HHS HealthBeat (September 30, 2010)

Activity with feeling

From the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, I’m Ira Dreyfuss with HHS HealthBeat.

Physical activity raises your spirits as well as making your body better. At Boston University School of Medicine, Chris Streeter looked at 19 people who did yoga and 15 who walked, on average an hour, three times a week, over 12 weeks.

Streeter did brain scans to measure GABA, a chemical linked to mood. And she checked people’s reports of mood. She found that a 60-minute yoga session correlated with increased GABA levels:

"Higher GABA levels were associated with reports of better mood. GABA levels were negatively correlated with anxiety, which means that, as GABA levels went up, reports of anxiety went down." (11 seconds)

People who did yoga got more benefit than people who walked.

The study in the Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine was supported by the National Institutes of Health.

Learn more at hhs.gov.

HHS HealthBeat is a production of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. I’m Ira Dreyfuss.

Last revised: November 21, 2011