March 13, 2025 • 21 mins
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Swearing might not just be an emotional release—it could actually boost athletic performance and increase pain tolerance. In this episode, we dive into fascinating research showing that strategically dropping swear words could make you stronger, push your endurance further, and even help you tolerate pain more effectively. But is it the words themselves or their taboo nature that makes the difference? We explore the science, the theories behind it, and how this connects to the mind-body relationship we discussed back in Episode #5.
Dr. Bobby shares studies showing how grunting enhances performance in tennis and weightlifting, with grunting increasing ball speed by 5% and muscle force by 20% (study). But swearing takes things up a notch: in anaerobic performance tests, swearing every three seconds led to a 4.5% increase in power output, an 8% boost in grip strength, and a staggering 22% improvement in wall sit endurance (study). The research also links swearing to increased pain tolerance, with one study showing a 20% improvement in cold endurance when participants submerged their hands in ice water while swearing (study).
So why does this work? We examine three key theories:
- Physiological response: Does swearing trigger a fight-or-flight response? The evidence says no—heart rate and blood pressure remain unchanged.
- Psychological arousal: Some researchers believe swearing might activate the brain’s amygdala, increasing confidence and reducing self-imposed limits.
- Pain tolerance theory: Swearing may act as a mental distraction, shifting focus away from discomfort and allowing for greater exertion.
Dr. Bobby even put this to the test in his own “N of 1” experiment during a run—grunting didn’t help, fake swear words did nothing, but real swearing momentarily reduced his perception of fatigue.
Takeaways:
- Swearing during high-intensity effort can significantly boost strength and endurance, but the effect is diminished if you swear regularly.
- The power of swearing may come from its taboo nature, making it an unexpected distraction that reduces pain perception.
- You might not want to try this loudly in a public gym, but experimenting with your own N of 1 study (perhaps at home) could be revealing.
Want to push past perceived limits? Maybe it’s time to embrace a well-placed expletive. Try it for yourself and let me know—just don’t tell my grandson.
Live long, well, and powerful—maybe even a little more powerful with a swear word or two
Want coaching from Dr. Bobby? Information here
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
What if you could increase your pain tolerance by
20% and your athleticperformance by 8%?
But it would make you sociallycriticized.
Would you do it?
Well, swearing every threeseconds does both of these.
Not just an interesting finding.
(00:22):
More importantly, it tells usthat we can tolerate more
discomfort and are stronger thanwe think.
Hi, I'm Dr Bobby DuBois andwelcome to Live Long and Well, a
(00:45):
podcast where we will talkabout what you can do to live as
long as possible and with asmuch energy and figure that you
wish.
Together, we will explore whatpractical and evidence-supported
steps you can take.
Come join me on this veryimportant journey and I hope
(01:06):
that you feel empowered alongthe way.
I'm a physician, ironman,triathlete and have published
several hundred scientificstudies.
I'm honored to be your guide.
Welcome my listeners to episodenumber 32.
What the bleep?
(01:27):
Can swearing really improveperformance?
Well, I ran across a studyrecently about how swearing
improves athletic performanceand I thought now this is a
really fun topic.
And I thought now this is areally fun topic, but as I
looked into it, there really arestudies that support it and
(01:51):
theories as to why it mightoccur.
This relates to episode numberfive that we talked about some
time ago on mind-body connection, and we're going to explore
what that mind-body connectionis here Now.
(02:13):
The study is fun, the findingsare really interesting, but I
believe what's really moreimportant truly important is
that we can do more than wethink.
We are more capable than webelieve possible.
Sometimes you read stories abouthow a woman lifts up a car
because her loved one is trappedunderneath.
Well, swearing gives us a tasteof how much more we can
(02:41):
possibly do, and there'sevidence to support it.
So it's exciting, it's fun, andnow let's dive in together.
Well, why now?
Of course, there's always astory behind the story.
I was recently chastised byGideon, my nine-year-old
soon-to-be nine-year-oldgrandson, that I sometimes swear
(03:04):
and, as he says, I shouldn't dothat.
Now the question is could thisstudy and what it shows and this
podcast episode justify myswearing, absolve me from my
sins?
Well, you listeners can decide,and of course, gideon can and
(03:25):
his mom can.
Well, let's start with a bit ofbackground and something that's
more socially acceptable thanswearing and that's grunting and
, as we'll get into later,actually the taboo element is
really a critical piece of thispuzzle, and I'll explain why.
