Yoga
Improves Sleep for Cancer Patients
New research suggests that regular practice of yoga can
lead to significant improvements in sleep for people who have undergone cancer
treatment. For patients with cancer, sleep problems are common. Research
indicates that people coping with cancer are at significantly higher risk for
sleep disorders than the general population. Lack of sleep contributes to
fatigue and can increase the risk of developing depression for people coping
with cancer. Poor sleep and disrupted circadian rhythms are also associated
with hormone dysregulation and immune system dysfunction. Among people with
cancer, disrupted sleep can occur as a result of several factors, including
physical pain or discomfort that interferes with falling asleep or staying
asleep, side effects from medications and treatments, as well as stress and
anxiety. Once triggered, problems with sleep are often difficult to
reverse: disrupted sleep patterns that develop during cancer treatment can
persist long after treatment has concluded.
Finding ways to
help people cope with cancer to sleep better is an important goal of sleep
research and clinical treatment. While short-term use of sleep medication may
be useful, it’s critical to identify strategies for improving sleep that don’t
rely on long-term use of sleep medicines.
Researchers
investigated the effectiveness of yoga to improve sleep as part of a
post-treatment care program and found that the mind-body exercise brought
significant improvements to sleep quality and sleep efficiency. Yoga also
helped to reduce patients’ reliance on prescription sleep medication. The study
included 410 patients with cancer, all of whom had undergone one or more types
of treatment—including surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy—within the past 24
months. Most of the participants (96%) were women, with an average age of 54,
and 75% of participants had breast cancer. All were suffering from at least
moderate levels of sleep problems. Researchers divided the participants into 2
groups, both of which followed the same standard post-treatment care plan. In
addition, one group also participated in a 4-week yoga program, consisting of 2
75-minute sessions each week. The yoga regimen included physical postures as
well as meditation, breathing, and relaxation exercises. At the beginning and
the end of the 4-week study period, researchers measured sleep for both groups
using questionnaires and wrist sensors worn during the night. They found both
groups had improved their sleep during the 4 weeks. However, the yoga
group experienced significantly greater improvements in sleep compared to the
non-yoga group:
Using a scale of
sleep quality with a range of 21-0, with lower numbers representing fewer sleep
problems, the group that practiced yoga demonstrated a more significant boost in sleep quality. The yoga group saw their average sleep quality score improve
from 9.2 at the beginning of the study to 7.2 at the end. The non-yoga group’s
average score improved to a lesser degree, from 9.0 to 7.9.
Yoga
practitioners also improved their sleep efficiency—the amount of time spent sleeping relative to the total amount of time in bed—to a greater
degree than the non-yoga group.
The yoga group
experienced more significant improvements in daytime tiredness than the
non-yoga group.
The yoga group
reduced their use of sleep medication by 21% per week during the course of the
study. The non-yoga group, on the other hand, increased their sleep medication
use by 5% per week.
This last
finding is especially encouraging, that the group practicing yoga improved
their sleep while also reducing their reliance on sleep medication. We know
from the CDC’s first-ever investigation of prescription sleep medication that
reliance on prescription sleep aids is alarmingly high, with 4% of the adult
population of the U.S. taking medication to sleep. Long-term use of sleep
medication is not the best method of improving sleep for anyone. For cancer
patients–who may already be taking one or more other medications–effective,
non-chemical treatments for sleep problems are particularly welcome and
important. To date, we’ve not seen a great deal of research attention paid to
the potential benefits of yoga for patients with cancer. But other studies suggest that yoga and other types of gentle, mind-body exercises
can help improve sleep among cancer patients:
With a group of
lymphoma patients, researchers examined the effects on sleep of Tibetan yoga, a
form that incorporates breathing, visualization, mindfulness, and physical
postures. After 3 months, patients who did yoga reported significant decreases
in sleep disturbances, increased sleep duration, and less reliance on sleep
medication, compared to a group that did not participate in the yoga regimen.
A group of
patients with a variety of cancers experienced improvements in sleep and
decreases in levels of stress and fatigue after an 8-week program of
mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR). MBSR includes meditation practices
designed to address both physical and psychological difficulties.
A review of
research into mind-body therapies for cancer patients found that several forms
of mind-body treatment had positive effects on sleep, as well as on pain and
fatigue.
These latest
results provide important additional evidence that yoga and mind-body practices
can play a constructive role in treating sleep problems among cancer
patients. I am a proponent of yoga and
mind-body exercise as a treatment for sleep problems and as part of a
healthy-sleep routine. I hope we’ll see additional research explore the
possible benefits of these practices for people living with cancer.
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