It is well known that laughter triggers healthy bodily changes and healthy changes in the mind. Laughter can increase your energy level, lessen pain, strengthen the immune system, and protect you from stress. Laughter is the best medicine because it is free, fun, and easy.
Laughter can be a strong antidote to conflict, pain, and stress. There is nothing else that works more dependably or quicker to bring your body and mind into balance than laughter. The use of humor can lighten your burdens, connect you to others, inspire your hope, and keep you focused, alert, and grounded.
Laughter is the best medicine indeed! Laughing is the best way to relieve tension, ease pain, and more! Science has shown that laughter has more benefits than just letting people know that their jokes were good. Laughter itself can cure some of the deepest pits of sadness. That’s why, today, we are looking at the top 14 benefits of laughter! Make sure to stick around till the end to see one of the best benefits of laughter!
Number 14: Laughing could help you live longer.
Living longer doesn’t sound like a terrible thing to most people. In fact, immortality seems to be something many humans covet or dream of having. This is evident in the ideas of immortal vampires, full of beauty and long, uninterrupted life.
While laughing won’t turn anyone into a Cullen, it can help people live much longer than normal. This is because while laughter does induce happiness (which is obviously healthier than sadness), it also causes the stress system in one’s body to stop and start again and again in order to cause laughter. This resets the stress system and cools it down, giving a sense of relief to the person laughing and keeping the blood pressure healthy.
Actually, a study in Norway found that people with a strong sense of humor outlived those who don’t laugh as much. The difference was particularly notable for those battling cancer. The terrible disease of cancer being aided by laughter is great news!
Number 13: Laughing helps with anger.
Anger is a very unpleasant emotion. For many, anger can sometimes become unmanageable. People can be mean, life is unfair, and at the end of the day, many people are looking for someone to blame as their anger begins to boil. It’s hard to not get mad at the world and all of it’s whims. However, laughing helps the feeling of anger subside and maybe even go away depending on the level of anger experienced by a person.
Laughing can cause the release of serotonin and joy, which can put a cap on anger and make it less prevalent. The serotonin, and even relieving the tension of the situation that is causing the anger itself, can allow for the ease of the nasty emotion thanks to laughter. Nothing diffuses anger and conflict faster than a shared laugh, after all. Looking at the funny side can put problems into perspective and enable you to move on from confrontations without holding onto bitterness or resentment towards anyone else at that moment.
Number 12: It protects the heart.
Laughter improves the function of blood vessels and increases blood flow. This lowers blood pressure to acceptable levels, which protects the heart from working too hard. This can help protect you against a heart attack and other cardiovascular problems. Making sure that the heart is protected is a great thing to do. After all, everyone needs their hearts. Laughing normally and having a great sense of humor can make sure that your heart is protected. This can also aid in living longer!
Number 11: Laughing can help you lose weight.
While laughing isn’t the same as doing crunches or push-ups, one study found that laughing for 10 to 15 minutes a day can burn approximately 40 calories—which could be enough to lose three or four pounds over the course of a year. This is a great way to maintain one’s health in a small way. Anything helps, after all! Working out can be hard to maintain, especially for the working mother or student, or really, anyone. So, if laughing can help maintain some kind of weight loss, then it’s better to do it instead of not.
Number 10: Laughter improves your mood.
Laughing improves moods like no one’s business. The serotonin released from laughing makes people happy, and of course, it means that their mood will improve. While laughing promotes the release of serotonin from happiness, laughter also produces endorphins, the body’s natural feel-good chemicals (aside from serotonin). Endorphins promote an overall sense of well-being and can even temporarily relieve pain (as mentioned earlier). Laughing makes people feel better, destress, and become more easygoing.
Number 9: It activates and relieves stress release.
As mentioned earlier, what laughter does scientifically is very interesting. Laughter will cause the human stress response to activate and then alleviate, causing temporary panic that lasts for only a millisecond. Then, the body calms down (the actual laughter), and this causes the body to become very calm and content. That’s why after a long, hard laughing session, many people find themselves smiling from contentment and feeling a weird sense of relief.
Oftentimes, it’s almost as if a wave has washed over them. This is due to the relief from stress, and the body is calming down from what it thought was a stressful situation. It’s rewarding your brain for “solving” the situation, and it’s also feeling proud of itself for surviving. This also lowers the affected person’s blood pressure (which is something very good!) because the heart isn’t working as hard as it thought it needed to.
