by John Fike

“The person who can bring the spirit of laughter into a room is indeed blessed.”
- Bennett Cerf

Stress and depression have become critical concerns in the modern workplace. Few people in the modern world don’t experience daily stress from their job or responsibilities. As a result, illness, disease and mental health disorders are skyrocketing.

Companies struggle to milk quality job performance from employees and are challenged by absenteeism brought on by stress and depression-related illness. And it’s not uncommon for stressed-out employees to take their stress home with them and create further opportunity for stress and/or depression.

Obviously, we need to find a solution. Fortunately there is a solution and it doesn’t involve drugs or expensive psychological therapy. More and more scientific studies are providing evidence that happier, less-stressful lives may be as simple as learning to laugh.

Here are 17 ways that laughter or humor can make your life healthier and happier.

1. Relaxes muscles - When you laugh hard, the muscles that aren’t involved in the laughing relax as a natural response of the nervous system. When you finish laughing, the diaphragm, which is the muscle that does the laughing, also relaxes.

2. Reduces stress hormones - Laughter is shown to reduce levels of epinephrine (or adrenaline), cortisol, dopac and growth hormone in the body. All these hormones are related to the fight-or-flight reaction that causes stress.

3. Boosts immune system - Laughter and feelings of joy have been shown to boost levels of immunoglobulins that are responsible for fighting illnesses and infections. Laughter also increases the number of neuropeptides that facilitate communication between cells and the nervous system. Since viruses infect cells through the same receptor sites on cells that the nervous system uses to communicate, an increase in neuropeptides at those sites effectively increases the cell’s ability to block viruses.

4. Provides cardiac exercise - According to WebMD.com, laughing heartily 100 times a day provides the same cardio benefits as exercising for 20 minutes.

5. Lowers blood pressure - A study at the University of Maryland showed that laughing dramatically improved the lining of patients’ blood vessels, improved dilation of the vessels and improved blood flow by as much as 22 percent.

6. Cleanses the lungs - The deep breathing of laughter tends to empty more air out of your lungs than is taken in. This has a cleansing effect on the lungs.

7. Improves cancer survivability - Laughing increases the number and activity of Natural Killer cells, which directly attack tumor cells. Although laughter is not considered a replacement for medical treatments, it is known to largely increase the success rates of such treatments.

8. Reduces pain - Whether it is because laughter releases endorphins, relaxes muscles or distracts a person from his or her pain is not known yet, but it is well documented that laughter reduces pain.

9. Lowers stress - Laughing causes the body to relax from its flight-or-fight response to stressful situations.

10. Reduced anger and anxiety - How can you be angry or anxious when you’re laughing? It’s both a chemical and emotional reaction.

11. Increased joy - Just like you can train yourself to be fast or strong or to have high endurance, you can train yourself to be happy. Laughter and an optimistic outlook are the exercises that train you to be happy.

12. Boosts self-esteem - Situations in life are much easier to cope with when you can laugh at them. It isn’t just the physical effects like releasing endorphins and relaxing muscles, laughing at something changes our perspective of something. If you can laugh at a problem or challenge, you can always overcome it.

13. Sense of control - When something angers us or makes us anxious, we tend to feel like victims. But when we laugh at something, we tend to feel above it and feel as though we are in control.

14. Increased emotional intelligence - According to humor researcher Dr. Paul E. McGhee, humor is a powerful tool in managing anger and anxiety, avoiding non-clinical depression, and for replacing negative emotions with positive ones, which is one of the most advanced Emotional Intelligence Skills.

15. Strengthens team spirit - Humor and joking in a team atmosphere, whether it’s a business team, an athletic team or any other kind of team; breaks down barriers, motivates team members, creates emotional bonding, and eases communication. All these factors result in a more productive team whose members are loyal to one another.

16. Enhances communication skills - Laughter and humor make communicating easier by breaking down barriers, such as those related to status or rank, and making awkward moments more comfortable. Humor also softens the emotional tone of communications that are otherwise very serious.

17. Increases creativity - Humor removes you emotionally from the problem you are trying to solve and removes the pressure caused by focusing intently and seriously. People think more creatively when they are feeling relaxed and natural; humor or laughter accomplishes this quickly.