William H. Frey II: Tears as Emotional Detoxification

In the early 1980s, biochemist William H. Frey II proposed something radical: emotional tears aren't just excess water. They're a detoxification system removing stress chemicals from the body.

His research at the St Paul-Ramsey Medical Center in Minnesota revealed that emotional tears contain 24% higher protein concentration than irritant tears from cutting onions. They also carry stress hormones like ACTH (adrenocorticotropic hormone), prolactin, and leucine-enkephalin - a natural painkiller produced during stress.

Reflex tears are 98% water. Emotional tears are chemically different, functioning as an excretory process that purges stress-related substances the body accumulates during emotional overload.

According to Frey, crying isn't just emotional release. It's literal physical detoxification that restores homeostasis.

If consciousness requires a coherent biological receiver, then clearing stress chemicals through tears maintains the system's ability to tune in. Crying removes what blocks reception.

The Experiment: Sad Films vs Onions

Frey's methodology was straightforward: collect two types of tears and compare their chemical composition.

For irritant tears, he needed something that would reliably make people cry without causing damage. Ammonia, tear gas chemicals, and menthol crystals were too harsh. The team tried horseradish but accidentally bought 15 pounds of foot-long horseradishes that proved too caustic. Staff took them home to make relish.

They settled on freshly grated U.S. No.1 white onions, blended, which produced tears within a minute for most participants.

For emotional tears, selecting films proved equally challenging. Sundays and Cybele - which Frey considered very emotional - only made 10% of people cry. The winning films were Brian's Song, a made-for-TV movie about football players Brian Piccolo and Gale Sayers, and All Mine to Give, about a 12-year-old Scottish immigrant finding homes for his siblings after his parents die.

The comparison revealed stark differences. Emotional tears from 42 women showed 21% higher protein concentration than irritant tears from 61 women. More significantly, emotional tears contained stress hormones and chemicals that irritant tears did not.

What Emotional Tears Contain

Frey identified specific compounds present in emotional tears but absent or minimal in reflex tears:

Leucine-enkephalin: An endorphin - natural painkiller similar to morphine - produced by the body during stress. Its presence in tears suggests crying literally removes pain-processing chemicals from the system.

ACTH (Adrenocorticotropic Hormone): One of the most reliable indicators of stress. ACTH triggers cortisol release. Finding it in tears supports Frey's theory that emotional crying purges stress-related chemicals.

Prolactin: A hormone regulating milk production in mammals, but also elevated during stress. Women have approximately 60% higher prolactin levels than men, which may explain why women cry roughly four times more frequently than men. Testosterone appears to inhibit crying; prolactin may facilitate it.

Manganese: A mineral affecting mood, found in tears at concentrations 30 times greater than blood serum. Elevated manganese has been associated with depression and mood disorders. Crying may function as a manganese excretion system.

These aren't trace elements. These are functionally significant stress-response chemicals present at concentrations that suggest active removal rather than incidental leakage.

Hans Selye and Homeostasis

Frey built on stress researcher Hans Selye's concept of homeostasis - the body's drive to maintain internal biochemical equilibrium despite external disruption.

Selye documented how chronic stress creates chemical imbalances that damage health. The body continuously works to restore balance through various excretory and regulatory mechanisms.

Frey proposed tears as one of these mechanisms. Just as urination removes waste products and sweating cools the body, emotional crying could serve to remove stress-accumulated chemicals that would otherwise remain in the system.

The question Frey asked was simple: if emotional crying serves no physical function, why would nature provide it? And why would it be uniquely human?

All air-breathing animals produce tears to lubricate eyes. But only humans cry from emotion. This suggested emotional tears evolved for a reason beyond eye protection.

The Parasympathetic Response

Crying triggers a cascade of physiological changes that extend beyond chemical excretion.

During crying onset, the sympathetic nervous system activates - heart rate increases, breathing becomes irregular, the body enters a state of arousal. This is the fight-or-flight response engaging with emotional overwhelm.

But during the resolution of crying - typically 2-3 minutes after tears stop flowing - the parasympathetic nervous system takes over. Heart rate decreases. Breathing slows and deepens. Blood pressure drops. The body enters a rest-and-digest state.

This is vagal activation. The vagus nerve, the primary component of the parasympathetic system, acts as the body's natural reset button. Research on respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) - a measure of vagal tone - shows increases during crying resolution, indicating the vagus nerve facilitating physiological recovery.

