What is Humor Therapy?
Humor therapy or laughter therapy is a kind of a therapy method which uses humor or laughter to promote overall wellbeing and improve health. It uses the natural physiological process of humor to alleviate stress and thus remove physical or mental discomfort.
Humor Therapy for Cancer Patients
Humor therapy is used to reduce the negative effects of many diseases and one of them is cancer. Yes, even research has found out and proved that laughter was infact useful on cancer patients and helped fight with the cancer cells to a certain extent.
For many years now, humor has been used in medicine and research performed on certain patients of cancer showed that laughter reduced the pain. This in turn boosted the immune system cells and decreased the stress related hormones from the body. Many people now and an increasing number of surgeons and doctors too are turning to the method of laughter therapy to heal cancer.
Several medical journals have stated that laughter therapy can be used to improve the quality of life of a patient with a chronologic disorder such as cancer. Humor often works well with almost all types of other treatments and is a complementary treatment method.
Benefits of using Humor Therapy for Cancer Patients
The following is a list of some ways in which laughter helped cancer patients and still continues to do so:
- Laughter boosts the immune system and thereby reduces the negative effects of cancer cells.
- It also boosts the circulatory system and enhances the oxygen intake in a person’s body.
- Humor or laughter can be used to stimulate the lungs and the heart of a cancer patient.
- It balances the blood pressure and relieves pain by a great degree.
- Another benefit of laughter for cancer patients is that it relaxes all the muscles of the body and triggers the release of endorphins which are body’s natural painkillers.
- Some other benefits of laughter include improving sleep, promoting general sense of wellbeing, promoting relaxation, reducing tension and enhancing quality of life.
Many cancer organizations or hospitals in the world have started offering humor therapy sessions and these sessions are known as humor clubs or laughter clubs. Laughter is not used in the form of jokes but in the form of a physical exercise. People are asked to do laughter related exercises by fake laughing and then make ‘ha ha’ or ‘hee hee’ sounds.
