Yoga helping women recover from breast cancer surgery, University of Tasmania study finds

Yoga can help breast cancer survivors suffering from a painful and common post-treatment condition, a study has found.

Lovers of yoga have long touted its spiritual and physical benefits, but rarely has the hype been put under scientific scrutiny.
But the ancient Indian exercise is gaining credibility as a modern medicine.
Women who took part in the University of Tasmania study said the practice had helped in their healing process both physically and emotionally and, for some, even changed their lives.
The study found yoga can help breast cancer survivors suffering from a post-surgical condition called lymphoedema, an impairment of the lymphatic system that is often a result of cancer treatments.
It is a condition that has to be managed for life, a situation breast cancer survivor Mandy Giblin said added to the stress of the disease.
“You get over the cancer, but it’s all the side effects that [are] a constant reminder and a constant battle which sometimes can be worse than the actual diagnosis,” she said.
Yoga therapist Annette Loudon has looked at whether the ancient practice could offer new hope to sufferers.
The University of Tasmania researcher created a special program for women with lymphoedema, testing 40 participants for eight weeks.
“A really great finding was that their symptoms reduced in comparison to the control group,” she said.
“Symptoms really can be a major detrimental effect of lymphoedema and stop people going about their daily activities in their life, so that was a great finding.”

Yoga helped marathon runner face new uphill battle

Ms Giblin spent the past few months training for the gruelling Point to Pinnacle race up Hobart’s Mount Wellington – often described as the toughest half marathon in the world.
The former Commonwealth Games athlete and mother-of-two is not afraid of an uphill battle.
“I’ve been running since I could run, sort of started Little Athletics when I was four and have run all my life – used to run to the shop, used to run to school … it’s in my blood.
“There’s not much of my life that I haven’t been running.”
After she was diagnosed with stage three breast cancer in 2009, Ms Giblin was determined to stay active.
She underwent chemotherapy, radiotherapy and a mastectomy, but after the cancer cleared lymphoedema proved to be another hurdle to clear.
Ms Giblin took part in the study and said yoga made a big difference.
“The yoga helped in a lot of ways,” she said.
“For me a lot of it was mental, the relaxation, it was a stressful time for me and I did yoga throughout as well as in the study.
“It was a mental thing for me and also obviously the physical side of it. It helped with the lymphatic drainage, it helped just that range of motion.”

Cancer survivor’s stories as inspiring as study results

Those personal stories meant as much to Annette Loudon as the measurable results she published.
“One of the ladies said for the first time in 20 years, she could reach her garage door with both arms and when we measured her range of motion it had improved,” she said.
“For another lady, her quality of life improved from a zero to an eight – where 10 is perfect quality of life – so these improvements were wonderful.”
Dr Andrew Williams supervised the study and said it was unlike anything he had been involved with.
“Well it’s only the second study that I’m aware of that’s looked at yoga in breast cancer-related lymphoedema and that first study was a very small study over a short period of time,” he said.
“So what we’ve done is with larger numbers, we’ve expanded the length of time and we have also expanded the range of variables that we looked at.”
Ms Loudon is now training other therapists to deliver her yoga for lymphoedema program and hopes the practice will spread as its therapeutic benefits are better known.
Source: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-12-05/study-finds-yoga-helping-women-recover-from-breast-cancer/5945932