Boing Boing

Can you really laugh yourself to death?

In 1975, Alex Mitchell, 50, was watching the UK television comedy The Goodies when he burst in such hard laughter that, well, he died laughing. His heart had failed. To be fair, he didn't really die of laughter.

"Laughing can increase your intrathoracic pressure, and if you have an aortic aneurysm, that pressure can be transmitted into your vascular system, and it would rupture," Duke University School of Medicine cardiologist Jorge Antonio Gutierrez told Gizmodo in 2019. — Read the rest