Can Laughing Be Exercise? Here’s What the Study Found

laughter therapy benefits

When you see a headline like “laughter over lunges,” it’s easy to assume it’s just another wellness trend trying to sound clever. Most of the time, those ideas don’t hold up. But this one comes from new research that tries to connect something surprisingly normal—watching comedies and genuinely laughing—to real physical effects in your body.

To be clear, this isn’t telling you to replace your workouts with sitcom reruns. But it does suggest something worth thinking about: laughter may be a legitimate entry point to movement, especially when your routine feels hard to restart.

What the Research Actually Claims
The study looked at how “genuine laughter” can raise your heart rate and breathing rate in a way that resembles light exercise. The idea is that when you laugh properly—those real belly laughs, not polite little chuckles—you create repeated bursts of physical activity. Your breathing changes, your core tenses, and your body moves in small but real ways.

In simple terms, laughter isn’t just emotional. It has a physical response attached to it, and that response can mimic the intensity of something like a brisk walk or beginner mat Pilates.

Why Laughter Can Feel Like a Mini Workout
When you laugh deeply, your diaphragm contracts and releases quickly. This is similar to how controlled breathing works in yoga. Your body isn’t just sitting there quietly. It’s reacting.

You also naturally engage your core muscles during stronger laughter. The muscles around your abdomen and pelvic area tighten in an isometric way, which is the same kind of muscle activation you’d often learn at the start of a Pilates routine. And because your heart and breathing rates increase, you’re also supporting oxygen flow and basic cardiovascular function, even if you’re not in “workout mode.”

It’s not the same as training hard, but it’s more movement than most people assume.

How the Study Measured “Laughs Per Minute”
Instead of looking at gym workouts or structured training programs, the study focused on comedy films. The researchers reviewed the top 10 comedy movies from the past 100 years, but with filters. Each movie needed a rating of 6.5 or above and a runtime under four hours.

They then used a “laughs per minute” metric, also called LPM. The logic was simple: the more often a movie makes you laugh, the more consistent bursts of movement you experience while watching.

Once the movies were ranked by laughs per minute, the researchers connected laughter to calorie burn using existing findings. They referenced research suggesting that 10–15 minutes of genuine laughter can burn up to 10 calories. Based on the average length of a laugh, they estimated around 0.2 calories per laugh, then multiplied that by the total laughs per film to estimate calories burned.

What the Numbers Look Like in Real Life
Some of the movie estimates were surprisingly high. Two examples mentioned were “Inside Out” and “The Hangover,” which were estimated to burn 72 and 68 calories while watching.

To put that into perspective, the study framed this as similar to around 25 minutes of low-impact mat Pilates or a 20-minute yoga flow. That comparison is useful because it explains the intensity level: gentle movement, not high-performance training.

At the same time, it’s important to remember calorie burn isn’t universal. Your individual physiology, how intensely you laugh, and even your baseline fitness level all influence what happens. A controlled lab setting is the only way to get exact numbers, although a fitness tracker can still give you a decent estimate.

laughter as exercise

Why This Can Support Your Mind
The “exercise” angle is interesting, but the mental health side might be even more valuable. Laughter activates areas of the brain linked to emotion, reward, motivation, and pleasure. It also supports the release of chemicals associated with mood improvement, connection, and even mild pain relief in some cases.

There’s also a calming rebound effect. Your heart rate and breathing rise during laughter, but afterward your body shifts into recovery mode, which helps you feel lighter and more relaxed.

That change matters because when movement feels tied to pressure, people avoid it. When movement feels tied to pleasure, consistency becomes easier.

Where Laughter Fits Into a Health Routine
In Longevity 2026 conversations, the goal isn’t only how long you live—it’s how well you function while you’re living. That’s the real difference between healthspan vs lifespan. You don’t improve your healthspan through intensity alone. You improve it through habits you’ll actually keep.

Laughter isn’t going to transform your biological age overnight, and it’s not a replacement for strength training, walking, or mobility work. But it can support the kind of routine restart that many people struggle with after a break.

If you’re already paying attention to wellness trends like epigenetic testing, whole-body MRI scans, or nootropics for focus, this fits into the same modern idea: small daily inputs can shift how you feel over time, even if they look too simple at first.

Quick Ways to Use This Without Overthinking It
If you want to try this approach without turning it into a “program,” keep it realistic:

• Pick a comedy you genuinely find funny, not one you think you should like
• Watch it without distractions so you actually laugh, not half-scroll
• Treat it as active recovery, not a workout replacement
• Notice how your breathing and body feel afterward
• Use the momentum to add real movement the next day

Conclusion
Laughter won’t replace training, and it doesn’t need to. What it can do is lower the barrier to movement when you’re feeling stuck, tired, or disconnected from exercise. If a comedy night raises your heart rate, engages your core, and leaves you calmer afterward, that’s a health win—especially when it helps you build consistency instead of quitting again. Sometimes the best way to move forward isn’t forcing a new routine. It’s starting with something your body and brain actually want to repeat.