You’ve likely heard the old cliché that laughter is the best medicine. Laughing certainly feels like a form of stress relief, and most of us take it on faith that a belly laugh is healthy. But is there any scientific evidence behind that idea, or is it more of a hunch?
To investigate the science of laughter, Bottom Line Personal spoke with Edward Creagan, MD, a cancer specialist and hospice and palliative care consultant at Mayo Clinic.
What happens when we laugh?
Interesting things go on in our bodies during a bout of laughter. At the chemical level, a two-pronged phenomenon occurs…
First, we experience a surge in endorphins and enkephalins. These small molecules, secreted from deep within the brain, are known as endogenous opioids. “Endogenous” means they occur naturally in the body, and opioids are feel-good chemicals. A laughter-induced surge of these substances produces feelings of peace and invincibility.
As these feel-good molecules flood the brain, we experience a decrease in stress-related hormones, primarily cortisol. So while laughter dials up levels of beneficial chemicals, it dials down levels of detrimental ones. Researchers have used numerous methods to study laughter’s effects, including recording changes in blood pressure, timing how long a person can hold his/her hand in freezing water after a laughing event, measuring hormones and monitoring brain wave changes.
Health benefits of laughter
Measuring laughter’s short-term benefits, such as increased tolerance to pain (the distraction of laughter allows you to put off the pain of holding your hand in freezing water) is fairly straightforward. But it is more difficult to produce scientific evidence connecting laughter to immune health and longevity. Certainly our immune systems function better with lowered levels of cortisol, but it’s difficult to design studies proving that frequent belly-laughers get sick less often.
It’s also hard to prove a longevity benefit because we don’t have reliably objective methods to capture frequency or intensity of laughter over decades. But since social isolation is a measurable risk factor for a host of conditions that shorten lifespan—and we know intuitively that people who laugh a lot are valued for their company—it’s no great leap to assume that fun people spend less time isolated and that this could have a longevity benefit.
Finding more laughter
Unfortunately, laughter’s health benefits probably don’t come from smiling wryly as you scroll past a cynical meme on Instagram but rather from the kinds of big guffaws you get in the company of others. Such laughter is increasingly rare in our society.
If you want to reap the health benefits of laughter, put down your cell phone and only pick it up when you need to communicate with someone. Look for occasions and excuses to join large gatherings that bring together people for the express purpose of experiencing joy, whether that’s at church, a family reunion or a comedy club.
