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He Who Laughs, Lasts               By  Neil Osterweil WebMD Medical

(excerpts)

             

Michael Miller, MD, director of the center for preventive cardiology and associate professor medicine at the University of Maryland in Baltimore. "The old axiom that 'laughter is the best medicine' appears to hold true when it comes to protecting your heart".

 

Those who laugh most often have a significantly lower risk for heart disease.

"We don't know why laughing protects the heart, but we do know that mental stress is associated with the impairment of the endothelium, the protective barrier lining our blood vessels. This can cause a series of inflammatory reactions that lead to fat cholesterol buildup in the coronary arteries, and ultimately to a heart attack."

 

So when you are having a stress reaction, if you laugh, apparently the cortasol that has been released during the stress reaction is reduced, "says psychologist Steve Sultanoff, PhD, who is president of the American Association for Therapeutic Humor.

 

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