You know that feeling when you’re so angry, frustrated, or hurt that you start to cry and then suddenly stop? And it feels like all your sadness is coming from one side of your face. It’s almost as if your left eye is not able to cry. That’s because it’s not. The reason why you only cry from one eye is thanks to the anatomy of your tear ducts. Or more specifically, one of them. There are two tear ducts in each eye: a left one and a right one. The left one feeds into the right one and vice versa. But this setup means that only the right tear duct is connected directly to your nose so watery tears have a shorter distance to travel out of your eyes in that direction. As a result, when you get really angry or sad or stressed, it’s almost always going to come out of your right eye instead of the other one.
Why do I only cry from my right eye?
It could be because your right eye controls your emotional state of mind. The right eye represents the part of your brain that governs emotions, and it controls the involuntary tear ducts in your face. The left eye is responsible for fine motor skills and visual acuity, so it is rarely affected by disease or injury. If you only cry from one eye, it could be a sign that you are struggling with strong emotions. If you are suffering from depression or anxiety, it may be a sign that you need to seek help.
Why Does Only One Eye Cry?
- Tears are produced in glands at the base of your tear ducts. It’s a little bit like the way that sweat glands work in your body, but they’re also connected to your eye as well. This means that when one of them is producing more tears than the other, you’ll have one eye that produces more tears than the other. The left tear duct is usually less active than the right one so it will produce more tears, and then it will usually overflow into the right eye.
- The irritation in your eyes can cause you to cry too. Some people find their eyes get irritated very easily and their eyes start to water a lot when they get emotional or stressed out. This is because there are tiny hairs on the surface of your cornea (the clear part of your eye) called cilia and these hairs can be pulled out by something irritating them which often happens with dry or windy weather or if you rub them with a tissue or something else that irritates them too much when you blink or open your eyes really wide (like if you wear contacts). These tiny hairs are called ciliates and they help control how much fluid gets into each tear duct so when they get pulled out too much, it makes it easier for those tears to go into one eye instead of both of them at once!
- Sometimes, we don’t know why we cry from just one side of our face but sometimes we do know why. For example, a lot of people find that if they get really nervous or upset, one of their eyes will start to water more than the other. This is because the nerve that controls your eye muscles starts in your brain and then goes down through your neck and into one side of your face, so it can get pulled by something in the nerves on the way which makes you start to blink more on one side than the other. This is called Horner’s syndrome and it’s not usually serious but it can be annoying!
- If you have a condition called Sympathetic ophthalmia or sympathetic ophthalmitis (which means “eye inflammation” in Greek), you might also find that you cry from just one eye instead of both of them. It can happen with either a cold or a fever when there’s an infection going on in your eye or sometimes even when there isn’t an infection going on at all! It happens because some parts of your body are trying to protect the eye from getting infected by making lots of tears so that they can keep the infection at bay.
The Anatomy Of Your Tear Ducts
- The tear ducts are located in your eye socket. A tear duct is part of the lacrimal system, which is part of the ocular system. An ocular system is a group of structures that control how you see and maintain your eyesight.
- The lacrimal system consists of four main parts: the eyelids, the lacrimal sac, the nose, and the lacrimal gland. The eyelids are composed of a thin layer of mucus-secreting tissue called mucin and tend to be closed most of the time except when we blink or blink and sneeze. When we open our eyes they open wide to let in light and help our eyes focus on objects in front of us.
- The lacrimal sac is made up of three parts: tarsi (the bottom portion), body, and head (the top portion). Together these parts form a hollow tube that connects with your nose at one end and empties tears into your eye at the other end through small holes called fornices or foramina (singular foramen). Tears pass through these fornices before exiting out of your eye through an opening called a punctum (singular punctum) located just under your lower eyelid (the conjunctiva).
- Your nose has two openings: an external opening at its tip called an external naris or nostril, which leads to breathing; as well as an internal opening that is part of the nasopharynx and leads to your throat.
- The lacrimal gland is a small body located just under the eyelid and embedded in the conjunctiva of your eye. It’s made up of two lobes: the inferior lobe and the superior lobe. The inferior lobe secretes tears, which are collected in the lacrimal sac and then travel through the fornices to be emptied out of your eye at your punctum.
- When you’re not blinking, tarsi (the bottom portion) forms a protective rim around your eye as they meet at their center point so they don’t touch each other when you close your eyes.
Why Does Only One Eye Shake When You’re Crying?
- The reason why your eyes shake is due to the fact that tears are actually a liquid. So when you cry, it’s like your body is shaking. You can also see this in videos of crying babies.
- The other reason why only one eye shakes when you cry is that tears are made up of two different types of fluid: mucus and water. Because of this, tears contain a small amount of both types of liquid which can make your eyes more likely to shake when you cry.
- The last reason why only one eye shakes when you cry is that it’s harder for your tear duct to drain the tears out of one eye than out of another one so if there’s more water in the right eye than in the left, that’s what will happen.
Why Do I Only Cry From My Right Eye When I Am Sad?
Your Right Eye Is More Accommodative Than Your Left Eye
Thanks to your right tear duct, you can produce more tears in that eye. This means that more of your tears will come from it when you’re sad. However, this also means that the number of tears coming out of the left eye is much less than the right one. This is why the left eye can only produce a small number of tears when you are sad.
Tears Are Made Of Water And Oil
Your tear ducts are made up of two different substances: water and oil. Water comes out first, then oil follows after some time and helps it to flow better down your face and into your nose. As a result, when you cry from one eye, the tear coming out of it will be mostly made up of water while that coming out of the other one will have more oil in it because there is less water in it (the tear duct connected to your nose). That’s why the tears coming out of your right eye are more watery than those from your left one.
Your Left Eye Is More Duct-Dependent Than Your Right Eye
As mentioned above, your left tear duct is more connected to your nose than the right one. That means that if you have a cold or allergies then it’s going to be more difficult for your left eye to produce tears. And this also means that you will be less likely to cry from your left eye as a result.
Conclusion
When you get really angry or sad or stressed, it’s almost always going to come out of your right eye instead of the other one. In fact, it’s pretty common for people to cry from just one eye. That’s why the next time you’re crying, you should check which eye is producing the tears. That way, you’ll be able to understand why you only cry from one eye.
