section_path: Studies/Ageing
section_name: Ageing
paragraph_text: Ageing
  
  Humour has been shown to improve and help the ageing process in three areas. The areas are improving physical health, improving social communications, and helping to achieve a sense of satisfaction in life.
  
  Studies have shown that constant humour in the ageing process gives health benefits to individuals. Such benefits as higher self-esteem, lower levels of depression, anxiety, and perceived stress, and a more positive self-concept as well as other health benefits which have been recorded and acknowledged through various studies. Even patients with specific diseases have shown improvement with ageing using humour. Overall there is a strong correlation through constant humour in ageing and better health in the individuals.
  
  Another way that research indicates that humour helps with the ageing process, is through helping the individual to create and maintain strong social relationship during transitory periods in their lives. One such example is when people are moved into nursing homes or other facilities of care. With this transition certain social interactions with friend and family may be limited forcing the individual to look elsewhere for these social interactions. Humour has been shown to make transitions easier, as humour is shown reduce stress and facilitate socialisation and serves as a social bonding function. Humour may also help the transition in helping the individual to maintain positive feelings towards those who are enforcing the changes in their lives. These new social interactions can be critical for these transitions in their lives and humour will help these new social interactions to take place making these transitions easier.
  
  Humour can also help ageing individuals maintain a sense of satisfaction in their lives. Through the ageing process many changes will occur, such as losing the right to drive a car. This can cause a decrease in satisfaction in the lives of the individual. Humour helps to alleviate this decrease of satisfaction by allowing the humour to release stress and anxiety caused by changes in the individuals life. Laughing and humour can be a substitute for the decrease in satisfaction by allowing individuals to feel better about their situations by alleviating the stress. This, in turn, can help them to maintain a sense of satisfaction towards their new and changing life style.