3 Things You Didn't Know About Tears

We have three types of tears.  The first type is called a basal tear, and they are tears that are constantly being released into our eyes. When we blink, that action keeps the tears spread across the eye. It keeps it from drying out. It protects it from bacteria and things in the air. There's a little bit of a lipid layer over the top. Those tears are there all the time.

The second type are reflex tears. These happen when you get an irritant, like a bug, that flies in your eye, or when an eyelash drops, or some piece of something falls into your eye. Your eyes will water to try to get rid of it. The same thing happens when you're chopping onions, right? It's an irritant. Your eye is trying to wash out that irritant.

The third type of tear is emotional tears. All of these types of tears contain enzymes, lipids, electrolytes, and other things. Emotional tiers also have more protein, and they have hormones in them.

Number two, when do we cry? Well, we cry obviously when we're sad or when we're upset. Sometimes when we're mad, sometimes when we're afraid, we also cry when we laugh. Sometimes we're laughing so hard that we're crying and that's because both of those responses are from the same area of the brain called the limbic system. And that is the system that oversees emotional responses.

Interestingly, laughing very hard and then going to crying can be okay. You can feel okay after that. But crying when you're sad, upset, scared, or whatever - you can feel kind of bad when you're done. But shortly after that, you feel better. You feel calm. And why is that? It's because you've just released a ton of toxins through crying.

Number three, because of that - crying is a great way to detox! It's one of many. We're not only getting rid of stress hormones and other things, but we're also releasing something called leucine enkephalin, which is a natural painkiller.

So all of these things are running around in our body and affecting our emotional state and then being released out through the eye. That's not the only place obviously, but it is an important avenue of detox.

Many people believe that in times of high emotional stress, the body relies on its tear duct system to really release all of that of energy and the emotions so that the body can come back to some sort of balance or homeostasis.

And we all experience a lot of emotions. Crying, anger, fear joy, happiness uncertainty, all of that. And all of those emotions need a place to be expressed, right? So a lot of them can be expressed, but some of them are buried deep down and crying is almost the only way to start to bring it up.

Women can cry pretty easily. It's it's easy for us and it's socially acceptable. For men, however, it isn't so socially acceptable. In fact, men are usually socialized out of crying when they're young, very young.

It makes it hard to actually use that path to detox because I'm assuming men want to just hold it in. They don't want to cry. They don't want to do anything. But I highly encourage you to find a place in your home where you feel comfortable either by yourself, in the bathroom, in the shower, wherever or if you feel safe - with your partner or your friends - to really allow yourself to cry and to let those emotions out, it's a very powerful opportunity to detox.

I hope that you'll take that opportunity.

If you have any type of a health issue that you'd like to talk to me about, you can sign up for a free health chat here.

Thank you so much for listening.

Dr. Elaine

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This information is for educational purposes only and is not intended to replace the medical advice of your doctor or healthcare provider. Please consult your healthcare provider for advice about a specific medical condition.