Big Girls DO Cry

You just got a ticket, you failed your midterm, your declaration of love was rejected, you were locked out of your house and you can’t get back in, or you did not get admitted into professional or graduate school – in all these instances, you could be dealing with considerable amounts of disappointment, frustration and sadness. Before you may even realize it, your vision may have already become blurred with tears, overcome by your predicament. Though both men and women are taught to hold back their tears to avoid appearing vulnerable to the rest of the world, crying may help reduce our stress levels and help the body get rid of toxic substances and prevent aggravation of certain stress-related diseases.

There are three different tear types, which have the same chemical composition but vary in concentrations of individual components. Tears consist mainly of water and salts, including sodium chloride and potassium chloride. The ratio of salt to water in tears is usually similar to that present in the body. Aside from water and salts, tears also contain lipids, lysozyme, proteins, glucose, and urea. Lysozymes are part of the immune system, and are enzymes that fight bacterial infection. Antibodies are also present in tears, to fight off disease-causing microbes. A thin layer of oil covers the tear’s outside to prevent tears from leaving the eye until it has completed its task.

The first type, basal or normal tears, are continuously formed to prevent our eyes from becoming too dry and help prevent small particles, such as dust, from harming our eyes. Blinking helps spread these basal tears across our eyes, and mucus helps them stay in place without causing harm. Irritant or reflex tears are the second type of tear, and are produced by irritants such as onion vapors, sand, and wind. Irritant tears are meant to destroy irritants to protect the eye. Thus, irritant tears probably contain higher concentrations of antibodies and enzymes and flow in much higher quantities than basal tears, to effectively eliminate irritants from the eye. Emotional tears are the final tear type, and can be triggered by intense emotions, such as suffering, sorrow, and sometimes joy. These tears do not eliminate irritants; instead, they may help in reducing emotional stress levels. Emotional tears have a much higher concentration of proteins than basal or irritant tears. The proteins found in emotional tears are hormones that have accumulated to very high levels when the body is under emotional stress. Furthermore, emotional tears contain far more manganese than basal or irritant tears. In high concentrations, manganese causes emotional disturbance. Thus, it has been hypothesized that the body may use crying as an excretory process to get rid of toxic substances that have accumulated to high levels in the body during emotional stress. Among the hormones present in emotional tears, prolactin and ACTH (adrenocorticotrophic hormone) have been identified as stress hormones. ACTH is the best indicator of stress in the body, and so is one of the most important compounds removed through tears. Prolactin is a major stress hormone released via tears from the body, and is present in much higher concentration in women’s bodies than in men’s. Thus, it is possible that crying may actually reduce stress by removing chemicals built up in the body during stress by concentrating and secreting these compounds in tears. If stress-related chemicals were not discharged at all, they would build up to toxic levels and could weaken the body’s immune system and other biological processes. In fact, suppressing tears may increase stress levels and aggravate a variety of disorders, such as high blood pressure, heart problems, anxiety, and depression. Though it may seem awkward or socially embarrassing, crying appears to be very healthy as it may help reduce stress levels.

Frequently, people feel better after crying because crying lowers the concentration of stress-related proteins in the body. In contrast, clinical depression – a state in which many of the body’s self-healing processes seem to stop working, is often exacerbated by the victim’s inability to shed emotional tears to eliminate built-up stress. Psychologists consider the ability to cry freely an important stage in the healing process.

Compared to men, women appear to cry much more; in fact, women cry about four times more than men do. Furthermore, women in developed Western economies cry much more than women in societies with more limited rights. Levels of prolactin in the body may have a positive correlation with the frequency of emotional crying, as women have 60% more prolactin in their bodies than men do; in addition to being a stress hormone, prolactin stimulates milk production in the female body. Since men do not have as much prolactin in their bodies as women, men may not be as likely to be stressed out. Thus, women may rely more on crying as a stress-relief mechanism to maintain homeostasis than men and may have to get rid of more stress as a result of a higher stress intake.

Other biological factors supporting the claim that women cry more than men are the relative sizes of men’s tear glands and tear ducts. Men’s tear glands are structurally smaller than a women’s, which may suggest that they are used less. Even if tears were formed, men’s tear ducts are larger than a female’s; if both a man and a women tear up, the woman’s tears will spill out more quickly from her eyes. Because of its smaller size, a woman’s tear duct would overflow more quickly and force the tears to spill out from her eyes, as they can no longer be contained in her tear duct. From a cultural standpoint, it is much less socially acceptable for men to cry than women; however, both genders are seen as weak when they cry. Men may also cry less because of higher testosterone levels present in the male body, as testosterone elevates the threshold between emotional stimulus and crying. As men get older, they cry more often; this is a possible result of decreased testosterone levels.

Another possible explanation for why men cry less is that they rely on mechanisms other than crying to get rid of their stress; after all, prolactin is not the only stress hormone and it is likely that men have higher concentrations of other stress- related hormones than women. Stress chemicals are released when we sweat and cry, and men tend to sweat more than women; sweat contains many of the same chemicals as tears. For men, sweating may reduce their stress in the same way that crying reduces a woman’s stress levels. Men may also urinate more, which also allows the body to eliminate built-up waste products.

From an evolutionary perspective, it would be beneficial to get rid of stress chemicals in alternative methods other than crying, as heavy crying makes vision blurry and would be much more deleterious than beneficial. Men were traditionally the hunters and would have to see their prey in order to kill it, cook it, and eat it to survive. Two possibilities are possible – men became less vulnerable to stress because they were used to the obstacles posed by hunting (this supports the hypothesis that men are less stressed because of lower prolactin levels) or that men use an alternative pathway to release stress. Sweating does not usually obscure vision, so it would be a feasible alternative to crying.

It should be noted that tears, saliva, stomach acids, and other bodily secretions are usually produced only when the body is in a calm or quiescent state, as these functions are under the nervous system’s parasympathetic control. The parasympathetic system operates most efficiently when there are no stimuli present to excite the body to action. We do not fully realize our fear and sadness until after the event has passed, and we have time to fully think about the situation, cry, and let go of the stress. However, it would still be more advantageous to sweat instead of cry in the event that men are lulled into a false sense of security because of the temporary absence of stimuli.

Though it is unclear exactly why men cry less than women, crying seems to be effective in reducing stress levels. Society and cultural norms perceive crying as a sign of weakness and vulnerability, but physiologically crying is beneficial and serves a homeostatic function. Thus, we should not hold back our tears and stop ourselves from crying; a better alternative would be to simply find a safe, quiet place where we can cry, hidden from the rest of the world before moving on with our lives.