Tears
Tears
are good for your eyes. In fact, without them, your eyes wouldn’t even be able
to move. Some people say tears help us in other ways, too. Maybe you know
someone who likes to watch sad movies in order to “have a good cry.” It hasn’t
been proven, but tears may be good not only for your eyes but for your
emotional health as well.
We
generally only notice tears when we cry, but we have them in our eyes all the
time. Tears effect how we see the world while at the same time protecting our
eyes from it. Without this liquid
covering them our eyes would be at risk of infection.[1]
In addition we need tears in order to see. The cornea[2]
of the eye doesn’t have a perfectly smooth surface.
Tears fill in the holes in the cornea and make it smooth
so that we can see clearly. Without tears, the world would look very strange to
us.
There
are three types of tears and they are called basal, reflex, and emotional (or
physic) tears. These three types are different not only in purpose but also in
composition.[3]
·
Basal tears are the ones that we produce
all the time. On average, our eyes produce these tears at a rate of five to ten
ounces[4]
a day. When we blink our eyes (quickly close and open them), we spread basal
tears across the surface of our eyes. I we don’t blink enough, like some people
who spend long hours in front of a computer, then our eyes get dry.
·
Have you ever cut up an onion and felt
tears come to your eyes? Tears of that type are called reflex tears. They are
the ones that fill our eyes when a cold wind blows. These tears also protect our eyes, washing away dust and other materials that get into them.
·
Emotional, or physic, tears flow when we feel certain emotions.
When we cry tears of sadness, disappointment, or happiness, we are crying
emotional tears. Emotional tears are the tears we think of when we use the word
cry.
Tom
Lutz, the author of Crying: The Natural
History of Tears, writes, “Throughout
history, and every culture,…..everyone, everywhere cries at some time.”
Even men and woman who say they never cry can usually remember crying as children.
Most of us probably think it is normal
for men or women to cry at certain times, and at such times, we may even encourage them to cry. For example, it
is no surprise when someone cries during a sad movie, and we often expect
people to cry when a family member dies. However, we don’t always take this view of tears. Sometimes adults who
cry-or even children who do-lose the respect of others. For example, what would
you think of an adult who cried over losing a card game? Most people are aware of the social rules about when,
where, and why it is OK to cry. These rules generally differ for children and adults, and often for men and women. They depend
on things such as family, culture, and religion, and they change over time.
Some
people think it is not just OK to cry but actually healthy to let the tears
flow. Doctors in Greece over 2,500 years ago thought that tears came from the
brain and that everyone needed to let them out. Today, many people still
believe in[5]
getting tears out. They say that through crying, we get rid of emotions we have
stored up, which is good for our mental
health. Some people report that they feel better after crying. This could be
because of the chemicals in
emotional tears. One chemical is a type of endorphin, a painkiller that the
body naturally produces. Emotional tears increase the amount of endorphin that
gets to the brain because tears flow from the eye into the nose and pass to the
brain that way. This painkiller may make a person less aware of sad or angry
feelings, and that could explain why someone feels better after “a good cry”.
Reference : Password 2 (A Reading
and Vocabulary Text) page : 174 & 175, by Linda Butler.
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[1]
Infection = a sickness in a part o the body
[2]
The cornea = a covering for the eye
[3]
Composition = the way something is made up of different things,parts,etc.
[4]
An ounce = a small amount of liquid (eight ounces = one measuring cup).
[5]
Believe in = trust in, feel sure that (a person or things) is good.
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