During the last 10 years, the number of articles in journals worldwide about clinical trials of yoga therapy to alleviate disease-related symptoms increased three-fold, according to a large-scale analysis of published papers spanning 46 years, 29 countries, and more than 28,000 study participants is published in The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine. Unsurprisingly, the rise in published papers has mirrored the popularity of yoga, especially as it transformed from a spiritual movement into an American exercise routine.
Pamela Jeter, PhD, Johns Hopkins University (Baltimore, MD) and Maryland University of Integrative Health (Laurel, MD), Sat Bir Khalsa, PhD, Harvard Medical School (Boston, MA), and coauthors found that yoga therapy was most often used for the treatment of mental health, cardiovascular disease, and respiratory disease. They report their findings in the article "Yoga as a Therapeutic Intervention: A Bibliometric Analysis of Published Research Studies from 1967 to 2013." This study was supported in part by the Patanjali Yogpeeth Trust (PYP USA).