Sawbones: A Marital Tour of Misguided Medicine - Sawbones: Laughter

Episode Date: October 1, 2016

Is laughter really the best medicine? No! Medicine is. The history of how we arrived at that conclusion is the subject of this week's Sawbones. Music: "Medicines" by The Taxpayers

Saubones is a show about medical history, and nothing the hosts say should be taken as medical advice or opinion. It's for fun. Can't you just have fun for an hour and not try to diagnose your mystery boil? We think you've earned it. Just sit back, relax, and enjoy a moment of distraction from that weird growth. You're worth it. that weird growth. You're worth it. Alright, what's wrong with these about? Some books! One, two, one, two, three, four! I'm not a sense the smell in my cup for the mouth.

Hello everybody and welcome to Saul Bones, a marital tour of misguided medicine. I'm your co-host Justin McElroy and I'm Sydney McElroy. Sitzer, it's been a long few weeks. That is the truth. Here at the McElroy, Haseyenda. Yes, we have been full time, full bore. Full bore. 24-7.

7. Wait, 24-7 7 Wait 24-7 4 7 4 5 2. I know it's hard. I don't know. We've been busy I'm shooting a TV show and it's that today's the last day of shooting so the the finish line is in sight. I had to take a little the finish line is in sight. I had to take a little staycation, is that the popular term that everyone uses? Staycation, but luckily- Little staycation from doctoring this week to just focus on, well, really our two-year-old. But if you think about it because I've been so busy trying to come up with jokes for people

that really I've been doctoring as well, as we all know Sydney laughter is the best medicine. So you think that's probably the same? It's probably the same thing to do medicine like with pills but also do it. Well that's what I do I do medicine with pills. Do you have some of pills but I do have a tisement next to my name like come see family practice doctor Sydney McRoy she do medicine with pills. I do medicine with pills, but I do like- That's the advertisement next to my name. Like, come see Family Practice Doctor Sydney McRoy. She does medicine with pills. I do it with like, pratfalls. Check it out. Instance and stuff.

Do you do a lot of stunts? There's not many stunts and pratfalls. And not many on the show, but I do like, fart noises and stuff. Hilarious gags. There's at least one banana peel, right? You know, yeah. That's the epitome of humor.

And that's like, that kind of makes me a doctor because it's the best medicine. Do you know what that would make you a doctor of? Lapturology. No. No. Gelatology. Gelatology?

Yes. What does that mean? That's the study of laughter's effect on the human body. What? That is a real thing. Gelatology. I'm kind of an amateur gelatologist. I guess.

I don't know. Do you know? Do you know? Okay. I understand that you know the phrase laughter is the best medicine. Do you know the history of laughter as medicine? No, Sydney, but I'm betting that you'll be willing to teach me. That's right, Justin.

Let me tell you all about it. Thank you to Sam and Matthew and Victor for suggesting this topic. Laughter is interesting because it's obviously an innate thing. You can certainly choose to laugh. I think certainly there are times where maybe you aren't inspired to laugh, but you can force it. Yeah, you can force it. Laughter just happens and we know this because we see infants laughing, right?

I mean, we remember. So it can't be a learned behavior? No, it's not a learned behavior. That that that turning up the corners of your mouth and making some sort of noise, repetitive noise, that is an innate way we have of communicating with each other. It creates some social bonds, you know, in ways that it can be used to tell somebody that you like them or you're interested

or to bring people together, people are more likely to laugh when they're together. But it can also be used to ostracize. It can be used to tell people we don't like you or you are different or you are weird. So laughter communicates. And it's also been observed in humans pretty much as far back as we go. Part of that is probably because in some ways laughter is the fight or flight response. You know, we've talked about that before, that discharge of the sympathetic nervous system when you're startled by something or you perceive something as a threat.

And everything kind of goes on red alert. If you then realize that it is unfounded, that the threat was imaginary, that it was like you thought you saw a shadow, you thought there was something scary there, and then you look and it was like a hat rack. Right. Laughter is a way to dissipate all that energy

that you built up all at once, and then realize, which is why, I think you see that with little kids a lot. I've noticed that with Charlie, she'll almost, she'll see something on TV that's almost kind of scary or startles her a little bit and she'll start laughing really quickly. And it's because she realizes, oh, I was scared, but okay, it's okay. Yeah, try to shake it off basically.

