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This series presents information based in part on theory and conjecture.

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The producer's purpose is to suggest some possible explanations, but not necessarily

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the only ones to the mysteries we will examine.

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Laughter.

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One of the most familiar, yet least understood, of the body's responses.

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Scientific examination reveals it to be a mystery.

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Its role in human behavior unknown.

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Recent evidence indicates that laughter may be linked somehow to our mysterious ability to heal ourselves.

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Is laughter capable of keeping us well?

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What occurs when a person laughs is a sudden mental explosion.

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I'd rather hear you, Bill Allen's baseball scoop, scoop!

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I would rather have a comedian with me when I'm feeling badly than a doctor.

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What is the importance of laughter?

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Could it be linked to survival itself?

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Come with us now as we go in search of laugh therapy.

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Music.

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In India, a man's wrists are deeply burned, then smeared with a mustard paste as a therapy against an illness.

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There's no rational explanation as to why that would work other than that the patient would believe that it would work.

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Dr. Ari Keene has traveled the world in search of an understanding of therapeutic practices.

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By simply believing in the therapy, this man's mind helps him to heal.

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Can we ascribe healing powers such as these to other forms of therapy?

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I think what's exciting about what we've been learning from studying the primitives is that the same time that we're making great advances in molecular biology,

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we're also becoming aware of the tremendous power of the mind, the power of positive thinking, the power of faith.

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All of which, when integrated, will open up a new era in the treatment of psychiatric as well as physical illness.

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From around the world, we learn of strange therapies that seem to be impossible, yet they do work.

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Some researchers in our own country have invented unusual tools in an attempt to heal the sick.

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This strange device cured many people at the turn of the century, yet it actually does nothing but emit a blue spark.

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When a treatment has no explainable medical basis for affecting health, but somehow does, it is called a placebo.

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Dr. A.K. Shapiro has spent the last 20 years investigating the so-called placebo effect.

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A placebo is probably connected and related to the will to live, the will to get better.

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It's probably a built-in genetic mechanism that helped mankind survive.

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It's omnipresent, everybody's subject to it. It's very difficult to recognize. It's probably universal.

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Dr. Shapiro has assembled a collection of placebos that rivals that of the Smithsonian.

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Some of the items that have been used over the years stretch the imagination.

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The most magnificent placebo in the world of history, without qualification, is the unicorn one.

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And the reason for that is that it was the most expensive treatment in the whole history of medicine.

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During the Middle Ages, people paid $500,000 for this unicorn horn because it cured everything.

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It was the most excellent aphrodisiac. And of course, only the royalty could afford to buy such a thing.

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The people also had a treatment which involved bathing the unicorn in water, and they drank unicorn water for pennies.

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Here is a powdered unicorn horn, which I bought in Japan in a herbalist shop.

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Here's an aphrodisiac recommended by Maimonides, which consists of a hollowed-out carrot into which you urinate.

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It's a cure for impotence, which you wrote about in his volume of work on the treatment of sexual disorders.

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Here's a Hyrudo-Medicinalis, that's a leech, which were extensively used in treatment to again withdraw the bad from the inside.

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These were all placebos used in the past.

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We asked Dr. Shapiro whether using laughter could be a placebo therapy.

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It is possible that laughter, like anything else, can be a placebo for the person who would respond to laughter therapeutically.

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However, for other people, it may not be a placebo at all.

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In fact, for some people, they may get uptight about that and be upset about it and feel worse or have a negative placebo effect.

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Without a placebo to help it along, can our mind cure illness?

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At the Lafayette Clinic in Detroit, a woman learns to control body functions that are normally beyond her control by a therapy called biofeedback.

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Sensitive monitoring equipment provides a signal or feedback from her body's responses, enabling her to reverse the symptoms of a painful condition known as Rayno's disease.

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They would get, they start to get white at fingertips and they go all the way at the knuckles.

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Then they would get like a brilliant red.

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Then they would turn a purplish color, which is really scary.

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And that's when the numbness would set in and they would, well, they looked ugly.

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Project director Dr. Robert Friedman explains how biofeedback works.

