Laughter

Laughter…..

……………

Laughter is the most inexpensive and most effective wonder drug. Laughter is a universal medicine.

Laughter is a release of tension mediated through the brain. When we laugh we expel the residual air from our lungs, our heart beats quicker, and apparently slows down to below the starting rate once a laugh is over. In fact, one of the most important signs of human health is the ability to laugh.

Scientifically, laughter is the biological reaction of humans to an outward expression of amusement.

During human development, laughter is the first social sound emitted by human infants. Responsive smiling generally develops in infants within the first five weeks, laughter emerges later around the fourth month.

Even children who are deaf and blind by birth have been reported to laugh. These evidences suggest that laughter is an evolved instinct.

Humour associated laughter seems to be a phenomenon unique to humans. Resent researches show that under certain emotional conditions animals such as chimps, dogs and rats emit sounds that bear similarities to human laughter. Primates such as apes exhibit facial expression, the open mouth or `play’ face, this expression is often accompanied by a pant-like emitting of sound during tickling and chasing.

The vowel-like notes of human laughter are performed by chopping a single expiration.

Chimpanzee laughter is a breathy panting vocalization that is produced during brief inspiration and expiration.

Evo lu t i on o f laught e rIt is believed, laughter in humans evolved some 5-7

million years ago, even prior to the evolution of human language. There are evidences in human evolution that show that laughter started when human ancestor started walking on two legs. Chimpanzees cannot laugh like humans because their body inherently constrains their vocal abilities.

Laughter does not have the same origin and purpose as smiling. The smile emerged from the silent, bared-teeth display in primates and conveys social affinity, reassurance, sympathy, or greeting.

Laughter, on the other hand, emerge from the relaxed open-mouth display in primates and occurs during the rough-and-tumble play in chimpanzees. Laughter and smile have a different evolutionary background.

The need to laugh arose in early humans and primates as a mechanism to convey the feeling of well being and safety among companions.

In his book, The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, Charles Darwin(1872) speculated that the evolutionary basis of laughter was its function as a social expression of happiness, and that this gave a cohesive survival advantage to the group.

Humour and Laught e rScientific studies have proved that humour and

laughter are associated with increased positive effect and improved mood. Humour is the most familiar cause for laughter. It is now accepted that incongruity or paradox and unexpectedness are the cause of almost all instances of formal laughter-evoking humour.

Human infants laugh spontaneously when they perceive unexpected situation in non-serious context, such as looking at people making strange faces.

The laughter evoked by tickling involves the unpredictable stimulation of vulnerable areas of the body by another person; we are unable to laugh when we tickle ourselves.

Sense of humour is a psychological trait that varies considerably and allows persons to respond to different types of humorous stimuli.

Laught e r The rapyHumour and laughter are being used in

therapeutic situations. Use of therapeutic humour tells us it has the power to motivate, alleviate stress and pain, and improve one’s sense of well being. This new line of therapy has even been given a name-laughter or humour therapy.

Interest in humour therapy is seen generally to have originated in the 1970s in a America when Norman Cousins detailed his experiences in overcoming a serious chronic disease by laughing at favorite comedy shows as ‘Candid Camera’ and ‘Marx Brothers’ films.

He stated that ten minutes of laughing gave him two hours of drug-free pain relief.

Known to improve pain tolerance and decrease the experience of pain, humour has been used extensively with cancer patients.

Humour is also being used in pediatric hospitals to help young patients cope with difficult moments, or as an organized programme that benefits groups of patients and families.

Some hospitals incorporate humour projects in the form of humour rooms, humour carts, or clown care programmes. Stresses of the professional environment and the adverse effects on personal health have led to humour being in corporated into the workplace too.

Happier, healthier employees work better. Humour improves employee creativity, communications and wellness, while reducing burnout.

The message is that a good laugh shared by office workers or colleagues doesn’t necessarily take much time from the workday. The pay-off is that it can improve the environment/climate and leave people feeling rejuvenated.

Struc tu r e o f Laught e rLaughing is not a random vocal

sound but is characterized by a series of start vowels like not. Each note is about 75 milliseconds long and repeated at regular intervals about 210 milliseconds apart.

A specific vowel sound does not define the laughter, but similar vowel sounds are typically used for the notes of a given laugh. It may have the structure “ha-ha-ha” or “ho-ho-ho” but not “ha-ho-ha”. The gap between two successive notes is called internote.

The note and internote interval carry most of the information about laughter and play an important role in making characteristic laughter of different individuals.

