Friday, February 24, 2006
RxLaughter
Here’s a wake-up call for more laughter in your life.
Watching TV studio audiences smile and look at each other after laughing at the sitcoms she produced, Roseanne and Home Improvement, Sherry Hilber became inspired to seek funding to discover whether laughter is, in fact, good medicine.
Hilber founded RxLaughter, a nonprofit project to fund a five-year study at the University of Southern California (UCLA), led by psychiatrist Margaret Stuber and Margaret Stuber, MD. Their first funding came, not from government, but from the Fox Network, the home of comedy Central.
Twenty years ago, Norman Cousins brought wide attention to the “laughter cure” in his book, Anatomy of an Illness, in which he described his remarkable recovery from a crippling connective tissue disease with a regimen that -- among other therapies -- included laughing at Marx Brothers movies.
Now, at UCLA they are studying the nervous and immune system effects of laughter such as heart rate, blood pressure, and the presence of the stress hormone cortisol in saliva, before and after the funny videos.
Already they have encouraging results from a first test.
Healthy kids were wired up, then asked to do something harmless, but uncomfortable. They were asked to put one of their hands in cold water, at 10 degrees Celsius, and keep it there for as long as they can, up to a maximum of three minutes.
On average, kids are able to hold their arms in the freezing water for
only about 87 seconds. But if they are shown funny videos during the
painful procedure, their heart rate, blood pressure, and breathing - all
their vital signs - get better, stronger, so they're able to put up with
the pain for 125 seconds, a full 40 percent longer.
Afterwards, the researchers sampled their saliva for the stress hormone Cortisol and found that laughing helped their bodies recover from the ordeal much faster.
The president of the American Association for Therapeutic Humor, Steven Sultanoff, PhD, is confident that the overall study will show that laughter helps healing, "Humor and distressing emotion cannot occupy the same psychological space."
Why not bring your favorite comedy videos to your family reunions?
Watching TV studio audiences smile and look at each other after laughing at the sitcoms she produced, Roseanne and Home Improvement, Sherry Hilber became inspired to seek funding to discover whether laughter is, in fact, good medicine.
Hilber founded RxLaughter, a nonprofit project to fund a five-year study at the University of Southern California (UCLA), led by psychiatrist Margaret Stuber and Margaret Stuber, MD. Their first funding came, not from government, but from the Fox Network, the home of comedy Central.
Twenty years ago, Norman Cousins brought wide attention to the “laughter cure” in his book, Anatomy of an Illness, in which he described his remarkable recovery from a crippling connective tissue disease with a regimen that -- among other therapies -- included laughing at Marx Brothers movies.
Now, at UCLA they are studying the nervous and immune system effects of laughter such as heart rate, blood pressure, and the presence of the stress hormone cortisol in saliva, before and after the funny videos.
Already they have encouraging results from a first test.
Healthy kids were wired up, then asked to do something harmless, but uncomfortable. They were asked to put one of their hands in cold water, at 10 degrees Celsius, and keep it there for as long as they can, up to a maximum of three minutes.
On average, kids are able to hold their arms in the freezing water for
only about 87 seconds. But if they are shown funny videos during the
painful procedure, their heart rate, blood pressure, and breathing - all
their vital signs - get better, stronger, so they're able to put up with
the pain for 125 seconds, a full 40 percent longer.
Afterwards, the researchers sampled their saliva for the stress hormone Cortisol and found that laughing helped their bodies recover from the ordeal much faster.
The president of the American Association for Therapeutic Humor, Steven Sultanoff, PhD, is confident that the overall study will show that laughter helps healing, "Humor and distressing emotion cannot occupy the same psychological space."
Why not bring your favorite comedy videos to your family reunions?
