Laughter Is Good Medicine; It Helps Relieve Pain for Kids Having Medical Procedures

It's been said that laughter is good medicine. Could laughter help dull the pain that children have when they're getting painful medical procedures? Researchers wondered and set out to answer this question. In a recent press release, researchers with UCLA's Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center announced their results. Their research reveals that laughter can also dull the pain associated with many medical procedures.

The UCLA Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center worked in conjunction with the nonprofit, Rx Laughter (tm). Together they found that laughter can, indeed, dull the pain that children and adolescents experience during medical procedures.

Many different programs are in use around the country to help brighten the lives of children undergoing stressful or painful medical procedures. While many of these programs use humor as a part of their program, no other research looked at the direct effect that laughter can have on children and adolescents undergoing painful medical procedures.

"We found that viewing funny videos increased the tolerance of pain for children, but did not change their ratings of the severity of the pain. Although they kept their hands in the water longer, they didn't describe the task as any less painful than when they weren't watching the videos. However, this may mean that it simply took longer for the pain to become severe enough to remove their hand," said Stuber, who also is the Jane and Marc Nathanson Professor in the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior.

Stuber referenced the hands of the kids who participated because that was an integral part of the research study. Researchers couldn't hurt children or adolescents on purpose just to see what their pain threshold was to medical procedures, so they devised a different system to cause pain. Their system was not be harmful to any of the participants, was easy to use, and easy to judge.

The mystery system? Icy cold water and the children (or adolescents) very own hands. Researchers cleaned the child's hands, and placed them into the 50-degree water while the children (and adolescents) watched a variety of different funny television shows and movies. This simulated the pain associated with many medical procedures.

Participants in this study were free to remove their hands when they were "too cold." The study was repeated several times. Researchers warmed the children's hands between these tasks.

Researchers documented how long each child kept their hands in the cold water, noting how many times the child laughed and smiled during the process.

Those children and adolescents who showed the greatest signs of laughter were able to keep their hands in the cold water for significantly long periods of time. While further research is needed, this study gives clear indications that laughter should be looked to for pain management.

Source:
http://www.newswise.com/articles/view/534511/