Is laughter the best medicine? Studies on laughter show that a daily dose of "ho ho ho" is good for your health. And it just might be that laughter IS the best medicine.
Laughter health benefits have been found to include everything from lowering blood pressure and your chance of having a heart attack or stroke to increasing intelligence and your ability to process and retain information. Laughter is also a great stress management tool.
Plus laughter is refreshing and exhilarating. So let's tune in on the laugh track and find out if laughter is the greatest medicine ever discovered. Or maybe it's all just a big joke.
Studies on Laughter and Your Movie Menu
Using movies to gauge the effect of laughter on heart health, Dr. Michael Miller of the University of Maryland School of Medicine discovered laughter is great for your heart. His breakthrough research was recently presented at the American College of Cardiology meeting.
Dr. Miller and his team measured the blood flow of 20 healthy volunteers before and after they watched two different movies – Saving Private Ryan (Steven Spielberg’s graphic war movie) and Kingpin (a Woody Harrelson comedy). The results were dramatically opposite.
During the war movie blood flow decreased by an average of 35%. And during the comedy it increased by an average of 22%. The conclusion? Laughter may be as healthy as exercise!
In another study, presented at the same meeting, Dr. Wei Jiang of Duke University found that out of 1,000 heart failure patients, those with mild depression had a 44% higher risk of death.
In other words, a joyful attitude is good for heart health and helps you live longer.
Laughter is the Best Medicine – and It's Free!
Studying therapeutic benefits of laughter began 20 years ago when Norman Cousins, in Anatomy of an Illness, told his story of overcoming a fatal disease by watching old Charlie Chaplin movies. “Laughter is a great antidote to illness,” he concluded.
Since then, Drs. Lee Berk and Stanley Tan, of Loma Linda University Medical Center in California, have continued research on laughter. Their studies show laughter lowers blood pressure, reduces stress, increases muscle relaxation and boosts the immune system.
Like exercise, laughter also releases endorphins – the body’s natural painkillers.
Another big benefit of laughter is that it’s free and has no negative side effects – other than being incurable and contagious. That’s a lot of benefits for just having fun.
Chuck the Frown and Become a Clown
Many hospitals today encourage patients to laugh. Some have TV comedy channels, comedy rooms with gag props and costumes, plus regular visits from clowns. As Groucho Marx said, “A clown is like an aspirin, only he works twice as faster.”
The best prescription for a long, happy, healthy life is to eat a good nutritious diet, exercise on a regular basis and add in a few good belly laughs every day.
Think about it. Maybe healthy people don’t laugh because they’re healthy. Maybe they’re healthy because they laugh!
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Note: The information contained on this website is not intended to be prescriptive. Any attempt to diagnose or treat an illness should come under the direction of a physician who is familiar with nutritional therapy.
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