Health
Matters
Laughter truly the best medicine?
Q. Why do ducks have webbed feet?
A. So they can stamp out fires.
Q. Why do elephants have round feet?
A. So they can stamp out burning ducks!
If you just reacted with a laugh, a chuckle, a smirk or smile,
you could be on a path to better health.
Mirthful laughter has been known to play a role in overall personal
well being and even make sick people feel better. Laughter activates
the chemistry of the will to live and increases our capacity to
fight disease. Laughing relaxes the body and reduces problems
associated with high blood pressure, stroke, arthritis and ulcers.
In short, a good hearty laugh can foster instant relaxation and
make you feel good.
In the traditional field of medicine, there are rigorous standards
that need to be met before something is considered “proven.”
For example, I’m sure that after more than fifty years of
clinical study, there still are people out there debating the
correlation between smoking tobacco and the development of cancer
or heart disease. So, to say the least, at first blush, traditional
medicine may have responded to the connection of laughter and
improved health as well—a joke.
In the 1960s, researchers at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester (Minnesota)
gave personality tests to 447 people to identify optimists and
pessimists. Thirty years later, they examined the health of those
people and found that the optimists had lived longer, suffered
fewer ailments and generally enjoyed life more than those with
a grim outlook.
Researchers at Loma Linda University School of Medicine believe
that because a patient is more than just a disease, it’s
important to look at the whole person when providing medical treatment.
The “humor therapy movement” may have begun when the
school’s late 1970s studies on exercise showed laughter not
only boosted the immune system, it decreased stress hormones in
the body. Research at Stanford University targeted the positive
effects of laughter on blood pressure and heart rate.
The Loma Linda University Cancer Institute has begun stocking
humor materials for patients to check out. University researchers
doctors Berk and Bittman have developed a humor profile called
SMILE (Subjective Multidimensional Interactive Laughter Evaluation),
which is based on the idea that each person has a different humor
preference. Participants taking the SMILE profile answer a few
questions about how they’re feeling and what types of humor
they enjoy, and then receive a “humor prescription.”
Imagine receiving an Rx containing a list of suggested reading
materials, videotapes and audiotapes that the person might enjoy.
Two names quickly come to mind at the mention of a “Humor
Therapy Movement”: Dr. Hunter “Patch” Adams and
author Norman Cousins.
Adams, is a physician, social activist, citizen diplomat, professional
clown, performer and author. His story was told in the 1998 film
“Patch Adams,” with actor Robin Williams in the lead
role. His life path takes him to medical school, where he finds
a callous philosophy that advocates an arms-length attitude to
the patients that does not address their emotional needs or the
quality of their lives. Adams is determined to find a better way
to help them.
Adams is noted for his beliefs that the health of an individual
cannot be separated from the health of the family, community and
the world. Equally essential is the necessity of personal interaction
with patients. Each year, he organizes a group of volunteers from
around the world to travel to various countries where they dress
as clowns to bring hope and joy to orphans, patients and the community.
Marquette is home to a Patch Adams-trained professional clown—Bill
Waters. According to Waters, his first awareness of the importance
of laughter in life came to him during his first career. Serving
as a professor in the criminal justice department at NMU, Waters
made a career altering observation. While humor was evident in
the field of criminal justice practice such as a police station
as a coping mechanism, it was scarcely found in the academic setting.
Waters set off to become a mechanism of mirth and has traveled
the world with Patch Adams teams.
Noted author Cousins also served as adjunct professor of medical
humanities for the School of Medicine at the University of California—Los
Angeles, where he did research on the biochemistry of human emotions.
He long believed they were the key to a human being’s success
in fighting illness. It was a belief he maintained, even as he
battled heart disease and arthritis. He fought both by taking
massive doses of Vitamin C and, according to him, by training
himself to laugh. Cousins wrote a collection of best-selling nonfiction
books on illness and healing, as well as a 1980 autobiographical
memoir, Human Options: An Autobiographical Notebook. His personal
health struggles are detailed in the book and movie, Anatomy of
an Illness.
Told that he had little chance of surviving, Cousins developed
a recovery program incorporating megadoses of Vitamin C, along
with a positive attitude, love, faith, hope and laughter induced
by Marx Brothers films.
“I made the joyous discovery that ten minutes of genuine
belly laughter had an anesthetic effect and would give me at least
two hours of pain-free sleep,” he said. “When the pain-killing
effect of the laughter wore off, we would switch on the motion
picture projector again and not infrequently, it would lead to
another pain-free interval.”
Research aside, doesn’t it feel good to laugh from the top
of your head to the tip of your toes?
Time for a laughter break from Henny Youngman:
“Doctor I have a ringing in my ears.”
“Don’t answer!”
The doctor says, “You’ll live to be sixty!”
“I am sixty!”
“See, what did I tell you?”
You might think about adding humor to your next workout. Laughing
uses more muscles at one time than any other activity. In fact,
fifteen muscles are required just to smile. Laughing while eating
may be a bit messy, but is known to help with digestion.
According to performer/educator Michael Pritchard, “You don’t
stop laughing because you grow old. You grow old because you stop
laughing.” Research estimates a child laughs up to ninety-five
percent more times a day than an adult.
Humor has many positive universal applications in life. It can
help diffuse conflicts, redirect actions of discipline, serve
as a coping mechanism and improve numerous communication objectives.
The dark side of humor is that it can be harmful and hurtful if
not used as originally intended. Can you relate to the feelings
of being the “butt of a joke?” In an effort to perhaps
salve the wounds of hurtful humor, how many times growing up did
you hear, “We’re laughing with you, not at you”?
