Smiles are innate facial expressions that can show amusement, pleasure, happiness, or joy. There are a lot of ways to define a smile: dazzling, nervous, fake, bright, charming – you name it! What you probably don’t know is that smiling is one of the easiest things you can do to improve your everyday life. When we smile, our mood changes, our day brightens up, and we feel better. Why is that so?

Along with other health benefits, smiles help reduce the level of cortisol, the stress hormone, and release endorphins. Smiles help us in social interactions and make us look good and more attractive to other people’s eyes. Smiling is contagious and rightfully so.

Did you know that the more you smile, the longer you’ll live? And that smiling enhances productivity and cognitive abilities? In this infographic, we offer an insight into what smiling is all about, and you’ll find plenty of reasons why smiles really are the curve that sets everything straight.

An infographic by Junomedical.