Warning: living in a city could seriously damage your health | Florence Williams

I recently spent some time walking around Washington DC, where I live, with an aethalometer sticking out of my shirt collar. I carried the device, which measures air pollution, around with me like a pet monkey as I walked in a city park, drove on the city’s circular beltway and picked up my kids from school. It was sadly eye-opening because it confirmed what I have long suspected: my city is a polluted place.

The monitor, borrowed from Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in Palisades, New York, measures black carbon, a byproduct of car engines and other fuel- burning processes. Its name comes from the Greek word meaning “to blacken with soot”. And that’s exactly what happened.

The spindly machine measured high readings of 6,000 nanograms per cubic meter while I drove around, even during off-peak hours. More shockingly, I recorded equally high values just outside my daughter’s school, where cars and buses idle, waiting to pick up students. Much of the pollution there is generated by diesel fuel, which has been shown to shorten life spans around the world by causing cardiovascular and pulmonary problems. Worldwide, fine particulate matter, of which black carbon is a component, is blamed for 2.1 million premature deaths annually.

Scientists have long considered the lungs as vulnerable to air pollution. Only recently have they come to realise the role of the nose as a pathway to the brain; the extent of the nose-brain connection was only illuminated in 2003, when researchers in smog-choked Mexico City found brain lesions on stray dogs.

Unfortunately for city dwellers, the closer we live to these roads, the higher our risk of autism, stroke and cognitive decline in ageing, although the exact reasons haven’t been teased out. Scientists suspect it has something to do with fine particles causing tissue inflammation and altering gene expression in the brain’s immune cells.

“I hold my breath when I’m behind a diesel bus,” Michelle Block, a neurobiologist who studies pollution’s effects on microglial cells at Virginia Commonwealth University, told me.

Regardless of whether people know about pollution, its effects are being felt in other ways too. In one 2008 survey of 400 Londoners by economists George MacKerron and Susana Mourato at the London School of Economics, “life satisfaction” fell significantly – half a point on an 11-point scale – for each additional 10 micrograms per cubic metre of nitrogen dioxide pollution, also a common byproduct of diesel engines.

Because I am strangely driven to probe the unhealthy aspects of my life, I also walked around my city wearing a portable electroencephalogram (EEG) device on my head. I wanted to know how easily I could attain “alpha” brain waves (indicating a calm, focused state of mind) by walking in various parts of the city, including a park.

Research has shown that people who live in cities may suffer more psychological stress than people who live in rural areas. For a study published in Nature in 2011, Jens Pruessner and colleagues at the Central Institute of Mental Health in Mannheim found a 21% increase in anxiety disorders, a 39% increase in mood disorders and a doubled risk of schizophrenia in city dwellers. Urban living was linked to increased activity in the brain’s amygdala – the fear centre – and in the perigenual anterior cingulate cortex, a key region for regulating fear and stress.

Meanwhile, a 2011 study from Portugal found that people living near industrial “grey areas” reported less optimism. This may sound trivial, but optimism is associated with healthier behaviours (such as a willingness to exercise), lower levels of fat in the blood and mental resilience, or the ability to recover from stress.

I uploaded the data from my EEG to a California-based website that read it, fed it into an algorithm, and sent me back this dejected message about my lack of alphas: “This indicates that in this state you were actively processing information and, perhaps, that you should relax more often!”

Both my local park and my house sit under the flightpath of a busy airport, and noise pollution is yet another well-proven source of stress. I decided to measure the noise. This I did in my very own backyard, using an iPhone app. I found out that the jets flying overhead every two minutes cranked out average decibel levels between 55 and 60 but sometimes spiking much higher (60 decibels is high enough to drown out normal speech). These are the same levels linked to stress-related disease and increased use of anti-anxiety medication in European studies. I bought noise-cancelling headphones. And I thought seriously about moving to the Rocky Mountains.

