Good Humour Can Affect Your Health And Wellbeing

Our health can be affected by whether or not we see the humour in every day occurences. "Health and good humour," said Massillon, "are to the human body like sunshine to vegetation."

Healing with Humour is the popular Blog of Donna Marie. She is changing lives as a nurse, professional clown, humourist, certified laughter leader, success coach and a holistic practitioner.

Inviting people to laugh with you while you are laughing at yourself is a good thing to do. You may be the fool, but you're the fool in charge. ~ Carl Reiner, My Anecdotal Life, 2003

"Every one," says Lubbock, "likes a man who can enjoy a laugh at his own expense,--and justly so, for it shows good humour and good sense. If you laugh at yourself, other people will not laugh at you."

People differ very much in their sense of humour. As some are deaf to certain sounds and blind to certain colors, so there are those who seem deaf and blind to certain pleasures. What makes us laugh until we almost go into convulsions moves them not at all. Is it not worth while to make an effort to see the funny side of our petty annoyances so that we can aid our health? How could the two boys do anything but laugh, after they had contended long over the possession of a box found by the wayside and when they agreed to divide its contents, they found nothing in it? This certainly was a lesson for them to deflect strong emotions with humour.

The ability to get on with scolding, irritating people is a great art. To preserve serenity amid petty trials is a happy gift which can change our health. A sunny temper is also conducive to health. A medical authority of highest repute affirms that "excessive labor, exposure to wet and cold, deprivation of sufficient quantities of necessary and wholesome food, habitual bad lodging, sloth, and intemperance are all deadly enemies to human life, but they are none of them so bad as violent and ungoverned passions; that men and women have frequently lived to an advanced age in spite of these; but that instances are very rare in which people of irascible tempers live to extreme old age."

Emotional stability and conscientiousness have been identified as traits that are directly related to good health and long lives. The opposite of emotional stability is neuroticism which is the tendency to worry and think negatively. These people do not handle stress well. They are often anxious and moody.

Purdue University psychologist Daniel Mroczek decide to explore the idea of whether this inherited trait is a death sentence or whether this behavior can be changed. Mroczek followed 1600 men over 12 years and recorded whether they became more or less neurotic over time. He also looked at the mortality risk after 18 years. Those middle-aged men and older that became more neurotic increased their risk for dying, primarily from cancer and heart disease. On the other hand, those men that managed to change their behavior lived as long as emotionally stable men.

Steven M. Sultanoff, a California clinical psychologist says learning to enjoy the ups and down of life reduces stress; improves communications; energizes relationships and generally makes people feel better. He continues by saying that 'studies show that humour might be dangerous to your illness.' Sultanoff maintains the website (humormatters.com), which includes an extensive section devoted to aging related humour.

We can learn to use good humour to change the course of our health, our personal relationships and our business lives.

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Works cited: Senior Journal: Today's News and Information for Senior Citizens & Baby Boomers More Senior Citizen News and Information Than Any Other Source. Two Personality Traits Linked to Health and Longevity. Emotional stability and conscientiousness make a healthy personality April 5, 2007 -

Humour Helps Us All to Cope With the Aging Process by Jerry Aragon.

Article by Amelia Johnson

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