Health Benefits of Shedding Tears

I'm someone who loves to cry myself .As I look back at some of the most important, pivotal and transformational moments of my life, both ones I considered to be "good" and ones I considered to be "bad" at the time, tears were a part of just about all of those experiences.

How do you feel about shedding tears yourself? Is it easy for you to cry? Is it hard? Are you comfortable crying in front of others? Do you judge yourself or others for doing so? I think it's interesting and important for us to ask ourselves these questions and notice our relationship to tears.

Many of us have a great deal of fear, resistance and judgment about tears -- both ours and those of 

other people. While this tends to vary based on our age, culture, gender and the environment in which we find ourselves, I'm amazed at how often crying is seen in such a negative way in our culture, even today.

Many people look upon tears as a sign of emotional weakness. But, what they fail to realize is that crying is a form of stress buster for the body. Crying helps you to get rid of all you’re pent up emotions, be it frustration or joy. Not only this crying has many other health benefits as well.

Even though we may resist, fear, and avoid crying -- at work, with friends or family, with members of the opposite sex, with our children or with anyone else, we worry it wouldn't be "appropriate" to cry in front of, there are some real positive benefits to shedding tears. Such as:

Improves Eyesight:

Tears can help to improve your eyesight. Many a times, due to dehydrated membranes of your eyes, you may find your eyesight to be a little blurry. When you cry, your tears hydrate your membrane and help to improve your overall vision.

Cleans your eyes:

Like other parts of the body, bacteria can be found in your eyes, too. But, your tears have natural antibacterial properties. Tears contain a fluid called lisozom, which can kill around 90 to 95 per cent bacteria in the eyes, within five minutes.

Stress relief:

When you are upset and stressed, you have an imbalance and build-up of chemicals in the body and crying helps to reduce that. It is said that a person who cries during stressful situations, has lower levels of depression. Emotional tears also release hormones likes adrenocorticotropic and leucine encephalin, which relieve your body of its stress.

Get rid of toxins:

In a research, it was found that normal tears contain 98 per cent water, but emotional tears contain stress hormones, which are released by your body to relax you. These tears contain a number of toxins, which are built-up in the body due to emotional pressure. Tears could actually be a way of flushing negative chemicals out of the body and doing us a world of good physically. In addition to removing toxic substances from our body, crying can also have the psychological benefit of lifting our mood and helping us to deal with painful situations.

Protection against irritants:

Have you wondered why your eyes water when you cut onions? It is because onion contains certain enzymes, which irritate your eyes. Similarly, when dust particles enter your eyes, they start watering. This type of crying simply protects your eyes and ensures that the particles are washed out along with the tears.

Cry for your overall health:

Tears released due to emotional reasons contain 24 per cent of higher albumin protein, which helps to regulate the body’s metabolic system. Crying also helps to fight diseases such as high blood pressure, obesity and diabetes, which are caused due to high stress levels.

To feel comforted:

Though you may be undergoing a lot of difficulties, crying gives you a feeling of relief. After you shed tears, your brain, heart and limbic system starts functioning optimally and you feel very comforted.

When we cry we open up, let down our guard, and connect with others in a more real and vulnerable way -- Many times in my own personal life I've seen tears dramatically shift a person's perspective, change the dynamic of an argument and bring people together in a genuine way. Tears have a way of breaking down emotional walls and mental barriers we put up within ourselves and towards others. Crying tends to be some kind of human equalizer, because no matter the circumstance, situation, or stress we may face, our tears have a way of shifting and altering things in a beautiful, vulnerable and humbling way.

There's nothing wrong with our tears, even if we get a little embarrassed, uncomfortable or even pained when they show up. As we allow them to flow through us, we not only release toxins from our body, stress from our system, and thoughts from our mind -- we tap into one of the most basic and unifying experiences of being human. Crying is powerful and important -- let's have the courage to do it with pride and support each other in the healthy expression of our tears.

So, next time when your heart feels heavy or your eyes start to water up, don’t think of it as a sign of weakness. With so many benefits attached to it, shedding a tear won't be that bad an idea.