Found another great article about the various positive benefits humor has on your physical and mental health. If you haven’t heard about Norman Cousins use of comedy cures, this is has a great summary.
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From PacPub.com
By RUSSELL ROBERTS
STOP me if you’ve heard this one before: Laughing can be good for you. We’re all aware of the mental uplift a good laugh will bring. Suddenly the day doesn’t seem as gloomy, the sky doesn’t seem as gray and your worries don’t seem quite as worrisome. Laughing is the equivalent of giving your inner disposition a happy pill.
While you likely won’t hear your doctor say “watch two comedies before bedtime and call me in the morning,” laughter does have tangible health benefits, including reduced blood pressure and a strengthened immune system.
“Laughter can certainly be a helpful strategy,” says Dr. Pat Vroom, a psychologist at Capital Health Systems in Ewing.
The notion of laughter as a healing tool is not some conjured-up New Age twaddle. In the Old Testament, Proverbs 17:22 reads, “A merry heart doeth good like a medicine…,” while Greek poet Pindar wrote, “The best of healers is good cheer.”
However, even as American Indians were aware that humor had healing and medicinal potential, it took a while for this knowledge to worm its way into mainstream American medical thought. Then, in 1978, Norman Cousins wrote Anatomy of An Illness, his landmark book about his battle with ankylosing spondylitis, a degenerative disease that causes the breakdown of collagen, the fibrous tissue that holds the body’s cells together.
Thinking he didn’t have much time to deal with conventional medicine, Mr. Cousins devised his own treatment of Vitamin C and laughing, particularly at old Marx Brothers comedies. He credited his humor regimen when he became cured, and suddenly, the healing power of laughter regained its spot in the limelight.
In 1991, the first government-sponsored Laughter Clinic opened in Great Britain. Today, an increasing number of studies focus on the health benefits of laughter. In general, these studies seem to find that laughter, besides making us feel good, also produces positive physical changes in the body. Laughter increases the immune system’s activity and helps fight respiratory illness; laughter also seems to produce so-called “natural killer” cells that help guard against cancer cells.
“Some studies have suggested that laughter lowers blood pressure and increases the blood flow, much like exercise,” says Dr. Jonathan Krejci, director of training and research at Princeton House Behavioral Health. “There are studies that indicate that laughter may create biological changes.”
Along these lines, laughter may relax and dilate blood vessels, as well as positively impact the heart. A study at the Loma Linda University School of Medicine in California indicated that heart attack survivors who watched a 30-minute funny video daily significantly reduced their risk of recurrent heart disease.
Laughter may also affect the body’s pain centers by acting as a muscle relaxer, reducing spasms and helping ease musculoskeletal pain. Laughter also seems to increase the production of endorphins, which act as the body’s natural pain-killers.
Mentally, of course, a good chuckle can alleviate gloomy dispositions. “It gives people a flexible way of looking at situations,” Dr. Krejci says. “It increases people’s creativity.”
Laughter has been found to help us maintain optimism and hope — two ideals influential in the healing process. It can also reduce anxiety and depression when something goes wrong in our lives, such as an illness.
“Sometimes laughter can help put things in perspective,” Dr. Krejci says, adding that suitable humor can play a vital part in positive psychology. If something seems absurd in a situation, pointing it out — and laughing at it — may help dissipate depression, anxiety and other “non-happy” emotional reactions.
But before you rush out and clear out the comedy DVD section at your local video retailer, our experts offer some cautions about the use of laughter. “There are times when laughter is appropriate, but it can also be used as a defense mechanism, to deny what’s going on,” Dr. Vroom says.
Dr. Krejci adds, “Certainly there are occasions when laughter is inappropriate. You’re not going to tell someone who has just been diagnosed with a fatal illness to just laugh it off.”
To discern when laughter is an appropriate response, and when it is being used as a defense mechanism, Dr. Vroom says it’s necessary to be aware of our own bodies, and to become comfortable with ourselves.
“Ignoring our bodies and our emotions is part of our Western culture,” she says.
People could greatly benefit from becoming more aware of themselves and their bodies, and learning to listen to what their bodies want, she says. Techniques such as yoga and meditation can help accomplish that and make it much easier for people to know when laughter is an incongruous response that is possibly masking deeper reactions. “If we are in touch with ourselves, we will know when laughter is an appropriate or inappropriate response,” she says.
Dr. Krejci points out that all human cultures laugh; even people who cannot communicate verbally can still smile or nod, and receive a reciprocal response. “I think it’s interesting to explore the question of why people laugh,” he says. “What evokes laughter in the first place?”
In addition, a smile or laugh sends a “safe” signal that others pick up on; in turn, they tend to relax and feel more comfortable when they’re confronting someone else who also appears friendly by smiling or laughing. (Along these lines, many experts consider the inability to laugh or smile a warning sign of depression; in this case, it’s best to consult your physician or mental-health professional.)
While the jury is still out on the matter of laughter as it pertains to other species, the evidence seems to be accumulating in the human world that, in certain situations, a dose of humor can keep us healthy and, well, happy.
“If you look at them, people that have been meditating for a long time are jovial,” Dr. Vroom says. “Look at the Dalai Lama. He’s always smiling. Being lighthearted can be very helpful.”
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