Cry Me a River

emotional experience. Tears, it turns out, have quite a past, as we'll discuss, and the earliest written record of tears is found on cannonite clay tablets dating from the fourteenth century BC. Now, one of the fragments tells the story of the virgin goddess and not the sister of Ball the earth god, and when she hears the news of her brother's death to tell it says that she sated herself with weeping to drink tears like wine. And it's interesting that this first record that we have, or uh,

this first written record of it, is detailing tears of grief. Yeah, because that's that's the thing about about tears. They're obviously various types of tears. They're various connotations for weeping. I mean, throughout human history we've seen good tears, bad tears, true tears, false tears, manly tears. Um. I think it was Dennis Leary that had a stand up bit about the only time it's acceptable for a man to cry, and this

is like the nineties to date. It was gearing, a sports movie in which the main character dies of some sort of illness. Um, and only then then, and only then is permissible. Only then is it permissible for Amanda shed a tear, you know, other than being poked in the eye or maced or something. Obviously. But but that's the thing about tears, and that's one of the reasons it makes for an interesting so of you to discuss here, is because there's the purely biological aspect of there's the

emotional aspect of it. And what happens when we try and uh and untie all of this. Right, we're gonna look at that today and uh, first we're gonna look toward Papa Darwin. Um. Now, in his book The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals, Charles Darwin listed three reasons for the secretion of tears. The first was pretty much about lubricating eyes. The second, he thought, was to keep the nostrils damp quote so that the inhaled air may be moist and likewise to favor the power of smelling.

And the third is to irrigate the eyes and flush out small particles. Um. But it when it came to actual emotional crying, Darwin was a bit flum mixed. He said, quote, we must look at weeping as an incidental result, as purposeless as the secretion of tears from a blow outside the eye. Okay, you know, and UH can sort of see where he's coming from there. He's approaching this from a very biological standpoint and saying, all right, anything else

is just human garbage l haired over the basic machinery. Yeah, it's kind of you know how Stephen Pinker will talk about music as auditory cheesecake. It's almost like the tears are the lachrymal cheesecake here cheesecake. Like yeah, and yeah, there is. There are reasons for it existing on an emotional level, and there are some really good theories out there. However, there are some really far flung, uh wild ones too. Indeed,

I like to think that that Darwin. You know, he goes as far as his scientific background allowed him to in analyzing tears, and then he stopped. He stopped at the edge of that dark forest of the unknown. Others were very willing to just run willy nilly into the forest with their their torches of of science and coming up with their own sort of you know, crazy theories. Uh. Particularly here, I'm talking about aquatic ape hypothesis or it's also known as aquatic eight theory, and this was first

proposed by German pathologist Max Vestenhoffer in nine two. And the basic idea here uh, and I believe we discussed this in our Mermaids episode of while back, is that the evolutionary ancestors of modern humans adapted to a semi aquatic existence at one point, so we took on various aquatic features, and the theory holds we still see echoes

of those adaptations even in our modern form. Now, as this relates to tears, the basic idea is that emotional tears are seen only in humans and aquatic animals, and they evolved as a system to excrete excess salt, because again we're talking about aquatic ages living in a saltwater environment according to this theory. So, uh, where this falls apart and just you know, one key area here is

that while there is salt and human tears. There's not enough to really uh make it a suitable primary excretory exercise. The salt content is similar to blood plasma, so he doesn't really shake out as as an example of oh that's extra salt, leaving the so as interesting as the aquatic eight theory as it doesn't really help us in our understanding of the emotional side of tears. And adding to all of this confusion is the cultural baggage that tears carry, because in one era crying would have been

seen as pious or that kind of sensitivity. In another era it would have looked like hysteria and weakness. And I'll give you an example, um, or maybe even a cultural example right now in which it's okay that male

crying that you had talked about related to sports. Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London, recalled his quote hot tears of patriotic pride at the opening ceremony of the Summer Olympics, and he also described the end of the games as quote a tear sodden, juttering climax, which that carries a lot of weight with it. Um. But on the opposite end of the spectrum, if you look at psychiatric literature of the late nineteenth century, public waterworks were really frowned upon.