But before we all ditch our cities to camp out in a hay bale, it’s worth remembering that there are some excellent ways to counter the ill effects of crowded, Euclidean, monochromatic, loud modern life. Because, let’s face it, there are still some rather nice things about living in cities. And the fact is, more and more of us live in them. Globally, as of 2008, more people live in cities than outside them. By 2050, another two billion people will pile in, leading one US anthropologist, Jason Vargo, to suggest a new name for our species: Metro sapiens. Learning to make cities livable will be one of the greatest public health challenges of this century.

One clear step is the need to tackle air pollution. Health experts in the UK recently suggested parents cover their babies’ prams during morning rush hour. A better solution would be to regulate the polluters. Paris, Madrid, Athens and Mexico City plan to ban diesel vehicles from city centres within the next 10 years.

Another antidote to noise, particulates and greyness is both delightful and affordable: trees. For humans, urban trees provide not just aesthetic pleasure but health benefits. Trees soak up air pollution, create cooling and provide a brain-tingling array of colours, textures and scents. The birds they shelter provide us with birdsong, which in turn is linked to feelings of wellbeing.

Consider the example of Toronto, Canada. The city values its 10m trees at C$ 7bn (£4.3bn). A 2015 study there showed the higher a neighbourhood’s tree density, the lower the incidence of heart and metabolic disease, and estimated that the health boost to those living on blocks with 11 more trees than average was equivalent to a C$ 20,000 gain in median income.

I hope to become so lucky, since Washington DC and partner nonprofits have been trying to plant at least 8,600 trees per year in an effort to increase the street canopy to 40% in the next two decades. New York City recently completed a campaign to plant a million trees, and Los Angeles, Shanghai, Denver and Dubai are in the middle of similar projects.

I envision soon nestling under a sprawling oak and removing all of my monitoring devices. It will just be me and the tree, and I won’t need a machine to tell me I feel better.

Warning: living in a city could seriously damage your health | Florence Williams

Dad’s Mental State Can Seriously Affect Children’s Development

Children’s self-esteem, emotional stability, mental health and behavior deeply depend on the behavior, love, and mental health of their parents. Many studies show that father’s love is as important as mother’s. According to the director of the Center for the Study of Parental Acceptance and Rejection at the University of Connecticut, Ronald P. Rohner, Ph.D, father’s rejections influences a lot children’s psychological problems, delinquency and addiction.  On the other hand, father’s love increases children sense of wellness, boosts kid’s emotional health and improves physical health. When the man becomes a parent, he should be more aware about his mental stability. This is essential for children’s development.

Dad’s Bad Mood Directly Influences his Children’s Mental State

According to research, the overall mental state of a father directly affect the mental state and mood of his kids. Parents’ stress levels, mental problems and behavior influence how they communicate with their children. Therefore, the father’s behavior directly affects his child’s behavior, development and mental health. It is surprising that the mental health of a dad has long-lasting implications. This influences his child’s social skills, self-control, reactions and way of communication by the time children reach 11. According to research, a father’s depression and bad mood during the toddler years has more implications in child’s later development, social skills and life than a mother’s bad mood, anxiety and depression.

According to researchers from Michigan State University, father’s stress level harm his children language development and cognitive skills while they are 2 to 3 years old. Thus, the father’s influence has a stronger effect than the mother’s on the children’s ability to learn and produce language during this age.

Therefore, these findings a great reminder that fathers should pay special attention to their psychological well-being if they want to raise more confident, healthy children.

Father’s role in kids’ childhood, is as important as a mother’s. Their influence is a key in helping his kids grow and develop into healthy human beings.

How to Minimize Father’s Negative Mood

How to find out whether you are a toxic parent to your children? Raise awareness that you are angry, anxious and stressed out. Recognizing your stress is the first step towards finding a solution. Then, learn what makes you stressed out and angry and de-stress as fast as you can – Analyze what situations cause you stress. If you can avoid them, do it. Take up some hobby or sport that makes you more relaxed. go for a walk or take some ‘me time’. Engage in reading or writing, relieve your stress level with yoga, do whatever makes you more relaxed. This is the best way to reduce your stress level and be a better parent to your kids. If you have a long history of depression, mental illness or anxiety, seek professional help. You are the head of the family. You can’t raise healthy kids if you are suffocating. Help yourself first, in order to be able to help them grow.

