Yoga   Yoga: For Health and Much More

Fatigue, depression, and cognitive problems (including difficulties with paying attention and being alert) often affect people with multiple sclerosis (MS).

In the first randomized clinical trial to learn whether yoga could help these symptoms, a team led by Oregon Health & Science University’s Barry Oken, M.D., found that yoga–as well as aerobic exercise–reduced fatigue compared with a group of 20 people who did not participate in either activity.

However, neither yoga nor exercise produced significant improvements in depression or cognitive problems. For 6 months, researchers followed 22 yoga participants and 15 exercise participants who did these activities in classes for 90 minutes weekly (modified to suit physical limitations) and at home.

In the June 8, 2004, issue of Neurology, the authors described the results of this trial as significant but noted that no known direct physical cause-and-effect relationship could explain the findings, so other factors (such as the placebo effect) might have been at work.

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