Laughter may be the best medicine

This article, published last month (Nov 5, 2019) indicates “laughter yoga” had better positive effects on people with IBS than anti-anxiety medication and a standard control group.

Laughter yoga is like regular yoga, but with “laughter breathing.” You laugh, intentionally, without anybody telling jokes or watching a funny skit. It might feel like fake laughing, but it really helps.

Most people know anxiety and GI symptoms can be correlated and even sometimes causative. This is why the anti-anxiety medication was the second arm of this study. But not all GI symptoms are anxiety related.

What I’d like to see as a follow up to this study is how laughter yoga compares with GI motility medications, like Imodium for those with IBS-D or Miralax or laxatives for IBS-C.

Another interesting article I recently saw was “Food we need to talk” on NPR. A bunch of different “nutrition experts” basically summed up the best 1 thing to do to be healthy. The summary was: Exercise- mostly strength training. Obviously there are other additional things to optimize your health (eat more vegetables, less sugar, etc.) but if you could only do 1 thing, that thing should be lift weights.

As the new year is upon us, what strength training are you going to do this year?