Humor for the Health of It!

Laughter is good medicine for the body and soul. Health promotion and wellness are serious topics but they don’t have to be taught that way! David Meinz, “America’s Personal Health Humorist” uses humor to engage his audiences to make positive health behavior changes. Here he shares some insight into the benefits of laughter.

1. Laughter helps relieve stress and muscle tension. If you have the ability to laugh at yourself, it helps you put events in your life into their proper perspective. Remember, stress isn’t about the events that happen to you, it’s about your perception of, and your reaction to, what happens to you. A particular event might be incredibly stressful to one person, and part of everyday routine to another. Same event, different perceptions and reactions. Humor helps takes some of the pressure off and helps you see the big picture.
2. You learn more. People that are laughing engage both sides of the brain. This enhances learning and helps to retain more information. When my audiences are laughing they’re paying attention. When they pay attention, they learn more. I think that when you’re asking people to make changes in their lives, like in wellness education, it’s essential that you take some of the pressure off by helping them laugh. A spoonful of sugar does, indeed, help the medicine go down.
3. Laughter helps lower your blood pressure. Those people that laugh on a regular basis tend to have a lower resting blood pressure.
4. It helps you stay well. Laughter boosts your immune system and increases the production of antibodies that helps you fight infection. People who develop their sense of humor should get less colds.
5. It connects you with other people. Think about it, even in a diverse group of strangers, when you’re laughing with others you share a sense of unity with them. Positive humor among co-workers contributes to workforce cohesiveness.
6. It helps in pain reduction. Norman Cousins was one of the first to identify the pain-reducing power of laughter. Living with a painful disease, he found that 10 minutes of belly laughter gave him two hours of pain-free sleep. Many studies have now confirmed that laughter helps patients by possibly increasing levels of endorphin production or simply by distracting attention away from the discomfort.
7. It helps protect your heart. A study done at the University of Maryland medical center found that people with heart disease were 40% less likely to laugh in various situations compared to those without the disease at the same age. Maybe that’s because they were concerned about having heart disease! (See what I did there? Humor is looking at things just a little differently than most. Be on the lookout for the obvious contradiction or irony in a situation. That’s how most professional comedians make their living. They simply point out a different viewpoint to everyday things of life. Haven’t you ever asked yourself ‘why didn’t I think of that?’ So look for those opportunities. That’s a big part of what people call having a sense of humor.)

Convinced you need to smile more? Good. Here are some ideas to get more laughter in your life. First of all, lighten up a little. Yes, there are very serious issues in life. Deal with them, but don’t let them influence your everyday journey in life. Yes, bad things happen to good people. Yes, life isn’t fair. But also count your blessings. If you’re reading this article, you probably live in a society that most of the rest of the world can only dream about. A bad day for you is far better than the best day for most everyone else in the world. Think about it. It’s true.
You also need to purpose to get around humor. There are funny people out there. Spend time with them, take them to lunch, invite them over to your house. Humor is contagious; you might catch some of it if you expose yourself to a ‘carrier.’ Go to a comedy club. Stop watching all those murder and crime shows on television. What are you thinking? No wonder you feel depressed. Do you actually pay good money to watch horror movies? No wonder you feel anxious. Stop it. And when you’re in the car do you really need to listen to all the angry talk-show hosts on the radio? What does that really accomplish besides making you more frustrated and angry yourself. Why not listen to some classic comedy CD from Bill Cosby or your own favorite comedian?  You’ll arrive feeling much better and more energetic. I purpose to watch comedies on television. I tape them so I have a constant supply whenever I’m ready to watch. I find shows like “The King of Queens” and “Frazier” lift my mood and make me actually laugh out loud. You need more laughter in your life, not more stress.

Here’s some humor to get you started from the mind of Stephen Wright. If a cow laughed, would milk come out her nose? After eating, do amphibians need to wait an hour before getting OUT of the water?

Is it true that cannibals don't eat clowns because they taste funny? If vegetarians eat vegetables, what do humanitarians eat? Why is it lemon juice contains mostly artificial ingredients but dishwashing liquid contains real lemons? Is boneless chicken considered to be an invertebrate? If toast always lands butter-side down, and cats always land on their feet, what happens if you strap toast on the back of a cat and drop it?

When my audiences hear that a nutritionist is coming they expect the worse. They’re pleasantly surprised to find that wellness can be promoted in a practical way that’s actually fun. People like to laugh, especially when they’re learning at the same time.

David L. Meinz, MS, RD, FADA, CSP of Orlando, Florida claims it's not what you eat between Christmas and New Year's that matters, but rather, what you eat between New Year's and Christmas! He appears regularly on radio and television and presents information from his book Survival of the Fittest internationally to businesses and associations. You can receive his free e-newsletter by visiting www.SpeakingOnHealth.com.