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What happens to your heart when you cry?

Your heart starts to race, and you feel that lump in your throat. The autonomic nervous system jump-starts the sympathetic nervous system and accelerates the fight-or-flight response.

self.com - This Is What Happens to Your Body When You Cry

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Wet face. Red eyes. Smudged mascara. It’s pretty easy to tell when someone’s been crying.

What’s not so clear? Why your body thinks sending salty liquid out of your eyes is an appropriate response to hearing that song that always reminds you of your ex. Does the world really need to know that you get that bent out of shape over Ed Sheeran?

Turns out, what happens when you cry is the result of an interesting chain reaction in your body. And once the process is triggered, it’s pretty hard to close the floodgates. Here’s a look at what goes on in your body when you cry—and the weird reason why you’ll probably feel better after your sobfest is over.

You feel an intense emotion—and the signals in your brain start flying.

Maybe you just got some really crappy news. Or your boss just dumped a ton of extra work on your plate, and you’re super overwhelmed. Or you just met your adorable baby niece for the first time. Hardcore emotions like sadness, anger, stress, and even extreme happiness are processed in your body as a sign of danger, as if you were being chased by a bad guy or are about to be eaten by a bear. In the face of intense circumstances, the amygdala, an area of the brain that controls emotional processing, sends a signal to the hypothalamus—a pea-sized gland in your brain that’s connected to your autonomic nervous system, explains Ray Chan, M.D., an ophthalmologist at Texas Health Arlington Memorial Hospital. The autonomic nervous system handles functions that you don’t have any control over, like body temperature, hunger, thirst, and yup—crying. Your heart starts to race, and you feel that lump in your throat. The autonomic nervous system jump-starts the sympathetic nervous system and accelerates the fight-or-flight response. To help you prepare for impending doom, the fight-or-flight response tries to stop you from performing any nonessential functions, like eating or drinking. As a result, it causes your glottis—the opening between the vocal chords in your throat—to swell up, making your throat feel full and tight. “The body is trying to protect you so you don’t accidentally get any [nasal secretions or tears] in your lungs,” says Patricia Salber, M.D., founder of The Doctor Weighs In. With your fight-or-flight system fully alerted, you might also experience other symptoms normally associated with sheer terror. Your heart rate might increase, your lips start to quiver, and your voice gets shaky.

Then the waterworks begin to flow.

All this emotion tells your hypothalamus to produce the chemical messenger acetylcholine. Acetylcholine binds to receptors in your brain that send signals to the lachrymal glands—small glands that live beneath the bony rim of your eyes, explains Dr. Chan. When these glands are stimulated, they start to produce tears. If you only shed a few, they might drain back into your punctums—the tiny tear duct openings at the inner corners of your eyes. But that reservoir fills up pretty quickly. And when it does, the tears will start to drip out of your eyes and stream down your face, Dr. Salber says. The tears will also start to flood your nasal cavity and come out of your nose.

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I asked a woman from Leipzig "How is it going?" She replied that she was stressed. Maybe Germans respond differently, but it seems like a sign of respect. What do you think?

Lea Musiolek Community Answer

There is a big cultural difference: in Germany, we only ask that question when we really want to know how the other person is, and the other person will usually answer honestly. For us, it is a sign of closeness and genuine interest, not just a greeting, and waiters and cashiers in Germany would never ask you how you are. However, when somebody asks us how we are and we have told them, the normal thing here is to ask them how they are too. The lady from Leipzig was answering normally for a German, but being slightly rude by not asking how you were.

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