[Previous entry: "Finding A Voice"] [Next entry: "Personality Types A, B & C?"]
07/23/2007: "Laughter is the Best Medicine"
In our house the most popular TiVo Season Pass has got to be America’s Funniest Home Videos. I often hear Nick laughing hysterically and constantly throughout the program. He rarely misses one. Second place goes to John Stewart’s Daily Show. I usually find myself laughing and smiling throughout the half hour. When I channel surf, I will most likely end up on Comedy Central watching a stand-up comedian. And this past couple weeks Jeanette has been reading the book, We’re Just Like You, Only Prettier. I have been distracted by her constant outburst of laughter almost every other page.
Did you know that in humans, laughter predates speech by perhaps millions of years? Apparently they used it as communication before they could talk. “Infants laugh almost from birth," says Steve Wilson, MA, CSP, a psychologist and laugh therapist. "In fact, people who are born blind and deaf still laugh. So we know it's not a learned behavior. Humans are hardwired for laughter."
Every once in awhile you read and article or hear a brief news blurb about the health benefits of laughter. Several studies, one published in Journal of the American Medical Association, cite that laughter can strengthen your immune system. Research, conducted at Graz University in Austria, showed that laughter therapy helped people recovering from strokes lower their blood pressure. The Experimental Biology 2006 conference in the United States recently say they have now shown that merely anticipating "mirthful laughter" before watching a funny video has significant neuroendocrine effects. This list goes on and on claiming that laughter will help you live longer and healthier.
I was raised with two brothers and three cousins, all of us boys, all within 5 years of each other. Growing up with this gang, there were plenty of laughs. While cleaning out some saved images on my computer I came across the one below that I had found on the Internet. I saved it because it makes me laugh every time I see it. Must be a cousin thing.
