Smile is the best medicine

This morning when I drove to my clinic, a lady gave me a beautiful smile as she walked in front of my car because I stop for her at the intersection. Her smile was so beautiful that I can feel that the muscle around my neck and shoulder soften right away from the morning traffic.

This kept me thinking for the rest of the morning about how smile effect us and how we overlook this simple but powerful expression in our busy daily life. Last week during one of my home visits for my volunteer work, the patient’s husband, who is terminally ill, said to me, “All doctors say that I should stay in the hospital for my health, but seeing my kids’ smiles take away all the pain. They are my pain medication.”

In Traditional Chinese Medicine, smile is part of the spiritual and emotion part of the fire element, where happiness and laughing stores. Heart is the organ in this element. Heart is also where we govern our spirit. Think of the wonderful moments in our life, there is a special feeling that we feel around our heart as it speed up a little and warm our body. And we always smile during these special moments. To simplify all the theories behind, let’s put this into scenarios. When we are happy and carry a big smile on our face, or laughing with our friends or family, our body tend to feel warmer and softer. When we are at work with serious face to get things done, we tend to get stuff shoulders and our hands and feet can easily get cold.

Of course, too much smile, happiness and laughing might lead to some harmful health issue, but overall, carrying smile face is a safe thing to do.

Smile is like the trigger that switch us from Sympathetic nervous system (fight or flight) to Parasympathetic nervous system (rest and digest). Our body is designed to be in the state of rest and digest most of the time, but here are too many stressful things in our life to keep our body to stay in the fight or flight mode. Therefore, please smile. Adding smile here and there throughout out day, to my believe, will boost the quality of life for not only ourselves but also everyone around us.

Here is an article I just found on WebMD about “What Does Your Smile Say About You?”. And there are many more articles out there talking about the benefits of smiles.

A few smiles a day will keep the doctors away. Smile on~  ^__^