Sometimes people laugh so hard they start coughing. However, as curious as I am about the physics of why that happens, I am more curious about how coughing seems to lessen the humor. Never have I seen a person who, after laughing so hard they launch into a coughing fit, completes the laughing response as it started. Following the coughing, people become somewhat inured to the humor, and what was once hilarious proceeds to simply being amusing. The coughing just made the joke less funny and somehow shortened and ruined the full effect of the laughter.
Has anyone else noticed this? Or am I the only one? It makes me sad when I tell a joke and someone starts coughing. It’s almost like starting to laugh again from the beginning isn’t worth the effort.
Please advise. My question is, is this a legitimate phenomenon? If so, why does it happen?
Mods, please move to IMHO if it makes more sense there.
I cannot think of a single instance in my life where someone was laughing and then was overcome by coughing. I can imagine a reason or two it might possibly happen but your post makes it sound like it’s commonplace and that is just not my experience in several decades.
adding a data point here that my wife, indeed, will laugh so hard that she starts coughing. It has to be something really really funny to her though.
I don’t know the mechanism myself, but I think the vocalizations of laughing get to be so strenuous that it causes a tickle in her throat that triggers the coughing response.
People with exercise-induced asthma will do it, or at least I will. If I’m laughing hard enough for any length of time it’ll trigger my asthma and I’ll cough as I’m trying to catch my breath and stop laughing. Then I’ll be wheezing for the next half hour.
I would suggest that the humor may dissipate simply because coughing is unpleasant, and tends to occur when you feel like you’re running out of air, which is also unpleasant.
It would kinda be like if you stubbed your toe while laughing. It would take the edge off the fun.
Thanks BigT, that’s the kind of answer I was looking for. Thanks everyone else for chiming in too. I just find it very interesting that humor is so dependent on being free of painful or uncomfortable stimuli. Not surprising, per se, but interesting to me how a joke can lose its humor so quickly. It may be related to the fact that a joke is funniest at the start (e.g. immediately after the punchline is delivered), and then loses some of the “funny” as time passes. But what I find interesting is that the time elapsed is so short between the joke and the cough. I would think what made the joke funny at first still is worth chuckling about even post-cough. The elements of humor are still fresh, you know what I mean?
And to those who ask, I do live with someone whom is frequently laughing at my jokes. It is commonplace for her, a 75-year-old woman with some health challenges, to cough after a good laugh. But I do see it other places too, enough to make me slightly surprised that other people don’t frequently see this happening.