Laughter Really Is Good Medicine

Chuckles, chortles, giggles and guffaws are good for the brain

Sonya Collins

Updated December 18, 2025

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Q: What’s a sleeping brain’s favorite musical group?

A: REM

If that joke made you laugh, your brain just got a pick-me-up.

You already know that laughter feels great. It turns out one of life’s simple pleasures — a big belly laugh — sets off a brain process that can ease stress, boost your mood and battle depression.

“[Laughter] makes you feel warm, relaxed and calm. It makes you feel that all is well with the world and whomever you are laughing with,” says Robin Dunbar, professor of evolutionary psychology at the University of Oxford.

A belly laugh ignites the brain

A burst of laughter activates multiple regions of the brain and triggers the release of a flood of endorphins — feel-good chemicals that are also natural painkillers — that can lead to a warm, buzzy feeling that’s an immediate mood booster.

“Endorphins also sharpen the mind,” Dunbar says. In a study of 25 adults ages 40 to 65 published in BMC Complementary Medicine and Therapies in 2025, laughing at a four-minute video clip before taking a test of thinking skills led to better test scores.

Laughter can also lower stress-related hormones, such as adrenaline and cortisol. While we need these hormones to function and stay alert, at consistently high levels they can harm our health.

“If you’re really stressed out at work...and you’ve got that kind of horrible gnawing feeling, that is cortisol running at high levels,” says Sophie Scott, a professor of cognitive neuroscience and director of the Institute for Cognitive Neuroscience at University College London.

The giggles are a good antidote: Just one session reduced cortisol levels by 36.7 percent according to an analysis of data from eight studies, with a total of 815 participants, published in PLoS One in 2023.

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Fake it till you make it

You don’t even have to laugh in earnest to get an endorphin boost, Scott explains. Fake or forced laughter — simply saying “ha-ha-ha” — involves enough muscle movement to prompt the release of endorphins in the brain.

“Laughter yoga” or “laughter therapy” is based on the idea that simulated or forced laughter can lead to health benefits. Pioneered in 1995 by Dr. Madan Kataria, while he was still a practicing physician in India, laughter yoga typically involves exercises that prompt fake laughter until real laughter takes over.

Multiple studies have affirmed the benefits of laughter yoga, among people of different ages and with a variety of health conditions. In a study of 84 older adults with depression, for instance, doing laughter yoga twice a week for eight weeks reduced symptoms of depression, anxiety and stress, according to a 2025 report in Aging & Mental Health.

Those benefits may do more than boost mood: In a randomized controlled trial of 36 perimenopausal and menopausal women, a month of twice-weekly online laughter yoga reduced the frequency and severity of hot flashes and night sweats and improved sleep. The study was reported in 2025 in Holistic Nursing Practice.

Laugh often; extra points for laughing with friends

To keep enjoying the effects of a good laugh, though, you’ve got to keep ‘em coming. Try your own “ha-ha-ha” exercise, perhaps while remembering a funny moment. Spend a few minutes with your favorite funny videos. You may start to reap the stress-relieving rewards even before you begin to laugh.

“If you’re anticipating something that makes you laugh, your heart rate will start to drop in anticipation of it,” Scott says.

An important part of laughter’s benefits may be the social-emotional environment in which we laugh, she adds. So think about the people in your life you can really let loose and howl with and keep them close. You’ll get the brain benefits of laughter along with those you’ll gain by spending time with others.