Okay Let’s Laugh & Learn

What does a Laugh Do:

A good, hearty laugh relieves physical tension and stress, leaving your muscles relaxed for up to 45 minutes after. Laughter boosts the immune system. Laughter decreases stress hormones and increases immune cells and infection-fighting antibodies, thus improving your disease resistance.

Laughter Traditions
When a baby is firstborn, the Navajo believe the child lives among the Holy People, until the first time the baby laughs. The act of laughing is a sign the child is transitioning from the spirit world with the Diyin Diné and is ready to fully join his or her family in life

These are the overall funniest words in the English language for both sexes:
• Booty
• Booby
• Hooter
• Nitwit
• Twit
• Waddle
• Tinkle
• Bebop
• Egghead
• Twerp
I call bullshit on this… what age group were they asking.

Funniest Celebrity Laughs
1. Tom Cruise
Just close your eyes and listen to this. You’d have to guess that it’s the Top Gun actor almost immediately! His laugh has also inspired many memes over the years.
2. Fran Drescher
It may be annoying, and it may sound a bit fake, but there’s no denying that this laugh is that of The Nanny.
3. Ricky Gervais
That high-pitched, almost wheezing laugh is unmistakable as the UK actor and comedian!
4. Janice from FRIENDS
We know this is put on for a fictional character, but if the laugh is enough to haunt Chandler’s dreams then we certainly class it as iconic.
5. Bart Simpson
We feel like we have to give a special mention here too for one of our favourite laughs for a cartoon character. None other than Bart Simpson.

1. Rats are ticklish
Rats laugh, chimps laugh and so do dogs. But rats aren't laughing at jokes. They laugh when they're playing, in the same way, humans do, In humans, laughter has developed into an important emotional expression, used throughout many channels of communication. Think of the ways we try to convey laughter in text-based media, like smileys and LOLs.

2. Laughter isn't about jokes

Robert Provine, a psychologist from the University of Maryland found that we laugh most when talking to our friends.
We're 30 times more likely to laugh at something when we are with other people.
Intriguingly, within these conversations, we are still not laughing at jokes: we laugh at statements and comments that do not seem on the face of them to be remotely funny.
It's a form of communication, not a reaction.
The science of laughter is telling us that laughter is less to do with jokes and more a social behaviour which we use to show people that we like them and that we understand them.

Your brain can tell the difference between deliberate and helpless laughter
3. Not only does your brain automatically tell the difference, but listening to staged laughter produces greater activity in an area called the anterior medial prefrontal cortex.
It's known to be involved in understanding other people's emotions.
It shows that we automatically try to comprehend someone's deliberate laughs, even when not instructed to do so.

4. Laughter is catching
Our brain scans also reveal that laughter is contagious. Even when someone is having their brain scanned, which is not very funny, you can see their brain responding to the laughter by preparing their facial muscles to join in.
And the more that someone shows a contagious response to laughter, the better they are at telling whether a laugh is real or forced.
This seems to suggest that joining in when you hear laughter is more than just contagion - it may be helping you to understand what that laughter means.

5. People you know are funnier
The fact that laughter encourages laughter is why an MC at a comedy club will spend a lot of time warming up the audience and keeping the energy high between acts.
You would have to laugh solidly for up to three hours to burn off a packet of ready salted crisps
But familiarity and our expectations are still often at the heart of laughter.
People find jokes funnier if they think they were told by a famous comedian.
"Two snowmen are standing in a field. One says to the other: 'Funny, I can smell carrots too'." - even on paper, it's funnier when you think it's coming from Jimmy Carr rather than Jamie Oliver.

6. Laughter doesn't make you fitter
The internet is full of claims that laughter is great for your health.
It's sadly not true however that laughter burns more calories than going for a run.
Although laughing does raise energy expenditure and heart rate by about 10-20%, this is on the order of burning an extra 10-40 calories for every 10-15 minutes of laughing.
You would have to laugh solidly for up to three hours to burn off a packet of ready salted crisps.

7. Relationships last longer when you laugh
Berkeley psychologist Prof Bob Levenson asked couples to discuss something about their partner that annoyed them - a touchy subject.
The couples that used laughter and smiling not only felt better immediately but also reported higher levels of satisfaction in their relationship, and stayed together for longer.
This shows us that laughter is an emotion that we can use with those with whom we are emotionally close, to make ourselves feel better.

8. Laughter requires precise timing
In conversations, people time their laughter to occur very precisely at the ends of sentences. Even people speaking in sign language do this - even though they could laugh throughout their "silent" conversation if they wished to.
I'm intrigued by how comedians coordinate the responses to their routines from the stage.
It's also difficult to learn to have the confidence to leave a pause for the audience to laugh and to cope if they don't.

9. Laughter is attractive
Can you laugh someone into bed? One study of personal ads found that both men and women specified a sense of humour more frequently than intelligence, education, profession or sexual drive.
Another found that we rate strangers as more attractive if they laugh at our jokes

10. Some things are almost guaranteed to make you laugh






RACHELLE STEELE