In today's health conscious world we are doing all kinds of things to prevent and decrease stress. Some of these methods may even be quite costly I.e. body massages, visits to the spa, joining fitness clubs, weekend getaways, shopping, and many other recreational activities most of which carry a price tag on them. At work we are constantly reminded of stress management, burnout, etc. At home we have family obligations. In essence, we can't seem to get very far away from some type of stress. So we get ourselves in a dilemma : to fight the negative consequences of stress it will cost money and a significant amount of time.
There is another way to fight stress and it is by laughter. The following is a little story to illustrate the benefits of laughter in decreasing the negative consequences of stress on the body.
A famous writer and editor of the Saturday Review, Norman Cousins, was diagnosed in 1964 with Ankylosing Spondylitis. This is a connective tissue disease with a poor prognosis for recovery and is classified by medical literature as incurable. Some of the symptoms are chromic pain, anemia, fatigue, heart problems and lung disease. The ability for movement is severely limited, as the spine becomes rigid and joints stiffen. Cousins did not want to give in to his fate, so he decided to put himself on his own protocol for recovery: large doses of Vitamin C and Laughter. He did whatever he could do to make himself laugh: told jokes, listened to jokes and watched television shows like Candid Camera and The Marx Brothers. The effect: astonishing! What he found was that "10 minutes" of good belly laughter had a calming effect and allowed him to be free of pain for 2 hours. To confirm this was actually true and not a coincidence, his sedimentation rate ( measures the degree of inflammation) was tested immediately after a laughing spell or a dose of Vitamin C and it was decreased. More than 10 years passed and he decided to write an article about his success which can be found in the New England Journal of Medicine ( 1976) and also became the first chapter in the book Anatomy of an Illness.
The bottom line of all of this is that we now have many proven occurrences that a positive attitude enhances the body's ability to prevent or alleviate the negative consequences of stress and illness. It fosters a better immune system and this can turn the immune system into a fortress against invading germs. Some benefits include: less propensity to develop cancer; less vulnerability to get viruses and less occurrences of the common colds.
Many scientists and research professors have been interested in how our state of mind affects our health ( the science of psychoneuroimmunology). What they have found is that laughter and a positive outlook actually trigger the release of endorphins and the decrease of cortisol and adrenaline. Endorphins are known as anti- stress hormones that relieve pain naturally.
To sum up: if laughter is so good for us, doesn't it make sense to avail ourselves of it more. It is free and we don't have to join anything or go anywhere to get it. Actually it is everywhere we are. Fact: Children laugh about 400 times per day; adults only about 15. By learning to smile and laugh more often we could be on our way to better health.
Sources for the above article
Anatomy of an Illness, by Norman Cousins
"Laughter as Medicine", the Physicians of the Penn State Geisinger Health System
"Laughter as Medicine" by Drs. Gael Crystal and Patrick Flanagan
