Pranayama is a set of techniques for controlling the breath, and a new randomized controlled trial from Brazilian doctors showed that this yoga breathwork led to significantly decreased anxiety and negative affect. It’s the first study to show how it impacts the brain: Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), they found that Pranayama exercises led to changes in areas of the brain implicated in emotional…
A new study from the University of California, San Francisco found that people consciously aware of the vistas and objects around them on a walk—researchers call these “awe walks”—reported being more hopeful and upbeat than walkers who did not. Study participants were older men and women, and one group was instructed on how to cultivate awe (i.e., look at the world with fresh, childlike eyes)…
A new randomized clinical trial from Harvard Medical School and Boston University (published in JAMA Psychiatry) compared a 12-week program of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and Kundalini yoga (which involves traditional yoga components, breathwork and meditation) against a stress education control group, for people with generalized anxiety disorder (GAD). They found that CBT was still the best first-line treatment, but that the yoga regime also…
A study from Saarland University (Germany) compared elite, competitive athletes’ (both men and women) to normal, healthy young people’s immune response to a vaccine. They found that after a flu vaccine, the athlete group had significantly more immune cells and antibodies post-vaccination than the non-athlete group. The researchers concluded that being in great shape is associated with a much more pronounced immune response and is…
A new study from Johns Hopkins and the University of California, Irvine found that people with a higher body mass index have less blood flowing to their brain, which might explain why obesity is tied to Alzheimer’s risk. Performing brain scans on 17,721 men and women, they discovered that the higher the BMI, the lower the blood flow to five regions of the brain that…
A new study randomized obese men and women into three groups: those who ate an unrestricted amount of calories from 1–7 PM, those who ate unrestricted calories from 3–7 PM, and a control group that ate anything at any time of day. Both groups that practiced time-restricted fasting consumed, on average, 550 fewer calories each day and lost 3% of their body weight while seeing…
