Crying is also needed

Although it may not be the most pleasant feeling, crying has a fundamental function on the human body.

We live in an era that thinks that crying is a clear sign of weakness, upon which, we are incited to live an endless happiness, but we must never forget that tears exist for some vital reasons.

Tears appear, normally, because of sad things that may happen, although they can also have happy reasons. Still, they can also occur for other factors: tears can be basal, or reflective, or caused by emotions, such as sadness, joy or anxiety.

Basal tears lubricate the eyes and help them keeping clean and safe from infections. Some of the substances present in the tear fluids fight bacteria, acting as a mechanism of the immune system.

Reflex tears can be induced by irritations occurred in the eyes, when something is bothering its functions, such as small particles or acid substances, like onions, gases or dust. Tears act then as a cleaning device, trying to wipe away the alien particle.

Most common tears are, however, those related to emotions or physical pain, when these regions are activated in the brain. Even though, tears aren’t just sadness, as they can be induced by highly euphoric moods or happiness feelings. These sort of tears have a different function from the basal ones. Crying out loud, whether it works as a sad weep or a wonderful joy, works as a real benefit for the human body and experts are keen on agreeing that tears can rebalance bodily energies, physical or mental.

Stopping our own defensive reflexes and being brave enough to cry triggers a positive process or healing our own ideas and release tensions from anxiety, since stress constrains our muscles and increases jitters in the body, but through tears we can relieve ourselves from these kind of feelings.

The act of crying is so liberating that, in Japan, there are “crying clubs”, where people reunite to cry and doing so, benefit from an unusual way of releasing stress, regaining physical or mentally healthy.