Yoga is becoming more popular among men, and for good reason: Besides getting rid of stress and increasing flexibility, it may lower the risk of heart disease, depression, and high blood pressure.

Ira Bloom calls himself a yoga "crazy" By day, the 52-year-old Bloom is a practicing dentist. Two or three times a week, though, after leaving his office, you'll find Bloom at the Greater Baltimore Yoga Center. There, for an hour and a half, he practices a form of hatha yoga known as Iyengar.
Bloom came to yoga quite by accident about five years ago. An ad offering a free week of yoga classes spurred him on, and he's been hooked ever since. "It's a great way to improve your strength, become more flexible, and relieve stress," says Bloom. "It really calms the mind."
Though Bloom says that his ultimate goal is to practice yoga every day, he admits that a hectic schedule makes that difficult. But, he adds, even the two or three times a week he does make it to yoga class has a strong influence on his daily routine. "It just spills over into your everyday life," he says. "You learn to do your life like you do your yoga ... to be centered, to breathe more calmly, and to be focused. Little things don't bother you as much."
Calming the mind not only makes day-to-day living easier, says Robert Bulgarelli, DO, FACC, who practices integrative and preventive cardiovascular medicine at Cardiovascular Associates of Southeastern Pennsylvania, it also has far-reaching effects when it comes to protecting men (and women, too) from the physical damages of stress.
"Yoga, with its combination of meditation and breathing, helps get the mind and body in sync," says Bulgarelli. Men, he goes on to say, frequently downplay the stress that they're feeling, and as a result, tend to develop heart disease at an earlier age than women.

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