Laughter Therapy Growing in Popularity as Way To Fight Stress

Can pretending to ride the subway, leaning into the turns and toppling fellow passengers, relieve stress?

Apparently, if the conductor is a certified laughter leader and the strap-hangers are willing to force a few laughs.

"Let's do subway! Lean to the right, to the left!" barked Jolene Nevers, above a chorus of loud but faked ha-has that morphed into a real giggle here, a bona fide titter there.

"You end up actually laughing," said Karissa Covelli, 19, who joined a group of eight men and women for a laugh-therapy session at the University of Connecticut's Health Education Center last week. The 20-minute session dissolved the day's frustrations and a crabby mood, Covelli said. "I feel a lot better now."

"Laughter clubs are a form of structured play," said Nevers, a university health-education coordinator, and a laughter leader certified by World Laughter Tour Inc., which provides training and support for those seeking mirth. Nevers learned about the laughter-therapy movement at an American College Health Association conference two years ago.

"As adults, we have to work fun and play into our lives," said Nevers, flushed and thirsty after 20 minutes of directing a half-dozen exercises, including pretend rides on a subway and a roller coaster.

Amid a merciless economy that has stripped millions of Americans of their jobs or homes or trapped them in the quicksand of debt, fitting fun into their lives is serious stuff. Laughter, researchers conclude, is nothing to joke about.

Laughter therapy reduced cholesterol and lowered inflammation in a group of diabetics with high blood pressure, according to a study this spring by doctors at Loma Linda University. Their findings jibe with a 2005 study by the University of Maryland's Center for Preventive Cardiology, which found that laughing relieves stress. Stress can damage the endothelium, the protective barrier that lines the blood vessels and lead to the build up of fat and cholesterol, factors in heart attack, said Dr. Michael Miller, the center's director.

"We know that exercising, not smoking and eating foods low in saturated fat will reduce the risk of heart disease," Miller said. "Perhaps regular, hearty laughter should be added to the list."

But does forced laughter, as practiced by laughter-therapy enthusiasts, provide the same benefits as real laughter? According to some studies, the brain doesn't know the difference between the two. Endorphins, the body's happy hormones, are released when we laugh or simulate laughter, according to Charles Schaefer, a psychology professor at Fairleigh Dickinson University in Teaneck, N.J.