Sometimes all you can do is laugh. That might actually be good for you

By Don Riddell, CNN

(CNN) — There was that time I was struggling to carry a mattress over my head and walked into a wall. There was also a view of me trimming my nose hairs somehow captured as I was getting ready for work.

Throughout their teenage years, my sons secretly filmed me in my worst moments, and every now and again they’ll treat me to an impromptu screening of them all.

Dad’s “greatest hits” are so bad they’re good, and we find ourselves howling with laughter every time my kids bring them out again. By now, I usually know what’s coming but somehow, the highlight reel gets funnier every time.

Now my sons are in college, and we’re still cracking each other up, which is just as well. There isn’t much else to laugh at these days, whether it’s because of ugly hyper-partisan politics, interminable wars in Ukraine and Iran, the spiraling cost of living, or the horrifying impacts of the climate crisis. That grim reality can leave us feeling stressed out and utterly powerless.

Ironically, perhaps the best thing we can do is laugh. A good chuckle won’t fix all the problems, but it can, at least, make you feel better about your place in the world.

I’m one of those people who laughs often and hard; I’m lucky enough to have some irreverent work colleagues who regularly tickle my funny bone — thanks CNN Sports! — and a wife and two kids who seem to find humor in pretty much everything. I’d never considered whether laughing might have any beneficial health properties until recently. But every time I leave a comedy club with my cheeks hurting, I know I can’t wait for the next show.

The Bible backs me up

“A cheerful heart is good medicine,” Proverbs 17:22 says, and if you’re visiting the birthplace of the 19th century English poet Lord Byron, you’ll see a plaque featuring a famous quote sometimes attributed to him: “Always laugh when you can. It is a cheap medicine.”

It’s often said that laughter is the best medicine — and there may be a lot more truth to that than many have realized. A good belly laugh isn’t just an emotional experience; it’s a physical one, too. Deep laughter opens up the chest, boosts oxygen intake and stimulates circulation. What’s more, cracking up triggers chemical changes that prompt the inner lining of blood vessels to dilate and improve blood flow.

“You’re pumping blood, your lungs are expanded,” the American comedian Craig Shoemaker told me before a recent Atlanta show. “Everything happens when you’re laughing. It’s as good as a workout!”

Laughter has some science behind it

What can a good laugh do for you? Through a systematic review of eight small, short-term studies conducted between 1989 and 2021, endocrinologist Dr. Caroline Kramer and her team identified that a good laugh is linked to a roughly 30% reduction in the stress hormone cortisol.

Kramer, an associate professor at the University of Toronto and a clinician scientist at Mount Sinai’s Leadership Sinai Centre for Diabetes, told CNN that her team’s 2023 study into the impact of spontaneous laughter on stress response was unambiguous.

“Even 10 minutes of laughter can reduce cortisol significantly,” Kramer said. “Our results were of greater importance than I thought they would be.”

It seems almost too good to be true: You can improve your health simply by having a laugh. Kramer admits it can be a hard sell to the cynics who have been shaped by a system that promotes a pill as the solution to every medical problem.

“We tend to look at studies showing outcomes like ‘it reduces mortality, it reduces your time in the hospital, it reduces this, it reduces that,’” she said. “I think overall people tend to undermine interventions that just increase well-being.”

Or as Shoemaker put it, “It’s so important to our wellness, and yet we completely dismiss it, because laughter doesn’t have a lobby.”

What the Lovemaster recommends

Back in the ’90s, Shoemaker created an alter ego called the Lovemaster, a smooth-talking, confident ladies’ man who delivered audacious pickup lines and relationship philosophies in an exaggerated, gravelly baritone voice. Numerous patrons credited him for helping them to conceive, he said.

“This couple came up to me in Michigan, and they said, ‘We want to thank you. We were told we couldn’t have a child,’” he said. The story goes that the couple had gone home from his show, and the husband pretended to be the Lovemaster.

“I guess they must have had fun instead of trying to have a baby — laughter kicks out all the stress, and sure enough they have a baby girl.” It happened again and then again, Shoemaker said. “Someone sent me a photo of a child that was conceived in the parking lot. They didn’t even wait till they got home. It’s hilarious — I still have the photo!”

Shoemaker jokes that he got into comedy so that girls would go to prom with him or his mom would love him, but he was also seeing another side to it. Now, he’s so passionate about promoting the health benefits of laughing that he has made it his life’s work.

“I realized this is truly wonderful medicine for people to be shared,” he said.

Laughter fuels resilience in the face of cancer

He told me the story of his friend, screenwriter Michael Goldberg, who was diagnosed with brain cancer around 2001 and given three months to live. Shoemaker threw himself into work with a cancer facility, trying to find ways for comedy to help Goldberg.

“If only concentrating on the misery of cancer protocols and methodologies, that’s a miserable experience and it doesn’t inspire people to keep going with their healing journey,” he said. “Michael lived 15 years past that prognosis. Wow.” Shoemaker gives some credit to Goldberg’s will to live and the joy he had in his life.

In the process of helping his friend, Shoemaker created a series of workshops and products to help many others. “It’s for people so they can have a reset, a recharge, a reclamation, on the spot, for whatever they’re dealing with,” he explained. “You literally cannot be angry, depressed or have any other feelings except for bliss while you are laughing. Laughter has its own space.”

‘When laughter comes back’

Jamie Bendall co-owns the Punchline Comedy Club in Atlanta, and he believes that comedy can act as a kind of social glue in these divided times.

When everyone is laughing in a comedy club, nobody knows who voted for whom. Taken to the extreme, “it’s very hard to both laugh and throw a punch,” Bendall said. When people are facing their toughest hours, he added, “the first sign that things are going to get better is when laughter comes back.”

Of course, diet and exercise are two key ingredients for a long life. “From a health perspective, it’s important to get your 10,000 steps a day, and it’s important to have moderation in your diet and your consumption,” he said. “But I would argue a well-rounded, healthy life includes regular laughter.”

Having a good laugh has always been fun, but your health and well-being are no joke — and something that’s infectious in a good way might just be the therapeutic balm you’ve been missing.

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