Marget Braun calls yoga central to her recovery from cancer. She believes that yoga poses, breathing and meditation helped her regain confidence in her body after the trauma of treatment. The movement helped her lymphatic system recover. And the focus of a discipline was a plus all around.
“Yoga helped me transform cancer disabilities to health and joy and strength,” says Braun, whose clear cell cancer at age 19 was linked to DES, the synthetic estrogen drug. But anecdotal stories aren’t scientific proof.
Braun is delighted that research for which she helped design the yoga classes now backs up certain benefits of yoga for cancer patients and survivors.
Braun, who teaches weekly yoga classes for cancer patients and survivors, was a consultant to University of Rochester Medical Center researcher Karen Mustian. Mustian’s randomized, controlled clinical trial, which was the largest of its kind, involved 410 people who’d been treated for cancer within the previous two years. Most were women who had breast cancer. Half attended a twice-a-week yoga program designed by Mustian and Braun to be the same at multiple sites across the country.
The results, announced nearly two weeks ago and scheduled to be presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology annual meeting that starts Friday in Chicago: Cancer survivors who do gentle yoga slept better, felt less fatigued and enjoyed better quality of life.
Mustian has her own connection to the issue. One of her grandmothers had metastatic breast cancer that recurred in the spine. The other had brain cancer. “Both of them struggled tirelessly with the side effects of their treatment,” says Mustian, who is among a handful of exercise psychologists and physiologists specializing in cancer in the United States.
While cancer treatments have advanced so that people survive longer, many people suffer with fatigue, pain, anxiety, depression and other side effects, says Mustian.
Studies have shown that exercise helps with pain, neutropenia (abnormally low levels of white blood cells) caused by chemotherapy, nausea/vomiting and inflammation. Exercise helps improve immune function and cortisol rhythms (related to stress).
Most exercise studies of cancer survivors have looked at walking and using resistance bands for muscle toning.
Mustian had the opportunity to test yoga for cancer relief on a large scale using funds from the federal National Cancer Institute and its Office of Cancer Complementary and Alternative Medicine. She used an established network of community oncologists in multiple states who’ve also been involved in key studies of cancer drugs and other treatments.
Mustian and Braun created a training video for yoga instructors to deliver the same class, without music, in multiple communities (not Rochester). That video is not available but Mustian is developing a video for self-directed use for her next study.
Braun, who’s taught yoga for 25 years, chose postures for the study known to induce sleep, reduce tension and quiet the brain.
She included modifications such as using a chair or blocks for patients with physical limitations. Special breathing and mindfulness practices were also included.
Mustian chose to look at sleep problems and fatigue because most cancer patients experience them.
Results were based on study participants’ reports, but they also wore an actigraph device on their wrists that measured movement and sleep, which backed up their reports, Mustian says.
“Yoga and meditation can really calm you,” says Suzanne Slack of Pittsford, who’s been taking yoga from Braun for about a year. The peaceful feeling counters the anxiety that comes with cancer, says Slack, who’s in her 50s and is in treatment for a recurrence of kidney cancer. “My sleep is deeper.”
Elizabeth Osta, 64, of Pittsford, finds that the swelling in her arm caused by breast cancer treatment is better controlled, she has more energy, she sleeps better and she feels more flexible since starting yoga with Braun. Learning techniques to focus on the present moment, such as paying attention to her breath and to the feeling of her feet on the ground, is a gift, she adds. “I’ve realized living in the now is how I’m going to survive in the now.”