Crying is good for your health, study finds
Laughter is one of the best medicines, but weeping can work wonders for staying stress-free, too, according to Daily Mirror.
A recent study from the University of Minnesota, US, found that crying improves the mood of 88.8% of people and it can also help with healing, boosting immunity and reducing levels of anger and stress. "We feel better after crying because we are literally crying it out," says Professor William Frey, who worked on the study.
"Chemicals that build up during emotional stress may be removed in our tears when we cry. Unalleviated stress can increase risk of heart attack and damage certain areas of our brain. The human ability to cry has a survival value."
It's also been shown that emotional tears — when we're unhappy rather than in pain — contain higher levels of manganese and potassium. Manganese is a nutrient that helps with lowering bad cholesterol levels and potassium helps control high blood pressure.
Emotional tears also contain a hormone called prolactin, which helps reduce stressful feelings and boosts the immune system. Women have more prolactin than men and their levels rise during pregnancy, which may be one reason why women cry more than men — especially when they're expecting a baby.
When we cry, our breathing also deepens, which helps lower stress levels. When our bodies feel under attack from a stressful situation, we tend to take short, shallow breaths, which makes the body pump out the stress hormone cortisol and heightens feelings of anxiety. Deep breathing, on the other hand, reduces cortisol production and lowers stress levels.