College kids, in my opinion, are like toddlers. We need a good amount of naps, tend to cry a lot, and have strange diets. We also try to have fun and have some laughs as much as we can, because who doesn’t love to laugh? From day one, it has been instilled in us that laughter is the best medicine — whether we fell off our bikes or got our hearts broken, a good laugh could cure anything. Is there any science behind this, though? Is laughter purely a psychological placebo, or is there some sort of chemical reaction in our bodies that actually makes us feel better? As a laugh enthusiast, I set out to find if laughter really is the best medicine.

According to the Mayo Clinic, laughter can have both short- and long-term benefits, such as improved mood and a stronger immune system. However, researchers at Loma Linda University in California recently published a study where they measured the stress levels and short-term memory in 20 healthy older adults, aging around 60-70. In this experiment (it’s an experiment because they variables were manipulated and the subjects were asked to do something. See, Andrew, I do listen!), one group was asked to sit silently without doing anything for 20 minutes, and the other group watched funny videos for the same amount of time. Both groups then gave saliva samples and took a short-term memory test. Turns out, the group that watched the funny videos performed much better than their silent counterparts, with a much larger improvement in memory recall abilities from the first time they took the memory test. The “humor” group performed 43.6% better, while the “non-humor group” performed 20.3% better than the “non-humor group.” So that’s it, right? The answer is clear?

Wrong.

Another group of investigators from the United Kingdom conducted a meta-analysis of nearly 5,000 studies, dating back to 1946, that were related to effects of laughter, and concluded that laughter isn’t totally beneficial for the body. According to the meta-analysis, “the force of raucous laughing-out-loud may dislocate jaws, trigger asthma attacks, and pop hernias. The physiological response to mirth might also kickstart Pilgaard-Dahl and Boerhaave’s syndromes, rare but dastardly conditions known to man.” The analysis also looked at findings that say “infectious laughter can disseminate real infection,” as well as lead to stroke, epilepsy, and multiple sclerosis. 5,000 studies sure seems like a lot, and those harmful effects seem to out weigh the benefits. So that’s it, right? The answer is clear?

Wrong again.

There must be thousands, if not tens of thousands of studies on the effects of laughter to the body, and in choosing to compare these two studies, I had to keep an open mind about the many possibilities out there. The first study that I chose included a somewhat well-conducted experiment with a control variable and a manipulated variable. That was all great, but why was the saliva sample taken? What are the odds that the people who watched the funny videos just happened to have better memory recall abilities than those who sat silently? What is there was a third variable at play? All of these questions were left unanswered, and while the study had the basic components of a good study, it was not conducted well enough to rule out chance or third variables. The meta-analysis, on the other hand, included several thousand studies that seemed to lead to the conclusion that laughter was more harmful than it was beneficial. The side effects that were listed, however, seemed pretty far-fetched  some of the time, and what’s worse is that we have no idea about the studies that were included in the analysis. Were they anecdotes? How often did people actually suffer a stroke when they laughed too hard? Were certain studies not published to make it look like there were more harmful effects than not (otherwise known as the file-drawer problem)? Did third variables come into play? Were studies that weren’t measuring the same thing inappropriately combined, altering results? These questions were left unanswered as well, proving that even meta-analyses with thousands of studies can often be misleading.

Because there are so many studies revolving around laughter and I was only able to look at two, there seems to be only one conclusion that I can make: Laughter is not always the best medicine. While there are major short-term and long-term benefits, there is always the possibility of a harmful side effects. Meta-analyses like the one conducted in the U.K. serve to refute the ideas that are widely thought of as true — laughter cannot be seen as totally beneficial to everyone. But, as we learned by looking at the vaccine problem in class, we know that nothing is truly safe, and there can be small risks to even the tamest of activities. That being said, don’t ever stop laughing, because I think we all want to believe deep down that laughter can cure anything.