Would laughing really be the best medicine?
I’ve always thought it was an excellent ‘medicine’. But the best? I can hear you now… “If SHE doesn’t believe it’s the best, why is she talking so much about it?” HAHAHA!
This morning I was reading an article from 2014 on the Times website. A very interesting article, by the way, and I thought I’d translate it for you and share it here.
So here it is.
Can we say that laughter has real health benefits?
It may not be the best medicine. But laughter is good for you and can even be compared to a good diet and exercise to keep you healthy and disease-free.
This statement is according to Dr. Lee Berk, Associate Professor at Loma Linda University in California, who has been studying the effects of a good laugh on the brain and body for nearly three decades.
According to Berk, your mind, hormonal system and immune system are constantly communicating in ways that influence everything from your mood to your ability to fight disease. Take grief: “Grief induces stress hormones, which inhibit your immune function, which can lead to illness,” he says. Hardly a week goes by without new research linking stress to another major ailment.
Why talk about stress?
“Because laughter seems to cause all the opposite effects of stress,” Berk explains. He says laughter prevents the release of stress hormones like cortisol. It also triggers the production of beneficial neurochemicals such as dopamine, which have all sorts of calming and anti-anxiety benefits. Think of laughter as yin and stress as yang.
Largely due to these anti-stress powers, laughter has been associated with health benefits ranging from lower inflammation levels to improved blood flow, Berk explains. Some research from Western Kentucky University has also drawn attention to the number and activity of “killer cells”, which your immune system deploys to fight disease. “Many of these things also happen when you sleep well, eat well and exercise,” Berk explains. Which explains why he includes laughter with more traditional healthy lifestyle activities.
Berk has even shown that laughter causes a change in the way many neurons in the brain communicate with each other. More specifically, laughter seems to induce “gamma” frequencies, the type of brain waves observed in people who practice meditation assiduously. These gamma waves improve the “synchronization” of your neuronal activity, which enhances recall and memory, Berk explains.
How does it work?
How does laughter accomplish all this? According to Robert Provine, neuroscientist at the University of Maryland, Baltimore, author of Curious Behavior: Yawning, Laughing, Hiccupping, and Beyond, that’s where things get tricky.
Provine calls himself areserved optimist when it comes to the health-enhancing properties of laughter. “One of the challenges of studying laughter is that there are so many factors that trigger it,” explains Provine. “For example, you’re 30 times more likely to laugh with other people than when you’re alone,” he says. “Social relationships and camaraderie are also recognized as positive health-promoting elements. And so this social component of laughter could play an important role in attributing and recognizing the benefits of laughter,” adds Provine.
Here’s why it matters: if you’re asking people to laugh to improve their health, there may be a big difference between laughing at nothing, without stimulation, watching a humorous clip on YouTube or meeting friends who make you laugh, says Provine.
“That doesn’t mean the benefits aren’t real,” he adds. “But it may not be fair to lend all these ‘superpowers’ solely to the act of starting to laugh.”
But even for researchers like Provine who aren’t ready – at least not yet – to make laughter a universal panacea, nobody disputes the great benefits associated with a good laugh. He’s simply challenging science’s current understanding of its data-gathering mechanisms.
“When you laugh, you’re in a happy space,” he says. “That’s always a good thing.”
Translated from You Asked: Does Laughing Have Real Health Benefits? By Markham Heid November 19, 2014
Yes, well. What’s next?
Personally, I know very well that if I have a giggle when I’m with friends or people, I’ll feel tremendously connected to them simply by having shared a giggle together! I’ll feel good.
However, if I start laughing by simply practicing my laughter as an exercise, I also know that I feel really good after a few minutes. I feel more energetic, calmer, more serene, calm, playful and events bother me less.
So laughter may not be the BEST medicine or, as Robert Provine suggests, a universal panacea. But it’s certainly a GREAT remedy for many ills! Whether it’s depression, lack of energy, insomnia or anxiety. It works!
And that’s a fact!
Come on. I’ll just be a few minutes. Look at your watch and do it with me! Let’s go for 5 minutes!
Laughter, joy and health
Linda
