Laughter and healing article - Seattle Times

Seattle Times
Astrid Pujari, MD
Column for: Feb 17, 2008

Q: I have breast cancer, and my friend told me that laughing can help my immune system and fight the cancer. Is that true?

A: We all feel better after we laugh. So it makes sense that people are getting more interested in studying the effect of humor on health. 

One recent study of 33 healthy women found that those who watched a funny movie and laughed liberally had lower self reported stress and increased natural killer cell activity afterwards. (Sounds a lot more entertaining than most of the studies I read.)

In contrast, the women in the control group who watched a tourism video instead didn’t have that response. Natural killer cells are part of a large team of cells which compose the immune system, and help fight cancer and viruses. So in theory, boosting their activity may help your results with cancer treatment – though the proof is still not definitive.

There are a few caveats to this study. One is that it was small. The second is that people who watched the funny movie but didn’t laugh didn’t get any benefit. So the bottom line is that if you want to get health benefits from watching a funny movie, give yourself permission to laugh!

In fact, there have actually been several other studies looking at the effect of humor on immune function. Most of them have shown that laughing boosts natural killer cell activity, with a few exceptions. In general, though, the studies are small and not always the best design.

That being said, I think this is a good time to acknowledge the value of common sense. Sometimes medicine gets so caught up in proving things with scientific studies that we lose the forest through the trees. I remember one research article I read saying something to the effect that (and I am paraphrasing here) although humor is often used for healing, there is little scientific evidence to support these types of claims.

It reminds me of the time someone did a review of all the scientific literature, and published a study saying that we didn’t have enough data to prove that if you jumped out of a flying plane, you needed a parachute.

The fact is we can’t do studies on everything. As a nation, and a world, we have neither the financial resources nor the time to do a “double blind randomized control trial” on every question we have. Given that, the ideal would be to prioritize our money for interventions which have the highest risk – which in my opinion, would include many of our conventional medical approaches.

Laughter, on the other hand, is about as low risk as you can go. And it’s the rare human being who hasn’t experienced its cathartic power. So regardless of how many studies have been done on laughter, I think it’s a safe bet to try.

Resources:

Worldlaughtertour.com

Harborview Medical Center – therapeutic laughter sessions

If menstrual cramps are a concern, I definitely recommend trying fish oil, in addition to calcium and magnesium. Usually, I start with 2 capsules of fish oil per day. I have seen this be very effective for many women. It can take about 2 cycles to work, because it takes time for the types of fats in the cell membranes of your body to switch over, so don’t give up if you don’t see results right away.