Laughter Therapy

(Thought-Random)

by Kathy Chan, MBA
 

Laughter is a behavior that we are all familiar with and have personal experience with.  So, what is Laughter Therapy?  It is the act of consciously practicing laughter.  What are the therapeutic effects of Laughter Therapy?  It can help to reduce stress, relieve pain, relax the muscles, increase oxygen intake, increase the heart rate, stimulate the circulatory system, make you feel good, plus many other positive effects.

For many years medical professionals have recognized that those patients who maintained a positive mental attitude and shared laughter responded better to treatment. But there were little research or proof on the therapeutic effects of Laughter Therapy until the New England Journal of Medicine published Norman Cousin’s case study in 1979.

Norman Cousin, a writer and editor of the “Saturday Review”, wrote “Anatomy of an Illness” in 1964 to describe how laughter has helped his recovery from ankylosing spondylitis, a very painful collagen illness that attacks the connective tissues of the body.  He discovered that 10 minutes of genuine belly laughter had an anesthetic effect and would give him at lease two hours of pain-free sleep.  Years later he went to work at UCLA Medical School as Adjunct Professor of Medical Humanities where he conducted studies with patients on the effect of emotions on the immune system.  He later stated that “laughter was important but it really was a metaphor for the full range of positive emotions: love, hope, faith, the will to live, festivity, purpose, [and] determination.”

Laughter in many cases is a behavioral response to humor.  This behaviour created predictable physiological and physical changes within the body and psychological changes in the mind and spirit.  Physiological changes include a variety of muscle groups becoming more active during laughter, namely the diaphragm, respiratory accessory, facial, and occasionally muscles in the arms, legs and back.   Physical changes from laughter involve increased breathing, oxygen use, and heart rate, which stimulate the circulatory system.  Psychological changes include relaxation, openness to ideas, feeling good, and a general sense of well-being.

Laughter Therapy is gaining more recognition after some widely publicized studies by Drs. Lee Berk and Stanley Tan at the Loma Linda University School of Medicine in California.  Their research proves that laughter is a boost for the immune system; it raises the body’s level of infection –fighting T-cells, immunoglobulin antibodies and B-cells.  It also lowers blood pressure and triggesr release of endorphins (the body’s natural painkillers). It relaxes muscles, promotes the cleansing effect of deep breathing and provides the body with cardiac exercise – the internal jogging.  Finally, and most obviously, it induces healthy, positive emotions.

Today, the increasing interest in this field has evolved to a new area of research called psychoneuroimmunology, which explores the connection between the nervous system (the seat of thought, memory and emotions), the endocrine system (which secretes powerful hormones) and the immune system (which defends the body from microbial invasions).

While scientists are still doing research to proof the positive health benefits of humor and laughter we can start practicing laughter therapy in our daily life.  There’s no need to wait for more evidence.  Deep down we know that laughter and humor are good for our health.  As a medicine, it is safe, inexpensive and does not require a doctor’s prescription.  So, just get into the habit of laughing by reading a comic; watching a funny movie or show; for no reason at all; etc.  Laugh whole-heartedly.  Share your laughter with others and spread the healthy, positive emotions that go with it.  It is contagious and helps to open up communication with others.

Mark Twain captured the positive effects of laughter succinctly when he wrote – “The human race has only one really effective weapon, and that’s laughter.  The moment it arises, all our hardships yield, all irritations and resentment slip away, and a sunny spirit takes their place.”

Someone once said,  “Laughter is the shortest distance between you and me”.  It helps to melt away all the tension and conflicts between people.  A powerful relationship building and team building tool.

Unquestionably, laughter has tremendous positive physical, emotional, mental and social benefits for all of us.   That is the exact reason why Laughter Clubs and Laughing Yoga are so popular today.

Have a laugh! You will feel better and then share this positive green energy with everyone!

July 15, 2011 Starr

Music and Heart Health

(Thought-Random)

From an article published on Health (USNews)

Throw on a little Bach, Beatles or Beyonce, and then sit back and relax in the knowledge that your blood vessels are expanding wide open, letting the blood flow freely.

Nothing could be healthier for your heart, a new study suggests. "Listening to music that makes you feel good may also be a good preventive measure for heart health," said study author Dr. Michael Miller, director of the Center for Preventive Cardiology at the University of Maryland Medical Center, in Baltimore. "There's no downside. It's simple, economic and it may pay off dividends in regard to a healthy heart."

Added Dr. Carl Lavie, medical director of cardiac rehabilitation and prevention director of the Stress Testing Laboratory at the Ochsner Heart and Vascular Institute in New Orleans: "Although this was just an acute [short-term] study, it suggests that laughter and listening to relaxing music may provide cardio-protection or be heart-healthy. I suspect that the authors are correct in this theory. But the important thing to know is whether regular performance of this or similar activity would have long-term benefits on the cardiovascular system, similar to, superior, or additive to such things as regular aerobic exercise that has been extensively studied and proven to have substantial long-term benefits."

Miller, who presented the findings Tuesday at the American Heart Association's annual scientific sessions, in New Orleans, said many people look at heart health in terms of negative risk factors that need to be overcome. "There are not a lot of positive risk factors," he noted.
Previous studies had found that music could affect heart rate and blood pressure. Prayer has also been shown to improve cardiac performance. And Miller's group previously found that laughter improved vascular health.

