Humor as a Complementary Therapy: A Narrative Review

Background: Research on the subject of laughter commenced on the 20 century. In recent decades researcher demonstrated that humor and laughter has positive impact on physical body same as psychological aspect. This study was conduct for integrate knowledge about humor as complementary therapy through the narrative review. Evidence Acquisition: The keywords humor, laughter, joking and humor therapy and humor sense were used. Data was collected from PUBMED, Ovid, ProQuest, Science Direct electronic databases. Literatures that were published in English or Persian between 19702015 that were addressed humor were included. 181 literatures were collected. Based on the in clouding criteria 52 articles were included for review and finally 33 articles were selected after critical reviewing. Results: Humor reduces acute and chronic pain, decrease stress hormone and depression, boost self-esteem, increased encephalin and endorphins, decreased blood pressure through increasing nitric oxide, decreasing catecholamine and regulating vascular wall function, increased cardiac output, improve pulmonary ventilation and prevent diabetic nephropathy. Conclusion: Humor could be helpful for patient and it improve quality of life but it needed more research especially meta-analysis. We must don’t forget that lough with others not to each other's. Implications of key findings: Humor gives patients the opportunity to forget about their anxiety and pain, if only for a brief period of time.