We've known for a really long time that there is some sort of positive effect on humans from laughter. And I'm part of that, it's like, you know, because it makes you feel good. But King Solomon gave us one of the earliest accounts of the healing power of laughter from Proverbs. And what was that? A Maryheart death good like a medicine, but a broken spirit dryeth the bones.

I think there's probably something to that if I had to guess. I'm not sure you're probably going to let me know I would assume, but that makes sense to me. That drives. You like that? Yeah, I like that sound. The ancient Greeks agreed.

They actually used to prescribe to their patients physicians from ancient Greece that if you are sick, just go to the Hall of Comedians. Well, I mean, not exclusively, I think it's probably better as a preventative than it is a curative, if I had a guess, but... I don't know. Do you think that you would tell people if you're not feeling so great,

maybe you should listen to my podcast? I don't think that you should tell people that. That seems like sticky ground. I do not tell my patients to listen to my podcast because that seems unprofessional. Well, that's true. You shouldn't use the operating theater as your promotional grounds for your podcast.

That's bad form. And I can't tell them to listen to your other podcasts because you use bad words. That's true. And your patients have never heard those. No, none of my patients have ever heard bad words. They would, they would send their patients to, to the theater to be entertained as part of the healing process. Let me clarify that. Like, you wouldn't just, hey, I don't know, go laugh. Let's hope it gets better. But as part of it, you know, also laugh.

Hypocrity specifically valued its medicinal use. and he would tell physicians, not patients, but actually tell other doctors, use wit in your dealings with patients because dowerness is repulsive, both to the healthy and the sick. Yeah. So, and there's this long history of doctors who teach other doctors, encouraging them to use a little humor at the bedside,

to use a little bit of your natural creativity and wit, which is such like a, and I can say this because I am one, like a nerdy scientist way of talking about social interaction, it's okay to use a little humor and wit when speaking with your patient. There are some suggested jokes. Exactly. Statistically proven to alleviate dour mood. It's funny because there's also usually a little kind of note at the end

that if it doesn't come naturally to you, faking it is not really advisable. Faking having a sense of humor. Yes. If you are just not a funny person, don't try really hard because it will come across as you know as unnatural and uncomfortable. That yeah, that I agree with that as well. Some some Native American cultures actually used to have clowns who worked with witch doctors. Well in case you needed some new things that I'm not sure about, you know, clowns that are working for witch doctors.

They realize that you know along with all of of the things that witch doctors would do, whether or not they worked, we're not getting into that, but that having a clown there to make you laugh and entertain you would also be helpful. And- Just acting. In that, in that lie,

clowns are actually really highly regarded within like the hierarchy of the tribal structure. Or in modern medicine, hello, patch atoms. It's like we never got off the clown thing. We're gonna get to patch atoms. Don't you worry. Hell, carry on. Of course, we're gonna get to patch atoms.

In the 1300s, a surgeon, Henri de Monville, used to tell jokes to his patients in the recovery room because he thought that specifically, as one was recovering from a surgery and all the stress on the body that a surgery did, telling them jokes would. Presumably not a tummy surgery, right? That seems like terribly in advisable.

They've got stitches, man. That is very true. Having had a tummy surgery, you do not want to laugh after a tummy surgery. No, absolutely not. No, but he also wrote about this, let the surgeon take care to regulate the whole regimen of the patient's life for joy and happiness, allowing his

relatives and special friends to cheer him and by having someone tell him jokes. Great. So specifically, get all the friends and family around and tell them some good jokes. Those are some good, clean gags. Throughout the centuries, we also know that court gestures were there, not just for medical use. I don't think you could make the argument that a royal court would have had a court gesture there to heal the king or queen. But certainly to help relieve stress and tension.

