A smile can change every day in your life in more ways than you would normally think. Smiling increases your life expectancy, it lowers stress levels, it boosts your immune system, and even an artificial smile can make you feel happy.

As a sophomore in high school, I rarely smiled. I juggled many things around in my life and had a lot on my plate. Beginning to smile more, junior year I opened myself up to more people. Towards the middle of junior year I found myself starting to slip back into my old sophomore ways. On one of the worst days I had all year, a friend said to me, “Slingo, why aren’t you smiling? You always smile."

A simple gesture that I used all the time became noticed by one person, and when I stopped, he brought it to my attention. I smiled when he said that to me and from that day on, I made it my goal to make sure I smiled every day because it has such a great effect on everyone around me, even though I did not know it did.

I also didn’t know that many other people in this world have made that commitment as well. On a mission to spread the power of a smile, Ron Gutman, founder and CEO of HealthTap, speaks to people all around the world. In a TED Talk he said, "When you smile, you look good and feel good. When others see you smile, they smile too. When others smile, they look good and feel good, too." A smile can contagiously spread like wild fire from one person to the next because it universally means the same thing to all different cultures.

A senior in high school, described a smile. He said, "A smile triggers chain reactions. It's the simplest form of communication. It's a sense of security. It's an innate human desire to smile." Language, hand gestures, and facial expressions can all mean different things in different cultures, but not the smile. As he described it, “it is an innate human desire to smile.” It takes less facial muscles in your face to smile than it does to frown, and researchers have found that in the womb a baby smiles as it cuddles into a ball and waits to be brought into the world.

Another senior also described a smile. He said, “The smile is the uncontrollable feeling of pure joy, that can’t be explained, only seen and felt." As a student athlete, he has set many goals for his future. Becoming a professional athlete and playing college ball are two of his main goals. Towards the end of 2012 he signed to play in college. When asked to describe how he felt on the day, he just showed me a picture. A picture of himself smiling in his new cap and shirt. The smile could only be described as a truly genuine smile. A smile that showed that something tremendous happened in his life. Lips spreading from ear to ear, mind realizing everything is complete, his smile makes you want to smile too. In a way, you get the same feeling that he experienced on that day. True happiness.

Now, “fake” happiness also exists. Ron Gutman and other researchers have found that if you make yourself smile, you can make yourself happy. Chemical reactions still occur in your brain and your brain is tricked into thinking that you are actually happy.

Gutman has also done many studies of smiles. In a study where he looked at baseball cards from the 1950s, he found that the baseball players who had a wider smile lived a longer life. Players, who didn’t smile, averaged a life expectancy of 72.9 years. Those who did smile averaged 79.9 years. Just by making the effort to smile every day, you can increase the amount of days you can smile.

According to Sheldon Cohen, a Psychology Professor, the more you smile, the better you feel day to day. In a study, researchers quarantined different people, and tried to get them sick. Before they quarantined them, they first interviewed them to see what type of personality they had. Up beat people mostly came out perfectly healthy. If they did get sick, they would not report as many symptoms as people with negative emotional styles would.

As I said previously, I rarely smiled as a sophomore and then began smiling more as a junior. It’s been about a year and a half since I started changing and I have noticed a big difference in the way I feel and my body feels. Before, I would get sick all the time. Now, things have changed. I rarely ever get sick, but when I do, it’s not a very bad sickness. I have never felt the necessity to take any prescription drugs to mask my symptoms. The best drug was a smile.

So, how about it? Not only will you be making yourself happier, and increasing your own longevity, but you will create a different world and make the same things that happen to you, happen to other people. The disease, joyful and infectious, will continue to spread.