Healthy Swellness: World Smile Day

Today is World Smile Day so get grinning, guys!

Even if you’re not feeling it.

And why’s that? Well, when we’re happy we smile, right? And the muscles contracting in our face notify the emotional centre in our brain and tell it “we are feeling happy!” but it can happen the other way around, too, says registered psychologist Nicole McCance. “If you’re not happy, but you smile, the muscles will tell your emotional centre in your brain that you are happy, and you will feel a sense of calmness. There’s a biochemical response, and endorphins and oxytocin — those are the feel-good hormones — will be released, and you’ll feel an improved mental state.”

There are also studies that show that if you’re experiencing pain, if you have a smile on your face, you actually experience lass pain, adds McCance. (Hmm, I think I’ll try this if I’m hurting in the tail end of my next marathon…)

If it’s not physical pain you’re experiencing, but just feeling blue, McCance suggests just trying to muster a half smile in these times of distress. “Just turn up the corners of your mouth, and it can help reduce anxiety,” she says.

Besides the happy-triggering effects of it, a smile is a confidence booster, too. People will gravitate to you, says McCance. “If you’re about to do a presentation or job interview, walk in with a smile, and it’ll show you are confident–even if you may not be, but the world will reflect back to you that you are, and it’ll boost your confidence in the long-term,” she says. How key do we consider a smile to our confidence? In a survey conducted for Philips Sonicare by Angus-Reid, 66 percent of women say an attractive smile is most important to their overall confidence.

So, keep smiling, friends, keep smiling.

(If you need some inspiration to smile, well, this teeny runt of a puppy I encountered this summer in Toronto should do the trick.)

Leave a Comment October 3, 2014

Go on and grin

Laughter helps alleviate pain, and now research shows that grinning and bearing it actually helps decrease stress and is good for your ticker. If you can hold a smile through a stressful moment, say, for example, you’re seated next to a woman who’s spending an entire flight plucking out her grey hairs and neatly saving them on a sheet of paper (!!!), your heart rate will be slower after recovering from the stressful moment than if you didn’t smile.

(The study, which will be published in Psychological Science, showed that the more genuine your smile, the greater the stress-relieving benefits for your heart — but even just a faux grin using just your mouth and not smiling with your eyes, too, offers benefits).

Smile on.

1 Comment August 2, 2012

Whiten up

So I’m heading today to Napa, California, for a few days. It’s for work, so I haven’t set the itinerary but I think it’s safe to assume a few glasses of red wine just might be consumed (you can’t go to Napa and not enjoy some vino)…red wine that may very well stain my pearly whites.

So what better time to test out Pure Smile‘s portable teeth whitening pen ($50). I’m not completely sold on the idea of whitening on the go (I think I’d prefer to complete this task in the privacy of my own home rather than out in public so a portable pen that you can apply in 60 seconds isn’t so much of a draw for me) but I’ll give it a shot.

How to use it? You paint on the product (which is composed of 30-percent carbamide peroxide, all-natural, kosher glycerin and xylitol), leave it on for one minute and then rinse with water.

According to Vancouver-based Pure Smile, using the product twice a day for two weeks is enough to see results–check back in 14 days for my review.

Leave a Comment May 14, 2010