While it’s true cancer is no laughing matter, a growing list of people say laughing in the face of cancer brings both control and relaxation to cancer patients.  They say to laugh loud and laugh often for the most beneficial effects.

A good old belly laugh floods the body with oxygen, which reduces stress, optimizes breathing, lowers blood pressure, and promotes healthier muscle function.  Luz Rodriguez, a 57-year-old breast cancer patient, says she just feels healthier when she’s laughing.  In 1979′s ‘Anatomy of an Illness,’ author Norman Cousins describes his own joke-filled journey through cancer and recalls that 10 minutes of genuine laughter seemed to generate a soothingly anesthetic effect.

There are no tried and true tricks to laughing one’s way through cancer but some programs gaining in popularity include:

• The ‘Strength Through Laughter’ group therapy sessions at Montefiore Hospital’s  Einstein Cancer Center in New York, where cancer patients meet once a month to share funny stories, jokes, gags, movies, cartoons, costumes, and parties as they also share their common battle against cancer.  It’s here that Rodriguez celebrates her remission with kindred, laughing, spirits.
• Patients at the Cancer Treatment Centers of America (CTCA) facility in Zion, Illinois, routinely practice laughing, making all the “ha-ha” and “ho-ho” sounds they can produce until the laughter becomes genuine.  To add to the fun, make-believe snowball fights and similar games are likely to break out at any moment, with the game continuing till laughter overtakes one and all.  So popular is this form of therapy that CTCA facilities in Seattle, Tulsa, and Philadelphia have introduced it.
• Psychologist Steve Wilson takes his ‘World Laugher Tour’ on the road, training and certifying laughter club leaders at hospitals across the nation.  He’s left ‘em laughing at dozens of hospitals in the last couple of years and says one particular hospital is especially anxious to try his light-hearted oxygen-boosting therapy on its lung transplant patients.
• ‘Caring Clowns’ volunteers around the world don clownish attire and head to local hospitals where they hope to use humor to bridge the cap between staff and patient, a gap they describe as somewhat “interpersonal” at times.  Dr. Richard Wender, chief of family medicine at Philadelphia’s Thomas Jefferson University Hospital, says his hospital’s clown volunteers are comforting to patients and help them preserve their dignity during the rigors of cancer treatment.  Robbie Robinson, 52, appreciated the program so much during her recent battle against non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma that she became a clown volunteer herself.
• ‘Rx Laugher’ was founded in 1998 by Sherry Dunay Hilber, once a prime time programming director for ABC and CBS television stations, so it should be no surprise this pain management program comes with a lavish line-up of comic TV and movie clips.  The program participated in two large clinical trials that revealed patients watching funny videos were better able to cope with painful procedures, they remained more relaxed, and were more tolerant of pain than less-amused cancer patients.  Patients even slept better after comic entertainment.  Hilber urges anyone going through stressful times to tune into some comic relief, especially easy now that it’s conveniently available around the clock.