Hypothetically: how much would you pay for something that can help protect your nervous system, reduce chronic stress on your body, boost your immune system, keep your brain active and sharp, even enhance your lifespan?
Fortunately, this wonder drug is free.
Sound like a joke? Well laugh all you want, because that's what we're talking about here: the power of laughter.
Yes, laughing. You may have heard that laughing is good for you, or perhaps you've seen the movie Patch Adams about the real-life doctor still practicing today and uses laughter as healing therapy. It may sound so simple and trivial compared to, say, eating some obscure Himalayan plant roots or other exotic-sounding brain remedies.
But the power and benefits of laughter are far more exciting, and real, not to mention easy to do and free...so start taking humor seriously add some comedy into your daily life. Here's why:
Laughing happens to be one of the most brain-engaging and overall healing activities that you can possibly do, causing a wide range of positive reactions...mental, physical, chemical, physiological, virtually your whole being.
On the physical side, laughter helps to move lymph fluids through your body which boosts immune system function, helping to clear out dead waste from your tissues and organs, letting your immune system do its job.
It increases oxygenation in your body at both the cellular and organ levels, because when you laugh, you intake large amounts of oxygen, which helps everything from your biological energy to helping destroy cancerous cells to even providing a sense of greater mental clarity in many people (hence the existence of "oxygen bars" in many cities).
Laughing also boosts your circulation, so at the same time that you're distributing oxygen around your body, you're also boosting the circulation of your blood; you're exercising your abdominal muscles; you're exercising the muscles of your face; and you're enhancing the flexibility of various joints throughout your body.
So, laughing is a quite a physical exercise as well.
And the harder you laugh, the greater this effect: when you get into one of those really crazy, ongoing, outrageous laughing episodes, you're getting a fantastic physical workout! In fact, the next day, you may even find your stomach muscles are sore: have you ever laughed so hard that your stomach hurt and your facial muscles were exhausted? That's a serious workout, and it's the kind of exercise in which we should all engage in far more often.
Then there's the chemical effects of laughing: when you laugh, there's a lot more going on in your body than just the physical effects; you're also experiencing a chain of biochemical reactions. Your body manufactures chemicals based on certain needs and then distributes them throughout your body; when you laugh, your body generates a wealth of healing biochemicals.
It has been said that, "for every minute of laughter, you produce somewhere around $10,000 worth of healthy body chemistry", meaning that if you had to go out and actually purchase these refined chemical compounds from labs or pharmaceutical companies, you would have to "pay at least $10,000 for the very same chemistry that your brain is producing free of charge when you engage in laughter". Not a bad deal, eh?
If you were to make a long list of all the chemicals created by engaging in healthy laughter, you would have quite a list that would surely carry a hefty price tag if you had to purchase them retail. And yet, once again, you can create these chemicals for yourself at no cost by simply engaging in laughter.
These laughter-induced chemicals have extraordinary positive healing effects on your body and mind: they boost immune system function, help improve your outlook on life, help diminish mental problems such as depression, and other positive effects. And, because they help reduce stress, they will also help prevent all of the various diseases and disorders that are caused by chronic stress.
In short, laughing is one of the best things you can do for your brain and body, on all levels. And what could be more enjoyable than laughing?
Now, there are plenty of ways to add more laughter into your life: you can rent funny movies or DVDs of comedians doing stand-up comedy routines; there are comedy series, videos, tv shows, and live comedy performances. Watching a great comedian, whether on a DVD or TV or live, can be a very direct, pure way to get a high dose of material that is likely to get you laughing harder and longer.
But perhaps even better is to laugh with a funny friend...or ideally several friends, so that you also reap the social interactions benefits which you've probably heard are also very important for your mental health, especially as you get older; those friendships, relationships with other people and having a sense of a close social network have been shown to be critically important for one's mental health and overall happiness. Particularly after age 40.
So, if you can find yourself laughing wildly with some close friends, that's truly one of the best things you can do for yourself. In fact, it would be hard to quantify the exact benefits and effects of a great evening with friends involving tons of laughter, but the real health benefits to your brain, body and overall well-being are surely far greater than any one food or drink or pill or therapy session that you could possibly do.
What would the equivalent cost you, to get those same benefits some other way? What could some pharmaceutical company or medical clinic charge you to achieve the same range of real benefits to your health? It would definitely cost a fortune.
But you can get it for free, anytime you want. Now if that doesn't make you want to get a good laugh tonight, you definitely need to pull the stick out of your .....well, you know.
LOL :)