Source:

Michigan State University

LifeHack

ScarryMommy

Dad’s Mental State Can Seriously Affect Children’s Development

"It could be any of these men": how we learned to take stalking seriously

About five years after the first emails arrived, the death threats started. When Sarah first began receiving messages from a man expressing a romantic interest, she shrugged them off. “I didn’t realise for some time that I had a stalker,” she says. They seemed confused and clumsy; strange, but nothing much to worry about. Later, when they became threatening – the man stalking her said he would attack her, or kill her – she went to the police. Even then, the police said it wasn’t very significant and not to worry about it. She was reassured at first, until she began to suspect that wasn’t the best advice. “I realised from the content of some of the messages that he was referring to real events in my life and that, according to him, we had met on one or two occasions. I don’t recall ever meeting him. I was alarmed – he wasn’t just a random person on the internet. Or he was, but he had taken a great deal of trouble to find out information about me. It was at that stage that I became really quite frightened that he might carry out one of these threats.”

She kept contacting the police, including making one statement at 4am “when I had received a number of threats and I couldn’t take it any more, and thought I would have to go and sleep at the police station”. Still nothing was done about it. “Eventually I found a very motivated police officer, who hadn’t had much training in this, but she made it her business to make something happen. With her support, I did eventually get somewhere, but I still had to do all of the preparation myself. I had started a long process of educating myself and educating the police. I had to learn everything myself.” The victim log she put together would detail how at one point she was receiving up to 10 emails a day.

Thinking back to when it started, Sarah says that if she had known more about stalking then, she would have gone to the police much earlier and pushed them to take it seriously. “I think it’s normal for people to think it doesn’t mean anything, or it will go away, but in my case it reached a point where it was unbearable. The earlier it can be stopped, the better.”

This week, the home secretary, Amber Rudd, announced plans for new Stalking Protection Orders, which would hopefully address this, and at an early stage. It would allow courts to ban stalkers from contacting their victims, even if they hadn’t been charged or convicted.

It has largely been welcomed by anti-stalking campaigners. “Anything that is another tool to deal with a stalker is great news,” says Jane Harvey, campaigns director of Network for Surviving Stalking. “But we need to get some of the basic building blocks in place. It takes people a long time to recognise what’s happening to them as stalking, so there’s under-reporting, and then at an early stage of a case, things can go wrong – a police officer hasn’t had training in stalking and the case is dismissed, or another element, such as criminal damage, will be seized upon instead of seeing the wider picture.”

Anti-stalking charities have broadly welcomed the new powers introduced by home secretary Amber Rudd, pictured at the Suzy Lamplugh Trust this week. Photograph: Yui Mok/PA

Catherine Skinner, chief executive of the charity Paladin, says: “You still hear that [police officers and others in the criminal justice system] don’t see the risks; they don’t see how the behaviour of the perpetrator can not just psychologically affect the victim – we see issues of suicidal ideation from our clients. But also there could be threats to kill, a history of violence, and things that could put victims at high risk.”

Research by the Suzy Lamplugh Trust has found that one in five women and one in 12 men will experience stalking. There have been several high-profile cases recently – a man was jailed in September for stalking the broadcaster Emily Maitlis for 25 years; in June, a man who stalked the singer Lily Allen for seven years, breaking into her house and entering her bedroom, was detained indefinitely under the Mental Health Act.

It is largely an unreported crime. The Suzy Lamplugh Trust estimates that in England and Wales, more than 1.1 million people are stalked each year, but police recorded 4,156 stalking crimes in the year to June, and just 1,102 cases were prosecuted. The proposed new protection orders are “a good thing,” says Victoria Charleston, policy and campaigns officer of the trust. “Where we are cautious is if the police are responsible for applying for these orders. If they’re not recognising stalking at the moment, are we clear that they are going to think about using them? We hope that there will be further training for police.”

