He who laughs...lasts.

He Who Laughs ... Lasts

Laughing may be to your health in the 1990s what jogging was in the 1970s and 1980s, except you won't get shin splints or knee injuries.

As Matt Weinstein, health professional and founding president of Playfair, Inc., says: "The only thing you can do about your present life is laugh. Life is what it is, but you have a choice of how to handle it."

Weinstein and others of his kind were pioneers in the field of laughter and health, led in part by Norman Cousins, author of the best-selling Anatomy of an Illness. The book explored the author's recovery from a near-fatal rheumatoid condition by use of comedy tapes and massive doses of Vitamin C.

Personal testimonies such as Cousins' spurred the present-day hard-core scientific research on how a good belly laugh might travel through the body, making those dazzling brain chemicals set a zing to the strings of the immune system.

In the meantime, even before tests are conclusive, health professionals have established laughter rooms at hospitals to boost the immune systems of cancer and heart patients, and physicians are designing recovery programs that include laughter therapy for a host of mental and physical ailments.

Researchers such as Dr. Lee Berk, immunologist at Loma Linda University Medical Center in California, say the public is way ahead of the medical profession on the benefits of laughter. His studies, which involve hormone and white blood cell levels, support the theory that laughter indeed reduces immune suppressors, such as epinephrine and cortisol, that block recovery. Other researchers are studying the laughter mechanisms that boost production of immune enhancers such as beta-endorphins.

"The changes [in the white cell counts and hormones] have been more surprising than we ever realized," says Berk.

Long before the technical research began, however, people suspected that a good belly laugh had curative effects. Adds Berk: "Ancient physicians used to tell jokes to their patients and laugh with them."

Berk also quotes Proverbs 17:22: "A merry heart doeth good like a medicine: but a broken spirit drieth the bones."

"When I started in the field 16 years ago, there was very little basic scientific data to support our theories," says Carl Simonton, radiation oncologist and pioneer in the field of developing a more playful way of life, especially in the face of life-threatening diseases such as cancer.

Laughter is linked to playfulness, and that conjures up images of childlike behavior. "Play is any activity that tends to produce the experience of having fun or the emotion of joy. It doesn't mean you have to be childish. That's different than being childlike," Simonton explains.

Once into the energy-forming mold of play, people develop "their own melody," says Simonton. What is playful to one person may not be for the next. Regardless, when you find your right play button, laughter is sure to follow.

Berk points out that children laugh approximately 400 times a day, while adults laugh about 15 times a day.

Pessimists may argue that there's not much to laugh about these days, but researchers point out that survivors, those people who overcome cancer or who prolong their lives, are optimistic and tough. They seem to have a more positive approach to life, and laughter is part of their makeup. Because they've learned to laugh at life's inconsistencies, they may not feel the pain of their disease as much as their more somber sisters and brothers.

Research by psychologist Rosemary Cogan at Texas Tech University revealed that feelings of pain were reduced by listening to comedy tapes.

To prove that it wasn't simply a distraction that eased the pain, Cogan conducted tests whereby some participants listened to a Bill Cosby tape and others to Edgar Allan Poe readings, lectures, mathematical tasks - or heard nothing.

Their thresholds for pain were measured before and after they listened to the tapes. Only those who heard the Cosby tape showed an increase in their ability to withstand pain.

Cogan, who works chiefly with obstetrical patients, says laughter eases the pain of labor.

There is a beneficial physical side to laughter, too. A good belly laugh increases the heart rate, raises blood pressure, speeds breathing, and increases oxygen consumption (similar to jogging), explains Berk. Then breathing and heart rate slow (usually below normal levels), blood pressure drops, and muscles relax.

"Laughter is just good medicine," says Lucille Nahemow, professor of family studies and a specialist on aging at the University of Connecticut. "Most of us are too uptight most of the time."

Nahemow believes it's healthy for the elderly to laugh at the stereotypes of ageism foisted on them by society. "Humor is an important part of being in control - a way of controlling a situation," she says.

A person needn't be ill or aged before turning to laughter, however. "The thing we've learned from cancer patients is that the principles are the same whether you're sick or healthy," says Simonton. "Health and illness is an arbitrary, man-made distinction. We can die healthy of natural causes and be active until the day we die. We don't get there by accident, though."

Laughter is part of the package that ensures a quality life.