Let me tell you a joke: which aspect of the English language are boxers¹ best at? Don't you know? It's punch-uation (as in punctuation²!)

 

Funny? Well, maybe you'd better not laugh too hard. According to a paper published by the British Medical Journal, laughter isn't always the best medicine. Sometimes it can even be harmful.

 

Professor Robin³ Ferner from the University of Birmingham, one of the authors of the study, found that bad things could happen to people who laughed too much. He says: "We found people with heart rhythm disturbance⁴ which had stopped their heart, we found people who had fainted, we found people whose gullets had burst, and we found people who'd dislocated their jaws⁶ or burst their lungs."

 

It seems that laughing can be no laughing matter. But it's not all doom⁷ and gloom. Professor Ferner says there are benefits to laughing… when you want to lose weight, for example. Yes, that's right: laugh and be slimmer!

 

Professor Ferner explains that: "You use energy when you laugh, you move your diaphragm, you expand your lungs, and both those things can be helpful."

 

According to the research, laughing for a quarter of an hour can burn up to 40 calories, and if you laughed all day you'd use up about 2,000 calories, which is what most people consume in a day. But don't do that or you might end up with a painful jaw⁵. Ouch! Or you might find people looking at you in a funny way.

 

There's also one kind of laughter, described by the authors as "pathological", which can be caused by medical disorders⁸ such as cerebral⁹ tumours¹⁰ and multiple sclerosis.

 

But I don't want to finish this article leaving you feeling desperate. Laughter comes naturally for most of us. Babies begin to laugh at around 3-6 months.

 

So give in to your sense of humour and… keep smiling. Life is short anyway.

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