Integrative biology for integrative medicine: A complete approach.

Background: India's AYUSH systems of medicine, Ayurveda, Yoga and Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha and Sowa-Rigpa, and Homeopathy, use natural self-healing abilities of body and mind. Their ways to treat non-communicable diseases reduce use of modern drugs with their side-effects. Scientific acceptance requires them to be explained from a modern biological perspective.

Design and implementation of a highly efficacious new yoga breathing and relaxation protocol for asthma: A discussion and summary.

Asthma presents a global problem to health of high prevalence; often life-long, typical onset in late teenage years, and no hope of reversal. Also, problems of long-term management with drugs present patients with endless suffering: poor quality of life due to reduced pulmonary function and associated psychological problems. There is thus great need for more effective management, and identification of any possible route to cure.

Impact of yoga breathing and relaxation as an add-on therapy on quality of life, anxiety, depression and pulmonary function in young adults with bronchial asthma: A randomized controlled trial.

Background: The impact of combinations of yogic practices on bronchial asthma have been studied. Such yoga modules tend to be too lengthy for comfortable practice long-term, giving high dropouts. Returning to conventional medicine despite improvement is common.

Vegetarian Diets, Ayurveda, and the Case for an Integrative Nutrition Science.

Two recent studies of the health effects of vegetarian diets reported conflicting results: the EPIC-Oxford study reported a significant increase in strokes among vegetarians compared to meat-eaters among a predominantly Caucasian cohort, while another, performed on Taiwanese Buddhists, reported significantly lower incidence of strokes among vegetarians. This was doubly puzzling given the pronounced decrease in cardiovascular events among the EPIC-Oxford group. In this article, we make a detailed comparison of the actual dietary intake of various food groups by the cohorts in these studies.

Yoga Practices as an Alternative Training for Physical Fitness in Children With Visual Impairment.

Physical activities provide fundamental benefits to children's health and well-being. They are vital for development and healthy life, but participation of children with visual impairment is limited. Herein, the authors report results of a 16-wk yoga program, evaluating its effects on physical fitness in children with visual impairment.

Association between Cyclic Meditation and Creative Cognition: Optimizing Connectivity between the Frontal and Parietal Lobes.

Background: Important stages of creativity include preparation, incubation, illumination, and verification. Earlier studies have reported that some techniques of meditation promote creativity but have not specified which stage is enhanced. Here, we report the influence of cyclic meditation (CM) on creative cognition measured by a divergent thinking task.

Effect of Yogic Breathing on Accommodate Braille Version of Six-letter Cancellation Test in Students with Visual Impairment.

Context: Attentional processes tend to be less well developed in the visually impaired, who require special training to develop them fully. Yogic breathing which alters the patterns of respiration has been shown to enhance attention skills. Letter cancellation tests are well-established tools to measure attention and attention span.

Investigation of Yoga Pranayama and Vedic Mathematics on Mindfulness, Aggression and Emotion Regulation.

Background: Competitive examinations, particularly in mathematics, have made emotional stress a major problem for preuniversity students, emotions like aggression toward fellow students and teachers increase. Mindfulness is a quality that reduces both emotional stress and aggression, so increasing mindfulness should be helpful.

Aims: To study the effects of Yoga Pranayama (YP) and Vedic Mathematics (VM) on mindfulness, aggression, and emotion regulation.

Combined Ayurveda and Yoga Practices for Newly Diagnosed Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus: A Controlled Trial.

Background: The increasing prevalence of type 2 diabetes in India is a cause for national concern, particularly the spiraling cost burden to the country. As one approach to stop its increase, Yoga medicine has been widely implemented, finding popularity with all social strata. Here, we report a study suggesting that treatment with fresh herbal juices and Yoga can improve the levels of blood glucose and hemoglobin A1c (HbA1c) in people with pre-diabetes.

Experience information as the basis of mind: Evidence from human decision making.

Study of product diversity by companies and corporations led to the discovery of a new statistical distribution, the (1/f) distribution, assessed according to the Herfindahl-Hirschman index. Products of human creative thinking and decision-making seem to obey the index very widely or universally. This article explores examples of its applications in business and economics as evidence for a new scientific conjecture concerning the physiological basis of Mind: that mind functions from critical instabilities in the brain physiology.

Effect of Lotus Posture on Acupuncture Meridian Energies: A Controlled Trial.

Background: Many studies have assessed Yoga practices using instruments such as AcuGraph, which measures conductances at Jing-Well points of acupuncture meridians. Such studies find that participation in Yoga programs ranging from a weekend to many months systematically increases subtle energy. Here, we report comparison of Jing-Well point conductances before and after sitting in Lotus Posture with those before and after sitting in a chair.

