Humor and Health

Humor is any experience that invokes laughter and amusement. Humor however is relative. What invokes laughter to a group of people may bring about totally different results to others. Such variables may include geographical location, culture, maturity, and level of education, environment, and degree of common sense.

Regardless of the relativity of humor, humorous experiences have certain root components:

• Humor appeals to the emotions. The experience triggers functional areas in the brain that automatically invokes laughter.
• Humor mimics reality. E.g. dressing like a wizard, and other types of Halloween characters.
• Contradiction. E.g. wearing a pair of pants with one of the legs short, a man dressed like a woman, wearing shoes with different colors.
• Exaggeration. E.g. a clown with a long nose.
• Jokes and unusual expressions as seen on comedies

What is the relationship between humor and health?

A merry heart doeth good like medicine: but a broken spirit drieth the bones

Proverbs 17:22

The above scripture, authored by the creator of the human body, depicts two opposite scenarios about humor and the lack thereof.

A merry heart refers to a humorous experience. This part of the scripture compares a merry heart to medicine. Medicine, as we know, is used to heal diseases. While medicine cannot heal all diseases, a merry heart, according to the above scripture seems to be capable of curing all diseases. The second part talks about a broken spirit (sadness, depression, discouragement, disappointment). Dry bones as we can all imagine are easily broken and therefore cannot support the human body.

Many  people do not believe in the healing power of humor, but specific medical theories, have identified a positive link between improved health, increased life expectancy, and overall well-being to humor. At the 121st Annual meeting of The American Psychological Society, it was reported that humorous experiences reduces the production of harmful stress related hormones (cortisol, epinephrine, and dopac). In 1989, the Journal of the American Medical Association published an article wherein the author stated that humor carried out regularly for extended periods can increase the quality of life of patients with chronic illnesses.

In the DVD titled “The Secret”, a young lady gave an account of how she got healed from breast cancer with no chemotherapy. After her diagnosis she resorted to watching comedies everyday. According to her, doing otherwise would create more stress, and this was one thing she could not afford. It was obvious from the DVD that comedies brought a lot of laughter to her. After three months, her doctor declared that she had been completely cured.

In addition to reducing the production of stress related hormones, humor also increases the production endorphins and white blood cells. Endorphins are the body’s natural mood elevating chemicals and painkillers. White blood cells are the body’s defense against the invasion of disease forming organisms and other unwanted foreign substances.

In conclusion, humor is a God given mechanism for health promotion, particularly at such a stressful time like this when health care is almost unaffordable.