Christopher Duffy

And he's found that if he can get the person to laugh right before or as he gives them the anesthetic,

that they experience the pain much less, that they have a much better experience of receiving this anesthetic.

So he's in Boston.

And he would sometimes say to his patient, if it seemed like they would appreciate this, he would say, what I'm about to do is going to hurt more than what the Yankees did to the Red Sox last night.

And they would laugh at this.

Didn't expect my emergency room doctor to say that.

And then the laughter would allow them to experience pain less.

And at the nursing home, this nursing home in Hong Kong, they ran a study where they had people do basically a humor course where they found things that made them laugh.

They shared them with this other group.

And what they found is that the elderly residents of this nursing home

had increased satisfaction with their life.

They had decreased loneliness and they experienced less pain in their day to day because laughter was this part of their life.

So that's an incredible outcome that also has kind of no negative side effects.

So in some ways, laughter is is the best medicine as long as you use it with other really good, effective medicine.