When I was in college, I was taking a class with a couple of friends in my program. We got along well and always chatted before (and during and after) class about nothing in particular, but never anything very serious. That is, until one day, when the more surly of the two girls called me out as I giggled about something she’d said, a story about an awkward interaction with a guy. As I was laughing, she said the words that would make me think more than anything we talked about in that class: “Why are you always laughing?”
Well, friend, let me tell you why. Because life is funny. But let me also tell you why you should always be laughing, too.
Health
According to a cross-sectional study by the Journal of Epidemiology, the likelihood of a person developing stroke or heart disease was markedly higher for participants who reported infrequent laughter or no laughter at all throughout the study (Hayashi et al). Even after adjusting results for other risk factors strongly associated with these diseases, researchers found that non-laughing patients were 1.6 times more likely to have a stroke and 1.21 times more likely to develop heart disease. Laughter has also been proven to decrease the negative symptoms associated with insomnia, anxiety, and depression. Laughter is one of the world’s most effective, natural tools for alleviating stress and tension and it’s always at your disposal.
Additionally, there might be evidence to suggest that laughter has physiological benefits as well as psychological benefits such as those listed above. The best part? Your body doesn’t really know the difference between laughing spontaneously, as one would in response to something funny, and forcing yourself to laugh. Levels of stress-hormones in the body decrease significantly when we laugh and studies have also shown that natural killer cell (the cells responsible for attacking harmful cells in our body, such as tumor and virus cells) activity might actually increase when we’re laughing (Louie, Dexter, et al). Because our body can’t really tell when our laughter is genuine or induced, the positive health benefits of laughter can be coaxed even from a faux guffaw! So go on, laugh even if the joke isn’t funny. Your body, and whoever told the bad joke, will thank you for it.
Communication
If you still need a reason to laugh, consider the following noted in an article published by Harvard about humor and communication. Laughter gives our brains a workout and helps us to connect with others in the most natural way in the world. When a joke is presented to our brains, processed, and deemed relevant enough to our experiences to trigger a response in the pleasure-and-reward center, we laugh (Edwards). When all of the different regions of our brain work together to “get” a joke, laughter is a natural, automatic response to the invisible work that we just did to understand it. Laughter is almost like a reward for understanding why something is funny. Our brains go into overdrive trying to make all the necessary connections that allow for comprehension of humor, and they must be incredibly flexible in order to interpret the presented information in the “correct” way. With the brain relieved of the task of processing humor, humans can laugh, a quintessentially human experience that signals to others what we are feeling. Some people, like myself, use laughter as more than just a tool to communicate to others that we are happy or experiencing joy as a result of processing unexpected (see: humorous) information. It can also be used when we are nervous, relieved, confused, excited, even angry! Laughter helps us to bond with each other through mutual validation, cope with trying situations, and express a multitude of different emotions without saying anything at all.
Are you convinced?
Well, if the reasons I’ve already given aren’t convincing enough, how about this one: why not laugh? You stand to lose nothing by laughing and may even see benefits in your health and relationships if you do. You can’t control a lot of the things that happen to you, but you can control how you react to them, and if laughing gets you to where you need to go, then by all means, have a laugh. Be a person that laughs often. After all, laughter is contagious, and the world could use more.
Have a Laugh
Sources
Edwards, Scott. On the Brain. Edited by Ann Menting and Karen Kiewra, vol. 16, Office of Communications and External Relations at Harvard Medical School, Gina Vild, Associate Dean, pp. 1–8, On the Brain.
Hayashi, Kei, et al. “Laughter Is the Best Medicine? A Cross-Sectional Study of Cardiovascular Disease Among Older Japanese Adults.” Journal of Epidemiology, Japan Epidemiological Association, 5 Oct. 2016, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5037252/.
Louie, Dexter, et al. “The Laughter Prescription: A Tool for Lifestyle Medicine.” American Journal of Lifestyle Medicine, SAGE Publications, 23 June 2016, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6125057/.