The Benefit of April Fool's Day

The Origin

British folklore links April Fool's Day to the town of Gotham, the legendary town of fools located in Nottinghamshire. According to the legend, it was traditional in the 13th century for any road that the King placed his foot upon to become public property.

 

So when the citizens of Gotham heard that King John planned to travel through their town, they refused him entry, not wishing to lose their main road. When the King heard this, he sent soldiers to the town. But when the soldiers arrived in Gotham, they found the town full of lunatics engaged in foolish activities such as drowning fish or attempting to cage birds in roofless fences.

Their foolery was all an act, but the King fell for the ruse and declared the town too foolish to warrant punishment. Ever since then, according to legend, April Fool's Day has commemorated their trickery.

The Pranks

As well as people playing pranks on one another on April Fools' Day, elaborate practical jokes have appeared on radio and TV stations, newspapers, web sites, and have been performed by large corporations.

In one famous prank from 1957, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) broadcast a film in their Panorama current affairs series purporting to show Swiss farmers picking freshly grown spaghetti, in what they called the Swiss Spaghetti Harvest. The BBC were later flooded with requests to purchase a spaghetti plant, forcing them to declare the film a hoax on the news the next day.

Laughter Changes Us

In the book A Better Brain at Any Age: The Holistic Way to Improve Your Memory, Reduce Stress, and Sharpen Your Wits (Conari Press, 2009), author Sondra Kornblatt explores how laughter can truly make you feel better.

She writes that the new field of gelotology is exploring the benefits of laughter. It was brought to the public’s awareness in Norman Cousins’ memoir Anatomy of an Illness.

He found that comedies, like those of the Marx Brothers, helped him feel better and get some pain-free sleep from his arthritis.

Humour and creativity work in similar ways, says humor guru William Fry, M.D., of Stanford University–by creating relationships between two disconnected items, you engage the whole brain.

And humour works quickly. Less than a half-second after exposure to something funny an electrical wave moves through the higher brain functions of the cerebral cortex. The left hemisphere analyses the words and structures of the joke; the right hemisphere “gets” the joke; the visual sensory area of the occipital lobe creates images; the limbic (emotional) system makes you happier; and the motor sections make you smile or laugh.

So Let’s Laugh

Research since then has shown that laughter reduces levels of stress hormones such as cortisol, epinephrine, and dopamine; increases health-enhancing hormones (such as endorphins), neurotransmitters, and infection-fighting antibodies; and improves blood flow to the heart — all resulting in greater relaxation and resistance to disease, as well as improved mood and positive outlook.

Laughter Changes Us and in the loveliest ways. When we lighten up we feel more positive and optimistic, more hopeful and engaged. We're friendlier, more resourceful, more attractive, more radiantly alive.

Raising Our Laugh Quota

My hope is that after I reading this blog, you will decide to up your "laugh quota."

So Keep On Laughing!

·      Laughing 100 times roughly equals 15 minutes on an exercise bike? Vigorous laughter increases the heart rate deepens the breathing rate, and uses muscles in the face, stomach, and diaphragm.

·      Aside from improving our moods, laughter can reduce stress, help fight infection, and reduce pain.

·      The levels of two stress hormones, cortisol and epinephrine which suppress the body's immune system, will actually drop after laughter.

·      Laughter causes positive changes in brain chemistry by releasing endorphins, and it brings more oxygen into the body.

·      Higher levels of an antibody (salivary immunoglobulin A) that fights infectious organisms entering the respiratory tract were found in the saliva of people who watched humorous videos.

·      Researchers found after watching an hour-long video of slapstick comedy that the "natural killer cells," which seek out and destroy malignant cells, more actively attacked tumor cells in test tubes. And these effects lasted up to 12 hours.