GeneFo will be hosting a webinar next week by Yvonne deSousa, a chronic patient and humorist, to teach patients how to integrate humor into their daily lives as a way of coping with chronic fibromyalgia.

The free webinar will take place at 1 p.m. on Sept. 27, 2017. Interested individuals can register here to attend the live online event or to receive a video recording of the event by email.

Despite the continuing increase in medicines to treat or help manage pain in patients with fibromyalgia, there can still be pain and stress associated with living with a chronic condition.

Multiple studies have shown that a patient’s emotional state can affect their health and the ensuing course or outcome of their disease. Therefore, researchers have investigated whether mood-altering alternatives, such as implementing humor and laughter, can help control symptoms, decrease pain, and increase a patient’s quality of life.

Interestingly, in a recent study conducted on fibromyalgia patients, 75 percent reported that sometimes laughing works as well as pills in reducing pain symptoms.

Reflecting this observation, GeneFo is hosting an online lecture to help guide chronic disease patients and provide advice on “how to find ‘the funny’, de-stress and enjoy a good laugh.”

The lecture will teach patients how adding humor to everyday life can help better manage symptoms, improve emotional well-being, and the ability to cope and manage social and work interactions related to the disease.

There is a scientific basis for laughter providing a benefit to human health, as it has been shown to improve immunological and endocrinological responses, increased pain tolerance, and decreased anxiety and depression, which are major issues that affect people with fibromyalgia and can contribute to a lower quality of life.

Currently, there are also ongoing studies investigating the benefits of laughter. In particular, one program at Walden University is evaluating the relationship between the frequency of laughter, pain perception, and the emotional state of patients in a cohort of fibromyalgia patients.

Additional details on this study will be imparted at the webinar.

If the study proves a link between the quality of life and laughter in this patient population, then practices based on humor and laughter can hopefully be implemented into mainstream treatment guidelines for fibromyalgia, neurological diseases, and chronic conditions.

Yvonne deSousa, is a humorist and author that was nominated for the WEGO Health Hilarious Patient Leader Award.