By John Salak –
Dry eye disease is bad enough to make a grown person cry—provided, of course, that a person’s tear ducts allow the tears to flow. Therein lies the problem. But there’s some good news: laughter counters dry eye disease, potentially offering a natural way to stimulate tear production and provide relief.
An estimated 16 million Americans suffer from dry eye disease, which comes in three different forms, all of which means a person’s vision suffers because they don’t produce enough tears. The Cleveland Clinic reports the disease is often associated with diabetes, thyroid eye disease, blepharitis and Sjögren’s syndrome.
Regardless of what brings it on, the disease can be pretty uncomfortable. Eyes can feel scratchy, burning or stinging, sensitive to light, vision can be blurred and excessive mucus can even be formed. In severe cases, the disease can be extremely painful and result in vision loss. Treatments usually include eye drops, ointments, nasal sprays, eye serums and even inserting a plug into a tear drain.
How effective these remedies are depends on lots of factors, including the environment. Now, however, researchers in China and Britain may have discovered an alternative solution: laughter.
“As a safe, environmentally friendly, and low-cost intervention, laughter exercise could serve as a first-line, home-based treatment for people with symptomatic dry eye disease,” according to their research.
The multinational research effort was launched in part by earlier work into the therapeutic value of laughter, which has been known to lessen depression, anxiety, chronic pain and even build up immune systems. It does this by decreasing stress hormones, activating immune cells and increasing infection-fighting antibodies.
The Chinese-British study focused on 283 dry eye disease sufferers who were randomly assigned laughter exercises or 0.1 percent sodium hyaluronic acid eye drops.
Those assigned laughter exercises watched an instructional video and repeated the phrases “Hee hee hee, hah hah hah, cheese cheese cheese, cheek cheek cheek, hah hah hah hah hah hah” 30 times in five minutes four times a day. The others used sodium hyaluronic acid eye drops four times a day.
The treatments lasted eight weeks and eye discomfort was measured at the 10- and 12-weeks.
Laughter exercises were just as effective as eye drops at keeping dry eye disease under control, the researchers reported. It had the added benefits of being more beneficial for certain eye functions and for mental health support.
The research team noted that laughter exercise admittedly takes longer to apply than eye drops and it is still not clear how long the exercises need to be undertaken for maximum impact. But there may be medicinal gold in those giggles.
“Laughter exercise might alleviate dry eye disease indirectly by creating a persisting positive effect on lifestyle,” the researchers concluded.
