Swearing Makes Pain Go Away

Swear words, or bad language, make up about 0.6 per cent of our speech. Given that we speak an average of about 16,000 words each day; that means that about 95 of our daily words are profanities. In general, swear words are offensive but there is one situation where they are actually very helpful.

The word 'profane' comes from the Latin roots of 'pro' meaning 'before', and 'fanum' meaning 'temple'. So a profanity was something that you said before or outside the temple. It was definitely not to be spoken inside the temple.

In every single language or dialect ever studied, regardless of whether that language was living or dead, regardless of whether it was spoken by billions or just a small tribe, profanities exist.

In other societies the concept of the honour and purity of women is protected. So, many of their swear words relate either to female genitalia, or to the theme of 'son of a whore'.

Just as an aside, in our English language, the majority of swear words we use come to us from German language roots, not Latin.

Sometimes, it goes the other way, and neutral words can become a little unpleasant or uncomfortable to use.

But swear words do have power. Hearing profanities will change the electrical conductance of your skin. Your pulse will quicken, the hairs on your arms will rise and your breathing will become shallow.

A study showed that, while repeating over and over a word meaning 'table', men could withstand cold water for a bit over two minutes, while women could go a bit over one minute. But if instead they were to repeat their chosen profanity, each gender could keep their hand in the 5°C water for an average of an extra 40 seconds.

A similar pattern was found for the heart rate. Their pulse rose a bit when they had their hand in cold water and were saying a neutral word, but rose again even higher when they were saying their preferred profanity.

So swearing makes pain go away.

But, what about people who tend to swear more than the average? Does the power of profanity fade the more you use it? After all you can also use swear words to express surprise and happiness, or anger and disgust.

So in 2011, Dr Stevens affirms that "if swearing is overused in everyday situations lessens its effectiveness as a short term intervention to reduce pain". So if you're prone to cuss and curse, you would get less pain relief by swearing.

The lesson seems to be — it's okay to profane, but only when you're in pain.

By Adriana Rueda

(Credit: photo by gringo media Erica resende/ Gabi Cristina) 

Source: ABC Science

Image: ABC Science