A recent study conducted by UCLA Health found that practicing Kundalini yoga provided numerous cognitive and memory benefits to older women at risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease. These benefits were not observed in a group that received standard memory training exercises.
The study, published in Translational Psychiatry, is the latest in a series of studies that UCLA Health researchers have conducted over the past 15 years into the comparative effects of yoga and traditional memory enhancement training on slowing cognitive decline and addressing other dementia risk factors.
The study, led by UCLA Health psychiatrist Dr. Helen Lavretsky of the Jane and Terry Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior, aimed 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 estrogen levels during menopause, and genetics. The study recruited a group of more than 60 women ages 50 and older who had self-reported memory issues and cerebrovascular risk factors from a UCLA cardiology clinic. The women were divided evenly into two groups.
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The first group participated in weekly Kundalini yoga sessions for 12 weeks, while the other 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 breathwork more than physical poses. Memory enhancement training developed by the UCLA Longevity center includes a variety of exercises, such as using stories to remember items on a list or organizing 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 molecules associated with inflammation, contributing to Alzheimer’s disease. A handful of patients were also assessed with MRIs to study changes in brain matter.
The Kundalini yoga group participants saw 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. On the other hand, the main improvements in the memory enhancement training group were found to be in the participants’ long-term memory. While neither group saw changes in anxiety, depression, stress, or resilience, Lavretsky stated that this is likely because the participants were relatively healthy and were not depressed.
She said that 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 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 complement memory training.”
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