Study: Yoga helps breast cancer patients combat treatment side effects
(AP)
Updated: 2006-06-05 16:03
Women going through treatment for breast cancer felt better when they tried
yoga, according to one of the first scientific studies of its kind.
"Our
belief is something as simple and brief as a short (yoga) program would be very
useful" at combating side effects from cancer treatment, said Lorenzo Cohen, a
psychologist who led the pilot study.
Yoga incorporates meditation,
relaxation, imagery, controlled breathing, stretching and physical movements.
Although the study was small and preliminary, it's one of the few to try to
rigorously measure the benefits of this form of exercise, Cohen said.
Researchers at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center focused
on 61 women who had surgery for breast cancer and now were getting six weeks of
radiation treatment. Thirty women were assigned to a test group that took
twice-a-week yoga classes. The others did not.
At the end of six weeks,
study participants filled out detailed questionnaires grading their ability to
lift groceries, walk a mile (1.6 kilometers) and perform other physical
activities. They also were asked about feelings of fatigue, their sense of
well-being and other aspects of their quality of life.
Their scores were
converted to a scale that ranged from 0 to 100. The researchers found the yoga
group consistently had higher scores in almost every area. It was most
pronounced in physical function _ the yoga group had a mean score of about 82,
compared with 69 for the other group.
Participants said they were in
better general health, were less fatigued and had fewer problems with daytime
sleepiness. But the researchers found no differences between the groups in
measurements of depression or anxiety.
The researchers drew blood and
took saliva samples in an effort to measure the participants' immune system
function and stress levels, but those results are not finished yet, said Cohen,
who presented the results at a medical conference in Atlanta held by the
American Society of Clinical Oncology.
A future study will have one
group do stretching and another yoga, to see if there is a difference in the
result, Cohen said.
Traditionally, such scientific approaches have been
lacking in the assessment of yoga's medical benefits, said Alan Kristal, an
epidemiology professor at the University of Washington School of Public Health
and Community Medicine.
Due in part to increased federal funding for
research into alternative therapies, more rigorous studies have emerged in the
last three or four years that attempt to provide harder proof, Kristal said.
Recent studies have demonstrated the benefits of yoga for cancer
patients and people with carpal tunnel syndrome. Kristal co-authored a study
last year that found middle-aged people who regularly did yoga lost weight over
10 years while a non-yoga group gained, on average, more than 13 pounds (5.9
kilograms).
The National Cancer Institute recently awarded Cohen and his
team $2.4 million (euro1.87 million) to study the effects of Tibetan yoga on
women with breast cancer undergoing chemotherapy. It was the largest ever
federal grant for the study of Tibetan yoga in cancer patients.
Teresita
Ladrillo, 52, a Houston breast cancer patient currently taking yoga classes at
M.D. Anderson, said the stretching helped her regain flexibility in her right
arm, which was limited by scarring from surgeries and other treatments.
Learning to control her breathing through yoga has helped her to calm and
sleep, she said.
"Whenever you do yoga, the first thing they tell you is
forget everything else and just focus on your breathing," she said. "There's
something to be said for being still."
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