Laughter is good for body and soul

Laughter is good for our body and soul!

Lets discover the benefits laughter gives us & how it helps fight anxiety, stress & even serious diseases!

It almost seems like a stupidity, but it actually has been discovered that laughing even for nothing does a lot of good, it gives us a lot of benefits too & also many books have been written on how it helps our body.  We can find also many testimonials on how people managed to beat serious diseases thanks to laughter therapy, one of these is Norman Cousins, journalist & researcher of the medicine faculty at the UCLA (U.S.A.), who cured his disease through the effects of laughter, he than wrote a book & sold millions of copies.

Which are te benefits and why!

• Laughing as an anti-depressive: physically laughter increases the production of the hormones known as adrenaline & dopamine, whos function is to free the natural morphines: endorphins, enkephalins etc.  The endorphins cause a reduction in physical tension, & allow us to reach a state of relaxation & serenity.  The enkephalins instead work on our immune system which stimulates the production of more antibodies; furthermore laughter amplifies the production of serotonin, which is a natural anti-depressive, & reduces the secretion of stress hormones such as cortisol & epinephrine.
• Laughing to reinforce our immune system: the human immune system plays a very important role for all our health & wellbeing, infact it blocks infections, viruses, allergies & also cancer.
  Some studies have proved that all negative emotions like anxiety, depression or anger manage to weaken our immune system, reducing its ability to fight diseases.  According to Dr. Lee S. Berk from the university of Loma Linda, laughnig helps us increase the number of Natural Killer (NK) cells, that is a type of cell whos function is to kill viruses & increase the level of antibodies.
• Laughing against arterosclerosis & heart disease: Various studies amongst which those held out by DR. Karen Matthews psychologist from the university of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, proved that the beneficial effects of laughter slow down the progression of aterosclerosis.  200 healthy women in post meno-pause condition were kept under observation for 3 years and discovered that the most optimistic women showed less thick carotid arteries with respect to the pessimistic women.  Laughing therefore plays an important role in prevention against aterosclerosis & heart problems & many studies are still being conducted also on myocarditis patients that seem to be responding positively towards laughter therapy.
  Actually already in ancient times the benefits of laughter were already known & still nowadays Tibetan school teachers laugh & make their students laugh too.  For Zen Buddhism 15 minutes of laughter are equivalent to 6 hours of meditation.
  Even in Chinese traditional medicine Xiao (laughter) is a fundamental part and is seen as the equivalent of the sound at the main heart meridian whos psychic movement is joy.
  As far as it seems laughter has the same effect of relaxing arteries & increasing blood flow as an aerobic exercise.
• Laughter improves our respiratory functions: Laughter helps also breathing, that becomes necessarily deeper.  The oxygen in our lungs is renewed through inhaling & exhaling three times more effective than when at rest, & the breathing rhythm alterations interfere on the oxygen in our blood & on the carbon dioxide expulsion causing the muscles of our brochi fibres to relax, giving a lot of benefits especially in who suffers from bronchitis, asthma or even enphysema, a sort of real lung exercises.
• Laughter improves our abdominal functions: it is not a joke, infact laughing is a an excellent exercise that uses over 60 muscles.  Infact when we laugh, a part of our chest muscles & upper limbs, contract & relax almost triggering a sort of abdominal exercise that improves liver & bowel functions.  Laughing is a real & actual exercise & is equivalent to 10 minutes of rowing machine or a good jog, & it also works on our bowel against constipation.
• Laughter improves selfesteem & interpersonal relationships: a good laugh creates a sense of wellbeing & lightness, helps develop a more harmonic personality & in time leads us to better self-awarness, better creativity & most of all a better inclination in working in a team.

It is also very important to laugh without a reason, the power of a natural laugh is very big, however it has the same effect even if forced, various studies have proved that who forces himself in smiling or putting on a “happy Face” in time becomes happier & therefore also improves all his organism exactly in the same way as a natural smile or laugh.  Therefore laughing is always good & thats why always more laughter therapies are being created starting right from laughter yoga but also real & actual exercises to lead people to be happier.