Source: abcnews.go.com
UNITED STATES, May 21, 2010: In the chemotherapy infusion room at the Staten Island University Hospital sit several cancer patients hooked up to IVs. But they aren’t leafing through magazines or staring at a talk show and worrying about their health. Instead, their right legs are lifted up in the air, and they’re circling their ankles clockwise while breathing deeply under the instruction of their yoga teacher.
A growing body of literature suggests that yoga can be beneficial for multiple serious and chronic health conditions. And now, new research released Thursday ahead of the American Society of Clinical Oncology meeting suggests yoga has beneficial effects on sleep quality, fatigue, and overall quality of life in cancer survivors.
The new study, funded by the National Cancer Institute’s Office of Cancer Complementary and Alternative Medicine, was carried out in nine different community sites around the country. “To my knowledge, this is the largest clinical trial using yoga intervention in cancer survivors [to date],” said lead study author Karen Mustian, an exercise psychologist and physiologist at the University of Rochester.
In the trial, 410 patients who had completed cancer therapy were split into two groups: one that participated in a four-week-long, twice-weekly yoga program, and one that did not. Compared to how they felt beforehand, the survivors who participated in the yoga program afterward reported improvements in sleep quality and fatigue. Yoga participants also used less sleep medication than they did before the program, while non-yoga participants actually increased their use of sleep medication.