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Biofeedback involves electronically monitoring and feeding back to the patient or subject information about a particular physiological function,

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so that the patient hopefully can eventually learn to bring that function under his own control, eventually without the use of the machinery.

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Our work with biofeedback in Rayno's disease tells us that at least in some cases it's possible for people to control their physiological processes

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and thereby abort or turn around certain disease processes.

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Whether or not this is merely due to a placebo effect or whether it's due to some true intrinsic effects of biofeedback really remains to be determined by future research.

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Whether a placebo or not, this woman is using a form of therapy that allows her to use her mind to become well.

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But if burning wrists and electronics can be therapies, what else might work?

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This man is author and philosopher Norman Cousins.

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For him, laughter has a special value, for it may have played a key role in saving his life.

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After contracting a form of collagen disease he was told was fatal, he found himself weakened but unwilling to die.

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Unable to accept either the diagnosis or hospital environment, he checked into a hotel and began a radical therapy,

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large amounts of certain vitamins and regular doses of laughter.

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At the time we carried out specific medical tests to find out whether there was any basis for the belief that laughter was therapeutic.

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And we discovered there was and that the experience I had which was that,

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laughed a free, tended to free my body to some extent of pain and would give me two hours of pain free and also pill free sleep.

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This was corroborated by the test.

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If laughter and positive emotions can physiologically affect us, the changes should be measurable.

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Is it possible to scientifically record the healing power of laughter?

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Primates seem to share an ability to respond to tickling in a way that resembles laughter.

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What is not clear is the importance of laughter to either these orangutans or man.

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Is there a primitive and instinctual basis for laughing? If so, why?

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At Stanford University psychiatrist Dr. William Fry takes part in a unique study.

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He is wired to monitor his body's vital physiology while experiencing sustained laughter.

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The primary study that we are doing this procedure here, putting the cannula into my artery,

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is to make a direct continuous study of the effect of laughter on blood pressure.

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There are also these electrodes on my chest which will give us readings on the heart rate and the characteristics of the heart action.

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In other words, what is called the electrocardiogram.

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Will research reveal that laughter is the best medicine?

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There's no question about in my mind that laughter is good for you.

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I think that it's good for people in a number of different ways having to do with this matter of the stimulation of various bodily processes.

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We can see in the blood pressure activity here that there's a stimulation of blood pressure responses.

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There's also an increase in the heart rate that takes place that's been demonstrated in other studies.

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We also know that there's quite a bit of muscular activity that companies laughter.

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You can just look at me and you can see how muscle groups all over my body are active.

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The ones you can see in outward activity would be the diaphragm and my abdominal muscles,

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but I can assure you that they were very active too.

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So I got a very good exercise while I'm laughing.

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I'm going to expect that this will tell us some very important things about the response of blood pressure to laughter in general, not just with myself.

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It's an area of science that hasn't been explored before.

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The whole area of the physical effects of humor and laughter on the body is one that's relatively ignored.

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His laughter contagious.

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Well, let's find out.

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Performer Carl Reiner.

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Ha ha ha!

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I don't know.

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Television star Steve Allen.

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All right, here we go.

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I'm only in the script where this good a far.

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The annual spring training warm up. The big league teams are all in the spring training

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headquarters around the country.

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What's happening?

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And what a joke does, at least many jokes do, they derail the logical train of thought.

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You think you're going to a certain point and then you're surprised.

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And I think this leads to perhaps some physical, literal spark in the electricity of the brain.

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And for reasons not yet clear, this produces the physical response of pleasant surprise

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and laughter. We go ha ha ha and the muscles go boom boom boom boom boom boom boom boom

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that sort of thing.

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When you're unhappy, juices flow that make you feel bad and you feel things you're having.

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You feel a disintegration inside the body. When you're feeling badly and crying, there's

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tensions and you know that your organs are reacting to it. They must be. And when you're

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laughing, you think of nothing. You feel happy. You feel good. You feel good.

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There's been a notion that I laughed my way out of a serious illness. Not quite true.

