Norman Cousins is generally credited with starting the scientific study of humor some 20 years ago. Anatomy of an Illness tells how watching comical movies helped him recover from an illness that was predicted to be fatal. Norman made it his mission to laugh 100 times a day. With this he recovered and taught us about the healing effects of humor.

Medical studies indicate that laughter boosts levels of endorphins, the body’s natural painkillers. Studies also show that laughter increases the cells that attack viruses, foreign cells and cancer cells. Plus it decrease your stress level and fights depression. Laughter exercises your heart by raising and lowering your heart rate and blood pressure.

It also makes your lungs stronger and gets your blood flowing going. One doctor says that 20 seconds of hard laughter gives your heart the same workout as 3 minutes of hard rowing. Let us think about

“I’m free! I’m free!’ he shouted

this for a moment, you could laugh with friends for 20 seconds or work up a sweat on a rowing machine. Which would you choose?

A man escaped jail by digging a hole from his jail cell to the outside world. When finally his work was done, he jumps out of the hole in the middle of a preschool playground.

Nurses can have troubles with some patients, especially when they aren’t happy where they are. By alleviating their depression with humor we could make hospitals less of a scary place to people like you and me. By adding more laughter in hospitals and in the world maybe we can accomplish some good moods and good health.

Now that you know how healthy humor can be, let me share with you why we need more humor in hospitals. Many mental institutes have humor rooms, with comedy carts full of costumes; gag props, closed-circuit comedy television channels, and visits from clowns to increase the use of laughter. This could benefit all of us if we were in the hospital. If you have ever been in a hospital for more than a co

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Norman Cousins, Anatomy Illness, , little bit, times day, mental institutes, humor hospitals, sense humor, children laugh, norman cousins,