Swearing Reduces Pain- No Shit!
A recent article I read states what I have known since I was about ten: Swearing reduces pain.
No...shit...I'm a very active person.Growing up, I was involved in ballet, ice hockey, and various other sports. I thought I was tough until I began training in Muay Thai, Boxing, and Jiu Jitsu. I remember the first Jiu Jitsu class I ever attended when I was choked full force. My reaction was plenty simple: "HOLY SHIT!". When you are in a class where the youngest members are around thirteen and the oldest forty, I got an eye brow raise from my coach. Oops!
Recently, some smart ass at Keele University in the United Kingdom decided to actually do some research and find out what anyone who has ever played any sort of sport, especially those of us involved in contact sports, could tell you: swearing does, in fact, reduce pain. These researchers found that, especially for those who do not usually swear, these naughty little four-letter words are better than most pain killers.
Here is how this ingenious study went down: " To test their theory, Dr. Richard Stephens and other scientists conducted an experiment with student volunteers. The students were asked to submerge their arms into a bucket of icy water, while repeatedly uttering a swear word. (It's not clear what the specific swear word was, but we're naturally assuming the worst.) They then repeated the experiment, while repeating a "harmless" word rather than a swear."
Swearing triggers the fight or flight response, which helps increase our pain threshold in these situations. In my opinion, words are just words.While they can be effective, you should set the example for your children by swearing when you are in pain so they can learn a new technique that will help them withstand pain.
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