What The “F”, Swearing Makes You Feel Less Pain?

According to a new study by researchers from Keele University, swearing makes you feel less pain. Therefore, if your mother taught you not to swear, then perhaps under certain situations you might want to let it loose. Like when you stub your toe on that annoying bed frame or club your thumb while hammering a nail. Now perhaps husbands, doctors, nurses and midwives have the answer to why a laboring woman swears when she is usually not foul mouthed.

The new study, which is published in the August NeuroReport, says that the researchers from Keele University had two student groups place their hand in a bucket of icy water. The control group was told to use an everyday word to describe a table. The second group was told to utter an expletive of their choice. The group uttering the swear word were able to withstand the frigid water for two minutes compared to the control group who were only able to keep their hand in for one minute 15 seconds; resulting in nearly a 50% difference between the two groups.

“Swearing has been around for centuries and is an almost universal human linguistic phenomenon,” Richard Stephens, one of the study’s authors, says in a news release. “It taps into emotional brain centers and appears to arise in the right brain, whereas most language production occurs in the left cerebral hemisphere of the brain. Our research shows one potential reason why swearing developed and why it persists.”

Researchers believe that the swearing triggers a pain-lessening effect allowing the brain to release its focus on the pain being experienced.

Dr. Stephens, one of the researchers from Keele, warned: “If they want to use this pain-lessening effect to their advantage they need to do less casual swearing.

“Swearing is emotional language but if you overuse it, it loses its emotional attachment.”