The lacrimal glands producing tears are innervated predominantly by parasympathetic fibres. Crying appears to be a parasympathetically-driven process that facilitates the shift from arousal to calm.

This is the same mechanism Kreft describes: nervous system regulation determining consciousness access. When the vagus nerve activates and parasympathetic tone increases, the system moves from survival mode into states where expanded awareness becomes available.

Why Depression Disrupts Crying

Research on crying and depression reveals a curious pattern: depressed individuals who cry don't show the normal parasympathetic recovery response.

In healthy participants, crying triggers vagal rebound - RSA increases during crying resolution, indicating parasympathetic activation and physiological restoration. Depressed participants who cry show no such increase. The regulatory mechanism fails to engage.

This suggests crying's restorative effects depend on intact vagal function. When the vagus nerve cannot activate properly - as often occurs in depression - crying loses its homeostatic benefit. The tears may remove stress chemicals, but the nervous system reset doesn't occur.

Some chronically depressed individuals also show elevated manganese concentrations in brain tissue at autopsy. If manganese removal through tears is impaired or if crying frequency decreases in depression, this could create a feedback loop where mood-affecting minerals accumulate, further deepening depression.

This parallels Persad's observation about fascia: when the physical infrastructure is too compromised, interventions that would normally work become less effective. The system needs sufficient baseline function to respond to regulatory signals.

The "Uniquely Human" Question

Emotional crying is apparently unique to humans. While some mammals produce tears to lubricate eyes, only humans shed tears in response to sadness, grief, joy, or overwhelming emotion.

Researchers have tested whether great apes, elephants, and other highly intelligent species cry emotionally. The evidence remains negative. Elephants produce tears to lubricate eyes but not in response to grief, despite showing clear behavioural mourning responses.

This raises a provocative question: why would humans uniquely evolve a stress-detoxification system through tears?

One possibility: humans possess expanded consciousness that comes with greater emotional complexity and stress exposure. The receiver may need a more sophisticated clearance system.

Another: emotional tears function as social signals. Crying communicates distress and elicits caregiving responses. This social dimension may be uniquely human, tied to language, complex social structures, and the development of empathy.

Or both: tears serve dual functions - internal chemical regulation and external social communication - with both contributing to the maintenance of the human consciousness-receiving apparatus.

Suppression and Health Consequences

If tears function as stress detoxification, suppressing crying should create measurable health consequences. The research supports this.

Studies indicate that people who habitually suppress tears show higher rates of stress-related illnesses: hypertension, heart disease, peptic ulcers, and colitis. Those suffering from these conditions tend to have more negative attitudes about crying than healthy individuals.

People with familial dysautonomia - a genetic condition that prevents tear production - show significantly reduced ability to cope with stressful events. Without the tears, stress management becomes impaired.

The chemical explanation is straightforward: if stress hormones and mood-affecting minerals accumulate without excretion, they create sustained physiological burden. Chronic elevation of cortisol (triggered by ACTH), manganese buildup, and reduced endorphin clearance would all contribute to deteriorating health.

The autonomic explanation adds another layer: if crying facilitates parasympathetic activation and vagal tone improvement, suppressing tears keeps the nervous system locked in sympathetic dominance. Chronic sympathetic activation is well-documented to drive cardiovascular disease and inflammatory conditions.

Both mechanisms likely operate simultaneously. The tears carry out chemicals; the crying activates regulatory systems. Blocking either disrupts homeostasis.

Research Limitations and Criticisms

Frey's work captured popular imagination but hasn't been fully replicated in the decades since publication.

Ad Vingerhoets, a professor of clinical psychology at Tilburg University and arguably the world's leading researcher on crying, attempted to verify Frey's findings. According to Vingerhoets, "It hasn't been disproven, but it's also telling that it hasn't been replicated."

Lauren Bylsma, a crying researcher, notes that laboratory settings aren't naturalistic crying situations. Getting people to cry on demand while collecting tears introduces variables that may affect results. The emotional intensity, social context, and artificiality of the laboratory could all influence tear composition.

Some researchers question whether excretion is tears' primary function. Vingerhoets stated he doesn't find it logical to think about tears solely as an excretory product, suggesting the social signalling and emotional communication functions may be more central.

