A new study indicates that laughter is known as the best medicine, but it can actually help our health, especially if we laugh with friends. Researchers, according to "Daily Mail," found that sharing laughter with a close friend reduces the risk of cognitive or physical disability by more than 30 percent among individuals over 65 years old. This was compared to individuals of the same age who laughed alone or laughed while watching television with no one else present.
While the reason for these results remains unclear, researchers suggest that laughing with friends may improve our immune functions, which in turn could reduce the risk of disability. Yodai Tamada from Nagoya University in Japan, the lead author of the study, states that laughing with friends brings health benefits such as stress relief, improved immune function, and a sense of social connection.
The study, published in the journal Preventive Medicine, aimed to examine the link between everyday laughter and the onset of "functional disability" among people in Japan. To learn more about the potential health benefits of laughter in daily life, Tamada and his colleagues turned to a national study on aging in Japan, aiming to analyze factors associated with health and well-being among individuals aged 65 and above.
The researchers utilized data from 12,571 participants, 46.1 percent of whom were male, all of whom answered complete surveys regarding their laughter habits. The researchers stated, "We evaluated their laughter in daily life from three perspectives: the types of situations in which people laugh, the number of situations in which people laugh with others, and the people with whom they laugh."
During an average follow-up period of 6.3 years, 1,420 (11.3 percent) of the participants developed functional disability. The team found that after adjusting for potential confounding factors, participants who laughed with others reduced their risk of functional disability by 30 percent. Similarly, a higher number of situations in which they laughed with others led to a decreased risk of functional disability.
The team noted in their research paper, "Having more situations where you laugh with others or at least in a situation where you laugh with friends may contribute to reducing the risk of functional disability later in life." Interestingly, those who laughed in conversation with friends were less likely to suffer from functional disability than those who laughed with partners or with children or grandchildren.
The team recognizes that their study cannot definitively conclude that laughter itself can prevent the onset of functional disability. Thus, further research is needed to accurately determine the causal relationship. In recent years, a significant number of studies have focused on the link between everyday laughter and various health outcomes. For example, in 2020, it was found that the rate of cardiovascular disease was significantly higher among individuals who experienced a lower frequency of laughter.
