Yoga Life

In this edition, it's yoga for life, promising research on exercise as a treatment for depression and your weekly recommendations.

The Rundown

Yoga Life. The connection between yoga and various health benefits is long established and now, a new paper suggests it might even increase physical capabilities associated with longer life.

A team from Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston conducted a systematic review that looked at 33 randomized controlled trials in 12 countries involving over 2,000 participants. They found that yoga improved health indicators linked to less frailty and more longevity. Specifically, a regular yoga practice improved frailty markers including walking speed, lower extremity strength and endurance.

According to study author, Julia Loewenthal, the findings, while determined with “moderate certainty” are nevertheless important because many markers of frailty are “connected with clinically meaningful outcomes like living independently and mortality.”

Frailty affects 7 to 12 percent of people over 65 in the United States. It is a loosely defined condition that has symptoms including weakness, slowness, easy exhaustion, low endurance and weight loss.

There are no standards for an optimal “dose” of yoga but the study’s authors note that previous research recommends two to three one-hour sessions per week.

Depression & Exercise. Research on exercise and depression has stressed that movement can help protect against developing depression but it’s less clear if exercise helps treat existing cases of it.

A recent paper published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine is the largest study to date of exercise as “medicine” for depression and its findings are significant. Overall, people with depression who exercised in any way improved their symptoms by almost five points on a widely recognized diagnostic scale. On another scale, it was about 6.5 points. An improvement of three points or more, for both scales, is considered clinically meaningful.

For the analysis, a global team of researchers collected every recent experiment using physical activity as depression therapy, which added up to 41 studies of over 2,200 volunteers. The studies’ workout programs included walking, running, and weight training. There were group classes, and solo workouts, with some supervised and others not. All featured people with depression. In general, the effects were best if people exercised moderately, although more intense workouts were almost as effective.

Experts who treat depression note that it is not a “one size fits all” condition and any treatment should be tailored to the individual. As for the study, more research is needed in terms of dose, intensity, and type of exercise as well as how lasting the early improvements related to exercise are.

It’s also the case that exercise can be discouraging for someone who is depressed. The takeaway is that if you or someone you care about feels depressed, talk with a doctor about exercise as either a first therapy or in addition to other treatments.

Extra Point

Watch

The Crash Reel. While training for the 2010 winter Olympics, snowboarder Kevin Pearce suffered a life-changing fall. This moving and very personal sports documentary follows Kevin, his family, his friends and his rival Shaun White as they all deal with the aftermath of Kevin’s traumatic brain injury and come to terms with his future as an athlete. More than a feel-good film about overcoming the odds, it’s a beautifully shot and poignant reflection on the joys and perils of extreme sports. The Crash Reel is streaming on Amazon Prime Video.

Listen

BBC Inside Health. Health advice can be confusing and sometimes conflicting. This podcast hosted by BBC health and science correspondent, James Gallagher, breaks down the research. Recent episodes discuss back pain, a lazy guide to exercise, and what rising food costs are doing to our health.

Read

3 Ways to Measure How Fit You Are Without Focusing on Weight. In this article from the New York Times, Dana G. Smith discusses how to move beyond weight as a measure of exercise progress.