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Yoga can help with mental-health conditions: Study

Written by: QMI Agency
Jan. 25, 2013

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Yoga has a positive effect on psychiatric problems, from mild depression and sleep troubles to schizophrenia, a review of more than 100 studies has found.

The review, published Friday in the journal Frontiers in Psychiatry, found that yoga influences key parts of the body that are thought to play a role in mental health in similar ways to antidepressants and psychotherapy.

The review found that yoga, a 5,000-year-old Indian practice, had a positive effect on mild depression and sleep complaints, even for people not taking medication for those concerns, and improved symptoms for people with schizophrenia and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder who were taking medication.

Yoga was found to have benefits for all mental-health conditions included in the review except eating disorders and cognition problems.

The authors say that although the results are promising, more research is required because all studies on yoga so far have dealt with small samples.

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