Go gaga over yoga to smack side effects of prostate cancer treatment

New Delhi: A study brings relief to many as it says that practicing yoga just twice a week may lead to better physical, sexual and emotional health among patients undergoing prostate cancer radiation treatment.

Men who attended the yoga classes reported less fatigue and better sexual and urinary function than those who did not, according to the study that looked at the effect of yoga on the side-effects and quality of life issues caused by prostate cancer treatment.

"Levels of patient -reported fatigue are expected to increase by around the fourth or fifth week of a typical treatment course, but that did not happen in the yoga group," said the trial's principal investigator Neha Vapiwala from the University of Pennsylvania in the US. 

"Both the severity of the fatigue as well as the patients' ability to go about their normal lives appeared to be positively impacted in the yoga group," Vapiwala said. 

All of the patients in the trial underwent between s between six and nine weeks of external beam radiation therapy for prostate cancer. 

The patients were randomised into two groups -- one arm participated in a yoga class that met twice a week and the other arm served as a control group. 

Each session lasted 75 minutes, beginning with five minutes of breathing and centering techniques and ending with five minutes of Savasana, a common yoga position. 

(With IANS inputs)