A well-known wisdom is that laughing is healthy for you. But is that true? And even more interesting, is it also healthy when your faking your laugh?

Maybe you think your face is always looking a bit serious. Well, it’s worth to put a smile on your face then, even a fake one. Here are three reasons why smiling is good for you.

1. You will experience less stress
In a study conducted by the University of Kansas, subjects were asked to hold their hand for a few seconds in a bowl of ice water. All subjects had an increased heart rate and more stress. But, when the subjects were asked to smile while holding their hands in ice water, they experienced less stress and increased heart rate. This is, because your body creates more happiness hormones such as endorphins, during laughing.

2. Your communication is a lot better when you’re smiling
You don’t only communicate with your mouth, but actually by using your entire face. There is something like facial communication. Researchers from Massachussets University conducted a ‘still face experiment’. Mothers were asked to watch at their babies for about 2 minutes without using their facial muscles. Within a minute almost all babies started to cry hysterically. Researchers concluded that babies did panic because they couldn’t see their emotions responsive to their mother.

3. Other people give you nice comments
If you smile a lot, your environment will respond to that in more positive reactions towards you. Psychologists from Uppsala University did an experiment where subjects were shown photos of neutral looking people. Just before the neutral faces where showed, a broad smiling person was shown in a flash. The shown photo of the smiling person was so short (only 25ms), that subjects couldn’t detect it. Yet, the subjects imitated the laugh. They concluded that if you see a smiling person, you smile back. So, if you laugh a lot, you probably get a lot smiles back.

A fake smile is good too!

For years people thought that fake smiling didn’t had the same effect as real laughing. But researchers from the University in Boston found that also fake smiling is good for you! They did an experiment where students had to promote a disgusting soda, they had to use a fake smile during recordings. Before the experiment, a group of students where shown photos of laughing people. During the commercial recordings they had to drink the soda and did it without hesitating. Real laughrimples were noticed in this group. While the other group, that did not see the pictures had problems laughing and drinking the soda during the recordings. The conclusion was that people start smiling after seeing a smiling person. Even when you start with a fake smile, you will most off the time end up with a real smile.

Would you like to laugh right now? Check this:

Old spanisch man laughing hard
Goats yelling like humans