Ep. 127 - Why You Should Laugh More: A Guide to Health Benefits

Speaker A: 00:00:04

Welcome, healthy friends, to another the reality of health. I'm happy. How could you not be doing an episode about laughter and laughing and all the health benefits associated with that? Quick disclaimer.

I am not here to tell you what you should do with your health. This is purely educational. It's just my experience and how I see this. It's my opinion. Now that that's out of the way.

Is this not the cutest picture ever? They look like adults, you know, like, he just told her a joke and she couldn't stand it. So the little kid's like, I can't even stand it myself.

That's so funny. I could just picture them laughing and giggling. Is that not the best sound when kids are laughing so hard they can hardly stand it?

Fantastic, isn't it? Well, I think this is a great topic for health.

If you've never thought about the fact that laughter can be so healing to your body, gets you out of that fear mode that I talk about, gets you out of stress, helps you cope every day. Fantastic. Well, guess what the other really great thing is. It's free. Well, Eric, of course it is. I know.

But how many things do you know of that are good for your health, that are free, that are an emotion or something that you take with you everywhere you go? You can turn it on whenever you need to. It's there to help you. It's an expression. It's part of you. It's your sense of humor. There's life going on.

You know what I mean? Not many things that you have that do that that you just naturally have. Well, I know it's a little existential, but it's how I see it. Good.

Humorous is a tonic for mind and body. It is the best antidote for anxiety and depression. It is a business asset. It attracts and keeps friends. It lightens human burdens.

It is the direct route to serenity and contentment. Grenville Kleiser, is that nothing? A great quote. And what's really funny is I found this after getting this all set up for you guys.

I didn't set up this episode from this quote yet. This quote basically goes along with what I have set up for you guys. That was crazy. A lot of fun when that happens.

If you've never done anything like a podcast or a video cast or anything like this, you've got to prepare. You got to put your stuff in order. You got to make sure that you're bringing receipts and all the other stuff. And sometimes you just pick something.

You're like, you know, what? I want a quote about laughter and humor and all that kind of stuff. And so I was looking some up, and then I was like, this guy, he knows. He's got it.

Grenville's the man. I think I want to learn other things that he said. Well, anyway, laughter starts in the brain.

So they say, you know, they keep talking about hormones and how laughter creates all these endorphins. And you say, okay, yeah, I believe that. Cause you said it. I don't know necessarily if I believe in hormones, as they say they are.

Are they just chemicals? What are chemicals gets into this whole thing? Eric, where are you going with this? Well, I don't see the mind as just particulate matter.

I see it as you. Your personality, your sense of humor, life, your ability to reason. That's bigger than materialism, isn't it?

Materialism that says that everything is atoms and particles, and that's all you are, carbon and hydrogen and proteins. And really, you know, when I see a dog get super excited when the owner comes home, is that carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, vitamin C, protein, water?

What is that? Does it start here? Is it in here? I'm just saying, I mean, I have my beliefs on where all that comes from.

I'm just trying to help you think outside the box a little bit. You are more than particles and atoms and elements. This is life we're talking about. So where does humor come from? Why do you laugh?

Oh, Eric, you understand. They've already mapped the brain, so they know it starts in the left hemisphere, and that's how you hear the joke.

And then your frontal lobe then goes, oh, that was a joke. And then the right side deciphers it and says, okay, I know what the joke was meant to say.

And then all these bits and pieces you see right here in the center, those make you laugh, really? Just because they light up on an EEG, that's humor.

Well, how did the brain know that that joke, which, as we all know, usually life stuff, is funnier than things that aren't about real life. Why was that funny and then changed your mood? Matter of fact, it lowered your stress, and you had the fun time, you know, a complete laugh attack.

Aren't laugh attacks amazing? They're very similar to other attacks. I'll get into that. But anyway, they say it's hormonal. I'm not so sure it's totally hormonal.

Yeah, maybe hormones are real. We'll get into that in the future. I don't know. I'm starting to question many, many things.

I was told over all these years, if you haven't noticed in this. Well, if you've listened to me for the last, I don't know. Are we a little more than a year and a half?

I'm questioning a lot of things very recently, in about last six, seven months, things I thought I always knew. I found out it might be different. This is one of them.

Well, anyway, do you ever notice after a laughing attack, you are calm, your mood changes, you are happy? Eric, it's just our hormonal flow. That's it. That's all it is. Is it really? I don't know if I believe that.

