Does Swearing Actually Help Reduce Pain?

Ever stub your toe and feel the urge to yell out something as a result – usually a curse or swear word? You may not be entirely sure why you feel the need, but it seems to lessen the initial pain. But does it? Is there any science behind cursing and pain relief?

Pain Reduction culled from zidb

Cursing or swearing occurs in every culture. Usually it’s used to shock or insult others, or simply to let off a bit of steam. It also seems to be a way to let others know we’re upset or have just experienced something painful. We’ve all experienced it: after hitting our thumb with a hammer or stubbing our toe, we draw a sharp breath and mutter a swear word.

Until recently, there wasn’t any actual research on whether swearing actually relieves our pain. In 2009, that changed when a study was published in the journal NeuroReport which showed that swearing does in fact increase our pain tolerance. Swearing enables us to temporarily raise our pain threshold and withstand pain for a longer time.

How swearing achieves its pain reducing effects is still unclear, but the researchers postulate that the brain circuitry which is responsible for our emotions is involved. Previous studies have shown that unlike regular everyday language, which relies on the outer few millimeters in the left hemisphere of our brain, expletives excite the evolutionarily structures buried deep inside the brain’s right half.