NEW BRUNSWICK, New Jersey, USA, 6 November 2026 — There is an hour of the night that belongs to no one. The house has gone still, the furnace has stopped ticking, and a man who beat cancer some years ago lies on his back, counting nothing in particular. He is not alone. Sleep disturbances affect up to 60 percent of people after primary cancer treatment, and they are often waved away as the price of treatment, or of age. For older men in particular, the science has had little to offer. Most research on behavioral treatments for insomnia has studied women with breast cancer.
A team led by Evelyn Arana-Chicas of Rutgers Cancer Institute set out to close part of that gap. Their peer-reviewed randomized controlled trial, published in Brain Medicine, asked a plain question with an ancient practice at its center: could Tai Chi and Qigong help older male cancer survivors sleep better?
A Trial with a Disguise
Tai Chi and Qigong, both meditative movement traditions rooted in Chinese medicine, combine gentle postures, deep breathing, and meditation. They are low in intensity, which makes them well suited to older bodies. But any study of a gentle practice faces an awkward problem. Is it the meditation that helps, or simply the act of getting off the couch twice a week and moving in a room full of other people?
The researchers built their trial to pull those two apart. Men aged 55 and older who had finished primary treatment for cancer, and who were living with clinically significant fatigue, were randomized to one of three groups. One received Tai Chi Qigong, taught by a Qigong master or certified instructor: 19 exercises of breathing, flowing movement, and guided relaxation, some of them possible from a chair. A second group took an exercise class designed by two exercise physiologists to match Tai Chi Qigong in intensity, posture, and muscle activation, built from controlled stretching and repetitive exercises. A third group continued with usual care. Both classes met twice a week, for an hour, for twelve weeks.
Then came the clever part. The words Tai Chi and Qigong never appeared in study materials. One class was called body-mind training; the other, body training. Participants were not told which was the experimental condition. It is a little like a blind wine tasting, where the labels come off so that only the wine can speak.
What the Pillow Reported
In all, 113 men enrolled at sites in New Brunswick and Albuquerque. Their average age was 69. Most had prostate cancer. Attendance was strong and similar in both classes, 78.4% for Tai Chi Qigong and 76.8% for the matched exercise, and the men rated the two programs as similarly credible.
Sleep was measured with the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index, a questionnaire on which lower scores mean better sleep. At the three-month mark after the program ended, the trial's primary endpoint for this analysis, the three groups did not differ significantly. In fact, no pairwise comparison between groups reached significance at any time point.
Within each group, the picture had more texture. The exercise class improved from baseline at six weeks (mean change −1.20; 95% CI −2.02 to −0.39), one week after the program (−0.82; 95% CI −1.63 to −0.01), and three months later (−1.04; 95% CI −1.84 to −0.24). The Tai Chi Qigong group moved in the same direction at each of those points, but its changes did not reach statistical significance. By twelve months, the gains in both groups had faded. Sleep efficiency, the share of time in bed actually spent asleep, improved more with the exercise class than with Tai Chi Qigong at three months (p = 0.04), though the authors caution that this may be a chance finding.
One number will tempt a headline writer, and it deserves a careful hand. At twelve months, 62% of the Tai Chi Qigong group met the questionnaire threshold for clinical remission of sleep disturbance, compared with 47% in the exercise group and 43% with usual care. Those differences were not statistically significant. They are a pattern worth watching, not a result.
"Sleep disturbance is one of the most common and persistent problems people carry after cancer treatment, and older men have rarely been the focus of this kind of research," said Wadih Arap, co-author, of Rutgers Cancer Institute and the Division of Hematology/Oncology, Department of Medicine, Rutgers New Jersey Medical School, in Newark. "This trial gave them that attention, with a careful three-arm design and strong attendance in both classes. The answers are modest, and they point clearly to the larger and more diverse studies that should come next."
The Honest Arithmetic
The authors are direct about the limits. Every change they saw fell below three points on the sleep index, the threshold for a clinically meaningful difference. The study was underpowered to detect differences between groups. The men were mostly White, non-Hispanic, and college-educated, and 87% had prostate cancer; by chance, no men without prostate cancer were randomized to usual care. Few participants were over 80. Participants were recruited for fatigue rather than for sleep problems, so the results may not apply to survivors whose main complaint is insomnia alone. Sleep was self-reported, and the authors recommend actigraphy or wearable devices in future work. Home practice logs were completed inconsistently, and the trial ran into the COVID-19 pandemic, although classes delivered in person and in hybrid format showed similar patterns.
The trial was funded by the National Cancer Institute of the National Institutes of Health, among other sources, and the authors report no conflicts of interest.
Movement as Medicine, Without the Mystique
It would be easy to wish for a different story, one in which an old practice of slow hands and measured breath quietly outperforms the gym. This trial does not tell that story. What it tells is plainer, and perhaps more useful. For older men after cancer, two very different ways of moving, one meditative and one not, appeared to help sleep a little and about equally, for a while. In their conclusion, the authors write that both approaches may yield comparable sleep benefits, and that adequately powered, demographically diverse trials are needed before clinical recommendations can follow.
The man awake at three in the morning is still waiting for a definitive answer. This study does not give him one. It does give him company, and a reason to keep looking.
The peer-reviewed research article in Brain Medicine titled "Effects of Tai Chi Qigong on sleep quality in older male cancer survivors: A randomized controlled clinical trial," is freely available via Open Access, starting on 8 September 2026 in Brain Medicine at the following hyperlink: https://doi.org/10.61373/bm026a.0063 .
The full reference for citation purposes is: Arana-Chicas E, Irwin MR, Blair CK, An J, Tundealao S, Lin Y et al. Effects of Tai Chi Qigong on sleep quality in older male cancer survivors: A randomized controlled clinical trial. Brain Medicine 2026. DOI: https://doi.org/10.61373/bm026a.0063 . Epub 2026 Sep 8.
About Brain Medicine: Brain Medicine (ISSN: 2997-2639, online and 2997-2647, print) is a peer-reviewed medical research journal published by Genomic Press, New York. Brain Medicine is a new home for the cross-disciplinary pathway from innovation in fundamental neuroscience to translational initiatives in brain medicine. The journal's scope includes the underlying science, causes, outcomes, treatments, and societal impact of brain disorders, across all clinical disciplines and their interface.
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