Laughter heals not only our soul. In addition to the joy and amusement, laughter also triggers healthy physical changes in the body. It has been also found to protect us against the heart disease, strengthen immune system, boost the energy, clean the lungs and burn hundreds of calories. Every day collecting anger, anxiety, depression and other negative emotions, we unnoticeably increase the risk of developing coronary heart disease and other illnesses. That’s because there has been proved for many times that anger and fear narrows human’s blood vessels. Conversely, positive emotions, openness to others and empathy seems to be the priceless medicine that can easily help us avoid many health problems.
According to the ten-year experiment which included 228 people who had already been experienced a heart attack, long-term stress and anger strongly affects our health. Trying to prove this, all participants were asked to complete special questionnaires about how often and how strongly they feel anger, tension or behave aggressively. During the decade, 51 of all the participants had the re-infarction. Of course, researchers have taken into account all the factors that may provoke the re-infarction (age, sex and cigarettes).
Interesting processes have been also noticed to take a place when watching movies. The American study has showed that comedies initiating laughter expand blood vessels and stress-associated painful situations that appear in films instantly narrow our heart arteries. After this research it has been shown that difference in human’s vessels between the laughter and sadness phases is 30-50 percent.