Ulcerative colitis is a chronic inflammatory intestinal disease that affects the colon. The inflammation causes soars to form on the colon’s mucus membrane, which means the patient experiences bloody and frequent stools as well as a general discomfort, anaemia (blood loss) and fatigue. The course of the disease is often affected by disease-free periods with no symptoms, and active periods with severe symptoms.
When the condition suddenly flares up after a disease-free period, it is often due to the patient being in a stress-affected state. This can cause the already stressful period to worsen due to the debilitating disease symptoms that inhibit the individual’s normal function level, whereby the stress-level further increases, and a vicious circle begins. Many patients with ulcerative colitis associate these periods with an impaired quality of life.
Yoga is a sport, which has become increasingly popular lately. In yoga, focus is on your breathing and flexibility, and during the exercises you try to combine and harmonise body and mind. Thus, yoga can seem preventive and alleviating on the outer stressful factors. A group of researchers noticed that there was a possibility that this yoga effect could appear alleviating in patients with ulcerative colitis. For this reason, they conducted a study of 77 patients with ulcerative colitis in a clinically temporary treatment period but with a reduced disease-specific quality of life.
Half of the study subjects had to attend a weekly 90-minute yoga session with an experienced trainer and were simultaneously given a yoga program with exercises they could choose to follow or not. The remaining half of the study subjects, those in the control group, were not given any yoga lessons but was instead given a book that described the disease, and what they could do themselves to relieve the symptoms. The study took place over the course of 24 weeks, and the study subjects had their quality of life measured as well as their disease activity after 12 and 24 weeks. The results showed that the quality of life was significantly better in the group, who received yoga lessons, compared to the control group. During the period, however, both groups experienced an improved quality of life. Apart from the fact that the quality of life increased among most in the yoga group, the disease activity in this group was also significantly reduced, compared to the control group.
Therefore, researchers could conclude that yoga could relieve the disease activity and increase the quality of life in patients with ulcerative colitis during a disease-free period. Since then, yoga has been suggested as a possible way of preventing the disease from flaring up again after periods of improvement as it prevents stress.
References:
1. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/apt.14062/epdf
2. https://www.sundhed.dk/borger/patienthaandbogen/mave-og-tarm/sygdomme/inflammatorisk-tarmsygdom/colitis-ulcerosa/
