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The American Heart Association reports that one of the best ways to protect yourself against heart attack is to laugh often and exuberantly. Researchers compared patients who had suffered heart attacks or had undergone angioplasty or similar revascularization procedures with healthy aged-matched control patients. Results showed that the patients who had suffered heart problems were 40% less likely to laugh in a variety of situations than their healthy counterparts.

"The old axiom that, 'laughter is the best medicine' appears to hold true when it comes to protecting your heart," said Michael Miller, M.D. and Director of the Center for Preventive Cardiology at the University of Maryland Medical Center, Baltimore. Miller and his team could only speculate about why this is so. "We don't know why laughing protects the heart, but we do know that mental stress is associated with the impairment of endothelium, the protective barrier lining in our blood vessels," said Dr. Miller.

So laugh it up people...

Labels: health, humor, Practical Advice