HEALTH, MEDICINE, AND HUMOR

Humor is often used to get people through tragic events, so it is no surprise that humor was used to get us through the Covid 19 pandemic. Here are a few examples:

Chuck Mead--“I Ain’t Been Nowhere”—Official Song of the Quarantine:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DIQvaBOuvAs&feature=youtu.be

College Church in Wheaton IL: Handel’s “Hallelujah Chorus”:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ag6CYY0cbFc

“Get Lost, Corona”--Nessun Dorma and the Aria from Puccini’s Turandot:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uL52AuF4QzY

Michael Flatley’s “Lord of the Dance” Team at Home:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4RoVVp8JJw&feature=share&fbclid=IwAR2ZJhwBOspSBLfGxCSZeABPPW1MVZYRl0yPxl_kKcnWcgkQJTfFfQrBCxo

Wellington, New Zealand: “Family Lockdown Boogie”:

https://www.facebook.com/pulsefmhobart/videos/644199879695445/?v=644199879695445

John Morreall and William Fry say that hearty laughter increases blood circulation, ventilates the lungs, increases oxygen intake, reduces water vapor and carbon dioxide in the lungs, and decreases the risk of pulmonary infection. Bill Fry calls hearty laughter “internal jogging.” But Rod Martin cautions that hearty laughter may also have deleterious effects because while extroverts tend to laugh more, they also are likely to drink alcohol, to smoke cigarettes, to be obese, and to engage in risky behaviors.

Research has shown that humorous laughter lowers the level of stress hormones (epinephrine, cortisol, dopac, and growth hormone). In the brain, catecholamines are secreted, which may increase alertness, reduce inflammation, and trigger the release of endorphins, the brain’s natural opiates. This may account for the reduction of pain as reported by researchers including Norman Cousins in the United States, and Ofra Nevo, who does research in Israel.

In 1979, Norman Cousins, editor of the Saturday Review of Literature, published his best-selling Anatomy of an Illness. He had a serious collagen disease that affected the connective tissue of his spine and joints. The disease was life-threatening, his pain was intense, and the doctors gave him little hope for a full recovery. He was frustrated by the hospital routines and his slow progress, so he checked himself out of the hospital and into a nearby hotel. But before Cousins left the hospital, he played a little joke on the nurses. Early one morning a nurse brought Cousins a container for him to collect his urine. Later that morning, another nurse brought Cousins his breakfast tray, and one of the items was a bottle of apple juice. So Cousins pored the apple juice into the cup used to collect urine. When the urine-collection stopped by Cousin’s bed, she looked at the apple juice in the urine cup, and said “This looks a little strange.”

Cousins looked at the apple juice, and said, “You’re right. It does look strange. Let me run it through again.” And he drank the apple juice.

Because of his celebrity status, the doctors visited him and delivered his medication, while he used “humor-intervention therapy.” He read humorous books, and watched funny movies, and tapes of TV’s Candid Camera. He found that the more he laughed, the longer his body was without pain. He persuasively made the case that if it is possible to have a psychosomatic illness, then it is also possible to have a psychosomatic wellness.