Yoga May Help Heart Failure Patients

Nov. 6, 2007— -- At a meeting where new drug combinations and cutting-edge heart treatments are usually the discussion du jour, one researcher presented new findings on how a 5,000-year-old approach to health may hold special benefits for today's heart failure patients.

Lead researcher Dr. Bobby Khan and colleagues at the Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta studied the addition of an eight-week course of yoga to standard medical therapy in a group of 19 heart failure patients to see if such a regimen would be safe and beneficial.

They found that yoga was not only safe but appeared to improve patients' ability to exercise, lower levels of inflammation, as well as improve overall quality of life.

The findings were presented at the American Heart Association scientific sessions in Orlando. Fla., Monday.

"With heart failure, which is becoming the more and more prevalent condition we're facing as our population gets older, the morbidity and mortality still remain very high, even with all the advances in medical therapy," said Khan, assistant professor of medicine at Emory's division of cardiology.

"This basically means we have to have some other aspects [of treatment] -- maybe nonmedical with some benefits in mortality, but especially in quality of life, because heart failure is difficult to live with."

Dr. Srinivas Murali, director of cardiovascular medicine at Allegheny General Hospital in Pittsburgh, Penn., said yoga does indeed hold promise as such a nonmedical treatment -- particularly since it offers an easy inroad into a healthier lifestyle as well.

"Anybody can do yoga with the proper training and instruction," said Murali, who was not involved with the research. "It's cheap, you can do it at home, and you don't have to join a club to do it."

Khan added that the nature of yoga therapy makes it an ideal entree into physical fitness for heart failure patients.

"Exercise is good in all populations ... but care has to be given to these patients, and you can't have them go from a sedentary lifestyle to heavy exercise," he said. "Yoga is an easier transition to improve overall exercise capacity as patients progress.