"Belly laughter" is not only good exercise, but good for your health!

Norman Cousins had a life-threatening, painful disease. The doctors reached a stage where they could no longer help him, so he discharged himself from hospital and booked himself into a motel. He rented a pile of funny videos (such as old Charlie Chaplin movies). He noticed, while watching and enjoying them, that ten minutes of "solid belly laughter" gave him two hours of painless sleep! [Cousins, N. 1989]. He literally laughed himself to good health! Today, an increasing number of hospitals have added "laughter therapy" to the treatment of cancer patients.

The question we ask ourselves is "How is that possible? How can laughter, a mental process, influence what's happening in the physical body over which we thought we had no control?"

Candace Pert provides an answer. Her research suggests that emotions take the form of real, concrete substances in our body, called peptides. Applying her theory, which has received world-wide recognition, laughter could well produce a particular kind of peptide (endorphin). Millions of these peptides would flow through the body and have a direct, positive effect on body systems, like the immune system.

What follows is an explanation of what peptides are and how they influence our body.

If you want to skip the explanations, you can go straight to Candace Pert's theory of molecules of emotion.