President’s Message: New ARPF White Paper Featured in Consumer Reports

We are thrilled to see our newest research cited in many prestigious publications. The Pink Brain^™ Project is a study sponsored and designed by the Alzheimer’s Research and Prevention Foundation (ARPF) at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), Department of Psychiatry.

The Pink Brain Project came to be in 2017 because of the research emerging at that time about women being at a higher risk of Alzheimer’s disease. Women make up 66% of all Alzheimer’s cases, and they are more often primary caregivers, which places an extra burden of stress on them.

This is noteworthy, especially if women already have risk factors like genetic predisposition, family history of Alzheimer’s disease, vascular risk factors or memory complaints, which may signify that they are on their way to developing mild cognitive impairment and then later dementia.

Therefore, the Alzheimer’s Research and Prevention Foundation decided to fund a study focused exclusively on women. The study was the most ambitious research project of ARPF to date. It was designed as a three-year study that began in early 2018 and ended approximately in February 2021. Analyses continued through 2023 and 2024.

Our goal was to explore whether women with multiple health conditions that are risk factors for Alzheimer’s disease would benefit from practicing Kirtan Kriya every day for 12 weeks. We embarked upon this study with a group of women with cardiovascular risk factors, high blood pressure, diabetes, high cholesterol, mild depression, obesity, and subjective memory complaints.

Participants were randomized into two groups that practiced either Kirtan Kriya/Kundalini Yoga, described below, or Memory Enhancement over a 12-week training period. The resulting data analysis revealed important findings, which led to the publication of several scientific papers in prestigious, peer-reviewed medical journals, with a few more in the pipeline. This new White Paper (in press) will reveal of the benefits of the Kirtan Kriya and Kundalini Yoga intervention in this patient population and a narrative explanation of the papers.