Why Are Tears Salty? - Science ABC

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Our tears are salty because they contain electrolytes, which are natural salts that the body requires for nervous system function and the transfer of information between different nerve cells. The most important electrolytes (salts) that we have in the body include potassium, sodium, calcium, bicarbonate, phosphate and magnesium, among others. When you stick out your tongue and taste a bit of salt in your tears, it demonstrates just how sensitive our sense of taste really is.

During particularly sad movies, when you’re going through a personal tragedy, or simply while cooking yourself an onion-heavy meal, you’ve experienced the sensation of tears running down your cheeks. Crying is something that we have been doing since birth; in fact, it’s probably the very first thing you did after you came wailing into the world. Given how universal the act of crying is, a few of those tears have undoubtedly run into every person’s mouth on the planet, revealing their salty truth!

Macro view of an eye with tears(pbsubhash)S
Tears rolling down the eyes (Photo Credit : pbsubhash/Shutterstock)

To be honest, the unusual salty taste of tears remains a source of surprise whenever they strike one of my taste buds, begging the question—why? Why do our tears have such an undeniable salty aftertaste?

Before we can delve into the full explanation of that question, let’s first take a look at the composition of our tears.

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