Yoga and Improved Sleep

Yoga classes may help cancer survivors sleep better.
USA Today (5/21, Szabo) reports that "yoga classes can help cancer survivors sleep better, according to a study" scheduled to be presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology's annual meeting and funded by the National Institutes of Health. Investigators "randomly assigned 410 people who had finished treatment to receive either their usual follow-up care or attend a 75-minute yoga class, twice a week, for four weeks."
Bloomberg News (5/21, Randall) reports that "by the end of the trial, 31 percent of yoga patients no longer had the sleep disruptions, twice the recovery rate of patients who didn't take classes." The researchers found that "yoga practitioners also reported a 42 percent reduction in fatigue, compared with a 12 percent reduction for the control group." While "yoga users decreased the use of sleep medication by 21 percent...the control group actually increased reliance on sleeping drugs by five percent."