In fact, it was referred to as emotional incontinent, So basically peeing your face essentially like the the equivalent of paying your pants in public. Is it's the same. Yeah yeah. Tom Dixon, writing h an article called on tears, actually says that there's a Yiddish term that the translation of

crying is pissing out of your eyes. Yeah. Yeah. Moreover, if you consult the Treatise of Melancholy, a six tome written by English clergyman and physician Timothy Bright, you will see him described tears as quote, a kind of excrement, not much unlike urine. So the idea that's coming out of this is that to crying in public is to almost um yourself in public, and it's seen as a

weakness of vulnerability. Yeah, I mean, and we'll get into some of that later, just the the the emotional um communication. You know, what are you saying to the world around you when you weep? So yeah, it's it's interesting to see those those various places where it's acceptable at the various times it's acceptable, But at the heart we're dealing with the tear. Do we just have one type of tier? Do we have two? Do we have three? Is the is the the stuff itself the same? Yeah, let's look

at the tier itself. We produce about ten ounces of the stuff a day to help maintain our eyes. And these tears fall into three different categories. So the first is the basil tier. Now, this is a thin coating of three layers that helped keep dirt out and debris in check. And the first layer is the mucous layer, which keeps the tears in place. The second is the aqueous layer that keeps the eyeballs hydrated, and then it

protects the cornea. And the third is the lip layer that's a bit like an oil slick, and it keeps things nice and smooth on the surface. Now, the second kind of tear, this, this is where it gets even more interesting when you look at the reflex tears, because they are reacting and they're springing forth when they sense an irritant and they come out in larger quantities. You've probably noticed before if you've ever gotten something in your eye.

And the aqueous layer of these tears contains antibodies to stop any microorganisms in their tracks. Now the third is emotional tears, right, and emotional tears act as mood stabilizers, and they contain higher levels of stress hormones like a C t H which is cortisol and and suffling, which is an endorphin and a natural pain killer. So how interesting that you are suffering from mental pain and you have a pain killer that's being released within your eyeball

and shedding worth and purging this out of your system. Huh. So with the first two cases, you can kind of think it as think of it as the tier as security force. So you have your basic security force just out there to keep the peace. Then you have additional security force that comes in when things get a little hectic, a little extra irritants in the eye. And then that third area are kind of like at the grief counselors, the stress of UMM counselors that that that run out

to the eyeball. Uh in times of emotional conflict. That's absolutely correct, all right. So now that we have that covered, we're gonna take the man hole off of the skin here and go underneath into the water works and look at the specifics. Yeah, grab raqel welch, grab donald pleasants, grab coolio if you want. They think of it as a fantastic voyage. If we were to climb into a miniature submarine and enter through the eye, what would that consist of. Well, you have two small openings at your

disposal here when we call these the puncta. Uh, there's one in your upper eyelid, the upper punctum, and then the lower eyelid the lower punctum. Okay, and if you look in the mirror you can see these. You can you know, pry your eyeball, your eyelid back and notice them there. Um, that's where you're gonna want to point your submarine. Follow follow those, take either either out your choice, and you'll swim through twin tubes called the canal kus uh.

And these connect to a fabulous place, probably a vacation spot, the lacrymal sack or the lachrymal lake as it's sometimes called. All right, and uh, this is tiers central. Now if you were to keep going, uh, there is the nasal lacrymal duct that allows passage down into your nasal cavity. Um. And and this is interesting to note too because if you've ever been especially with emotional tears, but also just

uh in irritants. You see pictures of people who are maced uh footage, and you know there's a lot of nasal activity going on as well. So that the the the the tear ducts and the nasal connection. Uh, it's right there. Now, how did the tears come out? Well? Blinking in capillary action, push the tears through the lacrimal drainage system. Your lids move evenly across your eyes, and the blinking pumps tears into the punkta and they're drawn

into the lachrymal sack down the nose, etcetera. I'm just trying to think about if this would be helpful to think about that whole process when you're trying to suppress tears. Have you ever been in that situation where were like, I feel them coming, you're not getting out. Maybe if you could slow it down and even just imagine that lachrymal way can say, Okay, we are not taking from

