I lost my friend Pauly a few days ago. Not sure why we kept calling him Pauly as an adult, but it fit.
God he made me laugh.
Pauly used to sell mattresses. Back then, he was 5’10, 384 pounds, or “damn near four spins” as he would describe himself, referring to the spinning dial when he stepped on a scale. At work, Pauly would jump on the beds in front of customers and say, “Holds up well, doesn’t it?”
I loved a story he shared of when he was little and he went camping with his older brother John. They were toasting marshmallows.
“John, that last marshmallow is mine. You had all yours.”
“No, Paul. I’m eating it”.
“John, I swear to God, you take that marshmallow and I’m setting your hair on fire.”
“I’m taking it Paul.”
“It’s MINE JOHN!”
John ate the marshmallow.
I asked, “What did you do?”
“I took my stick, placed it in the fire, and then set his hair on fire.”
“My mom got reeallly mad.”
Remembering his funny stories helps to lift. That’s what humor does.
So do all those humorous videos you’re getting now. It’s a release. Something we need, for more reasons than you might think.
As this virus rips around the globe, a word we hear often is “immunocompromised.”
For most people that word has never meant as much as it does right now. We tend to think of immunocompromised and “underlying medical conditions,” as heart disease, cancer, diabetes – the big ones. But by definition, it just means that the cells that help fight against a cold, bacteria, viruses, and other risks, are suppressed or damaged, making us more vulnerable to infection.
Do you know what else makes you vulnerable to infection and can hurt your immune system?
Stress.
Chronic stress, the over-exposure to the stress hormone cortisol, can seriously weaken your immune system. That’s not coming from me. That’s from the Mayo Clinic, Johns Hopkins, and leading medical institutions all over the world.
That’s where the humor comes in. You may be thinking, “yeah, yeah, I know that humor makes me less stressed. Got it.”
No, it goes deeper. While people may have talked about humor relieving stress for centuries, it’s only in recent years that scientific studies are actually documenting the positive health effects, and, significant to what is going on in our world right now, the effects of humor on our immune system and fighting infections.
A highly regarded study conducted through the Norwegian University of Science and Technology tracked 54,000 people – a huge study group – for 15 years to study the impact that humor has on mortality.
The findings were incredible. The women with a strong sense of humor had an 83% lower risk of death from infection, the men a 74% reduced risk.
How could that be? What does a sense of humor have to do with an infection?
The researchers found that a strong sense of humor could minimize the “stressors” of daily life, like people who bring really smelly food on a plane. By looking for the humor in the most anxious times, what we are doing internally is scaling down the perceived importance, threat, and/or stress of a situation – a process called diminishment. As a result, the sense of humor is helping to protect the immune system, and the scientists concluded that it led to a dramatically lower risk of death from an infection.
It’s often been asked why so many of the classic comedians have lived such long lives.
Bob Hope (100), George Burns (100), Sid Ceasar (91), Neil Simon (91), Jerry Lewis (91), Don Rickles (90), Milton Berle (87). Still alive – Carl Reiner (98), Dick Van Dyke (94), Shecky Greene (94), Mel Brooks (93), Jerry Stiller (92) Mort Sahl (92), Jackie Mason (91) Bob Newhart (90), Carol Burnett (86)….
That doesn’t prove anything, but it does make you wonder.
When you consider the fact that the line between living and dying for many people is the strength of their immune system, it begs the question of whether there has ever been a better time to take humor more seriously.
Humor is not going to cure the Covid-19 virus. But when we do come out of this, people are not going to forget the largest health crisis in 100 years. Those businesses with the most innovative approaches to good health will lead.
Follow the science, and let humor be a part of that.
And thanks for all the smiles Pauly. I hope you’re setting the heavens on fire with your humor.
I hope we learn to do the same here.
