A Smile-a-Day Can Help Keep Depression at Bay

Aimee Herd : Jul 5, 2010
Richard Alleyne – Telegraph UK

"A happy heart makes the face cheerful, but heartache crushes the spirit." (Prov. 15:13)

A recent Telegraph UK article highlights the connection between the ability to facially express emotions and actually feeling them.

With the increase of Botox being used to fight wrinkles in the face, has come the interesting discovery that there is a decreasing amount of emotion felt by the patient. (Photo: GETTY)

According to the report, Botox "temporarily paralyzes the facial muscles that can cause creases," which means fewer lines on your face, but also, a consequently "frozen" expression. Simply put, you lose a little more of your ability to smile.

What researchers found though, is that your ability to smile seems to be directly related with "feeling" like smiling—feeling happy. The same is true for feeling sad as well.

Joshua Davis, a psychologist at Barnard College in New York explained, "With Botox, a person can respond otherwise normally to an emotional event, [such as] a sad movie scene, but will have less movement in the facial muscles that have been injected, and therefore less feedback to the brain about such facial expressivity."

Research showed that compared to a control group, the Botox group "exhibited an overall significant decrease in the strength of emotional experience," the findings were published in the journal Emotion.

The article states that findings concur with a previous suggestion that "feedback from facial expressions to the brain can influence the experience of emotions." In other words, smiling can make you feel happier, and frowning can make you feel more depressed.

Sounds like it's right out of the book of Proverbs doesn't it?

And, it explains why just a smile—even from a stranger—can lift your emotions.