Can Laughing Your Ass Off Heal You?

“If it weren’t for the brief respite we give the world with our foolishness, the world would see mass suicide in numbers that compare favorably with the death rate of lemmings.” — Groucho Marx

“‘Having the new tools in medicine to look at some of these stress hormones, we said [to Dr. Fry], ‘Fly down, bring your Laurel and Hardy tapes, let’s sit down, we’ll place an IV in your arm and we’ll draw continuous blood samples while you’re watching the tapes,” Dr. Berk says.”

It’s been said before that laughter is the best medicine. Some people have sworn that having a good attitude and a load of laughs have cured them of their life-threatening illnesses. Is there any scientific validity to this idea of laughing and healing? Chinese doctors have been saying for thousands of years that attitudes affect disease. Anger causes stagnation, which can cause cancer and other tumors, according to Traditional Chinese Medicine. So it’s a very ancient idea. But what exactly does laughter do for you, and can it heal you?

Loma Linda University School of Medicine reported back in 1999 that one of its key researchers, Lee Berk, DrPH, MPH, discovered that laughter causes physiological effects that can lead to healing. Not only mind over matter, but really mind affecting matter. It’s no news that stress causes ulcers and heart attacks or that scared people can wet their pants. These are obvious connections between the mind, body and emotions. So what if we were to laugh and be happy — would this have the opposite effects of negative emotions? Chinese medical doctors say yes. Now western medical doctors are starting to agree.

Dr. Berk–associate director for the Center for Neuroimmunology, assistant research professor in the Loma Linda University School of Medicine, and assistant clinical professor of health promotion and education in the School of Public Health–believes that because a patient is more than just a disease, it’s important to look at the whole person when providing medical treatment.

Dr. Berk’s research into laughter’s benefits began in the late 1970s, when his studies on exercise showed that it not only boosted the immune system, it also decreased stress hormones in the body.

These findings led Dr. Berk and his colleague Stanley Tan, MD, assistant professor of medicine at Loma Linda University, to look for something else–something universal–that might also have the same effect. They hit upon mirthful laughter as a possibility.

They extended a research invitation to William Fry, MD, then a psychiatrist at Stanford University, who had researched changes in blood pressure and heart rate related to laughter.

Dr. Fry accepted the invitation.
“That was the initiation of everything,” Dr. Berk adds. “We looked at the data and we fell on the floor. It was mind-blowing.”

Since that time Drs. Berk and Tan have conducted controlled scientific experiments that have proven those early results.

They found first of all that laughter increases the immune system’s activity. Here’s how it works:

• Natural killer cells (the cells that attack virus and tumor cells) increase in number and activity.
• More T cells (which wait to be told to do something) are activated than normal.
• The antibody immunoglobulin A (which protects the upper respiratory tract) increases.
• Gamma interferon increases. This cytokine tells different components of the immune system to turn on.
• Immunoglobulin G (the immunoglobulin produced in the greatest quantity) and Complement 3 (which helps antibodies pierce dysfunctional or infected cells) increase both during laughter and the next day.
• The research also showed that in general, stress hormones–which actually constrict blood vessels and suppress immune activity–decrease in the body as a result of laughter.1

Norman Cousins, a one-time essayist and editor associated with the Saturday Review, who cured himself of a fatal illness by watching an endless stream of comedy films, said, “Laughter is a form of internal jogging. It moves your internal organs around. It enhances respiration. It is an igniter of great expectations.”

Cousins, the respected editor of the Saturday Review, had been given six months to live.

He’d been diagnosed suddenly with life-threatening ankylosing spondylitis, a painful, degenerative disease of the spine. Cousins, who was in constant agony and quickly succumbing to paralysis, checked himself out of the hospital, which in his view “was no place for sick people” and into a hotel where under the supervision of a doctor, he began taking extremely high doses of Vitamin C punctuated by a regimen of intense belly laughter.

Why laughter? It was the only thing that seemed to kill the pain. Cousins would start laughing by watching Marx Brothers movies and Candid Camera episodes on a rented projector. After several months, and day after day of laughter, Cousins walked out of the hotel. In the years since then, Vitamin C would be discredited, but laughter, it turns out, is another story.

Cousins’s “laughing cure” was greeted by the medical establishment with derision. How stupid. A man curing a life-threatening disease with laughter. Cousins even wrote a book about his experience, Anatomy of an Illness as Perceived by the Patient. Although the book helped launch the holistic health movement, decades would pass before medical researchers reopened the curious case of the Laughing Man.

