Photo by Mikhail Nilov: https://www.pexels.com/photo/a-couple-doing-yoga-at-home-7500701/
Flexibility exercises are often included in the exercise regimens of athletes and exercisers. New research in the Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science in Sports suggests that levels of flexibility may affect survival in middle-aged individuals.
After analysing data on 3,139 people (66% men) aged 46–65 years, investigators obtained a body flexibility score, termed Flexindex. This score was derived from a combination of the passive range of motion in 20 movements (each scored 0–4) involving 7 different joints, resulting in a score range of 0–80.
Flexindex was 35% higher in women compared with men. During an average follow-up of 12.9 years, 302 individuals (9.6%) comprising 224 men and 78 women died. Flexindex exhibited an inverse relationship with mortality risk and was nearly 10% higher for survivors compared with non-survivors in both men and women.
After taking age, body mass index, and health status into account, men and women with a low Flexindex had a 1.87- and 4.78-times higher risk of dying, respectively, than those with a high Flexindex.
“Being aerobically fit and strong and having good balance have been previously associated with low mortality. We were able to show that reduced body flexibility is also related to poor survival in middle-aged men and women,” said corresponding author Claudio Gil S. Araújo, MD, PhD, of the Exercise Medicine Clinic – CLINIMEX, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
He added that as flexibility tends to decrease with aging, it may be worth paying more attention to flexibility exercises and routinely including assessments of body flexibility as part of all health-related physical fitness evaluations.
A new UCLA Health study found Kundalini yoga provided several benefits to cognition and memory for older women at risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease including restoring neural pathways, preventing brain matter decline and reversing aging and inflammation-associated biomarkers – improvements not seen in a group who received standard memory training exercises.
The findings, published in the journal Translational Psychiatry, are the latest in a series of studies led by UCLA Health researchers over the past 15 years into the comparative effects of yoga and traditional memory enhancement training on slowing cognitive decline and addressing other risk factors of dementia.
Led by UCLA Health psychiatrist Dr. Helen Lavretsky of the Jane and Terry Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior, this latest study sought to determine whether Kundalini yoga could be used early on to prevent cognitive decline and trajectories of Alzheimer’s disease among postmenopausal women.
Women have about twice the risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease compared to men due to several factors including longer life expectancy, changes in oestrogen levels during menopause and genetics.
In the new study, a group of more than 60 women ages 50 and older who had self-reported memory issues and cerebrovascular risk factors were recruited from a UCLA cardiology clinic. The women were divided evenly into two groups. The first group participated in weekly Kundalini yoga sessions for 12 weeks while the other one group underwent weekly memory enhancement training during the same time period. Participants were also provided daily homework assignments.
Kundalini yoga is a method that focuses on meditation and breath work more so than physical poses. Memory enhancement training developed by the UCLA Longevity centre includes a variety of exercises, such as using stories to remember items on a list or organising items on a grocery list, to help preserve or improve long-term memory of patients.
Researchers assessed the women’s cognition, subjective memory, depression and anxiety after the first 12 weeks and again 12 weeks later to determine how stable any improvements were. Blood samples were also taken to test for gene expression of aging markers and for molecules associated with inflammation, which are contributing factors to Alzheimer’s disease. A handful of patients were also assessed with MRIs to study changes in brain matter.
Researchers found the Kundalini yoga group participants saw several improvements not experienced by the memory enhancement training group. These included significant improvement in subjective memory complaints, prevention in brain matter declines, increased connectivity in the hippocampus which manages stress-related memories, and improvement in the peripheral cytokines and gene expression of anti-inflammatory and anti-aging molecules.
“That is what yoga is good for – to reduce stress, to improve brain health, subjective memory performance and reduce inflammation and improve neuroplasticity,” Lavretsky said.
Among the memory enhancement training group, the main improvements were found to be in the participants’ long-term memory.
Neither group saw changes in anxiety, depression, stress or resilience, though Lavretsky stated this is likely because the participants were relatively healthy and were not depressed.
While the long-term effects of Kundalini yoga on preventing or delaying Alzheimer’s disease require further study, Lavretsky said the study demonstrates that using yoga and memory training in tandem could provide more comprehensive benefits to the cognition of older women.
