Yoga is an extremely popular form of exercise. I am sure that most of the people reading this blog have at one point tried a form of yoga. It is practiced by 15.8 million adults in the US alone.
A review of studies done about the exercise on major clinical psychiatric disorders was published recently in the journal, “Frontiers in Psychiatry.” The studies looked at effects of yoga on depression, schizophrenia, ADHD, sleep complaints, eating disorders and cognition problems. The review found evidence from biomarker studies showing that yoga influences certain elements of the body believed to play a role in mental health in similar ways that antidepressants and psychotherapy do.
A Hatha Yoga class (image by NewHomeLivingBC/ flickr.com)
Benefits were found for all mental health illnesses included above except for eating disorders and cognition problems, as evidence was conflicting or lacking.
Depression alone affects more than 350 million people world-wide and is the leading cause of disability according to the World Health Organization (WHO). A study carried out by WHO found that 60% of patients were still depressed after being treated with an anti-depressant.
By reducing perceived stress and anxiety, yoga appears to modulate stress response systems, decreasing physiological arousal- reducing heart rate, lowering blood pressure, and easing respiration. It also helps increase heart variability, which is an indicator of the body’s ability to respond to stress more flexibly. Researchers at the University of Utah did a study of varied participants’ responses to pain, and found that yoga practitioners had the highest pain tolerance and lowest pain-related brain activity during the MRI when they were subjected to thumbnail pressure.
For people with schizophrenia, psychotic episodes are often triggered by stressful events, becoming agitated, restless, and disturbed. Grounding and centering yoga could channel these energies towards a calmer and more controlled mood.
Professor of Psychiatry and Medicine at Duke University Medical Center, and author of the review, Dr. P. Murali Doraiswamy, stated that, “The search for improved treatments, including non-drug based, to meet the holistic needs of patients is of paramount importance and we call for more research into yoga as a global priority.” According to him, yoga may not only help improve symptoms, but may have a supporting role in prevention of stress-related mental illnesses. Below is a video of Dr. Doraiswamy discussing the benefits of yoga.
There are many benefits associated with practicing yoga for improving mental health, including fewer side effects. For many patients dealing with depression, yoga may be a very appealing way to better manage symptoms. I believe mental and physical health are essentially equivalent. Yoga practice is relatively low-risk, high-yield way to improve your overall health, and I think this should be known by a much broader audience.
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