Laughter may be of several types.

On basis of sound created, laughter may appear in different forms like giggles, chicks, chortles, hoots, chuckles etc.

Smiling may be considered as mild silent form of laughter.

Laughter can be divided into two main types

Duchenne laughter and

Non Duchenne laughter.

Duchenne laughter is stimulus driven and emotion filled.

Non Duchenne laughter is self-generated and emotionless.

An emotional component that actuates perception of happiness after an amusing experience possibly facilitated by the nucleus accumbens.

The neuronal control of laughter is divided into three major brain components:Congnitive areas such as sections of the frontal lobe that help the person to understand the jokes.A movement area that triggers muscle movements to induce a smile or laughter, and

Abnorma l laught e rDamage to a wide range of brain regions

produces abnormal laughter referred as pathological laughter.

Pathological laughter is defined as sudden outburst of uncontrolled, spontaneous, inappropriate laughter.

Gende r and Laught e r

The harmonic structure of laughter shows that each harmonic is a multiple of fundamental frequencies. Given that females have higher fundamental frequencies of about 502 hertz, whereas in males, it is about 276 hertz.

There are gender differences in the amount of laughter too. Females laugh more often than males. It has been observed that female speakers laugh 127% more than their male audiences; in contrast male speakers laugh about 7% less than the female audience. While cross-cultural evidences suggest that the male is the leading suggest that the male is the leading humour producer, it is the that female exhibits most laughter.

• Laughter is good for your health

• Laughter relaxes the whole body. A good, hearty laugh relieves physical tension and stress, leaving your muscles relaxed for up to 45 minutes after.

• Laughter boosts the immune system. Laughter decreases stress hormones and increases immune cells and infection-fighting antibodies, thus improving your resistance to disease.

– Laughter triggers the release of endorphins, the body’s natural feel-good chemicals. Endorphins promote an overall sense of well-being and can even temporarily relieve pain.

• Laughter protects the heart. Laughter improves the function of blood vessels and increases blood flow, which can help protect you against a heart attack and other cardiovascular problems.

The Benefits of Laughter

Physical Health Benefits:

• Boosts immunity

• Lowers stress hormones

• Decreases pain

• Relaxes your muscles

• Prevents heart disease

Menta l Heal th Bene f i t s :Adds joy and zest to life Eases anxiety and fear Relieves stress Improves mood Enhances resilience

Soc ia l Bene f i t s :Strengthens relationships Attracts others to us Enhances teamwork Helps defuse conflict Promotes group bonding

•Laughter dissolves distressing emotions. You can’t feel anxious, angry, or sad when you’re laughing. •Laughter helps you relax and recharge. It reduces stress and increases energy, enabling you to stay focused and accomplish more. •Humor shifts perspective, allowing you to see situations in a more realistic, less threatening light. A humorous perspective creates psychological distance, which can help you avoid feeling overwhelmed

1. Manage your hormones.Laughter reduces the level of stress hormones like cortisol, epinephrine, adrenaline, dopamine and growth hormone. It also increases the level of health-enhancing hormones like endorphins, and neurotransmitters. Laughter increases the number of antibody-producing cells and enhances the efficiency of T-cells. All this means a stronger immune system, as well as fewer physical effects of stress.

2. Nice internal workout.A good belly laugh exercises the diaphragm, contracts the abs and even works out the shoulders, leaving muscles more relaxed afterward. It even provides a good workout for the heart. Laughing 100 times is the equivalent to 10 minutes on the rowing machine or 15 minutes on an exercise bike!

3. Physical release.Have you ever felt like you had to laugh or you’d cry? Have you experienced the cleansed feeling after a good laugh? Laughter provides a physical and emotional release.

4. Positive frame of mind.Laughter brings the focus away from anger, guilt, stress and negative emotions to them alongside other “mere distractions.” It will make you cheerful and put you in a positive frame of mind.

5. Change your perspective.Researchers found that our response to stressful events can be altered by whether we view something as a “threat” or a “challenge.” Humor can give us a more light-hearted perspective and help us view events as “challenges,” thereby making them less threatening and more positive.

6. Social benefits of laughter.

Laughter is contagious, so if you bring more laughter into your life, you can most likely help others around you laugh more. By elevating the mood of those around you, you can diminish their stress levels, and possibly improve the quality of social interaction you experience with them, reducing your stress level even more!What’s even better is that the more you smile, the more others will too. Seeing a smile creates what is termed as a “halo effect,” helping us to remember other happy events more vividly, feel more optimistic, more positive and more motivated.

