The crying game

By WALKER MEADE Correspondent

Tuesday

Mar 30, 2010 at 12:01 AM

Why do we tear up? Why do we break down and cry? And do men cry less than women?

Nothing about us human critters is as simple as it seems. Scientists admit we are nowhere near knowing the whole story of how our bodies work. So it's not surprising that most of us believe we have tears to keep our eyes lubricated and that we shed the same type of tears when we are hurt, or angry or sad.

Guess again.

The tears our eyes make to keep them moistened and healthy also make clear vision possible (more about that later.) But those tears are completely different from the tears we shed when we cry. Our crying tears come from our lacrimal glands, which are located near the outer corner of each eye and are about as large as the first digit a thumb.

But first a note or two about our lubricating tears. Because the surface of the eyeball is actually rough, it does not permit clear focusing. Tears smooth that out in a remarkable way. Lubricating tears have three layers and it is one of those layers that makes it possible for us to see clearly.

"Tears are made of a layer of oil on top of a layer of water on top of a fatty substance," says Dr. Kenneth Lawson, an optometrist in Bradenton. "The fatty layer fills in the roughness of the cornea to make it smooth and give you crisper vision. The inner layer, the water layer, allows anti-allergy and macrophages to move around on the surface and provide you with a defense mechanism. The oily layer on top is designed to prevent evaporation from devastating the underlying watery layer."

The downside of this amazing system is that the construction of lubricating tears not only provides you with clear vision, it can become unbalanced and produce "dry eye." And you can have dry eye even though you continue to make tears.

Lawson says, "If that layered system becomes deficient, which I see a lot in patients who have arthritis or some autoimmune condition, the surface will become irritated because it's not getting that oily layer. Then a reflex tear, very similar to the ones you make when you cry, is released from the lacrimal gland to flood the surface and try and give it some kind of relief. That doesn't work well because it doesn't have the oily layer that protects the eye. So I see a lot of folks that have a dry eye who also tear."

It turns out the major component of our lubricating tears comes from goblets that are imbedded in the skin surface at the base of the eyelashes. They release the oily layer in combination with other glands.

The tears that you generate when you cry are stored in the lacrimal glands. Their main purpose is to remove irritants. But if you are emotionally upset, the nervous system will stimulate those glands to produce tears.

There are two parts of the nervous system: the autonomic and the sympathetic or emotional. The autonomic handles functions like breathing and the beating of your heart. The sympathetic responds to emotions and engages a reflex that makes you cry. The precise trigger for that reflex is unknown.

"You've got to have some kind of impulse that will get to the lacrimal glands," says Dr. Matthew Edlund of Sarasota. "Beyond that, it can be over-determined by so many elements of the cortex. Why should you cry if you have a urinary infection? People can cry in pain, and anger, and sadness, and happiness, and they can cry with all of them together at the same time."

Of course, the most commonly asked question is: Why do women cry often and men not so much? Some people think men don't cry at all. But they do. At least in the movies.

The big movie weeper is Mel Gibson, who cries in "Braveheart" when he removes the helmet of the dead king. He cries in "The Patriot" when his son is shot. He cries in "Ransom" when his son is kidnapped and in "Mad Max" when his family is run over by the Bikies.

Even in reality shows like "The Bachelor," grown men weep. In fact, last year bachelor Jason Mesnick teared up almost a dozen times.

Our role models are a-changin'.

Still, most men in real life don't cry as frequently as women.

"Men cry but less than women," says Edlund, citing research done by William Frey of the Dry Eye and Tear Research Center in Minneapolis. "Women cry about five times a month and a man might cry once."

That may be because tears can be used both to manipulate -- to get what you want -- and to signal surrender. And surrender is just not a good solution to problems for most men.

And it's beginning not to be so hot a tactic for women either. For evidence, consider an episode of NBC's "Apprentice: Martha Stewart," in which a young woman whose team had just lost a flower-selling contest told Stewart that she felt like crying.

"Cry and you are out of here," Stewart said. "Women in business don't cry, my dear."

Man or woman, tears are not salt water.

"Emotional tears produce all kinds of weird stuff, including adrenocorticotropic hormone (it reduces inflammation), including prolactin (a sex hormone), and a lot of other stuff," says Edlund. "So we have a different tearing mechanism under different conditions. Not all tears are equal."

One of the startling things about crying is how much of the brain is involved in making it happen.

"It takes a large part of the cerebral cortex to get the lacrimal glands going," says Edlund.

"There is so much involved when people cry. Sometimes people will tear more readily if, in fact, they are ready to tear because they are in a chemically irritant place. There are a lot of things that go into it. Someone will tell a joke and they will burst into tears. Or they will see a tree waving in the distance and they will start to cry. Sometimes people cry out of a state of helplessness to get what they want. Or they cry because they are emotionally overwhelmed and don't know what to do. In many cases I'll ask people afterward why they cried and they say, 'I don't know. I just started to cry.' "

The difficult times in which we live produce a lot of weeping everywhere, for people in all walks of life.

"I see people crying now because they feel up against the wall and just don't know what to do," Edlund says. "They just feel overwhelmed."

So we have tears so we can see clearly, tears to protect and clean our eyes, and tears that tell both us and the world how we feel about things.

One of the best observations about crying was made by writer Kurt Vonnegut:

"Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward."

Never miss a story

Choose the plan that's right for you.
Digital access or digital and print delivery.