Omaha daily bee. (Omaha [Neb.]) 187?-1922, 1916-10-01
Why Laughing
Makes You Fat
<<r AUGH and grow fat" has been


- yet few people have taken the
trouble to find out why laughing should
make one grow fat. holiness and stout
ness are generally found together; not
that all stout people are jolly. but that
nearly all Jolly people are stout. 1t is,
in measure, due to the influence OF the
mind over matter, but there is also
physiological reason.
Fat Is the result OF good digestion. 1t
shows that the food eaten is readily
changed by the processes of the body
into living tissue. OF course, extreme
stoutness or obesity may become so IN
convenient as almost to be disease,
but, even SO, this is still due to the
ability of the body to get the full meas
ure of worth out of the food consumed.
The sufferer from chronic dyspepsia and
the various forms of Indigestion is actu-
ally as thin as rail
1t is not always matter of quantity
of food. Some thin people eat great
deal, some stout people eat very little.
Nor is it entirely a matter of quality of
diet, though this often has great deal
to do with it. For example, Jewish cook.
ing is much more fat-producing than
American cooking. Still, it is not uncom-
mon to see stout people whose diet Is
spare and limited.
Since stoutness, then, is partly the re.
suit Of good digestion, the old proverb
MAJ be turned round: "Grow fat and you
will laugh" for it is not easy to be jolly
with indigestion, heartburn and other
similar ellis that flesh is heir to-"
Moreover, a good cushion of fat is a
great preventive of cold and great aid
in keeping the body at an even tempera-
ture during changes of weather. In
climate so variable as that of the United
States it is of great importance to be
able to resist these weather changes, for
1t calls heavily upon the resisting power
Of the constitution of thin man or
woman to maintain an even body tenn.
perature when the thermometer vol.
planes thirty degrees in one day.
Stoutness is a little like brake-it
keeps the body from plgging up and
down in response to the vagaries of the
weather. This induces contentment and
makes laughter easy.
1t may be asked, Will laughter make q
thing person fat? Undoubtedly. Laugh
ter, real, hearty laughter, a rib-tickling
guffaw. is even better than a yawn for
emptying the lowest passages of the
lungs and bringing air into their Utmost
recesses.
Few Of us ever breathe deeply enough,
and in consequence large section of the
lung is not only unused, but it is filed
with stale air. Many lung troubles-such
as tuberculosis-are invited by this con.
dition. But the man who laughs heartily
and often need have less fear; he clears
out his lungs; he uses the full extent Of
their passages for taking the oxygen into
his blood and making ii rich, full red,
and thereby he keeps the body fluids up
to their full powers of doing their work
of digesting the food and carrying to vari-
Gus parts of the materials for the build.
ing up of new tissues.
Tradition tells story Of Titus during
the siege of Jerusalem revealing the be-
lief in the laugh and grow fat" idea GEN.
turtles ago. According to the legend
Titus was sitting in his tent, pulling on
pair of the long war greaves or boots
with studded leather protectors over the
shins, and had donned one Of these when
a messenger arrived to tell him that he
had been given imperial honors in Rome.
He burst into fit of delighted laughter,
and when he tried to put on the other
boot his foot had fattened so that he
could not get 1t on.
All the heather gods who we're patrons
of jollity are represented as having been
stout; all those who were serious were
pictured as thin. In literature the same
holds true. Falstaff is fat and Hamlet is
thin. Caesar says to Antonius: Let me
have men about me that are fat"
In fiction Sancho Panza with his jollity
is rotund, while Don Quixote is built like
a lath.