Some
people say Laughter is the best medicine, but if you're laughing for no reason
then you need medicine.
Laughter is a way we express happy moments of our lives, but when it comes without any provocation, there might be a problem.
During my reading sessions recently, i came
across this disease called kuru, and then i realized you could actually die from
laughter (you won’t enjoy this kind of laughter anyway).
Kuru is also known among the ‘Fore’ tribe of
New Guinea as the "laughing sickness", due to the pathologic bursts of
laughter people would display when afflicted with the disease. It is now widely
accepted that kuru was transmitted among members of the Fore tribe of Papua New
Guinea via funerary cannibalism. The victim is emotionally unstable and
depressed, yet has uncontrolled sporadic laughter. kuru spread easily and
rapidly in the Fore people due to their endocannibalistic funeral practices, in
which relatives consumed the bodies of the deceased to return the "life
force" of the deceased to the hamlet (Fore societal subunit). Corpses of
family members were often buried for days then exhumed once the corpses were
infested with maggots at which point the corpse would be dismembered and served
with the maggots as a side dish. The incubation period (i.e the period between
initial exposure and the first symptoms), lasts between possibly 5 to 20 years.
An infected person usually dies within three months to two years after the
first symptoms.
I just hope this practice has stopped.
Another set of people who laugh
uncontrollably, are the manic patients. The stedman’s medical dictionary
described mania as an emotional disorder characterized by euphoria or
irritability, increased psychomotor activity (psychomotor simply means how your
brain/cognitive function affects your movement), rapid speech, flight of ideas
(having so many ‘good’ ideas), decreased need for sleep, distractibility,
grandiosity (an abnormal sense of superiority), and poor judgment. Mania causes
you to feel abnormally and persistently happy, angry, hyperactive, impulsive,
and irrational at different times. It is part of the disorder called bipolar
disorder.
My professor once told us a story about a manic patient; he wakes up at 2am, does all the house chores before his family wakes. His wife thought he was just been a "very good husband", until things got out of control.
Excessive laughter may be associated with
psychological or mental problems. Schizophrenia, observed in one among 100
individuals around the world is also known to cause excessive laughter.
Involuntary crying or laughing, are symptoms
of a condition known as involuntary emotional expression disorder (IEED).
This disorder is common among patients with
stroke and other neurological disorders, such as multiple sclerosis,
amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, and traumatic brain injury. IEED can become
disabling for people who are not accurately diagnosed and treated.
Laughter (that is provoked) eases stress and makes us healthier. Most times when we laugh, it really not due to any joke, rather I think it is our body's way of 'releasing the pressure'.
Share a laugh with someone today, because laughter was created to be shared. Laughing alone might mean something is wrong
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