Research of Alyson Ross and Sue Thomas on How Yoga Affects on People Body and Their Mental Health

Yoga is an old method of “exercise” that brings balance to many things such as physical posture, concentration, breath of concentration, control of your senses, induvial ethics and universal ethics. Our researchers Alyson Ross and Sue Thomas have done extensive research on how yoga really effects these variables listed and if they actually work. In their research they conduct experiments to test if doing yoga will actually have a change on your physical and mental health. They conducted twelve studies to gather intel from different countries. 597 of the subjects were woman out of 873 and the rest were men. They performed half of their research on healthy populations and the rest were sick and diseased. Every study showed that yoga was being utilized with physical asanas with restorative poses and relaxation poses.

Seven of the twelve studies combined mediation/breath work. Five of the studies had precise yoga poses to be played out in the experiment. Ross phrases “Yoga appears to be equal or superior to exercise in relieving certain symptoms associated with diabetes,33 multiple sclerosis,30 menopause,36 kidney disease,37 and schizophrenia.29 Exercise has been recognized as having insulin-like effects on blood glucose levels.38–40”. The effect of yoga has left a progressive change on the subjects that help reduce symptoms of mental illness including depression.

Another research done by Williams and Tappen from the “Exercise training for depressed older adults with Alzheimer’s disease” was taken place in an elderly home and experimented on elders with Alzheimer’s. Research showed that “87% of older adults with Alzheimer’s disease (AD) are estimated to be depressed (Carpenter, Ruckdeschel, Ruckdeschel & Van Haitsma, 2002). Study showed that residents residing in an nursing home, have more physical pain, and that they reveal greater dependency on others, and show more behavioral issues. Having the residents exercise lead to reduce the levels of depressive symptomatology in normal adults and adults with medical illness’s such as Alzheimer’s and etc.

The elders that suffer with Advance Alzheimer’s resulted in half positive outcomes such as increased good moods and lead to less grumpy and less depressed people. The other half that has advanced Alzheimer’s had no improvement after exercising with their mentality but did show some improvement in their physical forms. Due to the lack of memory in the patients with advanced Alzheimer’s, it was hard for researchers to test and study them because there was nothing to remembered. This research has brought attention to mid age adults by prepping them mentally and physically with proper exercising. With future elder adults coming we ought to prepare ourselves for our own well being by exercising. The effect it will leave has a huge impact on a induvial that will determine whether they turn out to be a depressed with low self-esteem or an energetic person who’s making the most out of life. We may see exercising as an justification to losing weight and staying fit, but with research that has proved to us that it plays a key role on our mental health, we should consider exercising on a daily base.

Another research conducted by M. Meenapriya, R. Gayathri, Vishnu Priya was tested on younger people from the age of sixteen to twenty-five. 61% were female and 39% were male. 68% were fourteen through twenty and 32% were from twenty-one to twenty-five. The survey asked how much they usually work out and the final verdict was that 30% exercise for over an hour and that 57% did not work out on a regular base. 63% worked light occasions only.

The survey did more research and questioned more to understand how they operated in their daily lives from stress levels to fatigue, memory and etc. This survey proved that Students who regularly exercise believe that exercise has a positive role in improving their memory, focus, and concentration (80%) and it boosts their mood and relieves stress (87%) but does not improve their marks or GPAs (63%). The effect on young teen and adults that exercise has on their body and their mental health were overall good. The study also shows that younger people tend to care for their looks and try to maintain a healthy lifestyle, they do this by balancing their diet along with staying hydrated and getting the right amount of sleep and last but not least exercising!!