Doctors and nurses, commented Dr. Dixon, are now realizing that laughter is a powerful way to reduce tension and stress, creating a sense of well-being, increasing contentment and alertness, helping us place the problems and difficulties of life in context. Medical research has discovered remarkable impacts on our hormonal levels, in response to laughter. Such hormones are released when we are tense, working hard, worried, or afraid. It is all part of the fight or flight reaction built into all of us, enabling us to either overcome an attacker or dash away to safety. Consequently, says Dr. Dixon, we develop stomach ulcers, our arteries clog up, we become irritable and develop many other symptoms - all because our bodies are pumping out hormones that we don t need.
Laughter is remarkably selective in what it shuts down.
Virtually all of us learn to laugh at four months of age, something which requires the action of fifteen facial muscles and changes in breathing. When we laugh, at first the heart rate increases as does our rate of breathing. After our laughter ceases, there is a period of relaxation, easing muscle tension and useful in breaking the muscle spasm in some neuralgias and rheumatism. It has been estimated that 100 good laughs are equivalent to 10 minutes of rowing. Cumulative laughter throughout the day, says Dr. Fry, may be significantly greater than that of an average marathon.