Sleep, Alzheimer’s Disease and Yoga

by Nina

Sun Behind Clouds by Melina Meza

One of the worst fears I think we all share about getting older is of developing dementia. Just recently I had a long phone conversation with a woman who is trying to deal with a mother in the early stages of Alzheimer’s Disease, and it was just so sad. I had some advice for her, but no solutions, of course. Then I heard a news piece on NPR “Brains Sweep Themselves Clean of Toxins During Sleep”  that gave me  glimmer of hope.

Scientists have been trying to figure out the purpose of sleep for a very long time. A recent study “Sleep Drives Metabolite Clearance from the Adult Brain”  published in Science Magazine, proposed a fascinating new theory. The team of researchers from the University of Rochester discovered that while the brain sleeps it clears out harmful toxins, a process that may reduce the risk of Alzheimer's. According to the NPR interview, during sleep, the flow of cerebrospinal fluid in the brain increases dramatically, washing away harmful waste proteins that build up between brain cells during waking hours. Professor of Neurosurgery and an author of the study, Dr. Maiken Nedergaard, said, "It's like a dishwasher."

The waste proteins getting washed away during sleep are toxic to brain cells, which could explain why we don't think clearly after a sleepless night and why a prolonged lack of sleep can actually kill an animal or a person. The results appear to offer the best explanation yet of why animals and people need sleep.

“Thus, the restorative function of sleep may be a consequence of the enhanced removal of potentially neurotoxic waste products that accumulate in the awake central nervous system.” Lulu Xie, et al.

Alzheimer's Disease researchers say this research could help explain a number of recent findings related to sleep and AD. Dr. Randall Bateman, Professor of Neurology  at Washington University said this about beta amyloid, which is the main component of certain deposits found in the brains of patients with Alzheimer's Disease.

"Beta amyloid concentrations continue to increase while a person is awake. And then after people go to sleep that concentration of beta amyloid decreases. This report provides a beautiful mechanism by which this may be happening.”

The team of scientists discovered the cleaning process while studying the brains of sleeping mice. Dr. Nedergaard said that during sleep the system that circulates cerebrospinal fluid through the brain and nervous system was "pumping fluid into the brain and removing fluid from the brain in a very rapid pace.” When the mice went to sleep, their brain cells actually shrank, making it easier for the fluid to circulate. But when the mice woke up, their brain cells enlarged again and the flow between cells slowed dramatically.

The researchers speculated that the reason the brain doesn’t do this cleaning all the time is because the cleaning uses a lot of energy, and it’s probably not possible for the brain both to clean itself and at the same time be aware of its surroundings, talk, move, and so on. So getting enough sleep—which we already know is vital for our physical and mental health—may be one key to preventing Alzheimer’s Disease as you age.

But what does all this have to do with yoga? Well, if you’re having trouble sleeping, yoga can help with that. Because insomnia is so often related to stress, yoga’s stress management techniques can help you quiet your nervous system so you fall asleep more quickly and sleep more soundly. For  information on how yoga can help you sleep better, see Yoga for Insomnia, Part 1  and Day to Night: Yoga for Better Sleep. The Supported Inverted poses I wrote about recently (see All About Supported Inversions) are poses that I've found particularly helpful.

We’re so careful here at YFHA not to make any false promises and of course as this research is new, we can’t promise that getting enough sleep will definitely make a difference for you. But encouraging you to get a good night’s sleep can’t be harmful in any way, and if this gives you more motivation to practice stress management techniques, which are helpful for preventing a whole host of health problems, we’re doing you a favor. And if you'd like to add an additional practices to encourage brain health, start meditating on a regular basis (see Meditation and Brain Strength) and keep practicing your yoga asanas (see Yoga for Brain Health?). 

Yoga and Dementia: Welcome News

by Nina

A Rainbow at the Dam by Melina Meza

"Dementia Rate Is Found to Drop Sharply, as Forecast”

Now that’s the kind of headline I like to see! Yes, an article in the New York Times this week Dementia Rate Is Found to Drop Sharply, as Forecast announced the results of two different studies that showed that the incidence of dementia—in one case in England and Wales and in the other case in Denmark—was declining. And the reasons for this are very exciting to us here at Yoga for Healthy Aging.

“Yet experts on aging said the studies also confirmed something they had suspected but had had difficulty proving: that dementia rates would fall and mental acuity improve as the population grew healthier and better educated. The incidence of dementia is lower among those better educated, as well as among those who control their blood pressure and cholesterol, possibly because some dementia is caused by ministrokes and other vascular damage. So as populations controlled cardiovascular risk factors better and had more years of schooling, it made sense that the risk of dementia might decrease.”

