Is it true that if a person cries with joy, the first tear falls from the right eye, and if from sadness - from the left?

On the Internet, there was a statement that there was a relationship between the reason for the cry of a person and the way the first tear is dripping from. We decided to check if this is so. 

Information that tears of joy and happiness stand out first from the right eye, and grief and pain from the left can be found in a variety of collections scientific facts. This Topic Interested visitors sites questions And answers. Users of social networks write about this ("VKontakte" Facebook*, Tiktok) and the platform blog ("Zen" Mypage). 

Human tears are divided into Three types.

1. Basal tears. This is a liquid that is constantly in the eye to lubricate the cornea and protect it from dust, dirt and garbage, which can get from the environment. In other words, in the usual sense, these are not even tears.
2. Reflex tears. This is a liquid that stands out in a large amount in response to external stimuli, such as smoke or foreign bodies. Unlike basal tears, reflex contains more antibodies that help fight bacteria.
3. Emotional tears. This type of liquid is released from the eyes of a person in response to strong experiences - negative or positive. 

Mechanism The formation of any type of tears in the eye is the same: the lumpy glands located above the eye produce fluid, when blinking it is distributed on the surface of the eye. Then the tears flows into the tiny holes in the upper and lower eyelids, gathered into the ducts and falls into the nose. There tears are either evaporated or absorbed. However, if there is too much liquids (in the case of reflex or emotional tears), it overloads the tear system and in this case the tears spill out of the eyes, falling drops on the cheeks, and sometimes drip from the nose. That is, exactly what happens that people usually mean by crying. It should be noted that from a scientific point of view, the mechanism of tears isolated - which is the reflex type, that emotional - is the same for the right and left eye. 

Mechanism, which causes emotional tears, is somewhat more complicated than that of two other types, as it includes a limbic system - a brain area associated with emotional excitement. It is she who, ultimately, gives the lines of the signals to produce fluid. This species tears inherent Only a person, therefore, in the absence of the opportunity to conduct research and experiments on animals, he has not yet been fully studied. Nevertheless, it has been established that emotional tears contain Stress hormonesthat are thus excreted from the body, which allows a person to feel better. In addition, emotional tears play and Social Role: they signal others that a person is experiencing strong emotions and needs help or support. It could be assumed that the difference between what the first tear falls from, could give others an additional signal than the crying, but for this they need to see a person at the very beginning of this emotional state. In addition, the environment, the context and expression of a person’s face in this sense are much more informative, therefore it is doubtful that from the point of view of evolution there is a meaning for the formation of such a mechanism.

“Verified” failed to find any studies that confirm or at least put forward the hypothesis of the relationship between the nature of the person experienced by a person and the amount of liquid secreted by the right or left eye. But it is precisely the volume of slang fluids, as we have already found out above, and determines the “loss” of tears outside the eyes, that is, if the relationship was, there should have been a mechanism that stimulates the lumpy glands to work more actively on one or another eye depending on the experienced emotions. Our colleagues from the project Check Your Fact They turned for a commentary to the American Academy of ophthalmology, and they were confirmed that there are no scientific data that would allow us to affirm anything like that.

However, in some people, tears really stand out from one eye, but this is not due to the emotions they experienced, but with pathologies -For example, for some reason, the tears on the one hand work worse or the tear system is blocked, therefore, on the one hand, tears do not have time to naturally be taken to the nose. Only an ophthalmologist can establish the exact cause. 

Thus, today there are no studies that could confirm the existence of the relationship between what the first tear falls from, and the nature of the emotions experienced by a person. The mechanism of teas formation also does not imply any difference between the appearance of tears from the right and from the left eye. Authoritative medical organizations also argue that this widely spread scientific fact is nothing more than fiction. In some people, one eye can really be watery more, but the reason for this is not in certain emotions, but in the congenital or acquired anomalies of the structure or the work of the eye organs. 

*Russian authorities They think Meta Platforms Inc., which owns the social network Facebook, an extremist organization, its activities in Russia are prohibited.

Photo on the cover: pexels.com

Not true

What do our verdicts mean?

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