Groucho Marx once said, “A clown is like an aspirin, only he works twice as fast.”

Groucho was as smart as he was funny - recent studies show that laughter is good for your health. It may be even better than exercise or a dose of the best medicine. And I’m not joking.

At a meeting of the American College of Cardiology, Dr. Wei Jiang of Duke University reported on how mood affected health. In a study of over 1,000 heart patients, Dr. Jiang discovered patients with mild depression had nearly twice the risk of death by heart failure than those with a more cheerful disposition.

At the same conference, Dr. Michael Miller from the University of Maryland demonstrated that even the type of movie you watch can dramatically affect your health. They measured the blood flow of 20 healthy volunteers before and after watching Steven Spielberg’s graphic war movie “Saving Private Ryan” and Woody Harrelson’s comedy “Kingpin”.

Dr. Miller reported blood flow decreased by 35% during the war movie and increased by 22% during the comedy. That’s a huge difference. Dr. Miller concluded that laughter could be as healthy as exercise. So it seems to me that a joyful, happy attitude is good for your heart and helps you live longer.

This isn’t really new information. Over 20 years ago, Norman Cousins told his amazing story of overcoming a terminal disease by watching old Charlie Chaplin comedies. His doctors gave him no hope. But he believed, deep down in his heart, that joy and laughter could turn his health around. And it did!

Since Cousins’ book Anatomy of an Illness came out, Drs. Stanley Tan and Lee Berk of Loma Linda University Medical Center in California have been the leaders in laughter research. Over and over again, they’ve shown laughter can improve muscle relaxation, releases endorphins (natural painkillers), reduce stress hormones, lower blood pressure and boost the immune system.

Laughter is cheaper than any drug and has no negative side effects, but it is contagious. So go out and start an epidemic. It worked for Groucho, Uncle Miltie, Bob Hope and George Burns - and it can work for you too.