Effect of Yogic Practices on Menstrual Disorders In Adolescents And Yoga

Introduction: Regularity of menstrual cycle in any woman depends upon a lot of internal and external factors affecting mind and body. In adolescent girls, the common menstrual complaints include irregularity, excessive flow and associated physical symptoms.

Design of Study: Experimental group, Control group. With an alarming increase in number, adolescent girls are approaching gynecologists with menstrual complaints. They have absence of any Structural or organics cause behind it. We, at Ghantali Mitra Mandal thought it would be worth to find out if relaxation by means of asanas and other practices helps to relieved the stress, which affect Hypothalamus-Pituitary-Ovarian (HPO) axis.

Subjects: A group of 30 girls between the age 12 to 18 years, either school or college going girls were selected by random selection. A control of 15 girls was also selected in the same age group, as a control, who had menstrual complaints but they were not ready to participate in this programme.

Methods: The girls under experiment group were' trained to perform selected asanas, which helped in shunting of blood flow of the pelvic viscera, helping in relieving pelvic congestion.

They were trained for 'OM tratak;, pranayam, yoganidra every day along with 2 sessions of music in form of joyful songs, Dhyana; This was supplementary to our objective of reducing the stress, and make these girls more adaptive not only tot heir individual and social stress, but also the physical changes occurring in the body during menstrual cycle.

A meeting with parents and informative lectures on anatomy, physiology, died was planned on every Saturday to allow free interaction.

A team of eminent yoga teachers, Psychologists, gynecologists, was involved in the study. An information about length of menstrual cycle, regularity, menstrual blood loss, associated pain during menses other physical complaints was noted. Routine investigation including Hemoglobin, blood count was done. Associated anemia  was also looked for. This information was also collected for the control group.

Out-come measures: A symptoms checklist was given to both groups at the end of 10 weeks of yogic training.

The irregularity of menses in experimental group showed significant improvement. Pain during menses (dysmenorrhea) disappeared in all girls in experimental group.

There was correction of anemia in all affected girls of the study group, symptoms or premenstrual tension syndrome also reduced, obesity reduced in the study group. These girls also reported increased concentration in study with decreased emotional outbursts. Excessive menstrual blood loss also reduced in affected girls.

Results: The comparison indicates significant improvement of symptoms lJl experimental group and no improvement in any of parameters in control group at all.

Conclusion: On the horizon of new treatment modalities which are being discussed every day on menstrual disorders in modem medicine, yoga seems to be a non-invasive, economical, and most physiological way of treatment and definitely a new ray or hope for treatment of the same.

The paper was presented in International Conference at Kaivalyadham, Lonavala in the year2001 and in International Conference at SVYASA, Prashanti Kutiram, Bangalore.