- What do you even know about tears?
These fun facts about tears won’t make you cry and may even surprise you. Like you make gallons and gallons of tears every year, for instance?
- Tears are similar to your saliva in that they’re mostly made of water. They also have salt, fatty oils, and more than 1,500 different proteins.
- Tears have electrolytes like sodium, making them taste salty, and also bicarbonate, chloride and potassium.
- Your tears have low levels of magnesium and calcium.
- There are three different layers to your tears. There is a mucous layer, an aqueous layer and an oily layer.
- The mucous layer of your tears keeps your tear attached to the eye. Did you know this as one of the fun facts about tears?
- The oily layer of your tears prevents the other layers from evaporating and keeps the surface smooth, so even at a little blurry, you can still see through it.
- The thickest layer of your tears is the aqueous layer which hydrates your eye, protects your cornea and keeps the bacteria away.
- There are three different types of tears and they are basal tears, reflex tears and emotional tears.
- Emotional tears come from your emotions like sadness, happiness or other intense emotions.
- Basal tears are always in your eyes, protecting us from debris and keeping them nourished and lubricated.
- Reflex tears happen as a result of your eyes being exposed to irritants like smoke and onion fumes.
- If you have dry eye syndrome, it could be a sign of the common condition known as dry eye syndrome. If your eyes don’t have enough quantity or enough of quality tears, your eyes won’t be properly lubricated. This can make your eyes burn, sting or even feel scratchy.
- Dry eyes are also associated with watery eyes. This is the strangest of the fun facts about tears.
- Dry eyes can be caused by different medical conditions, by air and wind and even from long periods of staring at a screen, be it your phone or computer.
- Humans make 15 to 30 gallons of tears every year! This has got to be one of the craziest fun facts about tears.
- Tears are produced by lacrimal glands located above your eyes and they spread across your eye as you blink.
- Tear production will slow as you age, but you will never run out of tears.
- Dry eye syndrome is more common among adults because your produce fewer basal tears as you get older.
- The gas that makes you cry when you cut a raw onion is Syn-propanethial-S-oxide.
- The thing that makes you cry when you cut an onion is a gas and the process
may surprise you. Onions grow in the ground and the sulfur that mixes with the onion creates amino sulfides. Then that gas mixes with onion enzymes that are released when you chop the onion, creating sulfenic acid. This acid reacts with the onion enzymes making syn-propanethial-S-oxide, the gas that irritates your eye. And because your reflex tears come out as a protection to your eyes, this is what makes you cry while you chop onions. - Reflex tears can come from strong odors like perfume, dust, chemicals like chlorine and cleaning products, bright lights, puke, too much screen time and reading small print or for prolonged times.
There are more fun facts about tears so watch out for those! Let me know what you think of these facts in the comments.