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Tuesday 2 January 2018

Alternative Therapy: Yoga, An Integrated Form of Exercise in Treatment of Behavioral Addiction

Kyle J. Norton 

Epidemiological studies strongly suggested that yoga as an integrated form of exercise may be used for treatment of behavioral addiction.

Yoga, the ancient practical technique for harmonized external and internal body well beings, through breath control, meditation, bodily movement and gesture..... has been best known for people in Western world and some parts in Asia due to health benefits reported by various respectable institutes' research and supported by health advocates.

According to the joint study lead by the University of Florida, yoga may be considered as an adjunct treatment in behavioral addiction through induce "dopamine homeostasis", or in simpler terms "normalcy".

Prevention of addictive diseases is a complex and systematic strategies including training of social skills, decision in-making skills, family intervention, etc. particularly, in making the treatment more effective.

Combination of physical exercise and yoga may be useful components of comprehensive programs, especially in treatment of patients in substance dependent patients and pathological gambles.

Yoga and other forms of treatment may regulate the resting state functional connectivity (rsfMRI), a method of functional brain imaging, used to evaluate regional interactions and restore this impaired cross talk between various brain regions (e.g. Nucleus accumbens, cingulate gyrus, hippocampus etc.)

Truly, physical exercise, a planned, organized, and repeated body movement and yoga practice not only promoted physical fitness but also alleviated the stress and anxiety in induction of impulsive behavior, thus relieving craving behavior, suppressing abstinence symptoms, through ameliorating hormone production in response to stress and activated implusive behavior, such as hormone cortisol, dopamine, ghrelin,....

Moreover, intensities of exercise study showed a two- to three fold longer time to the next cigarette,  reduced substantially cravings withdrawal symptoms and decreased heart rate reserve (HRR) (lasting 30-40 minutes) from 60-85% to as low as 24% HRR (lasting 15 minutes).

Dr. Taylor AH, the lead author in the study of "The acute effects of exercise on cigarette cravings, withdrawal symptoms, affect and smoking behaviour: a systematic review", said, "withdrawal symptoms and negative affect decreased rapidly during exercise and remained reduced for up to 50 minutes after exercise. Effect sizes for seven studies that assessed "strength of desire to smoke" showed a mean reduction, 10 minutes after exercise, of 1.1".

Some researchers also suggested that yoga intervention directly and indirectly drive the attention and energy to the root of suffering by restoring the balances of the mind and body, bringing back the presence and dealing how to control impulsive behaviors in positive way through breathing and body control.

Indeed, in compared to yoga intervention, competitive professional sport rather increased the number of risk factors for substance-related problems.

More interestingly, in the study of 17 clients from the Problem Gambling Institute of Ontario at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (88% male) to evaluate the feasibility of teaching problem gamblers about mindfulness meditation as part of regular treatment for problem gambling by 8-week mindfulness group program, researchers found that in the comparison of the first group session and after the final group session, yoga mindfulness increase the Mindfulness Attention Awareness Scale (MAAS) scores from a pre-test score of 3.65 (SD = 1.01) to a post-test score of 4.40 (SD = 0.78) and
participants also highlighted a number of improvements being more in control, relaxed and able to stay in the now.

In fact, yoga mindfulness participated demonstrated a high levels of positive instinctive or intuitive feeling with improvement of the ability to control emotion and acted, according to the values while experiencing negative emotions, by adapting to the change of environment.

Additionally, yoga attendees also expressed to gain a management skill in controlled poor emotion regulation which may lead to impulse behavior.

Participants with difficulty in appropriate management of emotions were found to associate with a variety of psychiatric illnesses, including depression and anxiety

Further analysis of yoga mindfulness effectiveness, researchers opinionated, "the suitability of mindfulness as an intervention as part of a problem gambling treatment service. However, the study did not evaluate whether mindfulness improved the clients’ ability to resist relapse".

Taking altogether, yoga may be considered as a secondary and integrated form of treatment used combined with standard therapy in treatment of behavioral addiction.


Author Biography
Kyle J. Norton (Scholar, Master of Nutrients, All right reserved)
Health article writer and researcher; Over 10.000 articles and research papers have been written and published on line, including world wide health, ezine articles, article base, healthblogs, selfgrowth, best before it's news, the karate GB daily, etc.,.
Named TOP 50 MEDICAL ESSAYS FOR ARTISTS & AUTHORS TO READ by Disilgold.com Named 50 of the best health Tweeters Canada - Huffington Post
Nominated for shorty award over last 4 years
Some articles have been used as references in medical research, such as international journal Pharma and Bio science, ISSN 0975-6299.


Sources
(1) Addiction Treatment in America: After Money or Aftercare? by Miller D1, Miller M1, Blum K2, Badgaiyan RD3, Febo M4.(PubMed)
(2) [Physical exercise and yoga in prevention and treatment of addictive diseases].[Article in Czech] by Nespor K1.(PubMed)
(3) Mindfulness and problem gambling treatment by Peter Chen, Farah Jindani, Jason Perry, Nigel L Turner(Springker link)
(4) Mindfulness-Based Approaches to Impulsive Behaviors Kelcey J. Stratton, M.A.(The New School Psychology BulletinVolume 4, No. 2, 2006)
(5) The acute effects of exercise on cigarette cravings, withdrawal symptoms, affect and smoking behaviour: a systematic review by Taylor AH1, Ussher MH, Faulkner G.(PubMed)

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