Is yoga helpful for people with chronic diseases?

There’s promising evidence that yoga may help people with some chronic diseases manage their symptoms and improve their quality of life. Thus, it could be a helpful addition to treatment programs.

• Cancer
  • In a 2018 evaluation of 138 studies on the use of yoga in patients with various types of cancer (10,660 total participants), most of the studies found that yoga improved patients’ physical and psychological symptoms and quality of life.
  • Many yoga studies have focused on women who have or have had breast cancer. A 2017 review of 24 studies of women with breast cancer (more than 2,100 total participants) found moderate-quality evidence that yoga helped reduce fatigue and sleep disturbances and improved health-related quality of life. The effects of yoga were similar to those of other types of exercise and better than those of educational programs.
• Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). A 2018 analysis of 10 studies (502 total participants) found evidence that yoga can improve physical ability (such as being able to walk a defined distance in a defined time), lung function, and quality of life in people with COPD.
• HIV/AIDS. A 2019 review of 7 studies (396 participants) of yoga interventions for people with HIV/AIDS found that yoga was a promising intervention for stress management.
• Asthma. A 2016 review of 15 studies of yoga for asthma (involving 1,048 total participants) concluded that yoga probably leads to small improvements in quality of life and symptoms.
• Multiple sclerosis. Two recent reviews on yoga for people with multiple sclerosis had mostly negative results. One review found a significant benefit only for fatigue (comparable to the effect of other types of exercise), and the other found no benefits for any aspect of quality of life.