Benefits of Yoga for Cancer Patients
Cancer patients who practice yoga experience a big improvement in their quality of life compared to those who prefer not to go the holistic healing route. The benefits of yoga for cancer patients include the support to manage the stress and pain arising out of the fear and anxiety following the diagnosis, side effects from chemotherapy, and extreme fatigue that sets in during radiation. It is even touted to help prevent relapse.
Yoga for Cancer: A Life Saver
Do you know there is a strong connection between your lifestyle and cancer? With simple lifestyle changes, you can prevent and manage cancer symptoms. By making yoga a part of your life, you can feel revived and relaxed all through your cancer treatment and stay motivated to fight for your life. Research reveals that patients who practice yoga for cancer symptom relief are less sensitive to pain.
Although yoga for cancer is not a cure, it can help you overcome the pain with strength, vigor, and vitality. When a patient battles cancer, the worst struggle lies in managing the discomfort, painful symptoms, and debilitating fatigue that accompany cancer treatment.
Cancer-Related Stress Management
Yoga offers significant benefits for stress management. Yoga postures, especially guided breathing exercises, can help dissipate tension and help cancer patients manage the psychological burden of undergoing a long, invasive, and rigorous cancer treatment. Chemotherapy side effects can cause a lot of stress, tension, insomnia, and anxiety for patients and caregivers. According to a new scientific review, yoga and mindfulness exercise reverse stress-related genetic changes that cause inflammation and are linked to poor physical and mental health. Researchers claim that those who make yoga a part of their exercise regimen benefit from a reduction in the production of inflammatory proteins.
Cancer patients recovering from surgery can experience greater flexibility and motion with gentle yoga practice.
Yoga as Post-Chemo Therapy
Yoga for post-cancer treatment phase is highly effective in eliminating the toxin buildup from cancer drugs and chemotherapy. Specific yoga postures stimulate blood circulation and enhance lymphatic flow, which enhances the internal purification processes. Guided breathing exercises are often emphasized in yoga for cancer therapy and post-treatment, since it helps boost the flow of oxygen-rich blood to cells, eliminating toxins and delivering vital nutrients to exhausted cells.
Yoga To Enhance the Quality of Life
According to a Harvard Medical School Mental Health Letter, patients should include yoga for cancer therapy to reduce stress and anxiety that accompany the rigors of treatment. Yoga can help lower blood pressure, which usually tends to go up for cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy. Additionally, it reduces the risk of lymphedema in cancer patients that have had undergone surgery, radiation, or lymph node removal. Gentle yoga poses can help improve lymph flow, thus reducing the risk of fluid retention in the arm, hand, breast, or chest wall. It can support your cardiovascular health, ease respiration, and reduce the heart rate adversely affected during cancer-related targeted therapies.
Yoga for Weight Management
Yoga is a phenomenal way to get back in touch with your body, learn what to eat and what to avoid, and understand when to say no when you are feeling full. Yoga poses can be more aerobic than traditional aerobic exercises and thus help a cancer patient manage weight. Guided yoga breathing techniques can help you burn calories even as you breathe. Yoga has been associated with decreased body fat density that can help prevent the risk of relapse. So, there are reasons galore for a cancer patient to make yoga a part of their life.
Yoga for Cancer Prevention
From stress management to weight management, from boosting immunity to detoxification, yoga is a way of creating a balance between your body and mind. When you are able to establish this connection, you can unblock your body from different cellular reactions that can cause cancer.
Yoga cultivates a cancer-resistant environment in your body. Regular yoga practice helps manage weight, lower stress, strengthen bones, and detoxify the body, all of which further lower your risk of relapse and prevent cancer recurrence.
Yoga for Cancer Patient Caregivers
Right from planning and discussing treatment to managing medications and offering all forms of assistance to a cancer patient, caregivers ride a roller coaster of emotions all through the treatment phase and aftercare. Studies reveal that caregivers experience the highest rate of depression, anxiety, and heart disease. Practicing yoga can improve your ability to handle the responsibility without psychological distress.
Yoga can be a boon for cancer patients and caregivers. Linked to overall wellbeing and balance, yoga can have a relaxing, calming effect on the body and mind, help reduce stress, anxiety, fatigue, and create an overall sense of wellbeing.