Every once and a while I hear in the media about how another singer, actor or famous person has died. It also can be closer to home when a relative dies. It made me think about what I can do to make sure I am around for longer. But for me personally, I would like to do my best to live a clean life and live long rather than just be around for ever sick and in pain.
I think it can be easy enough to achieve this through eating right and exercising, but what about stress. That isn’t always easy to control. If I tried so hard to do everything right and died before my time due to stress, that would really disappoint me. I would also feel down if I became sick solely because of stress; therefore, I decided to look into ways of reducing stress and today I would like to start with humour.
I always admire people, who can have a good laugh and especially when they laugh at my jokes. It started to make me think I should be kind enough to laugh at other people’s jokes as well, even if they aren’t that funny. It sure does seem to take the stress away. Scientific studies have been conducted to find out how laughter can influence our longevity.
In Norway, a 15-year study was conducted on 53,556 participants on the link between sense of humour and mortality. Men who achieved high scores in a humour questionnaire were found to have a 74 percent lower risk of death from infection, and in turn women with high scores in the same questionnaire had an 83 percent risk from the same cause. Women in the same survey were also found to have a 73 percent lower risk of death from heart disease.
I suppose that having a sense of humour is great, but could just simply the act of laughing help us even when there isn’t anything funny going on, effective as well? Apparently, it is. Laughter yoga may look and sound ridiculous; however, it seems to reduce stress. I could not find out whether or not it prolongs life; however, I did find many studies on the effectiveness of the practice including a study on patients with Parkinson’s disease. A study was conducted on 24 patients with Parkinson’s disease and it was found that there were significant reductions in stress and in these patients as well as improvements in sleep quality.
So I think the takeaway from this is to laugh at any joke you hear, but maybe don’t laugh randomly on the subway. If it reduces your stress, I think that we all should laugh as much as possible.
If you are finding it hard to think about the more humorous side of life, feel free to contact me.