Thus, there is appropriate and inappropriate humor. Timing and
setting have a lot to do with it. You may not think of church
as a setting for a good laugh; however, our pastor often has made
us laugh and acknowledges that humor is very much present in his
ministry.
Like most health improvement behaviors, it seems there are barriers
to engaging in healthy laughter, such as “I don’t tell
jokes well,” “I can’t remember the punch-line”
or “I’m just not funny.” Counter those notions
with a joke book, laugh-a-day calendars, recordings of comedians,
or asking children whether if they have heard any good jokes lately.
Here’s one:
Q. How do you catch a unique rabbit?
A. Unique up on him.
Q. How do you catch a tame rabbit?
A. The tame way. Unique up on him.
We can’t end without one of these:
Knock-knock!
Who’s there?
Candace.
Candace who?
Candace be the last knock-knock joke?
While it is comforting to know that research does support improving
your health through positive outlook and laughter, it’s also
good to know you don’t need a prescription other than one
you can write for yourself.
—Leslie Bek
Preventing epidemics: the
things of movies
What’s the worse thing you can think of from
a health viewpoint? It’s been interesting reading the Marquette
Mining Journal’s “90 Years Ago” news clips about
the 1918-19 influenza epidemics and the trouble it caused the
community. Still, while that bug killed more people than any other
virus since recorded time (forty million people), we humans made
it through that epidemic.
From now until 2012, you’ll begin to hear terms like Armageddon,
the end of time, etc. The end of the human race would appear to
me to be a pretty bad day. It seems the Ancient Mayan calendar,
which began on August 11, 3114 BC, abruptly ends its thirteenth
cycle on December 21, 2012, which is the Winter Solstice that
year. Is that enough to say that we won’t be around on December
22, 2012?
Doomsday scenarios are big business or a way to comprehend terrible
health calamities and they always have been. The Fourth Horseman
of the Apocalypse was supposed to have visited London during 1664-65
Bubonic Plague epidemics that wiped out a good proportion of its
residents. The past millennium celebration was supposed to be
doomsville for computers—and us, by extension.
The recent Will Smith movie, I am Legend is set in 2012. The premise
of the movie is that a scientist working on a cure for cancer
released by accident a killer disease that caused humans to kill
themselves. Talk about a nasty virus.
The public health community has been working on methods to help
postpone our extinction fairly successfully. One excellent example
is the now twenty-year experience of the Marquette County Health
Department working on the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV),
the bug that causes AIDS. The first World AIDS Day occurred in
1988. At the same time, our health department received a small
grant to begin work on this disease in the U.P.
In 1981, the AIDS (Autoimmune Deficiency Syndrome) epidemic began
with a bang. Young people were dying mysteriously in ever-increasing
numbers. In Michigan that year, there were four cases diagnosed,
with two deaths. By 1995, there were 1,062 AIDS diagnoses with
more than 900 deaths. It was causing a lot of fear in the public.
Laura Fredrickson, the health department HIV/AIDS coordinator,
notes that the health department, Community Mental Health (now
Pathways) and MGH worked collaboratively to bring a Continuum
of Care Clinic (COC) for AIDS treatment and prevention to the
U.P. It was housed at MGH with that first grant in 1989. Dr. Jeffery
Gephardt was the physician who worked with clients at the health
department. The COC program has a long standing relationship with
the Infectious Disease Specialists at MGH, including Dr. Gephardt.
The health department works with office staff to coordinate care.
This helps address medical, social, emotional or financial needs
at the same time.
Fredrickson’s role is to help people living in the U.P. with
HIV reduce many barriers they face. The primary focus is getting
clients to medical care and maintaining effective treatment. The
biggest barriers continue to be lack of insurance and the distance
to medical appointments. There is one Infectious Disease Office
in the U.P., with three specialists providing care. Some clients
travel more than three hours to get to appointments. The COC program
has funding available to help offset some of these costs. Medication
costs also are a huge expense; the program helps clients access
resources such as Medicaid, Medicare and the Michigan AIDS Drug
Assistance program.
Fredrickson reports that last year, as of October, there were
519 new HIV cases, with 366 new AIDS diagnoses and fifty deaths
in Michigan with sixty-eight cases in the U.P. Fortunately, it’s
not as lethal as in 1995, with many new medicines available. There
are twenty-seven different medications used in combination to
treat HIV. The medications are used to manage the illness by stopping
the reproduction of the virus in the body. In 1981, there was
only one medication and it wasn’t very effective.
Fredrickson said this is a two-edged sword in that it has made
prevention work more difficult. People mistakenly think the virus
is gone, or not as dangerous. Thus, the prevention message of
safe sex or sharing needles if using drugs often is ignored, leading
to new cases every year. HIV still is a very serious illness and
the medication can be difficult to take because of side effects,
and is not guaranteed to work because of increased resistance.
Fredrickson has many clients living with HIV in the U.P. that
she reports are concerned about confidentiality and are very private
about their health concerns. Newly diagnosed clients are afraid
and usually anxious about their future. Fredrickson is pleased
that clients tell her the COC program has been a lifeline to them,
helping them deal with a serious lifelong threatening illness.
Some clients have been living with HIV for more than twenty years.
The county is lucky to have public health workers such as Fredrickson.
Media attention happens when bad health calamities occur, but
when the media goes home after the last scare, the public health
worker stays on the job. Good thing too, as most of us would like
to wake up on December 22, 2012. For details, call Fredrickson
at 475-7651.
—George Sedlacek
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