I mean, that was kind of necessary. You have to do all these really tough, what a king things, make a lot of hard decisions, whatever kings do. And at the end of the day, you might be really tense and stressed out. And so it could be good for you to have a court jester. Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. And as we move through the ages, humor and laughter, of course, we know that they bring joy to people and they're good for counseling people.

We recognize the link pretty quickly between if someone has depression or what we all probably used to call melancholy, melancholy. We used to think their humors were out of order and so they were sad and down. In that case, it was actually true. That they're humors. Get it?

That's pretty good, right? That was a good one. There, I'm healing you. There you go. Enjoy this gift or healing? My seasonal allergies are recovering as we speak. Okay. And before we understood depression as a clinical entity,

just thinking someone was sad as it was, you know, melancholy was as close as we would have gotten, that making them laugh could be helpful, relieving stress tension. In Robert Burton, who was an English scholar from the 16th century, used to specifically write about using it as a cure for, again, for melancholy. Martin Luther also used humor therapy

during pastoral counseling. So again, mainly for people who were depressed or grieving, that kind of thing. Do we make a distinction between people who are just like, sort of naturally jovial and people who are like, intentionally using, as you said, humor therapy? Well, these are instances where people are specifically saying, I use this technique, like I advise this technique.

A lot of this was physicians or therapists or counselors or anyone whose job it is to make people, to help heal people, you know, spiritually, physically, mentally, emotionally, telling other caregivers, hey, this tool is really helpful. This is something that I have found makes people better. Here's some jokes that I wrote down that you can say. And Martin Luther famous, most famously, I think, wrote a collection of great knock knock jokes. Did he nail to the door at the church? I don't think that's how much it works.

Here's my list. Everyone, pay heed. Get this one, knock knock. Who's there? Interrupting Parrots. Interrupting Parrots. Wow. Like, that's a great one. You can have that.

We've almost taught Charlie that Nognaq joke. We're very close. So close. She also gets it backwards a lot. Because she'll tell us to say Nognaq. Nognaq. And she'll say who's there? It's like a great joke.

Which is really actually like a great joke. It's a whole elevated level of humor. But he also advised that instead of in times of depression or again what we would have just understood as like sadness, melancholy, that it is not good to isolate yourself, that you shouldn't go off and be by yourself, that instead being around people who specifically make you happy and make you laugh could be curative. And part of this is just common sense. You know, when you're sad, you want people cheering you up. That, you know, that's, that's just makes sense. But these are people who are advocating for it specifically as, and this will fix the problem that I see as a medical problem. Herburt spence was a sociologist from the 17th century who talked about specifically using humor,

not just to cheer people up, but if you are really tense. So people who are very anxious or stressed out or overwhelmed that humor could be a way to diffuse that tension. And a manual Kant, the German philosopher, also talked about using it to restore equilibrium to your mental and emotional state. Yeah. Using humor and laughter. It seems like this is a very, I don't know, it's one of those things that's interesting

because it is inherent. It seems like it is almost sort of instinctive that it would make sense that it would be helpful. But I guess at this point, we didn't really have a lot of ways of measuring efficacy of that, right? Exactly. At this point, we're still just, a lot of this is observational.

So physicians and philosophers and all these different people are observing it. They're maybe using it in some sort of practice. And then they're kind of just writing about how they think that it is useful, how they think that it is helpful. And there is a lot of literature on laughter just discussing what it is. They ain't kind of taking a step back. The ancient Greeks actually used to, and the Romans used to debate a lot, what is laughter?

What is humor? Why do we laugh? Why does it happen? What is its purpose? What is its usefulness? The answer to all those questions is, of course, Borat. That's what that is. Laughter is for Borat. Laughter is by Borat. Laughter is what's funny? Borat. Who makes you laugh? Borat. He's always there to crack you up. Laughter. My wife. Did you hear that?