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Laughter is a good headline. But the important thing is that I try to employ all the positive

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emotions. Love, hope, faith. Will to live laughter. Laughter was important to be sure because

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laughter helps to oxygenate the blood. It enhances respiration. And some medical researchers

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believe that it combats toxicity. So laughter is important. But it would be a mistake to

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think that that is the only positive emotion that was put to work.

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You laugh, laugh. Well, happy people live longer. There's no doubt about it.

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At Children's Orthopedic Hospital in Los Angeles, stuntman Red Horton steps into a classic comic

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role. They're doing a gig like that. It's of children especially because it's so hard

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to hold attention. It's really rewarding to feel that.

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He believes that a clown is a healer and that laughter is his medicine.

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Hello? Hello? It's for you. Washington. Hello? It's the president. Hello? No,

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still Egypt. Hello? Are you there?

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When I can get a child to laugh, to forget about the pain that he's in right at that

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moment, it makes me really feel great inside and makes me feel tremendous. Makes me want

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to stay there as long as I can just to keep them laughing.

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You ready? Here we go. You're going to balance this on my head, okay? You ready? How's that?

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How's that?

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What are you doing? What are you doing?

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I see myself in a role that has been carried on for centuries between clowns, Luke Jacobs,

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all the way back to the court gestures. I see myself trying to make people in general

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a whole new outlook in life. Something with a little humor, something to laugh at, something

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to feel good about, to feel good about living.

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I like to laugh because when you're hurt or your leg is uncomfortable, when you laugh,

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it makes it so you forget what the pain is. There's no hurting. You just laugh. It makes

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the pain go away because you just forget all about the pain.

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But not all pain is physical, and that's when laughter heals best.

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I will publish right now to bring the stage at the comedy store, one of our regular performers.

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She's a very special lady. She's a very special lady. She's a very special lady. She's a

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very special lady. Welcome right now, Jerry Jewel.

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I couldn't ask for a better reception.

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Yeah, how are we organized? Yeah, I can't lie to you people.

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I got cerebral palsy.

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I knew that I had cerebral palsy when I was just a little kid, and I always used to admire

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the clowns and the circuses and stuff like that. And I always used to think that if they

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put me in a clown costume, nobody would ever know I had CP. You know, they always walk funny.

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But I understand, you know, I'm not insensitive, and I understand that we're brought up in a society

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where we're taught not to stare or laugh at handicapped people. Well, tonight I'm going to break all those rules.

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And I'm going to laugh at Kevin and Carter.

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Laughter is a strength. When you're a handicapped child, you get a lot of abuse from kids when you're little.

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And I had to sustain a lot of that. And I learned to laugh at myself because I was a little

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because either that or I was going to be humiliated. You see?

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You know, I do impressions. Are you ready for an impression?

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I can do anybody with cerebral palsy. No, I can't.

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Okay. This is my impression of a Q-tip.

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Laughter and applause

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What goes on between me and my audience is that there's a lot of love going back and forth.

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It's like I'm giving them love and they're giving me love and it's going back and forth.

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It's vibes. Very strong vibes. I think the most beautiful part of being a comic is being successful

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with a set and walking off the stage and seeing everybody smile. It's so neat.

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And I love it. It just makes me feel so great.

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Jerry Jewel knows what laughter can do. She has found a balm for the spirit and a world of love and acceptance

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because of a mystery called laughter.

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We're very hopeful that these pioneer studies will make an important contribution to the future.

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Perhaps stimulating further studies in the future, perhaps providing some information that will contribute to

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an understanding of human activities, human physiology, and perhaps even human disease in the future.

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Laughter

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Is it possible that clowns and comedians through the ages have touched something we instinctively recognize is vital to our well-being?

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Can it be that Norman Cousin's story holds the key to medical insights yet to be explored?

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Insights that are linked to our mysterious ability to heal, an ability that crosses both cultures and time.

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Laughter

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It's obvious that laughter is important to us for our mental well-being. That's indisputable.

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Is it also possible that it actually helps to keep us well physically?

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We do know it feels good, but we don't know why. Will we someday?

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Perhaps future research will more clearly define the positive physical effects of laughter.

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Until then, we can certainly continue enjoying its obvious psychological benefits.

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Music

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.