Norman Cousins is generally credited with starting the scientific study of humor some 20 years ago. Anatomy of an Illness tells how watching comical movies helped him recover from an illness that was predicted to be fatal. Norman made it his mission to laugh 100 times a day. With this he recovered and taught us about the healing effects of humor.

Medical studies indicate that laughter boosts levels of endorphins, the body's natural painkillers. Studies also show that laughter increases the cells that attack viruses, foreign cells and cancer cells. Plus it decrease your stress level and fights depression. Laughter exercises your heart by raising and lowering your heart rate and blood pressure.

It also makes your lungs stronger and gets your blood flowing going. One doctor says that 20 seconds of hard laughter gives your heart the same workout as 3 minutes of hard rowing. Let us think about this for

It is a known fact that children laugh more than adults. In fact adults laugh approximately 15 times per day, while children laugh about 400 times a day! By the time you reach adulthood you've lost a few hundred laughs a day. By learning to smile and laugh again, more easily and often you could have a profound and positive effect on our health and well-being. Besides, who wouldn't enjoy a kid size case of giggles? Perhaps Cousins could have recovered from his illness a little bit faster if he could have chuckled during a clown visit. What we need to do is take action in mental institutes, hospitals, and other places where good health is lacking.

"SO WHAT," said a little girl, "I'M FOUR!"

We need to take what he did and do more with it. So get out there and laugh a little bit more. We could all benefit from a little bit more laughter. So I would like to leave you with a joke just to get you laughing more today. Since children get hundreds of laughs everyday it's only appropriate that we let them make us laugh.

Now that you've discovered how good laughte

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Approximate Word count = 723
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page double spaced)