Yoga May Help Suppress Episodes of Atrial Fibrillation (AF)

There are about 7 million people with atrial fibrillation (AF) in the USA and Europe, and the number is increasing.  Treatment is usually with medications and/or surgery, but many patients need to continue taking anticoagulants because of the risk of a clot traveling to the brain and casing a stroke.  Looking for a new way to improve AF, researchers at the University of Kansas Hospital decided to examine the possible benefits of yoga therapy.  They reported the results of a small study at the American College of Cardiology spring meeting.

There were 49 consecutive paroxysmal atrial fibrillation patients in the study.  They were assigned to 3 months of regular exercise of their own choice, and then 3 months of supervised yoga sessions (60 minutes twice a week), with encouragement to do yoga on their own between sessions. The yoga sessions consisted of deep breathing exercises, the conventional postures (asanas), meditation, and relaxation.  All participants wore heart monitors to record AF episodes.

During the yoga-intervention phase of the study, the average number of AF episodes was significantly reduced, from 3.8 to 2.1.  The average number of ‘phantom’ episodes - which come and go undetected because of lacking symptoms – were also reduced, from 2.6 to1.4.  Moreover, 22% of the patients had no AF episodes during the yoga phase.  There was a dramatic improvement in quality-of-life scores (e.g. by 5-6 points on the SF-36 scale).  Anxiety and depression scores also decreased on the corresponding Zung scales.      

This trial is clearly only a pilot study; there was no control group or randomization, and it was very small.  However, the findings are impressive enough to demand further studies.  It’s noteworthy that the principal investigator emphasized that patients continue their anticoagulant and anti-arrhythmic drugs during any such complementary therapy.