Yesterday I spent the day with a good friend, working and having fun. Afterwards  we went to dinner and laughed our bellies off! I'm sure the people next to us though we were drunk, but we weren't. It was one of those moments when everything was funny, really funny – like tears streaming down my face funny!

Anyway, I had an awesome day and I remembered how I used to laugh like that all the time, before I started taking life too seriously (doh!)

Years ago a man used laughter as his medicine. It was in the late 70's and Norman Cousins was diagnosed with a painful and life threatening form of arthritis called Ankylosing Spondylitis (AS). This condition is so debilitating and doctors gave him a dreary diagnosis with little chance of recovery (basically his spine would fuse together leaving him immobile)

Norman tired conventional medicine, but when that failed him, he took his health into his own hands. 

He check out of hospital and checked himself into a hotel room, took megadoses of vitamin C and watched marx brothers and TV sitcoms – and laughed and laughed. He found that 10 minutes of “belly laughter” allowed him two hours of pain-free sleep. 

Norman cured himself of the “incurable” illness (AS) and wrote a series of books about humour as medicine. He wrote his story about healing through laughter in his book “Anatomy of an illness” which sparked the research into emotions and it's affect on health. 

Laughing lowers your cortisol levels, and switch's on the relaxation response. When this happens your other hormones can rebalance – esp. those associated with mood and metabolism. Your body moves into self-healing mode which means anything that's out of balance or in need of healing, gets done, including detoxification, the immune systems becomes much more active and your body will naturally cool down inflammation and more. There is science behind laughter as medicine.

A good belly laugh is not just good for your mood, but also for your body. Find something funny to watch, call a friend who always makes you laugh, go out and be silly and make yourself laugh. 

Whatever you can, make laughter part of your daily routine, make it part of your daily diet. Just like vitamins and superfoods, make belly laughter something you do everyday. I know I will.