Stress, Inflammation, and Yoga Practice

Abstract

Objective-To address the mechanisms underlying hatha yoga's potential stress-reduction benefits, we compared inflammatory and endocrine responses of novice and expert yoga practitioners before, during, and after a restorative hatha yoga session, as well as in two control conditions. Stressors before each of the three conditions provided data on the extent to which yoga speeded an individual's physiological recovery.Methods-50 healthy women (mean age=41.32, range=30-65), 25 novices and 25 experts, were exposed to each of the conditions (yoga, movement control, and passive-video control) during three separate visits.Results-The yoga session boosted participants' positive affect compared to the control conditions, but no overall differences in inflammatory or endocrine responses were unique to the yoga session. Importantly, even though novices and experts did not differ on key dimensions including age, abdominal adiposity, and cardiorespiratory fitness, novices' serum IL-6 levels were 41% higher than those of experts across sessions, and the odds of a novice having detectable CRP were 4.75 times as high as that of an expert. Differences in stress responses between experts and novices provided one plausible mechanism for their divergent serum IL-6 data; experts produced less LPS-stimulated IL-6 in response to the stressor than novices, and IL-6 promotes CRP production. Conclusion-The ability to minimize inflammatory responses to stressful encounters influences the burden that stressors place on an individual. If yoga dampens or limits stress-related changes, then regular practice could have substantial health benefits. Keywords yoga; inflammation; psychoneuroimmunology; complementary medicine; IL-6; CRP Inflammation is a robust and reliable predictor of all-cause mortality in older adults (1). Proinflammatory cytokines such as interleukin-6 (IL-6), tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-α), and C-reactive protein (CRP) play a role in cardiovascular disease, type II diabetes, arthritis, osteoporosis, Alzheimer's disease, periodontal disease, and frailty and functional decline (2-3). In addition, inflammation is now regarded as a risk factor for most cancers because of the Address correspondence to Janice K. Kiecolt-Glaser, Ph.D., Institute for Behavioral Medicine Research, Ohio State University College of Medicine, 460 Medical Center Boulevard, Columbus, OH 43210, USA;, Janice.KiecoltGlaser@osumc.edu. Publisher's Disclaimer: This is a PDF file of an unedited manuscript that has been accepted for publication. As a service to our customers we are providing this early version of the manuscript. The manuscript will undergo copyediting, typesetting, and review of the resulting proof before it is published in its final citable form. Please note that during the production process errors may be discovered which could affect the content, and all legal disclaimers that apply to the journal pertain. evidence that inflammation influences tumor promotion, survival, proliferation, invasion, angiogenesis, and metastases (4). NIH ...

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