Humor, comedy, and laughter aren’t just enjoyable, they also hold immense benefits for our physical and mental health, as well as our social lives. If you feel better after a night of roaring great laughs with your pals, a good stand-up show, or watching your fave go-to comedy TV show, it’s not just the placebo effect at work. Laughing has measurable positive impacts on your body.
Verywell Mind explains that laughter strengthens your immune system, making you more resilient to getting ill and developing serious diseases. This happens by increasing antibody-producing cells and enhancing the effectiveness of T-cells. Meanwhile, your heart also benefits, as daily laughter reduces the chance of developing cardiovascular disease.
When combined with physical activity (for example, laughter yoga, where you simulate laughter), you also decrease stress and reduce your body weight, which is good for overall health and fitness.
It’s exactly by reducing the risk of various diseases that laughter is speculated to increase overall longevity.
Laughter also improves a person’s pain tolerance and gives your abdominal (core) muscles, shoulders, and diaphragm a workout.
That said, being even a superfan of comedy shouldn’t be an excuse to avoid working out: you need around 150 minutes of moderate-intensity physical activity a week to stay healthy, according to the CDC.
It’s not just your body that benefits from consistent laughter and living surrounded by good humor. Laughing a lot lowers the amount of the stress hormone cortisol in your body, alters levels of neurotransmitters like dopamine and serotonin, and releases endorphins. This can improve the situation of people suffering from depression.
What's more, laughter is a great way to connect with others, and those positive, deep relationships make you more resilient to stress in the long run.
The ‘No Context Brits’ project has grown by leaps and bounds over the years. On X (formerly Twitter), it has a whopping 1.8 million followers from all over the world, from Brits who love a good laugh about their own culture to people living abroad and hoping to learn a bit more about life in the United Kingdom.
Meanwhile, the project’s Instagram account has 127k followers at the time of writing.
The team curating all of the content has also published two books: Everything is Great: The Weird, Wild and Wonderful World of Modern Britain and How to Really be a Brit: The Unofficial Citizenship Test. They also have a website where you can get merch related to the project if you’re a die-hard fan.
