Laughter yoga exercise is known as a commentary method for some different treatment. Recently, the latest study published in the Biomedical Research and Therapy showed that this exercise gives some benefits for Parkinson disease.
Parkinsonism is a clinical syndrome that is characterized by tremor, akine- sis/bradykinesia, rigidity and disorder of postural re exes. is syndrome can be caused by various conditions, and Parkinson’s disease (PD) is an idiopathic entity of this syndrome. In 2015, this disease affected 6.2 million people and resulted in about 117,400 deaths globally.
There is no cure for Parkinson’s disease. The main families of drugs useful for treating motor symptoms are levodopa (always combined with a dopa decarboxylase inhibitor and sometimes also with a COMT inhibitor), dopamine agonists and MAO-B inhibitors. The stage of the disease and the age at disease onset determine which group is most useful.
In this current study, Azadeh Memarian et al. at Department of Physical Education and Sport Sciences, Karaj Branch, Islamic Azad University, Karaj, Iran evaluated effects of of laughter yoga exercises on anxiety and sleep quality in patients suffering from Parkinson’s disease.
In the study a semi-empirical and applied research design was used, which involved a pre-test and post-test, and appropriate control group.
The study consisted of 24 patients suffering from Parkinson’s disease who were referred and admitted to Hazarate Raoul Allah Hospital in Tehran, Iran. The patients ranged in age from 55 to 75 and met the study criteria prior to entering the research study. The patients were randomly divided into two groups – control or experimental (n=12 per group). After completing exercises (laughter yoga), post-evaluation of anxiety and sleep quality of patients in both groups were conducted using questionnaires. For normalization of research data, the Mann-Whitney nonparametric test was used.
The Mann-Whitney tests indicated that there was a significant difference between the average stress change as well as sleep quality in patients suffering from Parkinson’s disease (versus control subjects) following laughter yoga exercises. Indeed, regarding sleep quality laughter yoga was only effective on the subjective quality of sleep and latency in sleeping.
There was no observation of a significant effect on the duration of sleep, sleep efficiency, sleep disturbances, use of sleeping pills, or daily functions of the patients.
The results of the present study demonstrate that laughter yoga exercises can reduce anxiety and improve sleep quality in patients suffering from Parkinson’s disease. As a result, laughter yoga exercises may be beneficial as a complementary therapy with standard treatment methods to reduce anxiety and improve sleep quality in patients with Parkinson’s.
Jefferey Marval, Contributing Editor
Please read more at:
Memarian, A., Sanatkaran, A., & Bahari, S. (2017). The effect of laughter yoga exercises on anxiety and sleep quality in patients suffering from Parkinson’s disease. Biomedical Research And Therapy, 4(07), 1463-1479. doi:10.15419/bmrat.v4i07.200