It’s not a typical crime, Charleston says. “It’s a pattern of behaviour. It can be very small to begin with, before it escalates.” It is also a fairly new area for many health and criminal justice professionals. “It wasn’t really recognised until the 1980s, and the current anti-stalking legislation didn’t come in until 2012 [in England and Wales],” she adds. In October, Alex Chalk launched a private members’ bill to increase the maximum sentencing of five years. One of his constituents, Dr Eleanor Aston, a GP, had been targeted for seven years by a man who continued to stalk her even after serving a prison sentence for it.

Shan Parker, who lives in north Wales with her partner and daughter, has experienced stalking by a neighbour for the past five years. He would watch from his doorstep every time she left the house or came home. After about six months, when Parker was returning to work after maternity leave, he would follow her to work in his car. Around six months after that, he started following her partner as well. “On the days when he didn’t, it still made me nervous because I didn’t know where he was,” she says. “I didn’t know if he would turn up somewhere else.” The police have been repeatedly involved, but Parker feels there has been little support. “I’ve had anxiety and panic attacks. It’s caused a lot of stress between me and my partner. I feel awful for my daughter, who has had to grow up with visits from the police, and us watching over our shoulders.”

This year, research by the Suzy Lamplugh Trust found that 36% of stalking cases included online behaviours. For Emily, the man who stalked her was not someone she had met, but someone who became fixated on her and her family online. He found out her family’s email addresses and bombarded them with emails about her. “We reported it to the police and they said: ‘Just keep an eye on it and see what happens.’” He went quiet for a while, then started up again, trying to follow their various social media accounts. Shortly after this, he turned up at her parents’ house and tried to get in; he was arrested, and is awaiting sentencing. “It has been absolutely horrific,” Emily says. “I didn’t feel safe anywhere. I still check under my bed, in my cupboard. I spent £1,500 getting new locks put on my house. On the street, I don’t make eye contact with men. You lose all sense of faith in people.”

Amy, who has been stalked for four years, said she would keep her curtains closed in summer in case her stalker was watching her. Photograph: Thomas Fricke/Getty Images/First Light

Something similar happened to Beth Rylance, an actor and writer, who was stalked for several months in 2014 by a man who followed her on Twitter. She noticed him “liking” or replying to every tweet she wrote, and he would write about her on his own account. Eventually she blocked him and complained to Twitter several times. “But he would often delete his tweets, so Twitter would say they weren’t violent or harmful, and they couldn’t do anything about them. It was often a robotic reply. It wasn’t like they’d actually researched it and checked out what was going on. They did nothing.”

He started contacting her friends, and a few months later, he turned up on her doorstep. “It was horrific. When I started getting a bit worried about it, I used to picture in my head what I would do if I saw him. You think of the worst-case scenario, so when he turned up I wasn’t expecting it – but I also sort of was.” She screamed, slammed the door and called the police. When they arrived, they found him still sitting on her doorstep, tweeting about her. Later, looking at his account, she saw that the man – who lived several hundred miles away – had spent the week walking around her area, looking in pubs and cafes for her.

Amy has been stalked by a man for the last four years – an acquaintance from several years ago who developed a fixation with her. “It has gone from unwanted text messages and phone calls to hand-delivered letters and gifts,” she says. “They are all of a very strange nature. He’s delusional and has mentioned God having a plan for us to be together.” The first couple of times she went to the police about it, they talked her out of making a complaint, saying they would just have a word with the man. Later, he was charged with harassment without violence (rather than stalking), and after it went to court, he was given a restraining order, which he ignored. Even though he had breached the order, she says the police were dismissive of her – it was only after she got in touch with the National Stalking Helpline, who contacted the police on her behalf, that they followed it up. “Before, they would say things like ‘chances are you won’t hear from him again’. But it was obvious I would.”

The experience has had a huge effect on her life. In the summer, she says she was staying at home all day with the curtains closed because she was worried he would walk past the window and see her. “As soon as I walk in the door, I check for any letters. I feel really tense. Every time he is punished with a restraining order or community service hours, I don’t completely relax because the pattern is that it will start again at some point. The thing I would really like is for the mental health aspect to be recognised, because I think that is the root cause of the problem with him. People say [we should] make the stalking laws stricter, but it seems a shame to put someone into prison when it could be dealt with as a mental health issue. I would feel more reassured if he was being treated than if he was just going into prison and coming out again.”

