Does Laughing Increase Having a Happy Life?
March 1, 2021 by Kristy
My husband is the funniest person I have ever met. One of his most enduring qualities is that he has an amazing sense of humor. It was really the one thing that I was most attracted to when we started dating. The thing about his sense of humor is that, he doesn’t try to be funny, he just is.
Our daughter and sons definitely have the same gift of making others laugh. It is fun to be around people that you can just look at, and you know they are barely holding it together and are about to bust out laughing. Although, sometimes we may not be in appropriate place to belly laugh, it always brings a smile to my face. I have always heard the phrase, “It takes more muscles to frown then it does to smile”.
Is laughing healthy? According to helpguide.org, laughter is the best medicine. Laughter strengthens your immune system, boosts mood, diminishes pain, and protects you from the damaging effects of stress. As children, we used to laugh hundreds of times a day, but as adults life tends to be more serious and laughter more infrequent. By seeking out more opportunities for humor and laughter, though, you can improve your emotional health, strengthen your relationships, find greater happiness—and even add years to your life.
That is quite a statement, but is it true? Can laughing add years to your life? I wasn’t able to find any conclusive studies that proved that laughing adds years to your life, I did find a couple of studies that concluded that laughing can make your health better.
When surveyed about their satisfaction with the program, 96.2 percent found laughter to be an enjoyable addition to a traditional exercise program, 88.9 percent said laughter helped make exercise more accessible and 88.9 percent reported the program enhanced their motivation to participate in other exercise classes or activities. The findings are published in the journal The Gerontologist.
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