Yoga for Family Caregivers of Alzheimers Disease Patient

Study Overview
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Brief Summary
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This study evaluates the effects of the practice of yoga in combination with compassion meditation on the quality of life, attention, vitality and self-compassion of family caregivers of patients with Alzheimer's disease.

Detailed Description
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Alzheimer's disease is a progressive brain disorder that involves the loss of reasoning, memory, language and the ability to live independently. Thus, patients who suffer from this disease often require care from another person and must adapt to ensure their health, functional capacity and safety. Caregivers have a poor quality of life due to the physical and psychological burden of caregiving. Such physical, psychological, social and financial burden can increase the risk of death. Within this scenario, techniques such as yoga and meditation have emerged as low-cost interventions that offer little or no risk to the practitioners. Yoga seeks to develop health and attention through physical postures, breathing exercises and formal meditative practices.

Official Title
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A Yoga and Compassion Meditation Program Improve Quality of Life and Self-compassion in Family Caregivers of Alzheimer's Disease Patients: a Randomized Controlled Trial

Conditions
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Anxiety, Stress, Compassion

Intervention / Treatment
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* Behavioral: yoga and compassion meditation program


Participation Criteria
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Eligibility Criteria
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Inclusion Criteria: be a family caregiver of Alzheimer disease patient age over 18 years completed at least the primary education level at least at the phase of stress resistance according to Lipp's Inventory of Stress Symptoms for adults Exclusion Criteria: patient with asthma or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) alcohol use (more than 5 drinks per week) or use of drugs-of-abuse; suffer from Cushing's syndrome under treatment with topical, nasal or any form of steroids within the last 30 days practice yoga, meditation or similar techniques

Ages Eligible for Study
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Minimum Age: 18 Years

Sexes Eligible for Study
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All

Accepts Healthy Volunteers
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Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Study Plan
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How is the study designed?
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Design Details

Primary Purpose: Treatment
Allocation: Randomized
Intervention Model: Parallel Assignment
Masking: None (Open Label)


Arms and Interventions

| Participant Group/Arm | Intervention/Treatment |
| --- | --- |
| Experimental: Yoga and compassion meditation program<br>The duration of this group was 8 weeks. The program included sessions 3 times per week, with each session lasting 1 hour and 15 minutes. The volunteers performed yoga classes composed of asana (poses), pranayama (breathing exercise) and meditation. | Behavioral: yoga and compassion meditation program<br>* 25 min of physical exercise, holding each pose (stretching exercise) for an average of 1 min and 30 s; 25 min of breathing exercises and 25 min of meditation.<br>|
| No Intervention: control<br>this group was a non treatment group. | |

What is the study measuring?
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Primary Outcome Measures

| Outcome Measure | Measure Description | Time Frame |
| --- | --- | --- |
| change in cortisol | Saliva samples were collected for analysis of cortisol | baseline, 8 weeks | 

Secondary Outcome Measures

| Outcome Measure | Measure Description | Time Frame |
| --- | --- | --- |
| change in stress | Lipp Stress Inventory | baseline, 8 weeks | 
| change in depression | Beck Depression Inventory | baseline, 8 weeks | 
| change in anxiety | Beck Anxiety Inventory | baseline, 8 weeks | 
| change in quality of life | WHOQOL-bref (World Health Organization Quality of Life Questionnaire with 26 questions) | baseline, 8 weeks | 
| change in vitality | Subjective Vitality Scales | baseline, 8 weeks | 
| change in attention | Mindfulness Attention Awareness Scale | baseline, 8 weeks | 
| change in self-compassion | Self-Compassion Scale | baseline, 8 weeks | 

 Terms related to the study
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Keywords Provided by Centre Hospitalier Valida
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caregivers, anxiety, depression, yoga, meditation, stress