Smile. It’s good for you. If you make a conscious effort to smile, it can make you healthier, happier, more popular, and more successful. These might seem like outlandish claims, but they’re backed up by scientific research.
How Smiling Makes You Happier and Healthier
Forcing yourself to smile even when you don’t feel like it can alter the chemistry of your brain and actually make you feel better. That’s because smiling causes your brain to release neurotransmitters called endorphins. Endorphins have been called “nature’s painkillers” because they “are responsible for making us feel happy, and they also help lower stress levels.”
In addition to making you happier, smiling can also make you healthier. According to an article in Forbes Magazine, researchers confirmed the positive effects of smiling by having people use chopsticks to force themselves to smile. This sounds a little wacky, but the people with chopsticks in their mouths “exhibited lower heart rate levels after completing a stressful task compared to subjects who assumed a neutral expression.”
There’s even evidence to suggest that smiling can “strengthen the body on a cellular level.” That’s because when we’re smiling “we reduce the rigidness of our cells, and this physical relaxation can help combat the risk of stress-induced cell mutations that can lead to the development or persistence of various cancers.”
Smiling for Success and Popularity
Smiling is contagious and it will improve the way people feel about you. When you smile, “around 50% of people smile back,” Smiling will make you more popular because it gives people the impression that you are “more likable and friendly.” That’s why smiling “makes you appear more approachable.”
When you smile, you enhance your environment. According to neuroscientist Marco Iacoboni who teaches at UCLA, people have something called “mirror neurons” in their brains. Mirror neurons help us understand what other people are feeling. Dr. Iacoboni says:
When I see you smiling, my mirror neurons for smiling fire up, too, initiating a cascade of neural activity that evokes the feeling we typically associate with a smile.
People who smile more often tend to be more successful because of the positive feeling they arouse in coworkers. So it’s not surprising that they “are more likely to earn more money through tips and raises.”
Restoring Smiles in Pembroke, ON
At Parkview Dental in Pembroke, ON. we feature a number of treatments to restore and revitalize your smile. Give us a call today to discover what we can do for you!