Gopal Krishna R Dhondalay PhD

Summary

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The psychological effect in cancer patients usually causes depression and a breakdown of self-confidence. It is also linked with treatment response in patients undergoing chemotherapy, radiotherapy or both. Supportive counselling is proven to overcome psychological effects. Similarly, holistic yoga with meditation and pranayamas is also reported to be effective in combating depression and other psychological illnesses. In this study, we compared the effect of counselling and yoga intervention in the patients undergoing radiotherapy. As the representation of mental behaviour, we monitored salivary cortisol levels and hormonal IgG and IgM along with cytokine profiles in the recruited patients. To measure the stochastic DNA damage by radiation, we also investigated DNA repair capacity in the lymphocytes extracted from the peripheral blood of the patients. All investigations were carried out on two-arm pre and post-radiotherapy among supportive counselling and yoga intervention subjects. Yoga intervention subjects had better psychological stability compared to counselled subjects. Furthermore, the DNA repair capacity was found to be higher in yoga-practicing patients.