Laughter can fuel your soul and heal you from the inside out.
If you are enduring a particularly difficult time, those who care about you may try to cheer you up by cracking a joke or even saying things that they know will bring a smile to your face. Laughter is often the best medicine and can even improve your overall health.
How Laughing Helps Boost Personal Health
As we laugh, our body produces cells that combat viruses and can even aid in the destruction of tumors. When engaging with those close to us and enjoying a good laugh, the body produces a higher level of gamma-interferon which is a disease-fighting protein, T-cells which can boost your immune system as well as B-cells which make disease-fighting antibodies.
Laughter has the ability to lower one’s blood pressure and increase oxygen throughout the blood which promotes self-healing. Who would have thought, a good laugh with a friend can help to fight off a headache or even those pesky aches and pains!
When we engage in laughter, our body increases its ability to cope with stress, deal with loss, and calm our anxiety. This emotion allows our body to relax in the most natural way. Aside from feeling a moment of joy, laughing has the ability to lower your blood pressure, improve the immune system, and ward of disease.
A Practical Solution For Improving Mental Health
Since mental health is a major concern throughout the United States, finding ways to combat mental illness is a huge priority. Being able to engage in laughter:
- Helps us connect with others.
- Improves our coping with grief, fear or loss.
- Makes us more productive – happy people have more energy.
- Releases negative emotions such as anger, anxiety, sadness, and depression.
- Releases endorphins in the brain that help you to feel good.
Are you finding it difficult to make it to the gym? When you engage in laughing for a certain length of time you may become fatigued and this type of laughing is equivalent to aerobic exercise. Look for ways to laugh, your health is counting on you!
The Research Behind Laughter and Health
More recent research has found that those watching comedy videos needed less pain medication. The authors suggest, “These results can best be explained by the action of endorphins released by laughter.”
How to increase laughter in your life:
- Surround yourself with positive upbeat people who laugh a lot – laughter is contagious!
- Find out what makes you laugh – is it funny movies, watching the comedy channel, reading funny material? Whatever it is – do it more often!
- Don’t take yourself, or anyone else, or even life for that matter, so seriously.
Although it may seem silly, laughing can brighten up your life in more ways than one!
Partner With AICA Atlanta To Maximize Personal Health
Our Atlanta chiropractors care a great deal about your overall health and strive to help you maximize your body’s natural healing powers. If you are searching for ways to increase your body’s natural healing abilities, contact our Atlanta chiropractic clinic at (404) 889-8828 for an appointment.
