Laughter

It's no secret that laughter lifts your spirits, but apparently it improves your body's physical state as well. There is evidence that laughter relaxes tense muscles, reduces production of stress-causing hormones, lowers blood pressure, and helps increase oxygen absorption in the blood. It also helps you burn calories since it's possible to move 400 muscles of the body when laughing. Some researchers estimate that laughing 100 times offers an aerobic workout equivalent to 10 minutes on a rowing machine or 15 minutes on an exercise bike.

Scientific research has proven the positive benefits of a prescription for laughter. Cardiologists at the University of Maryland Medical Center said laughter might help prevent heart disease. Their findings, presented in 2000 at the American Heart Association's seventy-third scientific meeting, showed that laughing can actually reduce the risk of heart attack by curbing unwanted stress, which can destroy the protective lining of blood vessels. The researchers surveyed people with and without heart disease to gauge their reactions to certain humorous and non-humorous situations. They discovered that people with heart disease were 40 percent less likely to laugh in a variety of situations.

A program at UCLA called "Rx Laughter" uses humor to help pediatric patients cope with long-term illness and pain. The group has also conducted research on the benefits of laughter and physician Margaret Stuber, a psychiatric researcher, found that laughter induces a relaxation response in the nervous system, which could be helpful to children undergoing painful procedures or suffering from pain-expectation anxiety. Another California researcher, Lee Berk of the University of California at Irvine, has studied the healing benefits of laughter for years. He found that just anticipating a funny event could decrease levels of stress-causing chemicals in the blood and increase levels of tension-reducing chemicals.

While most medical therapies have risks associated with them, you can probably guess that, so far, no negative side effects of laughing have been discovered.

Resources:

How do we laugh, and what causes laughter? This website explains the workings behind our jollies.

Laugher is good for your heart, according to this study at the University of Maryland.

Learn how laughter can be used as pain therapy for children.

December 6, 2003