Fw: Humor: A Mind-body Connection ~ from The Scientist

October 6, 2000

Hmmmmmmmm......maybe I didn't laugh enough when I had my implants???????

Patty

----- Original Message -----

From: ilena rose <ilena@...>

Sent: Tuesday, October 03, 2000 2:23 PM

Subject: Humor: A Mind-body Connection ~ from The Scientist

The Scientist 14[19]:1, Oct. 2, 2000

Humor: A Mind-body Connection

Will researchers and comedy legends demonstrate laughter's therapeutic

qualities?

By A.J.S. Rayl

A merry heart doeth good like a medicine, but a broken spirit dries the

bone.

--Proverbs 17:22

Can humor cause a positive physiological impact? Could the gags,

quips, and shtick of such legends as Charlie Chaplin, Bud Abbott and Lou

Costello, and the Marx Brothers, or some of today's comedians, really

be medicinal? During the last couple of decades--since the best-selling

author Norman Cousins made headlines by laughing himself

well--researchers have been working to uncover the physiological

impact of laughter at the cellular and neurochemical level. By all

indications, the eons-old notion is grinning and bearing out.

Cousins was diagnosed with ankylosing spondylitis, a degenerative

connective tissue disease. Bedridden and so weak he could barely raise

his fingers, he was given a one-in-500 chance of complete recovery. He

could sleep, he discovered, only after watching Marx Brothers comedies

and Candid Camera episodes. It seemed to reduce his pain. Then,

somehow, in the process of laughing, Cousins began to heal, eventually

making an against-all-odds recovery.1,2

Now University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), cancer researchers

Margaret Stuber, professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences, and

Lonnie Zeltzer, director of the Pediatric Pain Program at Mattel

Children's Hospital, have launched a five-year study--dubbed Rx

Laughter--to investigate the impact of humor and laughter on the immune

systems of dozens of healthy children and children confronting

life-threatening diseases. The first physician-researchers to look at

the impact of comedy on both healthy and sick children, Stuber and

Zeltzer are calling on the talents of comedy's legendary heroes

to help them out.

" We're not hypothesizing that humor will be curative or that it is

going to take the place of any other kind of therapy, but we [believe]

that humor is going to have an additional benefit over and above simply

removing or reducing stress, " explains Stuber. " What I'm

hoping is that we'll actually be changing the level of arousal in the

autonomic nervous system, so we'll get the children to relax at

that central level. "

Adds Zeltzer: " If you're laughing, you feel better in general. And

since it elevates your mood, it should do something physically in

your body to create that feeling of well-being. I think we're going to

learn that exposing yourself to humor in life will not only change

mood and reduce stress hormones but also influence serotonin levels,

which are involved in the pain-control system. That would

mean laughter could have an effect on chronic pain over time and enhance

immunoreactivity, as well as help with depression and

sleep and anxiety disorders. "

Stuber and Zeltzer will measure direct physiological responses of

the autonomic nervous system. Initially, they will take

low-invasive measurements of the children's heart rates, blood pressure,

and stress hormones. They plan to extend the tests,

adding blood surveys, among other things, to investigate the impact of

humor on the immune system and on additional hormones,

neurotransmitters, and natural killer (NK) cells. The researchers will

also try to differentiate which comedies work best for which

disorders or diseases and what types of individuals respond better to

different types of humor.

The Rx Laughter study will add to the positive-thinking research

that has been ongoing for the last 20 years at UCLA's Norman

Cousins Center for Psychoneuroimmunology, endowed by the renowned writer

in the late 1970s. It will also expand on the basic

science investigations of Lee S. Berk, associate director at the Center

for Neuroimmunology at Loma University Medical

Center, also in southern California. Berk and colleagues have been at

the forefront of investigating the concept of eustress, or good

stress paradigms, beginning in the 1970s with studies of exercise.

