Yoga Helps Breast Cancer Patients During and After Treatments

Sharon Moore March 04, 2014

Yoga offers significant benefits to women undergoing radiation therapy for breast cancer. The new findings, which appeared in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, found that yoga may not only help fight fatigue, but also improve the general health, mobility and stress levels of patients.

191 women with breast cancer (stage 0-3) were randomized to one of three groups: yoga, simple stretching, and no instruction in yoga or stretching. Participants in the yoga and stretching groups attended sessions specifically tailored to breast cancer patients for one-hour, three days a week throughout their six weeks of radiation treatment.

"Combining mind and body practices that are part of yoga clearly have tremendous potential to help patients manage the psychosocial and physical difficulties associated with treatment and life after cancer, beyond the benefits of simple stretching," said Lorenzo Cohen, Ph.D., professor and director of the Integrative Medicine Program at MD Anderson. The preliminary findings of his research were published in 2011 in the same journal.

The study was part of the ongoing research geared towards validating mind-body interventions in cancer patients. It was conducted in collaboration with India’s largest yoga research institution, Swami Vivekananda Yoga Anusandhana Samsthana in Bangalore, India.

Researchers found that while simple stretching exercises counteracted fatigue, patients who participated in yoga exercises that incorporated controlled breathing, meditation and relaxation techniques into their treatment plan experienced improved ability to engage in their daily activities and improved general health.

They were also better equipped to find meaning in the illness experience, which declined over time for the women who didn’t practise yoga but integrated simple, generic stretching exercises into their lives.

Furthermore, women who practised yoga had the steepest decline in their cortisol levels across the day, indicating that yoga had the ability to help regulate this stress hormone. This is particularly important because higher stress hormone levels throughout the day, known as a blunted circadian cortisol rhythm, have been linked to worse outcomes in breast cancer.

Additionally, after completing the therapy, only the women in the yoga and stretching groups reported a reduction in fatigue. At one, three and six months after radiation therapy, women who practiced yoga during the treatment period reported greater benefits to physical functioning and general health. They were more likely to find life meaning from their cancer experience than the other groups. This suggests that yoga offer benefits to breast cancer patients even after their treatments.

Source of this article:

Randomized, Controlled Trial of Yoga in Women With Breast Cancer Undergoing Radiotherapy