When we tell a joke or crack a smile, the fun usually only lasts for a moment, and we don’t think about what comes after. Laughter is often dismissed as something casual and inconsequential, but research shows that it has a surprisingly meaningful role in promoting physical and mental health, especially as one ages. Potential benefits include stress reduction, enhanced short term memory, and an overall reduction in negative cognitive effects caused by aging.
Stress is something that almost everyone experiences, so it’s easy to dismiss it as a minor, fleeting problem. However, prolonged stress can cause a variety of problems, including mental effects like anxiety and depression, as well as cognitive issues like impaired memory and concentration. Epinephrine, more commonly known as adrenaline, and cortisol are stress hormones that are released from the adrenal gland in dangerous situations, triggering our “fight or flight” response. Epinephrine increases our blood pressure and heart rate, heightens alertness, and puts us in “survival mode”. High levels of epinephrine can cause nausea, anxiety, high blood pressure, and even life-threatening events, including heart attacks, strokes, and tumors. Cortisol is a vital hormone for the regulation of blood pressure, immunity, and metabolism. High levels of cortisol can lead to muscle and bone weakness, weight gain, high blood pressure, high blood sugar, and insomnia. Unfortunately, aging is accompanied with increased stress hormone production, specifically cortisol, so these negative consequences catch up to us as time passes. Research has shown that laughter can decrease the production of epinephrine and cortisol. Conversely, when we laugh, there is a great increase in the production of dopamine, our “feel-good” hormone, endorphins, our natural painkillers, and oxytocin, our “love” hormone. These combined effects make humor not only an enjoyable experience, but a valuable tool that can reverse our stress response.
Chronic stress can also significantly impair our ability to form and store memories by damaging the hippocampus, a brain structure responsible for the formation and consolidation of new memories. Laughter causes lowered stress levels and can ultimately protect us from that danger. Additionally, research has shown that humor enhances short-term memory. A specific study shows that adults who watched humorous videos had improved learning abilities.
In a world full of expensive, complex treatments for every issue, laughter is a low-cost tool that we all have access to. From alleviating our body’s stress response to improving our memory, humor, as simple as it seems to be, may be the fountain of youth that we’ve been searching for.
https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/articles/22611-epinephrine-adrenaline
https://mcpress.mayoclinic.org/healthy-aging/the-health-benefits-of-humor/
https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/articles/22187-cortisol
https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/body/23040-endorphins
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26026141/
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10426230/