That was laughter is of the Borat, for the Borat, by the Borat. Exactly, that's exactly right. And also it's worth thinking about, I think that at this time period, we did not have pretty much all of our medical treatments or unpleasant. So whatever we could sort of cling to,

that was like non-invasive and maybe would help possibly would be something really valuable. Right, which is why it makes sense that it would date all the way back to, especially if you think about hypocrite as sort of like the father of this kind of medicine. He, his recommendations often would be good diet, exercise, get plenty of rest, and be happy. And that'll get you most of the way there, which isn't bad advice for anyone. It's also a really defensive medicine. Maybe he's the father of defensive medicine.

Maybe. Yeah, I can't get sued if I just don't people to eat out the next exercise, get plenty of sleep and laugh a lot. Yeah, there's nothing in there. Nobody's gonna, nobody's gonna sue me then for saying like, oh, I laughed too much and well, I don't know. No, I have a hernia. Any other well-known doctors using laughter? Well, I'm gonna get to that Justin, but first, why don't we head to the Billy department? Let's go. The medicines, the medicines that ask you lift my car before the mouth. Why would you listen to a podcast of TV pilots that never got made? It must not have been any good, right?

I don't know for a fact that anyone read it. They couldn't get to deal that. First kind of a regime change. Someone at the studio who was in a decision-making capacity said, these guys seem like losers. They just blamed it on, okay, well, it must be women. We got word that USA had decided to stop doing comedy. Why aren't we making this?

It was so good. Here are the TV comedies you never got to see on the Dead Pilots Society podcast. Listen on MaximumFund.org or wherever you download podcasts. So we were talking to you about some of the other physicians that have utilized humor to help heal folks. So a lot of, as we've kind of mentioned, a lot of different physicians and counselors, therapists, philosophers all recognize that humor and laughter was helpful in the sense that people seem to subjectively feel better afterwards.

But you don't see a lot of mention as to why. Why do we think that that's good other than just, you know, I'm happier now. Right. In the 1500s, one physician, J'aubair, began to advise that laughter was good specifically for moving blood into the skin and especially like the facial area

that was a way of, which I mean, I guess you could kinda, if somebody's laughing really hard and they get flushed. Yeah, it makes sense where you draw that conclusion. Exactly, exactly. And it was thought that if you did that often enough that it would actually bring more like vitality to your facial features,

that you would look healthier, that you would have a more like vitality to your facial features, that you would look healthier, that you would have a more robust glow. Ready glow. Glow. And that it would also help to clean your complexion, that your complexion would be clearer if you laughed more often because of all this excess blood flow to your face as a result of laughter.

So there we see somebody actually trying to make kind of a physiological tie to it. In the 1600s, there's an educator Richard Mulcaster who recommended laughter for people who were suffering from anything that was thought to be like a cold illness. And I don't mean cold in like the common cold. I mean like temperature cold. Okay. We've talked about this a little bit on the humorous episode. Right. That there were disorders that were, that were kind of thought of as either cold or hot disorders. Sure. And the way you would combat them was with something that was the opposite. So like disorders that had something to do with like inflammation

usually or something like that would be hot. Exactly. And it was often thought that things, things that we call the cold, upper respiratory illnesses, or like pneumonia's, or bronchitis's, or those kinds of things would have been thought of as cold type disorders. In addition, melancholy would have been, or depression would have been thought of as a cold type disorder.

And a lot of those also had to do with the idea of, again, going back to the humor, is like too much black bile, too much flim, that kind of thing. And it would, the reason that Richard Mulcaster thought that it would be helpful to combat cold type disorders with laughter specifically is again the idea that it moves blood, which is a warming, a warming force. Yeah, but it makes sense. So you're transferring this blood to warm the chest,

to warm the surface of your skin, because it kind of, I guess if you laugh hard enough, you get sweaty. I guess. I don't usually laugh. How hard are you laughing? That's sweet. You must watch Borat a lot.

Because that's a lot of laughter. Either that or this guy was super funny. Yeah, it's like the funniest. I'm gonna start using him as my reference point for funny. Yeah, are you as funny as Richard Mulcaster? Richard Mulcaster. Richard Mulcaster. Beloved comedian and physician.

