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Letting a stream of four-letter words fly may do your body good. According to a new study, researchers found that swearing is “a drug-free, calorie-neutral, and cost-free means of self help.” U.K. researcher Richard Stephens found that swearing is linked to hypoalgesia, or the reduced sensitive to pain, and also bolsters physical, mental and emotional health.
According to The Washington Post, Stephens found that when people held their hands in ice water for a period of time, cursing helped them not only tolerate the pain, but also reduced their perception of pain. Swearing can also make you physically stronger, says Stephens. His research found that athletes in training improved their performances when they swore.
“Along with the cursing, we also recorded changes in heart rate, which seemed to indicate some sort of ‘fight-or-flight’ response happening,” Stephens said. “So, it was a natural progression for us to say, well, if swearing provokes a fight-or-flight response, then it should make you stronger.”
Emma Byrne, author of Swearing Is Good for You: The Amazing Science of Bad Language*,* says “In the U.K., if you watch football, you can quite often tell on the pitch from lip reading that frustration is voiced through profanity. We know that it happens in airline cockpits. We know it happens in operating theatres. We know that swearing is quite often the way we deal with the stresses of trying to perform at our best.”
While researchers admit they don’t know exactly why swearing has such a profound effect on the body, they say the phenomenon has been identified even in polite Japanese societies, indicating a cross-cultural effect.
Swearing, often viewed as a sign of aggression or poor manners, has surprising psychological and physiological benefits. Beyond its role in enhancing strength and pain tolerance, swearing also influences social bonds, memory, and cognitive processes.
One study found that participants who read a list of words that included swear words were more likely to remember those words compared to a list of neutral words. This suggests that the emotional weight carried by swear words makes them more salient and memorable. The heightened emotional state induced by swearing can enhance the brain's ability to store and retrieve information, making it a powerful tool for learning and memory.
Nick Washmuth, a professor of physical therapy at Samford University in Alabama, is exploring the effect of swearing in a clinical context. Washmuth uses swearing to successfully enhance his own weightlifting performance. He suggests that for people who want to employ profanity to help them with pain or to increase strength, that they start with a powerful swear word that they may naturally use if they accidently hurt themselves.
If no word comes to mind, use the F-word, which was the most frequently used in research studies. “Swear at a steady pace once a second to once every three seconds, at normal speech volume,” he advises. Washmuth is now researching whether internal swearing can achieve the same health benefits for those opposed to public profanity.
Lynn C. Allison ✉
Lynn C. Allison, a Newsmax health reporter, is an award-winning medical journalist and author of more than 30 self-help books.
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