Effects of yoga on sleep quality among the geriatric population: Systematic review and meta-analysis

Sleep disorders are prevalent in the elderly and tend to have a substantial influence on their daytime functioning as well as their quality of life. Pursuant to the latest studies, yoga may have benefits for enhancing a variety of aspects of sleep in this demographic. This meta-analysis and systematic review aim to give an up-to-date and complete assessment of the effects of yoga on sleep quality in the elderly. We conducted a thorough search of electronic databases (MEDLINE/PubMed, Cochrane Library, Scopus, and Science Direct) for English-language articles. We focused on randomized control trials and experimental studies; for evaluating yoga interventions aimed at improving sleep quality in the elderly. After assessing the risk of bias, we meta-analyzed the extracted data using a random-effects model to assess various sleep outcome parameters. Five studies with a total of 467 participants that met our inclusion criteria were included in this study. The meta-analysis demonstrated that yoga has a significant positive effect on sleep quality. Specifically, yoga interventions were associated with improvements in sleep disturbance (standardized mean difference SMD: -0.63; 95% CI -1.01 to -0.25), sleep duration (SMD: -0.96; 95% CI -1.89 to -0.02), sleep efficiency (SMD: -0.63; 95% CI -1.01 to -0.25), and the PSQI-Global score of sleep quality (SMD: -0.96; 95% CI -1.63 to -0.28). These results were statistically significant. Our meta-analysis indicates that yoga practices can lead to improvements in sleep quality among the elderly, demonstrating meaningful progress based on the results of conducted studies. To enhance the significance and generalizability of these findings, future studies should consider larger sample sizes and a higher number of RCTs, which can contribute to minimizing bias.