Influence of Humor and Laughter on the Overall Health Condition

Humor has always been thought to have a connection to health. There has been a lot of research to understand how or if it affects mental and physical health and whether it does so in a positive or negative way. Some medical professionals and researchers claim humor has positive impacts on health, while others disagree, saying it either has negative or no impact on health. I personally believe that health positively influences people’s mental and physical health.

Humor is sometimes used in professional settings to try to help patients. It is used in hospitals, nursing homes, clinics, doctor’s offices, and more. Methods such as humor carts and laughter therapy have been used among other techniques to attempt to make patients feel better. As stated in “Humor in Medicine,” “Some hospitals have formal humor programs in which staff members and volunteers bring laughter to patients by using humor carts and humor resource centers” (Bennett, 1258). These humor carts contain items that can help make patients laugh or help brighten their day such as books, videos, etc. Another popular method is laughter therapy. Laughter therapy is a type of therapy that uses techniques to help relieve stress, pain, or just help people feel better in general. For example, at one nursing home, “Laughter therapy was applied with nursing home residents of the experimental group two days per week,” (Kuru and Kublay, 3354). It was recommended that laughter therapy continues after the experiment because of the positive results. If it was so helpful that it was recommended to continue, it is obviously effective at making people feel better than usual. In addition, humor has also been shown to help people’s physical health in different ways.

Many researchers and medical professionals claim that humor has positive effects on physical health. It has been shown that humor can positively affect one’s general well-being. After the laughter therapy was given to the nursing home residents, “… general and subscales (physical functioning, role-physical, bodily pain, general health, vitality, social functioning, role-emotional, and spiritual health) quality-of-life scores...significantly increased” (Kuru and Kublay, 3354). Based on this experiment, it is obvious that humor is beneficial to overall physical health. Also, humor has also been found to improve specific functions inside the body. In her research about humor affecting a patient with cancer, Facente stated that “subjects had an increase in the number of activated T lymphocytes, which attack virus-infected cells and some types of cancer and tumor cells” (64hn6). This essentially means that humor had some effect on if cancer cells were attacked and dying. Humor has also increased immunity, exercised the heart and respiratory system, increased pain threshold, and more. All of these effects are very helpful to one’s body and one’s health. In addition to physical health, humor can also benefit mental health.

Humor has been considered beneficial to mental and emotional health. Certain types of humor can make people have better self-esteem or help relieve stress or other mental problems like stress. Affiliative humor and self-enhancing humor are considered to be helpful to mental health. Schneider claims that “Their goals lie in the strengthening of social ties and of self-efficacy in a benign and self-accepting way” (290). These kinds of humor can make one feel good about themselves and have a more positive attitude. Humor can also be a coping mechanism that can help people deal with stress. When stress is handled in a good way, the “humor might benefit health indirectly by moderating the adverse effects of stress on health” (Martin, 216). Stress can cause numerous health problems, but if the stress is taken care of, the health issues will go away. However, some say that humor can do the exact opposite.

Humor has also conversely been deemed bad for one’s mental and emotional health. Some believe that certain types of humor can hurt people. According to “‘A Joke a Day Keeps the Doctor Away?’ Meta‐Analytical Evidence of Differential Associations of Habitual Humor Styles with Mental Health,” Aggressive and self-deprecating humor “may threaten social ties and are directed against the own self” (Schneider, et al, 290). These types of humor could damage one’s self-esteem and overall mental health. In some cases, patients may not like humor or laughter methods. If humor is taken the wrong way, it could make the patient sad, offended, or angry, which would not help their mental state. When using humor, medical professionals should “keep in mind that humor is personal and that people from other cultures can take some kinds the wrong way” (Facente, 64hn7). It would not be beneficial to upset or hurt a patient in any way. While I can see how certain types of humor would not be effective, that does not mean that all humor is bad. Professionals would just need to know how to use it correctly. Although, some researchers and medical professionals do not think humor has any effects at all.

Some claim that current research is not strong enough to prove that humor is affecting health. Certain researchers have concluded that most research done is invalid or just is not enough to prove the claimed effects. In “Humor in medicine,” the author claims that the “numerous methodological problems with the studies make it difficult to draw firm conclusions” (Martin, 217). Martin beliefs that certain aspects of experiments have too many factors that could also be affecting the results. Bennet has similar thoughts, stating that “Despite statements about the health benefits of humor, current research is insufficient to validate such claim” (1257). This means that while some research could possibly be valid, there is not enough of it to be able to confirm if humor affects health. However, I do not personally think that humor research and experiments are always correct and what people should go off of when trying to help a patient. I do not understand why something would have to be argued and be 100% proven to be used to help people feel better.

Despite the claims against humor being effective in benefitting people’s health, I still believe that laughter and humor is the best medicine. Humor and laughter always help me feel better, no matter the situation. I think that making jokes about the stress of difficult times can help make the stress or sadness go away at least for a little while. Humor and laughter can also help with pain tolerance. If someone makes me laugh, it can take my mind off the pain and help it subside. I have also seen humor help people firsthand. In my high school medical classes, we did a day of laughter therapy exercises. It improved everyone’s mood and made their days better. I don’t think that all research has to be perfect in order to know that humor can effectively help people. Just because it is not scientifically proven does not mean that people should not use humor to help when possible.

I believe that humor has a positive effect on people’s health. Even though there are claims that humor is detrimental to health or is not effective at all, I choose to believe the claims that it does have positive effects. There has been a lot of research to prove or disprove the claims about humor helping people’s health, and there is support for both sides. The idea is still controversial in the medical world, but in my opinion, if it helps even sometimes then it is worth using.