and moods. The enzyme lysozyme gives tears bactericidal properties, making them the same antiseptic as saliva or breast milk. Children's tears, caused by pain, may contain opiates, which have an analgesic effect.
There are three types of tears. Basal (that is, base, main) tears are constantly secreted to wet the eye. With a lack of tear secretion, irritation occurs - “dry eye” syndrome. To replenish moisture, you can buy natural tears in drops at the pharmacy. Reflex tears flow in response to irritants: mote, onion fumes, tear gas. This is a method of emergency cleansing of the eye from foreign particles. Emotional tears arise due to subjective psychological reasons; only humans can cry with them. Such tears differ significantly in composition: they contain more protein, the hormones prolactin and corticotropin. In stressful situations, adrenaline or norepinephrine may also appear in them.
Theories of crying
Elephants, seals, otters and, of course, crocodiles can shed tears. True, for them this is a way to get rid of excess salt in the body without any sentimentality. When it comes to human crying, there are many theories about its origin. According to one of the ancients (XVI-XVII centuries), it was believed that when emotions heat up the heart, the body produces steam to cool it down. It turned out that tears are something like a condensation of emotional steam that accumulates between the eyes and the brain when our pot begins to boil.
This was believed until the Danish anatomist Niels Stensen discovered the lacrimal gland in 1662 - however, the image was firmly entrenched in the collective consciousness and largely influenced Freud’s ideas about catharsis. And in the 80s of the last century, researcher William Frey discovered a protein in emotional tears and suggested that tears remove toxic substances formed during stress. Since then, there has been no research to support this idea, and yet it still seems plausible to many.
Today, scientists do not see a direct relationship between the number of tears shed and the level of stress. A study of the dependence of mood on tears conducted by Dutch scientists did not give entirely clear results. Subjects were shown sad films, and those who did not cry while watching them reported stable moods both before watching and 20 and 90 minutes after. Those who cried felt much worse after watching, but reported an improvement in their mood as time passed. Such an assessment is subjective, therefore it is impossible to say whether the emotional state has really improved or whether it is a matter of banal contrast.
Crying that should alert parents
You should be alarmed if the child does not calm down for a long time, despite all your efforts. Based on the nature of the crying, one can suspect certain diseases in the baby.
- Sudden loud, shrill and prolonged crying, refusal to eat are characteristic of inflammation of the ears - otitis media. The child may calm down for a short time in his arms, then again screams piercingly. Crying intensifies when the ear is touched. To make sure that the cause of crying is otitis media, you can press on the tragus of the ear while the child is sleeping. With otitis media, the baby winces and wakes up. Crying decreases when heat is applied to the ear.
- Crying during the day, quiet, but annoying and painful, is characteristic of colds. In this case, crying is often caused by a headache, sore throat, or nasal congestion.
— If you cry hoarsely or soundlessly scream, you should urgently consult a doctor, since such crying may be caused by incipient stenosis of the larynx. Usually this is accompanied by difficulty breathing. Laryngeal stenosis most often begins in the evening or at night. In this case, do not wait until the morning, do not hesitate to call emergency help.
— Crying during urination is characteristic of inflammatory diseases of the urinary tract, more often inflammation of the bladder. Sometimes in boys the cause of crying when urinating is phimosis (narrowing of the foreskin) or balanoposthitis.
- Crying during bowel movements often occurs with constipation.
— If a child’s crying resembles meowing, then one can suspect a congenital genetic disease – cat cry syndrome.
A number of neurological diseases are accompanied by characteristic crying:
- Prolonged monotonous crying is typical for meningitis. It is often accompanied by vomiting.
— Capricious, irritable crying occurs with increased intracranial pressure and excess fluid in the brain. Children in the first year of life have difficulty falling asleep and sleep poorly and little. In older children, such crying may be accompanied by aggression.
— Crying when the weather changes and other geomagnetic changes is typical for children with neurological, vascular and liquorodynamic disorders.
According to foreign authors, those children who cried a lot in infancy often develop attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in the future. This is probably due to parents underestimating the child’s crying and, accordingly, not seeking treatment. You should know that in the first year, neurological disorders recover with timely treatment. Therefore, if your baby cries often and seemingly for no reason, contact a neurologist.
The baby may cry when teething. At the same time, the crying is aching, the child is capricious, often wakes up at night crying. The baby's mouth is watering, he constantly bites toys and other various objects, and may also refuse to breastfeed.
However, do not forget that most often the child cries simply because he is bored and needs to communicate with you.
