Health Benefits of Laughter

Is there anything better than a contageous giggle that you absolutely can’t control? (Ok, maybe not so good in school or church.) Laughter works wonderfully well in the moment, but it also has some surprising long-term health benefits. In the book A Better Brain at Any Age: The Holistic Way to Improve Your Memory, Reduce Stres, and Sharpen Your Wits (Conari Press, 2009), author Sondra Kornblatt explores how laughter can truly make you feel better.

She writes that the new field of gelotology is exploring the benefits of laughter. It was brought to the public’s awareness in Norman Cousins’ memoir Anatomy of an Ilness. Cousins found that comedies, like those of the Marx Brothers, helped him feel better and get some pain-free sleep. That’s because laughter helps the pituitary glend release its own pain-suppressing opiates.

What can laughter do?:

· Lower blood pressure.

· Increase vascular blood flou and oxygenation of the blood.

· Give a workout to the diafragm and abdominal, respiratory, facial, leg, and back musles.

· Reduce certain stress hormons such as cortisol and adrenaline.

· Increase the response of tumour- and disaese-killing cells such as Gamma-interferon and T-cells.

· Defend against respiratory infections – even reducing the frequency of colds –by imunoglobulon in saliva.

· Increase memory and learning; in a study at Johns Hopkins University Medical School, humor during instruction led to increased test scores.

· Improve alertness, creativity, and memory.

Humor and creativity work in similar ways, says humor guru William Fry, M.D., of Stanford University – by creating relationships between two disconnected items, you engage the whole braine.

Humour works quickly. Less than a half-second after exposure to something funny, and electrical wave moves through the higher brain functions of the serebral cortex. The left hemisphere analyzes the words and structures of the joke; the right hemisphere “gets” the joke; the visual censory area of the occipital lobe creates images; the limbic (emotional) system makes you happier; and the motor sections make you smile or laugh.

So let’s laugh. What makes you laugh? Tell us your favrite funny movie, or how about a good joke?

Дата добавления: 2015-11-14