The miracle of tears
by Jerry Bergman
Photo by Joy Luke
The girl with a tear running down her cheek, has won several photography awards
(photographic judges are emotional too!)
Evidence of our Creator is all around us—from the miracle of the atom’s
intricate internal structure, to the design of the most complex piece of matter
in the universe, the human brain. Scientists have found God’s greatness even
in one of the most minute phenomena—human tears.
Biochemist William Frey has spent 15 years as head of a research team studying tears.
The team found that, although tear production organs were once thought to be vestigial
(left over from evolution) and no longer necessary for survival, tears actually
have numerous critical functions.1
Emotional tears are a response which only humans have, for only people can weep.
All animals that live in air produce tears to lubricate their eyes. But only people
possess the marvellous system that causes crying.2
Tears are secreted by your lacrimals—tiny, sponge-like glands which
rest above the eye against the eye socket. The average person blinks every two to
ten seconds. With every blink, the eyelid carries this miracle fluid over your eye’s
surface.
One of the most obvious functions of tears is to lubricate your eyeball and eyelid,
but they also prevent dehydration of your various mucous membranes—and anyone
with the ‘dry eye’ problem knows how painful this can be. A severe lack
of this lubrication produces a condition requiring medication or therapy to save
the victim’s eyesight. A thin layer of oil on the exposed eye reduces evaporation
of tears, keeping eye tissue moist and soft.3 This oil is produced in
your Meibomian glands located in the eyelids.
Another important function of tears is that they bathe your eyes in lysozyme, one
of the most effective antibacterial and antiviral agents known. Lysozyme, from lysos,
to split, and enzyme (it is an enzyme which chemically splits certain compounds)
is the major source of the antigerm traits of tears. Amazingly, lysozyme inactivates
90 to 95 per cent of all bacteria in a mere five to 10 minutes.4 Without
it, eye infections would soon cause most victims to go blind.
Cry and feel better
Photo by Paul Salmon
Emotional tears, caused either by laughing or crying, are a response which only
humans have, for only humans can weep.
One amazing discovery is that tear production may actually be a way to aid a person
to deal with emotional problems. This finding lends some basis to the expression,
‘To cry it out helps a person feel better.’ Scientific studies have
found that after crying, people actually do feel better, both physically and physiologically—and
they feel worse by suppressing their tears.5
Not unexpectedly, those who suffer from the inherited disease familial dysautonomia
not only cannot cry tears, but also have a very low ability to deal with stressful
events.6
At the St Paul Ramsey Medical Center in Minnesota, tears caused by simple irritants
were compared to those brought on by emotion. Researcher William Frey found that
stress-induced tears actually remove toxic ‘substances’ from the body.7
Volunteers were led to cry first from watching sad movies, and then from freshly
cut onions. The researchers found that the tears from the movies, called emotional
tears, contained far more toxic biological byproducts. Weeping, they concluded,
is an excretory process which removes toxic substances that normally build up during
emotional stress.
The simple act of crying also reduces the body’s manganese level, a mineral
which affects mood and is found in up to 30 times greater concentration in tears
than in blood serum. They also found that emotional tears contain 24 per cent higher
albumin protein concentration than tears caused by eye irritants.8
The researchers concluded that chemicals built up by the body during stress were
removed by tears, which actually lowered stress. These include the endorphin leucine-enkephalin,
which helps to control pain, and prolactin, a hormone which regulates milk
production in mammals.
Suppressing tears increases stress levels, and contributes to diseases aggravated
by stress
They found that one of the most important of those compounds which removed tears
was adrenocorticotrophic hormone (ACTH), one of the best indicators of
stress. Suppressing tears increases stress levels, and contributes to diseases aggravated
by stress, such as high blood pressure, heart problems and peptic ulcers.9
Aid to health
Ashley Montagu concluded that weeping contributes not only to the health of the
individual, but also to the group’s sense of community and that ‘it
tends to deepen involvement in the welfare of others’.10 Tears
are an extremely effective method of communication, and can elicit sympathy much
faster than any other means. They effectively relate that you are sincere about
a certain concern, and anxious to deal with the problem.
Tears can be brought on not only by strong emotions, but also by mechanical irritation
of your eye, infections, or illness. Reflex or irritation weeping appears to be
‘designed … as an emergency … mechanism’ because the lacrimal
glands automatically provide the proper level of lubrication and protection when
needed.11
The reason that onions cause crying is because they release a chemical which turns
into sulphuric acid on contact with the eye surface—a chemical which would
damage your eyes enormously if it were not for the tear reflex which renders the
suphuric acid almost harmless.
|
Onions make you cry because they release a chemical which turns into sulphuric acid
on contact with your eye surface. But your tear reflex renders the sulphuric acid
almost harmless. |
Tears normally flow constantly, and are effectively drained into the lacrimal punctum,
visible as a small dot at the nasal border of the lower eyelid. The visible flow
of tears on the cheeks is caused by a tear production that is greater than
the drainage system can handle, causing the overflow to run down the cheek.
Tears constantly bathe each of your corneas (the transparent ‘windows’
of the eyes). This not only prevents your eyes from drying out (which can cause
blindness if not corrected) but it can help greatly in washing out foreign bodies
such as dust, which is an omnipresent part of air.12 As one author notes,
‘The importance of tears can best be recognized by seeing what happens when
someone does not have them.’13
Not being able to secrete enough tears produces burning and redness, and light itself
becomes bothersome. The eyes itch and have a gritty feeling. One sufferer described
the condition as similar to having sand in the eye. In time, ulcers develop on the
cornea and loss of its transparency often occurs.
What can we learn from all this?
That the seemingly simple and common response of producing tears is enormously complex
and, indeed, is an integral and necessary part of the miracle called the human body.
Without tears, life would be drastically different for humans—in the short
run enormously uncomfortable, and in the long run eyesight, so important for everyday
life, would be blocked out altogether.
Tears are just one of many miracles which work so well that we take them for granted
every day. And it is one more reason to realize that our marvellous body is not
the result of evolutionary trial and error.
References
- William Frey, Crying: The Mystery of Tears, Winston Press, Texas, 1977.
- Gregg Levoy, ‘Tears that Speak’, Psychology Today, July–August,
1988, pp. 8, 10.
- Lael Wertenbaker, The Eye: Window to the World, Torstar Books, New York,
1984.
- Ashley Montagu, ‘The Evolution of Weeping’, Science Digest,
November 1981, p. 32.
- Same as Ref. 2.
- Same as Ref. 4.
- Tom Kovach, ‘Tear Toxins’, Omni, December 1982.
- Same as Ref. 2.
- Same as Ref. 3.
- Same as Ref. 4.
- Arthur Freese, The Miracle of Vision, Harper and Rowe Publishers, New York,
1977, p. 19.
- Charles C. Kennedy, ‘Tears: Medical Research Helps Explain Why You Cry’,
Mayo Clinic Health Letter, February 1992, pp. 4, 5.
- Same as Ref. 11.
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