Complementary therapies: Yoga and pranayama for cancer related fatigue
Jyothi Chakrabarty
Manipal University, India
: J Nurs Patient Care
Abstract
Fatigue is very much common among cancer patients and it has bearing on their lives during disease and treatment. CancerRelated Fatigue (CRF) experience is personal (subjective) and has got different factors attributed to it. Most of the recently diagnosed patients of breast cancer reported severe fatigue. Fatigue is significantly associated with psychological symptoms like anxiety and depression. Almost 77% of the people receiving external beam radiation therapy for breast cancer experience fatigue. For patients on external beam radiation therapy, fatigue increases gradually during the course of radiation treatment. Many interventions are tried out for treating cancer related fatigue with varying results. Some of them are psycho-stimulants, erythropoietin, exercise, psychosocial interventions and Yoga. Yoga is the union of the individual self (Jivatma) with the universal self (Paramatma). The system was first collated and written down by Patanjali in his Yoga Sutras or Aphorisms. Yoga has been used as interventions for stress and coping, pain reduction, emotional well-being, anxiety and blood pressure, etc. Yoga has shown to alleviate the side effects of cancer treatment such as cancer related fatigue and to improve the quality of life. Yoga was found to be effective in reducing cancer related fatigue among patients and survivors as well.
Biography
