Why you get a "lump" in your throat when you cry

Ever wondered why you have a lump in your throat when you start crying?

“One of the functions of the autonomic nervous system is to react to stress by changing how the body operates, to better deal with whatever is causing the stress. Emotions such as sorrow, fear, or anger are translated as stress to the autonomic nervous system, because the only causes of these emotions in our primitive mammalian ancestors were stressful situations. All mammals (and most other vertebrates) have developed a “Fight or Flight” response to danger, which gives the individual the speed to run, or the strength to fight, when attacked by another animal. To accomplish this, the stress of being attacked triggers the autonomic nervous system to increase the flow of oxygen and sugar to the muscles, so that they can be used more actively.

The increase in oxygen is accomplished at several levels: blood flow to the muscles is increased by making the heart beat harder and faster, and by decreasing blood flow to the internal organs; absorption of oxygen into the blood is increased by making the lungs breath faster; and air intake into the lungs is increased by opening the throat and mouth. The side effects of this are panting, heart pounding, and nausea. In the case of crying, which is the autonomic response to sorrow or grief, most of these effects are easily recognized.

An important part of opening the throat to allow the lungs to get more air involves expanding the glottis – the muscle which controls the opening from the back of the throat (pharynx) into the voice box (larynx) – so that more air can pass through it. So part of the autonomic response of crying is to use throat muscles to open the glottis as wide as possible. This doesn’t pose a problem until you want to swallow; swallowing involves closing the glottis, so that food doesn’t get into your larynx. So if you try to swallow while you are crying, the muscles for swallowing are fighting against the muscles for crying, and this tug-of-war over the glottis is perceived as a lump behind your larynx which makes it difficult to swallow.”

http://www.madsci.org/posts/archives/1997-03/855114309.An.r.html

Cool :P

Depends

Interesting even though I rarely cry.

@unbreakable_fs4 said:

This is good to know. I've experienced some hardcore pain over some of these lumps, no joke, even when I let myself cry. It's awful.

I never cry, because I'm a MAN!

Pilasy:La Voix d'un homme

Yeah it is awful, it makes it pretty hard to hide that your abut to cry too.

I looked up why this happens a long time ago. I was visiting my mom and we were talking about some serious stuff which was making me emotional, I felt like crying but I was holding it in. And I felt the lump in my throat and it was hard to swallow, so I had to look up why.

I'm sorry to hear that, hope you find him soon!

science! ^_^

Science is golden. :)