Your morning yoga routine has a cool benefit you mightn’t know about

If you thought yoga was all about inner peace and kick-ass bods, well you'd be right. But new research shows that it could also reduce the risk of Alzheimer's disease.

A UCLA-led team of neuroscientists found that a three-month course of yoga and meditation practice helped minimise the cognitive and emotional problems that often precede Alzheimer's disease and other forms of dementia -- and that it was even more effective than the memory enhancement exercises that have been considered the gold standard for managing mild cognitive impairment. The study, which appears May 10 in the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease, measured changes in 25 participants, all over the age of 55, not just in behavior but also in brain activity.

"Memory training was comparable to yoga with meditation in terms of improving memory, but yoga provided a broader benefit than memory training because it also helped with mood, anxiety and coping skills," said Helen Lavretsky, the study's senior author.

Eleven participants received one hour a week of memory enhancement training and spent 20 minutes a day performing memory exercises. The other 14 participants took a one-hour class once a week in Kundalini yoga and practiced 20 Kirtan Kriya meditation at home for 20 minutes each day. Kirtan Kriya, which involves chanting, hand movements and visualisation of light, has been practiced for hundreds of years in India as a way to prevent cognitive decline in older adults. After 12 weeks, the researchers saw similar improvements among participants in both groups in verbal memory skills -- which come into play for remembering names and lists of words. But those who had practiced yoga and meditation had better improvements in visual-spatial memory skills, which come into play for recalling locations and navigating while walking or driving. The yoga-meditation group also had better results in terms of reducing depression and anxiety and improving coping skills and resilience to stress. Might be time to dig out that mat again, eh?