Crying is good for your health

Posted by Karen Degen on 22nd September 2016

Tags: crying, stress hormones, tears

Research has found that emotional tears have special health benefits for people. Tears are protective and they lubricate your eyes, remove irritants, reduce stress hormones, and they contain antibodies that fight pathogenic microbes. Tears might decrease arousal of distress and make people feel better. Reflex tears are 98 per cent water, whereas emotional tears also contain stress hormones which get excreted from the body through crying. Emotional tears shed these hormones and other toxins which accumulate during stress.

Crying stimulates the production of endorphins, our body’s natural pain killer and feel-good hormones. Crying makes us feel better, even when a problem persists. In addition to physical detoxification, emotional tears heal the heart. Researchers warned against dissuading people from holding back tears, saying that holding back tears was a form of bottling up emotions that could trigger stress and other problems. “We are in a society that tells us we’re weak for crying, in particular that powerful men don’t cry.” said Dr Uthman Mubashir, Public Health Physician of the University of Ilorin Teaching Hospital. “The new enlightened paradigm of what constitutes a powerful man and woman is someone who has the strength and self-awareness to cry,” he said. “It is good to cry, it is healthy to cry. This helps to emotionally clear sadness and stress.” Crying, he pointed out, was also essential to resolve grief when some someone lost a dear one. “Tears help us process the loss so we can keep living with open hearts. Otherwise, we will be depressed if we suppress these potent feelings.”

Thanks to and abstracted from an article by Vanguard
Read more at: http://www.vanguardngr.com/2016/09/crying-good-health-says-expert/