Why yawning is healthy and contagious

It refreshes the brain. Improves muscle tone and heart rate. It fosters empathy and communication with others. The age-old theory that yawning indicates boredom and fatigue needs to be reconsidered.

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benefits of yawning

I was waiting for the support of science to reevaluate an act that I have always considered liberating, and as such revolutionary: the yawnA popular, extremely popular gesture, uniting humans and animals, with its essentiality, and which has been the victim, for too long, of the worst clichés. La boredom, the trough, sonno, the lack of joy: all falseOr rather, everything should be taken with a pinch of salt, without getting trapped in the infernal mechanism of gossip.

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YAWN

Scientists, now in unison, from Vienna to New York, via Canada and Japan, continue to produce research that uncovers the true qualities of yawning, which is not at all automatically associated with tiredness or boredom. On the contrary, to translate the voice of science into popular jargon, Yawning serves to wake you up brain. It refreshes it, even better if with fresh airBut not only do we inhale fresh air when we yawn, which cools our brain, allowing it to work better, but we also simultaneously contract and relax the muscles in our face, thus increasing the flow of warm blood around our skull. In short, yawning is a valuable thermoregulator for our body.

BENEFITS OF YAWNING

Furthermore, it is always the scientists who give us this good news, Yawning improves our muscle tone and heart rate. And it's contagious., starting from 4 years of age, as it produces empathy, communication with others, and at the same time, it increases our mental efficiency. In their studies, the professors also calculated the duration of a yawn, linking it, even in this respect, to the functioning of our intellect: 7 seconds for humans, 6 seconds for elephants, 1,5 seconds for mice.

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WHY DO WE YAWN?

At this point, allow yourself long and frequent yawns, in the face of those who would like to reduce our gestures to those of robots. Do it without the fear to offend anyone, and just remember the etiquette, accompanying the sublime yawn with a little hand placed in front of your mouth.

DO WE ALSO YAW DUE TO HUNGER?

The relationship between yawning and appetite It's not direct, but it's still significant. The mechanism is more or less this: the body needs food, and it expresses this need by yawning. Do an experiment: if dilate the times between one lunch and another, you will see that at a certain point in this time interval the urge to yawn will increase, which usually occurs 6-7 times a day.

WHY IS YAWNING CONTAGIOUS?

Whatever its source—hunger, boredom, sleep—yawning becomes instantly contagious. Why? Scientists' explanation boils down to: “empathetic” communication which is created through this gesture. Through mirror neurons we perform an action by observing the same one performed by another person: but in the case of yawning we do it because this is how we build a relationship with others and create a sort of synchrony in group behavior. Almost a language for staying together and not separating.

STRETCHING BENEFITS

Even the gesture of to stretch, a companion to yawning, has its benefits. One above all: it gets our joints moving, which are often stiff from sitting. According to various medical theories, we should stretch several times a day, especially in the morning, as soon as we wake up. Just like cats, they are masters of this type of movement.

YAWNING LESS AND SLEEP MORE, HERE'S HOW:

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