How tears regulate our behavior
Crying has features of the so-called displaced activity - like the “unmotivated” licking of fur in cats or the desire to drum your fingers on the table or bite your nails in people. Displaced activity is a protective mechanism of the psyche during an insoluble stressful situation. Usually we react to danger by wanting to attack in order to defend ourselves, or by trying to escape, but when this is impossible, we can only hide: this is a biological mechanism for “waiting out” stress. Long-term hiding threatens depression, which is dangerous to health, so that in tense situations “protective” nervous activity appears. Perhaps crying was originally one of its types - it distracted us, occupying the body with important things: deep breathing, screaming or howling.
Temple University psychology professor Jay Efran has put forward a two-phase theory of the origin of crying. According to her, crying is a reaction to relaxation after tension. When faced with a stressful situation, the body becomes activated to make extra efforts. After some time, the nervous system is inhibited. If a solution is found and successfully implemented, the body is again out of danger and can therefore rest and recuperate. If it is impossible to find a way out, he decides to save his strength, since everything is useless.
Tears come precisely at the stage of inhibition, and not in the most acute situation, when all strength is spent on “survival.” That is, according to Efran, it is not tears themselves that cause relaxation: we can cry only when we have managed to relax. When we cry, we inhale short and exhale for a long time, which slows down our breathing and heart rate; the throat, muscles and even the intestines relax. However, relaxation cannot be induced simply by shedding tears from an onion. So, when they say that it is harmful not to cry and keep everything to yourself, they mean not so much the absence of tears themselves, but the willingness to give yourself a break.
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Have you ever cried and laughed at the same time? It probably happened out of joy, a funny joke, a comical situation, or from relief.
Have you ever had something similar? (further details)
Last night I was reading A KILLER'S WALKINGS by Robin Hobb as usual. The book has almost a thousand pages, but I’m keeping up the pace, so I’ll finish reading it in a couple more days, I’ve already read almost 600 pages in 3 evenings))))
At night, at about 2 o'clock, I felt this insanity. And this is how it was expressed. I shamelessly admit that I cried, worried about Fitz, cried because of the grief that overwhelmed him, pain, hatred, anger, because of my feelings towards the fact that they want to make his daughter the heir to the throne. And he has no opportunity to protect her, or refuse, or recognize her as not his. (he just came all wounded to Jumpy, Mountain Kingdom, a little later, when the jester recognized him)
Despair and grief seized Fitz that he even expressed everything that hurt in an accusatory speech to everyone who was next to him. It was impossible not to empathize with this, and I am too deeply impressionable and infantile in nature. Yesenin, in the end, lives for these insanely ecstatic moments that are akin to an orgasm in the brain.
And then after reading Chade’s advice addressed to the Jester.
“He has a fever,” he said indignantly to the jester. “You should give him some willow bark tea.” It’s as if he wasn’t given it all the time! XDDD ^______^
After reading this phrase, I laughed in real hysterics. She cried and laughed. It was like madness. I cried because of the bitter fate that befell the hero Fitz and laughed because of a serious phrase that sounded like a cruel joke. Just a few minutes of tears and laughter at the same time.
So... it’s been a long time since I read anything like this! I completely dissolve in the hero, in the plot... The book is different from the previous ones, it is different. But I always wanted to see Fitz more or less independent... There were many mistakes. He should have given up his revenge on Regal right away. But I understand Fitz's actions. I would have done exactly the same. I saw mostly negative reviews about this book on the Internet. (they say it’s boring, events repeat themselves, there are no palace intrigues) But it is in it that he becomes a man, a father in the end. Proves his loyalty to the king.
This book is not about a real hero (although he is of course a hero, in my opinion, epics like Frodo and the Hobbit are nothing in comparison with this, Robin Hobb describes all the hero’s thoughts and actions in such detail that you stop “being yourself”), this saga is about a person suffering, deprived of “their own life,” but fulfilling their duty, no matter what. And there are few bright moments in his life. I love dramas like this, they are not like fairy tales.
And the beginning of the book is simply amazing. Showing the human world through the eyes of a wolf is great! I bow to the author)))) thank her for this world. Yes, it is full of trials, anger, hatred, thoughts of revenge, chases, cruelty, pain, trials and persecution. And very little happiness. The book is very interesting. And I don’t understand who is talking bad about this book. Have you even read it? There are very poignant moments, and I am choked with impressions and delight while reading it! Therefore, I decided to write here about my new and all-consuming hobby.
I even wrote a poem the other day dedicated to the Bastard Prince Fitz Chivalry the Seer))) For those who haven’t read my poem yet, let’s unsubscribe)))
4mama
Sometimes it’s enough for a mother to hold the baby in her arms to calm him down. And sometimes no amount of tricks can help calm down an upset toddler. Prolonged crying exhausts both mother and child. How to make your baby smile? First, figure out the reasons that caused the baby’s indignation. We hope our mini-guide will help you with this. I'm hungry. The baby whines, puts his fist in his mouth, and sucks it. And then he starts crying. The crying is sharp and noisy. So the baby asks to eat. Newborns and children in the first months of life do not yet know how to accumulate energy, so they need to eat often. During the first months, feed your baby on demand. Don’t try to feed your baby for hours at a time - a hungry toddler can cry for hours. Soon the little one will determine the optimal diet for him.