Frank Farnham, consultant forensic psychiatrist at Barnet, Enfield and Haringey Mental Health NHS Trust, and a specialist in stalking behaviours, also favours treatment over custodial sentences for many offenders – not least because it is more likely to reduce reoffending, and is far cheaper. But one of the problems with the new stalking prevention order model, he says, is that requiring mental health treatment as part of the order might be too optimistic – if the offender doesn’t give consent, it can only be done under the Mental Health Act. But he does like the idea of requiring assessments. Stalking behaviours can look similar, but the motivations can be very different.

It is widely accepted there are five categories of stalker. The largest – thought to be somewhere between a third and a half – is the “rejected” stalker: someone, usually a man, upset by the end of a relationship who harasses his ex-partner. “That group are not usually mentally ill, but they might have personality problems – they can be quite grandiose, narcissistic. If you take that group away, there are very high rates of mental illness in [the other] groups.”

Intimacy seekers are “deluded” people who believe they are in a relationship with their victim, or could be. “The problem with that group is that if you believe you are on a mission from God, or convinced you’re destined to be [together], simply imposing an order isn’t going to stop you from doing it.” A third group – “incompetent suitors” – are not deluded but their behaviour may be due to a learning disability, and they don’t realise it is frightening or inappropriate. The “resentful” stalker is someone who harasses a person they believe is to blame for something that has happened to them – it is not uncommon for MPs, councillors and GPs to be stalked like this. “Some of those people are mentally ill – their paranoia is so severe that they are deluded. But underpinning all of this is a process where [there should be a] good assessment, to spot the people who are mentally ill and give them treatment.” (A fifth group, mercifully small, are “predatory” stalkers, whose victims are unaware they are being stalked; the stalking can be a prelude to a sexual attack.)

“Even if you do identify someone who is unwell, with the current state of mental health services, how do you get them into treatment?” asks Farnham, who used to treat people convicted of stalking until his funding was cut. He, along with the Suzy Lamplugh Trust and others, are trying to get a pilot programme going with the police service to look at intervention treatment – to treat stalking behaviour before it becomes dangerously entrenched – but they are yet to receive funding.

For the victims who have to endure stalking for years, the effects are profound. Sarah’s relationship with her partner broke down because of the stress it caused them; he felt worried about her, but also worried for his own safety. “There were times when [the man who was stalking her] would say he was going to come and kill me. Part of my rational brain said, ‘Well, he hasn’t up until now,’ but the other part thought: ‘Where do I go? To the police station? Where is he and what does he know? Should I move?’ It makes you hypervigilant. I would leave the gym, look around and think: ‘I just don’t know who it is. It could be any of those men.’ In my career I should probably be using the internet a lot more to publicise the work I do, and I don’t do that. I used to be a very sociable person but I entirely stopped socialising at one point.”

The man who has stalked her for 10 years eventually pleaded guilty and is awaiting sentencing. She isn’t wholly optimistic that her ordeal is over. “The truth is you never know.”

"It could be any of these men": how we learned to take stalking seriously

Abused children more likely to be seriously ill as adults, says report

Children who suffer abuse, violence or other trauma at home are more likely to become seriously ill as adults, a report has concluded.

The study says children who endure four or more adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are more than twice as likely to be diagnosed with a chronic disease in later life compared with those that have experienced none.

They are four times more likely to develop type 2 diabetes, three times more likely to develop heart disease and three times more likely to develop respiratory disease, according to the report from Public Health Wales.

According to the report, over a 12-month period, those with four or more ACEs were three times more likely to have attended accident and emergency units, three times more likely to have stayed overnight in hospital, and twice as likely to have visited their GP, again compared with people who report no ACEs.

The report, the first nationwide study of its kind produced by a public health body in the UK, argues that the reasons are not simply cyclical – that a child who has a challenging home life, where, for example, adults smoke or drink heavily, is more likely to do the same and suffer bad health as a consequence.