You really need to check out my husband Justin's new television show because he's as funny as Richard Mulcaster. Everybody's funny as 1600s educator, Richard Mulcaster. Yeah. He even said that in a sense, laughter can be thought of as a type of physical exercise. That's a stretch. I wish that were accurate, but I'm not sure I can

grant that one. Because our audience would be the fittest people. No. No. Well, that'd be pretty good. They would do people. No. No. No. Well, that'd be pretty good. You don't allow it. Yeah.

One of the best examples, because all of this is sort of, again, kind of anecdotal evidence or just hypothetical. They're basing their assumptions on why laughter helps people. Well, first of all, on an outdated system of medicine that is no longer used for humors. But also just based on like this is kind of what people look like and this is what they feel like afterwards so I guess that it helped. It's like the, you know, it's like the subhek cocaine or stuff that had diuretics in it. Like, something's happening. Like something changed, something's working.

Exactly. Even if they don't know what. So the question is, how do we get from all these kind of vague ideas about laughter? And the fact that, I mean, laughter therapy or using laughter to heal people probably would persist anyway, because people like it. You know, it's fun.

And it's certainly not harming anyone. If we think about about like, because there is something known as humor therapy now, what our modern concept of humor therapy probably starts really in the 30s, 1930s, because that is when you started to see, as a result of the polio epidemic, and so many children being hospitalized, they started to bring clowns into children's wards. Sorry kids. The idea was to cheer them up. Oh yeah.

Sure. Okay, we're not going to lot on clowns here. We gotta be careful. Okay. Okay. I'm in defensive clowns. I'm allowed to have my opinions of clowns, but go on. You are allowed to have your opinion of clowns.

There are a lot of people who still find clowns very funny. Nobody finds clowns funny. That's ludicrous. Charlie likes the big comfy couch and that is a clown. Thank you. Okay, that's fine, but those are clowns who have script written for them with jokes in them. Clowns inherently are not funny.

They're terrible. Well, who inherently is funny if they're just standing there silently? Kevin James. I could go on. Rick Moranis. Borat, I assume. Borat ever heard of him? No, I also think that clowns probably were funny or like back in the 30s, I think that...

When you've never hurt seen anything funny and your family was living off of Applecores, a clown would be a real gut buster. I'll grant you this, but that's also because you're laughing a little bit because it's like anything to distract me from like how much this sucks right now. I think clowning is also an art that you are completely undermining.

Like, there's a skill set there. You have to learn how to do it. So it's being a mortician, but they're not chucklebusters either. Listen, okay. We're all allowed to have our own idea of what's funny. That's fine. Okay.

Yes. Right. Personally, don't find, but we're at the funniest thing on earth. Well, I can't help you. In 1964, Norman Cousins. Have you ever heard of Norman Cousins? Okay. He was a journalist.

He was a professor. He was a largely known too for, he was a protester. He was a very, in most areas, a very strong liberal protester and is well known for that. He was diagnosed with a crippling and painful condition, which was probably thought to be ankylosing spondylitis, which is an inflammatory autoimmune condition of the spine and can be very painful. Now, whether or not that is true, that is actually up to some debate at this point,

because he was doing fine, and he went on this trip to Russia, and afterwards he got really sick, and he survives this. Norman Cousins does not die at this time. You looked anxious. But this may have actually been like a reactive arthritis. He may have been misdiagnosed in retrospect.

It may have been more of an acute process that resolved as opposed to a chronic illness that got better. Either way, I don't think it really matters. The point is the doctors told him, look, I don't think it really matters. The point is, the doctors told him, look, I don't think there's anything we can do for you. You're going to be on a lot of pain. This is going to be really terrible. And this is probably going to be what eventually ends your life. And I'm really sorry about that. And basically, throw up their hands. Yeah. And he said, no, I will not accept this. So he left the hospital and moved into a hotel instead and hired a nurse to help him out.

Now, one of the things he did was take megasus of vitamin C, which we have already said previously. Did not help. Did not help. That's fine, but the other thing he did was watch a lot of comedy. Specifically, what did he watch? The Marks Brothers? Okay, they're very funny. Laurel and Hardy.

