Can distance yoga help heart failure patients reduce stress and increase physical activity? A research team from the cardiology clinic and intensive care unit at Linköping University Hospital is investigating this question.
- To our knowledge, our project is the first in the world to test teleyoga, medical yoga led by a yoga therapist remotely via the web. We hope this will become a way for more people to practice yoga and perhaps participate in other physical activities remotely from home, such as patients who for various reasons have difficulty getting to an exercise room.
Anna Strömberg, professor at the Department of Medicine and Health at Linköping University and a nurse at the heart failure clinic in Linköping, says. Together with her research team, she is now working intensively on a study to find out whether teleyoga could increase physical activity, improve quality of life and reduce depression and anxiety in intensive care patients and patients with heart failure, for example. The research team includes Lotti Orwelius, associate professor and specialist nurse in intensive care (ANOPIVA at the US).
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- Both of these groups of patients have been shown to be affected by their stay in care. It is traumatic to be in intensive care or admitted acutely for heart failure. Many barely remember their time in hospital afterwards, and have cognitive problems such as difficulty keeping up with conversations. In this project, we want to investigate whether medical yoga can be a way for these patients to get back to life more quickly, to lower the stress threshold and find themselves, so to speak," explains Lotti Orwelius, who is an associate professor in health-related quality of life after intensive care.
The idea has been around for a long time, but in order to conduct the study, they had to test the best technology to allow patients to do yoga online.
- We already knew that medical yoga is an effective form of exercise for heart failure patients, for example, but now we have the opportunity to test new techniques and also introduce new groups of patients. There are no studies on teleyoga in these patient groups, so we are really breaking new ground here," says Anna Strömberg.
