Laughing is good for you in many ways. It’s one of the best things you can do for your mind and body. For instance, it reduces stress levels and anxiety symptoms, paving way for happier a spirit.
A person who laughs frequently isn’t only happier more often, but their base level of satisfaction is higher. So, is laughter the best medicine? You bet it is, and it’s natural.
In this article, I am going to cover the greatest benefits of laughter, and how training yourself to find the goodness in things will greatly improve your quality of life.
Here are 7 reasons why laughing is good for you:
1. Laughing Improves Your Mood
Have you ever been around a person, who, just by being near them brightened your mood? These types of people have an aura that sort of rubs off on you, and makes you want to smile, and laugh.
It’s not that they have some magical key to happiness. They have just developed a deeply-rooted positive outlook in life, and it makes them shine.
It’s a very magnetic shine, and it pulls you in and makes you want to be their friend…while they laugh maniacally.
Okay, not really. But this person does tend to receive the complete attention of others. And everything they touch or give their focus to seems to have a positive outcome.
You could consider them an archetypal figure, as I went over in a recent article. Make it a goal to be this type of person.
Laugh hard, and Laugh often.
Have you ever had a crying laugh before? The type where you almost pee your pants? Yeah. Those are awesome. Mix that kind of laughter in with a routine of mood-boosting foods, and you’re one happy camper.
They key though, is finding humor and laughing long-term. As Janet Gibson—Professor of Cognitive Psychology, puts it:
When we laugh, it triggers certain neurological pathways, and causes our brains to release neurotransmitters like serotonin, which affect our mood. This can make our physical and emotional responses to stress less intense.
Our bouts of laughter only matter most in terms of consistency, not strength. In other words, what matters more regarding increasing mood and reducing stress is that we laugh frequently, and continually over time, regardless of how intense our laughter is.
Laughing out loud is important, but laughing internally is effective too.
Just don’t laugh too often—internally, when you’re around other people. This is especially true when laughing nervously. Unless you want to be seen as the Joker, or something.
What’s the takeaway?
You don’t need to laugh to death in order to experience the benefits of laughter. It’s long-term laughter that impacts your mental health the most. A few giggles here and there is all you need to boost your mood and feel happy.
2. Laugh to Relieve Stress
The health benefits of laughter seem to never end. Studies that measure mood-related hormones in the blood during laughter find that there are decreased levels of cortisol, epinephrine, growth hormone, and dopamine catabolites (1).
These are hormones that cause stress, chronic anxiety, and depression. And so this further strengthens the idea that laughter benefits your mental health, and in such ways as rewiring your brain, to help increase your base level of happiness.
This approach to preventing and curing chronic stress and depression has been studied so much that medical practitioners introduced the idea of laughter clubs—laughter as a therapy (2).
These same studies found that laughing also benefits endothelial function, which can improve your body’s ability to ward off sickness and disease.
This combined with eating foods that boost your immune system could certainly help you become a healthier person, and live a more invigorating life.
What’s the takeaway?
The benefits of the therapy of laughter are profound. Not only can laughing more help to improve chronic anxiety, but doing it enhances your cardiovascular and immune system. This can lead to living a longer, sick-free life.
3. Laughter Reduces general Pain
In addition to improving your mood and relieving stress, laughing helps to reduce your physical pains by releasing endorphins. This can make your body will feel like it’s been medicated, naturally.
As you may know, if your body lacks serotonin and endorphins, then you may have a few of these symptoms:
- Depression
- No motivation at work
- Aggressive behavior
- Arising fear
- Lack of sleep
- Loss of appetite
- Growing hatred for your job
- Low self-esteem
These negative conditions can really ruin your quality of life. Your best bet is to kick back, make ’em laugh, and try to keep your spirits high.
Laughter isn’t a cure-all, but there are certainly no cons to doing it. That is, of course, unless you have a laughing disorder that is disrupting your life. For example, Pseudobulbar affect (PBA)—aka uncontrollable laughing disorder. This is where you involuntarily laugh and cry against your will due to certain brain disorders.
All in all, when you laugh when in pain, rather that be physical or emotional, it makes the pain more bearable.
What’s the takeaway?
One of the greatest reasons why laughter is good for you is that it releases endorphins, which increases your tolerance to pain. Try to laugh wherever you can, and whenever appropriate. This is YOUR life, and you need to make the best of it.
4. Laughing is good for you because it Spreads Positivity
I think we can all agree that the entertainment industry makes SO much money for this one reason: it pulls us away from reality and makes us laugh.
A whopping 28.4% of all movies made are Comedy, whereas, the rest are drama, thriller, romance, action, and horror. Even then, almost all movies have aspects of comedy in them which are intended to take our minds off the negativity in life.
Who doesn’t love to laugh? And who doesn’t love to be around others who are laughing?
Even animals laugh. According to a study in the journal Bioacoustics, they found that 65 different species of animals have their own form of laughter. A few of them are:
- The kea—a species of parrot.
- Chimpanzees
- Gorillas
- Rats
A laugh is contagious. We live to laugh, and we laugh to fully live.
