It also helps to cry, she says. She means we need to release stress. Otherwise the stress leads to inflammation, poor mood, fatigue, and heightened inflammation, and that can have lots of correlates. It can affect mood. “Crying is beneficial,” she says. It’s an acknowledgement of who and where you are, an embrace of self at a given time and, as such, it helps the immune system by sparing it from having to deal with the repressed anxiety. Crying “is not fun. It’s painful. But you feel better in many cases thereafter, as opposed to eating the chocolate doughnut.”