Actually, it was Cousins who set up Berk and colleagues with pilot

study funds to begin investigating laughter as a " real eustress

metaphor, " says Berk. With a small cohort of mostly medical students,

they established the parameters of the study and took

blood samples via intravenous angiocatheters as the subjects watched a

preselected, self-selected humor video, Over Your Head

by comedian Gallagher (Paramount Home Video) to measure impact on the

neuroendocrine system.

They found that mirthful laughter--which Berk defines as " happy

laughter as opposed to coping laughter or black humor or

derogatory humor " --reduces stress hormone levels.3 " The neuroendocrine

responses produced were opposite to what is seen in

classical stress, " he says. " We fell on the floor in disbelief that

something from our own apothecary could actually have such an

impact. This silliness is really serious stuff. It's real biology. "

The publication of those findings drew notable media attention,

including a segment on CBS's 60 Minutes. Given that kind of notice

and the age-old adage, perhaps the most surprising thing is that more

researchers didn't jump on the bandwagon. " To my surprise,

there are really minimal studies looking at the impact of humor on sick

individuals, and nothing in children, " says Zeltzer. In fact,

the amount of research into eustress and positive emotions has been

minimal overall.

The reason, suggests Berk, " is because there were very few people

who could bridge the gap across the borders of immunology,

behavioral sciences, and the technologies of psychoneuroimmunology. " Of

course, funding was also an issue. " If you turned in a

grant request for a project that crossed multiple boundaries, as I often

have, nobody knew what to do with it, " he adds. Berk,

however, continued to add slowly to the knowledge base with his small

cohort studies.

It Came from Hollywood

If the scientific community at large was hesitating, the idea that

laughter could help heal began emerging on other fronts. Rx Laughter

actually came straight from Hollywood, the brainstorm of Sherry Dunay

Hilber, a former ABC and CBS network programming executive who oversaw

such hit sitcoms as Home Improvement, Roseanne, Coach, Who's the Boss?,

and Cybill. The study even has its own Web site: www.rxlaughter.org.

Hilber came up with the study idea about two years ago in the midst,

she says, " of looking for some more meaningful way of using my abilities,

something beyond worrying about the ratings of last night's show. " She

pitched her concept to Stuber and Zeltzer, who immediately came on board

as the co-principal investigators and honed the study plan, and then

enlisted the support of the offspring of comedy's legends. Included on

Rx Laughter's Advisory Board: phine Chaplin,daughter of Charlie

Chaplin; Costello, daughter of Lou Costello; J. Fields,

grandson of W.C. Fields; Talmadge , the granddaughter of

Buster Keaton; and Bill Marx, son of Harpo Marx of the Marx Brothers.

For a scientific investigation, it is a unique teaming. But the

descendants of comedy's pioneers needed no convincing. Growing up

in the whirlwind shadows of their famous forebears, they learned early

that comedy was a potent and powerful force. " You grow up

with what you know, and I grew up with some wackos who taught me that

when you have a sense of humor, you automatically have

an option in your view of life, " says Marx. Fields agrees and adds,

" Humor is nothing but extreme positive thinking. "

With their support and assistance, Hilber secured all the necessary

rights and permissions from the studios, free of any licensing

charges--something that almost seems unbelievable. But, as Chris

Costello puts it: " There are some things you just can't put a

price tag on. "

One reason Hilber, Stuber, and Zeltzer agreed on the works of

Chaplin, Costello, Fields, Keaton, and the Marx Brothers was that

they had withstood the test of time. " We figured there's got to be a

reason for that, and so we felt pretty safe going with those, "

explains Hilber.

" When I was a child, I never really understood the impact of what my

father did, but I was watching The King in New York recently

and it is true: These films haven't gone out of date. And if they

haven't gone out of date by now, they never will, " says phine

Chaplin.

The Rx Laughter team also figured that these movies and shorts would

serve to establish a more objective reaction, because the

chances are good that most of the children have not seen many, if any,

of them.

For funding, Hilber contacted Comedy Central, which several years

ago had established its Comedy Rx program to promote the

positive effects of laughter. The cable network responded

enthusiastically by putting up the initial $75,000.

'Who's on First?'

