Feeling downward, dog? Hot yoga could fix that.
For people with moderate to severe depression, just one session of hot yoga per week was associated with a “significantly greater” reduction in symptoms compared to no treatment at all, according to a clinical trial.
The Harvard Medical School findings, published in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, analyzed 80 participants with depression over a period of 8 weeks.
The 80 patients were split into two groups. One group was prescribed at least two 90-minute sessions of hot yoga per week and the second group was put on a waiting list. While participants were meant to attend at least two classes weekly, going just once a week was enough to lessen depression.
On average, people attended 10.3 classes over the eight weeks. Researchers found that 44% of people in the hot yoga group said their depression scores were so low, that their condition was considered in remission. Two-thirds of the hot yoga group said they saw a decrease in their depression overall versus just 6.3% of the group that was on the yoga waitlist.
“Yoga and heat-based interventions could potentially change the course for treatment for patients with depression by providing a non-medication–based approach with additional physical benefits as a bonus,” said lead study author Dr. Maren Nyer.
“We are currently developing new studies with the goal of determining the specific contributions of each element—heat and yoga—to the clinical effects we have observed in depression.”
Other studies back up Nyer and his team’s findings.
Researchers from the University of South Australia found that regular exercise could be more effective in treating mental illness than medication.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 50% of Americans will be diagnosed with some sort of mental health problem or disorder in their lifetime.
A recent Gallup poll found that as many as 29% of Americans have been diagnosed with depression.
Source link
#Hot #yoga #put #common #mental #illness #remission #study