This morning, MSNBC's The Body Odd posted a story on whether you can die from laughter. (Spoiler: You can in cases of intense overexcitement, plus you can also black out from "overbreathing.")
But I prefer to think about the upside of cracking up. Laughter can lower your heart rate and blood pressure as well as reduce the constriction in your blood vessels. It can also help with your mental health. The problem is, we don't do it enough.
Enter psychologist Dr. Steve Wilson, founder of the World Laughter Tour, who trains nurses, doctors, social workers and lay people to run group therapy laughter circles. "Like music, art and certain physical movements," says Wilson, "laughter can help you work through emotional issues or simply help you feel better. But sometimes in life, we're told that our laughter is too loud, or too snorty. We're told to stop doing it. And we do.""
Surprisingly, he doesn't use jokes to help clients refind their inner laugh. Jokes can make the listener feel obligated to respond. "Fake crying doesn't help anybody," he says. "Why should fake laughter?"
Wilson, who formerly worked with celebrated laughter yoga guru Dr. Madan Kataria, uses a series of exercises designed to make you chortle, chuckle and just plain giggle like a fool. For example, there's the Hawaiian Handshake, where you say a rolling "aloha-a-a-a" which turns into a "ha ha" burst of laughter. Or there's the Burning Hot Sand, during which you imagine you're tiptoeing across boiling sand (ah, oo, oo, ah) ending in an ah-ha-ha. Over the phone, he demonstrated the Roller Coaster, ending in a long, sputtering round of ho-ho-hos. It wasn't funny. But I laughed. I couldn't stop, in fact.
"All humans are born to laugh," he claims. "Look at a baby. He lies in his crib, laughing at nothing. He's doesn't even have a sense of humor yet."
Groups, though, are the most effective way to get the laughter rolling. Accordingly, Wilson has been asked to run his workshops at weddings and bar mitzvahs, to bring family members together. I am considering inviting him to my mother's Fourth of July barbecue, sometime before Mom gives my kids their third red-white-and-blue Popsicle for breakfast but after my husband tries to grill on her tiny, toppling, coal grill from the '70s which requires an entire bottle of mind-numbing lighter fluid to produce sufficient flames for one very black hot dog.
Before you dive into that Chocolate Smore-cupine ice cream sundae, read that line again. The focus here is on the indulgent mind-set, not on the indulgent behavior. An indulgent attitude will not only help you enjoy your food more, it may also help your body enjoy the food more, which can lead to feelings of satiety, which can lead to weight loss. A new study (that the authors claim to be the first of its kind) has found that the mind-set in which we consider each meal, and each snack, can have a surprisingly strong effect on our physiological responses to the food we consume.
[After the jump, learn more about the diet drawbacks of "sensible snacking."]
Posted: Thu 06/23/2011 11:32 AM | By: Corrie Pikul
Photo: Thinkstock
Having a bad day? Avoid the pet store on your way home (unless you're ready to adopt something furry), and don't even think of swinging by the Carpet Emporium. As we all know from childhood weep fests with Mr. Bear-Bear, rotten moods make us reach for something soft, warm and fluffy. A new study inThe Journal of Consumer Research helps explain why—and also shows how negative states make us susceptible to buying things that satisfy our tactile cravings. In a series of five experiments involving hand lotion and mood inducement, researchers at the University of Florida found that participants in a negative state were more responsive to the way the lotion felt than to the way the package looked, and that they derived more pleasure than the positive-mood participants to the feel of the lotion on their hands.
[After the jump, the explanation behind the study, plus five things that are comforting to touch that are not George Clooney]
I don't remember exactly where I first encountered the jet
hand dryer, but I remember the elation I felt as I dipped my hands into the
machine and felt the hot air currents whipping against them from both sides.
This was the way that Judy Jetson would dry her hands, I thought, just before
she presented them to a robot manicurist with an air gun of instant-dry
lacquer. These dryers of the future seemed infinitely more advanced than the
classic heat dryers, with their droopy nozzles and damp power buttons, and
light-years away from paper towels. At last, a way to stay clean and save
trees!
Imagine my dismay when I
read in this month's O magazine that jet dryers actually increase the amount of bacteria on users' hands—it's because the air inside isn't exactly sterile. Even worse, the dryers blast bacteria all over the restroom (and presumably, those inside), "spewing germs more than six feet." After reading this, the jet dryer morphed in my mind from a
futuristic time saver to a potential weapon of germ warfare. O writer Ramona Emerson explains that the superiority of jet dryers is actually a myth. The hand-drying
researcher whose work she cites says that paper towels are more sanitary, but this still doesn't solve my eco-dilemma.
Here's an idea: We could take a cue from the Japanese, who
have taken hand drying (among many other things) to a new level. Many public washrooms in Japan
lack towels or dryers, and it is common for Japanese people to carry small,
personal hand towels or handkerchiefs (okay for drying your hands, but not for blowing your nose). The towels are so ubiquitous that there's even a museum
dedicated to them. By tucking my own little reusable towel in my purse, I'll
at least be able to keep my germs to myself. But I admit: I'll miss the roar
of the jets.
Who could forget Charla Nash, the woman who was brutally mauled by a friend's pet chimpanzee? When Charla made her first public appearance on The Oprah Winfrey Show in 2009, the world was shocked by the images of her disfigured face. She was missing her eyes, nose and lips (though she was still able to talk). The attack also left Charla without hands, which sightless people often depend upon to get around and to interact with others. Despite Charla's extremely unsettling appearance, viewers were struck by her courage and poise. "Charla is proving that it truly does not matter what you look like as long as you are beautiful inside, as she obviously is," posted one commenter after the show. "Charla's drive, determination and outlook on her future is indeed uplifting," wrote another. At the time of the interview, Charla expressed hope that she would someday qualify for facial reconstructive surgery. Last week, doctors at the Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston announced that Charla had received a full face transplant last month (in order to protect the privacy of the donor, they did not reveal the date of the surgery).