Terrifying. And Candid Camera. Now come on man. Lots of Candid Camera. Lots of Candid Camera. Like what did they step in? A pie? Hilarious. Which I love because... It's a punk to its generation. The punk to its generation, what are they stepping? A pie hilarious. Which I love because- It's a punk of its generation.

The punk of its generation, what I was gonna say is it's America's funniest home videos. Well, it's both, yeah. Which if you, if you could you imagine being locked in a hotel room, marathoning America's home video, America's funny some videos over just like- Sitting please, that's like too dire.

I would laugh at a clown at that point. Do you know how many crotch shots you'd see in that? That would, those always do get me. I mean, like as in somebody getting hit in a crotch. Yeah, not any crotch shots unless you went to a different station at the hotel TV. Don't do that. Then you get charged for. And that's not going to make you laugh.

He later wrote that after locking himself in this hotel room, watching tons of comedic films and all the candid camera he could stomach, that he made the joyous discovery that 10 minutes of genuine belly laughter had an anesthetic effect, so seemed to relieve his pain and would give him at least two hours of pain-free sleep afterwards.

So after doing this, he recovered eventually from his painful inflammatory condition. Interesting. And he kind of became a profit of laughter therapy after that. It's been the next 20 years, in addition to the other things he did,

teaching about the merits of humor and laughter in the healing process. And there's actually a movie that was made in 1984 about this. He wrote a book about it. Anatomy of an illness perceived by the, anyway, there's a long title. The movie's called Anatomy of an illness. Who's in it?

Ed Asner stars in it. If the movie has a 10 minute long scene of Ed Asner laughing at Canon camera, I think I might have a future rental on my hands. You know, it's funny. I did read, I was reading about the movie that Norman Cousins was not a huge fan of it. Really? He thought it was over-dramatized.

He didn't like the portrayal, but he did recognize it as an or try it as best. He worked really hard. He's a pro. The man is a professional. Yeah, exactly. And you see this kind of probably in part because of this huge story. This was already a famous guy and then he did this and then he wrote a big book about it. And then it became a big movie and it was a very dramatic story.

Because he did, I mean, he did get better. I don't know that I could say laughter was the only reason, but he did get better. I don't know that I could say laughter was the only reason, but he did get better. And this kind of led in the 60s to a lot of interest in laughter being used for therapeutic purposes. A lot of this was led by Dr. William Frye out of Stanford who started to study, okay, so we kind of think laughter is helpful. Why do we think it's helpful? And what is it actually doing from a physiological perspective? So we finally see somebody studying it and that's where I got the term Gelatology. Okay. This is when we actually see the study of the effect of laughter on the human body

Become an organized scientific process as opposed to just I don't know make them laugh The it's it's funny because in all these different studies, what they would have to do is induce laughter. That's a tricky one. And then like study people. So they would have to like, you know, show them funny things or read them funny stories or have them read a funny book or something like that. Super fudge. For example, Tales of Fourth Great Anything. That's a great book.

Any of them. But it's funny because what's interesting about this to me, I was reading about like, well, what did they use? And like some examples I found was the simpsons are commonly used in these studies. Okay, good. From the Simpsons South Park. Early Simpsons Presumably.

I don't know. South Park is used a lot when you read about it. It's interesting to me because as Justin knows, I'm not a person who laughs out loud very easily. Even when I think something's funny, I don't laugh. You just noted. Yes, I do. I am one of those people. But you'd have to try to find something that would specifically make your patient laugh a lot so that you could study it. And from that, we

have learned a few things about laughter. For one, there are two different types of laughter. What are they? They can be classified as either Dushan or non-Dushan laughter named for Dr. Dushan. Dushan laughter is that natural chuckle or giggle that you kind of can't control when something funny happens. It just hits you. and you have that. It usually makes close your eyes. That's one good way to kind of distinguish.

There's actually a reflex that happens that squeezes or shut the muscles that control your eyes at the same time. And that's real. That's real. That is more helpful, laughter. Let me say that. I don't want to say that the other is fake laughter. Anything else is non-dueshamed laughter.

