Yoga no more effective than general exercise in reducing incontinence in women
Participants receiving a pelvic floor yoga intervention reported some improvement in urinary incontinence symptoms, as did those in a general muscle stretching and strengthening exercise program.
A pelvic floor yoga intervention did not result in a greater improvement in urinary incontinence symptoms compared to a general muscle stretching and strengthening exercise program, according to a randomized trial involving middle-aged and older women.
Researchers randomly assigned 240 women ages 45 years or older (range, 45 to 90 years) who reported daily urgency-, stress-, or mixed-type urinary incontinence to either 12 weeks of yoga or a nonspecific stretching and strengthening exercise program. Women in the yoga group had twice-weekly group instruction and once-weekly self-directed practice of pelvic floor-specific Hatha yoga techniques. The exercise group had equivalent-time instruction in general skeletal muscle stretching and strengthening exercises. Participants used a diary to record each time they leaked urine by frequency and type of incontinence at baseline, six weeks, and 12 weeks. The study was published Aug. 27 by Annals of Internal Medicine.
Yoga did not have a clinically important effect compared to exercise, and both groups had similar incidence of adverse events. At baseline, mean incontinence frequency was 3.4 episodes per day (standard deviation [SD], 2.2), including 1.9 urgency-type episodes per day (SD, 1.9) and 1.4 stress-type episodes per day (SD, 1.7). Over a 12-week time period, total frequency decreased by an average of 2.3 episodes per day with pelvic yoga and 1.9 episodes per day with physical conditioning (between-group difference, −0.3 episode per day; 95% CI, −0.7 to 0.0).
Frequency of urgency-type incontinence decreased by 1.2 episodes per day in the pelvic yoga group and 1.0 episode per day in the physical conditioning group (between-group difference, −0.3 episode per day; 95% CI, −0.5 to 0.0). Reductions in frequency of stress-type incontinence did not differ between groups (−0.1 episode per day; 95% CI, −0.3 to 0.3).
According to the researchers, future studies should investigate potential effects of yoga on specific types of incontinence. “Although the current study does not indicate a clinically important benefit of yoga over other physical interventions for treatment of UI [urinary incontinence], it does provide evidence to assuage concerns that the practice of yoga could worsen UI, given that women in the pelvic yoga group reported a more than 60% average decrease in all-type and urgency-type UI frequency over a 12-week time period,” the study authors noted.