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- They say laughter is the best medicine, but this fan who almost choked to death from laughing can confirm it may also be the worst poison.
- Comedian, Wanda Sykes, was doing a show in Memphis when a fan laughed so hard he vomited.
- After vomiting, he started choking on his vomit, which could have led to death.
They always say laughter is the best medicine, and ironically the same medicine can turn into a death scare. One person who knows this too well is 58-year-old comedian Wanda Sykes who recently performed a live show in Memphis, Tennessee and recalled a scary moment when someone started shouting at her from the side of the stage.
READ MORE | Fifteen minutes a day keeps the doctor away – why laughter is actually the best medicine
Appearing on 'The Late Late Show with James Corden', she said, "I'm like, 'What's going on?' He's like, 'You need a paramedic! You need a paramedic!' So I'm like, 'Can you guys get the house lights up?' And my security went over, and I was like, 'Hey, is there a doctor? We need doctors.' And they went over, and this guy -- apparently, he had a lot to drink; there's always alcohol involved - he was laughing so hard that he puked. He vomited and then started choking on his vomit."
Fellow guest Joel McHale quipped, "Now that must have been a good joke."
READ MORE | Meet the man who can't stop laughing once he starts
According to Vulture and Healthline, there are many ways a person can die from laughing too hard, depending on how your body reacts:
1. If you happen to be walking around with an aneurysm in your brain, which 1 to 6 percent of us do unknowingly, a single laugh can cause it to rapture. This is because laughing puts pressure inside your cranium, which puts stress on that aneurysm.
2. You could also die from laughter by bowel death - This is because when you laugh, you contract your stomach muscles and increase the pressure of your abdominal wall. That force can cause little parts of your bowel to poke out through small holes in your abdominal and pelvic wall - a hernia.
READ MORE | Laughing is good for your mind and your body – here's what the research shows
3. If you have severe congestive heart failure, you already don't have much room to spare in terms of backup cardiac function and lung volumes, so you might not be able to compensate for the normal physiologic changes of a typical bout of laughter.
4. Laughter-induced syncope - unexpected nervous system firing and sudden drop in blood pressure which will make you pass out from laughing.
5. Cataplexy - This is when people suddenly lose all muscle tone when they laugh; however, they don't lose consciousness.
6. First sign of a stroke or seizure - Some people will erupt into a fit of pathological laughter, and others have outbursts of unexpected laughter, which may be a manifestation of a seizure - the first sign of a brain tumour.
Researchers of a study published in the British Medical Journal found that intense laughter can trigger fainting, asthma attacks, protrusion of abdominal hernias, headaches, incontinence and jaw dislocation.
However, this is no reason to stop laughing as long as it's within reason.
Laughter also has health benefits.
"Benefits of laughter include reduced anger, anxiety, depression, and stress; reduced tension (psychological and cardiovascular); increased pain threshold; reduced risk of myocardial infarction (presumably requiring hearty laughter); improved lung function; increased energy expenditure; and reduced blood glucose concentration," say the researchers.