Either way, after a really good laugh attack, you know? You know what I mean? It's not just five or 10 seconds or you giggled and chuckled because you heard a joke.

This is an all out trying to catch your breath. All that. This one time I was working with my brother and he mimicked a, by singing this song from the eighties.

It was playing and he, you know, he mimicked it and it was one of the funniest things I've ever heard in my life. Maybe, I don't know, four times.

's ten minutes. Could even be: 1520

And I'm like, that made it funnier. You know how that is. Why does that work that way? You see, this is my question. You thought it was funny.

So you're laughing hysterically and then somebody goes, what's so funny? And then you laugh harder and longer. Why do you ever think about that? It's like somebody sneezes and then like, you sneeze.

Why could it be energies going on? Well, notice this state that she is in. Totally relaxed, blissful, just got done laughing cause her husband or a dog did something.

Anyway, she's like, oh yeah, I'm in that zone right now. What other time puts you into that zone, if you know what I mean?

Aren't they very similar after a laughing attack and then a, you know the other thing that is really fun that humans do. Yeah. So you get this overwhelming euphoria and you're in this state. How many other emotions do you feel that puts you into this?

I think maybe a great massage. You feel, oh, I feel so good. But a blissful euphoric, then destressed. And this kind of state, how many things do that. Not many. Matter of fact, if.

If you can think of one other than the two that I just mentioned, let me know. Put in the comments so we all learn.

The other thing that comes from laughing a lot and getting into laughter more and using it to your advantage whenever you can is confidence. When you laugh and you change your mood, you become more confident. Gone is the stress and all that associated. Put yourself into a can do attitude.

Well, that was really, that was rah rah, Eric. You know, I used to be a coach when I was very young. Coached volleyball, whatever. Anyway, you can do many things.

Usually fear and stress are what holds you down. Laughter can pull you out of that. Get into regular laughter. Figure it out. I don't know. Watch something funny.

Call your friend that's funny and say, make me laugh. What happens when you laughed? Well, your lungs get exercised, and in turn, you get more circulation. Get into that in a second.

Essentially, you are able to exercise and stimulate your lungs in a very good way. Working out your lungs is like charging your battery. It's one of the ways you can charge your battery. You being the battery.

Remember, you're a water structure being that runs on electricity. Okay, well, how do you get energy through charge? One of the ways is breathing. Stop breathing. What happens?

Yeah, you pretty much, you know, you're on your way out. Go a long time without food. You can even go a really, really long time without sun, which is really essential for charge.

But you can't go without air. Whatever air is. What is it anyway? Do we really know? Is it true that everything that they said about air, that that's true?

Oh, Eric, you're just being ridiculous. Course there's air. You can breathe it. It's made out of oxygen and helium and hydrogen, and all is really. Hmm. We'll get into those in the future.

Anyway, when you breathe, or, excuse me, when you laugh a lot and you're exercising all these muscles of your torso and your neck and your arms because you're high fiving, because it was hilarious. And all that stuff that creates flow, that's great for everything in your body. Check this out. So these are the muscles.

So the left side of this photo is the front of your body. The right side is the back of your body. And notice how many muscles you see. There's muscles under there you can't see.

But isn't it crazy to think that you're made out of all these, and yet all you see is the skin of a person. You. Oh, that person's attractive, or that person's colored a certain way, really, because this is who they really are underneath.

Skin is only one part of a person, by the way. Anyway, this is really super cool. You want to activate as many of these as you possibly can. And laughing is a great way to do that. Why?

Well, it creates circulation, which we talked about recently in the episode that you need flow. You want good health, you need to have good flow. Lymphatic, circulatory water flow. You get those in one way by laughing.

You're getting so much contraction. You're getting contraction. Relaxation, contraction, relaxation. Over and over and over again as you're laughing. You create good flow by laughing.

Very, very healthy. You know what else? You work out your face. What was the last time you worked out your face?

Went to the gym, hit some bench press, did some squats, did some abs, got in the sauna. Do you work out your face? Nope. Why? Look at all those muscles. There's a lot of muscles there. Look at the neck.

All of these get worked out when you laugh. This is what gives your face structure. So you have bones, tendons, ligaments, and muscles. They give you your structure and then your skin on top.

