A Good Cry Can Help You Lose Weight, Read how?
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“You’ll feel better if you have a good cry!” they say, and they’re right. A good old sobbing session really can work wonders for your mental well being. But according to science turning on the waterworks has another totally brilliant benefit. It can help you lose weight.
Talking to Pop Sugar, leading stress expert Dr Pete Sulack, explained that an emotionally charged crying session can help you shift a few extra pounds.
It’s all to do with the fact that tears contain stress hormones. According to Dr Sulack tears contain the hormones prolactin, anthropocentric hormone and leucine encephalin (a natural painkiller), “all of which are produced by the human body when it is under a lot of stress.”
Dr Sulack went on to note that: “getting rid of that anthropocentric hormone actually reduces the body’s cortisol levels.”
So far, so scientific, so how will all this help us to shift those stubborn few pounds? Well, cortisol is the stress hormone that can make you feel anxious, panicky and can cause your body to cling to belly fat. So it follows that reducing the cortisol levels in your body, by effectively crying it out, could not only help you feel happier, but also make it easier to lose weight.
But don’t be thinking you can crocodile tear your way to a better body.
In a study at the St. Paul-Ramsey Medical Center in Minnesota, and reported in the NYTimes, Dr William H. Frey, revealed that only emotionally induced tears contain stress hormones as opposed to tears caused from say, an eye irritation or cutting an onion.
Dr Frey added that the best time to cry was between 7 and 10pm “when people are mostly likely to be with their significant others to watch TV or a movie.”
Did we just hear that right? Science more or less just told us that sitting on the sofa sobbing over The Notebook is just as calorie-busting as a night on the treadmill (kind of).
Well, that’s our excuse for skipping the gym and we’re sticking with it.
