Crying Away Stress :: Biology Essays Research Papers

Tearful Serenity Crying Away the StressSome days youve just had it. Youve been talked at all day by people you couldnt care less about, the lady at the convenience store snapped at you, your friend invited herself over right when you had exactly one hour to compile a paper, you got caught in a traffic jam going shopping, youre starting to seriously re suppose your life career ... and now theres a thirty dollar parking ticket stuck on your windshield because that darn machine wasnt accepting quarters.You burst into tears.Tears, stupid tears Always coming when you least want them. instanter everyone on the street is looking at you and your eyes are so blurry you trip over the bumper and stumble into the street. What a klutz. How humiliating Why do you always have to cry like this?But everybody cries. For its capacity to signal physical or emotional distress, crying has left an indelible mark on the slate of human history. Where would art and poetry be without tears? In fact, where w ould we be? In truth, crying plays an essential role in our biology as well as our social and cultural experiences. We cant stop the tears from flowing, but we can investigate why they flow and why crying might non be, after all, such a bad thing to do.Tears are body excretions, just like sweat and mucous and urine. We dont usually like to think about body excretions, but when we do, we bear with them because we know they have important functions. Sweat removes excess salts from the body and cools us mucous traps surrounding pathogens urine and throne expel unneeded, toxic waste products that would harm the body if they remained within it. All three contribute to the bodys self-regulatory or homeostatic nature, readjusting for balance. Tears, too, must serve a biological, homeostatic purpose. But what? In fact, there are three known answers to this question.Scientists distinguish three kinds of tears, which differ from each other by function and also, probably, by composition. p rimary(a) tears actually form continuously. We dont experience these minute secretions as tears because they dont ball up as we are used to tears doing instead, every measure we blink, our eyelids spread the basal solution out over the surface of our eyeballs(1). Basal tears keep our eyes lubricated, important in preventing damage by melodic line currents and bits of floating debris(2), (3).