Weight Loss and Emotional Well-being: A Guide to Smile Therapy and Emotional Regulation for Hypertension, Hyperlipidemia, and Hyperglycemia

Traditional Chinese medicine believes that humans have seven emotions: joy, anger, worry, pensiveness, grief, fear, and fright. Excessive emotions in any of these can lead to illness. In some patients, abnormal psychological states can easily create a vicious cycle between pathological psychology and pathophysiology, thus increasing the risk of illness due to emotional factors. If external mental stimuli are excessive in intensity or prolonged in duration, causing excessive excitement or inhibition of emotions, it can lead to dysfunction of the body's internal organs and cause illness. Mental illnesses primarily cause imbalances in Yin and Yang, disharmony of Qi and blood, blockage of meridians, and dysfunction of the five internal organs, damaging internal organs such as the heart, liver, and kidneys, ultimately leading to the development of hypertension, hyperlipidemia, and hyperglycemia (the "three highs").

Since psychological factors are one of the causes of the "three highs," it is undoubtedly crucial to learn psychological care to reduce patients' psychological stress and minimize the risk of illness due to emotional factors.

What is psychological care? Psychological care involves observing the patient's condition from a holistic perspective and providing physical and mental care. By stabilizing patients' abnormal emotions, alleviating anxiety, and controlling irritability, mental stress can be reduced, improving their psychological state and helping them maintain a positive and balanced mindset. This can effectively prevent the occurrence of "three highs" (hypertension, hyperlipidemia, and hyperglycemia).

A smile can dispel a thousand worries—laughter can also lower "three highs." As the saying goes, "A smile makes you ten years younger," and modern medicine also believes that laughter is closely related to people's health and longevity.

For patients with "three highs," smiling is most suitable. Smiling can relieve tension, eliminate depression, promote healthy circulation in various systems of the body, and improve the function of the immune system. A relaxed and heartfelt smile can fully relax the facial, chest, and limb muscles, helping to lower high blood pressure and eliminate bacteria in the blood. Frequent smiling can also reduce fat deposition and lower blood lipids to some extent. Humor is an effective means of coping with life's conflicts and troubles. In the world of humor, people can better grasp the essence of problems, and therefore can more properly and effectively assist in coping with various diseases. In the patient's mental world, humor is a rich source of nourishment; its subtle effect is to please the mind and prolong life. Therefore, humor therapy is extremely beneficial to the physical and mental health of patients with hypertension, hyperlipidemia, and hyperglycemia (the "three highs"). Practice shows that the therapeutic effect of smiling on the "three highs" is reflected in the following aspects:

(1) Promoting blood circulation and increasing metabolic capacity. Laughter strengthens heart contractions, increases heart rate, and increases cardiac output. Therefore, when laughing heartily, the muscles connecting the limbs also move, promoting overall metabolism through external oxygen intake and accelerated internal blood flow, thereby improving the body's disease resistance. Sufficient blood circulation can accelerate the elimination of harmful toxins in the blood, and sugars, fats, and lactic acid in the body can also be broken down more quickly. At the same time, smooth blood circulation transports nutrients to the peripheral skin, expelling accumulated waste and improving skin texture, resulting in a cosmetic effect.

(2) Analgesic and Blood Pressure Lowering Effects

When we laugh, the brain's nerve cells release a substance called β-endorphin, a pain reliever without side effects. Unlike morphine, β-endorphin is a hormone in the brain specifically responsible for transmitting information that produces pleasure and pain relief. β-endorphin also relaxes the blood vessel walls in the cortical tissue, thus repairing blood vessels and lowering blood pressure.

(3) Weight Loss
Researchers point out that 80 muscle groups twitch when laughing, and one minute of laughter is equivalent to 45 minutes of exercise. This means the body burns 20% more calories when laughing than when serious. Therefore, smiling happily for 10-15 minutes a day can burn 50 kcal, resulting in a weight loss of 2 kg per year. More importantly, it also exercises abdominal muscles that are rarely exercised. Therefore, while losing weight, it reduces fat accumulation and prevents the formation of high blood lipids.

(4) Stress Relief
Laughter is the best way to relax; whether it's genuine or fake laughter, it's beneficial to both body and mind. When you genuinely laugh, the brain's pleasure center is excited; when facing stress and negative emotions, forcing a smile also stimulates areas of the brain associated with feelings of pleasure.

Anger is more ferocious than a tiger—those with hypertension, hyperlipidemia, and hyperglycemia should be cautious about getting angry.

Anger is a simple, common, yet highly complex psychological phenomenon. Traditional Chinese medicine believes that frequent anger is the root of many diseases, with at least nine major harmful effects. People with normal blood pressure who are easily angered have a higher chance of developing heart disease than others, relatively increasing their risk. People who are prone to anger often have poor blood circulation, making them more susceptible to hypertension and hyperlipidemia.

The link between anger and heart disease usually occurs in people with normal blood pressure. This may be because patients with hypertension already have a risk of heart disease, so the correlation is not obvious. It may also be because patients use medication to treat hypertension, thus reducing their risk of heart disease. However, being in a state of negative emotions and easily angered for a long time has an absolute negative impact on health, especially for young people with normal blood pressure.

Therefore, we must learn to alleviate our anger and try to control our anger. Only by adjusting one's mindset, maintaining psychological balance, being cheerful and optimistic, and being content with what one has can one avoid psychosomatic illnesses.