Cheap Healthy Tips

Laugh for your Health

 If you’re looking for an excuse to take in a comedy show with your friends, look no further. According to new research, the physical exertion of having a good belly laugh in the company of friends, as opposed to a polite titter, exhausts us so much we produce protective endorphins that raise our pain threshold and make us feel good.

 

British researchers found that when we laugh properly, we exhale repeatedly without drawing breath. This is an involuntary mechanism that appears to happen only in humans. This physical effort exhausts us and triggers the release of protective endorphins, which regulate pain and promote feelings of well-being. 

The investigators found that watching just 15 minutes of comedy in the company of others increased the pain threshold by an average of about 10 percent. They say laughing with others seems to be more likely to produce this effect than laughing alone. They believe it is the “bonding effects of the endorphin rush that explain why laughter plays such an important role in our social lives.” 

 The authors of the study say the endorphin “rush” only seems to happen when we have a good belly laugh (one that creases the eyes, as opposed to polite laughter that does not reach the eyes), and when we share it with others. They suggest that the fact that only this type of laughter releases endorphins is because it probably evolved as a way of encouraging us to socialize with each other.

Spuds for Your Life? 

You probably think of potatoes as carb-heavy diet saboteurs, but new research may cause you to abandon that stereotype. According to a recent study, just a couple servings of spuds a day reduces blood pressure almost as much as oatmeal without causing weight gain.

Researchers from the University of Scranton in Pennsylvania studied 18 patients who were primarily overweight/obese with high blood pressure. The participants ate six to eight purple potatoes (each about the size of a golf ball) with skins twice daily for a  month. The authors of the study used purple potatoes because the pigment, or coloring material, is rich in beneficial phytochemicals. They monitored the patients’ systolic and diastolic blood pressure, and found that the average diastolic blood pressure dropped by 4.3 percent and the systolic pressure decreased by 3.5 percent. Most of the study subjects took anti-hypertensive drugs and still had a reduction in blood pressure. None of the participants gained weight.

It’s important to note that the research was not done with French fries, but with potatoes cooked in a microwave without oil. The authors of the study say high cooking temperatures seem to destroy most of the healthy substances in a potato, leaving mainly fat, starch and minerals. The purple potatoes used in the study are becoming more widely available, but the researchers say a future study using white potatoes will probably produce similar results