Do You Know The Benefits Of A Sense Of Humor?
A sense of humor offers us several benefits, allowing us to laugh and get away from reality for a while. Laughing relaxes us: with a good laugh, we feel fresh and calm. Knowing how to tell jokes and knowing how to entertain those around you improves social communication and relationships, because who doesn’t want to be close to someone funny?
A sense of humor improves blood pressure and reduces the feeling of anxiety. Psychoneuroimmunology was born out of the discovery of the large number of connections that exist between the central nervous system (our brain and spinal cord), the endocrine system (responsible for releasing hormones) and the immune system (responsible for producing antibodies to fight disease).
One of the conclusions of the studies carried out in this area is that a positive state of mind protects us from diseases and improves the prognosis of others, such as cancer, diabetes and asthma… and a sense of humor is precisely a great pillar of this positive state of mind.
Experts from the Spanish Society of Neurology (SEN) presented a report in 2015 in which they showed that vascular problems were reduced by 40% in people who laughed regularly, which translates to about 4 and a half more years of life.
When we laugh, our bodies release endorphins, serotonin, and dopamine, which improve the feeling of calm and reduce the perception of pain. With this, we were also able to improve the current view of the problems, reducing the worry of ridiculing them.
A sense of humor allows us to relax our muscles and lower our blood pressure, which is a great way to keep our heart healthy and lessen the chances of having a heart attack or stroke.
Benefits for our social relationships
Laughter and humor improve our mood and help us feel better. When this happens, we have the ability to project this feeling onto others. People are attracted to those who smile and make them laugh. In two experiments carried out in Sweden, the relationship between attractiveness and smiles was studied. They found that the stronger and more frequent a smile was, the more attractive the person was considered and the more attractive their face.
And why are we losing this ability over the years? One of the most recent studies of the sense of humor found that adults generally laugh between 15 and 100 times a day, compared to an average of 300 times a day for children.
Children are more spontaneous and analyze less the consequences that an event can have on their lives in the long term. The secret can be to laugh without shame and have a good laugh without hesitation.
Benefits of a sense of humor for our cognitive abilities
Laughter gets our attention, so whoever makes us laugh becomes an attractive person. Therefore, a sense of humor also favors information retention.
A study by Melisa B. Wanzer, published in the scientific journal Communication Education, states that humor draws the attention of people around the comedian – whether a person or circumstance -, facilitates the understanding of what is happening or the facts exposed, and dynamizes the processing of the content. In other words, a sense of humor is conducive to learning.
Understanding jokes also requires creativity, speed, and other resources that are rationally harder to acquire. Providing a positive view of problems, a way out of reality and just a moment of fun improves cognitive functions, the immune system and our social relationships.
A sense of humor has many benefits: laughing gives us life and makes us better inside and out. On the other hand, the humorous material we have is enormous, whether in books, magazines, on the internet itself or in a new look at what happens to us. Therefore, laughing is a possibility that is within everyone’s reach.
