Is Laughter a Really Good Medicine?

Laughter may be good for your heart. A new study demonstrates that laughing causes the tissue that forms the inner lining of blood vessels, the endothelium, to expand and thereby increase blood flow - exactly what aerobic exercise does.

In a study presented yesterday at the meeting of the American College of Cardiology in Orlando, researchers had 20 healthy volunteers watch a 15-minute segment from "Kingpin," a 1996 Woody Harrelson comedy, and then 48 hours later view the opening battle scene from "Saving Private Ryan," the 1998 war movie starring Tom Hanks.

After each movie was shown, researchers used ultrasound to measure changes in blood vessel reactivity. On average, blood flow increased 22 percent after the Harrelson movie, comparable to the increase brought on by aerobic exercise, and decreased 35 percent after "Saving Private Ryan."

While a comedy can be good for people, a stress-inducing movie can have a negative effect on cardiac health, said Dr. Michael Miller, the lead author of the study.

"There is great variability among people," Dr. Miller said, "but anything that evokes an emotional response has an impact on the heart" and the impact can be negative as well as positive.

Dr. Miller speculates that laughter induces the release of beneficial endorphins, just as exercise does. But don't hang up the sneakers yet.

"Laughter may help reduce the need to run marathons," said Dr. Miller. "But we don't recommend replacing exercise with laughter as a public health measure."

Laugh is good, but for some people, like myself for eg, laughter is hard to come by. So laughter is cool and all, but the problem is how to get one, for millions(I guess) of depressed people. I wish I can laugh, haven't done that for......must be more than a year...

Maybe people who can't laugh should find somebody to tickle'em ......which brings another question, is "artificial" laugh as good for you as "real" laugh..... I guess it is.