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These findings suggest that even a short-term yoga-based lifestyle intervention may be an important modality to reduce the risk for CVD as indicated by weight loss, reduction in systolic blood pressure, an increase in adiponectin, and decrease in IL-6 in overweight and obese men.

Objective:To assess the efficacy of a short-term comprehensive yoga-based lifestyle intervention in reducing anxiety, improving subjective well-being and personality.Materials and Methods:The study is a part of an ongoing larger study at a tertiary care hospital. Participants (n=90) included patients with chronic diseases attending a 10-day, yoga-based lifestyle intervention program for prevention and management of chronic diseases, and healthy controls (n=45) not attending any such intervention.Primary Outcome Measures:Change in state and trait anxiety questionnaire (STAI-Y; 40 items), subjective well-being inventory (SUBI; 40 items), and neuroticism extraversion openness to experience five factor personality inventory revised (NEO-FF PI-R; 60 items) at the end of intervention.Results:Following intervention, the STAI-Y scores reduced significantly (P<0.001) at Day 10 (66.7 ± 13.0) versus Day 1 (72.5 ± 14.7). Also, positive SUBI scores (F1– F6) improved significantly (P<0.01) at Day 10 versus Day 1. Similarly NEO-FF PI-R scores improved significantly (P<0.001) at Day 10 versus Day 1. Control group showed an increase in STAI-Y while SUBI and NEO-FF PI-R scores remained comparable at Day 10 versus Day 1.Conclusions:The observations suggest that a short-term, yoga-based lifestyle intervention may significantly reduce anxiety and improve subjective well-being and personality in patients with chronic diseases.

Objective: Previous studies evaluating neurophysiological correlates of long-term meditation are constrained by some methodological limitations. The objective of this study was to measure changes in the regional cerebral glucose metabolism during meditation using a novel methodological approach. Design: The present study was a part of a larger, nonrandomized, single-center open-label study.

AbstractBackgroundNowadays, yoga is endorsed and advised routinely to stay fit and healthy, as well as control many chronic diseases including diabetes type 2, hypertension, coronary artery diseases, etc. Now, our assumption is that those who do regular yoga have different persona than who do not do yoga regularly. We planned to test our hypothesis scientifically, and therefore baseline physiological characteristics with stress and inflammation levels in long-term and short-term meditators and healthy novice controls were analyzed.MethodsIn this retrospective analysis, 97 male participants were included for their Baseline analysis. Fifteen apparently healthy subjects practicing preksha meditation (since >5 years, at least 5 days a week) were included as long-term meditators (LTMs); 58 subjects who attended one of our short-term yoga-based lifestyle intervention programs for 2 weeks were included as short-term meditators (STMs); 24 male novice subjects, who did not participate in any yogic intervention, were included as healthy controls. Here, we analyzed the Baseline plasma levels of stress and inflammatory markers, cortisol, β-endorphin, interleukin (IL)-6 and tumor necrosis factor (TNF)-α in long-term meditators vs. short-term meditators vs. healthy controls.Outcome measuresThe study parameters body mass index (BMI), systolic blood pressure (SBP), diastolic blood pressure (DBP), plasma levels of stress and immune markers, cortisol, β-endorphin (β-Ed), interleukin-6 (IL-6) and tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α), were assessed in all the three groups at baseline.ResultsSignificant (p<0.05) differences were observed at baseline for plasma levels of stress and inflammatory markers as well as body mass index and systolic blood pressure among LTM vs. STM vs. healthy controls.ConclusionsOur observations suggest that the subjects who do regular yoga-meditation practice have better stress & inflammation status than comparable age matched healthy controls.