Laughter is the Best Medicine

  Ever
since an automobile accident left Dinesh Doshi paralyzed from head to toe
on his right side, he has dealt with his condition the best way he can.

   He laughs.

   "It relaxes me," said the Naperville, Ill., resident,
who received treatment at Marianjoy Rehabilitation Hospital and Clinics
in Wheaton and continues his exercise therapy at the Wheaton Park District.

   When author Norman Cousins argued in his 1976 article
"Anatomy of an Illness" — later published as a book — that the
comedic Marx Brothers did more than any pill to alleviate the pain associated
with his spinal disease, scientists began searching in earnest for empirical
evidence to support the axiom, "Laughter is the best medicine."

   What they’ve found is no laughing matter, said Barbara
Moran, a psychiatric nurse with Good Samaritan Hospital’s Midwest Institute
for Geropsychiatric Services.

   "We already know what stress does to the body," she said,
citing heart disease, stroke and hypertension. "Now we’re beginning to understand
what humor does to the body. We would do well to take laughter more seriously."

   For more than 20 years, William F. Fry Jr., a Stanford
University professor of psychology, has been researching the positive physiological
effects of laughter. A good, hearty laugh increases our heart rates, dilates
our cardiovascular systems and increases production of endorphins, a natural
pain killer thought to stimulate the immune system.

   Laughing causes our abdominal muscles and diaphragm to
convulse, giving our internal organs a stimulating "massage." At the same
time, our eyes begin to water, and studies have shown that stress hormones
exit the body through tears.

   Owing, perhaps, to these physiological responses, a bout
of full-body laughter often diminishes our perception of pain, said Moran,
whose lecture on humor and aging is one of her most widely requested.

   Just
as Cousins didn’t rely on pills to manage his pain, a group of 10 or so
participants in the Wheaton Park District’s new Laughing Club don’t rely
on jokes to reap the benefits of laughter. Thrice weekly in the Community
Center’s Parks Plus area, the Laughing Club gathers for 15 minutes of belly-rippling
giggles and guffaws. The concept was introduced to fitness manager Mike
Andrews by Doshi, who brought it from India, where laughing clubs are all
the rage.

   Andrews leads the group through a series of simulated
laughs, such as hearty laughter, silent laughter, dancing laughter, cocktail
laughter and chicken laughter. Although the laughter is initially simulated,
it doesn’t take long for the whole group to bust out in genuine hysterics.

   "There isn’t any sense to it at all, but everybody’s doing
the same thing and it just makes you feel good," said Joe Bricker of Wheaton.

   "It’s contagious," adds Winnie Dawson, owner of MedSearch
health-coaching services in Wheaton. She plans to use the concept in her
corporate stress-management seminars.

   "Humor is contagious, it’s infectious, yet it’s also good
for your health," Moran said. "How many things can you say that about?"

TIMES AND HUMOR

–
Moshe Waldoks
"Since
I came to the White House, I got two hearing aids, a colon operation,
skin cancer, a prostate operation, and I was shot. The damn thing is I’ve
never felt better in my life."

–
Former President Ronald Reagan
"You
can turn painful situations through laughter. If you can find the humor
in anything — even poverty — you can survive it."

–
Bill Cosby
"A person
without a sense of humor is like a wagon without springs — jolted
by every pebble in the road."

–
Henry Ward Beecher
"At
my age it’s nice to have birthday parties. All my friends can stand around
the cake and keep warm."

–
George Burns
"There
are two things that everyone must face sooner or later: a camera and reality.
A smile is a big help in both instances."

–
Anonymous
"You
don’t stop laughing because you grow old; you grow old because you stop
laughing."

–
Michael Pritchard
 "This
wallpaper is terrible. One of us has to go."

–
Oscar Wilde on his death bed