More Proof of Laughter Benefits

Laughter has positive psychological, physiological, and immunological impacts on our health. In fact there is a term for the study of laughter and laughing and the examination of its effects on the human body: gelotology, from the Greek gelos, meaning 'laughter'.

In a study “Humor and Laughter May Influence Health” in the journal Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine, authors report that a sense of humor influences psychological and physiological well-being.

- Laughter leads to increased heart rate, respiratory rate, and oxygen consumption, similar to aerobic exercise. After intense laughter, body muscles relax.
- Like other strong emotions, humor seems to activate the sympathetic nervous system (SNS), which shows an increase in such hormones as urinary epinephrine and norepinephrine, but blood pressure remains stable. (Sad emotional stimulus results in higher blood pressure.)
- Exposure to a humorous stimulus decreased self-reported anxiety.
- Laughter in response to humorous stimuli correlates with improvement of natural killer (NK) cell activity, the immune cells that kill cancerous cells and prevent some types of viral illnesses.
- Laughing also has social benefits. Since much laughter is a social response rather than a reaction to jokes, laughing facilitates social reaction.
- Laughter is also contagious. If you see someone laughing, you will probably laugh, too. Scientists found that we often mimic other’s behavior, copying words or gestures due to the mirroring system in the brain.