Laughter facts: Even smiling absorbs stress, study proves

"Laughter is the best medicine." This saying is true. A study proves that people who laugh frequently may handle stressful events better. It does not matter what the intensity of the laughter is; what is important is that the person laughs or even smiles. 

A team from the University of Basel did a study and stated a laughter fact. People laugh at least about 18 times a day. It includes any degree of pleasure that people feel when they interact with one another. The team reported that certain factors affect a person's laughter. They studied the time of the day, age, and gender of a person and stated that, on average, women smile more often than men. 

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A study proves that even smiling could help absorb stress.

The link between laughter and stress

University of Basel's Division of Clinical Psychology and Epidemiology of the Department of Psychology researchers shared their findings. The team recently studied the link between stressful events and laughter about perceived stress every day.

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They used an acoustic signal from a mobile phone app for the intensive longitudinal study. The app allowed subjects to answer questions eight times a day. They let the subjects answer at varying intervals for 14 days. The questions were linked to the intensity and frequency of laughter and the reason for laughing. 

Apart from that, any stress symptoms or stressful events that happened are included since the last signal. Lead authors, Dr. Thea Zander-Schellenberg and Dr. Isabella Collins used this method to study the link between laughter and stress. 

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They included stressful events and physical and psychological symptoms of stress and studied how it affects laughter in everyday life. Their subjects were from 41 psychology students, where 33 were women, with an average age of below 22. 

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Smile away to relieve stress.

The intensity of the laughter has less influence.

The observational study's first results were based on the specialist literature and have been laughter fact. The subjects that laughed frequently had milder stress symptoms after they were exposed to stressful events. 

The second findings were unexpected. The team discovered that there is no link between stress and the intensity of laughter. They saw that even weak laughter could absorb the same amount of stress as those who had strong laughter. 

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The research team said that it could be because people are better at counting how often they laugh rather than how intense it was. 

So if you are currently feeling stressed or under a stressful event, laugh or maybe smile a little bit. It could do wonders not only to you but also to the people around you. You might not know, but someone else could be falling in love with your smile, so smile away!