The Healing Power of Laughter: Exploring the Physical and Psychological Benefits

It’s true, laughter is strong medicine. It draws people together in ways that trigger healthy physical and emotional changes in the body. Laughter strengthens your immune system, boosts mood, diminishes pain, and protects you from the damaging effects of stress. Nothing works faster or more dependably to bring your mind and body back into balance than a good laugh, whether it's shared face-to-face or through the virtual realm of online chat. Humor lightens your burdens, inspires hope, connects you to others, and keeps you grounded, focused, and alert. It also helps you release anger and forgive sooner.

Physical Health Benefits

1. Stimulates your organs: When you laugh, you take in more oxygen-rich air. This stimulates your lungs, heart and muscles.

2. Relaxes your muscles: When you get stressed, your body tenses up and can cause you to feel stuck. A good laugh can relieve physical tension in the body and relax the muscles for up to 45 minutes.

3. Improves cardiac health: Laughing increases your heart rate and the amount of oxygen in your blood. This can improve vascular function and decrease the risk of a heart attack.

4. Boosts immune system: When you’re stressed, negative thoughts can turn into chemical reactions that decrease your immunity to sickness. When you laugh, you adopt a positive mindset that can release infection-fighting antibodies and neuropeptides that help fight stress.

5. Endorphins help you out: When you laugh there’s a contraction of muscles, which increases blood flow and oxygenation. This stimulates the heart and lungs and triggers the release of endorphins that help you to feel more relaxed both physically and emotionally.

6. Endorphins make you feel better: Laughing leads to the release of endorphins, a self-manufactured natural opiate that has been scientifically shown to carry messages of attachment and bonding (the scientific terms for love), and to stimulate feelings of caring and forgiveness in addition to acting as a natural painkiller. Endorphins create a positive state of mind and boost optimism, self-confidence and feelings of self-worth.

7. Laughter opens up blocked emotions: By enhancing the free flow of emotions, laughter can help dislodge blocked emotions stored in the body. Suppressed or blocked emotions can cause ongoing physical, mental and emotional problems and stress.

Psychological Benefits

1. Reducing stress is a big benefit of laughing: Lowering the stress hormones in your body makes it easier to focus and put your energy towards the goals you want to accomplish. It may seem obvious, but it’s pretty hard to remain anxious, angry or sad while you’re laughing. Even the temporary alleviation of such emotions can be a welcome respite during a tough time.

2. Laughter increases heart and respiratory rates as well as oxygen consumption over a short period: After these initial changes, a person moves into a state of relaxation. While these effects may not be the equivalent to aerobic exercise, as some claim, that is not to say it is entirely without benefit as a physical activity. 10-15 minutes of laughter per day may burn 10-40 extra calories.

3. Laughter triggers the bunch of chemicals: It boosts our immune system such as NK cells, endorphins, serotonin, growth hormone, interferon-gamma (IFN) and a host of other beneficial substances produced naturally every time we laugh heartily for extended periods.

4. By enhancing the free flow of emotions: It can help dislodge blocked emotions stored in the body. Suppressed or blocked emotions can cause ongoing physical, mental and emotional problems and stress. Laughter provides an excellent non-violent method for emotional release and catharsis.

Conclusion

Laughter also has the potential to significantly affect the quality of our work lives. Humor helps relieve tension, reassures people, and draws them together. It likely strengthens the bonds between patients and members of their care team. It even seems to increase peoples willingness to disclose, so it may help with obtaining good information during patient interviews. A study of laughter therapy's effects on volunteer community care workers found that it reduced stress, anxiety, and depression.