Take Your Medicine…

“Laughter is the shortest distance between two people.”                  – Victor Borge

I don’t usually advise about taking medicine but in this case I am.  I personally take this medicine several times daily.  It not only helps my personal life but helps my professional life a great deal, often when nothing else can help.  Yep, I’m talking about laughter; laughter is the best medicine.

I’m going nurse mode on you now; laughter helps to lower blood pressure, boost the immune system, and reduce stress hormones while triggering the release of endorphins, the body’s natural painkillers.  The bottom line is that laughter helps to produce a wonderful sense of well-being. 

Laughter is contagious and has no known ill side effects.  It’s that good belly laugh that exercises the diaphragm, relaxes muscles, and reduces stress while giving the heart a good workout, all the while contracting the abs.

On James Lipton’s Inside Actors Studio he asks the question what sound do you love?  Many say laughter specifically a child’s laughter.  Children laugh about 400 times a day as compared to adults who laugh 17 times a day.  Currently Americans laugh about 4 minutes a day, in the 1950s Americans laughed 18 minutes a day…  There are thousands of languages and hundreds of thousands of dialects but everyone speaks laughter pretty much the same way.  One of my favorite quotes on laughter is from Milton Berle who said laughter is instant vacation.  Laughter and humor give a light hearted perspective to life’s challenges and brings focus away from the negative emotions to positive emotions.  And it is interesting to note that as babies, we laugh before we speak.