Electrodermal Screening of Asthmatics with AcuGraph 4.

Traditional Chinese Medicine holds that acupuncture meridian activity is correlated with quality of function of specific organs. This study sets out to determine acupuncture meridian characteristics of subjects with moderate asthma distinguishing them from healthy subjects. Fifty asthma patients (age 35.

Acupuncture Meridian Energies in Patients Who Are Mentally Disturbed.

Background And Objective: Acupuncture medicine states that different pathologies exhibit different patterns of excitation in the 24 main acupuncture meridians. Previous exploratory work has shown that groups of patients with the same pathology exhibit such characteristic patterns when limited numbers of acupuncture points are measured with the AcuGraph meridian energy measuring device. This study reports patterns of meridian energies observed in an exploratory assessment of different classes of patient with mental disturbance.

Acute effects of mobile phone radiations on subtle energy levels of teenagers using electrophotonic imaging technique: A randomized controlled study.

Background: Mobile phones induce radio frequency electromagnetic field (RF-EMF) which has been found to affect subtle energy levels of adults through Electrophotonic Imaging (EPI) technique in a previous pilot study.

Materials And Methods: We enrolled 61 healthy right-handed healthy teenagers (22 males and 39 females) in the age range of 17.40 ± 0.

Yoga-based pulmonary rehabilitation for the management of dyspnea in coal miners with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease: A randomized controlled trial.

Background: Coal mine dust exposure causes chronic airflow limitation in coal miners resulting in dyspnea, fatigue, and eventually chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Yoga can alleviate dyspnea in COPD by improving ventilatory mechanics, reducing central neural drive, and partially restoring neuromechanical coupling of the respiratory system.

Objectives: To evaluate the effectiveness of Integrated Approach of Yoga Therapy (IAYT) in the management of dyspnea and fatigue in coal miners with COPD.

A randomized controlled study on assessment of health status, depression, and anxiety in coal miners with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease following yoga training.

Context: Psychological comorbidities are prevalent in coal miners with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and contribute to the severity of the disease reducing their health status. Yoga has been shown to alleviate depression and anxiety associated with other chronic diseases but in COPD not been fully investigated.

Aim: This study aimed to evaluate the role of yoga on health status, depression, and anxiety in coal miners with COPD.

Yoga-teaching protocol adapted for children with visual impairment.

Context: Childhood visual deficiency impairs children's neuro-psychomotor development, considerably affecting physical, mental, social, and emotional health. Yoga's multifaceted approach may help children with visual impairment (VI) to cope with their challenges.

Aim: This study aimed to develop a special protocol for teaching yoga to children with VI, and to evaluate their preferred method of learning.

Self-transcending meditation is good for mental health: why this should be the case.

A simple theory of health has recently been proposed: while poor quality regulation corresponds to poor quality health so that improving regulation should improve health, optimal regulation optimizes function and optimizes health. Examining the term 'optimal regulation' in biological systems leads to a straightforward definition in terms of 'criticality' in complexity biology, a concept that seems to apply universally throughout biology. Criticality maximizes information processing and sensitivity of response to external stimuli, and for these reasons may be held to optimize regulation.

Traditional, complementary, and alternative medicine approaches to mental health care and psychological wellbeing in India and China.

India and China face the same challenge of having too few trained psychiatric personnel to manage effectively the substantial burden of mental illness within their population. At the same time, both countries have many practitioners of traditional, complementary, and alternative medicine who are a potential resource for delivery of mental health care. In our paper, part of The Lancet and Lancet Psychiatry's Series about the China-India Mental Health Alliance, we describe and compare types of traditional, complementary, and alternative medicine in India and China.

Yoga Practice Increases Minimum Muscular Fitness in Children with Visual Impairment.

Introduction: Muscle strength, a component for balance, gait and functional mobility is vital for children with visual impairment. Yoga has frequently been demonstrated to improve physical and mental fitness in children. This study aimed to assess the effect of 16 weeks yoga training on muscular fitness in children with visual impairment.

A complexity basis for phenomenology: How information states at criticality offer a new approach to understanding experience of self, being and time.

In the late 19th century Husserl studied our internal sense of time passing, maintaining that its deep connections into experience represent prima facie evidence for it as the basis for all investigations in the sciences: Phenomenology was born. Merleau-Ponty focused on perception pointing out that any theory of experience must accord with established aspects of biology i.e.

Implicit measure for yoga research: Yoga implicit association test.

Context: The implicit association test (IAT), a new tool for yoga research is presented. Implicit measures could be used in those situations where (1) The construct is difficult to self-report, (2) there is a threat of social desirability. Clinically, we can assess cognitive dissonance by evaluating incongruence between implicit and explicit measures.