LOL: 6 Scientific Reasons You’d Actually Live Longer If You Just Laughed More

By  LAURA ARGINTAR

Next time you’re caught watching YouTube videos of tumbling cats, just tell your boss you’re taking your daily vitamins. According to a variety research, laughter really is the best medicine.

Besides making you really fun to be around at parties, laughing offers a multitude of health benefits. It improves your mood, relieves stress and supports your heart. Now there’s a solid reason to hang out with Netflix and indulge in Seth Rogen films all day.

Working in high-pressure environments and dwelling in crowded cities make it hard to find humor in the every day. We all need that someone or something to make us laugh.

It breaks the tension, loosens things up and lightens our loads. There really are no downsides to letting it out with laughs.

Laughter lands you the girl, makes you fall for the funny guy and never look back, and improves your friendships. All this humorous quality time isn’t just for your own fun though, it’s also favorable for your body’s wellness.

It’s time we start hanging out with our funny friends more often. We can thank them for helping us live longer lives. (Or, you can just check out the Elite Daily Humor section, too. We hear it’s really good for your health…)

Here are six reasons why we all need to laugh more:

1. Strengthens memory recall

Researchers at California’s Loma Linda University found that older adults performed significantly better on short-term memory tests after watching funny videos.

Humor delivers more than just comic relief, it also greatly improves recall abilities by stimulating more gamma brain waves. Have you laughed today?

2. Prevents heart disease

It’s important that you can laugh at yourself. Having a sense humor and learning to laugh more may help guard against potential heart attacks, according to a 2009 study by cardiologists at the University of Maryland Medical Center.

The groundbreaking study found that people with heart disease were 40 percent less likely to let out a chuckle in everyday life situations compared to people of the same age without heart disease.

All those quotes about not taking life too seriously because you’re not coming out of it alive actually have some science behind them.

3. Burns calories

Good news if you don’t want to go to the gym today and instead sit on your couch viewing Amy Schumer reruns: Big-belly laughing for just 15 minutes per day burns anywhere from 10-40 calories.

According to a study published in the International Journal of Obesity, laughing makes the heart beat faster, works the muscles and expends 10 to 20 percent more energy than at rest.

While that number might seem insignificant, it can result in a 1- to 4-pound weight loss per year — just by having a good time.

4. Relieves pain

This is no joke, laughter can ease pain by encouraging the body to produce natural endogenous painkillers. The Mayo Clinic suggests that the laughing also breaks pain-spasm cycles common to muscle disorders. Whether you’re in physical or mental pain, laughing helps you to cope.

Hmm, maybe this explains why we love watching “Sex and the City” after an awful date or traumatic breakup.

5. Releases endorphins

The physical act of laughing triggers an increase in endorphins. Muscle movements involved in producing the familiar “ha, ha, ha” cause your brain to release these feel-good chemicals, which is why we enjoy laughing until it hurts.

Like Elle Woods knows, endorphins make you happy, plus laughter makes you happy — you’re just one big ball of fun.

6. Eases stress

By stimulating oxygen to your organs and enhancing muscle relaxation, laughter has a very welcoming way of relieving everyday stressors.

A booming laugh aids in your circulation and increases your heart rate and blood pressure, which, in turn, helps you to loosen up and shake it out, Florence + The Machines not necessary. No wonder why watching the Housewives makes us feel so good about ourselves…

http://elitedaily.com/life/reasons-need-laugh-more/780899/

Negotiating with a Dentist? LOL

HOW LAUGHTER IMPROVES YOUR MEMORY

Dr. Victor Marchione MD

You don’t need a doctor to tell you that a giggle session is good for the soul, but new research shows that it can also be good for your brain.

A recent study of people with diabetes (rising numbers in North America) found that laughter could reduce age-related memory loss.

I’m all for it! Life is short, after all, and if can’t have a bring-you-to-tears laughter session now and again, well, what’s it all for?

COULD YOU PASS A MEMORY TEST (WITH FLYING COLORS)?

The study, presented at San Diego’s Experimental Biology meeting, involved 20 healthy individuals aged 66 to 72. Researchers at Loma Linda University in California had one group of test subjects sit quietly in a room and had the other, which included both people with diabetes and those without, watch a short comedy video.

Immediately after, they tested the patients’ memory and found that those who had watched the funny video performed better on all of its measures – memory recall, learning ability and visual recognition. The researchers found that memory recall and learning ability were up by about 40 percent in the group that watched the funny video, compared to 20 percent for the group that watched nothing.

The study subjects also showed lower levels of cortisol, a stress hormone known to negatively impact brain neurons, after watching the video. Measured at the start and end of the test via saliva samples, the cortisol levels decreased in the humor group for those both with and without diabetes, but stayed constant in the control group.

The subject group with diabetes showed both the greatest improvements in the memory test and the greatest reductions in cortisol levels after watching the comedy video. So watching those crazy YouTube videos your friends and family email you might do you and your brain a world of good.

STRESS CAN HARM YOUR BODY AND YOUR BRAIN

Too much stress is hard on your body, we all know that. But recent research has shown that stressful emotions could make the brain more susceptible to mental illness and previous studies have shown that stress increases cortisol production. This lends credit to the idea that stress can damage memory and the ability to learn in older people.

The recent California study shows that a person’s memory performance should improve as they encounter less stress, co-author Dr. Lee Burk told Medical News Today. “Humor reduces detrimental stress hormones like cortisol that decrease memory hippocampal neurons, lowers your blood pressure, and increases blood flow and your mood state,” Burk explained. All good!

Laughter causes your body to release more endorphins and dopamine to the brain, which makes us feel good and improves memory by increasing gamma wave band frequency, he said.

