Laughing is the Best Medicine

Laughing has major health benefits.  One study found that people who rarely or never laugh have a 21% higher ration of heart disease and 60% higher ratio of stroke.  Children typically laugh on average 300 x per day while adults only laugh 17 times per day.  Have you heard of Norman Cousins?  He is worth googling.  He has written two books concerning health and laughter (Anatomy of an Illness and The Healing Heart).  Norman writes about his remarkable recovery from a severe and life-threatening disease of the connective tissue called degenerative collagen illness. He was hospitalized in 1964 with severe pain, high fever and near-paralysis of the legs, neck and back.  The key to his recovery, he said, was a powerful drug called laughter.  "I made the joyous discovery that 10 minutes of genuine belly laughter had an anesthetic effect and would give me at least two hours of pain-free sleep," he wrote.  Flat on his back in a New York hospital, Cousins persuaded the nurses to read him excerpts from the humor columns of E.B. White and Max Eastman and show him "Candid Camera" reruns and old Marx Brothers movies.  The New England Journal of Medicine even printed a six-page article by Mr. Cousins exclaiming the curative benefits of megadoses of laughter and Vitamin C. The article drew some 5,000 letters, more than anything Cousins, a well-known author had ever received about any of his previous writings.

Author

Dr J. Zimmerman, Chiropractor Dr. Zimmerman is a practicing chiropractor from Galloway, NJ with 30 years of chiropractic practice.