healingways
Lighten Up!
Humor is FUNdamental to Good Health
by paul Mcghee
W
e all have a natural health and healing system attacks were randomly assigned to either a standard cardiac
within our body that is our biological inheritance, rehab program or the program plus the viewing of a comedy
but which too many of us have forgotten how to video, three times a week for a year at the rehab site. During
use. It is our innate sense of humor. the year, the comedy video group had suffered fewer addi-
Strong scientific evidence in multiple fields of research tional heart attacks and fewer episodes of cardiac arrhythmia.
now supports the view that humor plays a significant role in They also had significantly lower blood pressure than the
sustaining health. Humor’s many benefits to a great extent control group.
hinge on its ability to generate in us positive emotions, even Another recent study in the peer review journal, Heart,
substituting a positive for a negative state in the presence of may provide an explanation for humor’s reported boost to
stress. A general agreement in the broad field of psychoneu- cardiac health. Here, researchers found that watching a
roimmunology (studying the interaction between psychologi- comedy video significantly increased the diameter of a major
cal processes and the body’s nervous and immune systems) artery in the arm (vasodilation), while watching a stress-in-
is that emotion, and its underlying physical changes in the ducing film reduced the diameter of the artery (vasoconstric-
body, is the key to understanding the link tion). This constrictive effect in response to
between mind and body when it comes to stress is well established, and is known to
health.
Your sense of humor
result in increased blood pressure.
The earliest modern research on humor
is one of the most
This relaxation effect at the arterial
and health, from the 1980s and 90s, first level, in response to humor, is consistent
showed that a good dose of humor works to powerful tools you with the muscle relaxation effect that
strengthen the immune system and reduce
have to make certain
mounting evidence also associates with hu-
pain. Results of 30 to 40 studies consistently mor. Muscle relaxation is the key goal of all
demonstrate such benefits.
that your daily mood
stress management techniques, because it
A common claim for the reduced pain
and emotional state
generally leads to the easing of psychologi-
associated with humor and laughter attri-
butes it to the production of endorphins (one
support good health.
cal tensions. Concurrently, several studies,
published in such journals as The Journal of
of the body’s built-in pain reducers), yet only Rheumatology and The American Journal of
one study in the past 25 years supports this the Medical Sciences, now also have docu-
notion. The noted reduction in pain may rather be due to the mented a reduced level of stress hormones circulating in the
known muscle relaxation effect that results from humor and blood of study participants in response to humor.
laughter, or to humor’s power to mentally distract us from the The latest research on the relationship of humor to
source of pain. health, underway in Japan, is now extending humor’s ben-
One exciting new finding is how humor contributes efits to relief of specific diseases. While less well-established
to good cardiac health. More than a decade ago, a study than the findings relative to pain and the immune system,
published in the Canadian Journal of Cardiology showed that several humor-related studies published in The Journal of
humor is heart-healthy, even if one has already experienced Rheumatology, Journal of Behavioral Medicine, Journal of
a heart attack. In the study, patients who had suffered heart Psychosomatic Research and The Journal of the American
58 NA Triangle www.natriangle.com
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