People say laughter is the best medicine. But like all medicine, take too much—and it might kill you.
Now before you cancel your Netflix comedy queue, it’s worth noting: death by laughter is rare. Very rare. As in “lightning-strike-while-winning-the-lottery” rare. But it has happened. Enough times, in fact, that doctors have written about it in very serious journals while probably trying not to laugh themselves.
The classic example dates back to the 3rd century BCE. A Greek philosopher named Chrysippus apparently watched a donkey eat his figs, thought it was hilarious, and couldn’t stop laughing. Then he collapsed and died. That’s one way to go out on a high note.
Fast forward a couple thousand years and the stories keep coming. In 1975, a bricklayer in England named Alex Mitchell died while watching The Goodies, a slapstick British comedy show. According to his wife, he laughed uncontrollably for about 25 minutes before slumping over from what doctors later said was heart failure. The show’s producers sent her a sympathy note—probably the darkest fan mail ever written.
The science checks out. According to Dr. Claire Asher, writing for BBC Science Focus, laughing too hard can trigger a heart attack or suffocation. In rare cases, people faint or lose consciousness because laughter messes with the body’s oxygen and blood pressure balance. That euphoric wheezing sound we make when something’s too funny? That’s our respiratory system waving a tiny white flag.
There’s even a name for it—gelastic syncope. It’s what happens when laughter hijacks your nervous system. Think of it like your body saying, “Alright, comedy club’s closed—everyone out!”
But it’s not all gloom and doom. Most of us won’t die from laughing. We’ll just embarrass ourselves with a snort, spill a drink, or choke on a tortilla chip mid-punchline. (The author can confirm at least two of those.)
Still, the psychology of humor is weird. We use laughter as social glue, as stress relief, as therapy. It lowers cortisol, releases endorphins, and makes awkward social events slightly more bearable. Yet, in extreme cases, it overloads the brain’s emotional circuit board. Like joy short-circuiting into chaos.
In 1989, a Danish audiologist named Ole Bentzen reportedly laughed to death while watching A Fish Called Wanda. The scene with John Cleese and the chips apparently set off such intense laughter that his heart rate spiked to over 250 beats per minute. That’s the kind of cardio no doctor recommends.
Ironically, Cleese has made millions of people laugh for decades—and probably scared a few cardiologists along the way.
So how much laughter is “safe”? There’s no medical guideline, but here’s a rule of thumb: if your abs start cramping, your eyes are watering, and you can’t breathe—maybe take a sip of water. The meme will still be there.
Humor has always been our pressure valve. In bad times, we joke. In crisis, we laugh. Gallows humor isn’t a lack of empathy—it’s a survival mechanism. Soldiers do it. Nurses do it. Comedians practically live there. It’s how we process the unbearable.
But there’s a lesson tucked between the giggles and the graves. The same force that heals us can, in rare moments, break us. The body doesn’t care if the trigger is joy or fear—too much adrenaline, and the heart takes the hit.
So maybe laughter is the best medicine—but like whiskey, you don’t want to down the whole bottle.
Still, there’s something almost poetic about it. Of all the ways to exit this planet, going out mid-laugh isn’t the worst. If the choice is between laughing yourself to death or scrolling yourself to numbness, give me the giggles every time.
In the words of Mark Twain—who was famously terrified of dying before his next laugh—“Against the assault of laughter, nothing can stand.”
Unless it’s your cardiovascular system.