Laughter is the Best Medicine

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:

1. We contract around 15 facial muscles contract and our zygomatic major muscle gets stimulated. Laughter is a form of muscular excitement.
2. 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
3. Our eyes half closed, tear ducts secrete tear drops and the face turns moist and purple
4. 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