A recent study has revealed that 12-week supervised 90-minute long yoga sessions can reduce disease activity and improve the quality of life and mental health in patients, who are suffering from ulcerative colitis.
The study was conducted by a team of researchers from Germany's University of Duisburg-Essen. It found that regular yoga helped ulcerative colitis patients by depleting the activity of their colitis and raising their quality of life. The researchers conducted a trial on 77 people, who were randomly selected diagnosed with ulcerative colitis.
Ulcerative colitis (UC) is an inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) that leads to inflammation and even causes ulcers in the rectum and colon, primarily affecting the gastrointestinal lining of the large intestine. The condition can often be severely debilitating and sometimes lead to life-threatening complications.
As per statistics, 1 to 20 per 100,000 people get diagnosed with UC annually. It affects men and women equally and begins at the age of 15 to 30 years or impacts those above 60.
The symptoms of UC can vary from patient to patient depending on the extent of inflammation present. Doctors can often classify the condition according to the part of the colon that is inflamed. Several symptoms of UC are cramping and abdominal pain, diarrhoea, often with blood or pus, rectal pain and or bleeding, constipation, fever, failure to grow in children, weight loss and fatigue.
According to the findings published in the international journal of gastroenterology and hepatology Alimentary Pharmacology & Therapeutics, doing yoga regularly can benefit conventional ulcerative colitis medical therapies.
"Many people use yoga to increase their quality of life. Our study suggests that it might be worthwhile to consider yoga as part of a multimodal integrative approach for treating ulcerative colitis," Professor Holger Cramer, lead author of this Alimentary Pharmacology & Therapeutics study said.
The research concluded that yoga could be considered as an effective and safe additional activity for patients with ulcerative colitis and impaired quality of life
Earlier, another study revealed that structured yoga classes twice a week can also help prostate cancer patients undergoing radiation treatment in improving their sexual health.