It points out there is growing evidence that in addition early life trauma leads to changes in neurological, immunological and hormonal development that have detrimental effects on health across a lifetime.

Children who are constantly exposed to stress can become permanently prepared to respond to further trauma – which can increase strain on the body.

ACEs are defined as traumatic experiences that occur before the age of 18, ranging from verbal, mental and physical abuse to exposure to alcoholism, drug use, domestic violence or parents’ relationships breaking down.

The lead report author, Prof Mark Bellis, the director of policy, research and international development at Public Health Wales, said its previous research had shown how ACEs increase the uptake of health-harming behaviours such as smoking and drug use and reduce mental wellbeing in adults.

He said: “This report shows how experiencing abuse and other problems in childhood are linked with increased levels of chronic disease in adulthood and much greater use of health care. What happens to us as children can make our bodies develop differently, leaving them more vulnerable to conditions like type 2 diabetes and heart disease in later life.”

Bellis said that finding solutions needed a change in approach.

“This cannot be achieved by the NHS alone. That is why we are working with our key partners, including the government, police, local authorities, charitable and voluntary sector organisations, to develop a joined-up approach to prevent ACEs and support adults whose health is suffering because of childhood trauma.”

The relationship between ACEs and the development of health-harming behaviours and chronic disease in adulthood was first explored in the US in the late 90s. The Centre for Public Health at Liverpool John Moores University – now the Public Health Institute – ran the first British study in Lancashire in 2012.

More than 2,000 adults aged 18-69 took part in the Welsh study, providing anonymous information on their exposure to ACEs before the age of 18 and their health and lifestyles as adults. The results take into account sociodemographic factors and show it is not simply the children of “deprived” homes who suffer ACEs.

Simon Capewell, vice-president of the Faculty of Public Health, said the Welsh study was very important. “This is the sort of data that needs to be used to prevent health issues that become a burden on the NHS and on our society,” he said.

Wales’s future generations commissioner, Sophie Howe, said the study showed public services had to work together. “This new evidence from Public Health Wales emphasises the importance of focusing on early years and reducing the number of children living in families where there is domestic abuse, mental health problems, substance misuse or other forms of abuse or neglect.

“If we don’t tackle this we are storing up long term health and social problems for these children and our public services further down the line.”

Abused children more likely to be seriously ill as adults, says report

GMC takes wellbeing of doctors seriously | Letters

The tragic death of Dr Wendy Potts, a GP from Derbyshire who took her own life late last year, was shocking and our thoughts are with her family and friends.

In response to the letters from Professor Jeffrey Tobias, Dr Peter Hayward and Jenifer Bright (2 September), at the time of her death she was registered with a licence to practise. She had not been suspended from practising nor had any restrictions placed on her practice by the GMC.

We take the wellbeing of doctors extremely seriously, particularly those with health concerns. Earlier this year we, along with Professor Louis Appleby, one of the UK’s leading mental health experts and professor of psychiatry at the University of Manchester, developed proposals to reduce, as far as possible, the inevitable stress that our process can have on doctors.

These proposals aim to avoid full investigations whenever possible in cases that are primarily about a doctor’s health. We are pressing for legislative change that would allow us to resolve more investigations consensually where doctors are willing to accept any action needed to protect patients, and would like to pursue this as the preferred outcome. We are also establishing a team of specially trained GMC staff to handle cases where unwell doctors are subject to an investigation.

In addition we are pushing for the NHS to provide improved services for doctors with mental illnesses or addictions.

A doctor’s ill health is not in itself a matter that would require investigation. We would only intervene if we identified a risk to a doctor’s patients because they are not seeking or complying with medical treatment or not taking steps to protect patients, for example working when not fit to do so.

The GMC is here to protect patients, not to punish doctors, and wherever possible we aim to support doctors’ recovery and help them return to safe practice.
Niall Dickson
Chief executive, General Medical Council

• Join the debate – email guardian.letters@theguardian.com

GMC takes wellbeing of doctors seriously | Letters

Time to take laughter seriously?

