In the UK, researchers used electromagnetic brain scans
and heart-rate monitors to generate what they called "mood-boosting
values" for different stimuli. In other words, they had participants do,
look at, or listen to different things, and measured how happy it made them.
One thing trumped all else. It emerged as giving
participants the equivalent level of brain stimulation as up to 2,000 chocolate
bars. It was just as stimulating as receiving up to $25,000. What was this
magic stimulus?
A smile.
Smiling, as it turns out, has truly remarkable effects.
First, doing it actually makes you feel good even if you're not feeling good in
the moment. A 2009 fMRI study out of Echnische Universität in Munich
demonstrated conclusively that the brain's happiness circuitry is activated
when you smile (regardless of your current mood). If you're down, smiling
actually prompts your brain to produce feel-good hormones, giving credence to
the adage, "fake it til you make it" when it comes to your state of
mind.
Smiling is also a predictor of longevity. In a 2010 out
of Wayne State University, researchers looked at Major League baseball card
photos from 1952. They found that the span of a player's smile actually
predicted his lifespan -- unsmiling players lived 72.9 years on average, while
beaming players lived a full seven years longer.
Want to know where you stack up when it comes to smiling?
Know this: under 14% of us smile fewer than 5 times a day (you probably don't
want to be in that group). Over 30% of us smile over 20 times a day. And
there's one population that absolutely dominates in the smile game, clocking in
at as many as 400 smiles a day: children.
Excerpted from an online article