If everyone in our world could laugh more, maybe we could get along better. We may see ourselves as one grander, united family, living to make each others’ lives more peaceful.
What’s the takeaway?
Human aren’t the only animals that laugh. Animals laugh too. It’s an instinctive behavior that allows us to not only interact better socially, but it helps to keep us inspired and uplifted so that we can find happiness in all aspects of life.
5. Laughter Stimulates Your Facial Muscles
Have you ever heard the term, “Resting B**** Face?” It’s real. And if you don’t laugh enough, you may develop it.
Just like you can practice better back and shoulder posture to align your muscles into a healthier position, your facial muscles are affected by how often you smile and laugh.
Here’s a basic rundown of the anatomy of how you smile:
There is a muscle group in your face called the zygomaticus:
- Zygomaticus Minor (On top)
- Zygomaticus Major (On bottom)
These muscles are thick cords, and they run parallel to each other, stretching from the corner of your mouth to the cheek bone that sticks out next to your eyes, called the zygomatic bone. When you laugh, the zygomaticus pull your other muscles upward, resulting in a fabulous smile!
You also have the risorius muscle, but it only affects a small portion of your smile. This muscle is also easier to control than the zygomatic muscles, which makes fake smiling easy to do. This also means that fake laughter is easy to detect in others.
If you smile enough, your facial muscles at rest will naturally rise and give your face a softer effect, making you look like a happier person.
There are actually studies that show people who smile often are more content in life. It’s really not that hard to smile, and you can train yourself to do it.
Try this smiling technique to be happier naturally:
- Slightly raise the corners of your mouth when your face is at rest.
- Hold the position for a minute, then rest for a minute.
- Do this for 10-15 minutes per day.
- After a few days, increase the time you hold it from 1 to 2 minutes.
- Practice until you can smile for hours at a time.
You’ll notice that by simply wearing a smile more often—fake or not, it will trick your mind into thinking you are happy, and you will actually become happy!
Just don’t smile (or laugh) at inappropriate times, like at funerals or during passport photos. Because you might be misunderstood and people could take it the wrong way.
What’s the takeaway?
Studies show that smiling and laughing more will train your brain to become enlightened, and it causes your facial muscles to develop a softer appearance at rest. This may not only make you look happier, but be happier.
6. Lower Blood Pressure by laughing
Since laughing has so many calming effects on your energy levels and mind, it’s only natural that it would benefit your blood pressure.
After all, having reduced stress hormones and increased serotonin are known to be a factor in blood pressure regulation.
However, don’t expect that if you are measuring your blood pressure you can trick the machine into lowering it by laughing. The opposite effect will happen.
Laughing acutely raises systolic blood pressure.
There was a study done involving sixteen volunteers with normal blood pressure, and researchers concluded there was a significant rise in systolic blood pressure from 115 mmHg to 127 mmHg while laughing. The diastolic pressure was not affected—an increase of 71 to 73 mmHg (3).
You can see why laughing would temporarily increase your blood pressure, considering that you’re forcefully projecting sounds and emotions from deep within you. This is especially true if you burst out in laughter.
But it’s the long-term benefits we’re looking at here.
The release of healthy, calming chemicals in your body far outweigh the acute rise in blood pressure.
What’s the takeaway?
The positive benefits of laughter on health are extraordinary. Although laughing temporarily raises your blood pressure, doing it releases healthy chemicals which, ultimately, benefit you in the long run.
7. Laughter Reduces Aggressiveness
One of the most important objectives of humanity is (or should be) to reduce our aggressiveness, as a whole.
It’s vital for our prosperity as a species to coincide peacefully with each other if we want to have a future. You know…thousands to millions of years from now.
Coming together begins with us, individually.
We’re kind of like an apple. If our seeds become cancerous (our morals become corrupted) then we will eventually succumb to destruction, to extinction.
Laughing helps to rid of these negative tendencies we have. These tendencies to bully, and to boast ourselves, not by uplifting our good qualities, but by pointing out the weakness’ in others.
Our job as human is to make other people feel accepted, and loved. And we can’t do this if we are always distancing ourselves from one another by being aggressive.
Everyone has their own story. Don’t make the assumption that the guy at the grocery store didn’t hold the door for you because he has some deep hatred for blondes under six foot.
Just accept things for how they are, don’t take it personally, and laugh it off.
What’s the takeaway?
Reducing aggressiveness is one of the greatest reasons why laughing is good for you. When people are happy and getting along, everything in life seems easier. If our whole world could laugh more, maybe things would be much different than they are today.
Conclusion
There are so many benefits of laughing. Make it one of your goals to do it more. It’s one of life’s antidotes for a restless body, mind, and spirit.
If you make it a point to start laughing more frequently, you will notice that not only are you happier, but the world around you will seem like a better place.
Here’s a quick recap of 7 Reasons why laughing is good for you:
- Improves your mood.
- Relieves stress.
- Reduces general pain.
- Spreads positivity.
- Stimulates your facial muscles.
- Lowers blood pressure.
- Reduces aggressiveness.
That’s all folks! Thanks for reading.
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