On Laughing

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Every day I ask God

to help me stop taking

myself too seriously.

Research on laughter

suggest the following:

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  ON LAUGHING!

  1. Laughing 100 times roughly equals 15 minutes on an exercise bike?
Vigorous laughter increases the heart rate deepens the breathing rate,
and uses muscles in the face, stomach, and diaphragm.

2. Aside from improving our moods, laughter can reduce stress,
help fight infection, and reduce pain.

3. The levels of two stress hormones, cortisol and epinephrine
which suppress the body's immune system, will actually drop after
a dose of laughter.

4. Laughter causes positive changes in brain chemistry by releasing endorphins,
and it brings more oxygen into the body with the deeper inhalations.

5. Laughter releases anger, fear, guilt, anxiety and tension.

6. Laughter encourages concentration on "right" attitudes
rather than "wrong" attitudes.

7. Higher levels of an antibody (salivary immunoglobulin A) that fights
infectious organisms entering the respiratory tract were found in the saliva
of people who watched humorous videos or experienced good moods.

  8. Researchers found after watching an hour-long video of slapstick comedy
that the "natural killer cells," which seek out and destroy malignant cells,
more actively attacked tumor cells in test tubes. And these effects lasted up to 12 hours.

9. The 1998 movie Patch Adams told the real-life story of a nonconformist
doctor convinced that fun, play, and clowns are important in improving patients'
quality of life in a grim hospital atmosphere.

10. Planning enjoyable activities for the future will reduce the stressor hormones
such as cortisol and epinephrine.

So a scientist walks into a shopping mall to watch people laugh. There's no punchline.
Laughter is a serious scientific subject, one that researchers are still trying to figure out.
Laughing is primal, our first way of communicating. Apes laugh. So do dogs and rats.
Babies laugh long before they speak. No one teaches you how to laugh.

You just do.

And often you laugh involuntarily, in a specific rhythm and in certain spots in conversation.
You may laugh at a prank on April Fool's Day. But surprisingly, only 10 to 15 per cent
of laughter is the result of someone making a joke, said Baltimore neuroscientist
Robert Provine, who has studied laughter for decades. Laughter is mostly about social
responses rather than reaction to a joke.

"Laughter above all else is a social thing," Provine said.
"The requirement for laughter is another person."

Over the years, Provine, a professor with the University of Maryland Baltimore County,
 has boiled laughter down to its basics.

"All language groups laugh 'ha-ha-ha' basically the same way," he said.
"Whether you speak Mandarin, French or English, everyone will understand laughter...
There's a pattern generator in our brain that produces this sound."

Each "ha" is about 1/15th of a second, repeated every fifth of a second, he said.
Laugh faster or slower than that and it sounds more like panting or something else.
Deaf people laugh without hearing, and people on cellphones laugh without seeing,
illustrating that laughter isn't dependent on a single sense but on social interactions,
said Provine, author of the book : Laughter: A Scientific Investigation.

Article prepared by Joe Mc Fadden

Joe McFadden
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ME and the Boss

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