Can a Good Laugh Give You Killer Abs? The Surprising Connection

Laughing so hard that your stomach hurts can unintentionally become an ab workout.

There may have been times when you laughed so hard that you couldn’t breathe and your stomach hurt. In more severe cases, you might even feel sore in your stomach the next day.

Laughing until your stomach hurts means your abdominal muscles are contracting and not receiving enough oxygen, leading to a buildup of lactic acid, essentially a form of anaerobic exercise. The phenomenon of feeling sore in the stomach is called DOMS in professional terms, which is an inflammatory response that occurs when muscles are damaged from exercising after a long time or from eccentric contraction. It’s similar to the feeling of being sore after a strength workout.

In other words, a big laugh can be considered a tremendous ab workout that causes metabolic stress and even muscle damage through anaerobic exercise.

Peak laughter exercise is recommended if you look at the internal oblique part of a paper related to core muscle activation in an international journal of Environmental Research and Public Health.

This is a result derived from an experiment where participants were attached with electromyography electrodes on their rectus abdominis, internal obliques, external obliques, multifidus, and erector spinae and performed 10 seconds of laughter exercise, 10 seconds of three crunches and back extensions. The muscle activation of the internal obliques during laughter showed 150% higher muscle activation than crunches.

This paper shows that laughter has social, psychological, and hormonal effects and influences muscle activation.

With laughter bringing even exercise effects like this, how about having a hearty laugh occasionally?

By. Soo Jung Shin