Laughter: it's a kind of magic!

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Laughter.

We all laugh.
We all like a good laugh. (Heck, we pay to get them.)
We all like to make others laugh.

It’s fun. It feels good. It lifts the clouds and chases them away.

Yet, most of us don’t do anywhere near often enough.

As kids we used to laugh about 300 times a day. As adults? Four. And those are not belly laughs. Mere smiles and chuckles mostly.1

We let the day-to-day get the better of us. Nose to the grindstone, soldiering on. Being all serious about the serious business of making a living (instead of living). It’s what’s expected. It’s what we signed up for. Or at least what we took on from everyone around us.

It’s such a pity. As the Dutch say:

This phrase entered the list of Dutch proverbs as soon as it was first heard.2

Hardly surprising. It’s immediately recognized as a life motto worth having.

There’s truth in it.

Laughing has so many benefits, it’s not funny anymore.

Almost.

Laughing isn’t a miracle cure, but it’s proven (!) cheap medicine, readily available, and always fun to do.

Even when you have nothing to laugh about. More on that later.

First, the obvious positives.

You know these. Maybe not consciously. Maybe not all of them. But you know them and will instantly recognize them.

The obviously most obvious: having fun, feeling pleasure, enjoying yourself.

Just look at the seriousness and “what the …?” on the faces of the people around Dawn French at the outset, and what happens next.

What does laughter immediately gets you:

• An instant mood lift

• Sense of playfulness

• Tension and stress relief

More indirect effects of laughing (with someone):

• Easier and more relaxed conversations

• Social connection and inclusion, sense of togetherness

• Doing it regularly strengthens relations and a sense of belonging3

• De-escalates conflict (when laughter is shared and respectful, otherwise it backfires)

• Increases psychological distance from what bothers you (distancing being what psychologists advocate to reduce impact of “negatives”)

• Creates shared memories (high(er) emotion levels of any kind make memories stick)

• Makes you appear more approachable and friendly

• Loosens (excessive) self-monitoring

And the one I find most rewarding:

• laughing supports creativity and spontaneity.

It’s far easier to come up with spontaneous, creative ideas and solutions when your brain is relaxed, flooded with “feel-good” stuff. When you’re brain is in fight-or-flight4 it mostly shuts down to focus on survival.

Laughter doesn’t merely help feeling good or socially connecting with others.

There are very real, very “serious”, very measurable and documented psychological and physical effects.

• Gets you a natural high. Social laughing releases endogenous opioids.

• Reduces stress. Laughter-inducing interventions reduce cortisol. Significantly. By 31.9%. Even a single laughter session induced a significant reduction of 36.7%.

• Lowers anxiety. Meta-analyses of several studies found laughter interventions

• Fewer depressive symptoms. A meta-analyses of ten studies with 814 adults in total, found laughter and humor interventions reduced depressive symptoms. Longer interventions having a stronger effect. Doesn’t make laughter a treatment for depression, but it sure as heck helps! (That’s my personal experience talking.)

• Improves sleep. Subjectively, but still…

• Greater resilience and coping. This works through increasing the cognitive and emotional distance from adversity.

• Humor increases pain tolerance. One study showed no effect of watching comedy. While a broad review of 42 studies showed that it does improve pain tolerance but other distractions do the same. If you’re going to distract yourself to better tolerate pain, why not do so with comedy. That’ll lift your mood to boot.

• Improves immune function.

If you (think you) have nothing to laugh about, but do want the benefits, force yourself. Open your mouth and laugh. Not mere chuckling, full on belly laughs.

Why?

Your reason for laughter doesn’t matter! It still works magic.

Sure, forced laughter isn’t as effective as spontaneous in producing the “serious” measurable effects listed above. But it still works some magic.

And, what starts forced, can quickly turn spontaneous.

Perhaps you end up laughing at yourself for forcing it.

Or the forced laughter inexorably turns into spontaneous fits of laughter that may even be hard to stop. We’ve all experienced them!

So laugh. Even, or especially, when you don’t feel like it.

If forcing it sounds awful: check my tips on how to laugh more often. They’re much more fun to get you started than laughing without feeling it.

Laughter for laughter’s sake is fun. I recommend doing it as often as possible.

