Laughing Your Way to Better Health
Laughing (and) gasses
Hearty guffaws
Anything that’s become a clich can’t possibly be a groundbreaking medical secret. Such is the case with the old saw, “Laughter is the best medicine.” Everybody knows this one, right? Of course, but it’s still interesting when science backs up the old sayings.
And according to an ABCNews.com report from this past spring, a new study has elevated the old laughter-as-medicine another rung on the credibility ladder. Conducted by the University of Maryland, the new research focused on the physiological reactions of a group of test subjects to movies of various tenors.
The study group who watched a funny movie experienced an increase in blood flow in 95% of cases, while exactly the opposite was true for those forced to watch a sobering or sad movie – 74% of these experienced diminished blood flow. In the “comedy” group, the circulatory benefits lasted 12 to 24 hours.
None of this surprises me, and it shouldn’t surprise you. Think about it: When you laugh really hard at a something, don’t your cheeks get a little rosy? Most people’s do. That’s all the evidence anyone should need that laughing boosts circulation. It’s literally written all over your face.
Presented at this past spring’s meeting of the American College of Cardiology, the study points to a strong correlation between laughter and circulatory/cardiovascular health. Past studies have focused on laughter’s stress-relieving capabilities as a mechanism behind its heart-healthy benefits. It all makes sense. Laughter does all sorts of good things to us: It both reduces killer stress AND improves blood flow. It also releases powerful, painkilling endorphins into our blood.
Besides this, there’s evidence that laughing boosts immunity, too. A 2000 study of medical students showed an increase in T-cell (viral killers) activity in the blood while watching humorous videotapes. Other research showed laughter to be beneficial against heart arrhythmias.
The punch line is this: Whether there’s evidence proving it or not, common sense tells us that laughing is good for us on many levels. Do it long and often and you’ll live longer and healthier for it.
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What’s in a name? Everything, apparently
Speaking of clichs, here’s one we owe to master Shakespeare: “That which we call a rose, by any other name would smell as sweet.”
But according to recent research conducted by a group of British neurologists, this may not be such a truism after all. The University of Oxford team found that an odor’s name triggers certain brain areas that compete with – or override – the areas the actual smell stimulates.
The proof lay in the study’s simple testing methods. Subjects were asked to sniff a sample that was either correctly labeled “cheddar cheese” or incorrectly labeled “body odor” while undergoing functional MRI brain scans. Response to the cheese-labeled smell activated the area of the brain used for processing olfactory information, while sniffing the wrongly labeled sample failed to produce activity in that region.
Apparently, the printed words had a profound effect (like near complete blocking) of the mind’s perception of the scent. The conclusion: Cognitive input (like labels) has a huge impact on how we perceive things.
Hmmm. Seems to me the mainstream media has known this fact for years, if the false and misleading headlines we see every day are any indication.
Always chuckling, never buckling,
William Campbell Douglass II, MD
