Laugh & eat chocolate – Laughter is a highly complex process. Joyous or mirthful laughter is considered a positive stress that leads to a positive effect on health. It can help you STAY IN SHAPE! And if you’re not laughing enough, you’re probably eating chocolate.
Dr. Lee S. Berk has shown that repetitious “mirthful laughter” causes the body to respond in a way similar to moderate physical exercise. It enhances your mood, decreases stress hormones, enhances immune activity, lowers bad cholesterol and systolic blood pressure, and raises good cholesterol (HDL). Berk says, “We are finally starting to realize that our everyday behaviors and emotions are modulating our bodies in many ways.”
14 healthy volunteers were recruited to a three-week study to examine the effects that mirthful laughter and distress have on modulating the key hormones that control appetite. During the study, each subject was required to watch one 20-minute video at random that was either upsetting or humorous. The volunteers waited one week after watching the first video to eliminate its effect, then watched the opposite genre of video.
According to Berk, “The ultimate reality of this research is that laughter causes a wide variety of modulation and that the body’s response to repetitive laughter is similar to the effect of repetitive exercise.”
You need to keep in good MENTAL shape as well, and researchers have found that women and men eat more chocolate as they become more depressed, suggesting an association between mood and chocolate. They found that both men and women who had higher depression scores consumed almost 12 servings of chocolate per month, those with lesser depression scores ate about 8 servings of chocolate per month, and those with no depression had 5 servings per month.
Dr. Beatrice Golomb says, “Our study confirms long-held suspicions that eating chocolate is something that people do when they are feeling down.” Researcher Natalie Rose suggests that depression could stimulate chocolate cravings as ‘self-treatment’ if chocolate confers mood benefits, as has been suggested in recent studies of rats.
Humans crave chocolate, but there are animals that prefer toads, so Australian scientists have created a sausage made out of the meat from poisonous toads to use as bait to train animals not to eat them. Why don’t the sausages whet their appetites for more toad meat? Because they slip a nausea-inducing drug into them, that’s why. In BBC News, Victoria Gill quotes researcher Jonathan Webb as saying, “It’s a really powerful form of learning.” We’d have to agree with that!
The message behind all this? If you need to lose weight and don’t have time to exercise, go to a comedy club!
Did you know that there’s a FREE diet book right here on our website? To read it, click here and scroll down to What I Learned From the Fat Years. Anne Strieber, who used to be a diabetic, devised this diet herself, using scientific principles, and lost 100 pounds by following it, and you can too. Click on unknowncountry.com every day to learn the key to eating right. The key to OUR being here for you tomorrow is YOU: so follow the right path and subscribe today!
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