HealthDay Reporter
THURSDAY, June 7 (HealthDay News) -- Yoga's postures, controlled breathing and meditation may work together to help ease brains plagued by anxiety or depression, a new study shows.

Brain scans of yoga practitioners showed a healthy boost in levels of the neurotransmitter gamma-aminobutyric (GABA) immediately after a one-hour yoga session. Low brain levels of GABA are associated with anxiety and depression, the researchers said.

"I am quite sure that this is the first study that's shown that there's a real, measurable change in a major neurotransmitter with a behavioral intervention such as yoga," said lead researcher Dr. Chris Streeter, assistant professor of psychiatry and neurology at the Boston University School of Medicine.

She believes yoga could prove a useful tool to help people battling depression and anxiety disorders. "We're not advocating that they chuck their medication, but I would advise that they could use it as an adjunct and see how they are doing," Streeter said.

Her team published its findings in the May issue of the Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine.

In the study, the Boston researchers used high-tech magnetic resonance spectroscopic imaging to gauge levels of GABA in the brains of eight long-time yoga practitioners and 11 non-practitioners. The participants were healthy, and none was diagnosed with a major psychiatric condition.

Brain scans were taken before the beginning of the experiment. Then, the yoga group was asked to engage in the meditative practice for 60 minutes, while the non-yoga group simply read. The researchers then re-scanned each participant's brain, looking specifically at GABA levels.

"We showed a 27 percent increase in the brain GABA levels of those doing yoga -- a really significant increase," Streeter said. No such change was noted in the non-practitioners who had just read.

She said the style or school of yoga practiced didn't seem to matter. "We had hatha, ashtanga, bikram, vinyasa, and kripalu" practitioners included in the yoga group, Streeter said, "and many had been trained in several different schools."

According to Streeter, "this all gives us one of the mechanisms by which yoga may be having a beneficial effect. There could be other mechanisms."

But another expert pointed to what he considered flaws in the research.

Zindel Segal, chairman of psychotherapy and a professor of psychology and psychiatry at the University of Toronto, has for years studied the use of behavioral interventions to alleviate psychological woes.

He said the Boston researchers were to be commended for using brain scan imaging technologies to investigate the effectiveness of these techniques. But he questioned why the yoga group was simply compared to a sedentary reading group and not to another movement-based group.

"Exercise itself may have some effects on GABA, so I think in this study, you'd really want that comparison," he said. Including such a control group would make it clear that it was yoga and not just an hour of physical exertion that was responsible for the brain changes.

He also pointed out that all of the people in the study were mentally healthy, and clinical depression and anxiety disorders involve more than the "daily fluctuations in stress and tension" that healthy individuals are prone to.

"We know that yoga can have a profound effect" on smoothing out life's daily ups and downs, Segal said. "But so does working out on a Stairmaster for an hour."

Segal also questioned the role of GABA in depression. While it may play a role in anxiety disorders, "GABA is not one of the main neurotransmitters that seems to be a part of the depression story," he said. Other neurochemicals -- most notably serotonin -- play much bigger roles in the disorder, he said.

None of this means that the study's findings are without merit, Segal said. "In fact," he said, "we have a program called 'mindfulness-based cognitive therapy,' where we do use yoga, as well as mindfulness meditation," as therapeutic tools. Streeter's findings "suggest the need for more study of these practices," he said.

Streeter agreed that her study is probably just a beginning.

"I think what's important about this study is that it shows that by using really cutting-edge neuroimaging technology, we can measure real changes in the brain with behavioral interventions -- changes that are similar to those that we see with pharmacologic treatments," she said.

Would other mind-body practices -- Tai Chi, for example -- produce similar effects?

"I think that's very possible," Streeter said. "I suspect that all roads lead up the mountain."

More information

For more on depression, visit the U.S. National Institute of Mental Health.

Your grandmother was right after all , when feeling down, go out and play, eh? :)

Found this interesting article in the Tribune

Why Dutch women don't get depressed

AMSTERDAM: French women, says a recent bestseller, don't get fat. Japanese women, says another, don't get old or fat. But their sisters in the Netherlands may have one up on both of them.

That is because Dutch women, according to a book just released in the Netherlands, don't get depressed.

After scores of interviews with historians, psychologists, fashion designers, image-profilers, personal shoppers, magazine editors and ordinary Dutch women, Ellen de Bruin, a Dutch psychologist and journalist, throws down the gauntlet. In a title billed as the Dutch woman's answer to the French and Japanese, she argues that women in the Netherlands are a whole lot happier than their counterparts in most parts of the world.

"It has to do with personal freedom," said de Bruin, whose work, sure enough, is titled "Dutch Women Don't Get Depressed." "Personal choice is key: in the Netherlands people are free to choose their life partners, their religion, their sexuality, we are free to use soft drugs here, we can pretty much say anything we like. The Netherlands is a very free country."

While the book clearly parodies its French and Japanese rivals, it is underpinned by serious research. And its author does seem to have a point. While Dutch women do sometimes get depressed, just as French women do sometimes get fat, the Dutch as a nation emerge close to the top of the world happiness rankings established by Ruut Veenhoven, professor of social conditions for human happiness at Erasmus University in Rotterdam. On a scale of 1 to 10, where 10 signals greatest life satisfaction, the Dutch score 7.5 - beating 6.5 for the French and 6.2 for the Japanese. They also defeat Americans with 6.4, the British with 7.1, and the Italians and Spanish who each total 6.9.

Part of the reason lies in the social organization of the Netherlands, which offers women greater control over their lives than that of France or Japan.

"Japan is a very collectivistic culture with very little personal freedom when it comes to the choice of a job, a partner, a religion, the major things in life," de Bruin said in an interview. A high degree of centralization, meanwhile, seems to reduce life satisfaction in France. "We have a built-in distrust of central governments and a very high need for, and rates of, personal freedom in every aspect of our lives."

Such elevated levels of contentment may come as a surprise to some close observers of the Dutch. After much coaxing in interviews, foreigners living in the Netherlands came up with a collective portrait of Dutch women that, were they to become aware of it, could give them a good dose of the blues.

"We are seen as very tough," de Bruin said in a recent conversation in Amsterdam, before cycling off to a class in runway walking to learn how to balance in high heels. "We don't know how to dress and we are not very hospitable - if you come round to our house at dinnertime you get sent away." Clothing is geared more to the weather than seduction. "We do everything by bike, which is why we don't dress very elegantly," de Bruin said. And, with a highly developed sense of equality between the sexes, "we are bossy to our men."

Still, de Bruin's observations suggest that glamour, hospitality and charm may not be essential ingredients for female happiness. Living in a wealthy, industrialized society plays a huge part in the Dutch woman's sense of contentment, she said, given the benefits of a social net that allows for balance between work and family life. She backs that claim with statistics: 68 percent of Dutch women work part time, roughly 25 hours a week, and most probably do not want a full-time job.

Long used to a measure of economic freedom, Dutch women worked before marriage from as early as the 14th century, when the decimations of the plague made female labor a necessity and conferred a habit of independence that some historians have called the first feminist revolution.

A large component of the Dutch woman's happiness today derives from the importance attributed to the nuclear family - an institution invented by the low countries and whose hold there today is so strong that even gay couples want it. Furthermore, it became customary in the Netherlands much earlier than elsewhere for young people to choose their own spouses - the bidding of Pope Gregory IX in 1234, that people should marry by consent, not parental coercion, was quickly taken to heart in Catholic Holland. That, plus the Dutch eschewal of dowries - daughters and sons historically have had equal rights to inherit from their parents - meant women did not have to marry early to come into money.

Source - http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/06/06/news/happy.php