After the jump: The moment that left the lead surgeon almost at a loss for words
Do you need a pulse to live? Not if you're a hunky HBO vampire, and not if you qualify to be a recipient of a new, prototypical mechanical heart. Two doctors
in Texas have developed a device to replace a broken (as in
malfunctioning) heart with two centrifugal pumps. During a radio
report on WNYC's Morning Edition, Billy Cohn, MD, and Bud Frazier, MD, at the Texas Heart Institute in Houston described how they honed
the technology by implanting the devices in young cows. After testing the devices on 38 calves, the doctors decided
they were ready to implant a version of the machine into a human body. The
patient, Craig Lewis, had a heart that was so damaged that he'd been given
12 hours left to live.
[After the jump, hearts that don't have a beat and songs that barely have a pulse.]
1. In the beginning, man created treadmills. These personalized
conveyor belts allowed fitness-crazed humans to work out any time of the day or
night in the comfort of their own homes. With treadmills, they could avoid
workout obstacles like traffic, darkness, cold, snow, heat, pollution, unwashed
clothes, angry dogs and angry neighbors. Finally, there were no excuses for
missing a workout.
Photo: Thinkstock
2. The humans soon found other uses for the treadmill. These
alternative uses often served as excuses for missing a workout.
Photo: Amy West, via Flickr
[After the jump, fast-forward to the treadmills of the future.]
After suffering through a doubleheader of sports-related stress fractures in my 20s, I became a calcium-aholic. On top of putting skim milk in my coffee and cereal, cheese on my sandwich, yogurt in my smoothies and almonds on just about everything, I started eating more of the lesser-known calcium sources like kale, chickpeas, tofu and even sardines. It doesn't stop there: In order to bump my calcium intake up over 1,000 mg, which is the U.S. recommended daily allowance for women under 50, I also take a calcium supplement of 600 mg (plus vitamin D) at breakfast, and sometimes a second supplement at night. There was even a period--and I recognize the folly in this--during which I was popping those chewy chocolate-flavored supplements like they were Hershey's kisses. I take these precautions because I'm stressed out about my bones. The memory of my injuries, combined with my knowledge of the looming risk of osteoporosis (10 million Americans have it, and 80 percent of them are women), have made me think that I should be erring on the side of too much calcium.
However, a recent study has deflated my hopes that calcium supplements are the magic pill to prevent fractures and osteoporosis.
Snap quiz: Your friend tells you she's participating in
a fundraiser and asks you to donate money to her cause. You've got the funds,
and you adore the friend. In which situation would you be more likely to pony
up?
(a) Your friend is training for her first marathon with a
group that raises money for cancer research. (b) Your friend is hosting a masquerade charity ball to raise
money for a children's after-school program.
[Find out which option most people choose, after the jump.]
Posted: Thu 06/09/2011 10:25 AM | By: Corrie Pikul
Even those people who are tone deaf and so lacking in
rhythm as to be unable to find the beat in a Katy Perry song have taken comfort
that in a planet-wide dance-off, they'd outlast most other species on earth.
That admittedly and pitiably small consolation just went
"Oh! Oh! Oh!" and shot across the sky-y-y-y. This was made clear in
an article on the research of neurobiologists Aniruddh Patel and John Iversen
in the Brain special issue of Discover magazine.Patel explains to Discover that our sense of rhythm may have evolved from the brain development
that allowed us to learn to speak. Therefore, Patel says, the only other
animals that can boogie to a beat would be those that are advanced in
"vocal learning," or the ability to mimic the sounds of others:
parrots, an Asian elephant and Snowball the sulfur-crested cockatoo, a YouTube phenom whose dance moves and
habits were studied by Patel and his team.
In their experiments with Snowball, the bird was
videotaped reacting to music that was sped up and slowed down under a variety
of circumstances (in isolation, with verbal encouragement, with another
person). The videos showed that Snowball can not only synchronize his moves to
different tempos, but can do it when no one else is in the room (although he
danced the most when he had a human partner). This cockatoo loves mainstream pop like Michael Jackson and Lady Gaga,
and he's a huge fan of the Backstreet
Boys (wonder if he knows they're
on tour this summer? I'd love to see him get pulled up on stage to lead the
crowd in a dance to "Everybody").
What about the salsa-dancing retriever, you are undoubtedly wondering? When
I shared this video with my husband, an enthusiastic freestyle dancer, he
dropped the phone. Patel tells Discover that he suspects booty-shaking pets
like this are reacting to cues from their human trainers, instead of innately
responding to the beat. So for now, in this species-wide dance-off, the
cockatoo is the true champion—at least from a scientific perspective.
But the story isn't over yet! Patel and Discover are
looking for other examples of animals that can dance to a beat. If you have a
video of an animal grooving in time to music, please send it to them at webmaster@discovermagazine.com.
The Oprah blog is a place where you can find engaging news coverage, fresh inspiration, and the straight talk you've come to count on. A place that
provides the tools you need to make a change—if not in the world—then at
least in your little corner of it. It's a place that will raise your energy, lower your blood pressure and
occasionally make you laugh—in short, a place of possibility.
