SCALPEL ... CLAMP ... ONE-LINER; MORE PHYSICIANS THINK THAT HUMOR HAS HEALING POWER.

Byline: Evan Henerson

Laugh a little. Laugh a lot. Heck, laugh until it hurts.

It's probably the least expensive prescription for health you'll ever get.

Dr. Hunter ``Patch'' Adams, the man Hollywood made famous last year in a movie bearing his name, has been preaching his funny brand of medicine for 30 years.

Now, other doctors are joining Adams in advising something that once had people laughing at him, not with him.

``Laughter can help decrease anxiety and stress and improve the perceived quality of life, important factors during times of illness,'' writes Dr. Ron Berk in a recent Johns Hopkins Health Insiders newsletter.

``Studies show that laughter may also trigger physiological changes,'' Berk continues, ``such as stimulating circulation, improving respiration, boosting production of pain-reducing endorphins and possibly even increasing immune system activity and response.''

Indeed, a team of doctors closer to home at Loma Linda University School of Medicine and Public Health have discovered just that, said Dr. Lee Berk (no relation).

In a series of studies it has been conducting since the late 1980s, the team has tested the links between mirthful laughter and levels of stress hormones and immune cell activity.

Sure enough, periodic blood samples taken from subjects watching self-selected videotapes of comedy showed decreased levels of stress hormones and increased immune cell activity.

``I was more surprised than anyone else, seeing that something so perceptibly mundane as mirthful laughter has the ability to regulate or increase (immune) cell activity,'' said Dr. Lee Berk. ``This is really a quantifiable mechanism.''

That's not to say a half-hour of laughter will cure a person of cancer, doctors caution. But it is, said Dr. Lee Berk, a factor in the equation of good health.

``Let's get all the ducks lined up when it comes to mind, body, spirit and medicine,'' he said.

So go see a funny movie, spend an evening at a comedy club, or wear a clown nose every now and then. Many would label those activities a form of preventive medicine.

``The act of laughing is very healthy in terms of loosening you up and allowing you to gain perspective,'' said Dr. Barney Rosen, director of psychology at the Della Martin Center at Huntington Memorial Hospital in Pasadena. ``Every day, people should put themselves in a position to laugh. If you see that there's a lighter side to life, you'll reduce physical stress.''

What's more, after years of, well, laughing off studies of laughter, the medical community is starting to take notice, said Dr. Steve Sultanoff, an Irvine-based psychologist and president of the American Association for Therapeutic Humor.

``Doctors are paying a little more attention to research on humor these days,'' said Sultanoff, a ``mirthologist'' who attributes part of the recent interest to a growing acceptance of alternative medicine. ``Doctors become more respectful when they see research results.''

Do they ever. Thirty years ago, could anybody have predicted specially designated humor rooms or humor units in hospitals? Several medical facilities are making clowns available to patients. Sherman Oaks Hospital and Health Centereven has a part-time humor therapist.

Or hop online and check out how many disease-themed Web sites - such as www.canceronline.com - have sub-sections or links to humor sites, humor research or even joke-a-day sites. Type ``humor and medicine'' into a search engine and watch your screen start to fill up with matches.

OK, so maybe you're laughing as you read this. In disbelief. So, all that famous ``positive mental attitude'' theorizing is now supposed to have medical benefits? Yeah, right, you're saying, tell me another one.

It may be easier to accept studies that say that the opposite emotions are unhealthy, that feelings of depression and hopelessness are strong indicators of heart attacks or strokes. Stronger indicators, even, than cholesterol, said Dr. Todd Hutton, a psychiatrist who, like Rosen, works at the Della Martin Center.

But as Hutton notes, we're not yet at a stage where managed care is going to pay for a psychiatrist to enter the rehabilitation realm. In all likelihood, the M.D. at your bedside won't be asking a lot of questions about your state of mind or sense of humor.

``You don't see psychiatric treatment of people recovering from heart attacks,'' Hutton said. ``You don't see psychiatrists on a cardiac rehab team. Maybe they should be looking for depression as much as for cholesterol.''

Humor and laugh therapy targets seniors as much as any segment of the population. According to Rosen, the reasons are simple: The higher your age, the more likely you are to have experienced loss or to be facing issues of your own mortality.

When the everyday aches become more frequent, it's better to take as lighthearted an approach to your predicament as possible, Rosen said.

``Seniors have to find ways to improve the quality of their lives day in and day out,'' said Rosen, who later this summer will give a presentation titled ``Laughter: Truly the Best Medicine'' through the Huntington Senior Care Network. ``If you develop some humor and gain perspective, you begin to live each moment more fully.''

Sherman Oaks Hospital and Health Center's humor therapist, Roberta Gold, who has worked with groups as varied as moms seeking help on parenting with humor and the International Society of Coroners and Medical Examiners at a conference held right after the O.J. Simpson criminal trial.

``I teach them how to see the humor rather than the horror in the world,'' Gold said. ``You'd be surprised how many people want to and how many people can't.''

When you're stuck in freeway traffic, for example, do you pound impatiently on the steering wheel? Or, do you get a chuckle out of surveying the sea of people singing their hearts out behind closed car windows?

``Having a sense of humor doesn't mean knowing how to tell a joke. It's being able to see the humor around us, using humor to keep a positive perspective,'' Gold said.

In his seminars and in his books, ``The Healing Power of Humor'' and ``Courage to Laugh,'' Allen Klein tells his clients how to use humor to get through difficult times. Klein, who calls himself a humor educator and ``jollytologist,'' reached many of his conclusions when his wife was battling a liver disease that ultimately took her life. The experience sparked his fascination with the presence and function of humor during not-so-funny periods.

``My wife had a great sense of humor,'' said Klein, who lives in San Francisco. ``I realized looking back that, yes, there were a lot of tears, but there was also a lot of laughter.

``There's always humor in serious times, jokes that go around about the Space Shuttle Challenger crash or (the nuclear accident at) Chernobyl. People say, `That's just awful' or `That's sick humor,' and it is, but it's often a way to cope with it.''

The man credited with bringing the study of humor into the medical mainstream is not Patch Adams, but Norman Cousins, the former editor of the Saturday Review and later a faculty member at UCLA Medical School.

In his ``Anatomy of an Illness,'' Cousins described an unusual approach to his own self-treatment. Diagnosed with the connective tissue disease ankylosing spondylitis, Cousins determined that large doses of vitamin C and a steady diet of watching his favorite Marx Brothers movies and ``Candid Camera'' episodes gave him extended periods of pain relief. It became his quest to prove a biochemical link between laughter and fighting serious disease.

People have been known to follow similar treatment with episodes of ``I Love Lucy'' or Laurel and Hardy movies. For Rosen, it's Jackie Gleason and ``The Honeymooners.''

``Whenever I feel like I can't take it anymore, I realize my life is never as bad as Ralph Kramden's,'' Rosen said.

Daily News Staff Writer Betty Kwong contributed to this story.

CAPTION(S):

2 Photos

PHOTO (1--Color--Cover) Tap the funny bone

Research shows laughter is good medicine

Gus Ruelas/Daily News

(2) The efficacy of laughter as medicine is the theme of ``Patch Adams,'' starring Robin Williams as a real-life doctor who began using humor with patients 30 years ago.