Laughter: How does it affect the Overall Health?

Laughter is a response to humor. When you hear the sound of laughter, you can’t help but smile and laugh yourself. Hence, it can be infectious. When laughter is shared among others, it causes a binding between people and increases both intimacy and happiness, making people comfortable with one another and feel open and free.

 

The physical process of Laughter:

During laughter, the respiratory system is intermittently disturbed by the epiglottis, closing the larynx halfway so that air intake becomes irregular, making us gasp (struggle for breath). The mouth also begins opening and closing, struggling for oxygen intake in unity with the respiratory system.

In a situation where the laughter intensifies, the tear ducts are activated and the eyes become moist with tears.

 

Biological Process of laughter:

Have you heard that laughter is helpful to those coping with major illness and the stress of life’s problems? Yes, that is a fact. It can basically bring a balance to all the components of the immune system, which helps us fight off diseases.

Laughter reduces the levels of certain stress hormones by providing a safety valve that shuts off the flow of stress hormones that takes action when our bodies experience anger, stress or uncomfortable situations. These stress hormones are destructive, in that they suppress the immune system and increase the number of blood platelets which can cause obstructions in arteries, thereby raising the blood pressure. When we are in the laughing process, the natural killer cells that destroy tumors and viruses increase.

Laughter triggers healthy bodily changes, which in turn creates healthy changes in the mind. Laughter can increase your energy level, lessen pain, strengthen the immune system, and protect people from stress.

 

Laughter is Strong Medicine

Laughter can be a strong antidote to conflict, pain, and stress. , it can be said to be one of the best medicine because it is free, fun, and easy.

There is nothing else that works more dependable or quicker to bring your body and mind into balance than laughter. The use of humor can lighten emotional and psychological burdens, connect you to others, inspire your hope, keep you at alert and focused.

With this ability to renew your health and heal you, laughter can be a great resource for whatever problems you may have. It can also strengthen your relationships and can improve wellbeing.

 

How Is Laughter Good For Your Health?

Laughter can have many health benefits which include the following:

• Laughter can increase your immune system. It can decrease the level of stress hormones within the body and increase the number of immune cells and antibodies you have, which will help you become more resistant to diseases.
• Laughter is relaxing. A wonderful laugh can relieve you of stress and physical tension by relaxing your muscles.
• Laughter releases endorphins. Endorphins are the body’s feel-good hormones. When your endogenous endorphins are released, you feel a sense of well-being and a reduction in the sensation of body pain.
• Laughter can help the heart. Laughter can increase the ability of the blood vessels to nourish all parts of the body. It can increase your blood flow, which in turn can help prevent heart attacks and other types of heart diseases.

 

Laughter Can Help Your Emotional Health

Laughter simply makes a person feel good. This good feeling persists even when you are done laughing. Laughter helps you maintain an optimistic, positive stance so you can get through situations of disappointments, loss and other complicated situations.

Laughter is more than just a protection against pain and sadness. It gives you the strength and courage to find other sources of hope and meaning. Even when you find yourself in the most difficult of times, laughter or even a smile can take you far when it comes to feeling better. Laughter really is a bit transmittable. When you hear someone else laugh, it primes your brain and sets you up to join that person in laughing too.

 

Laughter and Mental Health

Laughter is associated with better mental health. Some things laughter can do to improve your mental health include the following:

• Laughter allows you to relax. A good laugh can lessen stress and increase your energy levels so that you can remain focused and get more things accomplished.
• Laughter shifts your perspective. It allows you to see things in a less threatening and more realistic light. Being humorous helps create a psychological distance between you and stressful events so that you don’t feel so overwhelmed.
• Laughter lessens fear and worry. When this happens, joy is added to our life.

 

Laughter has Social Benefits              

Laughter creates team spirit and oneness – This, in turn, strengthens relationships, as it becomes stronger and triggers positive emotions and an emotional connection with those you are laughing with.

A positive bond develops – Laughter can act as a powerful buffer against disappointment, disagreements, and stress when you laugh with others, this is a more powerful thing than when you laugh alone.

 

How to Create More Opportunities to Laugh

Here are some things you can do or try to increase your chances of laughing:

• Attend a comedy shows like “AY Show”, “Night of a Thousand Laugh” etc
• Watch funny videos on television and on YouTube
• Read the comics in the magazine/newspaper
• Be with people who are naturally humorous and stay away from angry people
• Share a funny story or joke with another
• Read funny stories
• Play games with your friends
• Play with your pet
• Play with children
• Do something you think is silly
• Engage in activities you consider fun

Laughter can do a lot to help you feel better on a physical, emotional, and cognate level. Don’t be afraid to share a good laugh with others for all-around better health.

Let the Laughter Flow

Power of choice:Key to healing yourself from within

The ability or power of choice can be used to improve the Quality Of Life and Wellness

Everyone has got the ability to choose. The ability to decide what to eat each day, what clothes to wear, what restaurants to go to; we have got the ability to choose what we want and do not want in life.

