What fills more of your time, crying or exercising?
Consider this: Cosmopolitan conducted a poll in 2010 and found that 33 percent of the women
polled said they cry at least once per week.
Meanwhile, the CDC says 25 percent of American women don't exercise at all, so if they fall
into both camps, there are women out there who spend more of their lives crying than
exercising.
If only crying burned calories, right?
Well, crying does have an effect on your body, and some of it can be positive.
So, here's what really happens when you start sobbing.
Starting up those tears
We humans can cry for pretty much any reason, and strangely, the parts of our brains responsible
for the tears don't differentiate between, say, sadness and joy - it's all the same to
our primal brain.
In an article for Psychology Today, Dr. Jordan Gaines Lewis explained what's going on in
those moments leading up to a waterfall of tears.
It starts in a small region of the brain called the hypothalamus.
When you're happy, sad, stressed, or feeling literally any other kind of emotion, your
hypothalamus only knows how to do one thing: react.
It interacts with another part of the brain called the amygdala, and that's what enables
us to experience emotions.
The amygdala continues to pass the buck to your nervous system, and that's when you start
pumping out those tears.
Meanwhile, your hypothalamus - the one responsible for all this mess - doesn't even get why you're
crying.
The audacity.
A full-body "workout"
Americans may not exercise as often as we should, but if we cry enough, it's kind of
like getting a workout.
All you have to do is picture a child throwing a tantrum and you'll know just how active
crying can become.
Even if you don't get as animated, your shoulders are probably still heaving out those heavy
sobs.
Your skin may get blotchy or you might even develop a headache, and that's because there's
a lot going on internally.
Dr. Jonathan Rottenberg, a psychology professor at the University of South Florida, explained
to Reader's Digest, saying you can thank your body's fight-or-flight response for getting
you all worked up.
He adds,
"People who cry exhibit elevated heart rates and increased sweating.
In this sense, crying is a 'workout' for the body."
All choked up
When you feel yourself about to let lose some tears, you also begin to feel a hard lump
forming in the back of your throat.
What lump?
The one that comes because you know how this story ends.
"Ready?"
"Really?"
"One, two, three, go.
Happy birthday."
"What?
God, they're adorable!"
Dr. Jennifer Stagg, a biochemist and naturopathic physician explained to She Knows that it isn't
actually a lump at all.
The medical term for the feeling is a "globus sensation," and it really is just that: a
feeling.
There's nothing there, but you can ease the feeling by sipping some water or eating.
Other than that, Stagg says there's not much more to be done - there's no definitive treatment.
It just comes with the territory of being human.
Thanks, brain.
Here come the waterworks
While Hollywood might try to convince you a person only cries from their eyes, we real
people know that's not true.
Our noses love to help our eyes push out those emotions, too, creating a lovely snot stream
or two.
Yuck.
Dr. Erich Voigt of the New York University Langone Medical Center says the liquid that
decides to creep out your nose while you're crying is actually the same kind coming out
of your eyes.
Essentially, while your tears are falling from your eyes and streaming down your face,
they're also doing the same thing internally and moving from your eyes and down into your
nose.
That's slightly less gross?
"Are you crying?
Are you crying?
There's no crying!
There's no crying in baseball!"
Bye-bye stress hormones
University of California, Los Angeles Psychiatric Clinical Faculty psychiatrist Dr. Judith Orloff
says tears contain "healing power."
She believes in their transformative abilities so much that she actually encourages her patients
to cry.
Unlike that lump in your throat, this one isn't just all in your head.
According to biochemist and "tear expert" Dr. William Frey, crying is an exocrine process.
That simply means it's a process that pushes substances out of our bodies, and other similar
functions, like sweating and exhaling, are pushing out toxic substances.
He hypothesizes,
"There's every reason to think crying does the same, releasing chemicals that the body
produces in response to stress."
They're not the only ones who support the healing benefits of tears.
According to a study published by Frontiers in Psychology, crying releases certain chemicals
that seem to ease both physical and emotional pain.
A natural stress-reliever and painkiller - no prescription needed.
For better or worse
Crying might seem like the most unlikely long-term self-care routine out there, but you're probably
familiar with the sense of cathartic release that comes after a really good cry.
Experts are still trying to figure out what's going on here, but they do say crying ends
with a mood shift.
One study from Tilburg University in the Netherlands found those who cried during a sad movie ended
up in a better mood than they had been before they watched the tearjerker.
But, it might take a bit.
Study participants reported it took them 20 minutes after the movie before they felt better
and 90 minutes to feel really, really good, leading researchers to write that many of
the longer term benefits that come after shedding tears are myths.
Bottom line?
Cry if you like: it's not going to hurt you, and it might just help.