Why does crying make your nose run

Tears come from tear glands located just over the eye, behind the bone. As tears rinse down over your eye, they collect at the rims of your lower eyelids, where some may overflow and stream down your cheeks.

But that's not the only escape route for overflowing tears. If you look very closely at the inside of your eyelid, right near your nose, you'll see a tiny little hole. You might need to gently pull your eyelid down to see it, because it's on the inner edge of the eyelid, resting against the eye.

These little holes, on the upper and lower eyelids of both eyes, serve as drains and lead into canals that run through grooves in the bones of the face and eventually empty into the nose. It runs parallel to the floor of your nose. In between this turbinate and the floor of the nasal cavity is the inferior meatus. When you cry, some of the tears run down your face. But some of them drain from the lacrimal sac, up near your eyes, down the nasolacrimal duct to the inferior meatus.

In the inferior meatus, the tears mix with the mucus that your sinuses produce, giving you a runny nose. If your sinus problems are causing you tears or vice-versa! We can help relieve your congestion, and maybe even cheer you up a little. With colder weather upon us, many people suffering from sinus congestion turn to over-the-counter medicines as soon as symptoms arise.

When you blink, your lids work like windshield wipers to push those tears into a pair of tiny holes called puncta, which lead to two sacs between the eyes. Blinking also squeezes those sacs, draining the liquid down the back of the nose and throat. The lacrimal gland, which sits above and on the outside of each eye, secretes water until your eyes fill up and overflow.

No matter what's causing your tears— happiness , sadness, pain—it's inevitable that a good cry will leave you with a runny nose. We've all been in the same sobbing , sniffly place at one time or another. As it turns out, thanks to good ol' biology, there's no way to stop it from happening. When you get all snotty during a cry, it's actually because your tears are draining down from your eyes, mixing with snot in your nose , and coming out your nostrils mind. These tears then drain into the nasolacrimal ducts, which run down each side of the nose.