Effectiveness of Yoga for Patients With Diabetes Mellitus

Diabetes mellitus is a multifactorial metabolic disorder which requires lifestyle interventions for its management. A number of controlled yoga trials in last few years have observed lifestyle interventions especially yoga to be efficacious in the management of diabetes. The aim of this study is to systematically review the research conducted in the field to understand the effectiveness of yoga on diabetes mellitus. A systematic search was done using search engines such as PubMed, Google Scholar, Cochrane Library, MEDLINE, CAMbase, PsycINFO and IndMED. A total of 212 articles were selected, of which 166 were excluded and 46 controlled trials (CTs) were included in the review. Among the 46 CTs, 31 studies were categorized based on the primary outcome variables, 10 were based on the secondary outcome variables and 5 studies were control studies. Risk of bias assessment was conducted on all the studies. The review demonstrates significant improvement due to yoga practice in the primary outcome measures such as blood glucose levels along with secondary outcome measures such as cardiac autonomic variables, lipid profile, liver enzymes, respiratory variables, quality of life, anxiety and depression. Thus yoga has not only been found to be beneficial for improved glycaemic control, but also for the wide variety of symptoms associated with the diabetes. Despite this evidence, it is worth mentioning that further gold standard randomized controlled trials are warranted with more specific sets of practice, to prescribe yoga especially as an alternative treatment for the management of diabetes.