Mid Semester exam N°2
TEXT:
It’s not a noise that you usually hear coming from a hospital room. “Ha ha haa! Hee hee!” You open the door to see twelve patients – all sick, several in wheelchairs – tickling each other with long balloons and laughing as hard as it’s possible to laugh.
Joining in with the fun is Dr Tim Crick, and this is his weekly session of laughter therapy at Leeds City Hospital. The aim of these 30-minute sessions is not only to help patients forget that they are sick, according to Dr Crick: “Laughter gives the lungs and the muscles a good workout, which is important in long-term patients. But more than this, I believe that laughter can actually speed up recuperation from sickness.”
Laughter therapy’s recent history begins in the 1980s, when writer Norman Cousins described in Anatomy of an Illness how he used comedy films to successfully give himself some relief from a painful medical condition. This promoted academics to begin looking at the physiological effects of laughter. The spread of therapeutic “laughter clubs” began in India in the 1990s with Dr Madan Kataria, who began taking patients for sessions in a public park.
So is there any science behind the claims that laughter speeds recovery? Certainly, it triggers a range of reactions in the body. Some studies have shown that the ability to use and respond to humour may raise the level of infection-fighting antibodies, and boost the level of immune cells. A recent study with diabetics showed that laughter helped control blood sugar levels. And research at the University of Maryland showed that laughter helped blood flow by keeping blood vessels relaxed.
For Dr Crick, it is in laughter’s ability to relax s that its healing power lies. “After a good laugh, our muscles relax, our mind stops focusing on pain or negative thoughts, and endorphins start to flow in our brains. It puts the body in a situation where it can begin to heal itself. When we are healthy we can achieve this state through physical exercise,
It’s not a noise that you usually hear coming from a hospital room. “Ha ha haa! Hee hee!” You open the door to see twelve patients – all sick, several in wheelchairs – tickling each other with long balloons and laughing as hard as it’s possible to laugh.
Joining in with the fun is Dr Tim Crick, and this is his weekly session of laughter therapy at Leeds City Hospital. The aim of these 30-minute sessions is not only to help patients forget that they are sick, according to Dr Crick: “Laughter gives the lungs and the muscles a good workout, which is important in long-term patients. But more than this, I believe that laughter can actually speed up recuperation from sickness.”
Laughter therapy’s recent history begins in the 1980s, when writer Norman Cousins described in Anatomy of an Illness how he used comedy films to successfully give himself some relief from a painful medical condition. This promoted academics to begin looking at the physiological effects of laughter. The spread of therapeutic “laughter clubs” began in India in the 1990s with Dr Madan Kataria, who began taking patients for sessions in a public park.
So is there any science behind the claims that laughter speeds recovery? Certainly, it triggers a range of reactions in the body. Some studies have shown that the ability to use and respond to humour may raise the level of infection-fighting antibodies, and boost the level of immune cells. A recent study with diabetics showed that laughter helped control blood sugar levels. And research at the University of Maryland showed that laughter helped blood flow by keeping blood vessels relaxed.
For Dr Crick, it is in laughter’s ability to relax s that its healing power lies. “After a good laugh, our muscles relax, our mind stops focusing on pain or negative thoughts, and endorphins start to flow in our brains. It puts the body in a situation where it can begin to heal itself. When we are healthy we can achieve this state through physical exercise,