FOR TRYING TIMES, LAUGHTER IS THE BEST MEDICINE
Laugh, and the whole world laughs with you. Cry, and you cry alone.
To get through this difficult and stressful time of the never ending deadly coronavirus pandemic, the 3 W preventative measures (wash hands - wear a face mask - watch your distance), social isolation, being cut off from friends and relatives, economic difficulties, political squabbles and lies are finally getting to us all. We feel sick and tired. It is causing unprecedented despair in all of us. To cope, we could easily resort to drinking, smoking, overeating, or taking habit forming substances, like tranquillizers or opioid medications.
A recent Columbia University study on this regard, showed that one in seven families in the USA have reported that they did not have enough food to eat. More than 40 percent reported having mental health problems and 13 percent of adults have begun substance abuse. Before we decide to resort to these harmful behaviors, we should know that the best medicine for these difficult times is to have a good sense of humor and laughter.
Laughter is our body’s and our mind’s natural, inborn coping mechanism for stressful and difficult times.
Scientific studies have shown that in difficult and stressful times, our brain and body produce a copious amount of stress hormones (cortisol and adrenalin) as consequence of hereditary evolutionary survival reflex of fight-or-flight reaction to address the problem and eliminate the stressors.
In chronic stress conditions, blood stress hormones levels remain high. This creates increased muscle tension, heart rate, blood pressure, edginess and suppresses the immune system. For these reasons chronic stress conditions increases the risk of cardiovascular diseases, like heart attacks and strokes.
On the other hand, laughter causes our brain and body to release beneficial chemicals like nitric oxide and hormones like endorphins. Nitric oxide relaxes the blood vessels and help to reduce blood pressure, endorphins are “feel good” hormones and have calming and tension relieving effects.
Epidemiologic studies have shown that people who are cheerful and laugh a lot, have a longer and happier life span. How can we cheer ourselves up, by laughter, in these trying times? First, we must raise some important questions for better understanding the issue:
1. What is laughter, why do we laugh?
2. Is smiling the same as laughter?
3. Does fake laughter have the same beneficial effects as genuine laughter?
Laughter is a universal part human vocabulary. It is the sound of pleasure, joy and friendship. It’s a primitive, hereditary reflex. A newborn child at the age of 3 months start laughing to express their joy towards their parents, siblings and familiar faces. It is believed that, sometimes in evolutionary human history, our ancient primitive ancestors replaced animal-like grooming with laughter to show their pleasure and to connect with their own kind.
A smile, which is closely related to laughing and expresses the same meaning, is not a deep inward feeling as laughter. It is a soundless facial expression, a body language, and it is not modulated by the brain’s neuro-chemical mechanisms.
Even though our brain is capable to distinguish fake laughter from real, scientific studies have shown that even fake laughter could cause out brain to release beneficial neuro-chemical substances.
That is why there are so many Laughter Clubs in the world, where a group of people get together just to laugh. Sometimes laughter is combined with physical exercises like yoga. This is called Laughter Yoga. There are also Laughter Meditation Clubs, in which people first use fake laughter to release tension, then they meditate to fall in a deep inner peace.
Since we can’t join these clubs during the pandemic, we can set up our own, one-man club to take the advantage of fake laughter. Instead of feeling sorry for ourselves or taking habit forming medications or drinking alcohol, I suggest creating a laughter–aid box. This box should contains your favorite joke, humor books, comic movies, comedians, clowns, copies of TV series like Saturday Night Live, to make laughing easier. And then try combining laughter with yoga and/or meditation as the healthiest way to cope with these trying times.