So what they are saying here is that, along with being better educated, controlling blood pressure and cholesterol can help prevent dementia. And that means yoga can help. Foremost, yoga’s stress management tools can help you keep your blood pressure low. As I discussed in Chronic Stress: An Introduction, living with chronic stress can cause high blood pressure. So practicing stress management (see The Relaxation Response and Yoga and Stress, Your Health and Yoga will help you keep your blood pressure in check as it benefits your health in many other ways. Stress management can also help you maintain a low cholesterol diet by reducing stress eating and giving you more willpower to stay away from high cholesterol foods (see Yoga, Stress and Weight Management and Healthy Eating, Stress and Self Control). Healthy eating is also fostered by mindfulness (see Meditation and Healthy Eating) so if staying away from high-cholesterol foods is a problem for you, a meditation practice may be helpful.

For me, yoga even provides an ongoing education. Yoga philosophy is food for my intellect as well as providing inspiration for living my life with greater equanimity. Why, just this week I learned a lot from Ram’s post LINK, and the week before I learned from writing my own post Modern Yoga and Hinduism. So if yoga philosophy and history are of interest to you, a whole world of new knowledge and intellectual stimulation awaits you.

The New York Times quoted Dr. Anderson, of the National Institute on Aging, saying:

“With these two studies, we are beginning to see that more and more of us will have a chance to reach old age cognitively intact, postponing dementia or avoiding it altogether. That is a happy prospect.”

The Effect of Yoga Poses on Your Mood

by Nina

“To sit in Lotus Pose and gaze at one’s nose is said to be a spiritual practice; to do Lotus Pose and concentrate on the coccyx or elsewhere is said to be a physical practice. Where is the difference? How can Hatha Yoga be only physical and Raja Yoga only spiritual?” —BKS Iyengar

Iyengar sounds a bit cranky in that quote, doesn’t he? I think that’s because back in the 60s he was getting tired of explaining his somewhat radical point of view that doing yoga poses was a form of meditation. Traditionally yoga poses were seen as physical exercises to purify and strength the body for meditation and other spiritual practices. But Iyengar argued that the poses themselves were a spiritual practice.

“A posture can be considered as much a mantra or as much as meditation.” —BKS Iyengar

I thought of this recently when I read an interesting article about a study about the affects of meditation on moods (see Meditation Induces Positive Structural Brain Changes). When I first heard about the article, I thought it was going to be about a study of traditional seated meditation, and I was excited about the possibility that there was proof that traditional meditation helped improve our moods. Instead, I found the study was done using a special form of Chinese meditation called Integrative Body-Mind Training (IBMT) that “differs from other forms of meditation because it depends heavily on the inducement of a high degree of awareness and balance of the body, mind, and environment. And the study found:

“Building on results from a study they published in 2010, investigators found that healthy college-aged volunteers who practiced IBMT for 4 weeks showed significantly improved mood changes compared with those who did not practice the meditation technique.

The researchers note that these mood changes coincided with improved axonal density and expansion of myelin in the anterior cingulate part of the brain, a region that is implicated in self-regulation. Previous research has linked deficits in this brain area with attention deficit disorder, depression, schizophrenia, dementia, and addiction.”

Orchids in the Mist by Michele Macartney-Filgate

Exciting results, certainly. But doesn’t IBMT sound like Iyengar yoga? I mean, isn’t the practice of yoga poses with a mindful focus on alignment and physical sensations the same as “awareness and balance of the body, mind, and environment”? So it’s pretty easy to extrapolate from this study that Iyengar yoga would have similar effects as this Chinese meditation technique.

Of course I don’t really need a study to tell me what I know from personal experience. My asana practice definitely affects my moods. I usually feel better after practicing almost any sequence, and when I’m feeling depressed or discouraged or stressed, I can intentionally design a practice that can improve my mood. But it’s always nice to find out about studies that back up what I know intuitively because, well, it seems I’m on a mission: I want you, whoever you are, to start practicing, too. Your moods will improve and your stress levels will be reduced, and your overall health will benefit as a result. And now there is the intriguing possibility the practice could also help with dementia (as well as attention deficit disorder, schizophrenia and addiction)!

“Yoga is the harmony of the body, senses, mind, and intellect. That’s why there is no difference between physical and spiritual yoga.” —BKS Iyengar