Biochemist William Frey has studied tears for fifteen years. The team found out that, although tear production organs had been considered unnecessary for survival, tears are actually critical. Tears are a normal and necessary component of your body’s natural health system.
Crying relieves stress and is much better for your mental health than suppressing your emotions—regardless of your gender.
Emotional tears are a response which only humans have, for only people can weep. All land animals have the ability to produce tears for lubricating their eyes, but people are the only animals who can cry emotional tears.
One of the most obvious functions of tears is to lubricate your eye and eyelid, but they also prevent dehydration of various mucous membranes—and anyone with the “dry eye” problem knows how painful this can be. A severe lack of this lubrication produces a condition requiring immediate intervention to save the patient’s eyesight.
Another important function of tears is that they bathe your eyes in lysozyme, one of the most effective antibacterial and antiviral agents known. Lysozyme, from lysos, to split, and enzyme (it is an enzyme which chemically splits certain compounds) is the major source of the antigerm traits of tears.
Amazingly, lysozyme inactivates 90 to 95 per cent of all bacteria in a mere five to 10 minutes. Without it, eye infections would be far more common.
The inability to produce tears produces burning and redness, and light itself becomes bothersome. The eyes itch and feel gritty. One sufferer described the condition as similar to having sand in their eye. In time, ulcers develop on the cornea and loss of its transparency often occurs.
Nerves that exit in the neck go to the eyes and the tear ducts, controlling and regulating their function. Interference with those nerves could in fact be one of the causes of “dry eye.”
Bottom line? Crying is good for you AND your eyes. Lack of tears, either from the inability to produce them or from suppressing them, can affect both your overall health and the health of your eyes . Crying really is good for you!
