Yoga: Beneficial for Women with Breast Cancer

The ABC News (3/5, Krol) “Medical Unit” blog reports that research published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology suggests that “yoga can help ease pain, fatigue and depression among women battling breast cancer.” Researchers “randomly assigned 191 women with breast cancer who were undergoing radiation therapy into one of three groups. One group did yoga, another did simple stretching exercises, and a third group did neither.”

The Huffington Post (3/4, Chan) reported that the investigators “found that overall, the participants who were assigned to the yoga group experienced the greatest gains in all measurements of health.” The study found that “after radiation treatment, the yoga and stretching groups experienced decreases in fatigue, compared with the control group.” Additionally, “months after the radiation treatment, the yoga group self-reported higher general health, and were also more likely than the other two groups to say that they found some kind of meaning of life from their cancer experience.”

HealthDay (3/5, Doheny) reports that “women in the yoga group had the greatest reduction in cortisol levels across the day, which reflected the ability of yoga to help regulate stress hormones.”