that lake. It needs to keep its reserves. Yeah, but the water levels rising in there and the damn is going to overflow it way it may all right, We're gonna take a quick break. When we get back, we're going to talk about good crimes come back, Frond, All right, we're back. Why cry? Why do it? Well, as we've already touched upon. Uh. Of course, part of it is

just you always have tears in your eyes. If you had somebody that was so much of that, they never had tiers, they would their eyes would dry out and fall out of their heads. Right. But the second area environmental stimuli that are causing the tears to well up. Various irritants can cause the eye to to well up with tears, dirt, smoke, the fumes of an onion, uh,

an eyelash, a troublesome contact lens. Um. We've all had had good cases where it's just that sometimes it's something you can't even tell what it was, Just some sort of speck of dust floating around in the air gets in there and suddenly it's, uh, it's gushing. Also, cold days, windy days, you'll notice some extra tears in there because the tears also protect those eyes from getting too dry. So that's an area when you'll see some sort of

weepy eyes on cold days. Right. And then finally, allergies, infections like cold pink eye notice of course, known as conjunctive itus, inflammations of the eye are going to cause it to become watery, as well as any kind of physical assault of your of your of your eyes is can also reduce in tears if you get poked in the eye accidentally or intentionally. Now, in terms of emotional crying, we all have had that moment before where we've cried

and it felt great and we moved on. It was this release, and then we've all had that moment to where you've cried and we actually felt worse afterwards. And researchers at the University of South Florida they were interested in finding out what makes a good cry good and bad cry bad. And they looked at three thousand crying related experiments, and you know, initially they said, Okay, a lot of this has to do with the circumstance at the time, who the person is, what they're doing, why

they're crying. But they did did tease out some more universal insights into this, like the majority of respondents reported improvements in their mood following about of crying. However, one third reported no improvement, in a tenth felt worse after crying. So they drilled down a little bit more to figure

out what was going on there. And they found out that those who cried and received support during their crying episode were the most likely to report improvements and mood as opposed to those who were alone, and especially those who were in a lab setting alone being videotaped, because

then you bring up perhaps emotions like shame and embarrassment. Now, the other findings crying caused increased heart rate and sweating, but the calming effect like slow breathing, well, that out trumped everything else, and that lasted much longer than the other negative effects. And those that ten percent that felt really terrible afterwards. Um, those people tend to be uh, people with anxiety or mood disorders, and there of course

least likely to experience positive effects of crying. In addition, and I thought that was just really interesting, this bit. Um. The researchers report that people who lack insight into their emotional lives, now this is a condition known as a exthemia, actually feel worse after crying. And the idea is that for these people, they lack the emotional insight um into a situation, and that could prevent the kind of cognitive change required for a sad experience to be transformed into

something positive. Okay, So again, if you think of it as sending in the grief counselors, sending in the stress counselors, if there's some sort of breakdown in your ability to actually reflect and crunch that information, then I can see where you would lose that therapeutic effect. Yeah, because we've talked about this before. When you are trying to get through a difficult or painful situation, a lot of times

you have to have the ability to reframe it. And you can only reframe it if you have insights into the problem that you can come back to and say, Okay, I have a different perspective on this, um. But if you have this condition that you just can't have that moment that catharsis that would allow you that the idea that that of weeping uncontrollable, almost as if you've lost

control of your your your bladder or your bowels. Right. Uh. Well, there is one condition, an actual condition known as pseudo bulbar effect or p d a UM, which is also sometimes known as emotional incontinence, and according to MPR, two million people in the US actually suffer from this. Uh. It is a neurological disorder. I want to stress that where it's Uh, it's neurological and nature. It's not an

emotional issue. It's all in the wiring of your brain UM and it's characterized by involuntary crying, uncontrollable episodes of crying, and occasionally it spills over into areas of laughter as well. But it occurs when disease or injury UH cause a malfunction in the brain circuit involved in expression of emotion.

