A cancer patient looks for all possible ways to get the best treatment possible. They explore complementary and alternative therapies for fighting against the adverse effects of cancer treatment and improving their quality of life during and after the dreadful disease. Many patients opting for regular treatment choose therapeutic yoga outside their mainstream care. This helps them improve cancer-related symptoms and side effects because of chemo and radiation therapy.
Yoga is becoming a reliable treatment to heal the symptoms like pain, fatigue, loss of appetite, sleep, neuropathy, nausea, and various levels of cognitive deficit. Some of them hamper the quality of life.
The source of Yoga as a complementary modality
Yoga has got its source in ancient Indian philosophy. It is thousands of years old. However, the use of Yoga as an effective therapy started in the latter half of the twentieth century in Europe and the United States. As a therapy of medicine, this traditional method includes asanas (physical postures), pranayama (breathing techniques) and dhyana (meditation).
Physical postures help improve the flexibility, strength, and coordination of a person. The breathing exercise and meditation helps calm down the mind and decrease anxiety. Your practice also improves cardiorespiratory performance, plasma melatonin levels, and cardiopulmonary performance. It is even supposed to help in blood pressure, and reduce mean arterial pressure and orthostatic intolerance.
How Yoga Benefits Cancer Patients
Many studies have found that yoga works as prostate cancer drugs do and is helpful for cancer patients. It is beneficial, especially when it comes to the side effects of many other therapies. It causes a reduction in the frequency of post-chemotherapy, induced nausea and several related side effects. Also, those patients who do regular yoga help in reducing anxiety, stress, and depression. Besides, it also leads to a significant reduction in toxicity scores.
Yoga is also useful for some of the side effects of cancer. These side effects include:
- Stress
- Pain
- Breathing issues
- Muscle stiffness
- Panic
- Fatigue
- Insomnia
- Neuropathy
- Weight
Some medical experts have found that Yoga is also helpful for women who have metastatic breast cancer. The patients of breast cancer are doing yoga to lower the levels of pain and fatigue. They experience higher levels of acceptance, invigoration, and relaxation. Recent research has shown that people who practiced Yoga had significantly better physical functions as assessed by six-minute walking test, better stamina for work performance or daily activities and mental health. Moreover, those caregivers who receive Yoga instructions witness improvement in fatigue and strength while working.
Below is a list of cancer types that patients do yoga for relief:
- Breast Cancer
- Colorectal Cancer
- Lung Cancer Lymphoma
- Prostate Cancer
- Brain Cancer
- Cervical Cancer
- Leukemia Cancer
- Ovarian Cancer
There are many other types of cancers that are treated by Yoga. If you are a cancer patient and want to learn about prostate cancer drugs or the importance of yoga for cancer, it is advisable to join popular online prostate cancer forums. You will get insights into the yoga and its effects on the cancer disease.
Insights about Yoga from online patient discussions
In an online forum, many patients discuss and share their practice, experience, and emotions about yoga’s effects on their overall quality of life. Researchers at Scry Analytics used Voice of Cancer Patients review the messages shared in more than 50 web forums for understanding how cancer patients are using yoga as an alternative therapy in their cancer treatment and measure its efficacy in combating side effects.
By techniques from Artificial Intelligence, expert researchers have extracted 15.7 million messages and analyzed each of them to obtain two pieces of meaningful information about Yoga and its benefits for the patients who have cancer. As a result, they found that thousands of patients are talking about your effectiveness on cancer, its side effects, ineffectiveness, etc.
Conclusion
Though cancer is the most critical disease and is not 100% curable, you can stay away from its adverse effect by doing regular yoga. It is advisable to encourage people who are suffering from cancer to join an online web forum to get insights into the impact of yoga for them.
