Why Laughter Is Your Best Medicine To Relieve Stress?
Having heard the proverb ‘Laughter is the best medicine’ throughout his childhood, Jaspreet was skeptical about its validity. He set a resolution to laugh heartily as often as he could. As he started including more laughter in his day, he soon became an advocate of the proverb himself.
Most of us are unaware of the health benefits of cackling at the jokes of our favorite comedian or even softly giggling at a forwarded meme. Apart from the positive impacts on your mental health, laughing more like Jaspreet also has numerous benefits for your physical health.
One of the central reasons why many doctors add laughter to their patients’ prescriptions is because of its ability to relieve stress. It reduces stress-inducing hormones in our bodies and makes us feel uplifted and fulfilled. I’m sure you have felt your head lighten while guffawing at your favorite sitcom after a long day of work.
A common misconception among people is that laughter can only relieve mental stress. Nothing can be farther from the truth. A good, hearty chortle can relax your muscles for over thirty minutes. Therefore, laughter also helps reduce physical stress and tension.
Why Laughter Is Your Best Medicine To Relieve Stress?
This is just the beginning of a long list of benefits of laughter that helps us relieve stress. Take a look at some of the reasons why laughter should be your go-to medicine for relieving stress.
- Reduces Stress Hormones
You might think that laughter can relieve stress because of the positivity and joy that come with it. Actually, there is a purely biochemical reason for the ability of laughter to remove the stress out of your system. To understand this, we first need to go deeper into the biochemistry of stress.
Stress is primarily caused because of the secretion of three hormones into our bloodstream- cortisol, epinephrine, and dopamine. Researchers have found that laughter reduces all three of these hormones. This stress-relieving effect makes us feel uplifted and fulfilled whenever we laugh.
- Boosts Immunity
Stress causes us to have negative thoughts which have a significantly detrimental effect on our immunity. This is because these negative thoughts can often turn into chemical reactions that not only result in more stress but also decreased immunity to sickness. Thus, stress affects both your physical and mental health.
As discussed previously, laughter directly combats stress and helps you steer clear of negativity. In addition, laughter also lights a spark of positivity inside you. This helps your body release neuropeptides that help fight stress and potentially chronic illnesses. To top it all off, laughing increases the count of immune cells and antibodies which further boost immunity.
- Pain Relief
Ever noticed why you don’t feel much pain when you slip and start laughing? Laughing causes our bodies to create their own natural painkillers thus providing relief from pain. This increases your pain tolerance significantly.
Many experts and scientists believe that laughing must be a part of pain therapy. By providing pain relief, laughing can go a long way in decreasing the stress induced by pain.
- Relieves Stress Response
Although a burst of big, hearty laughter first fires up your stress response, it then cools it down by decreasing your heart rate and blood pressure. This gives you a good, relaxed feeling and helps you relieve stress. It also improves blood flow by increasing the oxygen-rich air intake which has countless benefits.
The improved blood flow because of including more laughter in his life significantly decreased the chances of cardiovascular health conditions for Jaspreet. Furthermore, laughter also stimulates blood circulation. This helps in relieving the physical symptoms of stress.
Lastly, letting out a lively laugh also aids muscle relaxation. Researchers say that a good amount of hearty laughter has the ability to relax our muscles for over thirty minutes. This reduces physical tension and eliminates the physical symptoms of stress.
To sum up, laughter is indeed the best medicine. It has countless benefits for both your physical and mental health. From boosting immunity to increasing blood flow, laughing offers many benefits that have multi-fold benefits. Taking a gander at this list of benefits, it is clear that laughter is the best way to relieve stress.
With so many benefits on the table, it would be unfair of us to our physical and mental well-being if we don’t try it ourselves like Jaspreet. It’s free anyway!
