Jocelyn Keung | December 04, 2012 2:52 pm

A man rushed into the doctor’s office shouting “Doctor, I think I’m shrinking!”
The doctor responded, “Calm down–you’ll just have to be a little patient.”

Laughter, as it turns out, is good for more than just the soul. Research in the past three decades suggests that laughter has numerous physiological and psychological health benefits, which range from decreasing stress hormones to increasing pain tolerance.

These health benefits stem from both spontaneous (i.e. laughing when something funny happens) and simulated (i.e. self-induced; fake) laughter, as the human body is essentially unable to differentiate between these two types.

Recent studies seek to evaluate the potential of using laughter for therapeutic, or treatment, purposes. When you laugh, it influences your muscular, respiratory, immune, cardiovascular, and central nervous systems. Laughter techniques are based on the principle that through a variety of exercises and dynamics (such as laughter yoga), a person or a group of people transitions to a feeling of inhibition and is able to experience physical, psychological, emotional, and spiritual benefits of laughter.

Physical benefits of laughter include improving respiration, exercising and relaxing muscles, strengthening the defenses of the immune system, enhancing mental function, and stimulating circulation. However, most studies focus on the psychological benefits of laughter—namely, as a coping mechanism (behavioral tool used to overcome adversity) in patients with depression.

In a study conducted by De le Fuente-Mochales et al., weekly laughter therapy sessions led to a 50% reduction in depression symptoms in chronic pain patients. Similar results, such as reduction in depression symptoms and an improvement in mood after simulated laughter treatments, were shown in a variety of studies conducted since 2007.

At first, these results may seem, well, laughable—an improvement in mood after laughing seems obvious. However, these health improvements were retained after a 12-month follow up period. Also, let us not forget that these benefits stem from fake laughter.

Further, laughter reduces stress, elevates mood and self-esteem, improves interpersonal interaction and relationships, enhances memory, and improves quality of life and patient care.

And the best part? Laughter has no negative side effects.

So why hasn’t laughter therapy been incorporated into the health care system? Despite the abundance of proven benefits, research on simulated and spontaneous laughter is still in its early stages—the main reason being that laughter research designs are quite challenging.

One common issue is differentiating between humor and laughter, which are two distinct variables. Humor is often used as a stimulus but it can occur without laughter; similarly, laughter is a response but can also occur without humor.

Imaginably, laughter is also hard to quantify at a “dose-level” (what should be the standard? four ‘ha ha’s and three ‘tee hee’s? perhaps a giggle or two?). However, the recent development of the first system for the measurement of laughter (diaphragm electromyogram), which can measure the starting point and duration of laughter to the precision of 1/3000 seconds, will aid in the analysis of simulated or fake laughter.

The next obstacle is, then, to convince the health community to take laughter therapy a little more seriously.

Further Reading:

Laughter Yoga Lifts Depression

Therapeutic Value of Laughter in Medicine

Laughter Yoga: Easing a Lifetime of Diabetes

Reference: Mora-Ripoll, Ramon. “Potential health benefits of simulated laughter: A narrative review of the literature and recommendations for future research.” Complementary Therapies in Medicine 19. (2011): 170-177. Web.

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Categorized under: Psychology, Depression, Laughter, Health

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