“Laughter, the Best Medicine”

“A team of University of Maryland School of Medicine researchers, led by Dr. Michael Miller, has recently shown for the first time that laughter is linked to healthy function of blood vessels.” Another study by the University of Maryland School of Medical Center found that people with heart disease were forty percent less likely to laugh in situations compared to people the same age and without the disease. Miller found that people with heart disease laughed less in positive situations. People with the disease lack the optimistic perspective on life compared to people without the disease. Is a good dose of laughter a day able to keep your heart healthy? Nobody knows for sure why laughter helps protect the heart. We do know that laughter reduces stress. Too much stress will eventually cause fat and cholesterol build-up in the coronary arteries, which will lead to a heart attack (Murray 1). Heart disease is mostly caused by lack of exercise, smoking, and eating foods enriched with saturated fat. A pessimistic outlook on life may also cause the disease, but humor is difficult to study. In America, heart disease is the number one killer. Is the easiness of attaining humor another role in living a healthier lifestyle, one can really only find out for themselves (Murray 1). “Research suggests that happier people get less sick, explains the reassuringly down-to-earth immunologist Professor Luke O’Neill of Trinity College Dublin” (O’Connell 1). “Believe it or not, rats laugh. Yes, when the critters are not busy spreading plague or urinating in canals, they like to have a good old chuckle if you tickle them of when they play with their friends” (O’Connell 1). According to Rod A. Martin, there are four mechanisms that might relate humor to a healthier well-being. “First, laughter might produce physiological changes in various systems of the body, which may have beneficial effects on health” (Martin 216). Authors have suggested that laughter exercises and relaxes

Cited: Martin, R.A. “Is Laughter the Best Medicine? Humor, Laughter, and Physical Health.” Current Directions in Psychological Science Dec 2002: 216-220 O’Connell, Claire. “Laughter as best medicine.” Irish Times 1 Aug. 2006: 1-2 Murray, Michelle W. Feature Stories. University of Maryland Medical Center. 12 Nov. 2007 http://www.umm.edu/features/laughter.htm Bennett, Howard J. “Humor in Medicine.” Southern Medical Journal 96 (2003) 1257-61.