Can Laughing Improve Your Health?

Benefits of Laughing

Laughing can stimulate the immune system by lowering your stress hormones.

Laughing can stimulate creative and problem solving part of the brain. Think about that when your bills are coming in and you need a solution!

Laughing can give you a good cardio workout by stimulating the heart and circulatory system. Say goodbye to the gyms and just have a good laugh!

Laughing will create happy memories for you family.

Laughing can increase your threshold for pain. An example of this, which I came across, was about Norman Cousins who was an editor of U S Saturday Review. Cousins died in 1990 of heart failure. He wrote a book in the 1960s called, "Anatomy of an Illness." He had a debilitating disease called, "Marie-Strumpell's Disease" which was a spinal disease. In this book, he wrote about how he stopped taking drugs and pain killers. He replaced it by watching old comedies like Laurel and Hardy or the Marx brothers which would actually give him up to two hours of pain relief.

Laughing will help every cell in your body!

Laughing improves communication with others; especially your spouse. As Harville Hedrix, PH.D and author of several relationships books, including "Getting the Love You Want," says, " A belly laugh a day keeps the divorce lawyers away."

Most of all, with all the above said, laughing will result in you saving money by not going to the doctor as much. Now, how's that for a good laugh!!

Tips for Laughing

Stop listening to all the doom and gloom on TV - including realty TV. Turn it off and go to a good comedy movie or show.

Get away from people who are negative. No need to hear about their pity party.

Focus around things that make you laugh even animals; especially cats.

Find something daily to laugh about. Sometimes, for me, I like to search for a good funny on You Tube.

I love to laugh and make others laugh. I know the benefits of laughing a lot based on my own challenging life. Worrying about the future or what has happened in your past gets you no where but grief. So why choose it? Yes, we have foreclosures, bankruptcies, and death around us. We are in a period now, that many people find it hard to laugh. Nevertheless, we do have choices no matter what life dishes out to us. My choice is not to fall into the doom and gloom I'm hearing around me. My choice is to continue to spread laughter daily to people I meet because laughing can be contagious. And perhaps if I touch one person and make them laugh today, they might make someone else laugh tomorrow. I leave you with a good example of how laughing can be contagious. Click on this hpyerlink to "Dad at the Comedy Barn."