The Science of Laughter

Laughter is the best medicine, and science supports that claim

One of the people who always brought a smile to my face was Mr. Rogers, and this is one of my favorite quotes by him.  Imagine him saying this in his slow, kind cadence.

“I am concerned that our society is much more interested in information, rather than wonder; in noise, rather than silence.” – Mr. Rogers

If you’re a bit like me, you do a good job of using the tools of our current generation, yet sometimes it might feel like the tools are using you!  Every generation can feel stretched and overextended; yet no other generation has also had the burden of the expectation of immediate communication.  We have no time to think!

To the tune of “These are a few of my Favorite Things”:

Tik Tok and Twitter, Firefox and Facebook

Gigabytes and Google, Android and Apple

Text messages in the morning and last thing at night

These are a few of my least favorite things!

Decisions Are Expensive – and that means tiring.

Perhaps it’s a bit paradoxical that we spend time studying things like “Mindfulness,” and “Being in the Moment,” yet we can miss the basic first step of simply being fully present with ourselves or a loved one because of the constant interruptions of a beeping or buzzing NON-LIVING electronic gadget.  How are we supposed to think things through when we can’t get five minutes of interrupted focus?

What can break that cycle?  As human beings, we are incredibly powerful physically, mentally, and emotionally.  We can manifest just about any reality we put our minds to.  Yet, sometimes it can be a struggle just to manifest a good night’s rest!  One reason why is because our manifestation frequency is tuned to the Commercial Channel: Buy This, Order That RIGHT NOW for 20% off!

A Most Interesting Study showed that when our energy is low, we tend to default to the path of least resistance which is usually not making a decision at all.  The study was done of judges reviewing parole cases, and what was found was that the criteria for being approved for parole depended upon one single thing far more than any other factor: the time of day the case was reviewed.  We get tired of making decisions, and the more decisions we have to make successively, the more likely we are to default to “no decision.”  Food and a break give us energy to restore, so in the case of the parole hearings, we can see the number of cases approved rises significantly at the beginning of the day and after breaks, and falls in each section and over time throughout the day.

Full study: https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1018033108

How Does This Relate to Nutrition?

In food choices: when we’re MENTALLY tired, even more so than PHYSICALLY tired, we will tend to make the easiest food choices.  We’ll look for the highest calorie foods, with the least amount of energy involved to make them.  If you’ve ever found yourself eating cereal for meals, you were most likely in the Vortex of Tired Decision Making!  It filled you up, but it didn’t provide a lot of nutrients, and you were hungry soon after.  Follow this up with a Starbucks latte because it helps suppress the appetite, and we’re well on our way to a Low Nutrient High Calorie, HIGHLY INFLAMMATORY way of eating.  Depending on your sensitivity, it may take hours, days, or weeks to feel the effects of this, and it can take weeks, months, or years to reverse it.  But that’s the great news, IT IS REVERSIBLE!

And while I have LOTS to share with you about nutrition and especially Oriental Medicine nutrition where we use Food As Medicine, there’s something else that’s even more important.  It’s your State: your body’s physiology at the time that you eat.  Have you ever had to cram food down while you were running around, not even able to stop working for ten minutes?  You probably noticed you didn’t feel very energized after; your body was sending blood to your muscles to keep moving, rather than to your tummy to help digest food.  This priority evolved because if we were running from a saber-tooth tiger, even if we’d just had a big meal, we need our blood in our muscles to survive!  And our bodies don’t know the difference between saber-tooth tiger and running around on lunch break; it just does what we tell it to.

Here are some things to keep in mind when you eat:

1. Breathe.  Say grace in whatever way suits you, but something that you really mean.  You don’t have to say it out loud.  Grace helps our bodies to shift into “receiving” mode, and we all receive better with gratitude!  That means we receive the nutrients of our food better and we digest better.
2. Stop.  Stop moving around, stop multitasking, stop trying to make decisions for these 10-30 minutes.
3. Get yourself into a good mood!  Laugh if you can, and if you can’t, make that a goal in life.

The Science of Laughter & My Favorite Lab Tests

Why does laughter feel so good, and WHAT are we really doing inside our bodies?

Science of Laughter Study: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0286260

Video Summary:
– Laughter is a powerful form of medicine, as exemplified by Norman Cousins’ experience
– Norman Cousins, longtime editor of the Saturday Review, re-created his treatments to focus first on laughter and positive emotions; he also pioneered the use of IV- Vit C to cure himself of Ankylosing Spondilitis.  Fifteen years later he would write a book called, “The Anatomy of an Illness from the Perspective of the Patient,” and he taught at UCLA on this subject for many years.
– What are my favorite lab tests?
– Tips for handling a stool sample test.
– Importance of stool sample test for understanding microbiome and neurological markers.
– Benefits of a food sensitivity test for identifying aggravating factors.
– Exploring environmental toxicity test and its role in health issues.