Effects of Laughter Yoga on Premenstrual Symptoms

Premenstrual syndrome (PMS) is associated with a group of emotional, behavioral, and somatic symptoms that occur during the menstrual cycle. Laughter yoga involves a combination of laughter exercises and breathing techniques derived from more traditional yoga practice. No previous studies have examined the effects of laughter yoga on the symptoms of PMS.

The study intended to assess the effectiveness of laughter yoga in coping with the premenstrual symptoms of women.

The research team performed a pretest and posttest, quasi-experimental study.

The study took place in the nursing and midwifery departments at Marmara University, a state university located in Istanbul, Turkey.

Participants were 80 female students in those departments at the university between February 2019 and May 2020 who had PMS.

The research team divided participants into two groups based on their departments: (1) an intervention group, the laughter yoga group, with 32 participants who took part in a twice-weekly laughter yoga program that included a weekly 30-min group session consisting of laughter and deep breathing, and (2) a control group with 48 participants.

The research team collected the data using the Demographic and Descriptive Information Form (DDIF), Premenstrual Syndrome Symptom Scale (PMSS), and Visual Analogue Scale (VAS).

Between baseline and postintervention, the laughter yoga group's mean scores for the PMSS subdimensions depressive affection (P = .00), anxiety (P = .04), fatigue (P = .00), irritability (P = .01), depressive thoughts (P = .03), pain (P = .002), changes in sleep (P = .004), and bloating (P = .001) significantly decreased. The laughter yoga group's scores for fatigue (P = .03) and pain (P = .001) were significantly lower than those of the control group postintervention.

Laughter yoga is a noninvasive complementary therapy that clinicians can use to reduce the PMS symptoms.