ALL YOU NEED IS A SMILE

SMILE AND GOOD HEALTH 

“How is a smile related to good health?” you may ask.

Through good spirits, that’s how. When your soul and heart are full of joy, a happy smile appears on your face. A smile forced by a depressed person would come out fake and pathetic. This is the key to good mood and health. Indeed, these two are closely connected via the limbic system I described above. This ancient subcortex hosts positive and negative emotion centers, as well as control centers for the hormone, immune, cardiovascular, respiratory, and digestive functions.  

When the limbic system is in balance, we are in a good mood. 

When the limbic system is in balance, we are in a good mood. At the limbic cortex level, this harmonious state supports biological self-regulation, stimulates the hormone system, and enhances immunity. Conversely, when this system is excited or overstrained, we feel anxiety, apathy, or depression. Our body starts suffering from hypertension, indigestion, allergy, and inflammation caused by imbalances in limbic self-regulation centers. 

If only we had a magic key or a medicine that would quell this overexcitement, the list of human ailments would have been much shorter! Regrettably, substances that give us a gift of euphoria and psychological comfort may cause clinical addiction and, in the long run, accelerate the body’s collapse. What can we do? What can help extinguish our subconscious bonfires and cool down the frying pans of our little personal hell? Psychotherapy? Good reading? Meditation, prayer, and faith? Sure.  Yet there is a simple and potent medicine that requires no religion, mysticism, or long training. It’s that same smile, the starting point of this discussion.  

The magic key you always have at hand 

A smile is a neuromuscular response to the well-being of your emotional heart. 

If you keep smiling for at least thirty seconds, your body starts producing the hormones of happiness. 

A smile is a neuromuscular response to the well-being of your emotional heart. When the neural contact network forms a pattern that is good for our body, this shows as a reflex contraction and relaxation of certain facial muscles, also known as a smile. In turn, this contraction/relaxation sends a positive message to our mind (“everything is fine… it’s all over… I feel better…”).

Such a reassuring signal, as a matter of feedback, calms down the overexcited limbic cortex. Try to smile even if you don’t feel like it. Just stretch your lips, raise the corners of your eyes and mouth. You need not fake any bliss – a smile may be bitter, compassionate, or guilty. Just change your facial expression – and you’ll see a small miracle, as in the old song inspired by Charlie Chaplin’s “Modern Times”:  

Smile, though your heart is aching 

Smile, even though it’s breaking 

When there are clouds in the sky, you’ll get by 

If you smile through your fear and sorrow 

Smile, and maybe tomorrow 

A serious face is not a sign of intelligence. Serious people are responsible for the greatest stupidities on Earth! 

The ubiquitous American smile sometimes puzzles new immigrants, especially those from Russia. “We are serious people,” they would say, “why should we grin for no reason?” I would refer these ladies and gentlemen to Baron Munchausen, who observed that a serious face is not a sign of intelligence.

Serious people are responsible for the greatest stupidities on Earth. Could it be that the smile gives Americans more resistance to stress, crises, and revolutions? Smiles, not arms, are an area where Russia should catch up with the USA!

A nation that does not smile enough is a sick nation.  

If you want to avoid depression or, even worse, a major illness, master the art of smiling!

Smiling is good for you in every sense!