I’ve been known to lace some of my passionate speeches with profanities… well, there is a good reason for that. A recent article in Scientific American explains that swearing is a great release for pain (d#*n, I knew it!):
Bad language could be good for you, a new study shows. For the first time, psychologists have found that swearing may serve an important function in relieving pain…
How swearing achieves its physical effects is unclear, but the researchers speculate that brain circuitry linked to emotion is involved. Earlier studies have shown that unlike normal language, which relies on the outer few millimeters in the left hemisphere of the brain, expletives hinge on evolutionarily ancient structures buried deep inside the right half.