For the new study, 10 healthy, nonsmoking volunteers (70 percent of them men with a mean age of 36) selected music that made them feel good and other music that made them feel anxious. Selections differed according to the person. Participants also were asked to look at humorous video clips and relaxation audio tapes.

The researchers measured brachial artery flow, in the forearm, using a blood pressure cuff, before and after each "stimulus."
"In the minute after you release [the rubber bulb], you see how the inner lining of the blood vessel reacts, the endothelial response," Miller said. "People with risk factors for heart disease like smoking and hypertension don't dilate normally. We believe that means that their vasculature is not healthy."
Among the study participants, brachial artery flow increased 26 percent during the joyful music phase and decreased 6 percent after listening to anxiety-producing music.

Blood flow also increased 19 percent during the laughter (video clip) phase and 11 percent during relaxation.
The increase in dilation seen after listening to joyful music was "about the same level we see after someone does aerobic activity. It's also similar to what we see after taking statin medication," Miller said. "The effect lasts for about an hour."
The positive effect may come from the release of endorphins, Miller speculated, referring to the body chemicals that block pain and ease anxiety and depression.

"Clearly, the role of psychological risk factors, and particularly psychological stress, has been neglected in preventive cardiology," Lavie said.

 "Clearly, extreme emotional stress -- the classic example is public speaking, especially for novice speakers -- has the exact opposite effects as what Miller showed with laughter and relaxing music. Acute and chronic job stress also has deleterious effects which could be countered by laughter or relaxing music."

By Amanda Gardner
HealthDay Reporter

 

The Illusion of Memory

(Thought-Random)

Excerpts from a CBC news item on Health

A memory might seem like a permanent, precious essence carved deep into the circuits of the brain, but it is not. Instead, scientists are discovering that a memory changes every time you think about it.
"Every time you recall a memory, it becomes sensitive to disruption. Often that is used to incorporate new information into it." That's the blunt assessment from one of the world's leading experts on memory, Dr. Eric Kandel from Columbia University.

And that means our memories are not abstract snapshots stored forever in a bulging file in our mind, but rather, they're a collection of brain cells — neurons that undergo chemical changes every time they're engaged. So when we think about something from the past, the memory is called up like a computer file, reviewed and revised in subtle ways, and then sent back to the brain's archives, now modified slightly, updated, and changed.

"The memories can become unstored and have to be restored. And when they're being restored, it's an opportunity to either strengthen them, change their content to possible false memories, or weaken them," McGill University lab researcher Karim Nader said. "And if you weaken them, essentially it's the same as erasing memories."

"The old view of memory processing was that our memories got stored in the brain and once they're stored, you can't touch them," Nader said. But scientists now realize that memories are evolving all the time. "Every time someone recalls a memory, it's a chance to change it," Nader added.
That's because the memory has to be restored using a biochemical pathway that is very similar to the original storage. And there are ways to interfere with this memory "reconsolidation" using a drug. "You have to change the strength of the connection between neurons. It's almost like you've unwired the memory," Nader said.

For some, the idea that memories are unstable is an unsettling concept. But Eric Kandel says understanding the biology of memory doesn't dehumanize it.
"This does not take the magic out of it," Kandel said. "You know that your heart is a muscular pump that pushes blood around the circulation, but that doesn't mean you can't lose your heart to somebody. The metaphorical meaning is not in any way altered, but there is a biological underpinning to what the brain actually does."
"The modern view is that everything you and I do, from the most simple reflex act of hitting a racket in tennis to the most creative flights of ideas, comes from the brain," Kandel said. He won the Nobel Prize in 2000 for his research on the biological basis of memory. "You are who you are and I am who I am because of what we learn and what we remember and these are all biological processes," he said.

Understanding the neurochemical process of memory opens up possibilities for therapy in situations where memory is causing pain.
"People think that post-traumatic stress disorder might be susceptible to treatments of this kind. No one has shown this in a convincing way. But this is certainly an interesting avenue of investigation," Kandel said.
"There are many disorders of memory. Obviously, age-related memory loss, Alzheimer’s disease, schizophrenia, working memory loss, PTSD which is a hyperactivity of memory if you will," he explained.
Nader believes memory disruption could be helpful in a wide range of psychiatric disorders. He is collaborating with other researchers on drug addiction, and others are investigating the implications for obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD).

Other research has suggested that it might even be possible to block the memory reconsolidation without drugs, by asking a person to remember something and then, in those moments of remembering, replace the old memory with new information.  "Every time you remember something, it's an opportunity to change the content of it, that's just the way the brain is."
Karim Nader agrees that memory is much more transient than most people think.
"Yes, but that's not to say it's bad," he said. "The fact that memory turns out to be far from permanent is a positive thing for human survival. Evolution thinks it's the best way for it to work. Therefore, it's not a bad way. If it was a bad way, then we would have been extinct a while ago."


This is the conclusion of a four part series called Inside Your Brain on CBC's The National, World at Six and CBC.ca exploring how modern neuroscience is changing the way we think about the way we think.