BENEFITS OF LAUGHTER

• Strengthens the immune system.
• Enhances respiration.
• Improves mental attitude.
• Produces endorphins and enkephalins.
• Diminishes tension in the central nervous system.
• Gives the heart a good workout..
• Acts as a panic-blocker.
• Releases stress.
• Helps prevent heart attacks.
• Improves circulation.
• Clears the respiratory passages.
• Counteracts fear, anger and depression.
• Aids most, if not all, major systems of the body.
• Lengthens life.

(Source University of Michigan professor Christopher Peterson, coauthor of "Health and Uptimism.")

Sharon Wendell used to feel a little guilty "wasting" a night watching TV and laughing at silly sitcoms. Now she considers it part of what she calls "laugh therapy." In 1988, Wendell was diagnosed with non-Hodgkins lymphoma, a cancer that returned in 1993 after five years of being in remission. Doctors did not give her much hope for recovery the second time around. "When you're told you only have three months to live, you look really closely at yourself and your life," the Muskegon woman said. In the course of traditional medicine - chemotherapy, good nutrition, exercise - Wendell added something else to her treatment. She let herself laugh. She watched silly movies and bad TV if she wanted. She stopped hanging around gloomy friends and people with negative attitudes. Wendell believed laughter was the best medicine. She experienced first hand what "having a truly positive attitude, not just putting on a smiley face" did for her body and sense of well-being. "There's scientific evidence at laughter has an effect on you," she said. "Everyone has something that makes him or her laugh, even in illness." -Laughter can work in wondrous and scientific ways. It stimulates the immune system, improves blood circulation, works as antidepressant and relaxes muscles. Laughter is good for the lungs. It helps the body digest food better. It is a distraction from the mundane, the overwhelming, the painful, the serious.

"I could give you all kinds of complicated, medical stuff about laughter and how it works," said Dr. Stuart Silverstein, a pediatrician in Connecticut who combines a career in stand-up comedy with his medical practice. "But think of it as a steam valve on a pressure cooker. It feels good. It's a release from that pressure, pressure, pressure." Silverstein travels the country giving workshops on laughter and when to be wiseguys to other physicians. "Humor can provide perspective to alleviate the stress, alienation and panic most people experience in the medical office or hospital," he said Sunday afternoon during a long-distance interview that had him juggling regular patient calls, emergencies and eating lunch in the hospital cafeteria. Silverstein - no, he's not related to the very funny poet Shel Silverstein who wrote "Where The Side-walk Ends" has even set up an email address where people can get his Medical Joke of the Week. "You have to do this at the right place, right time," he said. "But what harm does laughing do? It doesn't mean one doesn't take things seriously. It's not a cure-all. It doesn't take away (the illness or diagnosis) ... but humor keeps us alive, both physically and psychologically." Since 1993, Wendell's cancer again has been in remission. As part of her daily therapy, she said she still believes in the "take two jokes and call me in the morning" theory.

And she prescribes the same for others facing illnesses. When she organized last month's program for the White Lake Area Cancer Support Group at Lakeshore Medical Center in Whitehall where she works, she asked a comedian to come and talk to participants. At the end of the night, people were laughing so hard "our stomachs hurt... and I've heard all these jokes before." They laughed so hard, they were near tears they hadn't been able to shed earlier in the evening: another benefit of belly laughs. "It really does help," Wendell said. "It especially helps with that feeling that you've lost control of everything." The Robin Williams movie, "Patch Adams," has brought the notion that laughter is good medicine into the cinema. But laughter being the best medicine is nothing new. Nearly a century ago, a Canadian doctor, Sir William Osler, was one of the first to recognize the importance of the bedside manner, including the benefits of humor.

In this century, the healing power of laughter was brought to public attention two decades ago by the late Norman Cousins, who became the world's first medical emissary for positive thinking and laughter. The editor of the Saturday Review, Cousins found a new calling in 1979 when he wrote "Anatomy of an Illness as Perceived by the Patient." The book detailed Cousins' recovery from a life threatening form of arthritis. In 1983, he wrote "The Healing Heart" about his recovery from heart trouble.

