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…
A large new observational study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found that meditating was associated with a 35% lower risk of high cholesterol, a 14% lower risk of high blood pressure, a 30% lower risk of diabetes, a 24% lower risk of stroke, and a 49% lower risk of coronary artery disease. ACCESS STUDY
A new study in JAMA Oncology suggests that very sedentary people are roughly 80 percent more likely to die of cancer than those who sit the least. The study, using epidemiological data and activity trackers on 7,000 middle-aged men and women, found that people that spent the most time during their day sitting were 82 percent more likely to have died from cancer during the…
