Humor Therapy for Diabetes

Humor is a wonderful stress-reducer and antidote to upsets, both at home and at work; we often laugh hardest when we have been feeling most tense. Laughter relieves muscular tension, improves breathing, regulates the heart beat and pumps endorphins-the body's natural painkillers-into the bloodstream.

Of course, many diabetics do not find anything to be funny about being a diabetic. But it helps quite a lot if you can look at the bright side and find humor and fun and laughter wherever you can, even in the diabetic state and its therapies.
A humorist once said: 'Just because I laugh at life doesn't mean I don't take it seriously. "

One of the reasons laughter is such an effective diabetes therapy is that it's a great stress reducer. When you laugh, you briefly lose muscle tone. All the tense muscles of the body are relaxed and you have "a discharge of nervous excitement.

Laughter, according to Norman Cousins, is a kind of "internal jogging" that can be even more health restoring than the external kind. Norman had "laughed himself out of" a collagen disease that a whole battery of experts couldn't cure. His recovery from this disease by watching humorous cartoons is well-documented.
So can you. Humor lets you see the good things in your life that will have a profound influence on your diabetes.

Eliminate The Negativism and the Negative People

Avoid the negative people like a plague. Find the right people, the positive people, the ones who fill you with joy and laughter rather than gloom and doom.
June Biermann, author of 'The Diabetic's Total Health Book,' calls the negative people 'the prana suckers.' "Prana is the Sanskrit word for life force, and after you've been with these people for a while you feel as if they've sucked the life force right out of you the way a vampire sucks blood. You feel totally drained," June says.

Prana suckers are great in finding bad or gloom in anywhere they look. "For diabetics there are plenty of potential ( yet avoidable) disasters that a person can dwell on if so inclined. And just as it's important not to dwell on them yourself, it's important not to hang around with people who want to dwell on them for you," according to June Bierman.

One way to keep a happy outlook on life is to take some time out for the little pleasures that can bring smiles and outright laughter to you. Some people will only take a day off when they are really sick. Take an occasional day off when you feel terrific. Do something you enjoy doing and never have time for. It could even be doing nothing, if that is what you wish to do.

Don't deny yourself your dreams because you're afraid your diabetes might cause some awkward problems. Sometimes you have to take minor risks to discover your full potential in life.