Karen Arrant, a researcher at the University of Louisiana Monroe doing doctoral work at the University of Mississippi Medical Center in Jackson, is conducting a new study on the effects of yoga intervention in postmenopausal women over the age of forty.
Arrant's study will focus on the effects yoga intervention has on sleep, stress, anxiety, and depression in postmenopausal women forty and over. She will use salivary biomarkers, hormones found in saliva that indicate stress, to track the progress women have throughout the eight week study. The women involved in Arrant's study will be randomly separated into two groups, an educational group and a yoga intervention group. The yoga intervention group will have the same information given to them as the educational group as well as adding three weekly yoga sessions at Blue Sky Yoga.
I was looking for a way to improve the health of postmenopausal women.
When asked for her inspiration for the study, Arrant shares, "I've lived in Northeast Louisiana my whole life. We eat well, and we suffer the consequences of our lack of physical activity... I was looking for a way to improve the health of postmenopausal women." Arrant saw that yoga was an affordable and achieve way to facilitate this improvement.
Women interested in this study can contact Karen Arrant at 318-417-9277 or through email at karrant@umc.edu and attend the interest meeting September 7th at 6:00 p.m. in room 242 in Kitty Degree Hall on campus at ULM. Incentives to join this study include gift card drawings each week and a chance to when a spa weekend at the end of the study.