Yoga Treats Depression

Are Yoga practitioners really happier than most people are?

Science says they do.

A team at Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) and McLean Hospital has discovered that practicing yoga could boost brain gamma-aminobutyric (GABA) levels, the primary inhibitory neurotransmitter chemical.

The this case, yoga could be employed as a possible tool against depression and anxiety, rampant conditions in modern society linked to low GABA levels. The World Health Organization signals that mental diseases represent up to 15 % of the overall conditions in the world.

By now, depression and anxiety have been successfully stopped with drugs that induce a boost of GABA release. In the current approach, the researchers employed magnetic resonance spectroscopic imaging to assess the GABA levels of 8 subjects before and after one hour of yoga.

These volunteers were compared with 11 other people who did not practice yoga but read for one hour. Yoga induced a 27 % increase in GABA levels while reading had no effect of this neurotransmitter. The GABA levels were assessed by employing a magnetic resonance spectroscopy technique developed by Dr. J. Eric Jensen, an assistant professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and an associate physicist at McLean Hospital.

Yoga has been already linked to eased symptoms in depression, anxiety and epilepsy. "Our findings clearly demonstrate that in experienced yoga practitioners, brain GABA levels increase after a session of yoga," said lead author Dr. Chris Streeter, an assistant professor of psychiatry and neurology at BUSM and a research associate at McLean Hospital. "This study contributes to the understanding of how the GABA system is affected by both pharmacologic and behavioral interventions and will help to guide the development of new treatments for low GABA states," said co-author Dr. Domenic Ciraulo, professor and chairman of the department of psychiatry at BUSM.

"The development of an inexpensive, widely available intervention such as yoga that has no side effects but is effective in alleviating the symptoms of disorders associated with low GABA levels has clear public health advantage," added senior author Dr. Perry Renshaw, director of the Brain Imaging Center at Harvard-affiliated McLean Hospital.