Obviously, there are some things we can’t choose, such as the color our skin, the size of our feet, what day of the week we were born, but we do have the ability to choose something that is really important.

How We Feel

The practice of developing wellness in our lives shows that we have the ability to choose how we feel. We can willfully influence our emotion. We can use mental training strategies such as meditation to promote feelings within our minds.

We have the ability to choose how to react to certain circumstances or to a certain person. That ability to control our emotions so that we don’t fall into negative, degenerative, or destructive thought processes is inbuilt in us. Hence, we can even use the power of choice to heal ourselves of negative situations.

Healing From Within

The power of choice is very similar to the power of intention. When we hold an intention in our minds, we tend to start attracting the result of that intention into our lives. Once we make a choice, the result of that choice into is being attracted to our lives. Therefore, if we learn to be very conscious of our choices we make, and also where our choices can lead us to, we can then learn to remove destructive and negative influences from our lives.

When these negativity and destructive influences are removed from our lives, we feel a universal sense of wellness within our daily way of life. Furthermore, when we can learn to promote this feeling on a regular basis, the natural result we get is healing in the spirit.

What does healing mean?

A person who is incredibly sick and unhealthy physically has the ability to create a feeling from the within that they will become healthy soon. They clear every negative notion of remaining in the sick bed from their spirit. The spirit controls the physical. In a short time, their physical bodies begin to respond the treatment being administered.

Having a complete awareness of what we are, knowing that in reality, everything is okay, and understanding our position and function in life, that is what real healing is about. On the other hand, there is suffering.

Being lost in life, being confused about what is real and what is not, being angry and traumatized by past experiences, holding onto judgments and opinions about people, things or places which lead to a feeling of separateness, these things are all in the realm of suffering.

True healing and true spiritual wellness can only occur when the source of our suffering has been extinguished by no more visualizing them through the spiritual eyes.

Spiritual healing result in Healthy body & mind

We have the ability to choose whether or not we suffer. By choosing not to suffer we are encouraging healing within our spirit. When healing is encouraged within our spirit, this has the natural effect of developing inner peace within our heart.

To truly heal, to remove all of the anguish, all of the confusion, all of the aggression, all of the conflict, all we have do is make a choice, a choice not to suffer, not to feed our problems, but instead, to take up the source of their inspiration.

The Choice depends on you

If we can choose not to promote suffering in our lives, naturally this has the effect of promoting a greater quality of life and greater health. But even if our physical health is bad, as will be the case with most of us as we age and grow older, we can still have a mindset that doesn’t experience this as suffering, but simply sees that it is a part of the natural way of things.

For those of us who have health problems in our younger years, by making the choice to stop doing anything negative or destructive, we can encourage greater physical health as well and mental and spiritual health. In order to do this, all we have to do is make a choice.

What will you choose?

Overcome that Fear & Worry

The graveyard have been said to be one place with quantum of frustrated talent. This is because a lot of people have died without fulfilling the dreams to their destinies.

Apart from having the resources and time for a project, Fear and Worry is known to be one twin factors that is responsible for people’s failure to achieving their dreams.

Briefly, permit WellBeingDigest to bring you a story and see if you can fetch out a lesson from it;

A young man called Tony was struggling to get out of poverty in one rural community with few basic infrastructures, where he graduated from college. He read many stories about the city life, such as fraudulent people dupe innocent ones, accident rate, failed project and dreams, prostitution among others. He could not imagine himself being a victim of the mentioned social vices. Although, he read of other positive things such as good roads, electricity, success stories but his heart was clouded by the negative sides of the city. After graduating from college, his uncle offered to assist him with some funds, travel to get a job and start a new life in the city. Even though he wished to be in the city, he decided to remain back in the village doing menial jobs. Years after, one Christmas, Gbenga, one of his ex-college friends working as a Manager of a firm in the city visited him. He had plenty of success stories for Tony. Tony was no longer happy as he had permit some built-in excuses (negative belief) to hold him back in life.

From the short story above, Tony capitalized heavily on the negative stories of the city, which in turn became an excuse for fear and worry. He failed to attempt something new. He stopped before ever starting because he was afraid of what would happen to him or even what others may think.

 

FEAR AND WORRY DEFINED

Fear can be simply put as a feeling triggered by anticipated or impending future danger such as threat, disaster or evil.

While

Worry is a mental agitation of unpleasant things or a potential problem that might happen in a way that makes one unhappy or uncomfortable or emotionally stable.

 

From the above definitions, one can say the two words are not the same. Fear in some cases can save a life, take for instance Tony was aware of the high crime rate in the city. This was capable of keeping him safe from being a victim as he would be proactive and careful. His fear created by the knowledge of high crime rate has reserved the signal or picture in his brain. But things become bad when he preoccupied his mind with the potential dangers perceived. Hence, his imagination begins to focus too much on the crime perceived images.

Capitalizing too much on the negative past diminishes our ability to interpret the present situation around us. Hence, we become more likely to miss knowledge that will notify us of near impending dangers.

