Patients Fighting Cancer and ADHD Find Hope Using Yoga to Battle Their Diseases
By KRISTINA FIORE
Nov. 1, 2009
“Doctor’s Orders” is a new feature in the collaboration between Medpage Today and ABC News. We’ll be exploring medical issues of interest to physicians and their patients. In this first monthly segment, we look at the increasing body of research into the effects of yoga yoga in a variety of conditions as interest in this form of therapy grows. Share Doctors embrace ancient form of exercise to treat ailments from ADHD to cancer. At major cancer centers across the country, patients are putting themselves in a better ‘position’ to cope with their cancer.
Some of the biggest names in cancer care — M.D. Anderson, Memorial Sloan-Kettering and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, among them — now offer their patients classes in yoga. In the past, physicians may have written off the therapy as merely a trendy yuppie pastime. But today, researchers — mainly psychologists — are asking questions about the benefits of yoga in a variety of conditions, including cancer, asthma, sleep disorders, depression and attention disorders.
Generally, the studies have shown that yoga improves quality of life and relieves stress and anxiety associated with these conditions. Some researchers say the Ayurvedic therapy may have physiological mechanisms, such as reducing cortisol levels, but those theories are still under evaluation. A word of caution, though: The studies that have been done so far have yielded soft findings, with little hard data to back up the conclusions. That said, there is no denying that yoga is becoming a presence even in the ivory towers of academic medicine.
Yoga for Cancer Patients Alyson Moadel, PhD, of Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx, N.Y., has been tracking the effects of yoga on breast cancer patients at Montefiore Medical Center for the past eight years. In 2007, Moadel reported early findings from the study in the Journal of Clinical Oncology: Patients who did yoga saw improvements in social and emotional well-being, compared with those who didn’t. When data on patients undergoing chemotherapy were excluded, yoga also significantly improved overall quality of life. “I think it’s going to be an important complementary modality,” Moadel said. “I don’t think it’s the only one, but I think it is an important one for dealing with stress and anxiety.” Yoga classes are offered three times a week at Montefiore. Patients gather in a conference room for the seated yoga sessions, which include stretching in a mix of seated and standing poses for the first hour of the class. Then the instructor dims the lights for meditation, breathing and relaxation.
Studies Find Yoga Can Relieve Anxiety, Attention Disorders, Improve Sleep
Moadel said the study has been expanded to include patients with lung cancer and colorectal cancer as well. Most previous studies have focused on breast cancer patients, but other cancers have also been evaluated.
Many doctors are embracing the postive effects of yoga for their patients.
(Riser/Getty Images)
A small study of cancer patients in Japan and published this year in the Journal of Palliative Medicine found yoga may be effective against anxiety. A recent study in cancer found the therapy improved sleep outcomes in lymphoma patients.
And at least one organization, the Society for Integrative Oncology, has issued guidelines recommending that the treatment “should be incorporated as part of a multidisciplinary approach for reducing anxiety, mood disturbance, and chronic pain and for improving quality of life in cancer patients.”
Investigators aren’t limiting their questions about yoga to cancer, though.
A German study found that yoga was superior to conventional motor training in a small population of children with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).
An Australian study published in the Journal of Attention Disorders, concluded that yoga “may have merit as a complementary therapy for boys with ADHD already stabilized on medication.”
Heather Peck, PhD, a school psychologist at the Bethany Community School in Bethany, Conn., and her colleagues at the University of Connecticut, performed a study last year on children with attention problems — although not clinically diagnosed with ADHD.
After taking a yoga class in school, the children had improved attention that was comparable to that of their peers who didn’t have attention disorders.
“We found significant effect sizes,” Peck said. “Their levels of attention came up close to those of the rest of the kids in the class.”
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Sat Bir Khalsa, PhD, a neuroscientist at Harvard who researches the effects of yoga on sleep disorders, said the therapy promotes focus, which could help explain why it appears to be so effective in children with attention problems.
“What could be better for someone with ADHD than improving their awareness and attention skills?” he asked.
Some researchers have looked into more physical effects of yoga. Peck’s colleague at the University of Connecticut, Melissa Bray, PhD, assessed the therapy in asthma patients.
Bray found that it did improve lung function “to some degree,” but it had a bigger effect on quality of life.
She said that improvements in posture may have played a role in promoting better breathing and airway function, but the relief of anxiety shook off a tremendous burden of the disease.
“You’re surmising that you’ve changed a mental state,” she said, emphasizing this idea is strictly an interpretation.
“No one really knows” what the potential mechanisms of yoga in improving asthma may be, she said. “We need studies to replicate our work.”
I have decided to place a gratitude journal in the studio for guests to write in. I was thinking this morning, which is my best time to think when my brain is most active, if i was told this is my last day on earth what would I be grateful for and the answers came flooding into my brain.