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 The practice of yoga includes breathing exercises, postures (called
asanas), and meditation. Yoga has been proposed as a treatment for a
variety of medical conditions, including asthma, but scientific
studies have shown inconsistent results.
Dr. Jin-Ling Tang from The Chinese University of Hong Kong's Prince
of Wales Hospital looked at the evidence from 15 studies involving
more than 1,000 asthma patients to see whether yoga provided
significant benefits.
One third of these studies included only yoga breathing exercises,
and the rest included breathing, postures, and meditation. The yoga
practice lasted anywhere from two weeks to four and a half years,
though it was less than six months in most studies.
Overall, yoga slightly improved symptoms and quality of life and
reduced the need for medications.
The quality of the evidence, though, was moderate at best, and the
effects of yoga on lung function were far from consistent.
None of the studies reported any serious ill effects from yoga, but
more research would be needed to make reliable conclusions about
unwanted side effects.
"We found that yoga probably improves quality of life and asthma
symptoms to some extent," the researchers conclude. "However, our
confidence in the results is low as most of the studies were flawed
in various ways."
"High-quality studies involving large numbers of participants are
required for us to be able to draw a firm conclusion about the
effects of yoga for asthma," they add.
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Dr. Holger Cramer from University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany
completed a similar review in 2014. He told Reuters Health by email,
"Giving yoga, specifically yogic breathing, a try can be worthwhile
in asthma patients. As the evidence is not really strong, no wonders
should be expected but yoga is likely to do more good than harm.”
“Breathing techniques are an essential part of yoga when targeting
asthma,” Cramer said. “While posture-based yoga interventions and
mere meditation might not be this effective; complex yoga forms
(incorporating yoga postures, breathing, and meditation) and yoga
forms that only include breathing techniques are more or less
equally effective.”
“More research is needed before we can conclusively judge the
effectiveness of yoga in patients with asthma,” he agreed.
The complete review of these studies appears in the Cochrane
Database of Systematic Reviews.
Tang did not respond to a request for comments.
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