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The Philadelphia Inquirer, Health & Science Magazine, Art Carey
Let a Smile be Health Insurance

Laura Lewis has a sharp mind. She’s bright, savvy and ambitious.

Laura Lewis has a fantastic body. It’s immediately obvious and something that can’t be overlooked or denied.  The stats: She’s 5-foot-5, weighs 123 pounds, and her body fat is a mere 15 percent.  That places her among the topmost echelon of the Physical Elite.

Truly impressive, but not that extraordinary, all things considered. Laura is a nutrition pro, an avid walker, a former aerobics maniac, a girl who high-kicked around the world on behalf of truth, justice and the American way as a member of the Kilgore Rangerettes. (If you’ve never heard of the Kilgore Rangerettes, you’ve never spent time in the Lone Star State, or else you’re a hopelessly provincial Northeastern pseudo-sophisticate.)

What’s even more striking than her body, however, is her smile.

All the clichés are applicable: incandescent, 1,000-watt, Pepsodent, a veritable keyboard of gleaming teeth. She wears the smile constantly. Even when making a serious point, she manages to punch it home with a smile. Somehow, on her, it doesn’t seem forced or phony. It’s a natural part of her upbeat, effervescent personality.

It’s also one of the secrets to her abundant good health, one of the techniques she’s used successfully, not only to win friends and influence enemies, but also to keep several demons at bay.  Demons such as heart disease, breast cancer, obesity, Alzheimer’s, alcoholism, diabetes – the genetic bogeymen, courtesy of her forebears, who haunt this seemingly blithe cheerleader for fitness and an active life.

Putting on a smile, as Laura points out in her book 52 Ways to Live a Long and Healthy Life, is more than just a matter of dazzling people with a pageant puss worthy of Miss America. A smile, it turns out, is more than skin-deep.

"If you smile, your body will think you’re happy." Says Laura, "and respond accordingly."

Folk nonsense? Holistic hokum?  Maybe not. When you smile, you contract 42 facial muscles, Laura says. This constricts and slows blood flow to the brain via your sinuses. This means cooler blood reaches the hypothalamus – the "master controller" of body temperature and emotion. The result: more pleasant feelings.

Laughter is equally salutary. Did you know that laughing 100 times during a 24-hour period provides the same cardiovascular benefit as working out on a rowing machine for 10 minutes?

It happens like this: When you laugh, your blood pressure and heart rate rise. Afterward, they drop lower than they were before the hilarity. Moreover, because laughter accelerates your blood flow, you have more ammo to repel infection and disease, you feel less pain, and levels of stress-induced hormones - such as epinephrine, cortisol and dopamine – fall.

The lesson is obvious: Smile and laugh. As Anne Frank once observed: "whoever is happy will make others happy, too." Laura might amend that slightly: "Whoever tries to be happy will make his body happy, too."

This is just one of 52 subjects dealt with in Laura’s book, a purse-sized paperback that is billed as "the holistic lifestyle guide for the ‘90s." Yecch!  Let’s just say this: It’s the perfect literary accessory for any waiting room, coffee table or bathroom. Designed for spot-nibbling, it’s chockfull of concise, neatly synthesized, bite-size morsels about everything from Attitude (and how to cop one) to ZZZs (and how to get more of them). The prose is simple and chirpy, and bursting with more exclamation points than a UHF announcer. Like peanuts or Doritos, whole chapters can be gobbled during commercial breaks. As a gesture to philosophical heft, the chapters begin with snappy quotations and inspirational sayings ("Our nature consists in motion; complete rest is death." – Blaise Pascal) and end with "action tips."

To combat headaches: Apply an ice pack to the base of the neck.

To get to sleep: Take a calcium-magnesium supplement one hour before bed.

To overcome jet lag or low energy: Rub drops of such essential oils as lavender, basil or tangerine on your Temples.

To relieve office stress: Drink a cool beverage through a straw. (It slows you down, cutting your mental RPMs, forcing you to live in the moment.)

Considerately, the book tells readers where they can go for more information. For instance, the chapter on smiling and laughing offers this: "The Far Side, Gary Larson."

"One chapter a week, and in a year, you’ll be a new person," Laura promises. "You’ll be more alert, you’ll have more sparkle in your eyes, you’ll be happier and healthier."

