Monday, January 5, 2009

The Tear Theory

Monday, January 5, 2009

What are tears are made of? Why do when we cry or laugh, we cry just the same?
Observing snapshots of people crying and laughing, Tom Lutz, author of Crying: The Natural And Cultural History of Tears, noted that tears are shed when the face is "crunched up". I'm sure you would agree that this "crunching up" is common when we both give a generous outburst of laughter and wail in deep sorrow. Shedding tears is also a body's natural way of returning to normal state after a surge of excitation.


Emotional tears, however is different from the one that wells up when you chop an onion. It was found out that emotional tears are abundant with protein-based hormones that spike when we're stressed. Thus the theory that crying, or shedding of tears, is a bodily attempt to de-stress.

Now then, if laughter is best medicine, crying could be a close competitor. What do you think?



7 comments:

godofredo said...

Interesting. Maybe that is why I feel the tension is loosen up after crying and a relaxing feeling soothes me up. Hmm... i think it's time to cry again. :p

Anonymous said...

i agree..its time to cry!

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Anonymous said...

You should look up Bill Plympton's animation, Where Tears Come From, on YouTube. It's very amusing.

manÜ said...

yeah! it's soooo funny! hahaha

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LzciJv2DSGs

Anonymous said...

Yeahm, i read somewhere that teArs are like the body's toxins so we do need to unload them if needed. Else, we're poisoning our own dear sexy bodies with stuff as lethal as grudges.

Anonymous said...

kaya ako iyakin, i need to de-stress! =)