Pain relief

In the recent annual Ig Nobel awards ceremony at Harvard University the peace prize was awarded to psychologists at Keele University for confirming that swearing relieves pain.

I knew that! I hadn’t proved it scientifically, but I knew it. The only thing better than swearing your head off after stubbing your toe, or cutting your thumb on the veggie slicer, is a local anaesthetic. Which is why it’s advisable to say, “Yes. Please!” when the dentist asks whether you’ll be requiring an injection before he extracts that molar. Have you tried saying “FUCK!” with your mouth wide open?

Also, I have a theory that the coarser the swear, the greater the pain relief. See, if you break your wrist, for example, you’re not going to take an aspirin, are you? You’ll be wanting an ibuprofen 600. Possibly a few. And so for acute pain, you’ll need something stronger than “bloody hell”. “Bloody hell” is the aspirin among swear words.

Not being a doctor, it’s not for me to prescribe your painkiller. As a rough guide, you could try consulting entry 589 of Michael Swan’s Practical English Usage. Here, Swan has rated taboo words according to their level of coarseness with a star system: one star for mildly taboo, four (or even five) stars for... well, you get the picture.

In an endeavour to help humankind, I have tested my theory — although some might say not scientifically — and I feel quite confident that swearing coarsely and loudly alleviates acute pain.

The only recorded side effect was one case of shock. But as the shock was suffered by an ear witness and not by me, it doesn’t really count.