A study by the University of North Carolina published in 2005 says women who are hugged regularly appear to have a lower risk of heart disease. A University of Maryland study shows regular laughter improves blood circulation and may protect against heart attack. Psychiatrist Joseph Richman’s study of depressed and suicidal senior citizens, showed laughter had a significant curative affect. A 2001 University of California study reported members of a choir showed significantly increased levels of immunity-building proteins just prior to performance and even more dramatically afterward. Clinical psychologist Dan Johnston says that simply smiling for no particular reason can have a positive effect on health and attitude. What these have in common is they’re all obvious and none require a prescription. Even AIG, an American insurance company is now running ads on U.S. network TV claiming: “Laughing will add ‘eight years’ to your life” – and as actuaries they should know. Laughing, it appears, did add 26 years to Cousins’s life.2

Apparently, laughter has a lot to do with relaxation responses, explained this way:

Two separate mechanisms cause the relaxation you notice. Muscles not directly participating in the act of laughter tend to relax while you’re laughing. That’s why little kids fall down during fits of laughter. It’s also why you seem to lose your strength when you’re laughing (just try carrying a friend–or any other heavy object–across the room when you’re laughing hard). When you stop laughing, the muscles that had been contracting relax. This is no different from what happens with any other physical activity. When you stop working muscles, their natural tendency is to relax. In combination, these two mechanisms produce a general pattern of muscle relaxation throughout your body.3

And now for more empirical evidence on laughter having healing powers.

One study showed that people using a biofeedback apparatus were able to relax muscles more quickly after watching funny cartoons than after looking at beautiful scenery. The importance of this natural relaxation effect may be seen in the fact that relaxation not only helps reduce stress; it also helps alleviate heart disease, headaches, chronic anxiety and other problems. For patients with rheumatism, neuralgia, or other conditions characterized by a spasm-pain-spasm cycle, the reduced muscle tension that results from laughter disrupts this cycle and reduces the pain experienced.

The limited research on stress-related hormones and humor has shown that laughter reduces at least four neuroendocrine hormones associated with the stress response, including epinephrine, cortisol, dopac, and growth hormone. This is consistent with research showing that various relaxation procedures reduce stress hormones.

The best evidence that humor boosts the immune system comes from studies where immune system measures are taken before and after a particular humorous event–usually a comedy video. But research showing that individuals with a better sense of humor have stronger immune systems is also important, since it shows the importance (for your health) of making the effort to improve your sense of humor.

The greatest amount of research to date has focused on immunoglobulin A, a part of your immune system, which serves to protect you against upper respiratory problems, like colds and the flu. Our saliva contains IgA, and this is often referred to as the body’s first line of defense against upper respiratory viral and bacterial infections.

The studies show that watching as little as 30 or 60 minutes of a comedy video is enough to increase both salivary IgA and blood levels of IgA. This has been shown for both adults and children.

mmunoglobulins M and G have also been shown to be enhanced as a result of humor/laughter. IgM is the antibody that arrives first as part of the humoral immune response. IgG antibodies are present in the greatest amount in the body, and are responsible for producing long-term immunity. When you are immunized for a particular illness, it is the IgG antibodies that are tested to see if the procedure has worked.

This same study showed that watching a comedy video produced increased levels of a substance called Complement 3, which helps antibodies pierce through defective or infected cells in order to destroy them.3

Paul E. McGhee, Ph.D., (pictured to the right) a pioneer in humor research, developed a program he termed The Laughter Remedy which laid the groundwork for the current interest in the health benefits of humor. After receiving his Ph.D. in developmental psychology in 1968, McGhee spent 22 years conducting basic research on humor and laughter while teaching at the university level. He has published over 50 scientific articles and 13 books on humor. McGhee wrote:

With respect to cellular immunity, watching a one-hour comedy video has been found to produce 1) increased number of B cells (this is not surprising, given the increased levels of IgA, IgG, and IgM, since B cells are responsible for making all the immunoglobulins), 2) increased number of, and activation of, T cells, 3) increased number of Helper T cells (the cells attacked by the AIDS virus), 4) increased ratio of Helper/Suppressor T cells, and 5) increased levels of Gamma Interferon. Gamma Interferon plays an important role in the activation of NK cells. It also contributes to the growth of cytotoxic T cells and the maturation of B cells. It is best thought of as a kind of orchestra leader that regulates the level of cooperation between cells in the immune system, and tells different components of the immune system when to turn on and off.4

Laughter has also been shown to stimulate B cells, natural killer cells (involved in cancer and other diseases) and T cells (immune cells produced in the thymus gland, instrumental in the body’s attempt to fight AIDS).

Humor has also been shown to increase levels of gamma interferon, a complex substance that plays an important role in the maturation of B cells, the growth of cytotoxic T cells, and the activation of NK cells.23 It also tells different components of the immune system when to become more active, and regulates the level of cooperation between cells of the immune system. Given the specific types of immunoenhancement resulting from humor discussed above, this effect on gamma interferon is to be expected.

Taken as a whole, it’s clear that there is something about humor and laughter that causes the immune system to “turn on” metabolically and do more effectively what it is designed to do–promote health and wellness in the face of internal or external threats.3

Sources:

1. Loma Linda University School of Medicine news, 2001 Loma Linda University
2. Nerenberg, Albert, Laughter as a cure for even the most serious illnesses, Canwest News Service, March 14, 2008
3. How Humor Contributes to Physical Health:, Nurses’ Learning Network
4. McGhee, PhD, Paul, The Laughter Remedy