No Joke … Laughter Loves The Heart

If you could bottle laughter, and prescribe it to patients, you would make a gazillion dollars.

According to this report, laughing (basically) gets rid bad chemicals and encourages good ones.

Dr. Lee Berk, at the Oak Crest Health Research Institute in Loma Linda, assigned 20 adults with type 2 diabetes, average age 50, either to a “laughter group” or a control group.

All of these patients had high blood pressure and high cholesterol. Then, for 12 months, the laughter group was instructed to view humor (watching sitcoms or funny movies) for at least 30 minutes every day.

That’s all … just 30 minutes per day.

After 12 months, the researchers measured cholesterol and levels of C-reactive protein, a marker of inflammation associated with heart disease. The laughter group increased their “good” HDL cholesterol by 26 percent, compared to just a 3 percent increase in the good cholesterol of the control group. The harmful C-reactive proteins dropped by 66 percent in the laughter group but just 26 percent for the control group.

Enjoy your life. Laugh out loud. Oh, by the way, when you do you improve your heart health in the process.

Funny, eh?