According to a study released in the United States on Wednesday, breast cancer patients who participate in yoga have lower stress and a better quality of life as compared to their counterparts who only did stretching exercises.

A team of scientists from the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center studied a group of 163 women with an average age of 52 who were participating in radiation therapy to treat their breast cancer, anywhere from early onset up to stage three. The women were randomly placed into one of three groups: no instruction, simple stretching, or yoga.

The women who were in the stretching and yoga groups experienced less fatigue than the non-exercise group, but the women who did yoga had better physical function, overall health, and were more likely to have a positive view on life than either the stretching or no exercise group.

According to the study, the group that participated in yoga experienced the “steepest decline in their cortisol across the day, indicating that yoga had the ability to regulate this stress hormone”. The study went on to say, “This is particularly important because higher stress hormone levels throughout the day, known as a blunted circadian cortisol rhythm, have been linked to worse outcomes in breast cancer”.