Have you heard that laughter can actually improve health and help fight disease? There are number of reasons to say that "laughter is the best medicine." Learn about laughter. What it is? What happens in our brains when we laugh? What makes us laugh? And how it can make us healthier and happier?
We human beings always like to laugh and we are the only species that laughs. How we laugh? Humor produces laughter and in fact laughing is our physiological response to humor. For one reason or other we want to show some seriousness and hence we consciously control to our laughter. There is no logic or reason or rationale for laughter. If we feel it is appropriate to laugh, we should laugh. If we control our emotions how we laugh?
Laughter is not humor; it is the movement of the muscles of the face, particularly of the lips in response to humor. Merriam Webster Online Dictionary defines laughter as "to show emotion with a chuckle or explosive vocal sound; to find amusement or pleasure in something." When we laugh, we make a set of gestures and produce vocal sound and our brain pressures us to conduct both these activities simultaneously. When we laugh heartily:
- We contract around 15 facial muscles contract and our zygomatic major muscle gets stimulated. Laughter is a form of muscular excitement.
- Our respiratory system gasps more air. During laughter our larynx gets half closed and as a result our air in-take gets disturbed. This makes us to gasp
- Our eyes half closed, tear ducts secrete tear drops and the face turns moist and purple
- We make typical noises in association with bizarre behavior ranging from sedate giggles to boisterous guffaws
The laughter elevates human mood and makes him to feel comfortable; it binds us as a group and strengthen our relationship and it is often contagious.
The physiology of laughter or "Gelotology" is an advancing field. The frontal lobe of our brain controls our emotional responses. But it is understood that various regions of our brain are responsible for our laughter.
We have many reasons to laugh. Laughter helps to cope up with major illness or stress. Stress brings unhealthy physiological changes within us. The cause and effect relationship between stress and high blood pressure, muscle tension, immunosuppression is known for years.
We now have proof that laughter is the perfect antidote to all these ailments. Modern research affirms that laughter will certainly bring balance to our immune system, which helps us to fight off diseases. Our stress hormones get balanced and the negative emotions like anger, stress, hatred, hostility etc., disappear suddenly; as a result there is an emotional balance
When experiencing coughing and hiccupping, our respiratory system clears the respiratory tract by dislodging mucous plugs. There is the concentration of salivary immunoglobulin A (IGA), which protects us against infectious organisms entering through the respiratory tract.
Laughing lowers serum cortisol levels and influences the concentration of natural killer (NK) cells that destroy tumors and viruses increase. Our immune system show response and produce Gamma-interferon (a disease-fighting protein), T-cells, and B-cells, which make disease-destroying antibodies.
More surprises are waiting for you! Do you believe that laughing 100 times is equal to 10 minutes on the rowing machine or 15 minutes on an exercise bike? Yes. While laughing our total body works out! There is normal Blood pressure; increased vascular blood flow and in oxygenation of the blood. Laughter makes your respiratory, facial, diaphragm / abdominal, leg and back muscles to work. There is also an aerobic workout!
There are added up psychological benefits of laughter. We often accumulate negative emotions, such as anger, sadness and fear, rather than venting them out. Laughter provides a way to vent out these emotions. Psychologists advise people to go to a funny movie or a comedy club, so they can vent out the negative emotions through laughing.
Psychologists are also recommending "laughter therapy," which teaches people how to laugh -- openly -- at things that are not usually funny and to cope in difficult situations by using humor. There are humor clubs making people to laugh to the maximum possible extent. A set of fun loving people make "laughing community"; and they assemble... and laugh … start off by clapping their hands … Clap to the rhythm of one, two, three again one, two, three and laughing Ho, Ho, Ho or Ha, Ha, Ha, all the time laughing, laughing and laughing to become stress free and healthy life.
Let us find out what makes us laugh and do it more often. Let us crack jokes at our next get-together and learn to develop sense of humor; and let us make use of every chance to spent time amidst people who always make fun and laugh. Let us always put more laughter in our life.