The impact of laughter on the immune systems of children has " just

been waiting to be tested scientifically, " says Zeltzer. " It

seems like such a no-brainer. " The concept may be obvious enough, but

designing the parameters of a study like this is most

certainly not a no-brainer. Comedy is highly subjective, while science

strives to be objective beyond question. The levels of

complexity in a study like this are as numerous as they are intricate,

and there are a lot of critical, basic questions to consider,

including:

* How does one determine what will be viewed as funny across the

board?

* Does it matter how much somebody laughs versus how funny they

think something is? In other words, is the physical act of laughter an

operative factor?

* How does one test for differences across gender lines? Ethnicity

lines? Age demographics?

In adult populations, says Berk, " We learned that there are a lot of

potential pitfalls in selecting comedy. Self- selection of material

is important, because what is funny to one person is not necessarily

funny to someone else. If you don't like slapstick, you will experience

a very different biology than I would. "

Researchers investigating the impact of humor must also control for

various other issues. " You have to be really pure when you do

this kind of research, " says Berk, based on his previous studies. " Our

subjects [had nothing to eat or drink] for six to eight hours

prior to beginning the study. They could not have exercised, or had

coffee or any drugs or chocolate, and sex was not allowed. " For

his research, whether the subject(s) had seen the video before was less

of an issue. " I'm looking for the conditioned response, " he

says. Actually, he found that the conditioned phenomenon is real. " In

other words, we found positive effects from the anticipation. "

Rx Laughter is a study of children, so theoretically, the

researchers will be dealing with a less socially conditioned, less

biased population. Although the investigators are in the first phase of

selecting the videos and finalizing study parameters, Stuber and

Zeltzer have already begun initial second-phase testing on healthy

children to establish a baseline. In a third phase, they will look at

the impact of laughter on children with cancer, HIV, and other

life-threatening diseases or disorders.

" In terms of selecting the comedy videos, part of what we have been

going for are things that are consistently funny and things that

no parents are going to object to, " says Stuber. That is actually harder

than one may think. " We have to be careful, because today,

we have different eyes for some of these things than people might have

had originally. "

On request from the researchers, the offspring of the legendary

comedians made initial suggestions. Chaplin, for example,

suggested The Circus. " I thought it was the funniest one for this

project, and that's the one we offered first, " she says. Costello

recommended Abbott & Costello Meet enstein, but then offered up all

the duo's projects. Regardless of how parents might

view slapstick comedy, compared to today's humor there is, she suggests,

" a certain purity of form " in these classics. " When you

watch any of these great legendary comics, the fun they poke is always

brought back to themselves. "

'Mikey Likes It'

" When we took a tour at the UCLA children's hospital, we discovered

that many of these kids never had seen vintage comedy, "

says Costello. " Before they had turned the videos on, the room was

quiet, with just the humming of machines, and then suddenly

the sound of laughter was everywhere. To watch those children sitting

there and laughing over what was purely slapstick was so

wonderful. It kind of gets you choked up, because this is comedy that

was done 50 years ago, before their parents were even born. "

For now, the classics are producing the needed laughter, which,

along with the internal physiological responses, is exactly what

the researchers are eager to investigate. " It's long been clear to me

that people who are able to distance themselves have a sense

of humor, [and people] who have more perspective and who don't get so

absorbed in all the tension of the moment, generally feel

better, " says Stuber. " Now some of that obviously is psychological. But

we know that most of the psychological feelings that we have are

actually biochemically based. "

A few years ago, Derks, now professor emeritus of psychology

at the College of and , and colleagues used

21-electrode EEG topographical brain mapping to look at brain activity

related to humor. He found that laughter affects substantial

and significantly unique electrical activity, and that the whole brain

is involved.4 " Because there is substantial electrical activity in

the brain associated with laughter and humor, suppositionally, there

must be appropriate neurochemical activity, " contends Berk.

And that is exactly what he and his colleagues at Loma have found.

Since 1990, Berk's lab has been investigating the impact of laughter

on the immune system, acquiring cellular and neurochemical

samples via four measures: before, during, after, and the following day.

