YOGA and Cancer - Breast Cancer

Yoga has been practiced for thousands of years to improve physical and emotional well-being. Those who have a diagnosis of cancer and do yoga are more likely to maintain a higher quality of life. There is more research information on the various health benefits of yoga practice.

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Benefit of yoga practice
Yoga induces a feeling of well-being in healthy people, and can reverse the clinical and biochemical changes associated with metabolic syndrome. Metabolic syndrome is a cluster of heart disease risk factors such as high blood pressure, obesity and high blood sugar.

Yoga and Cancer
Yoga has been practiced for thousands of years to improve physical and emotional well-being. Recent studies conducted with cancer patients and survivors found yoga lead to modest improvements in sleep quality, mood, stress, cancer-related distress, cancer-related symptoms, and overall quality of life. It appears  from the emerging medical literature on yoga and cancer that yoga therapy is helpful for cancer patients.     

Yoga and breast cancer
Women with breast cancer that has spread beyond the breast may benefit from participating in a tailored yoga program that includes gentle yoga postures, breathing exercises, and meditation. The benefits of yoga could include less pain and fatigue, and more vigor, relaxation, and acceptance. In a small study of breast cancer survivors, researchers found that a yoga program helped relieve severe hot flashes and other bothersome menopausal symptoms." These women have suffered through the difficulties of breast cancer and are left to cope with these daily, extremely disruptive symptoms with few options for relief," said Dr. Laura Porter, of Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, co-author of the study presented in March 2008 at the International Association of Yoga Therapists Symposium for Yoga Therapy and Research in Los Angeles, California.
   Women with breast cancer and who engage in yoga have improvements in social functioning. Yoga appears to enhance emotional well-being and mood and may serve to buffer deterioration in quality of life. There are natural supplements that have been studied in prevention or treatment of breast cancer.

Yoga can improve wellbeing in women with breast cancer
Yoga classes can improve the quality of life and well being of women with breast cancer patients -- particularly those who are not taking chemotherapy. Dr. Alyson B. Moadel of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx, New York, wanted to find out whether yoga could help breast cancer patients and survivors feel better. Her team randomly assigned 128 women to a 12-week yoga intervention or a wait list "control" group. Yoga classes were offered three times a week, and participants were urged to attend at least one class a week, and also instructed to do the exercises at home with the help of an audiotape. The Hatha yoga based exercises had been developed especially for breast cancer patients by one of the study's authors, and were done while participants were either sitting in a chair or lying down. During the course of the study, patients in the control group showed greater declines in well being than breast cancer women in the yoga group. When the researchers omitted patients undergoing chemotherapy from their analysis, they found that the women who did yoga showed improvements in quality of life; greater emotional, social and spiritual well being; and less distress. This yoga breast cancer research paper was done by Dr. Alyson B. Moadel and published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, October 1, 2007.

Yoga Helps Cancer Patients
A new study published in the April 2007 issue of Cancer, a medical journal targeted to doctors who treat cancer patients, reports that a gentle form of yoga helps those with lymphoma sleep better. Lymphoma is a cancer that arises in the cells of the immune system. The investigators found that among 39 patients being treated for lymphoma, those who participated in only seven weekly sessions of yoga said they got to sleep sooner, slept for longer, and needed fewer drugs to fall asleep. Study author Dr. Lorenzo Cohen, of the M. D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas, explained that living with cancer can be a very stressful experience, as patients cope with a diagnosis of a life-threatening illness and the side effects of treatment. As is well known, stress can often interfere with patients' sleep habits. Over the years, studies have linked yoga to a number of health benefits, including lowering blood pressure, beating fatigue and easing chronic pain. In the current report, Cohen and his team asked half of the patients to participate in seven weekly sessions of yoga and the results were compared to other patients with lymphoma who did not participate in the yoga program. Some studies have suggested that up to three quarters of cancer patients struggle with sleep. This may have important health consequences since sleep disturbances have been linked with problems with the immune system, and an increased risk of illness or death. Individuals with cancer should be cautioned that while undergoing or recovering from treatment one should adopt a gentle routine, and avoid excessively strenuous routines. This is particularly true for cancer patients who have metastases to the bones which would make the skeletal system more prone to fractures. There is good reason to expect that a gentle form of yoga would be beneficial to not only patients with lymphoma, but those suffering from other types of cancer. SOURCE: Cancer, April 15, 2004.

Yoga breast cancer help
In breast cancer survivors, the Iyengar method of yoga not only promotes psychological well-being, but seems to offer immune system benefits as well. The Iyengar method, created by B. K. S. Iyengar, is considered to be one of the more active forms of yoga. Pamela E. Schultz from Washington State University, Spokane randomly assigned 10 breast cancer survivors to 8 weeks of Iyengar yoga (2 classes and 1 solo session at home per week) and 9 to a wait-list control group. The women had an average age of 61 years, were about 4 years out from initial breast cancer diagnosis and were being treated with hormone therapy. None of the women had any prior experience with Iyengar yoga. Psychosocial tests showed that the "demands of illness," which reflects the burden of hardship of being a breast cancer survivor, fell in the yoga participants. These improvements correlated with decreased activation of an important immune system protein called NF-kB, which is a marker of stress in the body. Diet advice is also helpful.

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