Laughter as medicine?
I can summarise six articles for you: leg ulcers yes, hospital pain in children yes, blood vessels yes, weight loss yes, asthma no and yes, heart disease possibly, ankylosing spondylitis or maybe reactive arthritis possibly.
Let’s start with asthma. Apparently over half of asthma sufferers in one study report that their asthma is triggered by laughter, but when the asthma is ‘well-controlled’, they can laugh for longer without getting asthma symptoms. I would call that one a draw.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/4576739.stm
‘Nobody knows how laughter brings on asthma, but it might involve hyperventilating, say the New York University authors.’ Here’s a wild guess: laughter has a spasmodic effect on the chest and diaphragm. Can I have a professorship now, please?
Blood vessels next. Lie down, watch 15 minutes of a funny film or a stress-inducing film, laughter increases blood flow in the brachial artery in your arm by about 22%, stress slows it by about 35%. Now this is interesting, because the bloodstream is a magic sea of nutrients and information and transport.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/4325819.stm
It was once explained to me that the original difference between osteopathy and chiropractic was that osteopathy emphasised blood supply whereas chiropractic stressed the importance of nerve supply. (These days it’s much more confusing as osteopaths in the States are medical doctors with extra training and don’t seem to do much osteopathy these days, whereas chiropractors there correspond much more closely to osteopaths in the United Kingdom.) Obviously blood supply and nerve supply are interconnected, as the blood supplies nutrients to keep the nerves healthy, and the nerves send signals to and from the brain and spinal cord, which can affect the blood supply to an area.
However, apparently the nervous system is more recent than the endocrine (hormone) system and appeared as animals got bigger, so I would come down on the side of blood supply if pushed. Interestingly, in Chinese medicine, there are patterns known as ‘Liver Qi (=ch’i) Stagnation’ and ‘Blood Stasis’. Liver Qi Stagnation has many of the hallmarks of stress and frustration but also a raft of potential physical symptoms including sighing and restricted breathing.
If untreated, Liver Qi Stagnation can lead to Blood Stasis, (though Blood Stasis may have several other causes) which might manifest in fixed (non-moving) pain, dark clotting in menstrual periods and be observed in a purple colour on the tongue, or the veins underneath. As usual, it’s easy to laugh at different cultural paradigms, but if we simply say that the ancient Chinese observed that stress can lead to reduced blood flow and illness, it doesn’t seem so ridiculous any more.
Which leads neatly to the article on leg ulcers: "Believe it or not, having a really hearty chuckle can help too. This is because laughing gets the diaphragm moving and this plays a vital part in moving blood around the body.", according to Professor Andrea Nelson, who was leading the Leeds University team who did the study. Now we’re starting to see a common theme emerging.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-12699016
As for weight loss: ‘Giggling for just 15 minutes a day burns enough calories to shed up to 5lbs of fat over a year, work shows. A big belly laugh uses about the same energy as walking more than half a mile, the US study in the International Journal of Obesity suggests…Work already suggests that laughter is good for the heart and immune system, and appears to help ease pain. Dr Shevach Friedler at the Assaf Harofeh Medical Centre in Zerifin even found humour increased the chance that fertility treatment would be a success in patients seeking IVF. He said: "Laughter has a physiological effect as well as a psychological one.’
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/6274119.stm
There's another common theme emerging, which is the BBC using the same stock photo of a demented man clutching his head for the leg ulcers article as for the weight loss article. Good to see them recycling and conserving taxpayers' money.
Let’s designate this as a secondary weight loss method. I don’t think it’s up there with the big ones. Nor do I know any adults who giggle for more than 15 minutes a day. I think the pleasure gained from the weight loss might be offset by the number of people glaring at you. However, laughter is now used in children’s hospitals to help them reduce pain and stimulate immune function.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/1833854.stm
The last couple of issues, heart disease and ankylosing spondylitis/reactive arthritis, refer to Norman Cousins, the American journalist, editor, and political activist, who also served as ‘Adjunct Professor of Medical Humanities for the School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles, where he did research on the biochemistry of human emotions, which he long believed were the key to human beings’ success in fighting illness.’ Cousins wrote the well-known book, Anatomy of an Illness which was also made into a film, about how he laughed himself back to health.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Cousins
Told that he had little chance of surviving, Cousins developed a recovery program incorporating megadoses of Vitamin C, along with a positive attitude, love, faith, hope, and laughter induced by Marx Brothers films. "I made the joyous discovery that ten minutes of genuine belly laughter had an anesthetic effect and would give me at least two hours of pain-free sleep," he reported. "When the pain-killing effect of the laughter wore off, we would switch on the motion picture projector again and not infrequently, it would lead to another pain-free interval." Recent European legislation seeks to make megadoses of Vitamin C unavailable to us a few decades later. Presumably it won’t be long until laughter is illegal as well.
I wondered what Cousins was like, and managed to track down some footage of him. Despite being healed by laughing at Marx Brothers films, he had clearly developed the related but opposite skill, which is the ability to keep a straight face while being interviewed by someone who looks like he’s wearing a Groucho mask.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oas-WpnpQpk
It's only fair that the last word goes to Norman Cousins:
"Drugs are not always necessary, but belief in recovery always is."