Does a Good Laugh Really Help? Aristotle once said that laughter was ‘a bodily exercise precious to health’, but a good giggle actually has little effect on pure physical fitness like walking or jogging does. It does however produce short-term changes in cardiovascular function, boosts heart rate, depth & rate of breathing, as well as oxygen consumption. Studies from the 1930s reported that whereas exercise build muscle, laughing actually decreases muscle tone for up to 45 minutes after you’ve had a good laugh. Presumably, this physical relaxation helps to moderate the effects of psychological stress because as we shall see below there is enough evidence that laughter produces other types of physical feedback. Immune to Laughter Laughing at a funny film can cause a drop in the levels of cortisol in the blood. Since high levels of cortisol have been shown to weaken the immune system, having a chuckle could help fight off disease. Experiments have also been done that showed that laughter increases the activity of the immune cells known as ‘natural killer cells’. In some cases, laughing may also dampen inappropriate immune responses. In 2007 Japanese researchers measured the levels of the hormone melatonin in the breast milk of breast-feeding mothers before and after the woman watched either a funny Charlie Chaplin video or an every day weather report. Melatonin regulates the sleep-wake cycle and is often disturbed in the allergic skin condition atopic eczema, which all of the 48 babies in the study suffered from. Mothers who watched Charlie Chaplin,  but not the weather report, increased the  amount of melatonin in their milk. The laughing-breast-milk also reduced the allergic responses to latex and house mites in the babies. So making a breast-feeding mother laugh might also serve as an allergy remedy for her baby! A Sense of Humour Helps Most ‘humour researchers’ (yes, honestly, that’s what these scientists are really called) believe that the psychology of humour, rather than the laughter itself, is what benefits mental and physical health the most. You’ve probably never thought of it like this before, but humour is classed as an intellectual skill which requires an ability to view situations in a certain light. A sense of humour tends to shift your perspective in a way that can be psychologically protective.  Such cognitive and emotional distancing helps to keep anxiety at bay…53 students were told that they would receive an electric shock in 12 minutes’ time. Although no shock was actually given, during the waiting time, some students listened to a funny tape, whereas others heard a boring speech,  and others heard nothing at all. Those who listened to the funny tape rated themselves as less anxious as the ‘shock time’ got closer than the students in the other groups. In addition, volunteers who on an earlier personality test (part of the same study) had scored higher on ‘a sense of humour’ showed the least tension of all, suggesting that humour is indeed calming. Being Cheerful Since scientists create tests to test everything, then you probably won’t be surprised to read that there exists a Cheerfulness Test. Its official name is the Strait-Trait Cheerfulness Inventory. Its questions distinguish between a person’s momentary mood (state) – for example, after a joke has just been told – and a general tendency for enjoyment (trait). A high cheerfulness score means a person gets in a cheerful mood easily and laughs readily. One benefit of a cheerful character is resilience. This a psychic robustness that emotionally buffers people against crises and enables them to see the silver lining (or lesson) in disappointments and set-backs. In a study done where volunteers were asked to fill out questionnaires in 3 different types of rooms (a cheerful room, a depressing room, and a serious room) the mood of the sunnier-participants (as assessed by the cheerfulness scale) were not affected by the different rooms. The rooms had a much larger effect on the less cheerful volunteers: the depressing and serious rooms put the humourless students in a worse mood…. Laughter as a Natural Painkiller Humour has been scientifically proven to have painkilling properties (I wonder if the jokes were painful….!!). A 1996 study demonstrated that patients who watched funny movies needed less painkillers after surgery than patients who watched more serious films –or who didn’t watch anything at all. This phenomenon has been known since 1928 when New York doctor James Walsh noticed that laughter reduced pain after surgery. And probably one of the most famous examples of the power of laughter over pain is how writer Norman Cousins’ watching 10 minutes of Marx Brothers films brought him 2 hours of pain-free sleep from inflammatory arthritis. It seemed that it not improved his pain, but also helped to reduce the inflammation  - so much so that eventually  he could go back to work. The pain-reducing (analgesic) effect of humour requires enjoyment and not necessarily laughter, according to a study published in 2004.  5 women were asked to put a hand in ice-cold water before, immediately after, and 20 minutes after watching a 7-minute funny film. In response to the film, some of the women were told to get into a cheerful mood without smiling or laughing; others were asked to smile and laugh a lot; the rest were instructed to create humourous commentaries to the film while watching it.  As you would now expect, seeing the funny film boosted the tolerance to pain in all the women. After watching the funny film, all the volunteers required a longer time in the  iced-water to feel pain, and they could put up with the pain for longer time periods before pulling their hand out. These changes in pain perception lasted for 20 minutes after the film ended. Smiling, but not necessarily laughter, seemed to be most important for pain-suppressing effects. The women who were asked to not smile felt the most pain. Healing Through Humour Because of humour’s many psychological benefits some psychologists are testing comedy as a remedy for stress, mild depression or just generally feeling down. Researchers have already found that incorporating humour into your daily life helps people become more naturally cheerful and content with their lives, and that the improvement lasted for up to two months. This was based on a study done during a humour training program developed to help people manage stress. Another similar study (a 3-week course to teach people to make themselves feel cheerful) found that participants felt better for at least two days afterwards, and that they generally felt calmer and showed reductions in blood pressure. Now that the effects of humour on mood have been established, studies are now being carried out to look at its long-term effects.  In 2007 , ten elderly depressed patients received humour training in addition to their normal medication and reported that they felt more satisfied with their lives than a group of patients who received only medication. Funny Summary Laughter and humour do seem to have significant effects on our psyche, influence our perception of pain, reduce our risk of disease and contribute to overall wellness. Cheerfulness and smiling are linked to emotional resilience, and our satisfaction with life seems to increase with our ability to laugh. All in all, humour’s effects last a long time after the smile has faded :=) REFERENCES: W.W. Norton, Anatomy of an Illness as Perceived by the Patient, 1979. M.P. Bennett & C.A. Lengacher, Humor and Laughter May Influence Health. I. History and Background, eCAM 2006 3(1):61-63. http://ecam.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/3/1/61 M.P. Bennett & C.A. Lengacher, Humor and Laughter May Influence Health, Part 3: Laughter and Health Outcomes, Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine, 2008, vlume 5 (1), 37-40. S. Ayan, Laughing Matters, Scientific American Mind, 2009, volume 20 (2),  24-31. J.A. Walsh, Laughter and Health, 1928. K. Zweyer, B. Velker & W. Ruch, Do cheerfulness, exhilaration and humor production moderate pain tolerance? A FACS study. International Journal of Humor Research, 2004, volume 17 (1/2), 85-119. L. L. Cohen, Behavioral Approaches to Anxiety and Pain Management, Pediatrics, 2008, volume 122 (supplement), S134-S139. http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/reprint/122/Supplement_3/S134