Is Laughter the Best Medicine?

The Reader's Digest has always run a column entitled "Laughter is the Best Medicine."  It turns out they may well have been right.  In today's New York Times, there is an article reporting on a study conducted in England by a researcher at Oxford University that suggests that laughter is really a form of exercise that can help raise your pain threshold. "The Chemical Payoff of Belly Laugh With Friends." www.nytimes.com.

The study was conducted by Robin Dunbar, an Oxford professor of evolutionary psychology. She showed a group of volunteers a series of two sets of movies, one set of documentaries and a set of comedies.  She then measured their pain thresholds and found that when shown the comedies, the thresholds rose, but not when shown the documentaries. She concluded that was because the laughter, like exercise, causes an increase in endorphins in the brain, which act as a natural analgesic. The same result occurs in runners and may explain the so-called "runner's high" some runners report experiencing Apparently, that effect is even greater when in a group setting or at least with one other person.

So, if you don't have time to exercise or don't want to take a pain reliever, maybe you should sit down with family or friends and watch a  Marx Brothers movie or reruns of Seinfeld.