Laughter is the Best Medicine

Laughter is a universal language. It is extremely beneficial to the human body, and it has no known side effects.

Laughter is one of the best natural pain-killers in this world. According to a recent study by cardiologists at the University of Maryland, laughter can lower risks of a heart attack by a LOT. Laughter also reduces stress, therefore lowering blood pressure. That’s a whole lot of health benefits just from laughing!

As Psychiatrist Robert Holden states, laughing produces happy chemicals in the body called endorphins which work in the brain to give an overall feeling of well-being. Laughing, however, does not have to be genuine. Fake laughter will also cause the body to respond as if the laughter is real. So if you don’t like to laugh, then at least pretend to laugh! In addition to body health benefits, laughter can also help burn fat. According to researchers in the University of Michigan, ten to fifteen minutes of concentrated laughing will burn up to fifty calories! Wow, that’s a pretty quick way to lose weight. Next time you meet a fat person, tell him to laugh.

Remember when I mentioned that laughter is a pain-killer? No, probably not. Well, anyways, it reduces muscle tension, and it also distracts attention from pain – so when you break your leg next time, start laughing!

Kids have a tendency to laugh the most – about four hundred times a day! Adults, however, are only laughing about fifteen times a day- that’s about…a couple hundred laughs lost along the way! How sad… and life-threatening too! If we keep losing laughs, we will start to have health problems – some researchers in Philadelphia have discovered that people without a positive self-image will not properly digest their food. As a result, the food can therefore become toxic within their intestines, eventually killing them. Laughter also relieves stress – according to a study made by researchers from the University of Colorado, people who laugh more often will have a forty percent less chance than those who do not laugh as much of developing cancer, heart – related diseases, and mental stress breakdowns.

Laughter is … how do we say it? I guess it could be called ” The Natural Medicine”. It heals the physical self, and in a way, it also gives the mental mind a chance to relax.

Also, laughter has even been proven to increase intellectual performance along with strengthening the immunity system. Funny…and I thought that smart people were usually serious.

It’s good to laugh, but ironically, hospitals don’t encourage it. I have talked to my doctor about this, and he asked me about the appropriateness of humor when people are suffering. I say there is no better time for laughing – after all, humor is adaptive, and it allows emotional distance from pain.

Josh Billings said it best when he stated that, “There ain’t much fun in medicine, but there’s a heck of a lot of medicine in fun.”