A recent randomised controlled clinical trial has shown that heated yoga can significantly reduce depressive symptoms in individuals with moderate-to-severe depression. The findings of the study, published in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, suggest that heated yoga could offer a feasible therapeutic option for people suffering from depression.
The trial, led by investigators from Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), part of Mass General Brigham (MGB), spanned eight weeks and included 80 participants who were randomly assigned to one of two groups. The first group engaged in 90-minute sessions of Bikram yoga, practised in a room heated to 105°F, while the second group was placed on a waitlist and received the yoga intervention after the waitlist period. The analysis included 33 participants in the yoga group and 32 in the waitlist group.
Participants in the yoga intervention group were prescribed at least two yoga classes per week but attended an average of 10.3 classes over eight weeks.
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At the end of the eight weeks, participants in the yoga group showed a significantly greater reduction in depressive symptoms compared to those in the waitlist group, as measured by the clinician-rated Inventory of Depressive Symptomatology (IDS-CR) scale.
The study also revealed that 59.3 per cent of yoga participants experienced a 50 per cent or greater reduction in symptoms, while only 6.3 per cent of waitlist participants achieved this level of improvement. Furthermore, 44 per cent of the yoga group achieved IDS-CR scores indicating remission of depression, in contrast to 6.3 per cent of the waitlist group.
Notably, even participants who completed only half of the prescribed yoga sessions showed a reduction in depressive symptoms, indicating that heated yoga sessions once a week could still be beneficial.
Lead author Maren Nyer, PhD, who serves as the director of Yoga Studies at the Depression Clinical and Research Program at Massachusetts General Hospital and an assistant professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, emphasised the potential of yoga and heat-based interventions as non-medication alternatives for depression treatment. Nyer stated, “We are currently developing new studies with the goal of determining the specific contributions of each element – heat and yoga – to the clinical effects we have observed in depression.”
Participants in the study reported positive experiences during the heated yoga sessions and did not experience any serious adverse effects associated with the intervention.
Senior author David Mischoulon, MD, PhD, who is the Director of the Depression Clinical and Research Program at Massachusetts General Hospital, stressed the need for further research to explore whether heated yoga offers unique benefits beyond those of non-heated yoga for the treatment of depression. This research could be particularly relevant given the emerging evidence supporting whole-body hyperthermia as a treatment for major depressive disorder.
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