“We don’t laugh because we’re happy, we’re happy because we laugh” – William James

Do we laugh enough or should we learn to laugh more?
Joyful, good-natured, ‘mirthful’ laughter is a tonic for our body, mind, emotions, and spirit. Whether we use it as a distraction, to cheer ourselves up, or as a practice to energise and enthuse us, laughing impacts every part of us. In many ways it is the ultimate drug, with no harmful side-effects.

It activates our zest for life.

On a physical level, laughter stimulates our cardiovascular and pulmonary systems by giving our hearts and lungs a vigorous workout. It stimulates blood flow, oxygenates our blood and energises our whole physical system even if we’re hospitalised. The US doctor Patch Adams has been using it professionally for years.

Its endorphin-triggering effect makes laughter a strong painkiller for emotional and mental pain, as well as physical. It has been proven that higher levels of pain can be readily tolerated and the healing process is speeded up. Both the Norman Cousins experience, described in his classic best seller ‘Anatomy of an Illness’, and the current RX Laughter project with children in UCLA hospital in Los Angeles provide the evidence.

Psychologically, laughter is the antithesis of depression. If we’re feeling any anxiety, it is an excellent antidote. In fact, in 2002 in Austria Dr Koutek started using the sound of spontaneous group laughter as part of his treatment for patients with depression. In our Bristol laughter club (www.bristollaughterclub.com) there are countless examples of people whose lives have benefited from the ‘lightness’ that laughter induces. People’s faces change, their body language and posture become more open and relaxed, their communication becomes more playful and spontaneous. Even the simple smiling exercise based on the 1988 F. Strack, L.L. Martin and S. Stepper’s pencil exercise produces lasting results. All you need do is smile genuinely three times a day for at least 10-15 seconds and some people find it transforms their lives.

Laughter and playfulness, in turn, unlock our natural creativity. “You can learn more about a person in an hour of play than a year of conversation” said Plato. Creativity is an essential part of a fun-filled life and helps neuroplasticity, our brain’s learning ability, by strengthening mental flexibility and resilience. Because of this – as we see in Martin Seligman’s Positive Psychology – optimism, positivity and happiness become learnable skills. In short, we learn to become happier. Learn more about this here.

On the self-development path, the practice of laughter is the practice of joyfulness. Ancient traditions as well as new ones encourage us to practice laughing – with a sense of willingness. What ancient traditions intuited and experienced, and neuroplasticity shows, is a practice is learning new skills until they become second nature. Current thinking is that it might be only 21 days, as in the Chopra 21-day meditation challenge.
The key ingredients are
single-mindedness,
perseverance and
tenacity to keep going until you become aware of the differences in your life.

There are numerous recent psychological studies which show the beneficial impact of smiling especially when this is the genuine ‘Duchenne’ smile which uses the involuntary orbicularis oculi muscles. This genuine smile encourages an empathetic response and consequently stimulates sociability.

This is also the theme in the book ‘Awakening the Laughing Buddha within’.

4 top tips to laugh more:

1. Look for laughter and laughter will find you. Look for as many opportunities to smile and laugh in your day, and importantly, communicate them. Not only will you feel better, you will also be encouraging a positive ripple in others too.
2. If it will be funny later, it’s funny now. Often we look back and laugh at things. Can we laugh at them now instead?
3. Start your day with a laugh. This is both a Zen and a Hawaiian practice. No matter what yesterday delivered, start today with a chuckle, a kinaesthetic version of a positive affirmation. Why? We get the endorphins. We may then feel more upbeat and better equipped for your day ahead. Its worth remembering, when we’re feeling really rough, that’s the time we need our endorphins most.
4. Fake it till you make it. Feeling grumpy? Sluggish? Irritable? When you’re ready to change your mood, smile and laugh, even if you don’t yet feel like it. Your system will release endorphins anyway because it can’t tell the difference between the real joyful laugh and a fake one. The key is your willingness.

For more information, please visit www.joehoare.co.uk

Time to take laughter seriously?