The manganese findings, while intriguing, haven't been extensively followed up. Whether manganese excretion through tears significantly affects mood regulation remains unclear.

However, the core finding - that emotional tears differ chemically from reflex tears - appears solid. What remains debated is whether this chemical difference represents primary function (active detoxification) or secondary effect (chemical leakage during emotional arousal).

The Convergence Pattern

Frey's tears research fits a larger pattern emerging across multiple fields:

Kreft (nervous system): Coherent nervous system states enable consciousness access. Dysregulation blocks reception. Crying facilitates the regulatory shift from sympathetic to parasympathetic dominance.

Persad (fascia): Trauma stores in tissue as physical distortions. Sound, vibration, and parasympathetic activation facilitate release. Crying provides all three.

Popp (biophotons): Cellular coherence determines information transmission. Stress disrupts coherence. If crying removes stress chemicals and restores autonomic balance, it could support the return to coherent biophoton emission.

HeartMath (heart coherence): The heart's electromagnetic field shifts based on emotional state. Parasympathetic activation during crying resolution would affect heart field coherence.

Sheldrake (morphic resonance): Fields require tuned receivers. If crying clears interference and resets the nervous system, it would improve morphic field reception.

Each researcher describes a different aspect of the same underlying process: maintaining the biological infrastructure required for consciousness access. Tears are one maintenance mechanism - removing chemical interference while triggering regulatory resets.

Practical Implications

If Frey's theory holds - that tears function as stress detoxification - the practical implications are direct:

For emotional health: Suppressing tears may accumulate stress chemicals that would otherwise be removed. Cultures or individual habits that discourage crying could be blocking a natural clearing mechanism. "Having a good cry" isn't just emotional catharsis; it may be literal detoxification.

For nervous system regulation: Crying appears to facilitate the shift from sympathetic arousal to parasympathetic calm. Allowing tears activates the vagal response that Kreft identifies as necessary for consciousness access. Blocking tears keeps the system in fight-or-flight.

For trauma processing: If crying creates conditions for fascial release (as Persad suggests), suppressing tears during trauma work could limit effectiveness. Tears might need to flow for full somatic processing.

For consciousness work: If the receiver model is accurate, crying represents one mechanism for clearing what blocks reception. Meditation, breathwork, and other practices often trigger tears. This may not be incidental but functional - the system clearing interference to improve field access.

For understanding depression: The finding that depressed individuals don't show normal vagal response during crying suggests depression involves autonomic dysfunction, not just neurotransmitter imbalance. This supports treating depression with vagus nerve stimulation and polyvagal approaches alongside conventional therapy.

Open Questions

Frey's research opened territory that remains largely unexplored:

Do tears from different emotions have different chemical signatures? Joy tears vs grief tears vs relief tears - do they carry different compounds reflecting distinct stress states?

What determines individual variation in crying frequency and its effects? Why do some people feel better after crying while others report feeling worse? Does this relate to vagal tone, tear composition, or psychological factors?

Can tear composition be used diagnostically? If stress hormones and mood-affecting minerals appear in tears, could tear analysis reveal stress levels or depression markers?

What's the evolutionary origin of emotional crying? At what point in human evolution did this mechanism develop, and what selective pressures drove it?

How do chronic stress and trauma affect tear chemistry? Do people with PTSD or chronic anxiety show different baseline tear composition?

These questions point to tears as potentially significant but under-researched aspect of human physiology and emotional regulation.

The Broader Framework

Frey's insight - that emotional tears function as chemical excretion - provides another piece of evidence for consciousness as receiver rather than generator.

If the brain generated consciousness, there would be no particular reason for tears to contain stress hormones. Emotional expression through facial changes and vocalisations would suffice for social signalling.

But if consciousness access depends on maintaining a finely-tuned biological receiver, then multiple clearance systems would be necessary. The body would need ways to remove interference - chemical, electromagnetic, structural - that accumulates during stress and blocks reception.

Tears appear to be one such system. They work alongside other clearing mechanisms: sleep (glymphatic clearance), breath (CO2 removal), movement (lymphatic drainage), fascial release (structural clearing). Each addresses different aspects of receiver maintenance.

Together, these systems keep the antenna functional. When they're suppressed or dysfunctional, reception deteriorates. Consciousness narrows. Awareness contracts.

Frey documented one clearing pathway. The full map of receiver maintenance likely includes many others.