NEW DELHI, INDIA, March 29, 2006: A first-of-its-kind sleep lab now has empirical evidence that those who practice yoga and meditation improve their quality of sleep, says this article. Brain research also show yoga improving quality of life for severe cases of epilepsy patients. “There is an increase in high amplitude wave in sleep of people who practice yoga and sudarshan kriya. The natural sleep pattern of middle-aged person actually reverses age-related sleep degradation,” said Dr. T.R. Raju, head of neurophysiology at Bangalore-based National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences (NIMHANS). The yet-to-be published study found that EEG of yoga practitioners not only reverses age-related degeneration of sleep but display a sleep pattern seen in younger people. This is the first scientific evidence on the effect of yoga and pranayama on the physiology of the brain. Yoga is also coming to the rescue of severe cases of epilepsy, where even drugs are proving to be less useful. “About 15 percent of epileptic patients are unmanageable by any methods of treatment. To this group, yoga has been found to be very effective,” Dr. T.N. Sathyaprabha at the department of Neurophysiology, NIMHANS, said. The team studied cardiovascular autonomic functions in epileptic patients who underwent eight weeks of yoga therapy. The results were very encouraging: 68 percent had significant improvement of their autonomic functions (including heart rate and blood pressure) compared with pre-yoga stage.
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