And that could be a force laugh. It could be that I think a lot of people participate in non-dueshain laughter when they go to live comedy shows. Because you see views of the audience where everyone is laughing hysterically. Well, it's social. You hear the people laughing and you just laugh. Exactly. It's a social cue, and which is why people are more likely to laugh in groups than they are alone. And also, you've already bought into the theory like I'm here for a funny thing, I'm here to laugh, and so you're more likely to laugh.

But that laughter is unfortunately not as medically useful. There have also been branches of laughter meditation and laughter yoga that have kind of spawned off from this. As you mentioned, Dr. Hunter Patch Adams brought laughter into the forefront, especially after the movie, that in general trying to humor your patient while nature takes its course is probably one of the most useful things as a physician that we can do. Now what is all this lettuce, too? We've done all these studies.

Yeah, we've got different types of laughter. What does laughter do? So some studies have shown that it can reduce your blood pressure. Okay, good. It helps decrease levels of stress hormones in your body. So in theory, this is where we get this idea that it helps you deal with stress intention, helps to diffuse stress intention.

It may boost your immune function. There have been some studies that have shown a little bit of improved immune function after laughter, but I don't know that I would prescribe it for people who are in some sort of immunocompromised condition. I don't think that you could go that far. I think it's more of an interesting academic point. It also does relieve, it releases endorphins when you laugh,

which are thought of as like your natural opiates inside your body that help you deal with pain. So they've done a lot of studies on people in like, put them in uncomfortable positions, standing in an uncomfortable position and then showing them the symptoms and seeing if you can stand longer or like crouch in that position or whatever while you're watching something funny and laughing,

then you could otherwise. Yeah. To say like, well, look, they're painting, and they'll say afterwards like, well, I wasn't in as much of this comfort as the people who weren't watching something funny. Wasn't the control have to be watching something that wasn't funny? What do you think they'd be watching? I don't know, like,, lawn order, I guess. I guess.

See, I feel like that would be, because my suspicion is it would have an anesthetic effect regardless because you would be, have something else to focus on. Well, but specifically, now I didn't read about controls. What I read about is that they were in uncomfortable positions and then they were watching something funny in an uncomfortable position. Cool. As far as I could tell, anyway, the idea is that you tolerate pain better

when you are laughing. So there you have it, laugh more, it's good for you. It'll improve your general well-being, and I guess if you laughed enough, it could exercise your abdominal muscles. That's a lot of laughter. That's a lot of laughter. That's a lot of, you're gonna wear out your forehead

at DVD with that one. Folks, that's gonna do it for us here on saw bones. We hope a lot of laughter. It's a lot of you. You're going to wear your Borad DVD with that one. Folks, that's going to do it for us here on saw bones. We hope you've enjoyed yourself. Thanks for sticking with this even though. We've had kind of a wild schedule these past few weeks. It's been tough on our intus. Thanks for being understanding. Thanks to taxpayers for letting us use your song Medicines is the intro and outro and mid-trow of our program. You can find them on on bandcamp. It's, I think it's tax, I can never remember.

Taxpayers.bankamp.com or the taxpayers. Try them both. One of those will work. They're worth the extra effort. Yeah, it's worth the work. Thanks to MaximeFund.org for letting us be a part of their network. There's a lot of great shows there and now that you can go listen to. And I believe that's going to do it for us. But until the next time we have

something to speak with you about. Until next week. My name is Justin McRory. Justin McRory. Justin McRory. Justin McRory. Justin McRory. Justin McRory. Justin McRory. Justin McRory. Justin McRory. Justin McRory. Justin McRory. Justin McRory. Justin McRory. Justin McRory. Justin McRory. Justin McRory. Justin McRory.

Justin McRory. Justin McRory. Justin McRory. Justin McRory. Justin McRory. Justin McRory. Justin McRory. Justin McRory. Justin McRory. Justin McRory. Justin McRory. Justin McRory. Justin McRory. Justin McRory. Justin McRory. Justin McRory. Justin McRory. Justin McRory. Alright! Maximumfund.org or comedy and culture, artist owned. Listen or supported.