“Ideally, people should do both because they do train different parts of the brain and have different overall health effects,” Lavretsky said. “Yoga has this anti-inflammatory, stress-reducing, anti-aging neuroplastic brain effect which would be complementary to memory training.”
New research published in the Journal of Orthopaedic Research suggests that the physical postures, breathing exercises, and mindfulness practices of yoga may benefit individuals with back pain.
In the study, 10 women with and 11 without chronic low back pain underwent an 8‐session yoga program over 4 weeks, with the first session conducted in a clinic and the rest delivered with a tele‐approach. Women with chronic low back pain experienced a significant decrease in pain intensity, as assessed through a 10-point visual analogue scale (an average pain of 6.80 at the start, dropped to 3.30 after the sessions) and through a spine-related measure called the flexion–relaxation phenomenon, which is often absent or disrupted in people with low back pain (5.12 at the start versus 9.49 after the sessions).
The findings suggest yoga can positively impact the neuromuscular response during trunk flexion and pain perception in individuals with chronic low back pain.
“It was interesting to show the role that yoga might play in the management of chronic back pain,” said corresponding author Prof Alessandro de Sire, MD, of the University of Catanzaro “Magna Graecia” and University Hospital “Renato Dulbecco,” in Italy.
The authors noted that further research is warranted to assess yoga’s long‐term effects.
Yoga therapy and lifestyle modifications have been shown to improve heart failure (HF) patients’ quality of life and enhance their cardiovascular function. A new study, presented at the American College of Cardiology Asia 2023 conference, examines the long-term outcomes of yoga therapy to determine the benefit of adding yoga therapy as a complementary treatment in the management of HF. After 12 months, participants with HF receiving yoga therapy continued to show improvement in left ventricular systolic function as well as quality of life.
The study included 75 heart failure patients (aged 30–70 years old) at a tertiary care centre in South India, who underwent coronary intervention, revascularisation or device therapy within in the previous six to 12 months. All of the patients included in the study were less than or equal to New York Heart Association (NYHA) Class III and had been on optimised medical therapy for at least 6 months to 12 months, and had a left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF) of < 45%.
The interventional group included 35 participants (31 men and 4 women) and 40 (30 men and 10 women) were in the non-interventional (control) group. The interventional group received yoga therapy and guideline-directed medical therapy, while the control group only continued with standard guideline-directed medical therapy. Echocardiographic parameters were compared at various follow-ups to see the impact of yoga therapy on heart failure patients.
“Yoga is a combination of mind-body techniques, which is a set of physical exercises [asana] with breathing techniques [pranayama], relaxation and meditation that can be effectively used to stimulate physical and mental well-being,” said lead author Ajit Singh, PhD, research scientist for the Indian Council for Medical Research at Kasturba Medical College & Hospital, Manipal Academy of Heart Education in Manipal, India. “Our patients observed improvement in systolic blood pressure and heart rate compared to patients who were on medication without yoga.”
Participants in the yoga group were taken to the Department of Yoga at the hospital and an experienced yoga therapist taught selected yoga therapy like pranayama, meditation and relaxation techniques. Each session lasted around 60 minutes and participants were supervised for one week at the training centre before being asked to continue self-administered yoga at home. Those in the yoga group were advised to perform yoga at least five days a week for 12 months. At the training centre all the participants were taught together to perform the same steps, but individual support was available.
Researchers measured quality of life improvements using the World Health Organization Quality of Life questionnaire, which uses 26 questions to evaluate quality of life in four aspects: physical, psychological, social and environmental health. The participants completed the questionnaire at enrolment, as well as at 24 weeks and 48 weeks of follow-up. According to the researchers, the study showed participants in the yoga group had improvement in endurance, strength, balance, symptom stability and quality of life. They also observed that while patients improved physically and psychologically, there was no improvement in social and environmental health.
Echocardiographic parameters did not show any significant differences between the two groups at baseline. At both the six- and 12-month follow-up, improved biventricular systolic function was seen in the interventional (yoga) group compared to the control group. The interventional group also showed substantial improvement in functional outcomes as assessed by NHYA classification.
“This study proves that the addition of yoga therapy to standard medical management of heart failure leads to an improvement in left ventricular systolic function and quality of life in heart failure patients,” Singh said. “Hence, yoga therapy may improve physical well-being and left ventricular function among heart failure patients on guideline-directed optimal medical therapy.”
