Imagine this: You’re relaxing after a long day at work and unwinding to YouTube videos of people falling. If you’re like most people, your instinct will be to audibly laugh when someone takes a terrible tumble. While laughing is a completely normal reaction to a non-serious event, such as an enemy tripping, in some cases excess laughter can cause you to die.
While the term, “Laughter is the best medicine,” is often heard, just like a trusted vaccine from a syringe, it is not 100% reliable. In a post in Splitsider, James Hamblin writes, “if you happen to be 
walking around with an aneurysm in your brain (1-6 % of us, most unknowingly), a single laugh could cause that aneurysm to rupture.” That’s right people, one jolly jiggle and you could go ker-splat. A brain aneurysm is typically located in weak spots in the base of the brain, and many times has no symptoms or warning signs until it is too late. As Medicine Net put it, “Cerebral aneurysms are common, but most are asymptomatic and are found incidentally at autopsy.” With a brain aneurysm rupturing every 18 minutes, the next fatal one could occur to you.
In the case that you aren’t one of those carrying an aneurysm, you could very well be at risk for a laughter-induced heart attack. While the American Heart Association claims human hearts get stronger everyday post having an attack, heart disease is still the number one leading cause ofdeath. Every day, about 2,200 people die from heart attacks; adding up to roughly 612,000 Americans every year. Heart attacks occur due to blood clots formed in the arteries around the heart preventing the flow of blood to the muscle. Laughing increases respiratory functions within the lungs, and in some cases can decrease the amount of oxygen in the blood beingsupplied to the heart. When the circulatory system is interrupted, one typically feels a great deal of chest pain followed by light-headedness, and in severe cases, loss of consciousness and death.
In the event you still believe you’re invincible to death-by-laughter, you better hope you’re not one of the 25 million people diagnosed with asthma; and if you are, go
od luck. Wheezing, coughing, tightness of the chest and shortness of breath are all common symptoms of asthma, and may often be shrugged off as signs of only a minor asthma attack. Many people suffer from asthmatic episodes following heavy laughter or crying, and subdue the issue with a common inhaler. However, in the event an inhaler is not present, the extreme emotion can cause one to die from lack of oxygen to the lungs.
Upon discovering laughter can actually shorten your life, I wondered if those who laughed more actually had shorter lives than those who were considered more serious. One study, analyzing the lifespan of comedians, found on average comedians died at a younger age than serious writers or individuals in other professions. Another study, compared the lifespan of men and women entertainers and athletes to business, political, and military oriented people. It was concluded here that the youngest deaths were again reported in comedians and athletes. The mean age for comedians and athletes was 77.2, while business, political and military personnel were expected to reach 82.95 years of age.
However, like Andrew has imprinted into our brains, correlation need not equal causation. Several confounding third variables come in to play with these conclusions, as comedians’ lifestyles are on average drastically different than those of, say, judges. Perhaps the bright lighting on a stage comedians are typically exposed too, leads to negative impacts somewhere in the brain. In this case, the harsh fluorescent lighting could be the cause of the decreased lifespan in comedians, and the death not necessarily due to the amount of laughter the entertainers are experiencing.
While modern medicine has vastly increased its knowledge on the treatments for brain aneurysms, heart attacks, and asthma since the beginning of time, one can never be too careful when it comes to protecting their health. It may be hard to stop laughing completely, but it might be wise to choose a tearjerker at the cinema over a comedy every once in a while.
This is an amazing topic. I guess I think that I will die because of other things other then laughter so I never really thought go this before. As all the other comments say, I do believe that there are many health benefits of laughter and for me they outweigh the results that you may die if you laugh to much. It would be interesting to be if you looked at the meta-anaylisis of many different studies to see if laughter can really be harmful to your health. For now I think it is ok to still laugh but this is defiantly something to look into further. Nice job!
Personally I’ve never heard of anyone laughing themselves to death. But I have to say, I did think twice before laughing while I was reading your blog. There is evidence that laughter can have an impact on when you die. But I believe that in this cause laughter could be considered the mechanism rather than the cause. In the examples you stated there are other medical conditions which must already be in place in order for someone to laugh due to their jolly giggle. People don’t drop dead from just laughing alone. This article made a very good point by stating the same statistics you did but then going on to explain that “since we will all leave this world at some time, having the last laugh isn’t the worse way to go.”
Grace, I believe that this blog post is a bit silly yet still very informative. As Aubree stated above, there are many health benefits of laughter. I am a bit confused because I feel as though if someone is on the verge of having a heart attack or a brain aneurism, a laugh is only one of the many, many things that could ultimately trigger the medical emergency. One could presume that hysterically crying would potentially put more stress on the body than a good laugh. Still, your articles were intriguing and the fact that many scientists have researched this before you is extremely interesting. I tend to be an optimistic person and have heard many times that laughing can actually result in weight loss. In order to decide if this fun fact is only a legend, I decided to research the question. According to an article on LIVE STRONG, laughing causes the average person’s heart rate to increase 10-20%. “Research conducted by Vanderbilt University Medical Center revealed that laughing for 10 to 15 minutes burns between 10 and 40 calories”. After finding out this evidence, I would say that I humbly disagree. When given the decision, feel free to chose the comedy.
Being serious all the time can have negative effects to.. Laughter is a away to relieve the stress that is building inside of you. It cools down your stress response, and increases your heart rate and blood pressure which results in a relaxed feeling. The chances of a person dying from laughter is rather low… and a life without laughter is not a life worth living honestly. Like Andrew said in class it’s really all about the odds compared to the odds of something else and the odds against laughing isn’t enough to convince me to stop… Like they say everything is good in moderation.
There are also many benefits that go along with laughter which you did not mention. I think it is important to examine both sides of the argument and then determine whether the positives outnumber the negatives, because lets face it-cutitng back on laughter can lead to a pretty miserable life. I found on http://www.helpguide.org/articles/emotional-health/laughter-is-the-best-medicine.htm that laughter relaxes the body, boosts the immune system, releases endorphins, and improves blood flow in the heart. The site does not stop at the positive physical aspects of laughing though, as it explains how it eases anxiety, stress, and fear as well as improve the overall mood, among many other perks. It is definitely something to further explore.