Can Laughing Help You Lose Weight?
January 15, 2010 by admin
Filed under Uncategorized
I recently ran across a very neat research article in Diabetes Care on the power of laughter.
Laughing doesn't work for pugs, they always get fat.
Japanese researchers took a group of type-2 diabetics and healthy subjects for two days:
Day 1 – they ate a 500 calorie lunch and attended a “monotonous lecture (40 min) without humorous content.”
Day 2 – they ate an identical 500 calorie lunch and attended a 40min comedy show where “the subjects laughed.”
(Funny excerpt: “The subjects estimated their laughter level on a scale of 0–5, and most of them considered that they laughed well (level 4 or 5).” Leave it to a scientist to take the fun out of a comedy show!)
Researchers monitored the subjects bloo d glucose levels for two hours after the and in the people who attended the comedy show glucose levels where significantly lower .
“Negative emotions such as anxiety, fear, and sorrow are known to be factors that elevate the blood glucose level.”
Why Does This Matter To You?
Elevated blood sugar (glucose) levels require that your body secretes insulin to bring them back down. The more insulin you secrete the more your fat cells grow. Anything you can do to reduce your insulin levels (high intensity exercise, low-carb eating) will help to make you leaner.
Apparently, its not just what you eat, but how you eat. If you eat in a stressed out state, that can make your healthy lunch less healthy.
So, lighten up! Pass gas and blame it on somebody else at lunch. Make sure that you are having fun every day – even at work.
Let's get you started.
You can read the whole article in Diabetes Care right here for free:
http://care.diabetesjournals.org/content/26/5/1651.full
Josef Brandenburg is 2010, Washington, DC Personal Trainer of the Year Nominee for both Personal Fitness Professional Magazine and The Washington, DC Fitness Association, and author of “The Body You Want”. He shows normal people with hectic lives and average genetics how to create the bodies they want in the time they actually have. To find out more about the 7-Day Free Trial click here. You can also pick up a FREE copy of his brand new CD – “Why Eat Less and Exercise More is The Worst Advice Ever” here.
