Healing Through Humor

Healing through Humor

Sing for joy, O heavens! Rejoice, O earth! Burst into song, O mountains! For the LORD has comforted his people and will have compassion on them in their suffering.

Isaiah 49:13

Laughter has important physiological effects on the body. Laughter is good medicine. Modern research indicates that people with a sense of humor have fewer symptoms of physical illness than those who are less humorous. This idea, however, is nothing new. Since King Solomon’s time, people have known about and applied the healing benefits of humor. Proverbs 17:22 tells us, “A merry heart does good, like medicine” (NKJV). And as the French philosopher Voltaire wrote, “The art of medicine consists of amusing the patient while nature cures the disease.”

In spite of its historical legacy, the healing power of laughter was not taken seriously by the scientific world until Norman Cousins, former editor of Saturday Review and subsequent professor at UCLA’s School of Medicine, wrote about his life-changing experience with humor. As he reported in his book Anatomy of an Illness, laughter helped turn the tide of a serious collagen disease. “I made the joyous discovery,” Cousins reported, “that ten minutes of genuine belly laughter had an anesthetic effect and would give me at least two hours of pain-free sleep.” He surrounded himself with Marx Brothers films and Candid Camera videos. He also checked out of the hospital and moved into a hotel where, as he says, he could “laugh twice as hard at half the price.”

Cousins called laughter “inner jogging” because every system in our body gets a workout when we have a hearty laugh. Laboratory studies support Cousins’s hunches. Our cardiovascular and respiratory systems, for example, benefit more from twenty seconds of robust laughter than from three minutes of exercise on a rowing machine. Through laughter, muscles release tension, and neurochemicals are released into the blood stream, creating the same feelings that long-distance joggers experience as “runner’s high.”^a

What amuses you as a couple? Is there some equivalent of Cousins’s comedy videos that you could surround yourselves with on some kind of a regular basis? Brainstorm your options together today. Make it a point to maintain a sense of playfulness and humor together. You might even think of it as a workout for your soul!^b

Laughter is like a shock absorber that eases the blows of life.

—Barbara Johnson

^a 89

^b 90