Geeky wellbeing favourites: September 2024
Why I love immunology, plus the usual mind–body science highlights
The more time I spend reading about the mind–body connection, the more convinced I become that immunology is the key to everything. And by immunology I mean inflammation, which is basically the physical response to a threat or harm and involves the recruitment of tons of immune cells to site of threat to resolve it.
Ok, I’m biased, I clearly liked immunology enough to spend 3 years in a lab feeding and counting cells (and some other things obviously that I’ll spare you from, lots of listening to XFM too). But seriously, I was just looking for inspiration on what to write about and I stumbled across an article on the journal Brain, Behaviour and Immunity on inflammation as a driver of depression. And yes, I appreciate there is quite a bit of bias here given that I was looking at an immunology journal.
Now, it might seem quite odd to link immunology and mental health; after all, we are used to thinking in very reductionist (non-holistic) terms in medicine. But we are mind–body people, we know better than that.
It’s true that depression, or at least some types of depression, have an inflammatory component. Which in simple language means that those who experience depression have higher levels of inflammation, and this might be what is driving their depression in the first place. In some ways, this makes sense – think about your behaviour when you are sick (imaginatively called ‘sickness behaviour’). You are tired, lethargic, lack an appetite and are generally down, similar to what happens in depression.
And this might be part of the reason why yoga can be beneficial in depression, which the research is revealing time and time and again. By tackling the stress response, yoga lowers inflammation, which in turn could help to alleviate the inflammation-related symptoms of depression.
This is a beautiful example of what we can learn when we look at health more holistically rather than divide the body up into brain, immune system etc. Clearly, many processes in our bodies interact, and clearly the immune system is key.
Events
Want to know more?
Join me and Melanie Cooper on September 7th for the second instalment of our ‘Yoga and the immune system’ workshop series. We’ll talk about the connection between the brain and the body (and bonus content on gut brain and gut microbiota), the role of the vagus nerve, and how yoga could help to support a healthy immune system. The workshop will be recorded, so if you can’t attend live you can still sign up!
In other workshop news
Join me for a 2-hour workshop on September 21st, MoreYoga Harringay. We’ll flow through a short gentle yoga practice, before dropping into the meditative stillness of yin yoga. We’ll close our practice with yoga nidra, a guided relaxation that will hopefully leave you rested and restored.
Mind–body science highlights
Yoga (and other practices) help with healthy ageing
I don’t have access to the full text of this review, but it looks like it covers the existing research on the effects of yoga, meditation and other lifestyle practices (like healthy diet and exercise) in ageing. Of particular interest is the effects they have on biological processes that are linked to ageing, such as inflammation. There you have it again, immunology is everything.
Yoga effective for stress among healthcare professionals
Another one for those who teach in the context of workplaces and want to make a convincing argument for yoga.
This systematic review consolidated studies that have looked at the effects of psychological (including mindfulness-based stress reduction) and mind–body therapies (including yoga) on occupational stress among healthcare professionals. Mind–body therapies were more effective than psychological therapies, which I am somewhat surprised by because MBSR has such a good body of evidence behind it in the context of stress. Yoga was in fact the most effective of the mind–body therapies, followed by muscle relaxation (MR).
For interest so that you can read the graph below: PT: Psychoeducational therapy; CT: Comprehensive therapy; MBIs: Mindfulness-based interventions; MBSR-M: Modified mindfulness-based stress reduction; MBIs-C: Mindfulness-based interventions combined with other strategies; MBA: Mindfulness based awareness; MT: Meditation techniques; BT: Biofeedback therapy; UC: Usual Care/
And another one for workplace stress
Here’s a recent editorial from Frontiers in Public Health covering the issue’s research on the evidence of yoga to alleviate workplace stress.
Yoga can help in COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease)
Including this here because it is published in Scientific Reports, which is a more reputable journal that most yoga research manages (although if I have to correct one more journalist/Instagram influencer when they say something was published in Nature when in fact it wasn’t, I might explode).
It’s another systematic review and meta-analysis looking at the effects of mind–body practices (including yoga, tai chi and qi gong) on COPD. The researchers conclude that these practices have beneficial effects, alongside medication, for patients as they led to improvements in key metrics in COPD. They are probably also good practices to consider because they can be more gentle than other forms of exercise, which is a good thing for these patients.
Practice
I have a couple of new tracks on Insight Timer, plus a course in the making. Check them out here.
News from the blog
It’s time for me to do a bit of tidying up and a bit of consolidation. I’m thinking of retiring the blog and creating more content here on Substack. If you have any ideas or content requests drop me a note. In the meantime, I did actually write a blog post this month, possibly the last one I’ll ever do, so if you missed it…
Yoga nidra – what do people think? (2024 update) – Why do people try yoga nidra? And what are the benefits they find? I look at online conversations because I’m nosy but also to help shape my (your) offerings.
Until next month!