Hello everyone!
Maybe you have heard the quote that peace begins with a smile - Mother Teresa. And you know what? She had a point. We associate so much with a smile that often, we forget just how great they are. And what’s more is when we are going through a bad patch or a bit of a slump, we might just forget ours for a while, too.
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A smile means more than you think, though; it has a lot of benefits for our mental health - that can’t be ignored. So let’s take a look at why you should be making sure your smile is tip-top by visiting Nations Dental Studio, and just how big of an impact smiling has on us.
Bye-bye stress
Stress puts us in a horrible cycle; we feel stressed and get more stressed because of the stress. Smaller stresses stack up thick and fast until they are overwhelming. Chronic stress is hard on the mind and body, and what is worse is that it takes a long time to get under control. Well, good news for you: smiling reduces stress! Even a fake smile tricks your body into believing it is happier and reduces your stress response.
Live forever?
Okay, maybe not forever, but smiling might help make you live just a little bit longer. While there is nothing conclusive, some suggest that smiling more often might make you live longer. Baseball players who took part in a study at Wayne University were found to live longer the bigger the smile they had.
There are some supporting articles from Scientific American that state that women who have a strong sense of humor (aka laugh or smile often) have a reduced level of infection and cardiovascular disease.
So, it might be time to start watching some more comedies!
People are nicer
The world as it is right now doesn’t always seem to be a happy or comfortable place. And while not everyone is going to return your smile with a big beaming smile of their own, it is more likely that you are going to get a few in return - and sometimes from people who don’t want to!
When we see a smile, our natural reaction is to copy it. Uppsala University in Sweden noted that it is more difficult not to smile at someone who smiles at you than you might think! The researcher who made the discovery called it emotional contagion - the more you smile, the more you will get smiled at, and what could be better than that?
Relax
When we smile, our blood pressure is lowered, our heart rate is lowered, and we get a huge amount of those feel-good happy hormones that make for a much better day. Just the act of smiling gives us serotonin, endorphins, and dopamine - the magic mix for feeling relaxed and happy!
So there you have it - even when you don’t quite feel like it, it is always time to smile! For many, their smile is cause for a lack of confidence, but really it tends to be on a longer list: Beauty problems that you really need to stop ignoring.
Talk soon,
