Why improv should be covered by your health insurance.

Ditch your vitamin C tabs, your magnesium pill, your vitamin D lamp and your gym membership: laughter is the best medicine.

Seriously though, keep your tablets and regular GP checkups. What we mean to say is that laughter is scientifically proven to have physical and mental health benefits.

Laughter is associated to reduced levels of cortisol (the stress hormone, the one that makes you wake up in with a beating heart, crave kaassoufflées or tony chocolonely and yell at your loved ones) and endorphins release. Altogether, it increases immune cells and infection-fighting antibodies, thus improving your resistance to diseases.

When you laugh, you improve the function of blood vessels and increase your blood flow, protecting you against heart attack and other cardiovascular problems and extending your life expectancy - except for Sir Thomas Urquhart,  who died of uncontrollable laughter in 1660.

Jokes aside, this 15-years study found strong evidence that people with a strong sense of humor had higher survival rate than boring, stoic buzzkills.

Finally, when life gives us lemon - or when the world gives us an orange with blond hair, 88 charges and fascistoid tendencies -, when we feel hopeless or powerless, laughing it off can be the only way to keep us going: laughing hard to release, laughing together to connect, laughing to mock, subvert and rebel.

so, should we have a laugh?