Hindawi Publishing Corporation Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine Volume 2013, Article ID 702914, 7 pages http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2013/702914 Research Article Quality of Life and Mental Health in Patients with Chronic Diseases Who Regularly Practice Yoga and Those Who Do Not: A Case-Control Study Holger Cramer, Romy Lauche, Jost Langhorst, Gustav Dobos, and Anna Paul Department of Internal and Integrative Medicine, Kliniken Essen-Mitte, Faculty of Medicine, University of Duisburg-Essen, Am Deimelsberg 34a, 45276 Essen, Germany Correspondence should be addressed to Holger Cramer; h.cramer@kliniken-essen-mitte.de Received 19 March 2013; Revised 13 May 2013; Accepted 23 May 2013 Academic Editor: Arndt B¨ ussing Copyright © 2013 Holger Cramer et al. his is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. While clinical trials have shown evidence of eicacy of yoga in diferent chronic diseases, subjective health beneits associated with yoga practice under naturalistic conditions have not yet been investigated. he aim of this study was to investigate associations of regular yoga practice with quality of life and mental health in patients with chronic diseases. Using a case-control design, patients with chronic diseases who regularly practiced yoga were selected from a large observational study and compared to controls who did not regularly practice yoga and who were matched individually to each case on gender, main diagnosis, education, and age (within 5 years). Patients’ quality of life (SF-36 questionnaire), mental health (Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale), life satisfaction, and health satisfaction (Questionnaire for Life Satisfaction) were assessed. Patients who regularly practiced yoga ( = 186) had a better general health status ( = 0.012), a higher physical functioning ( = 0.001), and physical component score ( = 0.029) on the SF-36 than those who did not ( = 186). No group diferences were found for the mental scales of the SF-36, anxiety, depression, life satisfaction, or health satisfaction. In conclusion, practicing yoga under naturalistic conditions seems to be associated with increased physical health but not mental health in chronically diseased patients. 1. Introduction Yoga has its roots in Indian philosophy and has been a part of traditional Indian spiritual and medical practice for around 5000 years [1]. While the ultimate goal of traditional yoga has been described as uniting mind, body, and spirit, yoga has become a popular means to promote physical and mental well-being [1, 2]. As such, yoga has been adapted as part of complementary and alternative medicine in Western soci- eties [3]. While yoga traditionally also comprises advice for ethical lifestyle and spiritual practice [1–4], it is most oten associated with physical postures (asanas), breathing tech- niques (pranayama), and meditation (dhyana) in Western societies [2]. Diferent yoga schools have emerged that put varying focus on physical and mental practices [2]. However, even exercise-based yoga interventions difer from purely gymnastic exercises in that the yoga practitioner focuses his mind on the postures with inner awareness and a meditative focus of mind [5, 6]. Yoga is gaining increased popularity as a therapeutic practice. In 2008, about 15% of the American adult population was practicing yoga or was at least extremely interested in it [7]. Of those who were already practicing yoga, about half started practicing explicitly to improve their overall health, resulting in more than 13 million people practicing yoga for health reasons in 2007 [8, 9]. Worldwide, it is estimated that yoga is regularly practiced by about 30 million people [10]. Yoga has also been recognized as medical therapy; nearly 14 million Americans (6.1% of the population) reported that a physician or other therapist recommended yoga to them [7]. In the United Kingdom, yoga was even promoted by national