Crying in babies
Although babies cry seems the same every time, there are several types of infant crying.
The first type is basic crying, which is systematic and looks like crying with breaks in the form of silence.
The main cry begins in the form of a cry with a short pause followed by a high-pitched sound breath of air and after some silence followed by crying again. The main stimulator of basic crying in children is the feeling of hunger.
The second type of crying in babies is what is called irritable crying.
This kind of crying is somewhat similar to the main one, but at the moments of such crying, much more air passes through the vocal cords and therefore it is much louder and sharper than the main cry.
The sequence of crying phases is almost the same as with the first type of crying.
The third type of crying is painful crying. Such crying does not have any preliminary groans. It begins with one loud cry, followed by a period of holding one's breath.
Most parents are able to distinguish between types of baby crying, thereby eliminating the cause of irritation.
A person's crying
Crying is the shedding of tears in response to a person's emotional state. Also, the act of crying is defined as a complex phenomenon characterized by activation of the secretion of the lacrimal glands without physical irritation of the organ of vision.
Research has established a neural connection between the human lacrimal glands and the area of the brain responsible for emotions.
In addition, it has been established that tears secreted during emotional crying have a different chemical composition compared to other types of tears.
Such tears contain much larger amounts of the hormone prolactin, adrenocorticotropic hormone, enkephalin, as well as the elements potassium and manganese.
The exact reasons for the origin of emotional tears during crying have not yet been clarified.
Theories suggest both simple causes - in response to pain - and more complex ones, such as verbal communication causing altruistic behavior in others.
It is also believed that crying has biochemical purposes, such as relieving stress and removing excess toxins from the body.
However, the latter anti-stress reason has recently been questioned by psychologists who claim that the only reason why a person thinks more soberly after crying is social influence. Crying is most likely a release of intense emotional feelings such as suffering, surprise or joy.
This is what explains why people cry during happy events or in traumatic situations.
People also tend to perceive crying as a release of grief. In addition, it is believed that screaming while crying also has a positive effect on health.
During the time of Hippocrates and medieval medicine, it was believed that tears secreted during crying were the juices of the body and crying helped get rid of excess juices. William James believed that emotions are reflexes to rational thinking, believing that a physiological reaction such as stress or irritation is a prerequisite for the cognitive awareness of emotions such as fear or anger.
William H.
Frey II, a biochemist at the University of Minnesota, believed that people feel better after crying due to the release of stress-related hormones such as adrenocorticotropic hormone from the body. Combined with the increased secretion of the mucous membrane during crying, it is a plausible theory that crying is a mechanism developed in humans to get rid of this stress hormone when its levels become too high.
Some psychological theories of crying suggest that this process is a perception of the inability to influence events that occur (helplessness).
This explains why a person cries when receiving good news, all because he feels helpless and cannot influence what is happening.
The biological effect of crying is quite difficult to study.
However, research into crying in laboratories has measured several physiological parameters, such as heart rate, respiration, and sweating.
A common effect of crying in many people is a so-called lump in the throat. A lump in the throat can also be caused by other reasons such as stress and is controlled by the sympathetic nervous system.
So, when the body is under threat, the sympathetic nervous system triggers several mechanisms aimed at helping to escape and fight.
This also includes turning off functions that are not currently needed, such as digestion, which is necessary to increase the flow of blood and oxygen to the muscles. While a person experiences negative emotions such as sadness, the sympathetic nervous system reacts in a similar way. Another function that receives increased activity under the control of the sympathetic nervous system at this moment is breathing.
Air flow is increased by opening the throat, expanding the vocal cords, allowing more air to pass through. Ultimately, the parasympathetic nervous system attempts to cancel the response by decreasing stress activity and increasing recuperative processes, including digestion.
This also includes the swallowing process, during which the gap must be completely closed so that food does not enter the larynx. However, attempts to leave it open continue to come in the course of crying.
Such processes interfering with each other create the feeling of a lump in the throat.
According to studies conducted by German scientists who compared various scientific studies in the field of crying, women cry on average from 30 to 64 times a year, men on average from 6 to 17 times a year. Men tend to cry for two to four minutes, and women for about six minutes. Crying turns into sobbing in women in 65% of cases, compared to 6% in men. Before adolescence, no difference was noted between boys and girls.
