Professor Miller pointed out that laughter should be an integral part of a healthy lifestyle, saying: "If doctors recommend exercising three to five times a week, it is important that we laugh heartily at least two to five times a week."
Laughter stimulates the release of endorphins in the brain, which promotes vasodilation by releasing nitric oxide, lowers blood pressure, inflammation, and cholesterol levels, and reduces the risk of heart attacks. Endorphins also act as a natural pain reliever.
Psychologist William Frey of Stanford University is one of the founders of laughter therapy, known as Gelotology , having discovered in the 1960s that laughter raises the level of immune cells in the blood.
These ideas were put into practice in India in the 1990s, when Dr. Madan Kataria founded the first "laughter club". After noticing that participants quickly ran out of jokes, he developed a system of exercises combining deep breathing, gentle stretching exercises, and deliberately funny movements and sounds, noting that "artificial laughter turns into real laughter within seconds".
Researcher Jenny Rosendahl from the University of Jena concluded, after analyzing data from 45 scientific studies, that laughter therapy reduces cortisol levels, blood sugar, and chronic pain, and improves mobility and mood, especially in older adults.
Rosendahl asserts that forced laughter can be just as effective as spontaneous laughter because the underlying physiological mechanisms remain the same, including active breathing, muscle activity, and diaphragm contraction. She adds, "The improvement in overall health comes about almost indirectly – first the exercise, then the genuine laughter."
