"Cheer up, watch funny shows, laugh heartily and you'll stay healthy!" It's ever-present advice, but it's wrong, wrong, wrong. We hear it all the time. If you're ill, spend a few days glued to the screen watching the exuberance of "Glee" and the laugh-out-loud comedy of "Seinfeld" reruns and, so goes the common wisdom, you'll have a speedy recovery. Or even better, stay cheery and you won't get sick in the first place. Unfortunately, there's no good scientific evidence for this sort of progression. Worse, this misconception draws attention away from the real relationships between happiness, health and long life. What does science really say?
On the face of it, the idea that an Elizabeth Edwards or any other brave person riddled with cancerous tumors could laugh away the disease -- that they would get better if only they tried really hard to cheer up -- is a form of magical thinking that is terribly implausible. Of course, someone will always offer up an example -- an anecdote of a miraculous recovery -- and there are indeed rare cases of a seemingly miraculous healing. But for every miracle, millions of brave patients succumb. Was it because they did not laugh enough?
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