Laughter as Therapy Essay Example

Laughter as Therapy Essay Example Laughter as Therapy Paper Laughter as Therapy Paper Laughter As Therapy Naturally, we as a people dislike feeling bad and like feeling good. Two examples of common things that make us feel bad are sickness and sadness. Common remedies for those things are medicine and humor. Though medicine and humor seem different at first glance, they share very important commonalities; they make us feel good and are key influences on a culture. This connection between health and humor has intrigued scientists for years. Recently, scientists have begun seriously investigating the relationship between the two. More specifically, if laughter is capable of contributing to the field of medicine. Many scientists have reason to believe that laughter could have a significant effect as a therapeutic medicine, whether it be through the physical act of laughing, or through the effects of changing hormone levels. Therefore, the goal of this essay is to educate the readers on the development and experimentation of laughter used as therapeutic medicine in the past, present, and fut ure. Laughter is an age-old, natural human reaction to humor that elicits a feeling comparable with euphoria. For 2,000 years, people have been baffled by why laughter causes humans to feel so good. (Gorman, 2011) In fact, the benefits of humor and laughter are even recognized in Proverbs 17:22 of the Bible, â€Å"A cheerful heart does good like a medicine: but a broken spirit makes one sick.† (The Nurse’s Handbook of Complementary Therapies, 2001) Some cultures, such as the Mayans, have practiced humor in medicine for thousands of years. Specifically, the Mayan healer, Don Elijio Panti, whom lived until he was 103, was described as much of a clown as a doctor. Panti believed that a happy patient was a healthy patient. Without a positive attitude, the patient was less likely to recover from their sickness. He utilized humor techniques, such as making jokes, teasing, and telling stories with dancing and other body movements, to lighten the mood of his patients. Panti once sai d, â€Å"A persons spirit needs to be uplifted as much as the body needs to be healed. And without an uplifted spirit I dont think there is enough energy within the body or enough vital force for a person to properly and completely experience healing.† (Balick Lee, 2003) Many considerable strides have been made since the time of the Mayans. Today, scientists have reason to believe that laughter could be therapeutically beneficial in ways such as a relief from pain and stress, an improvement in immunity, and a useful tool for nurses in treating patients. (Nurse’s Handbook of Complementary Therapies, 2001) I will analyze these claims in the following three paragraphs. On September 13th, 2011, the New York Times published an article entitled â€Å"Scientists Hint at Why Laughter Feels So Good† by James Gorman that contained results of a pivotal experiment in the field of laughter studies conducted by Robin Dunbar, an evolutionary psychologist at Oxford University, and his colleagues. Dunbar and Co. conducted five studies in the laboratory by testing subjects’ pain tolerance after fits of laughter. Dunbar had his subjects watch â€Å"excerpts of comedy videos and neutral videos, or videos meant to promote good feeling but not laughter.† The comedy videos included excerpts from the popular television shows, â€Å"The Simpsons,† â€Å"Friends† and â€Å"South Park†. Neutral videos included a documentary on pet training and a program on golf. The videos meant to elicit good feelings, but not laughter, included excerpts from television shows about nature such as â€Å"Planet Earth† and â€Å"Jungles.â₠¬  They inflicted pain in their subjects via a blood pressure cuff, a freezing wine sleeve across the fore arm, or a demanding ski exercise. Participants were tested before and after watching a series of the aforementioned videos. When suffering the various inflicted pains subjects were instructed to indicate when the pain became unbearable. All events that occurred during these experiments were recorded. The results of the experiments by Dunbar and his colleagues showed that laughter increased pain tolerance, while ‘good feeling’ videos did not. These results confirm that laughter is a relief from pain. Though much more conclusive evidence is needed, one can speculate that laughter may be a door way into a new realm of pain medication. Lee Berk, a PhD and scientist of the 1980s, was interested physiological effects caused by fits of laughter. In his most famous study, Berk simply instructed ten healthy individuals to watch a 60-minute humorous video while he tracked their hormone levels. The control group did not watch a video of humorous nature. Surprisingly, he found that laughter significantly reduced the levels of three critical stress hormones. Cortisol (steroid hormone produce by the adrenal gland), epinephrine (also known as adrenaline), and dopac (metabolite of the neurotransmitter dopamine) decreased by 30, 70, and 38%, respectively. (Balick Lee, 2003) There was not a reduction in levels of stress hormones in the control group. Knowing that stress levels usually have an influence in an individuals immunity, Berk furthered his studies in psychoneuroimmunology by replicating his experiment and focusing on change in hormone levels associated with immunity. He and his associates found that laughter caused a significant increase in two hormones; beta-endorphins (chemicals which improve mood) by 27% and human growth hormone (chemical that helps optimize immunity) by 87%. (Balick