sent for validation to forty experts of whichthirty responded.Results: Experts (n ¼ 30) gave their opinion on the usefulness of the yoga module. In total 29 out of 30practices were retained. The average content validity ratio and intra class correlation of the entiremodule was 0.89 & 0.78 respectively.Conclusion: A specific yoga module for coping and facilitating adaptation in Antarctica was designed andvalidated. This module was used in the 35th Indian Scientific expedition to Antarctica, and experimentsare underway to understand the efficacy and utility of Yoga on psychological stress, sleep, serum biomarkers and gene expression. Further outcomes shall provide the efficacy and utility of this module inAntarctic environments.© 2018 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of Institute of Transdisciplinary Health Sciencesand Technology and World Ayurveda Foundation. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-NDlicense (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)
ABSTRACT
Background & objectives: Immune activation and inflammation play critical roles in the stressful environmental conditions like high altitude, extreme cold, etc. Human leukocyte antigen-G (HLA-G) is a non classical major histocompatiblity complex class I (MHC class- I) protein, upregulated in the context of transplantation, malignancy and inflammation. We hypothesized serum HLA-G as a possible stress biomarker and studied levels of soluble form of HLA-G (sHLA-G) in Indian Antarctic expeditioners. Methods: sHLA-G ELISA was performed in the serum of summer (n=27) and winter (n=22) Indian Antarctic expeditioners. The summer expeditioners were evaluated at three different time points, i.e. before leaving India, after one month ship borne journey, and after staying one month at Indian research base, Maitri in Antarctica, while winter expeditioners were evaluated at five different time points, i.e. before leaving India, and in the month of March, May, August and November at Antarctica. Results: one month ship borne journey did not cause any significant change in the sHLA-G level as compared to the baseline level of the summer expeditioners. sHLA-G levels were not changed significantly in the months of March, May, August and November as compared to the baseline level of the winter expeditioners. Interpretation & conclusions: Our results indicated that the extreme conditions of Antarctica did not cause any significant change in the sHLA-G level in both summer and winter expeditioners.