In a study published in the February, 2006 of the journal Heart, investigators found evidence that laughing can improve vascular reactivity. Vascular reactivity - the ease with which blood vessels dilate under appropriate circumstances - has been shown to correlate with cardiovascular health.
The investigators took 20 volunteers and had them watch (in randomized order) scenes from movie and TV comedies (clips from "Saturday Night Live," -presumably from the early years - and from the movie comedies Kingpin and There's Something About Mary), and a 20 minute segment of a movie known to produce stress and anxiety (the Normandy invasion scene from Saving Private Ryan). Vascular reactivity was significantly improved after watching the comedies, and significantly impaired after watching the stressful movie segment.
The investigators concluded that inducing laughter frequently might modify the long-term risk of cardiovascular disease.
DrRich Comments:
This is an interesting study, in that it identifies a possible mechanism for the phenomenon many doctors think they have seen - that patients with a well-developed sense of humor generally do better than patients whose anxiety reactions become saturated at what most would consider a relatively low level of stress. Whether laughter could actually offset some of the risk produced by the traditional risk factors - smoking, cholesterol, sedentary lifestyle, hypertension, diabetes, obesity - and what "dose" of laughter would be required to do so, is completely unknown. In the meantime we may take some small comfort in supposing that, while sourpusses are miserable human beings, perhaps at least they won't be around to be miserable for as long as more lighthearted people.