Lee, 2003) There was not an increase observed in th e control group. His findings support the claim that laughter can reverse the negative effects of stress and cause an improvement in ones immune system. Though it may not be considered â€Å"therapeutic† by exact definition, humor is a technique constantly used by many nurses today for many purposes. Typically, nurses will use humor to ease the strange, anxious feeling patients sometimes experience in hospitals, to develop a therapeutic relationship between nurse and patient, and to positively influence hopefulness. (The Nurse’s Handbook of Complementary Therapies) For example, I have an aunt named Joan who is a nurse at Children’s Hospital in Chicago and, much like the Mayan healer Don Elijio Panti, uses humor as a tool when meeting her young patients for the first time. â€Å"Usually, they (patients) are very shy to start but once I introduce myself in a positive, humorous manner, I begin to gain their trust. A patient’s trust is imperative to a successful treatment by a nurse. By displaying a positive attitude, I instill the same positive, hopeful attitude in my patients†, says Joan. Some nurses have even gone so far as to allow clowns to aid them in their treatment of patients. Patients at the Babies and Childrens Hospital at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center (CPMC) in New York were lucky enough to be subjects of three studies that were funded by The Richard and Ilinda Rosenthal Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine at The Columbia  College of Physicians and Surgeons to learn about the effects of ‘clowning around’ with pediatric cancer and heart patients. Specially trained clowns, deemed the Clown Care Unit (CCU), were hired to aid researchers in their investigation of â€Å"the effect of clowns on decreasing physiological and psychological indicators of distress in children and adolescents undergoing cardiac catheterization†. (Balick Lee, 2003) Results showed decreases in observed child distress, child self-reported distress, and parent-rated distress when the clowns were present for the cardiac catheterization. As for the doctors performing the cardiac catheterization, they found the procedure significantly easier to perform when the clowns were present. In summary, nurses and doctors alike use humor on a daily basis to instill a feeling of hopefulness and to improve relations with their patients. The future of laughter therapy seems promising based on the history of the development of the science. After the connection between humor and health was realized thousands of years ago society has been making significant strides in the forward direction which will hopefully lead to a proven and regulated therapy for individuals who are ill, undergoing treatment, or recovering from a treatment. In order to accomplish an effective laughter therapy, doctors would need to administer a form of medication that contained the same chemicals released during laughter or recommend their patients to therapist that specialized in laughter therapy. In other words, laughter therapy could come in the natural form of humor via another human or artificially via a medication. The possibilities are endless. In conclusion, in the present scientific community there has been studies that yielded concrete results that support that laughter can improve health in the short term. Robert Dunbar and his colleagues proved that laughter can reduce sensitivity to pain in their tests using various techniques of inflicting pain in their subjects while they were instructed to watch comedic television shows. By relieving that stress, individuals will feel healthier in general. Finally, there has been record of doctors practicing laughter therapy as treatment for long-term ailments, specifically Mayan healer Don Elijio Panti. (describe article in more detail) In conclusion,  there is scientific evidence to support laughter improving short-term health by relieving stress in the individual. However, despite the fact that many ancient cultures practice laughter therapy for long term ailments, there is very little concrete scientific evidence that laughter could heal an individual that has been diagnosed with serious disease or condition. At most, laughter therapy can act as an aid to the individual to cope with a difficult healing and/or treatment processes [There is no word to explain the feeling after a gut-busting laugh. It is a natural high to say the least. Some scientists, like Robin Dunbar an evolutionary psychologist at Oxford University, believe that it is the physical act of laughing that produces the pleasurable feeling. Others, like Lee Berk, PhD and a pioneer in laughter studies, believe the answer lies our hormones. (add information on book source)] The article, written by Micheal J. Balick and Roberta Lee and published in the scholarly journal entitled Alternative Therapies in Health and Medicine, discusses the role of laughter in traditional practice and its pertinence in the current medical field. Balick and Lee incorporate and analyze a series of essays regarding lessons and observations of humor in the medical community. an aid in recovery from surgery, a cure for melancholy, physical exercise, to restore equilibrium, to use in treatment of the sick, to help digestion, and to stimulate the internal organs. News Article:nytimes.com/2011/09/14/science/14laughter.html?_r=1src=meref=science Scholarly Journal: Healing with HA! http://search.proquest.com.proxy2.cl.msu.edu/docview/204826776/131EA152F382DD5362B/2?accountid=12598 Book:The Nurse’s Handbook of Complementary Therapies