#@*! That Hurts!

We all have our own ways of coping with pain. Some medicate while others tolerate. Now researchers from the UK have discovered cursing actually helps dull our perception of pain. The researchers asked the study participants to think of five words they would use if they were to hit their thumb with a hammer. The first word listed would be their go to profanity word. The participants were then asked to list five boring words to describe a table. (I`m guessing the researchers wanted to be certain the curse words differed from the boring words; fucking table! ) The study subjects were then instructed to submerge their hand in a container of 41degree Fahrenheit water (5 degrees Celsius), holding it there for as long as they could while repeatedly uttering their curse words. Their heart rate was recorded before the experiment and once they withdrew their unclenched fist they were asked to rate their pain.

This is the part I struggle with. Obviously, the folks involved with this experiment have never dipped their open fist or their entire body into the Bay of Fundy at the height of summer where the average water temperature seldom exceeds 7or 8 degrees C (44/46F). We called this behaviour swimming. What a bunch of wussies. If I were doing this pain study I would incorporate tweezing; electrolysis; leg and bikini waxing; eyebrow plucking. Make it worth the participants while. However; as it turned out, people withstood a moderately to strongly painful stimulus for significantly longer when they repeated a swear word rather than a nonswear word. The researchers actually thought the swearing would have the opposite effect and cause water to feel colder. The accelerated heart rates post ``swearing`` indicated the fight of flight response was activated. The researchers claim this may be due to the fact that cussing can amp up feelings of aggression. I wouldn`t know anything about that but that guy in the blue Chevy who cut me off this morning might disagree entirely.

Women reported feeling less pain after swearing a blue streak. Come on guys. Never been in a labour room? Tell us something we don’t already know. The researchers did say that swearing did not help tolerate the pain in men with a tendency to catastrophise, the polite British equivalent of saying some of the male subjects were total drama queens.