Stubbed your toe? Burned your hand on a hot pot? Go ahead and curse. It might make you feel better.

    Swearing increased pain tolerance in a small study of college students published online Sunday in the journal NeuroReport.

    It also increased heart rate and decreased perceived pain -- signs of a "fight-or-flight" response that may help mitigate actual pain, according to Richard Stephens of Keele University in Staffordshire, U.K.

    "If people experience the emotion of fear to a significant degree … their pain tolerance increases," Stephens said. "There seems to be something similar here. Swearing is emotional language. If it's not fear, it might be aggression."

    Dr. Gail Saltz, professor of psychiatry at New York Presbyterian Hospital and a psychoanalyst with the New York Psychoanalytic Institute, said that a fight-or-flight response absorbs mental capacity so you can't think about your pain, and increases certain nervous system functions while slowing down others -- such as gut function -- to maximize chances of survival.

    She said pain tolerance also has a lot to do with coping mechanisms, distraction being a key example.

    "If you're screaming obscenities, you're not thinking about your pain," she said. "The distraction compartmentalizes the other experience."

    Researchers say that swearing has long been a common response to pain.

    "Many a woman in the delivery room has already figured that out," Dr. Saltz said.

    But whether swearing alters a patient's experience of pain hasn't been formally studied.

    So Stephens and colleagues conducted a study of 67 undergraduates from Keele University who were asked to submerge one of their hands in freezing cold water.

    One group was told to utter a curse word of their choice during the immersion, while a control group repeated an innocuous word that would be used "to describe a table."

    The researchers looked at how long both groups left their hands in the water as a measure of pain tolerance. They also measured pain perception and heart rate immediately following the submersion.

    They found that swearing significantly increased pain tolerance and heart rate, and decreased perceived pain, compared with not swearing.

    The effect on improved pain tolerance was similar in both males and females, but it led to a greater reduction in perceived pain and a greater increase in heart rate among females.

    However, the researchers said that the "most intriguing" finding was that the pain-killing effect of swearing didn't work for males with a tendency to catastrophize, or think the worst in terms of their own outcomes.

    Though the researchers didn't have an explanation for these findings, they noted in the study that it may occur because the "negative emotions induced by swearing spill over into catastrophic thinking in those more predisposed to such thinking."

    If it's not just the fight-or-flight mechanism at work in terms of pain tolerance, it could also be that swearing induces a negative emotion that may still be characterized as an immediate alarm reaction to a threat.

    It may also induce aggression or downplay "feebleness in favor of a more pain-tolerant machismo," the researchers said.

    "There's something about the release of feeling that seems to have a positive effect on pain tolerance," said Dr. Mark Smaller, a psychoanalyst in private practice in Chicago. "Swearing would be an expression of intense release of feeling."

    Smaller said the findings seem consistent with an idea in psychoanalysis that increased expression "can diffuse the intensity of emotional pain."

    磕著腳趾了？被熱鍋燙著手了？管它呢，罵上一兩句再說。這樣，感覺或許會好些。

    NeuroReport雜志周日在網上公布了一項在大學生身上進行的小型實驗結果：咒罵增強了的疼痛忍耐度。

    據來自英國斯塔福德郡基爾大學的里查德·史蒂芬斯分析，咒罵還增強了心率，減少了預知的疼痛感---即一種有助于減輕事實疼痛的"斗或逃"反應呈現出的征兆。

    "如果人們經歷著強烈的恐懼感-他們的疼痛忍耐度會上升",史蒂芬斯認為。"與這兒的情況有些類似。咒罵是一種情緒語言。如不源自恐懼，則多半是緣于挑釁".

    紐約長老會醫院精神病教授、紐約心理分析研究所精神分析師爵爾·梭爾滋博士認為，"斗或逃"反應把人的思想集中了起來，因此顧不得去考慮疼痛之事，它一邊在增強某神經系統，同時也在放緩其它系統功能-如內臟功能-最大限度地獲取生存的機會。"

    她說疼痛忍耐度與應變機制也有關，注意力分散就是個典型范例。

    "如果你口吐穢語，你就不會去想疼。"她說。"注意力分散將其它感受獨立開來。"

    研究人員說，咒罵一直以來對疼痛的反應都一般。

    "很多婦女在產房都深有體會",爵爾·梭爾滋博士說。

    但對于咒罵是否能改變病人對疼痛的感受，還有待正式研究。

    因此，史蒂芬斯和同事們在基爾大學67位在校生當中進行一項研究，要求他們將一只手浸泡在冰冷的水中。

    按要求，一組人在浸泡過程中可以自愿罵一句臟話，而另一組受控人則重復一個無傷大雅的詞，來"形容一張桌子".

    研究人員以疼痛忍耐度為衡量標準來觀察兩組人員將手浸在水中要多長時間。他們還衡量了緊接著浸泡之后的疼痛感及心率。

    他們發現，與不咒罵的情況相比而言，咒罵大大增強了疼痛忍耐度和心率，降低了預知的疼痛感。

    改善后的疼痛忍耐度在男女當中效果差不多，但對女性而言，預知的疼痛感減輕得要多一些，心率增強程度要大一些。

    然而，研究人員說最有意思的研究結果是，咒罵的止痛效果對于把結果愛往最壞處想的男性作用不大。

    盡管研究人員對這一研究結果尚無解釋，他們仍指出"因為咒罵引起的消極情緒對那些易于產生這種念頭的人會形成災難性的想法，",因而產生了這種情況。

    如果不只是"斗或逃"機制作用于疼痛忍耐度，那也可能是因為咒罵引起消極情緒，而這種消極情緒可能對威脅形成直接警告反應。

    它也會引發挑釁，或淡化"虛弱突出疼痛忍耐度更強的男子氣概，"研究人員說。

    "情緒的釋放似乎對疼痛忍耐度有積極作用",芝加哥私人精神分析師馬克·斯摩勒說。"咒罵是一種情緒強烈釋放的表達方式。"

    斯摩勒還說，研究結果似乎與精神分析的一個觀點相一致，即強化了的表達方式會舒緩感情傷害的強度。