The Truth Behind Laugh Therapy
Have you ever laughed until your belly hurt, or until you got teary-eyed, or you could hardly breathe? Don’t worry, no harm will come to you or your body. In fact, you may be even doing your health a lot of good.
Yes, laughter brings a lot of health benefits, believe it or not. Laughing a lot, several times a day, may even beat several doses of those relaxants or health boosters that you are probably taking.
How Does Laughter Benefit Your Health?
Laughter activates the release of substances called endorphins into your blood. This substance, as it traverses your veins and goes through your body and your brain, is what causes that relaxing, happy, overflowing feeling when you laugh, and makes you want to laugh more.
But laughter not only makes you happy; it also does create positive physiological effects on your body:
- It lowers blood pressure. First, blood pressure rises when you start to laugh, then it goes down below the normal level. When you laugh, your tendency is also to take in a lot of air, and with it, oxygen, which gets into your blood and feed your body. Oxygen is good because it stimulates the circulation of blood and the processes of your body.
- Laughter also increases heart and pulse rate, and reduces stress. Increased heart and pulse rates (within normal levels) keep your body organs active and your body more energized. These also help you be more focused, which facilitates learning and knowledge acquisition.
- Laughing strengthens the heart. When you are always stressed, fats and cholesterol in the heart and the arteries accumulate faster.
- Laughter, by reducing stress, helps prevent the buildup of fats and cholesterol, and makes the heart stronger and keeps it in a more healthy condition, thus lessening the likelihood of having a heart attack.
- Also by reducing stress, laughter also reduces blood sugar levels. Excessively high sugar levels are associated with health problems like diabetes and obesity.
Exercise by Laughing
Physically, laughter also does good to your body by the bending and stretching movements your body does while you laugh. And since you inhale and exhale air a lot while laughing, you take in a lot of oxygen and release waste carbon dioxide.
This air exchange has the effect of conditioning your muscles and body organs similar to the effect of an actual physical workout.
- “Laughter yoga” is another form of exercise that makes use of laughter as the main stimulating agent. The method also includes physical positions and postures but the main object is to make the participants laugh and therefore benefit from the positive effects of laughter.
Laughter and Mental Health
Laughing is one good way to relieve yourself of the mental pressures and emotional stress that you are often subjected to everyday. Laughter lifts your spirit and helps you handle life’s challenges more positively, and more competently.
- When you laugh, after the height of the spasms of laughter, you get this feeling of relief and relaxation and a sense of inner peace, and any feeling of stress or agitation you may have had before subsides.
- Laughter is also a good way for families to be able to handle common problems and face difficult times.
Families that are able to laugh together, even in the face of troubles (like a death in the family, a sickness, or financial problems) are able to discuss matters together, understand one another, and find solutions acceptable to all better.
A Daily Dose of Laughter Keeps the Doctor Away
Along with healthy food, exercise, and natural air and sunshine, laughter is probably one of the least expensive and most effective “medicines” for good health – mental, physical and emotional. And it certainly is the most enjoyable of all!