One of the greatest health problems in modern society today, if not THE greatest, is stress. The American Institute of Stress claims that over 75% of all doctor visits in the US are stress related. The pace of modern life is so fast and we all have so many demands on our time that we all sometimes suffer from stress.

Stress can affect different people in different ways, but will almost certainly cause everyone in either the short or long term to experience reduced effectiveness, productivity and overall mental and physical wellbeing. This usually applies even to those people who seem to thrive on stress. In the most extreme cases, stress is known to cause serious illnesses such as heart disease, cancer, suppression of the immune system, and many others physical and mental conditions.

There are many different things we can do to deal with stress, and there's no doubt that we all need to have a way of dealing with stress that works for us, or we are likely to end up with one of any number of stress related heath problems.

Whilst it's natural to think that stress is a bad thing, researchers have now established that there are two types of stress - good stress and bad stress. The great news is that good stress is actually the opposite to stress as we generally think of it, and it counters the negative effect of bad stress. Even better news is that one of the forms of good stress is laughter.

There is new science called psychoneuroimmunology which studies how our mind affects our health. Doctors at California's Loma Linda University Medical Center have carried out research to find out if laughter can improve the immune system.

They exposed a group of adults to an hour of comedy videos and took blood samples during and after the hour. The samples showed increases in 'good' hormones such as endorphins and neurotransmitters, and decreases in cortisol ad adrenalin - stress hormones. No such changes were found in a control group not exposed to the videos for the same period.

The researchers found that antibody producing cells increase in number and cells which combat viruses are activated as a direct result of laughter. Laughter is like a safety valve that releases stress and tension, causing our stress hormones to drop, which allows our immune system to work more effectively.

One of the researchers, Dr Stanley Tan stated 'All these neuro-hormones act like an orchestra, each instrument makes a particular note. Laughter makes the entire orchestra more melodious or balanced. In other words, laughter brings a balance to all the components of the immune system.'

Physical exercise can also have similar results, but isn't it fantastic to know that we can actually reduce stress and improve our mental and physical well being by something as simple and enjoyable as laughing!

Research has also been presented to the American College of Cardiology indicating that laughter boosts blood flow and may reduce your risk of developing heart disease.

In this study, 95% of the volunteers in the study had better blood flow after watching a comedy clip, while 70% had a worse blood flow after watching a stressful film clip.

Other research has shown many other benefits brought about by laughter, such as helping to fight infections, relieving hay fever, easing pain, helping to control diabetes, decreasing blood pressure and heart rate and increasing oxygen in the blood.

Most adults laugh around 5 to 15 times per day, whilst children laugh anything from 100 to 400 times per day! Most children can laugh at anything, and you don't need any scientific research to tell you that children know the how closely related laughing and enjoying life are.

Smiling and laughing more easily and more often clearly can have very real and profound benefits to our mental and physical health. Surely this makes it well worth the effort to go out our way to smile and laugh more. I'm not suggesting that we should all go around with a silly grin permanently on our face, or laughing all the time at anything or even nothing.

Life is serious and we all have responsibilities, but that doesn't mean we can't look for the funny side to things and take ourselves a little less seriously. In almost any situation we find ourselves in, no matter how serious, there will be some sort of funny side to it if we actively make the effort to look for it.

Taking life and ourselves less seriously will also go a long way towards developing our sense of humour, and there's no doubt that having a good sense of humour will make our lives richer and more enjoyable.

There are countless things we enjoy doing, eating or drinking that we are told that we shouldn't do because they are bad for us. It's incredible to know that scientific research actually supports something as easy to do and as much fun as watching a good comedy program or film, and that it can do us the world of good in many ways.

Surely one of the very best ways to enjoy yourself must be to sit down for a couple of hours and watch something that never fails to make you laugh out loud. Even things we may think we are now too mature and adult to watch, like classic cartoons we loved as a kid, can give us just as much pleasure now as they ever did = if we let them. The fact they can also be so good for our mental and physical health and wellbeing is really the icing on the cake!

'A well-developed sense of humor is the pole that adds balance to your step as you walk the tightrope of life.' - William Arthur Ward