Laura’s odyssey is instructive. Born in a suburb of Philadelphia, Levittown, Bucks County, she moved to New Jersey, then New York state. When she was 13, her family uprooted in a major way, relocating to Texas, specifically, a suburb of Dallas called Plano. "I was a funky hippie girl who wore sandals and love beads," says Laura. "I decided to change my life and become a real Texas girl." Did she ever. She joined the high school drill team and eventually became captain. Her classmates voted her another distinction: Best Smile.

At Kilgore Junior College, and later at the University of North Texas, she studied food and nutrition, biology and chemistry. A jock and a tomboy ("I always won the sit-up and jump-rope contests"), she’d enjoyed using and exercising her body from an early age, playing football and baseball and running track. As a high-stepping Rangerette, she performed in the Cotton Bowl and traveled abroad as "an ambassador for the all-American ideal."

From seminars on nutrition, Laura drifted into leading aerobics classes and teaching fitness. One major influence: her father, a hard-charging Xerox v.p., always on the go, always catching airplanes, smoking three packs of cigarettes a day. When he was 40, and Laura only 18, he nearly died of a heart attack. It was a sobering experience, a searing encounter with a family demon.

In fitness terms, Laura is no ingenue. She’s a person who’s been there, tried this, done that. During the ‘80s, she, too, fell prey to the spirit of excess. Her body, exhausted from leading 14 aerobics classes a week, shut down. "I was feeling dizzy and nauseated. I had bruises all over me."

Time to chill out. Laura rested and ate better food. She opened her own aerobics studio, with a new-age emphasis on relaxation and meditation, therapeutic aromas, and mood-elevating full-spectrum light. And she continued to teach and broadcast her knowledge, most recently through a popular radio talk show.

Now she’s still eager to spread the gospel of fitness. "I love to see people change and grow and feel better about themselves," she proclaims. After reading 50 Simple Things You Can Do to Save the Earth, Laura decided something was out of whack. "It doesn’t make sense to worry about planetary ecology if you’re ignoring your personal ecology by drinking massive quantities of Coca-Cola and eating tons of doughnuts. How can you save the Earth if you don’t first save your body?"

Distilled to its essence, her message is this: Not much of life can be controlled, but when it comes to the health and welfare of your body, you have remarkably more control then you think.

"Nobody else is driving your car but you," she says. "Eighty percent of deaths occur in health institutions. People need to be aware that the outcome doesn’t have to be like that. You don’t have to play the victim. By making small changes – in how you eat, in the way and amount you exercise, -- you can make major, powerful changes in your life.

"Any time you work out, you’re putting your body into a state of stress. With sufficient time to rest and recover, this stress is good. (It enables you to deal with the normal stresses of everyday living more easily and effectively than someone who’s a couch potato."

Needless to say, Laura believes her entire book is a wonderful compendium of body wisdom. But I asked her to pick her top five suggestions for a longer, healthier life. After "Laugh It Off" (smile, and see above), they are, in no particular order:

Go for the garlic. It’s one of the most powerful natural healing foods on the planet. Among other things, it decreases cholesterol and blood pressure and rates of colon, rectal and breast cancer.

Put more punch in your lunch. Eat your largest meal at lunchtime, and snack less. The French do this (consuming 57 percent of their daily calories before 2 p.m., as opposed to 38 percent for us), which may be why they live longer, and are generally more healthy, than we snack-crazy, big-dinner gorgers in the U.S. of A.

Balance your moods with foods. If you want to be alert and ready for action, eat foods rich in protein; if you want to relax and get drowsy, eat foods high in carbohydrates.

Be balanced. "Strive to be a moderate extremist." Take it to the limit without going overboard. Exercise more, and eat nutritious food but don’t completely forgo ballpark hot dogs and hot fudge sundaes. Reward yourself occasionally with "treat days" and "sloth days."

"If you take all the fun out of life, what’s left to enjoy?" says Laura.

With a smile, of course.

by Art Carey

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Laura Lewis is a walking advertisement for the benefits of exercise. In her book "52 Ways to Live a Long and Healthy Life," she says smiling and laughing are good for health, too.