Laughing Your Way to Health

It is said that humour and laughter can improve your mood and health with limited side effects.  Laughter is known to have stress reducing properties that can improve your health by lowering your blood pressure, enhancing respiratory function and improving general fitness levels.  Moreover, humour and laughter can increase tolerance levels for pain as it distracts the individual's attention away from the feelings.  

It is difficult to determine the exact health benefits from laughter as other variables need to be considered such as positive life events, sense of humour, optimism, cheerfulness, etc.  Optimism improves heath as it is a coping mechanism but when the individual experiences extremely difficult life challenges will find the situation more shocked and stressful than others.   It can also be questioned whether the dispenser or the consumer benefits from the humorous activity.  Additionally, is the humorous activity to improve social status or social connections?

Despite these health benefits there is still a shortage of research to investigate the study of laughter further, leaving many questions unanswered.

Source:  Laughing your way to health, by Robert. R. Provine.