Happiness and Health

ENG 101

Jose Torres

Professor: L. McCormick

12-06-10

Happiness and Health

     Happiness is an emotional state, in which it helps people to be healthy all around; being laughter one of the most powerful weapons to achieve happiness.  The happier a person is, the healthier that person can become. However, due to the lack of happiness people may experience health problems because, they could acquire stress which is the cause of many diseases.

            The laughter is a way to get healthy; thanks to it people fight diseases.  Laughter acts directly in the physiology of people, it can deal with the functions and activities of live or living matter as organs, tissues and cells. Many scientists have made experiments about the connections between laughter and its influence on the human body. As stated in “The Laughing Guru”, as a result of experiments of Dr. Berk and psychiatrist William Fry; they determined that laughter dampened the production of cortisol hormone that eliminates the immune function. The chemical and biological effect of laughter, it manifest in other investigations in which neuroendocrine and stress hormone changes as a result of laughter. In the same way laughter help to produce cells which are using by the body to combat infections and cancerous expansion.

            Happiness as a mechanisms to achieve health, it has been studied for many scientist, educators, psychologist for many years.  According to “The Laughing Guru” by Raffi Khatchadourian,  “in sixteenth century England, Richard Mulcaster, a humanist educator, argued that laughter produced warmth throughout the body, and was a good antidote for colds, headaches, and bouts of melancholy”.  When both happy people and unhappy people have contracted a virus and diseases such as influenza and cold, it has been proven that happy people easily overcome them and they present fewer symptoms that unhappy people.  It indicates that there is a close relation between the psychological part (happiness) and the physical part (health).  An American Journalist named Norman Cousins explained about his own experience of unhappiness after a trip to Russia and how it affected his health.  He experienced stress unhappiness as a result he developed ankhylosing spondylitisis, which is a degenerative disease of the joints (85).

            Due the lack of happiness people may have health problems because, they could acquire stress which is the cause of many diseases like, pain of any kind, digestive problems, depression, obesity, sleep problems, heart disease, skin conditions like eczema and loss of appetite. To overcome these problems and their consequences, people like doctors, adviser, counselor and gurus, have developed countless programs, advices, therapies and techniques to help unhappy people.

The health and happiness are closely related each and other, but when this equilibrium is broken in any way people's health is affected seriously. According to “Happiness Enhances Health” by Rick Nauert.  “A new study finds that happiness and other positive emotions play an even more important role in health than previously reported”. When people are unhappy they are likely to get more diseases because their self-defense is low. The unhappiness brings many negatives emotional states like stress and its consequences like depression, headache, tension, irritability, fast heartbeat and other. In the other hand, happy people can easily overcome them or they do not show any signs of them.

Unhappy people are more exposed to stress which play an important role in people life because, its response is the body’s way of protecting themselves, help people to stay focused and alert when they are exposed to an emergency give them extra strength to defend themselves. But when stress gets out of control it is harmful to health destroying people relationships and the enjoyment of life.

Specialized people have developed treatments to help unhappiest to improve their emotional state and therefore their health and happiness. Psychiatrist treats children, teenagers and seniors because the unhappiness and stress has not preference for age. Many management programs can teach them about the nature, sources of stress and its effects on health. Many therapies have been created like cognitive-behavioral therapy, group therapy and exposure therapy. In the same way alternative treatments have been developed like, massage therapy, acupuncture, acupressure, diet, meditation, yoga, breathing exercise, Tai Chi and sound therapy. The use of many pharmaceutics is considered to avoid stress and achieve happiness like vitamins B6, B complex, C, panax ginseng, valerian and many more.

Happiness helps tremendously to people to be healthy, because thanks to it people avoid illness and overcome diseases that affect the body. Laughter plays an important role to achieve happiness and it is very important all the research and investigations that expert such as Doctors, Scientist and Gurus like Kataria are doing to develop programs based on it to reach full happiness.

 Khatchadourian,Raffi.”The Laughing Guru”ENG101.The Pursuit of Happiness.Ed.E.McCormick.New York:La Guardia Community College.2010.84-85 Print

 Nauert,Rick.” Happiness Enhances Health”.November 8,2006. December 1,2010.< http://psychcentral.com/news/2006/11/07/happiness-enhances-health/392.html>Web