Laughter is Good for Health

by Gregory Allen Butler

Research shows that laughter is good for health but research also shows that we don't laugh enough.

Have you heard this story?

A tour bus driver is driving with a bus load of seniors down a highway when he is tapped on his shoulder by a little old lady. She offers him a handful of peanuts, which he gratefully munches up. After about 15 minutes, she taps him on his shoulder again and she hands him another handful of peanuts.

She repeats this gesture about five more times. When she is about to hand him another batch again he asks the little old lady, why don't you eat the peanuts yourself? "We can't chew them because we've no teeth", she replied. The puzzled driver asks, "Why do you buy them then?" The old lady replied, "We just love the chocolate around them."

What about this one?

Three men were sitting together, bragging about how they had given their new wives duties.

The first man had married a woman from Indiana He bragged that he had told his wife she was going to do all the dishes and house cleaning that needed done at their house. He said that it took a couple days, but on the third day he came home to a clean house, and the dishes were all washed and put away.

The second man had married a woman from Utah. He bragged that he had given his wife orders that she was to do all the cleaning, dishes, and the cooking. He told them that the first day he didn't see any results, but the next day it was better. By the third day, his house was clean, the dishes were done, and he had a huge dinner on the table.

The third man had married a New Jersey girl. He said he told her that her duties were to keep the house cleaned, dishes washed, lawn mowed, laundry washed, and hot meals on the table for every meal.

He said the first day he didn't see anything, the second day he didn't see anything, but by the third day most of the swelling had gone down and he could see a little out of his left eye, just enough to fix himself a bite to eat, load the dishwasher, and telephone a landscaper. Jersey girls rule!

I hope these two stories made you laugh, because as research is starting to show, laughter is good for health. The more you laugh the better. But how often do you laugh in the course of a day?

The health sciences have told us we need to sleep eight hours a day, drink eight glasses a water a day, eat three square meals a day, but neglected to tell us that laughter is good for health, let alone tell us how often we need to laugh a day. William Fry, M.D., professor of psychiatry at Stanford University Medical School and expert on health and laughter, reports the average kindergarten student laughs 300 times a day. Yet, adults average just 17 laughs a day. Most people just don't know that laughter is good for health. When the word gets out, more people will stay up late to end the day with a laugh watching Letterman or Jay Leno.

That looks like evidence that our priorities are way out of balance. If we can't laugh at life we are not alive. You've heard the expression, "Get a life!" It's very appropriate advice for people who don't laugh, for if they don't laugh, life's vicissitudes will pull them down.

Norman Cousins is the most famouse person who proved with his own life that laughter is good for health. He healed himself of ankylosing spondylitis (a degenerative disease causing the breakdown of collagen). He was given up to die. He was almost completely paralyzed. He checked himself out of the hospital and moved into a hotel room to subject himself to a non-stop feast of humorous films and similar "laughing matter" and extremely high doses of vitamin C.

He found that 10 minutes of intense laughter gave him two hours of pain-free sleep. Talk about sleeping pills. This gives new meaning to bedtime stories. He completely recovered and was able to resume his duties as Editor at the Saturday Evening Post

Clinical Proof that Laughter is Good for Health

There is now clinical research that shows laughter is good for health. To support the necessity for laughter as it relates to cardiovascular health. Dr. Michael Miller, Director of the Center for Preventive Cardiology at the University of Maryland Medical Center conducted a study on 20 healthy participants who watched clips from one of two movies.

Because blood vessels constrict when people are under stress, and because narrowed vessels are more prone to becoming blocked, Dr. Miller and his researchers wanted to examine the ability of blood vessels to expand--known in the medical field as vasodilation.

According to the press release from the University of Maryland, they were randomized to first watch either a movie that would cause mental stress, such as the opening scene of “Saving Private Ryan” (DreamWorks, 1998), or a segment of a movie that would cause laughter, such as “King Pin” (MGM, 1996).

A minimum of 48 hours later, they were shown a movie intended to produce the opposite emotional extreme.

Before and after the segments, the volunteers were tested for vasodilation by constricting and releasing an artery in their arms with a blood pressure cuff and then using ultrasound to measure how the blood vessels were functioning.

Blood flow was reduced in 14 of the 20 volunteers who saw the Private Ryan segment and 19 out of the 20 volunteers who watched the funny segment were found to have a significant increase in blood flow.

The press release from the study stated that "...overall, blood flow decreased about 35 percent after experiencing stress, but increased 22 percent after laughter-an improvement equivalent to that produced by a 15 to 20 minute workout."

Because research shows laughter is good for health, Dr. Miller believes a time will come when doctors will recommend 15-20 minutes a day of laughter just as they recommend at least 30 minutes of exercise.

Wouldn't it be great if instead of going to the doctor's office to get a shot, you go to hear a really funny joke? I guess they will have to start teaching comedy at medical schools. The doctors might even start living longer.

For further reading on how laughter is good for health, you might look at the collection of articles on humor from Helpguide.org. By reading these articles, you will not only realize that laughter is good for health physically, but that laughter is good for health mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. That makes it a key component in holistic personal development.