Death From Laughter?

There's an old saying, "Laughter is the best medicine", which I completely agree with. Laughing actually has many health benefits: it decreases stress hormones, triggers the release of endorphins, and increases the immune cells, along with a myriad of other positive attributes. It helps us to forget our troubles for those few seconds, or sometimes minutes, of laughing carelessly.

Popular meme of a man laughinng

But death from laughter? Seriously? That's a new one.
After scanning the Unusual articles page on Wikipedia, I randomly chose one to write about for this blog post, and came across the death by laughter page. This is quite an unusual article, even for Wikipedia. (again, I mean that it is taken seriously) Of course, the phrase "I could die laughing" or, as we laugh, "I'm dying OMG", are common for me and my friends to say on a daily basis, so I have heard of  and used the term more than a few times. Reading this article, though, I found that dying from laughter has been recorded during the times of Ancient Greece and a few other times in history. For example, Zeuxis, a 5th century BC Greek painter, apparently died from laughter after painting the Greek goddess Aphrodite.
So how does one die from laughter, then? In the first paragraph of the article, it states that dying from laughter can happen by going into cardiac arrest or asphyxiation, (a condition where the body does not have enough oxygen due to abnormal breathing. I love learning new words!) so this is something that, while very rare, has happened before. Because really, when was the last time you saw a news headline saying "Man Dies From Laughter"?
The rest of the article discusses historical and fictional references to people who have died while laughing, and that's about it. In terms of fictional references, Wikipedia references the show 1000 Ways to Die, where a man dies of continuous laughter for over 36 hours. The article does not say what the joke was, and I would like to know. What joke is that hilarious that it's worth dying over? It's funny (see what I did there?), because I use the phrase "I'm dying right now" all the time when I laugh very hard, but I never pause to consider that it could happen. No, I won't spend every second I laugh now thinking that I could die, but it still is an interesting concept. This information is useful, because I know a lot of people who laugh for minutes at a time, sometimes even causing themselves to go into an asthma attack. It's scary that an action that causes us so much joy can end up killing us. Very morbid.

My best friend and I, always laughing of course. 

Death by laughter, I think, does earn a Wikipedia page. It's useful information to know, and it's funny at the same time. It is also helpful to see those who have died from laughter, both in real life and in fiction. As I said above, normally "dying laughing" is used jokingly, so the fact that Wikipedia made a legitimate article about it, backed with historical references, is useful and comical. Performing a quick Google search, I was able to find other websites with articles about people who really have died laughing, containing the same facts as Wikipedia, if not probably a bit more accurate, because we all know that Wikipedia isn't always the most trustworthy website to gain information from.
On a lighter note, laughing truly is wonderful. There are some people who go days, or even weeks, without laughing properly, and I honestly cannot imagine going that long without doing so. Along with the quick facts I provided at the beginning of this post, laughing also relaxes muscles, protects the heart, improves our mood, and strengthens relationships. So don't worry everyone, death from laughter is extremely rare. So my advice for you after reading this article is live life to the fullest, love with everything you have, and laugh until your stomach hurts, because it's totally worth it.