Even When You Don’t Feel Like Laughing…
Some years ago, Norman Cousins, then editor of the notable magazine, The Saturday Review (no longer published,) was diagnosed with a painful, rheumatologic disease that included significant pain, and a not very rosy outcome. Cousins took his treatment into his own hands, checked into a fancy hotel and spent his days watching funny, old movies like The Three Stooges, Laurel and Hardy and Abbot and Costello. The story of his remarkable recovery using laughter therapy is the topic of a book (Anatomy of an Illness) he later wrote.
Now, researchers at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore, using laughter-provoking movies to gauge the effect of emotions on heart health, have found that laughter is indeed linked to the healthy function of blood vessels. It seems that laughter causes the tissue that forms the inner lining of blood vessels, the endothelium, to dilate or expand in order to increase blood flow.
When the same group of volunteers was shown a movie that produced mental stress, their blood vessel lining developed a potentially unhealthy response call vasoconstriction, reducing blood flow. That finding adds evidence to earlier studies which suggested there was a connection between stress and the narrowing of blood vessels.
The recommendation is that we all try to laugh on a regular basis. Laughter is almost as good as aerobic activity. Thirty minutes of exercise three times a week and 15 minutes of laughter daily is probably very good for your heart.
Even though our work with clients at Seniors’ Choice at Home, can be heart-breaking at times, we in the office, and our care givers out with clients, find lots of opportunity to laugh and have fun. One of the skills that persons with memory loss often retain, is the ability to make a joke and to have fun. We like to think we make good use of our clients retained skills.
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