She began to experience attacks due to her son-in-law’s jokes. His jokes were extremely dirty

In her book “How to cheat your age”, Professor Rose Anne Kenny suggests what steps are worth taking to stay young longer – and proves that a person is only as old as he feels. The author has 35 years of experience in leading scientific research on aging processes. Thanks to the courtesy of Wielka Literamy Publishing House, we publish a fragment of it.

No boredom – laughter and purpose

Laughter and smiles shorten the distance between two people. We are programmed to be happy and share positive experiences with other people through laughter. Laughter is a social behavior; we use it to communicate and bond. You can tell a lot about the strength of relationships between people by the tone and type of their laughter. But you already know that. The laughter of a tickled child, the laughter of someone who feels obliged to respond to a boss’s joke, and the laughter of good friends are different from each other and show the type of relationship between certain people.

The older we get, the less we laugh, but the benefits last a lifetime. Laughter is a simple way to improve many age-related cellular pathways, so it’s especially important for us as we get older. Laughter not only makes you feel better, it also helps maintain better health by working muscles, increasing breathing and blood circulation, improving digestion, emotional catharsis and joy. Healthy children laugh as many as 400 times a day, but older adults laugh only 15 times a day. As I wrote this, I thought that I don’t remember laughing today – and it’s already 6 p.m.!

‘How to cheat your age’ by Professor Rose Anne Kenny Wielka Litera Publishing House

Laughter is contagious

In most cases, our laughter has nothing to do with humor, but rather is correlated with social connection. We use laughter and humor to deal with situations, to demonstrate our willingness to get involved, or to show that we are on the same side. We laugh more often when other people are around. Friends spend an average of 10 percent of their conversation laughing. We definitely laugh more if we know and like the people we are with. The most important thing for us are other people, how they influence us and what they think about us. Laughter is therefore crucial to important social interactions and matters because of how important it is in connecting with others. They underlie our survival and remain important for our physiology and psyche, playing a key role in the aging process.

Therefore, laughter connects us with others. As with smiling and kindness, laughter is contagious; we can be “infected” with laughter from someone else, and this contagion is greater if we know the person. Laughter improves our mood and reduces the stress level of everyone involved.

She began to experience attacks due to her son-in-law’s jokes. His jokes were very dirty Photo Przemysław Skrzydło / Agencja Wyborcza.pl

Animal laughter

Laughter has also been noticed in many animal species. This makes sense, of course, because laughter is part of mammalian evolution and, if you think about it, it’s a lot like an animal calling. You can actually say the same about some people’s laughter! Great apes laugh while playing together. Dogs also laugh and perform a “play bow” before playing. Even rats laugh: females tickle their offspring, triggering a laughter response in the young. Tickling is a bonding activity because it requires at least two animals or people. Try tickling yourself – this is not possible because tickling is a social interaction and involves trust. A stranger can’t walk up to you on the street and start tickling you. Tickling should be fun and safe, should not pose a threat, and should result in laughter.

They considered it part of the healing process

So humor, laughter, learning, connection and health are all connected. The benefits of humor and laughter have been described in detail in various historical materials, including as early as the reign of Solomon (971–931 BC). In the Book of Proverbs we read: “A joyful heart brings health, but a depressed spirit dries up the bones.” Even then, people understood that a joyful spirit brings positive therapeutic effects.

Ancient Greek doctors prescribed watching comedians perform as an addition to therapy – they considered it an important part of the healing process. Native Americans appreciated the power of humor and laughter in healing, using not only the help of traditional shamans but also the support of clowns. In the 14th century, the French surgeon Henri de Mondeville used his sense of humor to distract patients from the pain during surgery – until 1847 there were no anesthetics. Even in cases of amputation, de Mondeville used laughter during and after surgery to help patients recover. He described this practice in his book Surgery: “Let the surgeon take care to regulate the whole pattern of the patient’s life so that joy and happiness may be found in it, and so that the patient’s relatives and close friends may support him and joke with him.” English pastor and scholar Robert Burton he expanded this practice by using humor in the treatment of mental disorders in the 16th century, as he wrote in his book The Anatomy of Melancholia. During the same period, Martin Luther, a German monk and co-founder of Lutheranism, used a sense of humor in the treatment of mental disorders as a key element of pastoral counseling. Luther advised people suffering from depression not to isolate themselves, but to surround themselves with friends who could joke and make them laugh.

So what happens when we laugh?

Laughter is, above all, another way of breathing. When we laugh, we use our intercostal muscles to repeatedly blow air out of our lungs without inhaling it. Laughter increases pressure in the chest by effectively holding your breath and stopping the normal, regular, rhythmic flow of air in and out. The increase in pressure in the chest reduces blood flow to the brain, sometimes causing dizziness or fainting. That’s why the phrase “I almost fainted from laughing” is true.

I run a specialist clinic for adults experiencing loss of consciousness, and I sometimes encounter patients whose physiological response to laughter is atypical, which means that it causes their heart rate to slow down and stop; then blood pressure drops and loss of consciousness occurs. I remember a patient who only experienced these attacks when her son-in-law told a joke. His jokes were consistently raunchy. The patient’s reaction to his jokes became such a common occurrence that her family brought multiple videos to the clinic showing the frequency and characteristics of her fainting while laughing. We connected her to equipment that simultaneously measured blood pressure, heartbeat and blood flow in the brain. We then asked her son-in-law to tell one of his jokes.

The patient burst out laughing and then fainted. Her heart stopped for a moment, cutting off blood flow to her brain. The woman needed a pacemaker to prevent fainting. Her cheerful family then brought me further recordings in which the patient burst into laughter, but without any undesirable consequences. In other words, the pacemaker kicked in when her heart started beating too slowly while she was laughing, preventing her from going into cardiac arrest.

Laughter provides physical relaxation and a “workout”. Good laughter exercises the diaphragm, contracts the abdominal muscles and trains the arms; as a result, the muscles are more relaxed afterwards. It even provides a good workout for the immune system and the heart.

Is a “good laugh” really beneficial on a chemical level?

Yes, because laughter lowers the levels of stress hormones such as cortisol and adrenaline. Low cortisol levels stabilize blood sugar and insulin levels, regulate blood pressure and relieve inflammation. Adrenaline is the chemical responsible for fight and flight, it raises blood pressure and increases the rate of heartbeat. It is associated with abnormal heart function and heart attacks. The effect of adrenaline is the opposite of the effect of relaxation hormones. Therefore, lowering the level of adrenaline calms the nervous system and calms the circulatory system. Laughter has even been shown to weaken or block the effects of adrenaline in heart attack patients. An hour of genuine laughter a day reduced the risk of another heart attack by 42 percent.