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."

    磕着脚趾了？被热锅烫着手了？管它呢，骂上一两句再说。这样，感觉或许会好些。

    NeuroReport杂志周日在网上公布了一项在大学生身上进行的小型实验结果：咒骂增强了的疼痛忍耐度。

    据来自英国斯塔福德郡基尔大学的里查德·史蒂芬斯分析，咒骂还增强了心率，减少了预知的疼痛感---即一种有助于减轻事实疼痛的"斗或逃"反应呈现出的征兆。

    "如果人们经历着强烈的恐惧感-他们的疼痛忍耐度会上升",史蒂芬斯认为。"与这儿的情况有些类似。咒骂是一种情绪语言。如不源自恐惧，则多半是缘于挑衅".

    纽约长老会医院精神病教授、纽约心理分析研究所精神分析师爵尔·梭尔滋博士认为，"斗或逃"反应把人的思想集中了起来，因此顾不得去考虑疼痛之事，它一边在增强某神经系统，同时也在放缓其它系统功能-如内脏功能-最大限度地获取生存的机会。"

    她说疼痛忍耐度与应变机制也有关，注意力分散就是个典型范例。

    "如果你口吐秽语，你就不会去想疼。"她说。"注意力分散将其它感受独立开来。"

    研究人员说，咒骂一直以来对疼痛的反应都一般。

    "很多妇女在产房都深有体会",爵尔·梭尔滋博士说。

    但对于咒骂是否能改变病人对疼痛的感受，还有待正式研究。

    因此，史蒂芬斯和同事们在基尔大学67位在校生当中进行一项研究，要求他们将一只手浸泡在冰冷的水中。

    按要求，一组人在浸泡过程中可以自愿骂一句脏话，而另一组受控人则重复一个无伤大雅的词，来"形容一张桌子".

    研究人员以疼痛忍耐度为衡量标准来观察两组人员将手浸在水中要多长时间。他们还衡量了紧接着浸泡之后的疼痛感及心率。

    他们发现，与不咒骂的情况相比而言，咒骂大大增强了疼痛忍耐度和心率，降低了预知的疼痛感。

    改善后的疼痛忍耐度在男女当中效果差不多，但对女性而言，预知的疼痛感减轻得要多一些，心率增强程度要大一些。

    然而，研究人员说最有意思的研究结果是，咒骂的止痛效果对于把结果爱往最坏处想的男性作用不大。

    尽管研究人员对这一研究结果尚无解释，他们仍指出"因为咒骂引起的消极情绪对那些易于产生这种念头的人会形成灾难性的想法，",因而产生了这种情况。

    如果不只是"斗或逃"机制作用于疼痛忍耐度，那也可能是因为咒骂引起消极情绪，而这种消极情绪可能对威胁形成直接警告反应。

    它也会引发挑衅，或淡化"虚弱突出疼痛忍耐度更强的男子气概，"研究人员说。

    "情绪的释放似乎对疼痛忍耐度有积极作用",芝加哥私人精神分析师马克·斯摩勒说。"咒骂是一种情绪强烈释放的表达方式。"

    斯摩勒还说，研究结果似乎与精神分析的一个观点相一致，即强化了的表达方式会舒缓感情伤害的强度。