The research could be used to improve rehabilitation and wellness programs for the elderly. Cognitive abilities like learning and memory recall get more difficult as we age, but are essential for our quality of life. Burk says, “Although older adults have age-related memory deficits, complementary, enjoyable and beneficial humor therapies need to be implemented for these individuals.”

ABC News recently reported that laughter also has the potential to improve immune function and change brain wave activity toward the “gamma frequency” that improves memory and recall. However, the study group was small, which limits the degree to which the results can be applied to the population as a whole.

Regardless, it is always a good idea to make a point out of having a good laugh every day, but the added bonus of improved memory might sell the idea to you even more!

http://www.the-open-mind.com/how-laughter-improves-your-memory/

Is Laughter the Best Medicine?

There's some scientific evidence that "Take two jokes and call me in the morning" is a worthwhile prescription. But not much.

By Susan Brink

We all want to believe that laughter is good for what ails us, but the science backing that up is thin. Most studies have been small and have relied on self-reported assessments.

Still, a rollicking good guffaw can't hurt. Or can it? There are rare instances of laughter prompting an asthma attack and even rarer instances of it triggering a stroke. And though this hasn't been part of a formal study, one researcher speculates that if you're surrounded by people laughing inappropriately—finding, say, a cockfight hilarious—it increases stress.

However, a few studies relying on laboratory testing do show some benefits.

"A good belly laugh leads to the release of endorphins from the brain," says Michael Miller, director of the Center for Preventive Cardiology at the University of Maryland Medical Center in Baltimore.

That release sets off a cascade of heart-healthy biological events. Endorphins, pleasure-inducing neurotransmitters, activate receptors on the surface of the endothelium, the layer of flat cells lining blood vessels. That leads to the release of nitric oxide, which widens blood vessels—increasing blood flow, lessening inflammation, inhibiting platelet clumping, and reducing the formation of cholesterol plaque.

A 2005 study by Miller measured the blood flow of 20 volunteers before and after watching a funny movie and a sad movie. After the sad movie, blood flow was more restricted in 14 of the 20 viewers. But after the movie that made them laugh, average blood flow increased by 22 percent.

"The best laugh is one that brings tears to our eyes," says Miller, author of Heal Your Heart: The Positive Emotions Prescription to Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease, scheduled for publication by Rodale Press in September. His prescription: at least 30 minutes of exercise at least three times a week—and 15 minutes of daily laughter.

You Have to Laugh Out Loud

Funding for laughter and humor research is low—so low that when Mary Bennett, director of the Western Kentucky University School of Nursing, wanted to look into the effect of laughter on the immune system, she found herself scrounging, asking other researchers for vials and other equipment from their labs. "It's really hard to get taken seriously when you say you study laughter," she says.

But her study of 33 healthy women, published in 2003, showed that those who laughed at a humorous movie had higher levels of natural killer cell activity, which increased their ability to fight off disease. However, the effect was seen only in the subjects who laughed out loud, not in those who quietly watched the comedy.

A study in Japan that also used laboratory findings found that laughter could improve anti-inflammatory factors in the blood of people who have rheumatoid arthritis.

But the bulk of the research on laughter and health depends on subjective studies and not on evidence-based science. And some studies are contradictory. One study of 70 depressed elderly women found that laughter yoga was just as effective as exercise therapy in improving mood, as measured by self-satisfaction reports by subjects. Humor and laughter may improve muscle tone, though only when someone is laughing, and some studies do show that a good laugh can help reduce stress hormones. But other studies show that laughter doesn't affect those hormones, according to a review of the literature published by Bennett.

No doubt, a New Yorker cartoon, a good joke, or an hour spent with the Marx Brothers can feel therapeutic. But when Bennett, who has spent much of her career studying laughter and poring over the research literature, is asked whether laughter cures or prevents any disease, her quick answer is a simple "No."

Still, she adds, "I think it's a useful adjunct of real medicine. If you're going through something like chemotherapy, anything you can do to help you stay sane through something that nasty will help."

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/06/140606-laughter-jokes-medicine-health-science-laughing-yoga/

Laughing Makes Your Brain Work Better, New Study Finds

By SARAH FIGALORA

Ever have trouble remembering where you just left your keys? Just laugh it off. New research suggests that humor can improve short-term memory in older adults.

In a recent small study conducted at Loma Linda University in Southern California, 20 normal, healthy, older adults watched a funny video distraction-free for 20 minutes, while a control group sat calmly with no video. Afterwards, they performed memory tests and had saliva samples analyzed for stress hormones.

You guessed it; those who got to laugh the 20 minutes away with the funny video scored better on short-term memory tests, researchers said. And salivary levels of the stress hormone cortisol -- a memory enemy of sorts -- were significantly decreased in the humor group.

"Learning ability and delayed recall become more challenging as we age," said study author Dr. Gurinder S. Bains, a Ph.D. candidate in Rehabilitation Sciences. "Laughing with friends or even watching 20 minutes of humor on TV, as I do daily, helps me cope with my daily stressors."

The less stress you have, researchers said, the better your memory. It works like this: humor reduces stress hormones, lowers your blood pressure, and increases your mood state, according to Dr. Lee Berk, a co-author of the study and associate professor of Allied Heath.

The act of laughter -- or simply enjoying some humor -- increases endorphins, sending dopamine to the brain to provide a sense of pleasure and reward, Berk said.

That, in turn, makes the immune system work better and changes brain wave activity towards what's called a "gamma frequency," amping up memory and recall.

Want to lower your stress levels?

"Begin by laughing more daily," Bains said. "It will improve your quality of life."

So, maybe you don't have to feel bad about all that time you spend watching funny videos at work?

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/laughing-makes-brain-work-study-finds/story?id=23393053