Number 8: Laughing shifts perspective.
When people say to look on the bright side of life, they are often met with mocking laughter or eye rolls. They aren’t taken seriously because there is no simple “bright side” to life. However, laughter may be the key to finding the desired bright side so many people have talked about. Laughter shifts one’s perspective on a darker situation, allowing you to see situations in a more realistic, less threatening light.
A humorous perspective creates psychological distance, making the problems seem less of a threat. This can also help give people time to unpack these emotions that they’re dealing with, which can help them to avoid feeling overwhelmed and diffuse conflicts that arise and cause this situation.
Number 7: Laughter relaxes your body.
Because of the stress-activating and repelling response in the body discussed above, the body will become easily relaxed after laughing for long periods of time. Endorphins, which are released as well as serotonin when laughing, are the same chemicals that one’s body releases when they are working out. It’s the body’s natural “reward” system for working hard.
That’s why the body feels completely relaxed and content after a workout and a super hard laughing session after a binge-watch of The Big Bang Theory. Laughter can easily create some of the best times for the body, especially after long hard days at a grueling job. Laughter can take that pain and put it somewhere else, allowing the person to totally relax.
Number 6: It boosts your immune system.
Who knew that laughing was just as good as taking a multivitamin? Well, it’s probably not just as good, but laughing can help the immune system on top of taking daily vitamins and minerals! Laughter decreases stress hormones and increases immune cells and infection-fighting antibodies. Antibodies and immune cells help the chances of improving resistance to disease. Laughter can literally make a body relax, and feel happier, and it can prevent people from becoming sick!
Number 5: Laughing helps your heart.
As discussed above, laughter can lower blood pressure substantially by the stress relief response. Now, blood pressure levels are essential to heart health. Basically, blood pressure is the volume of your blood and tells healthcare workers how hard a heart is having to pump to get the blood in the body from the heart where it is stored to the rest of the body where it needs to go.
High blood pressure can be dangerous because the heart has to work twice as hard which can lead to heart attacks and more. Low blood pressure (when it’s too low) can also be dangerous, but laughter won’t ever cause blood pressure to get that low. Laughter will oftentimes balance out the blood pressure issue and bring it back to where it needs to be, which is very healthy for the person laughing.
Number 4: Laughter relieves pain.
Laughter can actually be used as pain medicine. Due to the endorphins released from laughing, pain can be dulled (or even quelled and taken care of completely) by laughing. Endorphins are natural painkillers, so it would make sense that laughter releasing them would cause a lack of pain.
Laughing will make minor aches and pains disappear within a time frame, but they aren’t as good as actual painkillers. They act as natural painkillers, so they’ll just aid with the processes that painkillers offer. A certain study performed in 2011 by LiveScience had participants watch 15 minutes of a comedy show in a group. Their pain tolerance increased 10% more than before they began to laugh.
Number 3: It promotes group bonding.
Laughter brings people closer together in so many ways. It relieves tension, offers a way for people to feel special by making someone else laugh, creates a shared space within an inside joke where people can feel included and special, and allows for group bonding. This can make large groups in companies, hospitals, nursing centers, and more feel better connected with one another through actually enjoyable experiences instead of forced icebreakers.
Laughter promotes this bonding in the groups by offering a shared inside joke. That way, it’s a memory that the specific group can call upon whenever they’re around each other. This makes them feel closer to those they shared the inside joke with so they can continue to further their bond and make it stronger in the future.
Number 2: Laughing attracts us to others.
Humans are attracted to happiness. Happiness in others, happiness in themselves, happiness basically anywhere they can get it. Laughing is a sure sign of happiness, of course, which draws others to the person laughing like flies to honey. Laughing a lot can make someone very popular!
Number 1: Laughter can increase the chances of becoming pregnant.
Trying to get pregnant? Laugh more! Supposedly, laughter can increase a woman’s chances of becoming pregnant! A 2011 study showed women going through in vitro fertilization were 16% more likely to get pregnant when entertained by a clown than those who did not have the clown encounter (the clown was funny, don’t worry.) This study is one example of how laughter can actually increase the chances of having a baby!
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