This is why I strongly agree with someone who defined F.E.A.R. as False Evidence Appearing Real. This is true due to the fact that one chose to believe in unreal or happenings of the past, which may not be applicable to our present day.

On the other hand, Worry is the mental fabrication of fear. Man has a great choice whether to worry or not. Hence, worry is nothing more than a continuous fear caused by indecision.

 

WORRY ANALYSED

In certain situations, worry can either lead people to make healthy decisions or may even help keep them alive. For example, worrying about impending economic crises can make one invest wrongly and worrying about finances can help prevent someone from reckless spending respectively.

Also, worrying about basic safety can make someone become informed about self-defense tactics, thereby secure or lock doors and windows. But when worry persists, and we do nothing about it but occupying much of one’s thoughts and preventing relaxation or enjoyment of life, it can have a significant negative effect on the Mental Health.

Some people may worry to the extent that they become unable to focus on daily tasks, and others may develop insomnia, unhealthy eating habit or on a worst side, might experience heart attack.

Worry can affect the physical health negatively when the imagination produces a terrifying scenario. In such a situation, the body responds by releasing a number of chemicals, such as adrenaline and cortisol, in the same way that it would if the imagined scenario were actually taking place. These chemicals help people react to danger on a short-term basis, but they also raise the blood pressure, cause blood to clot faster and lead to muscle tension.

On a long term, these effects can reduce immunity and cause illness. Carrying stress in the body may also lead to aches and pains and the development of high blood pressure or other heart related trouble.

In many cases, worry might also reflect one’s reluctance to take action, whereby the individual begin to worry, thereby expressing anger, depression or fear. They start imagining things that might go wrong and becoming preoccupied with potential outcomes. This may facilitate an avoidance of the actual situation. Hence, persistent worry can become a mechanism to avoid problems that one feels unable to solve.

 

FEAR ANALYSEDS

The amygdalae (a section of the brain that is responsible for detecting fear and preparing for emergency events) trigger a chain of biological events and engulf the mind in the fear, even before the conscious mind can assess the situation. This instinctive biological signal is triggered by the brain, which tries to overcome issues by foolishly preparing the body to defend itself, freeze or even flee from the scene of event.

 

EFFECTS OF FEAR

Fear can cause threatening health consequences such as follows;

• Fear takes control of breathing, digestion, blood circulation.
• The signals from the amygdalae dilate pupils and increase brain wave frequency.
• They make hairs stand on end.
• They reduce saliva, thereby drying the mouth.
• Fear cause sweating and a decrease in skin resistance to weather forces.
• Fear decrease peripheral blood flow and cause hands to become cold.
• The signals speed breathing and dilate bronchial tubes to allow more air to the lungs.
• The fear signal tighten stomach muscles,
• It slow down digestion and close down the excretory system.
• It increases the acids in the stomach, thereby causing diarrhea.
• The signals travel to the adrenal gland, which produces cortisol, causing an increase in glucose production to provide additional fuel for the muscles and brain to deal with the potential stress.
• The action above releases sugar into the blood and increases the tendency for blood clotting.
• They dilate blood vessels to skeletal muscles to allow greater blood flow.
• They slow down the working of the immune system.

 

SIMPLE FORMULA FOR OVERCOMING FEAR

For everyone who want to be free from Worry & Fear, these simple formula can be used to overcome and make them pretty close to being Fearless.

Formula One – Clearly identify the cause of Fear or Worry. Half of the worries and fears will be solved once identified clearly by writing it on paper. What once seemed mighty in your mind will look small and insignificant on paper.

Formula Two – Ask yourself this vital question; What is the worst possible thing that can happen if that, which I fear or worry becomes true?

Make a list a list of possible solution(s) and write them down on paper underneath your clearly defined Fear/worry. At this point, it will be noticed that you about 90% of the fear or worry will never happen? This list will enable you discover how much time you spend on worrying about stuff that never will happen.

Formula Three – Decide in your mind that you will acknowledge the worst possible thing that can happen. Keep telling yourself, I can handle it, over and over again. Since 90% of those things will never take place, then the other 10% will not kill you; Say to yourself  “I will survive”.

Formula Four – Begin to put together an action plans that will ensure the worst never happens. By making positive action/changes and implementing your action plan, your focus will start shifting from your fears to the positive outcomes.

Try this formula today and see. I know it will work for you. It has worked for me.

 

SUMMARY

Fear and Worry over the years has been linked to health issues, including arthritis, migraines, allergies, stomach ulcers and thyroid disease.

Over a lifetime, Worry and Fear builds an additional sensitivity to pain experiences which may have been caused by physical injury, painful confrontations, loss of loved ones, loss of social status, or rejection.

People suffer fears of failing, of being ridiculed, of the loss of loved ones. If a person suffered trauma, such people should endeavor to stay away from loneliness.

Eating well and maintaining physical wellness can often help one in keeping a new positive outlook.