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Gray Matter
Laugh, for Longevity
Q.
What two things do you believe contribute to successful aging?
A.
First, a resolute and practiced sense of humor. Next, combine a carefree leitmotif with an
enthusiasm for-- and commitment to—regular exercise.
Let’s begin today with my mandate for daily laughter. Next week, we’ll turn to the more difficult
matter of exercise-for-life.
“Please take life seriously, but take yourself lightly.” This bit of wisdom was dispensed by a man
wearing a ridiculous-looking Groucho Marx nose and faux eyeglasses. His name was Israel (Izzy)
Gesell; Brooklyn, New York was his home, and he gave his occupation as “American humorologist.”
Now, when Professor Izzy took off the alleged disguise, his God-given nose was a duplicate of the
outsized make-believe proboscis. The surprise at once became cause for laughter. The scene, on this
long ago day, was a seminar on stress control at a Canyon Ranch in the Berkshire Mountains of
Massachusetts.
Over the next 45 minutes, the Brooklyn philosopher persuaded the class that “Humor is an
underutilized resource for most people,” while “stress is not an event, it is a perception of an
event. Thus, the way to effectively deal with stress is to alter our perceptions.”
From my reading, I knew this earnest practitioner was following a long line of poets, essayists,
authors and scientists, all who believe that: 1) laughter and humor lead straightway to good health;
and 2) laughter can increase creativity, as well as flexibility of thought.
“If you wish to glimpse inside a human soul and get to know a man,” wrote Fyodor Doestoyevsky, the
brilliant Russian novelist, “you’ll get better results if you just watch him laugh. If he laughs
well, he’s a good man.”
Further, no essay on our subject is complete without reference to the American author and editor
Norman Cousins. Driven to a hospital bed by the severe spinal pain of incurable ankylosing
spondylitis (a form of arthritis), Cousins became his own doctor. In his 1976 bestseller “Anatomy of
an Illness,” he described how he self-treated himself by watching funny movies (The Marx Brothers,
with Groucho, were among them), and by reading humorous literature.
Cousins wrote, “Ten minutes of solid belly laughter would then give me two hours of pain-free sleep.”
In years to come, Cousins went on to lecture medical students on the efficacy of laughter,
explaining how, in his mind, “laughter stimulates and activates endorphins, hormones known to us as
the body’s own morphine.”
Some 100 years before the intellectual Norman Cousins “discovered” the efficacies of healthful
laughter, an essayist named Josh Billings (1818-1885) was writing, “There ain’t much fun in
medicine, but there’s a heck of a lot of medicine in fun.”
Moreover, the late anthropologist and author Ashley Montagu weighed in on the side of laughter by
teaching this truth about the species: “We are intended to remain in many ways childlike…” Quickly,
this sober Princeton University scientist added how a child actually laughs some 250 times a day on
average, while an adult during a 24-hour day laughs just 15 times.
Lesson learned: the science-based evidence is overwhelming; we senior adults are depriving ourselves
daily of hundreds of pleasurable, life-affirming episodes. So, grab your party hat, find a partner,
and go laugh it up somewhere. Tell friends that you’re the new self-appointed doctor of good humor.
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Outrageous Associations
