What’s so Funny? Have you got the giggles? It’s okay. There is an old saying that laughter is the best medicine. Now we know that some of that advice may be true.
Laughing increases your intake of oxygen-rich air and improves circulation. Laughing also increases your brain’s production of natural painkillers and stress relievers. Laughter affects your stress response, heart rate and blood pressure, which can help you feel better.
Researchers used PET scans to study participants’ brains after they watched laughter-inducing comedy clips with close friends for 30 minutes. The Journal of Neuroscience published a study that found that social laughter increased pleasurable sensations and triggered endogenous opioid release in the brain. Researchers also found that participants had elevated pain thresholds after watching laughter-inducing comedy.
In other words, laughter increases the brain’s production of endorphins. Endorphins are feel-good chemicals that relieve pain and reduce stress. Laughter can improve your emotional and mental health. Endorphins also contribute to feeling calm and happy, improving mood and reducing anxiety. Reap the emotional, mental and physical benefits of laughter and connect with others by going to comedy clubs, watching funny shows or movies or doing whatever makes you chuckle with family and friends.
The bottom line: Laughing increases the brain’s production of endorphins — the natural way your body relieves pain, reduces stress and boosts mood. Laughing also increases your intake of oxygen-rich air and blood flow and circulation, which can improve brain health. Have some belly laughs with others to reap the benefits of laughter and staying social.
The Top Ten Benefits of Laughter
1. Manage your hormones. Laughter reduces the level of stress hormones and increases the level of health-enhancing hormones. Laughter increases the number of antibody-producing cells and enhances the efficiency of T-cells. All this means a stronger immune system, as well as fewer physical effects of stress.
2. Nice internal workout. A good belly laugh exercises the diaphragm, contracts the abs and even works out the shoulders, leaving muscles more relaxed afterward. It even provides a good workout for the heart. Laughing 100 times is the equivalent to 10 minutes on the rowing machine or 15 minutes on an exercise bike!
3. Physical release. Have you ever felt like you had to laugh, or you’d cry? Have you experienced the cleansed feeling after a good laugh? Laughter provides a physical and emotional release.
4. Positive frame of mind. Laughter brings the focus away from negative emotions, making you more cheerful and putting you in a positive frame of mind.
5. Change your perspective. Researchers found that our response to stressful events can be altered. Humor can give us a more light-hearted perspective thereby making them less threatening and more positive.
6. Social benefits of laughter. Laughter is contagious, so if you bring more laughter into your life, you can most likely help others around you laugh more.
7. Fight illness better. People who are optimistic (who are out there laughing!) have stronger immune systems and are able to fight off illness better than pessimists.
8. Live longer. According to some recent research published in the Archives of General Psychiatry, elderly optimistic people, those who expected good things to happen (rather than bad things), were less likely to die than pessimists.
9. It feels like eating 2000 chocolate bars. That’s right — according to The British Dental Health Foundation, a smile gives the same level of stimulation as eating 2000 chocolate bars. The results were found after scientists measured brain and heart activity in volunteers as they were shown pictures of smiling people and given money and chocolate.
10. It costs absolutely nothing. It’s free!
So, go ahead and laugh a little or a lot. It’s good for your brain. Like a spoonful of medicine, laugh it up for good health!