They have documented and shown that mirthful laughter

increases the number of activated T lymphocytes and the number of T

cells with helper/suppressor markers. They have also found

increases in NK cell activity, as well as increases in the actual

numbers of NK cells, " very significant " in terms of immunosurveillance.5

" The method we used to test this was to take blood samples from the

experimental group before and after mirthful laughter, " Berk

explains. " We literally put the peripheral mononuclear blood cells in

test tubes with a type of tumor cell line .... It is astounding that

something as simple as mirthful laughter could in some manner modulate a

significant immunological cell like NK cells. " Berks

stops far short of suggesting that mirthful laughter is a panacea or

that it will eradicate cancer. " The point is, " he says, " mirthful

laughter modifies the physiology and the chemicals that affect natural

cells and increases their numbers and activity. "

Based on his research, Berk maintains that none of these changes

would have occurred had there not been changes in

neuroendocrine components, and that the neuroendocrine components would

not have been changed had they not been affected

from higher centers of the brain and central nervous system. " The fit is

there relative to laughter and humor as a eustress state, and

that impinges on our psychophysiology as well as our

psychoneuroimmunology. "

Long-term Study

It will be about two years before preliminary results from Rx

Laughter will be available, with definitive data due in about five

years. Meanwhile, initial test subjects are already laughing, and

everyone is betting that positive biologic responses will be found.

Whatever the specifics of the scientific outcome, " Is there anything

you could say [is] bad about making somebody laugh and feel

good? " wonders Bill Marx, who was part of his father's act for a number

of years. " I don't think you can--and you can't say that

about a whole lot of things in the world. If anything, the Rx Laughter

study will take the kids' minds off what they're there for and

offer them an option. Perhaps, too, it will help them realize somewhere

down the line that humor and having a good attitude will help

strengthen them physically and mentally. If kids are taught the

importance of laughter--and encouraged to laugh more--we'll have a

better world. "

Berk concludes: " There is a very serious side to humor, and that is

[that] what you wear on your face is what you have inside your

body. The question of what happens physiologically when we experience

mirthful laughter forms the basis for a new frontier of

health care/medical research looking at positive emotional or eustress

states and their consequence to health and disease. "

Science is, however slowly, now producing the hard evidence that

laughter is a powerful potion. Five years from now, says Rx

Laughter's co-principal investigator Zeltzer, " Maybe the prescription

will include finding what the patient's favorite funny program is,

prescribing it, and then looking at the impact on both symptoms and

physiology. " Imagine a prescription that reads: One Abbott &

Costello, followed by doses of Charlie Chaplin, W.C. Fields, Buster

Keaton. Wash down with Marx Brothers. Repeat as necessary. Call me in

the morning.

A.J.S. Rayl (ajsrayl@...) is a freelance writer in Malibu,

Calif.

References

1. N. Cousins, The Anatomy of an Illness, New York, Bantam Doubleday

Dell, 1991.

2. N. Cousins, " The laughter connection, " Head First: The Biology of

Hope and the Healing Power of the Human Spirit, New York,

Penguin Books, 1989.

3. L.S. Berk et al., " Neuroendocrine and stress hormone changes

during mirthful laughter, " The American Journal of the Medical

Sciences, 298: 390-6, 1989.

4. P. Derks et al., " Laughter and electorencephalagraphic activity. "

Humor, 10:285-300, 1997.

5. L.S. Berk et al., " Eustress of mirthful laughter modifies natural

killer cell activity, " Clinical Research, 37:115A, 1989.

We welcome your opinion. If you would like to comment

on this article, please write us at editorial@...

October 6, 2000

Hi Patty,

If you felt anything similar to how I felt -- you didn't dare laugh!!!

MM / NSIF

-----Original Message-----

From: Patty <faussettdp@...>

egroups < egroups>

Date: Thursday, October 05, 2000 7:38 PM

Subject: Fw: Humor: A Mind-body Connection ~ from The

Scientist