Laughter Helps Treat Diabetes

The relationship between body and mind is the subject of scientific researches for almost 20 years. Doctors noticed a long time ago that psychological and social events in a person's life strongly influence their state of health. Hving the goal of finding whether positive emotions can really help in treating diseases, the specialists of the University Loma Linda, United States, have made a 12-months-long study on people with diabetes, the experiment consisting in proposing patients to watch humoristic small videos. Doctors were regularly analyzing the patients' blood, monitoring the content of stress hormones, cholesterol, inflammatory cytokines and markers of cardiovascular diseases.

It was found that laughter has significant effects on the state of patients' health: the levels of 2 hormones – beta-endorphin, which improves the mood, and of the hormone of human growth, which helps maintain immunity functions, - were increased by 27 and 87 percent respectively. Besides, positive laughter lowered the harm made by the stress hormones: the level of cortisol (also called the steroid stress hormone) decreased by 39 percent, the level of adrenaline – by 70 percent and the level of dopamine – by 38 percent. Chronic concentrations of these hormones in the organism have a negative influence on the immune system. It was also discovered that the quantity of "bad" C-reactive proteins was also lowered by 66 percent.

Thanks to laughter, the levels of "good" cholesterol increased by 26 percent and the inflammatory processes in the organism lowered. It is considered that laughter also helps in preventing cardiovascular disturbances and the development of the metabolic syndrome. According to doctors, laughter can be an auxiliary simple therapy of diabetes without any danger or risks.

Posted by summer_rain