As the saying goes, "laughter is the best medicine." It has been shown to be one of the most powerful ways to ward off disease and illness known to man. Research has shown that the health benefits of laughter range from stress relief to treatment for cancer.

>>The following is the evidence that laughter is the best medicine:

# It brings joy to your life and to those around you. It makes your cheeks red and your face glow, making you more approachable and even more lovable.

# It alleviates pain in the body and provides you with a sense of well being by releasing endorphins and serotonin, which have been proven to help reduce pain and can even enhance treatments of many illnesses and diseases.

# It reduces the negative stress hormones such as cortisol and epinephrine, helping you to feel more relaxed

# It affects our social relationships. It allows us to connect with others more readily and to share a common bond with them.

# It helps supply your body with oxygen, helping your feel full of energy and life.

# Your body treats laughter just like exercise, as it makes the blood vessels work more efficiently, increases blood flow to the heart, and helps to increase lung capacity.

# A good belly laugh can boost your immune systems ability to ward off disease for up to three days. Imagine the benefit of laughing multiple times daily!

# It's the best alternative medicine for depression available....and it's free!

# It's a great distraction from the stresses and rigors of life. Any time you can change your focus from the negative emotions of your day, even for just a few moments, the better off you are.

Laughter: The Best Medicine

Laughter reduces pain, increases job performance, connects people emotionally, and improves the flow of oxygen to the heart and brain.

Laughter, it's said, is the best medicine. And there's lots of evidence that laughter does lots of good things for us.

It reduces pain and allows us to tolerate discomfort.

It reduces blood sugar levels, increasing glucose tolerance in diabetics and non-diabetics alike.

It improves your job performance, especially if your work depends on creativity and solving complex problems. Its role in intimate relationships is vastly underestimated and it really is the glue of good marriages. It synchronizes the brains of speaker and listener so that they are emotionally attuned.

Laughter establishes -- or restores -- a positive emotional climate and a sense of connection between two people, In fact, some researchers believe that the major function of laughter is to bring people together. And all the health benefits of laughter may simply result from the social support that laughter stimulates.

Now comes hard new evidence that laughter helps your blood vessels function better. It acts on the inner lining of blood vessels, called the endothelium, causing vessels to relax and expand, increasing blood flow. In other words, it's good for your heart and brain, two organs that require the steady flow of oxygen carried in the blood.

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* Laughter relaxes the whole body. A good, hearty laugh relieves physical tension and stress, leaving your muscles relaxed for up to 45 minutes after.
* Laughter boosts the immune system. Laughter decreases stress hormones and increases immune cells and infection-fighting antibodies, thus improving your resistance to disease.
* Laughter triggers the release of endorphins, the body’s natural feel-good chemicals. Endorphins promote an overall sense of well-being and can even temporarily relieve pain.
* Laughter protects the heart. Laughter improves the function of blood vessels and increases blood flow, which can help protect you against a heart attack and other cardiovascular problems.

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Laughter, along with an active sense of humor, may help protect you against a heart attack, according to a recent study by cardiologists at the University of Maryland Medical Center in Baltimore. The study, which is the first to indicate that laughter may help prevent heart disease, found that people with heart disease were 40 percent less likely to laugh in a variety of situations compared to people of the same age without heart disease.

"The old saying that 'laughter is the best medicine,' definitely appears to be true when it comes to protecting your heart," says Michael Miller, M.D., director of the Center for Preventive Cardiology at the University of Maryland Medical Center and a professor of medicine at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. "We don't know yet why laughing protects the heart, but we know that mental stress is associated with impairment of the endothelium, the protective barrier lining our blood vessels. This can cause a series of inflammatory reactions that lead to fat and cholesterol build-up in the coronary arteries and ultimately to a heart attack."

In the study, researchers compared the humor responses of 300 people. Half of the participants had either suffered a heart attack or undergone coronary artery bypass surgery. The other 150 did not have heart disease. One questionnaire had a series of multiple-choice answers to find out how much or how little people laughed in certain situations, and the second one used true or false answers to measure anger and hostility.