Neuroscientists from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) have discovered that doing a three-month course in yoga and meditation is effective in decreasing cognitive and emotional concerns that are signs of Alzheimer's disease and other types of dementia. They found that yoga and meditation are more effective than crosswords and memory games in this aspect.
"Memory training was comparable to yoga with meditation in terms of improving memory, but yoga provided a broader benefit than memory training because it also helped with mood, anxiety and coping skills," said Helen Lavretsky, the study's senior author said via EurekAlert. Lavretsky is a professor in residence in the Department of Psychiatry in UCLA.
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Yoga Better For Visual-Spatial Memory
Lavretsky and her colleagues studied 25 volunteers aged over 55 with memory issues. After three months, they found that yoga and meditation and crosswords and memory games were equally effective in improving verbal memory.
Eleven of the volunteers were trained in weekly hour-long memory training sessions and had memory exercises like crossword puzzles and computer-based tasks. The remaining 14 engaged in an hour-long yoga session once a week and did Kirtan Kriya meditation for 20 minutes every day at home.According to The Telegraph, yoga gave the volunteers more benefits for visual-spatial memory.
Yoga Also Helpful For Depression
The 14 volunteers who practiced yoga and meditation also experienced greater minimization of their depression anxiety, according to The Huffington Post. They also had improved coping skills and resilience to stress.
"When you have memory loss, you can get quite anxious about that and it can lead to depression," Lavretsky said. Lavretsky is also a researcher at the Semel Institute.
Their study is the first to compare yoga and meditation results to the results of memory training. It was published in the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease.
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