By Power of Positivity
Smiling, joking, and giggling; some of our most joyful moments can be explained by how laughter affects our health. Some people have loud, contagious laughs, some snort, and some titter daintily and cover their mouths.
In the body, laughter is nothing more than a repeated contraction of the diaphragm, located below the lungs. You might laugh at a joke or a funny memory or watching someone fall down on a funny video. These are external stimuli that cause you to react with humor.
Doctors Explain How Laughing Can Change Your Health
Sometimes laughter is something we accidentally do. We have the ability to engage in both voluntary and involuntary laughter. Involuntary laughter is emotionally driven and can come even when we are feeling fear or anger. Involuntary laughter has also been called nervous laughter.
The act of laughing can change your mood quickly, which is one of the ways that doctors explain how laughing can change your health. Negative moods can be changed to positive ones, which are better for our health.
1. Reducing the impact of pain
Cancer Treatment Centers of America uses laughter therapy for their patients who are undergoing treatment for cancer. They explain the therapy and its effectiveness this way:
‘For years, the use of humor has been used in medicine. Surgeons used humor to distract patients from pain as early as the 13th century. Later, in the 20th century, came the scientific study of the effect of humor on physical wellness. Many credit this to Norman Cousins. After years of prolonged pain from a serious illness, Cousins claims to have cured himself with a self-invented regimen of laughter and vitamins. In his 1979 book Anatomy of an Illness, Cousins describes how watching comedic movies helped him recover.’
Related article: 10 Signs Cancer May Be Growing In Your Body
Laugher is a good diversion because patients are unable to focus on their pain while they experience laughter therapy. The positive feelings that laughter gives to cancer patients can last for hours.
2. Heart and blood vessel health
Researchers studying the effects that laughter has on our health say that laughing has beneficial effects on blood pressure and vascular tone. They also say that endorphins are released by the pituitary gland when we laugh.
The endorphins activate opiate receptors that in turn produce nitric oxide. Nitric oxide helps protect the heart cells and it is also responsible for opening the blood vessels.
The nitric oxide produced as a byproduct of laughing can change your health by reducing the accumulation of plaque in artery walls that can lead to heart attack and stroke. Researchers also found that laughing reduced vascular inflammation. The scientists say ‘Mirthful laughter may serve as a useful and important vehicle for the promotion of vascular health.’
3. Improves mental health
Depression, anxiety, and frustration are all negative emotions that have been helped by laughter. If you find yourself experiencing a negative emotion, try laughing off the situation or even laugh at your own reaction. The less you can hang on to negative emotions, the less mental and emotional stress you will have, which is another way that doctors explain how laughing can change your health.
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