Filed under: Happiness, Fitness, How I Stay Fit
Laughing until it hurts can certainly feel like a workout — especially in your abs — but does it actually do anything for your love handles? That’s what researchers from Loma Linda University in California set out to find when they began studying the effect a good session of the giggles has on the body.
Chief researcher Lee Berk and colleagues studied 14 individuals, testing their blood and blood pressure before and after movie clips. One clip showed a violent excerpt from Saving Private Ryan, while the other showed comedy stand-up routines.
They discovered that while the violent clip had no apparent influence on appetite, watching the funny one did — it helped decrease appetite-suppressing hormone leptin while increasing appetite-boosting hormone ghrelin. This doesn’t mean participants were hungrier — rather, the clip helped strike a more harmonious balance between the two hormones.
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