Getting to the 300/day mark of children maybe a bridge too far. But raising the four to an eight, a 16, a 32, is definitely within reach.

And you can point it at a lot of “less than fun” situations to improve them or to be less bothered by them. I’ve found laughing beneficial to interrupt rumination (very effective in my experience) and get through any difficult situations.

Self-deprecating humor gets you there the quickest.

But I’d use it with caution if you already are in, or are prone to depression. The pitfall is you’ll talk yourself deeper into a pit. (Yes, been there too.)

The takeaway though is:

A bit of laughter never goes awry.

The most dire and sad circumstances feel less so with a bit of a laugh.

Not that I know of or have been able to find.

Unless you count intentionally laughing at someone and the effect it has on them.

Ironically, for the one laughing, it probably still has positive effects in the short term, despite potential negative consequences in their future. Not sure whether that’s ever been studied. Nor would I like to see it studied. It’s toxic behavior and I see no reason to give anyone additional reasons to engage in it.

Ooh. Now we’re getting to the real fun.

These all get (require!) you to take yourself (a lot) less seriously. And that’s a good thing. Whether it gets you laughing to boot or not.

• Act silly. Do the puddle plunge. (The submersion is optional.) Kids love puddle plunging.

• Play. Fun and games. Any games. (Unless you can’t stand to lose. Then you want to work on that first.)

• Watch stand-up comedy. Watch one funny video on YouTube and it’ll suggest tons more! Avoid the rants though, unless the ranting itself is done in a funny manner. Dutch cabaretiers5 are good at it. Solo and in groups.

• Curate fun. I have an album in my Google Photos called “Pick me uppers”. Not all especially funny. But all bring a smile to my face. Add to yours whenever something tickles your funny buds. Definitely when you, like me, otherwise get bored with watching the same things again and again.

• Schedule it. Counterintuitive? No. Makes absolute sense when you, like me, would otherwise forget to get a daily dose of humor into your life.

• Watch old slapstick movies. Guaranteed to get you laughing.

• Binge on your favorite comedy series’ episodes. ’nuf said.

• Tease and be teased. Not exactly my favorite. My neurodivergence has trouble with being teased, unless it’s obvious that I’m being teased. As a result, I don’t tease others that often. Though I am perfectly capable of it <evil grin>.

If you’re still not convinced that laughing is good for you, one of your essential self-care oxygen masks, then I don’t have the words or the crayons to explain it further.

And then there’s only one thing for it:

LAUGH!

Experience it yourself. Directly. Intensely immediately.

‘nuf said.

Live long and prosper.

• Social Laughter Triggers Endogenous Opioid Release in Humans
  Manninen et al., J Neurosci 2017;37(25):6125-31. PMID 28536272.

• Laughter as medicine: A systematic review and meta-analysis of interventional studies evaluating the impact of spontaneous laughter on cortisol levels Kramer & Leitao, PLoS ONE 2023;18(5):e0286260

• A meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials of laughter and humour interventions on depression, anxiety and sleep quality in adults Zhao et al., J Adv Nurs 2019;75(11):2435-48. PMID 30882915

• The effect of laughter yoga on loneliness, psychological resilience, and quality of life in older adults: A pilot randomized controlled trial Öztürk et al., *Geriatric Nursing* 2023;50:208-14. PMID 36804028

• Effects of mirthful laughter on pain tolerance: A randomized controlled investigation Lapierre et al., *J Bodywork Mov Ther* 2019;23(4):733-8

• Laughing away the pain: A narrative review of humour, sense of humour and pain Pérez-Aranda et al., *Eur J Pain* 2019;23(2):220-33] &
  PMID 30176100

• The Effect of Mirthful Laughter on Stress and Natural Killer Cell Activity Bennett et al., *Altern Ther Health Med* 2003;9(2):38-45

• The efficacy of laughter-based interventions in children: A systematic review and meta-analysis — Journal of Child Health Care. SAGE

• Laughter intervention for stress reduction in adults: a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials — BMC Psychology. Springer

• Effects of laughter therapy on depression and anxiety: A dose-response meta-analysis with trial sequential analysis — Journal of Psychiatric Research ScienceDirect