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2-15-01 The
Journal of the AMA this week published results of a Japanese scientific
inquiry on how effective laughter really is as a medicine. Dr. Hajime
Kimata of the Unitika Hospital in Kyoto, injected allergens into 26 study
subjects who were prone to skin rashes and allergy to dust mites. After
skin welts appeared, the subjects were exposed to one of two movies.
One was the Charlie Chaplin movie, Modern Times, and the other was
a documentary on the weather. And it turned out the skin welts diminished
as the subjects watched Charlie Chaplin’s 1936 final appearance as the
Little Tramp in the one where he’s oiling the huge gears in the Jetson
Factory and his boss gets caught in the mechanism and by the time the
conveyor is stopped at the lunch whistle, the only part of the boss
visible is his head sticking out between the gears and Charlie Chaplin
uses a funnel to get coffee into the boss’s mouth, but the whole roast
chicken and pie are a trifle more difficult. Whereas, in the subjects who
watched the weather show, there was no change in the appearance of the
skin welts. The conclusion was laughing relieves stress, and stress is a
chief factor in undermining the immune system.
And I recalled that we have a home grown expert in this field and I
phoned up Ed Dunkleblau, a psychologist in Elk Grove Village, who is past
president of the American Association of Therapeutic Humor, at AATH.org,
and who co-chaired its annual convention out in San Diego this month, at
the Marriott Mission Valley hotel, 5 miles from the San Diego Zoo and 20
miles from Tijuana, where the morning newspaper is complimentary and they
serve Starbucks at the lobby coffee cart. These are health care humor
professionals who gather at the hotel bar to ask one another how long
they’d had that weak back? 200
members attended from all over. One conventioneer traveled all the way
from the Ukraine, where he’d probably heard the one about the new
Ukranian navy having glass-bottom boats in order to see the old Ukranian
navy, and how, if a Ukranian throws a pin at you, you’d best run like
hell because he’s got a hand grenade between his teeth. And Ed
Dunkleblau, whose E-mail address is drlaugh01@aol.com,
was not surprised by the Japanese findings, and recalled the time a woman
patient hospitalized for a severe digestive disorder told him she had not
laughed for a year since she’d been sick and he prescribed comedy videos
and she was discharged five days later.
Ed presided over the convention, where seminars had titles such as
“Biotranslation of Mirthful Laughter; Perception and Neuro-immune
Response,” and “Psycho-neuro-immunology for Dummies.”
And there was a panel discussion on “Humor and Psychotherapy,”
at which the panelists no doubt knew that a psychotic thinks two and two
are five, whereas a neurotic knows that two and two are four, but really
hates it. Or the session
entitled, “Humor in Dementia Care,” where they are probably sick of
the one about one of the positives being you can hide your own Easter
eggs. But maybe they haven’t heard the one where the doctor says to the
patient that he is sorry to have to tell him this but he has cancer and
Alzheimer’s, to which the patient replies, “Well, at least I don’t
have cancer.” And they always honor somebody with the “Doug Fletcher
Award for Excellence in Therapeutic Humor,” which, this year, went to
Steve Allen, comedian, author, composer, who was not present to accept,
citing a previous engagement as compost, and who was once interviewing a
psychologist who said that the only instinctive fears in men are the fear
of loud noises and the fear of falling, to which Steve Allen confided that
his greatest fear was making a loud noise while falling.
The mission statement of the American Association of Therapeutic
Humor is to promote things which are funny as a healing ointment, albeit a
non-topical ointment, unless, by topical, you mean the one where President
Bush is in the restaurant with Dick Cheney ordering breakfast and
the President asks the waitress if he might have a quickie, to
which the waitress harrumphs that she won’t take that even if he is the
president and stomps off, at which point Vice president Cheney leans over
and says to the Chief Executive, it’s pronounced quiche. ©2001
Dave McBride, all rights reserved (No
reproduction or rebroadcast without express written permission from the
Commissioner of Major League Baseball) |