The benefits of yoga for patients with cancer

I have been getting into yoga over the past few months. I have gone from an infrequent practice to a daily practice. I feel bendier, yes (which is not to say I am bendy, oh no), and generally have fewer aches and pains. But the biggest change for me is that overall I feel less fatigued. So this got me to thinking about whether my patients would benefit from yoga too. I get asked about fatigue (from cancer, from chemo, from radiation) by almost every patient at some point, it seems. So, off I went with an interesting idea, an open PubMed and Google browser and some time to kill. Here's what I found:

A personal account of yoga for patients with cancer on Yoga Journal (warning! Space age-y!)
I think I may have linked to this one before, but it is relevant here too. Yoga helped patients with breast cancer feel better while they were getting radiation (this is a randomized study, fairly compelling ... here is the abstract).
A similar study from India showed that yoga helped women with breast cancer also undergoing radiation with circadian rhythms and self-reported stress.
Well, what do you know? There's enough literature out there that you can do a review on it! The upshot? According to the authors, "This study provided a systematic evaluation of the yoga and cancer literature. Although some positive results were noted, variability across studies and methodological drawbacks limit the extent to which yoga can be deemed effective for managing cancer-related symptoms."
And apparently yoga and cancer is big business as Donna Karan donated $850,000 to Beth Israel to allow them to set up a yoga program for cancer patients.

And with that, I say, "Namaste!"