I've been doing yoga for 10 years and could bore you silly about how much I love it, how good it is for you, blah... blah.... blah..... instead, I'll let this article I came across on healthypages.com explain that yoga doesn't just make you more flexible and keep your muscles and joints healthy, it's equally as good for the brain!
"It has recently been discovered that the practice of yoga can increase the levels of gamma amino butyric acid (GABA) which is a principle inhibitory neurotransmitter of the brain. Low GABA levels are associated with anxiety and depression disorders and increasing these levels has up until now been achieved by the use of pharmaceutical preparations.
A team of researchers at McLean Hospital and the Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) conducted a test with 8 people who practiced yoga for one hour and 11 people who read for one hour but did no yoga.
Both before and after the test the subjects were tested with magnetic resonance spectroscopic imaging. The yoga practitioners showed a 27 percent increase in GABA levels whereas the control group did not register any change in their levels. The technique was developed by Professor J. Eric Jensen, PhD who assists in psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and another physicist from McLean Hospital
One of the authors of the report, Chris Streeter, MD, said: "Our findings clearly demonstrate that in experienced yoga practitioners, brain GABA levels increase after a session of yoga." A senior author of the report, Perry Renshaw, MD, PhD was enthusiastic about the health benefits to the public that would result from something as readily available and cheap to practice as yoga for dealing with the symptoms that arise from disorders connected to a low GABA rate".
Excerpt from Healthypages.com
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