Laughter reduces Pain

Laughter reduces pain. I lecture about it all the time. Then one day it happened to me.

I was doubled over in pain. Accidentally I ate something I was allergic to. In response, my intestines twisted and cramped to a high level of pain. All I could do was go to bed and wait it out for the next 12 – 24 hours.

As I lay there comatose, my roommate appeared in the doorway, spouting off something in a dry comedic wit that sent me into a spin of laughter. I laid on the bed laughing and laughing only to realize that, in the process, my pain completely disappeared. “Well, there it is, what I always tell people.”

Unfortunately the pain immediately returned as soon as I stopped laughing. Yet I know that the longer you laugh, the more relief you get.

Norman Cousins, author of Anatomy of an Illness, found that ten minutes of solid laughter yielded him two hours free of pain. He had been suffering under the debilitating disease, anklosing spondilitis, which left his entire body racked in pain.

When we laugh the brain triggers the release of endorphins. Those happy hormones also act like morphine on the body. They’re powerful pain killers.

I’ve received numerous testimonials of this nature from participants in my ongoing laughter programs, yet this was the first time I experienced it myself. Someone suffering from Scleroderma once told me she liked to come to the laughter club when she was in pain because she could get relief from it with all the laughing.

Laughter heals in so many ways.

Photo: Wikimedia/Norman Cousins