Yoga as an Adjunct to Conventional Cancer Treatment in Breast Cancer

Breast cancer is a profoundly stressful disease posing both physical and psychological threats to the patient. Patients have to endure distressing side effects of multimodal treatments over a long period of time leading to anxiety, depression and other psychological reactions that can affect treatment compliance. These stress perceptions coupled with cancer-related intrusive thoughts, age, sociodemographic characteristics and financial concerns along with a tendency towards negativity (neuroticism) may conspire to heighten a women's risk for psychological distress, reduce their quality of life and also inhibit innate and anti tumor immune responses against cancer. Earlier studies using various behavioural approaches have shown some benefit finding in these populations. Studies using various forms of yoga intervention have also shown to improve quality of life, mood states, reduce stress symptoms and improve general well being in cancer patients. However, most of these studies have methodological problems with design, have smaller sample size, have heterogeneity in cancer population and disease stage, and lack effective controls.