End Fatigue

Laughter Helps Immunity?

In this study, diabetics were shown comic videos and laughed together with hospital staffs on 1 day. On the other day, they participated in an inpatient diabetes educational program. Blood samples were collected before and after watching comedies or again after lecture time, and changes in gene expression were comprehensively analyzed by microarray technique.

Of the 41,000 genes analyzed, the laughter increased function of (up-regulated) 39 genes. Fourteen of these genes were found to be related to natural killer cell activity. Low natural killer function is an important part of the immune dysfunction seen in CFS.

References

Biomedical Research, Dec 2008;28(6):281-5. PMID: 18202517, Hayashi T, Tsujii S, Iburi T, Tamanaha T, Yamagami K, Ishibashi R, Hori M, Sakamoto S, Ishii H, Murakami K. Bio-Laboratory, Foundation for Advancement of International Science, Tsukuba, Japan.