And that's what makes you either ugly or attractive. You ever notice that attractive people smile a lot? Actually, they're usually laughing and they're happy.

You ever notice that people who are very negative and mean never laugh, never smile. They're not all that attractive.

And even if you go, yeah, I mean, he looks kind of handsome or she's kind of pretty, but it's like you're not drawn to them. There's something not there. Could it be that they're not laughing in their life? I'm just saying something to that.

Of course you have to manage your stress. Did you know laughter does that? It can lower all of this stress. You're doing your coffee. Well, that increases adrenaline output.

When that goes down, you feel stressed out chemically. Yeah. Everybody wants your time. They want your, you know, your. Your knowledge and your, you know, opinion and whatever it is at work.

Like, this lady is here, and she's on the. On the computer and got to get all this done and projects. Okay, what about you just take a break? You just go, you know what? Enough.

And you get up and you go outside, you get on your phone, and you look up. Joke of the day. I don't care, whatever it is. And you can giggle a little bit. Maybe a little chuckle. Well, why don't you read a bunch of those?

Get your mind out of your mind. Start laughing a little bit.

Maybe you leave work like this, you get home, and what do you do as soon as you get home because you're super stressed out? Put on a comedy movie. I'm just saying. You could also maybe tell your friends, like, hey, I'm on the way home. What are you doing tonight? I don't know.

What are you doing? I had a stressful day. You want to go to the comedy club or let's go the movies and watch a funny movie? You get the point.

Anyway, if you really want to understand health, one of the best things that you can do is learn the autonomic nervous system. I mean, essentially, it's your backbone. Really funny, Eric talking.

Anyway, when you understand the parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous system, you can understand a lot about your health. Briefly. Let me just show you what happens. So now you're stressing out. Your life is whatever you, bad news.

Your project's not going right, bad day, whatever it is. And you know that it's terrible. Well, here's what happens. Your adrenal glands stimulate adrenaline and cortisol, if that's a thing.

So if adrenaline and cortisol and all these hormones we produce are real, you raise those. That then has effect on the rest of the body immediately. Let me show you. Your airway dilates. Why it needs charge.

When you're in a sympathetic state, you are. You are discharging your battery. You're a battery. 100%. You're a battery.

You can listen to my past episodes to talk about this, especially salt silica. So your body's like, I need charge. You are draining me. This stress is draining me. So.

Makes you breathe more, also increases circulation, so your circulatory flow increases. Not in a good way, by the way. That's called bad blood pressure, not good flow.

You want open blood vessels with lots of flow, not constricted and high, fast flow. That's not what you want. Well, that's what sympathetic does to you. This is a bad state to be in. You want to be in the parasympathetic.

This is where, after you've been in the stressful state, you come home, you laughed, and you hang out with the dog. The dog's doing goofy things. You're chuckling and that kind of stuff. You're entering parasympathetic, and now everything slows down and you heal.

This is what you experience after a laughing attack. Or, you know, the other thing I just talked about that's also free and similar to the same mood producing activity.

Humor can absolutely be used as a coping mechanism. Matter of fact, I would say it's amazing. It has more benefits than you even realize and more than I'm bringing up here.

This is just a, I don't know, 20 minutes episode. Whatever it is, you would be much better off coping by using laughter.

Watching funny movies, going to the comedy clubs, getting around people that are funny. Anything you can do to laugh. I don't know. I mean, figure it out. Whatever it takes for you to laugh.

I could come up with probably ten things, but it would. Then we're into a 45 minutes episode, which I'm trying to keep shorter.

You'd be so much better laughing as a coping mechanism than drugs, both pharmaceutical or recreational. Those never have good outcomes, ever. Whoever said, you know what, I have all these side effects from laughing. You know what?

I just don't feel good because I was laughing. Or you know what? Laughing is really expensive. I gotta quit this habit. Nobody does that. All the other coping mechanisms like antidepressant drugs and.

You know what I mean? They have side effects. Big ones. There's no side effect to watching a comedy movie and laughing. Come on, this is great.

Well, again, I was trying to keep this one a little bit shorter so I didn't crack a bunch of jokes. I was going to say, you know, a joke like something about salt. And then I thought, nah, if you know what that means, you're in the know.

Anyway, appreciate you listening. Thanks, as usual. Go laugh. Go watch a comedy movie or something. Take care of yourselves.