Laughing With Friends Makes People More Resistant Pain

Laughing with friends for 15 minutes was able to increase a person's tolerance to pain by an average of 10 percent. Researchers discovered endorphins (painkilling hormones) that is released when you laugh out loud in a social environment can make the pain less.

"We recommend that laughing, which is an opiate effect of the hormone endorphin, seems to play an important role in social bonding," said lead researcher Robin Dunbar, evolutionary anthropologist from Oxford University in England as reported from theconversation,

Previous research has found that laughing is more likely to do when in groups than when alone. Well, in this latest study researchers experimented with video comedy Mr. spectacle. Bean or comedy performances at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. While other groups were shown a video recording ordinary events such as golf tournaments.

After watching, participants were given tests of pain tolerance. The procedure to see how long they can withstand the cold, tight cuffs or doing heavy exercise.

"We tested the hypothesis that laughs together raise the pain threshold, both in the laboratory and in natural conditions. In both cases, the results confirmed that when the laughter, the pain threshold was significantly increased. Meanwhile, when the subjects saw something that raises a laugh with the unnatural, the threshold the pain does not change, it is often lower, "Dunbar said in a paper titled 'Laughter Social Correlated with a Higher pain Threshold' and published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

The results are explained because endorphins are released when laughing. The researchers calculated that 15 minutes watching a comedy in a social environment increases a person's ability to withstand pain about 10%.

Professor John Stevens of the Department of Nursing and Health Southern Cross University, said therapeutic effects of laughter on health is not a secret anymore, but a special study to find out how and why the mechanism, still very little is done.

"The study by Dunbar is the most detailed study to date to indicate that laughing releases endorphins," says Prof. Stevens had done research on how laughter can help patients with dementia.

This research could also help explain some of the other laughs therapeutic effects against depression, cancer and dementia that can be found in the literature. All of these studies explains that laughter therapy can make people feel better, reduce pain, become happier and more sociable.