By: MICHELLE PARK
Staff Writer
There is a quote by Millie Florence, “When all else fails, smile”. Actually, smiling has various health effects, such as increasing the number of immune cells.
Our body has hormones called endorphins. Endorphins are released to relieve stress when one gets stressed. Laughing stimulates endorphins in the brain, which improve mood and relieve pain. However, can force laughter help to relieve one’s stress?
As a result, it helps. A study by researchers at the University of Kansas found that laughter lowers one’s heart rate and relieves stress, even when one doesn’t have lots of stress. The research team made participants make a variety of facial expressions, including true and fake laughter, and neutral expressions. Then researchers put participants’ hands in a bucket of ice water, which they don’t like to do, and kept their facial expressions intact. As a result, those with a fake or forced smile had lower heart rates than those with a neutral expression.
This means that smiling, whether one is actually happy or not, helps lower one’s stress. It was also found that making a smiling expression actually makes one happier. Laughter doesn’t just relieve stress, it can be healthy and life-changing. Therefore, one will be positively affected if one forces oneself to smile in a difficult moment.