#@*! Swearing really is a powerful painkiller
 

#@*! Swearing really is a powerful painkiller

Next time you stub your toe, go ahead and let those four-letter words fly. Cursing actually does help dull our perception of pain, new research suggests. In the study, researchers from the UK's Keele University asked participants for five words they'd likely use after hitting their thumb with a hammer; the first word listed would be their go-to profanity during the experiment. (They were also asked to list five boring words -- ones they'd use to describe a table.)

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Participants were then instructed to submerge their unclenched hand in a container of 41-degree water, and keep it there -- while repeatedly cursing -- for as long as they could. Before and after plunging their hands into the chilly water, their heart rate was recorded. And after they could no longer stand the cold temperature, they were asked to rate the amount of pain they were in, too.

What's surprising is that the researchers had thought that swearing would make the cold water feel much colder, lowering the participants' tolerance for pain and heightening their perception of it. "In fact, the opposite occurred -- people withstood a moderately to strongly painful stimulus for significantly longer if they repeated a swear word rather than a nonswear word," write the team, led by Keele University psychologist Richard Stephens, in the journal Neuroreport.

From the way participants' heart rates accelerated post-swearing, the psychologists believed their fight-or-flight response had been activated -- that may be because cursing can amp up feelings of aggression. (Think of a bunch of rowdy NFL players psyching each other up before a big game.)

Interestingly, women reported feeling less pain after swearing a blue streak. (Hilariously, the researchers report that cussing "did not increase pain tolerance in males with a tendency to catastrophise." That's the polite British way of saying some of the boys were total drama queens.)

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:2 cents: I always knew cussin' had merit.

FUCK YEAH :thumbsup

Quite a therapeutic thread :)

Test pilot for new butt plug?

Swearing could increase tolerance for pain. This is interesting. Perhaps loud screaming will help, as well. After hitting their finger with a hammer, people are likely going to scream loudly instead of saying words. They might say "fuck" after screaming for several seconds.

What an awesome study! Thanks for posting this :)

MYTHBUSTERS also did a show on that.

They found it plausible.

Mythbusters did a pain study using the same cold water test, except colder. And by and large, women were more tolerant of the pain.

It is also said that when you are cramming for an exam that plunging your arm into very cold water helps you remember much better. I think I saw that on Scientific American Frontiers on PBS.

Pretty much if you run across a woman with her arm in the cold water swearing her ass off, you should hope you are her friend.

i'm gonna cuss up a storm this weekend and get fucked up like i'm on pain meds!

So does this mean tourettes sufferers are actually just in chronic pain all the time?

Funny - but the people I know who DO have actual tourettes (I know 3) all suffer a lot of physical pain.

I love to say fuck, I say it way too much. Must be why I feel so awesome all the time.

Ryan Seacrest is doing a reality show about people with Tourettes. I saw the ad looking for people on craigslist. :1orglaugh