Article: One laugh = 3 tbsp. oat bran. (laughing as therapy) (column)

Loretta Laroche of Plymouth, Mass., says that healthy people laugh 100 to

400 times a day. Laroche should know. She is a health educator who runs a company known as Wellness Associates, and she travels around staging workshops on health matters, including "Humor: The Healing Power of Health and Play."

Only the churlish should wish to attack such a wellmeaning humor monger. But let us face facts. Yukking it up at Laroche's recommended peak capacity-25 times an hour, 2,800 times a week, 146,000 times a year-is obviously no laughing matter. Holding it down to 5 seconds per laugh, this would still amount to 200 man-hours (or woman-hours) per year ...

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