Humor Therapy and Cancer
Laughter through humor therapy is a great way for patients to cope with the stress of cancer and its treatments.
Medically reviewed by Lindsey Marcellin, MD, MPH
Good times, good humor, and laughter don’t usually come to mind when you're dealing with cancer. But as with anything in life, a positive outlook and a good laugh can help you cope with stressors like cancer.
Humor Therapy: It’s No Joke
Cancer humor therapy involves using humor, laughter, jokes, and all-around funny stuff to help relieve stress and pain. It's an actual complementary cancer therapy that's often used in addition to cancer treatment and can be as simple as watching a sitcom or a favorite screwball comedy. The goals of cancer humor therapy are to:
Although humor therapy doesn’t improve cancer outcomes, it can help you better cope with pain, give you an improved sense of well-being, and provide a welcome respite from the seriousness of cancer and its treatments.
One study did find that laughter can actually improve immune function, which is important for cancer patients battling the disease and trying to heal their bodies during cancer treatment. Stress is a definite detriment to physical and mental health, and lots of laughter is a great way to combat it.
Humor Therapy: A Patient’s Approach
There's not a lot that's funny about cancer, so when you find something that is, you deserve to have a good laugh about it.
Brenda Scruggs, 53, a teacher from Frankfort, Ky., has found humor in aspects of her breast cancer treatment and recovery.
A common side effect of the chemotherapy she was receiving was supposed to be diarrhea. However, at first Scruggs was experiencing constipation so bad, she says she was praying for what her health care team had promised was sure to come: the diarrhea that was going to strike. Sure enough, it did — while she was flying home to Kentucky from the medical center in Texas where she was receiving treatment.
"Of all times for this to hit me," Scruggs says, laughing about her emergency bathroom runs on the plane. Still, she was grateful for the relief — and she appreciated the comic aspects of the experience. She shared her toilet troubles on her blog, so that her friends could read and share in both her misery and her laughter.
Scruggs is a cheery, bubbly, and optimistic person — you can't teach middle and high school math for more than 30 years without a good sense of humor. So it only made sense that she applied that same positive attitude and sense of humor to her cancer treatment and recovery, too.
"Keeping a positive attitude through it all has been a big part of my treatment — I know it has," Scruggs says. And being upbeat and laughing about situations puts others at ease, too, as not everyone knows how to respond and react to cancer.
Scruggs uses her blog to keep friends, family, and loved ones updated on her treatment and progress, and to record the funny parts, too. She writes not only about her bouts of gastrointestinal distress, but also about her travels between Texas and Kentucky and shaving her head months before she needed to — sporting the bald look long before her body was ready to undergo a round of chemo.
Laughter won't help your body get rid of cancer, but when it comes to much-needed stress reliefand a mood booster during the trials of cancer, laughter is most certainly the best medicine.
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