Laughter is as good as workout in promoting physical condition and a sense of comfort, a new research said.

Lee S. Berk, preventive care specialist and researcher at Loma Linda University's Schools of Allied Health (SAHP) and Medicine, and Stanley Tan have been examining the human body's reaction to funny laughter and have discovered that laughter helps optimize many of the functions of different body structures.

Berk and his fellow workers were the first to found that laughter helps optimise the hormones, comprising declining the cortisol levels and epinephrine that cause stress reduction.

They researchers also found that laughter has an optimistic effect on modulating constituents of the immune system, including augmented production of proteins and activation of the body's defensive cells such as T-cells and especially Natural Killer cells' killing activity of tumour cells.

Their researchers have shown that repetitive "funny laughter," which they call Laughercise©, helps the body to react in a way like modest physical exercise.

Laughercise© improves your mood, reduces stress hormones, augments immune activity, lowers bad cholesterol and systolic blood pressure level, and raises good cholesterol.

Berk together with Jerry Petrofsky at Loma Linda University presented their discoveries at the Experimental Biology conference in Anaheim, CA. (With Inputs from Agencies)