Laughing is good for your health

I have never met a person that hasn’t laugh at least, the thing that even if something isn’t funny, just seeing another person laughing makes you want to laugh also, but haven’t you wonder, why is this?, Why are laughter so contagious as a virus? English scientist have found new evidence about the contagious power of a laugh: our brain is particularly social, because every time it perceives a laugh it responds the same way, seems true that “if you smile, the world will smile back to you” said Sophie Scott from the University of London and author of a study published in the magazine Journal of Neuroscience.

The new study replaced the visual study for an auditory one. Researchers selected vocalizations that respond to positive emotions (fun, success) and negative (dislike, fear) and through studies of magnetic resonance, the monitored the brain reaction to certain voluntary groups. Mirror neurons got activated as a response of all sounds, preparing facial muscles to take action. But the response was more intense in the case of laughter and winning voices. The fact that positive emotions active mirror neurons in major quantities helps us understand how positive emotions promote social interaction.

But this is not a new therapy in the 70’s Patch Adams, developed a new therapy to treat patients in a Hospital of Virginia, this is the beginning of laugh therapy, with this therapy was proved that laughing helps the organism physically and mentally. Norman Cousin experimented with the laugh therapy and overcome the pains caused by rheumatoid arthritis. He proved that if before he went to bed he watched a movie that made him laugh, he would sleep the whole night without pains. Laughing was his pain reliever.

From this moment before and after was marked in the application of laughing as therapy. Laughing as a therapy is a group discipline that exposes people physically and emotional to laugh. It a method that helps people to live their lives better, changing their perspective of life from negative to positive. Emotional state and perception get transform by developing happiness, optimism and humor.

Laugh thing by itself, is not a cure, but is a complement to traditional medicine. Between the reasons we could mention:

*When we laugh we exercise by moving around 400 muscles, including some stomach muscles that are only exercised when laughing.

*It helps us relax: bones of the vertebral column, where we tend to accumulate tensions stretch.

*It cleans our eyes, laughter clears nose and ear and active our lacrimal glands.

*We oxygenate our lungs and skin while we laugh.

*It helps us stay happy, stimulates the nervous system and makes the immune system stronger.

*It stimulates the cardiovascular system: lowers arterial tension, decreases the
cardiac rhythm.

*Helps against constipation by giving a massage to the digestive tube, increasing intestinal traffic.

There are a million reasons to laught so stop what you are doing and laugh out loud.