A man rushed into a veterinarian’s office carrying his limp, lifeless dog. The vet examined the animal and told the man the dog was dead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The man asked if there was any way the doctor could revive the dog. The doctor left the room and returned with a cat, who sniffed the dog from head to tail then looked up at the vet and meowed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Sorry,”\nsaid the doctor. “There’s nothing I can do.”
\n“Thanks for trying,” said the man with a sigh. “How much do I\nowe you?”
\n“Three hundred and fifty dollars,” replied the doctor.
\n“Three hundred and fifty dollars! Just to tell me my dog is dead?”
\n“Well,” said the doctor, “it was 50 for the office visit. The\nother 300 is for the CAT scan.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Whether the above joke\nmade you laugh or groan, it lightened your mood. And if you had been in pain,\nmany scientists agree, it would have eased the hurtat least temporarily.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A fresh take on an old idea<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The notion that laughter is good for the body has been around for thousands of yearscertainly as far back as the Old Testament. Proverbs 17:22<\/strong> says, “A cheerful heart is good medicine, but a crushed spirit dries up the bones.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Seventeenth century English physician Dr. Thomas Sydenham<\/strong> remarked, “The arrival of a good clown exercises more beneficial influence upon the health of a town than of twenty asses laden with drugs.” Or as Groucho Marx put it, “A clown is like aspirin, only he works twice as fast.”<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n How do you get a sweet\n80-year-old lady to say the F word? Get another sweet little 80-year-old lady\nto yell BINGO!<\/p>\n\n\n\n The value of laughter\nin helping to relieve pain began to attract significant attention in the 1980s\nwhen Dr. Norman Cousins in his book Anatomy of an Illness described how\nwatching Marx Brother movies and reading humorous books and articles helped him\nrecover from a life-threatening tissue disease.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Cousins made it a\npoint to enjoy a hearty belly laugh several times a day. He claimed that a few\nminutes of laughter gave him an hour or more of pain-free sleep. As a result,\nmany pain centers around the country began to use humor therapy to reduce the\nlevel of pain medication needed by patients.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There was even a movie\nmade about real-life doctor Patch Adams, a physician who was totally committed\nto making his patients laugh as an essential part of his treatment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n How does laughter reduce pain?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Clinical staff\nconsistently note that the primary benefit of humor therapy is that it serves\nas a diversionary tacticthat is, it takes a patient’s mind off the pain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A study published in the Journal of Holistic Nursing<\/strong> reported that patients who were told one-liners after surgery and before painful medication was administered perceived less pain when compared to patients who didn’t get a dose of humor as part of their therapy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Why don’t bunnies make noise when they have sex?<\/strong> Because they have cotton balls.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Another study, this\none published in the Journal of Applied Behavioral Analysis, found that young\ngirls with burns who were shown cartoons during very painful hydrotherapy said\nthey felt less pain than similar patients who were not exposed to cartoons during\nthe same procedure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A second theory of how\nlaughter helps relieve pain is that it triggers the release of endorphins, the\nchemicals in the brain that can make us feel good.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Natural healing<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Around the same time that the Cousins book appeared, the departing editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, Dr. Franz Ingelfinger<\/strong>, noted that 85 percent of all human illnesses are curable by the body’s own healing system. Building a positive focus in your life which includes a regular dose of laughter can play a key role in supporting the body’s ability to do just that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Laughing, in fact, has been shown to increase the body’s natural killer cells and T-cells, which are types of cells that attack foreign material in our bodies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Laughter also keeps away negative emotions such as anxiety and depression, which tend to weaken the immune system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Why are they called “hemorrhoids<\/strong>“. They should be called “asteroids<\/strong>“?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Research on\nstress-related hormones and humor has shown that laughter reduces at least four\nof the hormones associated with the stress response, including epinephrine,\ncortisol, dopac, and growth hormone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Some studies have\nindicated that laughter improves lung capacity and with improved lung capacity\ncome improved oxygen levels in the blood, thereby alleviating ischemic pain or\npain do to lack of oxygen-rich blood. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Internal jogging<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n According to Dr. William Fry<\/strong> from Stanford University, one minute of laughter is equal to 10 minutes on the rowing machine. Laughter is a kind of “internal jogging<\/strong>” that exercises our heart and reduces blood pressure in the same way as does standard aerobic exercise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This kind of laughter exercise is well suited to sedentary people and those who are confined to a bed or wheelchair.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What did One saggy boob say to the other saggy boob?<\/strong> If we drop any lower people are gonna think we are nuts!<\/p>\n\n\n\n If you keep the Huh\nHuh Huh – going for long periods of time and increase the number of times you\ndo it while at the same time shrugging your upper body you will keep the oxygen\nflowing to the cells that need it and you will be giving what you body need to\nbegin to reduce your pain and speed healing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n