How much better do we feel after a good laugh? That warm, bubbly feeling that spreads through the chest and makes everything seem a little brighter. When did we last laugh so hard our stomach hurt, or share a laugh with a friend that left us both wiping away tears?
Here is something surprising. When laughter has been tried as a treatment, the kind that worked best needed no joke at all. Laughing on purpose, with nothing funny going on, did better than laughing at something funny. So we can stop waiting for the punchline.
Laughter, then, is less a matter of luck than it seems. It is something we can choose, and it does more in the body than a passing good mood.
Here are ten ways laughter changes us, each with what has been found.
1. It eases stress
When the day piles up, a laugh is one of the quickest ways to let some of it go.
Thirty-three women watched either a funny video or a travel video. Afterwards, stress had fallen in the humour group compared with the others, and the more a woman had laughed, the lower her stress went.
When stress builds, take a few minutes for a funny video, or call the friend who always makes you laugh.
2. It nudges the immune system
This one is promising and small. Twenty-one men watched a 75-minute comedy on one day and a neutral film on another. After the comedy, the activity of their natural killer cells, the immune cells that attack infected cells, went up. After the neutral film it did not. In the thirty-three women above, the ones who responded most to the humour showed a rise too.
These are small groups over a single afternoon. They show the body responding, which is a long way from fewer colds. Still, as excuses to watch a comedy go, it is a good one.
Keep something that makes you laugh close by: a favourite funny book, a comedian you love, a friend's voice notes.
3. It is good for our blood vessels
Seventeen healthy adults watched thirty minutes of a comedy on one day and a documentary on another. After the comedy, the ability of the main artery in the arm to widen went up by 17%. After the documentary, it went down by 15%. A documentary, it turns out, is no treat for the arteries. The arteries in the neck stayed more supple for a while after the comedy too, and were back to normal by the next day.
Two large counts in Japan point the same way. Among 20,934 people aged 65 and over, those who almost never laughed were 1.6 times as likely to have had a stroke as those who laughed every day. And among 17,152 adults followed for about five years, those who laughed less than once a month died at about twice the rate of those who laughed at least once a week. People who laugh rarely may differ in other ways, so these are links, and they fit with the comedy test.
Plan an evening of laughter with friends or family: funny stories, an old comedy, whatever gets you all going.
4. It lifts a low mood
Laughter is often said to raise serotonin and to work as well as mood-lifting medicine. Neither has been shown, and The Science of Serotonin: Everyday Habits That Lift Your Mood, linked below, explains why the serotonin story itself is shakier than it sounds.
What has been found is still worth having. When those tests were gathered together, laughter therapies improved depression. The quality of those tests was low, so it is a hopeful sign, and something to add alongside other help, not in place of it.
Keep a list of the videos and comedians that never fail you, for the days that need them.
5. It raises our pain threshold
Laughing seems to switch on the body's own painkillers. Across six tests, some watching comedy videos and some watching live comedy on stage, people could bear more pain after laughing than after something that did not make them laugh. The effect came from the laughing itself, and not only from feeling cheerful.
The story that made laughter famous as medicine came long before those tests. In his 1979 book , the American writer Norman Cousins described watching comic films through a long and painful illness. He wrote that "ten minutes of genuine belly laughter had an anesthetic effect", and that it bought him at least two hours of pain-free sleep. Not everyone was convinced: one critic suggested his illness may have eased on its own. The tests since have been kinder to the laughter than to the cure.
If you live with pain, try laughter exercises or a laughter yoga session, and notice how your body feels afterwards.
6. It bonds us to our people
Twelve men spent half an hour watching comedy clips with close friends. Then their brains were scanned. The scans showed the brain releasing its own opioids, the chemicals behind pleasure and comfort. Laughing together may be one of the ways friendships hold. Friends who laugh together, it seems, are quietly building something.
It is also something we mostly do together. How Your Thoughts and Emotions Shape Your Body, Mood and Choices, linked below, has the students who logged every laugh and laughed about thirty times more in company than alone.
How catching laughter can be shows at its far end. In 1962, at a girls' boarding school in Kashasha, in what is now Tanzania, laughter started with three girls and spread to 95 of the 159 pupils. Over eighteen months it reached about a thousand people and closed fourteen schools. It was a kind of mass hysteria, and it came with crying, fainting and pain, so it was no fun at all. Usually the catching works in our favour.
