Yoga against Cancer

Yoga & Cancer

Cancer survivors often feel tired and have trouble sleeping for months or even years after their last session of chemotherapy or radiation. Now a new study shows that yoga can help you sleep better, feel more energy, and reduce the sleeping pills.

"We really wanted to find something useful, because now there are not many good treatments out there for fatigue," says the study author, Karen Mustian lead, PhD, assistant professor of radiation oncology at the University of Rochester Medical Center, Rochester, NY

Compared to sleeping pills, yoga can be really difficult, "Suzanne Danhauer, PhD, Professor of Psychosocial Oncology says in the School of Medicine of Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, NC sleeping pills are not always effective and can have undesirable side effects, and human do that, only by cancer treatment can not take more drugs, says Danhauer that examines the benefits of yoga for cancer patients, but not participate in the new study.

This study included 410 cancer survivors who have completed treatment in the two previous years and had insomnia for at least two months. All but 16 patients were female and 75% were survivors of breast cancer. In addition to routine care after the treatment received by each, half the study participants took 75 minutes yoga twice a week for a month.

The meetings, which are known in two forms of low-intensity yoga as Hatha Yoga and Restorative Yoga, including breathing exercises, meditation based, and 18 different poses. "This was not some kind of power vinyasa yoga class," said Mustian. "He was gentle."

At baseline, less than 85% of participants in both groups, yoga and control have sleep problems. In the end, 31% of patients who practiced yoga sleep, compared with only 16% of the control group. Participants were also sleeping with Yoga drugs about 20% less, on average, while people in the control group, even the consumption of sleeping pills increases than 5%.

In addition, participants had significantly lower levels Yoga fatigue and sleepiness during the day in comparison with the control group.