Study:Yoga May Help Treat Depression, Anxiety Disorders

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(HealthDay News) -- Yoga's postures, controlledbreathing and meditation may work together to help ease brains plagued byanxiety or depression, a new study shows.

 

Brain scans of yoga practitioners showed a healthy boost in levels ofthe neurotransmitter gamma-aminobutyric (GABA) immediately after aone-hour yoga session. Low brain levels of GABA are associated withanxiety and depression, the researchers said.

 

"I am quite sure that this is the first study that's shown that there'sa real, measurable change in a major neurotransmitter with a behavioralintervention such as yoga," said lead researcher Dr. Chris Streeter,assistant professor of psychiatry and neurology at the Boston UniversitySchool of Medicine.

 

She believes yoga could prove a useful tool to help people battlingdepression and anxiety disorders. "We're not advocating that they chucktheir medication, but I would advise that they could use it as an adjunctand see how they are doing," Streeter said.

 

Her team published its findings in the May issue of the Journal ofAlternative and Complementary Medicine.

 

In the study, the Boston researchers used high-tech magnetic resonancespectroscopic imaging to gauge levels of GABA in the brains of eightlong-time yoga practitioners and 11 non-practitioners. The participantswere healthy, and none was diagnosed with a major psychiatriccondition.

 

Brain scans were taken before the beginning of the experiment. Then,the yoga group was asked to engage in the meditative practice for 60minutes, while the non-yoga group simply read. The researchers thenre-scanned each participant's brain, looking specifically at GABAlevels.

 

"We showed a 27 percent increase in the brain GABA levels of thosedoing yoga -- a really significant increase," Streeter said. No suchchange was noted in the non-practitioners who had just read.

 

She said the style or school of yoga practiced didn't seem to matter."We had hatha, ashtanga, bikram, vinyasa, andkripalu" practitioners included in the yoga group, Streeter said,"and many had been trained in several different schools."

 

According to Streeter, "this all gives us one of the mechanisms bywhich yoga may be having a beneficial effect. There could be othermechanisms."

 

But another expert pointed to what he considered flaws in theresearch.

 

Zindel Segal, chairman of psychotherapy and a professor of psychologyand psychiatry at the University of Toronto, has for years studied the useof behavioral interventions to alleviate psychological woes.

 

He said the Boston researchers were to be commended for using brainscan imaging technologies to investigate the effectiveness of thesetechniques. But he questioned why the yoga group was simply compared to asedentary reading group and not to another movement-based group.

 

"Exercise itself may have some effects on GABA, so I think in thisstudy, you'd really want that comparison," he said. Including such acontrol group would make it clear that it was yoga and not just an hour ofphysical exertion that was responsible for the brain changes.

 

He also pointed out that all of the people in the study were mentallyhealthy, and clinical depression and anxiety disorders involve more thanthe "daily fluctuations in stress and tension" that healthy individualsare prone to.

 

"We know that yoga can have a profound effect" on smoothing out life'sdaily ups and downs, Segal said. "But so does working out on a Stairmasterfor an hour."

 

Segal also questioned the role of GABA in depression. While it may playa role in anxiety disorders, "GABA is not one of the mainneurotransmitters that seems to be a part of the depression story," hesaid. Other neurochemicals -- most notably serotonin -- play much biggerroles in the disorder, he said.

 

None of this means that the study's findings are without merit, Segalsaid. "In fact," he said, "we have a program called 'mindfulness-basedcognitive therapy,' where we do use yoga, as well as mindfulnessmeditation," as therapeutic tools. Streeter's findings "suggest the needfor more study of these practices," he said.

 

Streeter agreed that her study is probably just a beginning.

 

"I think what's important about this study is that it shows that byusing really cutting-edge neuroimaging technology, we can measure realchanges in the brain with behavioral interventions -- changes that aresimilar to those that we see with pharmacologic treatments," she said.

 

Would other mind-body practices -- Tai Chi, for example -- producesimilar effects?

 

"I think that's very possible," Streeter said. "I suspect that allroads lead up the mountain."