Yoga helps with opioid withdrawal recovery

Yoga, as adjuvant to standard buprenorphine treatment, appears to improve opioid withdrawal outcomes, including recovery, anxiety, sleep, and pain, as shown in a study.

The study included 59 adults (mean age 25.6 years, 100 percent male) with opioid use disorder who were experiencing mild to moderate withdrawal symptoms (Clinical Opiate Withdrawal Scale [COWS] scores 4–24). These participants were randomly allocated to the yoga group (n=30) or the control group (n=29).

The yoga intervention consisted of 10 supervised 45-minute sessions, wherein participants performed relaxation practices, postures, breathing techniques. These sessions were conducted over 14 days as an adjunct to standard buprenorphine treatment. The control intervention involved standard buprenorphine treatment only.

Coprimary endpoints were time to withdrawal stabilization (COWS score <4) and heart rate variability parameters at day 15. Secondary endpoints included anxiety (Hamilton Anxiety Rating Scale), sleep latency, and pain scores.

Compared with the control group, the yoga group had a faster recovery (hazard ratio [HR], 4.40, 95 percent confidence interval [CI], 2.40–8.07; p<0.001), with a median stabilization time of 5 vs 9 days.  Heart rate variability improvements were also more favourable in the yoga group, with large effects on low frequency power (ω2=0.16), high frequency power (ω2=0.14), and LF/HF ratio (ω2=0.12) relative to the control group (p<0.001 for all).

In mediation analysis, parasympathetic activity accounted for 23 percent of the treatment effect (indirect HR, 1.38, 95 percent CI, 1.10–2.03).

Yoga was associated with a significantly greater reduction in anxiety (ω2=0.28; p<0.001) and moderate improvements in sleep latency (61-minute reduction; p=0.008) and pain (p=0.004) compared with control.

The findings demonstrate that yoga has the potential to address core regulatory processes beyond symptom management for opioid withdrawal recovery and support its integration into withdrawal protocols.