Laughing your way to good health: how a giggle can boost your mood 

A good chuckle releases brain chemicals that can boost your mood and increase happiness levels. It can also improve heart health and blood circulation

Pic: iStock

HAVE you ever said, ‘I needed that,’ after a fit of laughter on a night-out with friends? If you have, that’s because laughing can make us feel lighter and happier. But it has many other benefits too.

Laughing may seem to be simple, involuntary, but it is a deceivingly complex mechanism. Scientists aren’t sure what makes us laugh or what we find funny, but they believe that it happens when the brain’s frontal lobe connects with the limbic system, an elaborate set of brain structures.

The frontal lobe is divided into two: The left side, where the brain decides if what we’re seeing or hearing is humorous; and the creative right side, which figures out if we find it funny. The frontal lobe sends a message to the limbic system, where our emotions are managed, to tell it we find the situation funny. The limbic system then triggers the physical act of laughter, which is a body and mind process.

“Laughing is our natural stress buster,” says Dr Sabina Brennan, psychologist, neuroscientist, and best-selling author of the book Beating Brain Fog. “The chemicals it releases in our brains can improve our mood and increase our feelings of happiness.”

Those chemicals are dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin, and endorphins. Dopamine is the ‘feel-good’, pleasure hormone and is part of our reward system. Oxytocin is the love hormone, and it also regulates our emotional responses and social behaviours.

Serotonin balances our moods, allowing us to feel calmer and more relaxed. It also elicits feelings of happiness, satisfaction, and optimism.

Our brains release endorphins when we’re doing something enjoyable, like laughing. These natural hormones can reduce stress, enhance our mood, and ease pain.

This heady combination of hormones delivers impressive results. A 2010 study conducted among nursing-home residents and published in the Journal of Aging Research found that laughter therapy decreased chronic pain and loneliness and increased feelings of happiness and life satisfaction.

Irish people often laugh in the face of grief. “Laughter is one of our strongest coping mechanisms. Traditionally, one of the first things we do when someone dies is to have a wake, where we tell stories, mostly funny stories, about the person. Stress and grief can be unbearable, and, by laughing, we can release some of that mental pain,” says Brennan.

Laughter is also contagious: Hearing someone laugh can trigger laughter.

Laughing in a group, much like singing in a choir or dancing with friends, is bonding. “It enhances relationship quality and strengthens social connection,” says Brennan.

Dr Sabina Brennan, psychologist, neuroscientist, and best-selling author of the book Beating Brain Fog. Picture: Eddie O'Hare

Bonding mechanism

According to British biological anthropologist Robin Dunbar, laughter allows humans to bond and live in large social networks.

Perhaps that’s why laughter yoga is so popular.

While it’s not typical yoga, group-based laughter yoga does involve breathing work and light stretches, says Donegal-based laughter yoga facilitator Heather Peoples.

“We start off with gentle movements and breathing exercises to loosen up the muscles. We then move on to some playful clapping techniques and chanting to get people to relax,” Peoples says.

“The goal is to cast aside your ego and inhibitions,” she says. “We’ll often start laughing by encouraging intentional or forced laughter. As the class goes on, and particularly because of the group setting, this laughter turns into real laughing, and becomes contagious.”

Dr Madan Kataria founded laughter yoga in Mumbai, India, in 1995. From a handful of classes in Mumbai to thousands of so-called laughter clubs around the world, it’s come a long way.

Peoples teaches laughter yoga in schools, to those with multiple sclerosis (MS) and Parkinson’s disease, and at corporations that use it to promote team building.

“The beauty about laughter yoga is that anyone can do it, even those who may be limited with their movement,” says Peoples. “Its positive effects are universal: I’ll ask everyone at the beginning of the class to rate how they’re feeling on a scale of one to 10, and at the end of the class I’ll ask again. The number always goes up.”

Hearty laugh

In addition to its mental-health benefits, laughter is also good for our heart health. Professor Marco Saffi and his team presented a study at the European Society of Cardiology Congress in 2023, claiming that people with coronary heart disease improved by regularly watching comedy shows, which benefitted their circulatory system, as compared to a group that watched more serious television.

The small study tested 26 people with coronary heart disease who were aged over 64. Those who watched comedy shows saw improvements in their heart health and blood circulation. Their oxygen flow increased, their arteries expanded, and inflammation markers in their blood decreased (elevated inflammation can indicate a higher risk of heart attack or stroke). The control group, those who watched documentaries, showed no changes.

Laughter can also be a good workout for your respiratory system. When you laugh, your diaphragm, chest, and abdominal muscles all tighten, which can force your lungs to work harder.

According to the American Lung Association, by forcing stale air out of the lungs, space is created for pulling fresher oxygen deeper into your lungs.

Peoples sees this every day in her laughter yoga classes. “Without doubt, laughter is a workout for the lungs. You’re using your lungs to a fuller capacity when you laugh, not too dissimilar to keen athletes,” she says.

“My clients also tell me that they don’t get quite as many colds or coughs as they used to before they started laughter yoga.”

A school of thought is that laughing has a positive effect on our immune system. In 2023, Mary P Bennett and her team at Indiana State University showed that “mirthful laughter” noticeably improves our ability to resist illness. Their lab tests showed that laughter releases more ‘natural killer’ (or disease-fighting) cells from the spleen into the bloodstream.

If laughing feels too much for you, why not start with a smile? “Smiling has very similar benefits to laughing,” says Dr Brennan. “The interesting thing is that even if you just make the shape of a smile, your brain interprets that muscle movement as a genuine smile, and you can still gain the benefits.”

Laughing may be a simple response to a joke or madcap scenario, but its impact on our bodies is remarkable, according to Brennan. “The physical, mental and emotional benefits of laughing are significant,” she says.

“It helps us manage physical pain, stress, and grief. It boosts our feelings of happiness and increases our social connections. It really is the best medicine.”

A giggle a day...

April 14 is International Moment of Laughter Day.

The day was dreamed up by humourologist Izzy Gesell in 1997 to encourage people to inject laughter into their lives.

For Gesell, laughter is one of the healthiest things you can do right after breathing. “It relieves stress, instils optimism, raises self-confidence, defuses resistance to change, and enhances all your relationships,” he says.

How to find daily moments of laughter:

• Figure out what makes you laugh. Look through memes or funny videos on social media and bookmark those you find funny. Return to them when you need a good laugh;
• Most of us have at least one funny moment in our lives that made us cry with laughter. When you need a laugh, try to relive that moment in your head;
• Why not make someone else laugh? Hone a favourite funny story or learn one simple but hilarious joke. If you’re in a group that could do with an injection of humour, break out your joke or story. Laughter is contagious.
• In addition to your five-a-day fruit and vegetables, purposefully smile five times a day, urges psychologist and neuroscientist Dr Sabina Brennan. “You should begin and end your day with a smile,” she says. “Smile with someone else, return a smile, and simply smile for no reason. It’s amazing how it can make you feel lighter.”

I’ll leave you with this joke from my five-year-old: Two sausages in a pan. One says to the other, “Hello”. The other one screams and says, “Ah, a talking sausage.”