Yes, You Can Die From Laughing Too Hard

Hey, we all enjoy a funny gag from time to time. But how funny does a joke have to be for it to literally kill you?

In the third century B.C., an account from biographer Diogenes Laërtius says that Greek stoic philosopher Chrysippus actually died from laughter.

Chrysippus told the joke himself, effectively committing suicide in the process. What was it then?

Apparently he saw a donkey eating his figs one fateful day. So he told a slave to give the innocent donkey some wine to wash them down. He ended up loving the joke a little too much and, after laughing hard, he died.

Although the chances of this happening is incredibly slim, it is possible when compounded with pre-existing or life-threatening conditions.

For example, a ruptured brain aneurysm may occur if someone is undiagnosed. A hard laugh could actually lead to one. An asthma attack, on the other hand, is triggered by a wide range of emotions. A funny joke might do a person in with it.

Laughing, in extreme cases, can also lead to syncope, which is a temporary loss of consciousness due to insufficient blood flow to the brain.

Of course, dying from laughter may also happen if there is asphyxiation or suffocation. Such was allegedly the case with the Italian renaissance writer Pietro Aretino (Officially, though, it was a heart attack or stroke that took his life).

In a study on laughter published in the British Medical Journal back in 2013, there was only one case of death by laughter in its 67 years' worth of research. A 50-year-old woman, who suffered from schizophrenia and had a history of heart ailments, tragically passed away after laughing too hard. She went through Ziprasidone therapy beforehand, too. The woman then had intense laughter one day after hearing some joke and, well, she just collapsed.

Still, this shouldn't stop us from laughing as much as we can. It's extremely rare, after all. And if there was a way to go, wouldn't we at least want to be happy when we say goodbye?