Surprising Reasons Why Crying is Actually Good for You

A lot of people demand to feel better after a good cry. Whether it's to mourn the end of a close relationship or because of the sheer disappointment of a bad day, once you get to wipe the tears away, the world can seem like it's been put back together again.

Now a study has recommended that tears could actually be a step of flushing negative elements out of the body and doing you the world of good. We look at why it's good to cry.

Here are some of the surprising reasons why crying is actually good for you.
1. Helps Flush Out Toxins

Crying helps your body to get rid of dangerous toxins and chemicals, some of which raise your levels of cortisol, the stress-related hormone.

Like other exocrine secretions including urinating, sweating and exhaling, crying helps purge the body of excess stress chemicals and unwanted toxins that build up from emotional tension and may end up affecting your health adversely.


2. Helps Deal with Stress

Crying is a safe and useful way to deal with stress. Emotional tears are the main reason for the release of excess cortisol from the body. While you cry, your tears eject this hormone, thus actually relieving stress and tension and making you feel better.

This will help reduce the chance of a heart attack and brain damage. Crying eliminates chemicals like ACTH that form up in the body through stress. Elimination of this chemical is important as it triggers cortisol, which can further lead to various health issues.

A good cry can make your feel much better during stress. It can even help deal with negative feelings and frustrations.

3. Improves Mood

Crying releases endorphins, the ‘feel-good’ hormones, into the body that make you feel great. Moreover, endorphins have a slight sedating effect that helps you sleep better after crying.

Crying can be self-soothing and can help elevate your mood, better than any antidepressant. People with anxiety or mood disorders are less likely to benefit from crying.

4. Improves Vision

The act of crying helps clean and protect the eyes from irritants as well as improves vision.

When your eyes come under attack of some foreign bodies or irritants, your lacrimal glands get activated to stimulate more fluid into the eyes and wash and drain out the irritant.

This fluid, also known as reflex tears, contains glucose and lysozyme, antibacterial and antiviral enzymes that protect and nourish the cells on the surface and inside the eyes. It works to dissolve and break down the outer protective wall of the bacteria, thus killing them and preventing any damage to the eyes.

Lubrication and hydration of the eyeballs and eyelids directly helps in clearing up vision. After a good cry, you will have a comparatively better and clearer vision.

5. Keeps the Nose Moisturized

Crying moisturizes and removes bacteria from the nose by releasing tears into the nose through the tear ducts.

Your tears travel down internally through the nasolacrimal ducts into the internal nasal mucus in the nasal passage. This explains why you get a runny nose when you cry!

6. Kills Bacteria and Improves Immunity

The tears that come out while crying are strong antibacterial and antiviral agents that help get rid of all the germs accumulated during the day.

Tears contain lysozymes, which are powerful antibacterial, antimicrobial and antiviral enzymes that contribute to killing bacteria in the eyes. It breaks down the walls of bacterial cells, and provides a protective coating to the inner and outer surfaces of the eyes.


7. Releases Bottled-Up Emotions

Crying encourages you to face your painful emotions with full force. It acts as emotional perspiration of feelings, a release, a psychological tonic for your body.

In fact, shedding tears is a healthy catharsis and a natural way of relieving tension in the mind. While crying does not take away your problems, it definitely helps you deal with them in a more level-headed manner.


8. Boosts Communication

At times, crying works as a communication medium, especially when you cannot express yourself using words. For instance, if you are in pain and cannot express it with words, crying can display your message.

Crying is a great bonding factor in relationships between people as compared to arguments and silence, which can usually cause miscommunication. This is because people are aware that when one starts to cry suddenly, there is probably a reason behind it.

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