Even the simplest laugh needs someone else. A touch we make ourselves feels less ticklish than the same touch from another person, and brain scans showed why: the cerebellum predicts our own movements and damps the feeling down. That is why we cannot tickle ourselves.
Put a game night or a lazy afternoon with your funniest friends in the diary. A party game such as does much of the work.
7. It frees up our thinking
A good mood makes the mind more playful, and that has been tested. After watching a few minutes of a comedy film, people did better on a classic creative puzzle, working out how to fix a candle to a wall with a box of drawing pins. Exercise, which raises the heart rate without the fun, did not help.
When you are stuck on a problem, step away for something light, and come back to it.
8. You do not need a joke
Laughter yoga began in 1995 in a park in Mumbai. Madan Kataria, his wife Madhuri and three friends started a laughter club, and when they ran out of jokes, they invented laughter exercises instead: laughing on purpose, with breathing and playfulness.
That is the kind of laughter that did best in the tests of laughter as a treatment. It sounds silly, and silly is hard to stay serious about.
Even the face can be tricked. 170 people did two stressful tasks while holding chopsticks in their mouths in a way that made them smile, or kept their faces neutral. The smilers, even those who did not know they were smiling, had lower heart rates while they recovered from the stress, and a full smile that reached the eyes did a little better still.
Look for a laughter club near you, or try it at home with a willing friend. Start by pretending.
9. It is the oldest sound we share
Robert Provine, who spent much of his working life on laughter, put it this way: "everyone speaks laughter in pretty much the same way". Babies laugh before they can speak. Children born blind and deaf still laugh.
We are not the only ones. Rats give a chirping laugh, too high for us to hear, when they play rough-and-tumble or are tickled by people. They have ticklish spots, the rats that laugh most also play most, and they prefer to spend time with other laughing rats. When rats are given a drug that blocks the body's own opioids, tickling no longer makes them laugh, the same chemistry the brain scan in way 6 showed in people.
Dogs have something like it too: a breathy pant that sounds like a laugh. Played to dogs in a shelter, recordings of it lowered their signs of stress. Something like laughter has been found in more than sixty species. So the next time someone tells us we are being silly, we are in good company.
Join a group built around fun, whether a choir, a dance class or a quiz team, and let the laughing take care of itself.
10. We can choose it
The most hopeful part is that laughter is not only something that happens to us. Even on hard days we can invite it in: a funny podcast in the morning, a message to the friend who always sets us off, a few minutes of laughing on purpose. Looking for the humour in ordinary moments is a habit, and habits grow with practice. It is free, it needs no equipment, and it is better shared.
One thing to watch is that not all humour helps. It comes in four styles. Two bond and cheer: laughing with others, and finding the funny side of trouble. Two can harm: laughing at others, and putting ourselves down to get a laugh. The kindly kinds go with wellbeing, and the others can work against it.
Each day this week, notice one thing that makes you smile, and tell someone about it.
A good laugh
Think back to that laugh that made our stomach hurt. It eased stress, nudged the body's defences, loosened the blood vessels, dulled pain and drew us closer to the person beside us, and it cost nothing.
The word humour comes from the Latin for liquid. It goes back to the old belief that four fluids in the body, the humours, set a person's mood, and only later did the word come to mean wit. A good laugh still changes the mood. There is even a name for the study of it: gelotology, from the Greek for laughter.
Moods and hard times pass. Laughter helps them pass a little lighter.
We do not have to wait for something funny to happen. We can go and find it.
Today, send a funny message to the person who makes you laugh most, and see what comes back.
Want to know what really lifts a low mood? The Science of Serotonin: Everyday Habits That Lift Your Mood — light, movement, company, and why the low-serotonin story is shakier than it sounds.
Curious how feelings spread from one person to the next? How Your Thoughts and Emotions Shape Your Body, Mood and Choices — the students who logged every laugh, and what our moods do to our bodies.
Do you know someone who could use a good laugh? Send them this, and something funny to go with it.
Disclaimer: This article is general information. For advice about your own health, talk to a qualified health professional.
Affiliate Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate, All For Life earns from qualifying purchases, at no extra cost to you. We only link to products we would recommend without the commission.
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