I’ve always enjoyed laughing. There’s just something about it that makes me feel good. But, funny enough, I’ve never thought twice about it. Until now.

I was stressed out and having a bad day, and I was in no mood to think about anything funny let alone laugh. And then I got an email on my phone. It was from my brother, and the subject read “You Need to Check This Out”—so I opened the email.

The email was just as cryptic. All it said was, “I need you to check this out” with a link to Imgur. I decided to humor him and clicked on the link, which led me to this:

Candy Peddler

Post with 333660 views. Shared by KatRaccoon. Candy Peddler

As I started going through the slides, I was mildly amused. And then I got to the first GIF, where I let out a soft chuckle. Okay, that’s pretty good, I thought with a smirk on my face. I kept going. When I got to the second GIF, I paused and started laughing a little bit harder under my breath, enough so that my stomach muscles contracted a bit. This was actually pretty funny. By the time I finished and got to the last GIF, I was laughing out loud.

I was officially cracking up all thanks to the email my brother had sent. When I had finally regained my composure, I noticed something interesting. All the stress that I had been feeling before seemed to have vanished. The cartoon was a helpful distraction, that’s for sure, but I also seemed to feel  pretty good all of a sudden. I had to find out why.

The Medical Benefits of Laughing?

I did some research about laughing and its effects, and I found some really interesting information. While there are a variety of blogs and media sites that publish about the widespread benefits of laughing, I wanted to see what was available in the medical community.

The first major medical publication that discussed the potential association between health benefits and laughter are attributed to the article “Anatomy of an Illness (as Perceived by the Patient)” published by Norman Cousins in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1976.

Cousins’ article was a first-hand account of his recovery from ankylosing spondylitis, a life-threatening collagen disease. He explained how against all odds—doctors gave him a 1 in 500 chance of recovery—he was able to battle back from his diagnosis with large quantities of vitamin C and even larger amounts of humor and laughing.

While Cousins acknowledged that his account can be oversimplified, and he cautioned that, “We mustn’t regard any of this as a substitute for competent medical attention,” the notion of laughter and a sunny outlook on life having positive health benefits gained widespread attention.

Potential Health Benefits of Laughter

Since Cousins’ publication, there has been more research on the effects of laughing and health benefits. Some of the potential medicinal benefits of laughter include:

Pain Relief and Improved Mood

Laughter can help enhance your intake of oxygen-rich air, stimulate your heart, lungs and muscles, and increase the endorphins that are released by your brain.

A study on happiness and health published on the National Institute of Health explains that “Endorphin also studied as a neurotransmitter in happiness. Endorphins are endogenous opioid peptides that function as neurotransmitters. They are released during continuous exercise, fear, love, music, chocolate eating, laughter, sex, orgasm etc. Increased level of endorphin inhibited pain in the body and reduced level of endorphin inhibited positive feelings.”

Stress Relief and Improved Immune System

Laughter can help reduces hormones such as cortisol and epinephrine, which are released during stress response. Long-term or chronic stress can suppress immune, digestive, sleep and reproductive systems. Stress can also cause serious psychological problems as detailed in this study on stress and health.

A study published on the National Institute of Health explains that “The mirthful laughter experience appears to reduce serum levels of cortisol, dopac, epinephrine and growth hormone. These biochemical changes have implications for the reversal of the neuroendocrine and classical stress hormone response.”

Learning Ability and Memory

Laughter can help reduce stress, and specifically cortisol, which is a stress hormone. The chronic release of cortisol can damage hippocampus neurons which leads to impairment of learning and memory.

A study published on the National Institute of Health about the effect of humor on short-term memory in older adults saw that humor and laughter can have clinical benefits and rehabilitative implications for older adults on learning ability and delayed recall.

A Laughter Prescription?

Even with growing public acceptance and research to support the health benefits of laughter, there has been a certain level of skepticism in the medical community and reluctance to support its application in the field of health.

There have been numerous reports from researchers that show shortcomings when studying the physiologic effects of laughter. In a study on humor, laughter and physical health, the author concludes that “Taken together, the empirical studies reviewed…provide little evidence for unique positive effects of humor and laughter on health-related variables. More rigorous and theoretically informed research is needed before firm conclusions can be drawn about possible health benefits of humor and laughter.”

In another study on therapeutic humor and laughter, the author concludes that “For practitioners to implement credible programs and effectively teach self-management techniques, further empirical research on the physical, psychosocial, debonafide and the placebo effects of humor and laughter needs to be conducted.”

In an additional study titled “Humor and Laughter may Influence Health,” the authors concludes that “current research indicates that using humor is well accepted by the public and is frequently used as a coping mechanism. However, the scientific evidence of the benefits of using humor on various health-related outcomes still leaves many questions unanswered.”

From a medical perspective, this kind of scrutiny in regards to a correlation between laughter and medicinal benefits does make sense. When considering human health and medical treatment, it’s understandable that researchers would like to have a certain threshold of evidence to determine the efficacy of a treatment method. With that being the case, though, it seems that there needs to be more research conducted on the topic.

Humor and Laughter: It Will Probably Help You, It Definitely Won’t Hurt You

While the medical community is divided on the idea of laughter and health benefits, there is one fact that everyone can agree upon: Laughing may improve your health, but it certainly won’t hurt your health.

This idea was summed up in a study about the use of humor to reduce stress and pain and enhance health, where the author states:

“Laughter and humor are not beneficial for everyone, but since there are no negative side effects, they should be used…to help reduce stress and pain and to improve healing.”

As for me, I’m going to keep laughing as much as I can. And I hope that my brother keeps sending cryptic emails every so often to give me a nice dose of humor and some more LOL moments.