EVERYONE has experienced it. You cried when you are sad and tears fell down your cheeks. But cry a little longer and you would have a runny nose too. This runny nose is not mucus, but it actually is tears that came from your eyes! So how does a tear get to your nose? Tears are produced by the lacrimal gland or commonly known as your tear gland located just above your eyes. Tears are important as a lubricant and to clean our eyes from particles in the air and are consistently produced by blinking our eyes. That is why when you feel your eyes are dry you are told to blink more. The tears are drained out to our noses through a lacrimal punctum. The lacrimal punctum is located in the inner corner of your eyes at both the upper and bottom eyelids. It is a small hole where your tears are drained to. In normal circumstances, the tears produced are very little and thus you may not notice it as it went into your nose. However, when you are crying you produced an excess of tears, and this tear goes into your nose mixed with the mucus that is already there and produces the snot which you usually have following a cry.
