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Review
. 2021:4:135-138.
doi: 10.1016/j.crphys.2021.04.002. Epub 2021 Apr 30.

Laughter therapy: A humor-induced hormonal intervention to reduce stress and anxiety

Nuraly S Akimbekov  1 , Mohammed S Razzaque  2
Affiliations
Review

Laughter therapy: A humor-induced hormonal intervention to reduce stress and anxiety

Nuraly S Akimbekov et al. Curr Res Physiol. 2021.

Abstract

Prolonged pharmacological interventions have detrimental health consequences by developing drug tolerance or drug resistance, in addition to adverse drug events. The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic-related stress has adversely affected the emotional and mental health aspects around the globe. Consequently, depression is growing during the COVID-19 pandemic. Besides specific pharmacological interventions, which if prolonged have detrimental health consequences, non-pharmacological interventions are needed to minimize the emotional burden related to the COVID-19 pandemic. Laughter therapy is a universal non-pharmacologic approach to reduce stress and anxiety. Therapeutic laughter is a non-invasive, cost-effective, and easily implementable intervention that can be used during this pandemic as a useful supplementary therapy to reduce the mental health burden. Laughter therapy can physiologically lessen the pro-stress factors and increase the mood-elevating anti-stress factors to reduce anxiety and depression. In this ongoing stressful period of the COVID-19 pandemic, keeping necessary social distancing, it is important to create a cheerful environment that will facilitate laughter among the family, neighbor, and community to cope with the stresses of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Keywords: Anxiety; Depression; Insomnia; Laughter.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Figures

Image 1
Graphical abstract
Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Major types of non-pharmacologic interventions.
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
A few potential benefits of laughter therapy.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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