Effect of Hatha Yoga and meditation on academic stress in medical students—Clinical trial

Introduction
Medical students use to deal with high levels of academic stress. Hatha yoga and meditation have been found to reduce variables associated with stress. Objective: To evaluate and compare the effect of Hatha yoga and meditation on academic stress in medical students at a private university in Cali, Colombia.

Methods and materials
A total of 27 volunteers were randomly divided into two groups: Hatha Yoga(n = 13) and Meditation (n = 14). Each group undertook two weekly one-hour sessions for 14 weeks. Study outcomes were salivary cortisol and perceived academic stress. Anthropometric and clinical variables were additionally measured as characteristics of the study sample. Perceived academic stress was estimated via a structured questionnaire. An intra-group analysis was also conducted to compare the outcomes at baseline and post-intervention within the groups.

Results
At baseline demographic, clinical, and anthropometric variables were similar between the intervention groups. After the intervention, no differences were found between meditation and hatha yoga groups in salivary cortisol measures (time 0, 15, 30, 45 min, and mean of the 4 measures) and perceived academic stress. However, the intra-group analysis showed that only in Hatha yoga there was a significant increase in cortisol measures and improvement in the scale of perceived academic stress.

Conclusion
Based on the intra-group but not between-group comparisons of outcomes at baseline and post-intervention, Hatha yoga reduced perceived academic stress despite a concomitant significant increase in cortisol levels. Further trials with larger samples of medical students should be conducted to contrast our findings.