So we're talking about it appearing is a symptom of multiple sclerosis, a LS, Alzheimer's, parkinson stroke, traumatic brain injury, and the outburst can often be very disturbing and erassing to the person UH that's afflicted with it. UH. It can hit like a seizure, lasting for seconds or minutes, and it can happen several times of day. So it's a Again, it's quite an ordeal to have to suffer

through it as a symptom of a greater disease. But it's interesting that there there is a treatment for an FDA approved treatment out there called dextro metamorphine, a key ingredient in cough medicine and the one that leads to recreational use of cough medicine in so called robo tripping, which we do not encourage you to do, and it's used here in treating p B A. Actually came out of its out of researchers exploring its potential use as

an A L S treatment. It actually didn't help in the treatment of A L S. But while they were exploring the options here, they observed that it cut down on emotional outbursts in A L S patients that were also suffering from p p A as a symptom. Now that's a scenario in which the person cannot help themselves. They are not trying to cry on purpose. Obviously the

wires are crossed. But if you look at Dutch psychologist ad vinger Hoots work, he says that if you're someone who does not suffer from that in your crying, it could be a kind of social signaling. Um. He calls tears highly symbolic, and he and psychiatrist John Bilby point to the early childhood mother child bond at play, in which he says that you know, crying plays a really

critical role because it communicates suffering in an engender's empathy. So, from an evolutionary biology perspective, Fingerhoots is basically saying that crying, shedding a couple of tears is far safer um for our ancestors, right then crying out, which a predator might hear. You know, a silent tear falling can communicate to any member of someone's family that they are suffering in their own need of help. So he's coming at it from that perspective. And to support this, he points to the

enlarged visual cortex and humans and primates. Now, this part of the brain is something that allows us to read really subtle um facial signaling in the face, whether it's a micro expression blushing or tears. So he says that you know, tears part and parcel of this kind of um arsenal of ways that you can nonverbally communicate what's

going on emotionally, and it is an instant communication. I mean, you see somebody on the on the train and they've done some tears in your eyes, are instantly at least curious, if not compassionate for that individual. Even with my my my son two going on three, Like he sees another kid crying, he instantly like starts asking questions like what happened? What happened? To that boy, you know, and and uh and and so I definitely, I definitely buy into some

of these ideas of the social communication of tears. Yeah, and Fingerhot said that if you look at people who are watching a Hollywood tear jerker in the studies that he's conducted, when they're doing this with a friend, they tend to cry and then have an improvement in mood or report an improvement in mood. But when they watched the tear jerker alone, there's no improvement in mood or

overall in his findings. So that again points to his idea that this could be social signaling, because if there's no one around to see it, it's kind of like a tree falling in the woods. I'm I'm I'm sadden that the study didn't go into look what happens when you shed tears for a piece of media that you do not want to make you cry? You know what

I'm saying? Like example, well, okay, to be a pieces of media that I instantly can remember having shed a tear got a little worked up over um In Madmen, there was a character death in there that that that was really emotional and that that that really choked me. Up, and I was like, all right, madman, you're a great show, you're well put together. I'm totally okay with you tinkering

with my emotion. But then then once and this was not like heavy weeping or anything, but I was watching Sons of Anarchy and uh, and I had and I had a little tear crop card on my face and I'm like, Sons of Anarchy, you did not get to make me cry, but you know, kudos you managed to do it. But I feel like they're there are other cases of that. Have you ever had that happened to you where the media maybe it's your mood or something, the media gets into you when you really would rather

it not to have that power over your emotion. Yeah, it's when it's usually more of a modeling moments that don't normally buy into this sort of you know, saccharine, sugary moments that that feel, um, not very authentic, And every once in a while it'll it'll catch me unawares.

