Researchers at Keele University in the UK have discovered that swearing actually increases pain tolerance. You knew that. But now you know that.

In the study, researchers asked participants for five words they’d likely use after hitting their thumb with a hammer; the first word listed would be their go-to profanity during the experiment. (They were also asked to list five boring words — ones they’d use to describe a table.) Participants were then instructed to submerge their unclenched hand in a container of 41-degree water, and keep it there — while repeatedly cursing — for as long as they could. Before and after plunging their hands into the chilly water, their heart rate was recorded. And after they could no longer stand the cold temperature, they were asked to rate the amount of pain they were in, too.

What’s surprising is that the researchers had thought that swearing would make the cold water feel much colder, lowering the participants’ tolerance for pain and heightening their perception of it. “In fact, the opposite occurred — people withstood a moderately to strongly painful stimulus for significantly longer if they repeated a swear word rather than a nonswear word,”

Swearing Really Is A Powerful Pain Killer Study Shows (MSNBC)