How Laughing Fights Pain

We all know that laughing makes us feel good, but research has never shown exactly how this happens or how laughter fights pain, which it definitely can. An interesting investigation from England has demonstrated that the physical act of laughing - the actual muscle contractions involved - lead to the release of "feel good" endorphins, the same brain chemicals responsible for the runner's "high." Endorphins are also known to influence our perception of pain. Researchers at Oxford University studied reactions to pain both before and after bouts of laughter. Participants agreed to the use of a freezing sleeve slipped over their forearms, a blood pressure cuff that kept tightening and an uncomfortable ski exercise while they watched comedy videos, as well as some videos that weren't funny at all. The results of five sets of studies were published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences and confirmed that laughter activates the release of endorphins. The results also indicated that pain thresholds were significantly higher in participants after laughter than in members of control groups who watched factual videos instead of funny ones.

My take? The findings from this study are important. The results help us better understand something we've long observed and that earlier studies have shown: laughter can influence health by relieving pain, lowering stress and even helping protect against heart disease. When you're stressed, nothing works better to counter it than a first-class belly laugh. I recommend seeking out laughter whenever you're stressed or feeling down. Call your funniest friend, rent a video comedy or you can try Laughter Yoga (seriously, there are more than 6,000 clubs in 60 countries). Bottom line: lighten up and laugh! It's good for you.

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Women's Heart Disease Tied To Small Blood Vessels

Heart disease affects men and women in different ways. In women, symptoms of burgeoning heart disease are often more insidious, but when a heart attack strikes, it is more lethal than it is in men. Roughly 25 percent of men will die within a year of their first heart attack, but among women, 38 percent will die. Women are twice as likely as men to have a second heart attack within 6 years of their first one, and women are twice as likely as men to die after bypass surgery.

Yet after a heart attack, women's hearts are more likely to maintain their systolic function - their ability to contract and pump blood from the chambers into the arteries. According to C. Noel Bairey Merz, MD, Director of the Women's Heart Center at Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute in Los Angeles, this suggests that heart disease manifests differently in women, affecting the microvasculature (small blood vessels) instead of the macrovasculature (major blood vessels) as it does in men.
Dr. Bairey Merz provided an overview of the sex differences in heart disease at the Physiology of Cardiovascular Disease: Gender Disparities conference, October 12-14 at the University of Mississippi in Jackson. The conference was sponsored by the American Physiological Society with additional support from the American Heart Association. Dr. Bairey Merz's presentation was 'Ischemic Heart Disease in Women: Microvascular Coronary Dysfunction.'

Function Indicates Form
The heart is a muscle, and as with other muscles, depriving it of oxygen causes damage that diminishes its ability to function. Conventional wisdom notes that the most prevalent form of heart disease is coronary artery disease, in which atherosclerotic plaque narrows and eventually blocks the major arteries leading into the heart, thus cutting off the heart's supply of oxygen. The damage to the heart tends to be permanent, and after a heart attack, the heart never quite regains its former power.
But when reviewing the medical literature, Dr. Bairey Merz and her colleagues found that women's hearts were less likely than men's to lose their ability to pump blood after a heart attack, and that female heart patients were less likely to present with obstructive coronary artery disease. Instead, the oxygen deprivation and subsequent damage to the heart is more likely to occur when small blood vessels, not major arteries, become dysfunctional.
"That is the reason women are often misdiagnosed and suffer adverse events," said Dr. Bairey Merz. "Physicians have been looking for male pattern disease, when we need to start looking at female patterns." Likewise, more research is needed to develop appropriate treatments and reduce risk in women, she added.
According to Dr. Bairey Merz, the good news is that it is possible to measure damage to small blood vessels objectively. "The gold standard is reactivity testing, angiograms, and other physiologic measures, rather than anatomic study."

Dr. Bairey Merz provided an overview of the latest data about these methods and how they can be applied to help clinicians understand gender differences in the pathophysiology of heart disease during her presentation.

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