Posts made in October, 2014

Humour: pretty decent medicine

Posted by Bob LeDrew on Oct 1, 2014 in emotions, Guyside, humour, men, Uncategorized | 1 comment

The Royals had court jesters to supply them with humour. What’s your source?

When I was a kid, my parents subscribed to Reader’s Digest. In addition to the “I am Joe’s Kidney” features, I remember the humour columns, like “Humour in Uniform,” “Life’s Like That,” and my joke-obsessed-kid favorite, “Laughter, the best medicine.” It’s still there, at least here in Canada. In addition to the monthly magazines, our house had a bunch of anthologies of funnies that would have come with “Reader’s Digest Condensed Books” (not to be confused with Condensed Milk, apparently).

I don’t know if those jokes got me into being funny early on, but something did. Humour has been part of my life pretty much as long as I can think, for both positive purposes — if you’re thought of as ‘the smart one’ in school, ‘the funny one’ is a big step up — and for negative — I spent a lot of years using jokes and humour to keep people away from any real feelings I might have had.

But when it comes to health, humour is pretty decent medicine. Trust me on this one. As a bladder cancer guy, I have had multiple people dealing with the areas I normally only show one person over a period of years — and being in a city with a med school and multiple health science programs means that you’re not only dealing with the urologist / nurse / sonographer / whatever, you’re dealing with residents / interns / students… Sometimes the only way to deal with the more embarrassing parts of the whole affair is to crack wise. I think it helps them too.

But there’s more to humour than just dispersing embarrassment. There’s lots of research that shows humour can help when you’re ill, and help before you get ill. One study of prostate cancer support groups found that for participants, humour is a way of sharing information about their health and feelings that doesn’t leave the men feeling vulnerable. Given what we already know about men’s unwillingness to be open about their health, that’s a valuable thing.

There can be a dark side to humour, though, especially as men sometimes use it. Sometimes jokes can be couched in mean or insulting terminology, and sometimes (as I know to my regret!) humour that works in one context doesn’t in another. I’ve made some jokes about cancer that have gotten a laugh from some people and dropped jaws elsewhere.

Ask yourself if you have enough laughter in your life. If not, find ways of seeking it out or making your own fun. It may not be the best medicine — if you have a heart attack, I’d recommend a bypass rather than a Marx brothers marathon — but it’s more important than you might think.

CC-licenced photo by Flickr user neiljs