Crying apparently burns as much as laughing does, at about a rate of 1.3 calories a minute.
According to researchers in California, shedding some tears will release toxins from our body and reduce stress. That reduction in stress helps your body burn fat. According to Dr. Aaron Neufeld, emotional crying promotes weight loss by stopping the production of hormones that make your body store fat.
Activation of the body's fight-or-flight response
Epinephrine causes the heart to beat faster and breathing to speed up, which can burn calories. Additionally, it changes how the gut digests food and alters blood glucose levels.
Crying apparently burns as much as laughing does, at about a rate of 1.3 calories a minute.
That means during a typical day, a person uses about 320 calories just to think. Different mental states and tasks can subtly affect the way the brain consumes energy.
Crying burns calories, but not enough to trigger significant weight loss. Putting on a sad movie or working to trigger a fit of crying isn't going to replace your workout, according to research. Crying does serve an important purpose, though, and “a good cry” every so often can have health benefits like stress relief.
Apart from an emotional impact some people even feel that their skin starts glowing and turns brighter. But have you ever thought about why your skin behaves in such a way? Well, it's because the blood vessels of your face dilate and cause increased blood flow. But in long term, crying can cause damage to your skin.
When a person cries with emotion, they can produce more tears than the lacrimal drainage system can cope with. This causes the tears to run out of the eyes and sometimes the nose. Tissue around the eyes can then reabsorb the tears, making the area appear puffy.
“However, it is notable that reduced levels of cortisol can also reduce premature signs of aging. Therefore, crying often may also have an anti-aging benefit.” On the flip side, crying too much might cause excessive broken capillaries around the eyes or nose.
To help constrict blood vessels and reduce symptoms after crying, Zhu recommends washing your face with cold water or applying a cold compresses over the eyelids. Since crying dehydrates you through lost electrolytes, Seelal also advises drinking water and applying a moisturizer.
When you are happy, angry, or sad, your body releases a hormone that makes your pupil size change. When you're happy or angry, your eyes usually become more vibrant, while when you cry, your eyes obtain a reddish color, making your eyes appear brighter.
Chan, however, says that if you feel emotional and want to cry, it is best to let it all out rather than holding it back. “Crying can be helpful in some situations, but remember that it's only a means for you to express your feelings, be it anger, sadness, anxiety, frustration or grief,” he says.
The cool thing is that when the pupil changes size, the pigments in the iris compress or spread apart. This changes the eye color to a degree. The pupil can change size with certain emotions, thus changing the iris color dispersion and the eye color.
While not often associated with strength building and muscle toning, crying does release tension held in the eyes, face, neck and shoulders as well as utilizes the diaphragm, abdominal muscles, and lungs.
Crying for No Reason
And if you are tearful everyday over activities that are normal in your life, that may be depression. And that's not normal and it is treatable.
The magic number of calories bandied about for decades has been 3,500—subtract that number from your diet or burn off 3,500 calories more than what you consume, and you'll lose 1 lb.
Crying also soothes us by facilitating the release of oxytocin (also called the cuddle hormone). This induces a sense of calm and well-being, helping us sleep peacefully.
“Crying releases a ton of hormones, including chemical endorphins (painkillers) and oxytocin, also known as the 'love hormone'. These induce a sense of calm and promote sleepiness,” explains Rhodes.
If you laugh or cry uncontrollably, suddenly and frequently—even when you're not feeling emotional, this may be a symptom of a condition called PseudoBulbar Affect (PBA), which may be a sign of a neurologic condition or traumatic brain injury.
Cry all you want — you won't run out of tears
According to the American Academy of Ophthalmology (AAO), you make 15 to 30 gallons of tears every year. Your tears are produced by lacrimal glands located above your eyes. Tears spread across the surface of the eye when you blink.
A newer study found that the average duration for a crying session was eight minutes. If you're concerned that you're crying too much, if you can't seem to stop crying, or have started crying more than usual, talk to your doctor. It may be a sign of depression or another mood disorder.
Researchers have established that crying releases oxytocin and endogenous opioids, also known as endorphins. These feel-good chemicals help ease both physical and emotional pain.
Green is considered by some to be the actual rarest eye color in the world, though others would say it's been dethroned by red, violet, and grey eyes. Green eyes don't possess a lot of melanin, which creates a Rayleigh scattering effect: Light gets reflected and scattered by the eyes instead of absorbed by pigment.
Some possible ways an African-American person might have ended up with blue eyes are: Caucasian relatives in their ancestry (the most likely reason) A rare disease that causes albinism only in the eyes (ocular albinism) A new mutation that makes their eyes blue.