Yoga can reduce emotional distress, anxiety, fatigue, and insomnia in people living with cancer, according to the first clinical trial of its kind presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology's annual meeting.
Hundreds of millions of people worldwide are living with cancer, and up to 95% of survivors experience sleep disturbances or insomnia. More than half suffer from mood disturbances, anxiety, or fatigue.
Researchers recruited 410 cancer survivors in the US, average age 54, three-quarters diagnosed with breast cancer. None had done yoga in the previous three months.
Half received standard survivorship care; the other half also completed a four-week program called Yoga for Cancer Survivors (YOCAS), involving gentle hatha and restorative yoga, breathing exercises, and mindfulness.
Compared to standard care, yoga participants showed significantly less overall mood disturbance, anxiety, and fatigue. The effects ranged from small to large.
"This large, randomized study shows that structured yoga may help relieve some of the most consistently reported and hard-to-treat issues in cancer survivorship," said Dr. Fumiko Chino of MD Anderson Cancer Center. "It offers survivors a non-pharmaceutical solution for reducing four different side-effects at once."