Why am I crying about this Lifetime special? I'm just kidding, um, But you know, some sort of piece of media that doesn't feel like it's earned it, you know, Yeah, like you don't get my tears um and which you know makes you kind of wonder, are we the only animals? Are we the only organisms on this earth who cry emotionally? And you know, the the jury is still out on this. We know that other animals cry, just not emotionally. So

we're talking about apes and elephants, even camels um. Last year, Discovery News reported on a spate of elephants who were observed to cry after traumatic events. For instance, quote rescuers of a male elephant brutally abused for fifty years in India claimed that after the chains and spikes were removed

from elephant Raju's legs, tear streamed down its face. And animal behaviorist Mark beck Off says that some mammals may cry due to a loss of contact comfort and that this could be a hardwired response to not feeling touch. So he's parsing at out more in physicality and physiology, but that sort of boils down to emotional crying, right, because if touch is soothing, and soothing is playing into your emotional response, well then they're all connected. That being said,

the jury is out. You know, at the top of this episode, you mentioned the drinking of tears like fine wine. And uh is we're discussing the animal world, and we really need to point out that you do find tier vampires in the world, um specifically tear feeding moths and butterflies. You'll find these in Africa, Asia, South American and they mainly feed on large blasted animals such as a deer

and antelope, a crocodile. They getting close, they drink some of that moist goodness, uh, you know, as if it were morning dew, and then they get out of there. I mean, why not. It's there, it's it's liquid, it's drinkable, Drink it if you can, and get out before something happens. But the most interesting of the tier vampires is actually a species of off in Madagascar discovered in two thousand six, and it drinks the tears of sleeping birds. And the

name of the species is mcreadtoids hieroglyphica. I do like the hieroglyphic part. It does, it does, And as you'll see this, this is a creature that has some significant panache when it comes to stealing some tears. It's a delicate theft that involves a specialized harpoon like probiscus that they insert under the eyelid of the sleeping magpie robins

and Newtonian birds. And then this hooks into place, and scientists dur eniture if there is some sort of chemical compound going on here as well to deaden the sensation of those hooks. But they don't perceive them right. But at any rate, they hook into place without probiscus, and then they slurp away at some tears and they think this is probably to make up for a lack of salt in their diet, because we mentioned earlier there is

salt and tears about the same that you'll find in plasma. Uh, they drink it up and may get out of their and uh it's it's amazing, So kudos Hieroglyphica stealthy stuff there. Now those are a kind of vampire praying on tears. Um, but could you prey on tears blood? Oh? You you would have to be very you could. You have to be a very specialized vampire. And as we discussed in our episode on vampire bats and the evolution of vampire bats,

that's already a pretty pretty rough road as it is. Yeah, if you suffer from a very rare disorder called hemolacrea, which causes tears that are partially or entirely made of blood. I urge you not to hang out near a livestock, particularly in South America, because that is where a vampire bat may detect those tears. Indeed, now we've known about this condition for fair while. You'll see accounts of it,

uh from a sixteenth century Italian physician Antonio Brassavola. He wrote about teaching a nut who wrote about treating a nun who wept bloody tears when she was menstruating. Modern film fans probably remember this best as UH one of the quirks of Bond Villain the Chief in two thousand six Casino Royale, played by Mad's Mickelson. He would have a little a little bit of blood that would come out of his eye there at particularly poignant moments of

the narrative. Um. But in most cases, what we're dealing with here, uh, it's you're talking about it being a symptom of a head injury, a tumor, a blood clot, a tear in the tear duct um, a common infection such as conjunctive ittis pink i that causes the bloody

tear to well up. Now, there are other cases that have shown up over the years, even in recent years there too in Tennessee that that popped up where it's it's a little harder to get to the truth of and part of it is when you we took you through the tear duct and uh, it's there's a lot of very small mechanisms going on there. So it's difficult to really get in there and do a size study in all these cases. But um, for the most part,

we are talking about injuries and uh, inflammations and infections. Uh, there are outline cases that scientists continue to explore. But can you imagine before science did explore this phenomenon would have looked other worldly to people? Oh indeed, I mean just that we already have so much and we've already built up so much supernatural wonder about blood and then the fair amount of of wondering on mysticism about tears, and have the two come together as one. I mean,

that's crazy. What's gonna happen next? Are they gonna sweat blood too? Well, if you're hippo, right, although it's not actual blood, right, but but yeah, but even that, the early early analysts looked at that and like, what's happening here. It's blood. What's why? Is the creature the creature of Sado massacust I don't know, devil creature? Alright, guys, If you want to look further into crying, how stuff Works has an article called how Crying Works. Check it out.

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