Can laughing really be good for you?…
We currently live in a world where there is a lot of worries, from general mental health to home equity release rates, everybody seems to have something that they are worried about. So what do we do about it?
Laughing in one sense is great for the body, be it from watching your favourite sitcom on the television or when a mate tells you a joke that has you in fits. You feel good inside after a good laugh, having a lighter feeling which clears away all your troubles. Does that make you want to laugh? No?
This should do the trick, laughing gives you a workout. I guess you’re laughing now, thinking its a joke, but its true, apparantly, if you have a good laugh, fall onto the floor and roll laughing, you could actually be making your body feel good, as well having the feel good factor of laughing.
Dr. Lee Berk, a preventive care specialist and researcher at Loma Linda University carried out a study to suggest this, which suggests that laughing affects hormones in the same way as exercise. The study consisted of fourteen people, who had their blood pressures and blood samples taken before and after watching two videos. The first video was twenty minutes of violent footage from the movie “Saving Private Ryan”which they watched, and the second was twenty minutes of footage containing assorted comedies and funny moments.
The experiment concluded that on watching the the funny footage, hormone activity changed in the people undertaking the study, the hormone leptin, an appetite-repressive hormone decreased while Gherin, a hunger stimulating hormone increased. Berk said “This doesn’t mean that the volunteers became hungrier; instead, the effect struck “a good balance"between the two hormones. After watching the violent video, there had been no change in hormone activity.
“It’s not rocket science that exercise is good for you,"Berk adds. “It adds years to your life.”
Comments are closed!