Mora-Ripoll Ramon
Organización Mundial de la Risa, Barcelona, Spain.
Altern Ther Health Med. 2010 Nov-Dec;16(6):56-64.
The aim of this review is to identify, critically evaluate, and summarize the laughter literature across a number of fields related to medicine and health care to assess to what extent laughter health-related benefits are currently supported by empirical evidence.
A comprehensive laughter literature search was performed. A thorough search of the gray literature was also undertaken. A list of inclusion and exclusion criteria was identified.
It was necessary to distinguish between humor and laughter to assess health-related outcomes elicited by laughter only.
Thematic analysis was applied to summarize laughter health-related outcomes, relationships, and general robustness.
Laughter has shown physiological, psychological, social, spiritual, and quality-of-life benefits. Adverse effects are very limited, and laughter is practically lacking in contraindications. Therapeutic efficacy of laughter is mainly derived from spontaneous laughter (triggered by external stimuli or positive emotions) and self-induced laughter (triggered by oneself at will), both occurring with or without humor. The brain is not able to distinguish between these types; therefore, it is assumed that similar benefits may be achieved with one or the other. Although there is not enough data to demonstrate that laughter is an all-around healing agent, this review concludes that there exists sufficient evidence to suggest that laughter has some positive, quantifiable effects on certain aspects of health. In this era of evidence-based medicine, it would be appropriate for laughter to be used as a complementary/alternative medicine in the prevention and treatment of illnesses, although further well-designed research is warranted.
本综述的目的是识别、批判性评估和总结与医学和医疗保健相关的多个领域中的笑声文献，以评估目前实证证据在多大程度上支持与笑声相关的健康益处。
进行了全面的笑声文献检索。还对灰色文献进行了彻底检索。确定了纳入和排除标准清单。
有必要区分幽默和笑声，以便仅评估由笑声引发的与健康相关的结果。
应用主题分析来总结与笑声相关的健康结果、关系和总体稳健性。
笑声已显示出对生理、心理、社会、精神和生活质量有益。不良反应非常有限，而且笑声几乎没有禁忌证。笑声的治疗效果主要源于自发笑声（由外部刺激或积极情绪引发）和自我诱发笑声（由自己随意引发），两者都可在有或没有幽默的情况下发生。大脑无法区分这些类型；因此，假定使用其中任何一种都可能获得类似的益处。尽管没有足够的数据证明笑声是一种全面的治疗手段，但本综述得出结论，有充分证据表明笑声对健康的某些方面有一些积极的、可量化的影响。在这个循证医学时代，将笑声用作疾病预防和治疗中的补充/替代医学是合适的，不过仍需要进一步设计完善的研究。
