{"id":911,"date":"2019-07-17T18:56:39","date_gmt":"2019-07-17T18:56:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.mydentalpracticeblog.com\/graystonedental\/dental-care-blog\/smile-to-improve-your-day-and-your-health\/"},"modified":"2019-07-17T19:05:38","modified_gmt":"2019-07-17T19:05:38","slug":"smile-to-improve-your-day-and-your-health","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mydentalpracticeblog.com\/graystonedental\/dental-care-blog\/smile-to-improve-your-day-and-your-health\/","title":{"rendered":"Smile To Improve Your Day \u2014 And Your Health!"},"content":{"rendered":"<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-21332\" src=\"http:\/\/contentlibrary.socialmediafordentistry.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2019\/07\/smile_543.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"543\" height=\"543\" \/><\/p>\n<p><b>\u201cIT TAKES MORE MUSCLES<\/b> to frown than to smile,\u201d the old clich\u00e9 goes, so you should smile more to conserve energy. Well, it turns out the clich\u00e9 is false. Smiling takes at least ten muscles, while as few as six are required for a frown. A better expression would be \u201csmile to burn more calories,\u201d but that isn\u2019t the only benefit you\u2019ll get from flashing those pearly whites more often.<\/p>\n<h3>The Feedback Loop Between Smiling And Happiness<\/h3>\n<p>When we smile, it sets off a chemical reaction in our bodies and brains. We release endorphins, the feel-good hormones. The amazing thing is that <strong>we can release these endorphins simply by the act of smiling, even if it\u2019s fake!<\/strong> Smiling and happiness are so closely tied together in our brains that it doesn\u2019t matter which one comes first. If you\u2019re having a rough day and want to feel better, smiling is a great, simple first step to take.<\/p>\n<h3>Smile Your Pain And Stress Away<\/h3>\n<p>That rush of endorphins has a lot of benefits, and two of the most immediate ones are reducing pain and relieving stress. <strong>Endorphins are natural painkillers with no side effects<\/strong>, and they help us recover more quickly from stressful situations. A 2012 experiment demonstrated this by testing how long it took for subjects\u2019 heart rates to return to normal after performing a stressful task. The smiling subjects were the fastest to recover!<\/p>\n<h3>Smile To Give Your Immune System A Boost<\/h3>\n<p>Over time, those short-term benefits from the endorphins released by smiling can compound into something much bigger. By smiling freely and often, we can make ourselves more resilient against all kinds of illnesses \u2014 <strong>even lowering our chances of getting cancer<\/strong> by reducing the number of stress-induced mutations our cells go through.<\/p>\n<h3>Smile To Live Longer!<\/h3>\n<p>When we think of the benefits of smiling, we usually don\u2019t think much farther than how it makes us look younger and more attractive to the people around us, but in the end, <strong>smiling can actually add years to our lives.<\/strong> Smile as often as you can so that you can take full advantage of what it can do for you, and make sure you\u2019re taking good care of your smile so that you feel more like sharing it.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Bpv9Ln7M8RA?rel=0\" width=\"543\" height=\"305\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<h3>Let\u2019s See Those Gorgeous Smiles!<\/h3>\n<p>Did you know that children smile an average of twenty times as often as adults over the course of a day? Just imagine the health benefits we could enjoy as adults if we smiled as often as we did when we were little. We encourage all of our patients to find every reason you can to smile, and come see us twice a year so that we can help you keep your smile as healthy as it can be!<\/p>\n<h4>Our patients are our biggest reason to smile!<\/h4>\n<h6>Top image by Flickr user <span style=\"color: #2a7abd;\"><a style=\"color: #2a7abd;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/fromthefrontend\/4670280548\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">David Long<\/a><\/span> used under <span style=\"color: #2a7abd;\"><a style=\"color: #2a7abd;\" href=\"http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-sa\/4.0\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike 4.0 license<\/a><\/span>. Image cropped and modified from original.<\/h6>\n<h6><span style=\"color: #d9d9d9;\">The content on this blog is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of qualified health providers with questions you may have regarding medical conditions.<\/span><\/h6>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p><b>\u201cIT TAKES MORE MUSCLES<\/b> to frown than to smile,\u201d the old clich\u00e9 goes, so you should smile more to conserve energy. Well, it turns&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":912,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[176,179,184,180,181],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-911","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","category-dental-posts","category-endo","category-general-dental","category-pediatric","category-176","category-179","category-184","category-180","category-181","description-off"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mydentalpracticeblog.com\/graystonedental\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/911"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mydentalpracticeblog.com\/graystonedental\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mydentalpracticeblog.com\/graystonedental\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mydentalpracticeblog.com\/graystonedental\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mydentalpracticeblog.com\/graystonedental\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=911"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.mydentalpracticeblog.com\/graystonedental\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/911\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mydentalpracticeblog.com\/graystonedental\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/912"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mydentalpracticeblog.com\/graystonedental\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=911"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mydentalpracticeblog.com\/graystonedental\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=911"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mydentalpracticeblog.com\/graystonedental\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=911"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mydentalpracticeblog.com\/graystonedental\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=911"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}