Apple has a message for you: Remember to breathe. Later this year, the Cupertino, Calif.Controlled breathing may improve health conditions ranging from insomnia and anxiety to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), high blood pressure and depression. Yoga Breathing May Help to Reduce Depression. New research finds that a breathing- based meditation practice helped alleviate severe depression in people who did not fully respond to antidepressant treatments. Investigators from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania discovered breathing practices associated with Sudarshan Kriya yoga significantly improved symptoms of depression and anxiety. Researchers compared medicated patients with major depressive disorder (MDD) who participated in the breathing technique to medicated patients who did not. The study, which appears in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, bolsters the science behind the use of controlled yogic breathing to help battle depression. The randomized, controlled pilot study, was led by Anup Sharma, M. D., Ph. D., a neuropsychiatry research fellow in psychiatry at Penn.
Significant improvement were found after two months among the yoga group. This cohort reduced its mean Hamilton Depression Rating Scale (HDRS) score by several points, while the control group showed no improvements. HDRS is the most widely used clinician- administered depression assessment that scores mood, interest in activities, energy, suicidal thoughts, and feelings of guilt, among other symptoms. The finding is important as more than half of the 4. Americans who take antidepressants do not fully respond. Add- on therapies are often prescribed to enhance the effects of the drugs in these patients, but they typically offer limited additional benefits and come with side effects that can curb use, prolonging the depressive episode. What’s more, patients who don’t fully respond to antidepressants are especially at risk of relapse.“With such a large portion of patients who do not fully respond to antidepressants, it’s important we find new avenues that work best for each person to beat their depression,” Sharma said. Overall, the authors also note, well- designed studies that evaluate the benefits of yoga to treat depression are lacking, despite increased interest in the ancient Indian practice. Millions of Americans participate in some form of yoga every year. In the study, researchers enrolled 2. MDD who were depressed, despite more than eight weeks of antidepressant medication treatment. The medicated patients were randomized to either the breathing intervention group or the “waitlist” control group for eight weeks. For weeks two through eight, participants attended weekly Sudarshan Kriya yoga follow- up sessions and completed a home practice version of the technique. Patients in the Sudarshan Kriya yoga group showed a significantly greater improvement in HDRS scores compared to patients in the waitlist group. With a mean baseline HDRS score of 2. Patients in the yoga group also showed significant mean reductions in total depression and anxiety scores versus the waitlist control group. Results of the pilot study suggest the feasibility and promise of Sudarshan Kriya as an add- on intervention for MDD patients who have not responded to antidepressants, the authors wrote.“The next step in this research is to conduct a larger study evaluating how this intervention impacts brain structure and function in patients who have major depression,” Sharma said. Source: University of Pennsylvania. Related Articles.
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