Can Yoga really cure varicose veins?

Prof Mark Whiteley explains why Yoga might help the symptoms of varicose veins, but there is no proof at all that Yoga can cure varicose veins.

“There’s an amazing amount on the internet at the moment and even appearing in paper based media stating from certain ‘so called’ experts yoga that they can cure varicose veins. Well if they can there is absolutely no research to show it and it doesn’t stand up to logic.

Varicose veins are caused by a genetic problem and that is valves giving way and this is now being shown with multi-million pound research projects. What yoga can do is yoga can help people exercise, is good for physiotherapy and I’m sure it’s good to try and keep healthy veins healthy. If you do have varicose veins and have problems I’m sure that yoga poses will help reduce the stress on the lower legs by elevating the leg or exercising the veins themselves. But can it actually make swollen veins go back to being normal? The answer is almost definitely not. Can it make the valves work again? The answer to that is also almost definitely not.

If anybody in the EU community can actually prove in a proper randomized controlled study that this does change, or, they can actually show how it could happen then we could take it seriously, apart from that until it comes I think we have to say that really yoga is unlikely to ever cure varicose veins although it may help with the symptoms of them.”