The components of your tear system include:
- Lacrimal glands (tear glands): Lacrimal glands behind the upper outside corner of your eyes make the salty water that becomes your tears. The glands are each about the size of an almond.
- Meibomian glands: Meibomian glands on the edges of your eyelids produce oil that mixes with the water from your lacrimal glands to become your tears. The oil helps the water cling together and stay in your eyes as long as it needs to.
- Lacrimal puncta: Lacrimal puncta are the openings that pump tears out of your eyes. You have a punctum (the singular form of puncta) in each of your upper and lower eyelids on the inside of your eye, near your nose. Every time you blink, your puncta act like valves that drain used tears away from your eye.
- Lacrimal sacs: Lacrimal sacs in the inside corner of your eye collect tears that drain out of your eyes through your lacrimal puncta. They act like temporary reservoirs for tears that have just left your eyes. They keep old tears from flooding your tear ducts constantly.
- Nasolacrimal duct (tear ducts): Nasolacrimal duct is the medical term for your tear ducts. Old tears that leave your eye through your lacrimal puncta and lacrimal sacs drain into tear ducts on either side of your nose. Your tear ducts empty into the back of your nose.