His interest in how attitudes and feelings could influence a person's ability to cope with illness took him to UCLA's School of Medicine where he was an adjunct professor in the department of psychiatry and biobehavioral sciences. "Laughter helps us stay balanced," said Ron Culberson. "It gives us a break, not an escape, but it takes us away for a moment." A clinical social worker by training, Culberson started working with a hospice organization before he graduated from college in Virginia. In 1996, he started us own speaking, training and consulting business called FUNsulting, etc. in Herndon, VA.

In April, Culberson spoke at Hospice of Muskegon-Oceana's annual meeting. Even during the most serious times in Life and death, "funny things still happen," he said. Laughter affects more than the physical in someone, he said during a long distance interview last week. Laughter contributes to the social and spiritual side of life. "I like to say laughter is a social lubricant," he said. "It's a connection, a bond between people." It can add to the health of the workplace and future generations. Imagine the staffs reaction at New Era Elementary School last year when principal Todd Kraai told everyone the school day was going to start with a few good "belly laughs." Kraai had been reading about the therapeutic benefits of laughter, and he told the teachers and others on staff that he wanted them to meet in the all purpose room every morning for a few rounds of guffaws to get the day started right.

"You know what it's like, if you can just tell a joke, it relieves the tension," Kraai said. "It's fun to laugh." He takes the same philosophy into the classroom each day. Last week, Kraai was teaching kindergartners about conflict resolution what to do when they find themselves feeling angry, how to handle it wisely, how not to fight on the playground. But the principal's reputation preceded him. "When I got done, the kids said, 'Are you going to make us laugh, Mr. Kraai?' So I read them a funny story," he said. "We ended up laughing together." Having a sense of humor is part of the "life skills" taught in many elementary schools. "It's good to laugh," Kraai teaches in the classrooms and when he meets one-on-one with his students. "But having a sense of humor means being playful without being harmful or putting-down anyone." Before returning home to Muskegon earlier this year Wendell, 51, worked in Kalamazoo where the hospitals have "humor rooms" where patients can go to watch funny movies, read comics or indulge in a joke collection pinned to bulletin boards. Wendell found herself there often. "None of us knows how much time we have left," Wendell said. "We have to get to the point where we say: This day is going to be wonderful. This minute is going to be beautiful. The past is gone. I am going to live for now." For Wendell, part of the journey was remembering to laugh. But patients aren't the only people who need to laugh during an illness, said professional comedian Shawn Jacob, who counts visits to West Michigan hospitals within his performance circuit.

Families need to laugh, too. During a trip to a pediatrics unit where he visited a terminally ill child, he learned that his "audience" was more than the child lying in bed. The little guy was too sick to respond. But his parents, who had been at his bedside for days and his caretakers at home, needed Jacob's prescription of "take two jokes and call me in the morning" just as much. "The standard feeling is that the person who's ill is suffering more than the family," Jacob said. "But think what the family's been through. They need to laugh, maybe even more than the patient does." Not only is laughter good for the immune and respiratory systems. It also is salve for souls in pain.

Last week, Jacob entertained the congregation of Jamestown Reformed Church in Ottawa County. The church burned to the ground earlier in the winter. Jacob's performance was booked months before the fire, and for awhile, there was talk that maybe a comedy show was inappropriate in the face of tragedy. "At first, we asked: Is that smart? Is it smart to get together when there was so much sadness about the church burning down?" Jacob asked. "But then we decided, yes, this is exactly what was needed. Humor and joy are a wonderful bonding experience." If the reasons escape you, remember back to childhood, he said.. "As children, everything was new to us," he said. "We'd be on the floor laughing, clutching our bellies...that's what laughter does for us. It gives us a chance to suspend belief...to enjoy life." No doubt those who are regulars of the "Signals" and "Wireless" gift catelogues will recall the grimfaced woman poking fun at Scandinavian humor and "and other myths."

Don't tell that to Dr. Niel Loenberg, a physician from Norway, and about 50 other Norse docs who formed the Nordic Society for Medical Humor. At the group's first meeting, Loenberg reportedly waxed eloquent. "There's nothing like sex, good food, music and humor to stay fit," he told the assembled physicians. Rumors that membership in the society soared after he gave his speech cannot be substantiated.