See what laughter can do for you

Photo credit: Christopher Smith for The New York Times

You walk into your favorite Riverwalk weekend hot spot, realizing you're the first to arrive from your group. You sit at the bar, order a drink, and hear a group of people laughing down the counter from you.

What is it about hearing this that makes us want to get in on the humor? What makes us want to know what they're laughing at?

It's simply because laughter is a pandemic that has been sweeping the world with its ability to heal, relax, and draw people together.

Of course, it is obvious that humor is a positive thing for us all; We've felt it when our friends do something idiotic or while you're watching an episode of "Saturday Night Live". But most of us, including myself until I researched for this article, are unaware of just how far a few chuckles can go in the long run.

Turns out, laughter can decreased your risk of heart disease and heart attack. A study, originally released in 2000 by the University of Maryland Medical Center, has proven that laughter really can be the best medicine:

"In the study, researchers compared the humor responses of 300 people. Half of the participants had either suffered a heart attack or had undergone coronary artery bypass surgery. The other 150 were healthy, age-matched participants who did not have heart disease..."The researchers found that people with heart disease were 40 percent less likely to laugh in a variety of situations compared to people of the same age without heart disease... The results of the survey showed that those suffering from heart disease were less likely to see the benefits of humor and less likely to even laugh, in general. "They displayed more anger and hostility".

Try the survey out for yourself here.

Also in 2000, Psychologist Steve Sultanoff, Ph. D., president of the Association for Applied and Therapeutic Humor, offered that "With deep, heartfelt laughter, it appears that serum cortisol, which is a hormone that is secreted when we're under stress, is decreased. So when you're having a stress reaction, if you laugh, apparently the cortisol that has been released during the stress is reduced." He also said in an interview with WebMD, that our tolerance for pain increases from hearty laughter and boosts our immune systems.

Other benefits of laughter include lowering blood sugar (Keiko Hayashi, Ph. D., R.N., University of Tskuba in Ibaraki, Japan 2003), blood flow regulation (University of Maryland 2006), pain-free sleep (Norman Cousins "Anatomy of an Illness" 1983), and physical fitness (WebMD 2006), anxiety in children (WebMD 2005). Read through my source and about the above in more detail here.

Moving away from the science, now...

I don't know about you, but it's good to know that Some Like It Hot or There's Something About Mary will do me more good than being a couch potato does. Check out other movies that the American Film Institute named as part of their Funniest 100 Movies list (HTML view) and watch away, guilt-free.

Or, you can watch this PSA. It was voted funniest European commercial in 2005. Did you really think I'd leave you without something to laugh at after all this? :) Enjoy!

For more info: University of Maryland Study, HelpGuide.org, JulianTrubin.com