What happens to your body when you cry

What fills more of your free time, crying or exercising? Cosmopolitan conducted a poll in 2010 and found that while most women cry once (or more) a month, 33 percent of women cry at least once per week. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), on the other hand, reported 25 percent of women in the U.S. don't exercise at all during a standard week. You read that correctly — on average, there are more women crying on a weekly basis than exercising. If only crying burned calories, right?


Nevertheless, crying does have an effect on your body — some of them positive — and much depends on what type of tears you're shedding. According to Dr. Nick Knight, there's even more than one way to cry — there's three. Your body can produce basal, reflex, and psychic tears. Basal tears are responsible for keeping your eyes moist, reflex tears are the ones that help you get rid of a rogue eyelash, and physic tears are the ones that fall after you experience strong emotion.

Here's what happens when you start sobbing and producing any of these three types of tears.

Your brain doesn't care if you're happy or about to be eaten by a shark

Raise your hand if you've ever cried tears of joy. What about crying after being frightened or upset? Oddly enough, we humans can cry for pretty much any reason. Even weirder is that parts of our brains can't even differentiate why we're crying.

In an article for Psychology Today, Dr. Jordan Gaines Lewis explained what's going on. In our heads sits a small almond-sized region of the brain called the hypothalamus. When you're happy, sad, stressed, insert any other emotion here, your hypothalamus only knows how to do one thing: react.

It receives a signal from another part of the brain called the amygdala — don't worry if you forget these names, there won't be a quiz at the end — which enables us to experience emotions. The amygdala continues to pass the buck to your nervous system. And, after this series of either fortunate or unfortunate events, your tear ducts 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 frequently enough, it's kind of like getting a workout. All you have to do is picture a toddler throwing a tantrum and you'll know just how active crying can become.

Even if you don't drop to the floor and flop like a fish when you're crying, your shoulders are probably still bouncing around, heaving out those heavy sobs. Your skin may get blotchy or you might even develop a headache. Even if you're not a particularly spry cryer, there's still a lot going on internally.

Dr. Jonathan Rottenberg, a psychology professor at the University of South Florida, explained to Reader's Digest, saying, "People who cry exhibit elevated heart rates and increased sweating. In this sense, crying is a 'workout' for the body." This is because of the body's fight or flight response to whatever it may have been that started the waterworks.

That lovely lady "lump" in the back ... of your throat

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. Sometimes you don't even have to be sad to experience it. If you're nervous, you may also be met with the lump.

Dr. Jennifer Stagg, a biochemist and naturopathic physician enlightened us to not only what the lump is, but what it isn't. In speaking with She Knows, she first explained that it isn't actually a lump at all. Say what now?

"In medical terminology, it is referred to as 'globus sensation,'" Stagg said. We may think we're literally choking back tears, but, in reality, we are just experiencing a feeling that something is stuck in our throats. Thanks, brain. That said, even though it's not "real," you can ease the feeling by sipping some water or eating.

Other than trying to ward off the feeling with some fluids and nibbles, Stagg says there's not much more than can be done — there's no definitive treatment. It just comes with the territory of being human.

Here come the waterworks — from your eyes and nose

While you may picture a person crying from their eyes — thanks Hollywood — we all know that's only partially true. Our noses love to help our eyes push out those tears, creating a lovely snot stream or two. Gross. So, what's up with that, anyway?

Dr. Erich Voigt, director of the division of general otolaryngology (the study of ear, nose, and throat) at New York University Langone Medical Center told SELF what's going on with our noses when we cry.

The liquid that decides to creep out of your nose while you're crying is actually the same kind coming out of your eyes, well, plus some boogies. Essentially, while your tears are falling from your eyes and streaming down your face, they're also doing the same thing internally — moving from your eyes and down into your nose. "You're not making more mucous," Voigt explained, "it's just the tears draining and mixing with the mucous [that's already there]."

At least we don't snot from our eyes, right? Silver linings.

Bye-bye stress hormones

Dr. Judith Orloff, a psychiatrist and member of the University of California, Los Angeles Psychiatric Clinical Faculty says tears contain "healing power." She believes in their transformative abilities so much that she actually encourages her patients to cry.

Orloff acknowledges the three types of tears and says each one plays its own role in healing. However, she explained that "emotional tears have special health benefits," including reducing stress hormones. Could it be?

According to biochemist and "tear expert" Dr. William Frey, it could. "Crying is an exocrine process,” he told The New York Times, ”that is, a process in which a substance comes out of the body." Other similar bodily processes, like exhaling and sweating, rid our bodies of toxic substances. "There's every reason to think crying does the same, releasing chemicals that the body produces in response to stress," he hypothesized.

Dr. Orloff and Dr. Frey aren't 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 pain-killer — no prescription needed.

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