NEW ORLEANS — Laughter may indeed be the best medicine, researchers said Wednesday as they released a study showing that people who report that they laugh more are less likely to have heart disease.
"The old axiom that laughter is the best medicine appears to hold true when it comes to protecting your heart," Dr. Michael Miller, director of the center for preventive cardiology at the University of Maryland in Baltimore, told a news conference.
"This is the first study to demonstrate a link between laughter and heart disease."
Miller and colleagues told a meeting of the American Heart Association that they believe laughter may release chemicals that relax the blood vessels.
"It's not just going 'ha, ha, ha,' " Miller said. "It's having a good, hearty laugh."
For their study they interviewed 150 patients who had either suffered heart attacks in the past or had undergone procedures such as angioplasty to clear out clogged arteries.
They compared their responses to those of 150 people the same age who did not have heart disease.
The questions came off standard tests used to measure humor in day-to-day situations, such as getting to a party to find someone else wearing the same outfit.
"If you were woken up in the middle of the night by a good friend who had been out of town and whom you hadn't seen for a while, how would you respond?" Miller asked.
"We found that individuals that had heart disease had a 40 to 45 percent reduced likelihood of laughing in response to those social situations."
He hopes laughter may one day be used for therapy.
"We don't know yet if forcing yourself to laugh when you're angry is beneficial, but there may be effective, practical ways for people to lessen their discomfort or hostility to improve their humor response and increase the amount of laughter in their lives," Miller said.
"There is no reason we can't learn to regulate our laughing muscles, like all the other exercises we do," he added. "Second, we may be able to find ways to take ourselves less seriously."
Miller said his team is now looking to see if the act of laughing releases chemicals that affect the blood vessels, perhaps like nitric oxide, known to dilate blood vessels.
The chemical, related to the nitrous oxide used to relax dental patients, is already targeted by some heart drugs.
"Wouldn't it be ironic if laughing gas turns out to be protective for the heart?" he asked.