7. Fight illness better.People who are optimistic (who are out there laughing!) have stronger immune systems and are actually able to fight off illness better than pessimists.The research is very clear — this is not some social science generalization — there is a link between optimistic attitudes and good health. And it has been measured in a variety of ways. Overall, scientists have found that optimistic people are healthier. Their biological makeup is different and they have a more robust immune system.

8. Live longer.According to some recent research published in the Archives of General Psychiatry, elderly optimistic people, those who expected good things to happen (rather than bad things), were less likely to die than pessimists.

In fact, among the 65-85 year-old study participants, those who were most optimistic were 55 percent less likely to die from all causes than the most pessimistic people. What’s more, after researchers adjusted the results for age, smoking status, alcohol consumption, physical activity and other measures of health, the optimists were 71 percent less likely to die than the pessimists!

9. It feels like eating 2000 chocolate bars. According to The British Dental Health Foundation, a smile gives the same level of stimulation as eating 2000 chocolate bars. The results were found after scientists measured brain and heart activity in volunteers as they were shown pictures of smiling people and given money and chocolate.People have long been drawing attention to the fact that smiling increases happiness both in yourself and those around you, so it is good to receive the backing of this scientific research.

Creating opportunities to laugh Read the funny pages. Seek out funny people. Share a good joke or a funny story. Check out your bookstore’s humour section. Host game night with friends. Play with a pet. Go to a “laughter yoga” class. Goof around with children. Do something silly. Go to a comedy club. Make time for fun activities (e.g. bowling, miniature golfing, karaoke).

Why laught e r i s Con tag iousWe start laughing when people around us start

laugh. Why does this happen? Researchers at University College London and Imperial College London have found that positive sounds such as laughter trigger a strong response in the listener’s brain. The finding appear the 12th December 206 issue of The Journal of Neuroscience.

This response occurs in a brain area that’s activated when we smile, as though preparing our facial muscles to laugh, the scientists said. The research team played a series of sounds to volunteers while scanning their brains with functional magnetic resonance imaging, a technology that measures brain activity based on blood flow in the brain.

Some of the sounds were positive, such as laughter or triumph; others were unpleasant such as screaming or retching. All were found to trigger activity in the brain’s premotor cortical region, which prepares the muscles in the face to respond accordingly. But the response was greater for positive sounds, suggesting that these were more contagious than negative sounds.

The researchers believe this explains why we respond to laughter or cheering with an involuntary smile. This plays an important role in the building strong bonds between individuals in a group.

Therapeutic use of humour throughout history

14th century: French surgeon Henri de Mondeville used humour therapy to aid recovery from surgery. He wrote “let the surgeon take care to regulate the whole regimen of the patient’s life for joy and happiness, allowing his relatives and special friends to cheer him and by having someone tell him jokes.”

16th century: Robert Burton, an English parson and scholar used humour as a cure for melancholy.

16th century: Martin Luther used a form of humour therapy as part of his pastoral counseling of depressed people. He advised them not to isolate themselves but to surround themselves with friends who could joke and make them laugh.

17th Century: Herbert Spencer, sociologist used humour as away to release excess tension.

18th Century: Immanuel Kant, German philosopher used humour to restore equilibrium.

18th Century: English physician William Battie used humour in treatment of the sick.

20th Century: Modern humour therapy dates from the 1930s, when clowns were brought into U.S. hospitals to cheer up children hospitalized with polio.

20th Century-1979: Norman Cousins publishes his book ‘Anatomy of an illness’ based on his own experiences: he had been suffering from ankylosing spondylitis and decided to use his brand of ‘humour therapy’ by watching episodes of the television show ‘Candid Camera’ and ‘Marx Brothers’ films. He claimed that ten minutes of laughter could give two hours of pain relief.

20th Century-1998: Renewed interest in the uses of humour as therapy thanks to the release of the film ‘Patch Adams’ starring Robin Williams and based on the real Hunter ‘Patch’ Adams.

Pluto remarked: ‘Even GOD loves jokes’. This emphasizes the myriad of benefits that come along with a hearty laugh. Evolution has certainly provided us with a unique characteristic that is a beautiful signal to advertise our feeling of joy and happiness. Most of all laughing is contagious.

So, go get a hearty laugh, and pass it on!

Laughter is good for you!

Laughter has

Been found to

Have immeasurable

Health benefits.

Most of all, it is free

And has no known

Negative side effects.

So laugh because

It is good for you!