A GOOD laugh will do just as much for your health as a mini-workout in the gym, a pioneer in the field of humour said yesterday.
US academic Dr Bill Fry told students at University College Cork that 20 seconds of intense laughter can double the heart rate for three to five minutes, a feat that would normally involve rigorous exercise.
Dr Fry, psychiatrist and professor emeritus of the Stanford University School of Medicine, delivered the annual HJ and Barbara Cummings public lecture on humour at the Cork college yesterday.
He noted that in all his years of study he only ever came across the death of three individuals who were laughing at the time of their demise.
"Sudden death during laughing just does not happen. There are very few people who die laughing. There is some unknown element there. There is symbiotic relationship between health and humour. Humour has an impact on most physiological systems of the body."
Dr Fry said studies show that muscles in the chest, abdomen, neck, shoulder, face and scalp get a beneficial workout and other parts of the body are more relaxed during a laughing session. He added the body got a mini workout.
According to Dr Fry, laughter may help ward off heart attacks by easing tension, stress and anger. It may also help prevent the circulatory sluggishness that leads to strokes, and lessen the discomfort of people suffering from cancer.
He has suggested that laughter may even help prevent cancer by relieving depression, an emotional state that may make people more susceptible to the disease.
He pointed to a study earlier this year of 20 men and women, conducted in the US at the University of Maryland School of Medicine which found that 95 per cent of the volunteers experienced increased blood flow while watching a funny movie and the benefits lasted about 12 to 24 hours.
The medical world started taking note of the possibilities of therapeutic laughter after Norman Cousins' book, Anatomy of an Illness, came out in the late 1970s.
In it, he described how watching comedies and reading funny books and articles helped him recover from a life-threatening tissue disease which left him in chronic pain.
Dr Fry said there was huge potential for further research.
"There is so much to find out. Regarding weight control, there is some suggestion that humour and laughter would be beneficial as an adjunct to someone trying to establish a lower weight state. One of the things we need to consider when talking about our health is circulation. Circulation is vitally important and laughter lowers blood pressure."