Friday, October 04, 2013

Blog 4: YOGA HAS LIMITED MENOPAUSE BENEFITS



YOGA  HAS LIMITED MENOPAUSE BENEFITS

Basically there was a study going on where researchers were randomly assigning women to yoga sessions or the usual activities of yoga, to see how it would affect the symptoms they were going through with menopause. The goal for some women is to seek natural alternatives instead of resulting to hormone replacement therapy. The study that took place basically showed that the benefits the women are receiving from yoga is very limited. 

During the study, researchers chose 249 woman and randomly assigned them to 12 weekly sessions of yoga, which were 90 minutes a piece; the average age of these women was 54. There was also a group that performed usual activity. During these yoga sessions, the women did 11 to 13 poses, deep relaxation, and even practiced a breathing exercise while doing this. 

At the end of the study, the yoga group actually had improvements in the insomnia symptoms, which was a very common complain of menopause. However, the other symptoms showed no statistically significant improvements. As stated in the article, "While hot flashes and night sweats declined in the yoga group, to 4.6 at the end of the study from 7.4 per day at its start, there were similar declines in the usual activity group, to 5.4 from 8." ; this showed that there was no big difference between the two groups in depression, anxiety, hot flashes, or night sweats. Author Katherine M. Newton basically states that many women have hot flashes. some women do have hot flashes, that aren't even going through menopause. Even though insomnia worked with the yoga, the other symptoms may take more than that. I personally think this was a helpful study. I believe most women will do whatever they can to make menopause less stressful for them. This is why they result in the therapy, if they are bothered by many symptoms that won't go away by using natural alternatives. More studies like this should take place and they should find more alternatives for woman to turn to.








Quarshona Collins
October 4, 2013 
4:01 pm




http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/10/04/yoga-found-to-have-limited-effect-on-menopause/?ref=health

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