Yoga as an Integrative Approach for Prevention and Treatment of Oral Cancer

Abstract

Despite tremendous advancements in medicine, the number of oral cancer cases continues to increase, and the need for integrating alternate medicine or adopting an integrative approach has become a compelling cost-effective requirement for the management and treatment of diseases. Conventional treatment of oral cancer involves surgery followed by radiotherapy with or without chemotherapy which causes several complications including poor quality of life and high chances of recurrence of cancer. Oral cancer is often linked with obesity which is major risk factors in other cancers. Apart from obesity, oral cancer is thought to have an inverse relation with neurodegenerative disorders presumably because cell death decreases in the former case and increases in the latter. Ancient mind-body techniques such as yoga have not been adequately tested as a tool to synergize the cellular equilibrium pertaining to the treatment of oral cancer. Nerve growth factor (NGF), tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-α), and interleukin-6 (IL-6) are among the early experimental cellular biomarkers that may be used to probe the modulation of oral cancer, obesity, and neurodegenerative disorders. Yoga has been reported to influence these molecules in healthy individuals but whether their expression can be altered in patients of oral cancer by yoga intervention is the subject of this research being discussed in this review article. Therefore, the present article not only reviews the current status of research studies in oral cancer, obesity, and neurodegenerative disorders but also how these are linked to each other and why the investigations of the putative NGF pathway, involving TNF-α and IL-6, could provide useful clues to understand the molecular effects brought about by yoga intervention in such patients.

Keywords: Integrative medicine; oral cancer; prevention; treatment; yoga.

Figure 1

Existing information and research questions related to oral cancer and yoga: relation of oral hygiene, obesity, and neurodegenerative disorders with oral cancer is unknown. How the lipid profile, voice quality, cytokines level are altered affected by oral cancer and whether yoga shows any beneficial effect also need to be investigated. Yoga also needs to be tested as a tool to reduce cancer recurrence and side effects associated with radiotherapy and chemotherapy

Figure 2

Putative molecular mechanism involved in oral cancer. Nerve growth factor is thought to promote oral cancer progression through cytokines (interleukin-6 and tumor necrosis factor-alpha) and transcription factors (nuclear factor NF-kappa B and STAT3). However direct molecular basis needs to be established