Randomised trial, 2025
Do breathing exercises help teenage girls with premenstrual symptoms?
Yes. Girls who practiced specific breathing exercises for 12 weeks had significantly fewer premenstrual symptoms including pain, mood changes, water retention, and trouble concentrating. The improvements were moderate to large.
What they did
48 teenage girls aged 13 to 18 were randomly divided into two groups. One group (24 girls) practiced two specific breathing techniques (Anuloma-Viloma and Bhramari pranayama) for 12 weeks. The other group (24 girls) received no intervention. Researchers measured premenstrual symptoms and relaxation before and after using standard questionnaires.
What they found
The breathing exercise group had significant improvements in pain, water retention, physical symptoms, negative mood, trouble concentrating, and behavior changes. They also showed marked improvement in relaxation and emotional control. Effect sizes were moderate to large.
What it means for you
Regular breathing exercises offer a simple, free, non-medical way to ease many premenstrual symptoms. This could work well in schools. The main limits are that the study period was relatively short and only the breathing group received the exercises, so we cannot fully separate the effect of the exercises from the effect of paying attention to symptoms.
48
Total girls studied
24
Girls in breathing group
12
Weeks of practice
About the study
- Original title
- Pranayama as a clinical intervention for premenstrual symptom relief in adolescent girls: An experimental study
- Authors
- Iti Jain, Anurodh Sisodia, Shiv Shankar Sharma
- Journal
- International Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecological Nursing
- Year
- 2025
- Study design
- Randomised trial
- Participants
- 24
- What was tested
- Anuloma-Viloma and Bhramari pranayama breathing exercises for 12 weeks
- Open access
- Yes
- Read the paper
- doi.org/10.33545/26642298.2025.v7.i2c.230
Topics
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