(03:46):
Now, if you ever watch tennisand I used to play tennis in
high school.
Quite a lot you hear gruntingnowadays when players hit the
ball.
Now this probably goes back toJimmy Connors decades ago.
Serena Williams was famous forthis.
Maria Sharapova was able to,you know, grunt at about 100
(04:06):
decibels, so pretty, pretty long.
And basically what's happeningis you're exhaling when you're
exerting yourself and it focusesyour energy at the moment of
contact.
Now that's all nice andinteresting in theories, but
there's actually scientificstudies to show that grunting
(04:27):
changes your abilities in tennis.
So this is a study of 32collegiate tennis players, both
men and women, and in thisexperiment, some of the time
they grunted and some of thetime they didn't grunt, and they
measured the speed of theirserve and their forehand strokes
(04:47):
and they put EMG monitors ontheir muscles so they could see
how much force was beinggenerated.
And lo and behold what did theyfind?
That with grunting velocity,the speed of the ball was 5%
greater and the force they weregenerating from those muscles
increased by 20%.
(05:08):
Now it also turns out that whenyou grunt, it distracts your
opponent a fraction of a second,so they can't quite as well
tell where the ball might begoing.
So this is grunting and it'sinteresting if you're a tennis
player, but this concept ofgrunting also has been shown to
(05:31):
work for weightlifters.
So here's a study of 30 men andwomen about age 25, and they
were looking at hand grip inthis study.
So how hard can you grip adevice and how many pounds of
force can you generate?
And it was a two-second handgrip and they tried it three
(05:52):
different ways.
One they grunted.
Another, they didn't grunt, sothere's no big sound.
But they exhaled when they didit and, of course, there was a
control where they didn't do it.
It and, of course, there was acontrol where they didn't do it.
And what they found is that ifyou exhaled at the moment you
were doing this, you had 11%increase in the force you
(06:13):
generated, but if you grunted,it was 25%.
Now, that's huge.
Like everything we talk abouthere, the evidence is never as
clear as we'd like.
So it worked for for hand grip,but when they did the same
exact study or another studythat looked at this, it didn't
(06:35):
help deadlifts.
So is it unique to hand grip?
Is it unique to tennis?
Well, it didn't generalize toall activities, so there's a
wrinkle in this already.
Well, let's move on fromgrunting to swearing.
Now there's a couple of piecesof the puzzle here.
(06:55):
Grunting is generally singular,you do it a single time while
you're trying to do somethingforceful, whereas swearing at
least as the way it's done inthese studies is done multiple
times.
You swear over and over everycouple of seconds.
I mentioned this earlier.
Grunting is somewhat sociallyacceptable, whereas swearing is
(07:19):
viewed as a taboo.
And there may be a component ofthe taboo which is really
important.
Well, what is swearing?
We must define our terms, andthat is defined as use of
potentially offensive taboowords.
(07:39):
Again, this issue of taboo,something that you don't
normally say, you're going tosay when we do these athletic
tests.
Well, this of course, goes backto the Bible, and probably
thousands of years before theBible, where in the Bible it
says thou shalt not take theLord's name in vain.
(08:00):
So swearing, or at least thataspect of swearing, was
prohibited in the Bible In theyear 1250, one F word, which in
this case was fart, was one ofthe very first times that it was
written down.
And in the 16th century a monkscribbled the other F word, the
(08:25):
bad F word, in the margins of amanuscript.
So it turns out that, althoughswearing may have been
relatively common throughouthistory.
It was almost never writtendown.
That's part of its tabooelement of it.
Now, the most common swear wordswhich may or may not be your
(08:49):
most common swear words are theF word and the S word, and in
these studies they asked thefolks to think of what you might
say if you stubbed your toe orhit your head really hard.
So each person would choosetheir taboo or swear word of
(09:09):
choice.
Choose their taboo or swearword of choice.
Now, before we get into thestrength element and this is
going to be very importantbecause we're going to talk
about the theories of why thismight occur, and if we can't
come up with any good theories,then I don't know what to make
of the evidence.
So there's been a number ofstudies in the psychological
(09:31):
literature that swearingincreases your pain tolerance
and keep this in mind, becausewe're going to come back to this
concept in just a bit and someof these studies did something
very interesting.
Of course, they had the controlwhere you didn't say anything.
Then you had, of course, theswear word of choice, but then
(09:54):
they made up what sounded like aswear word.
In one of the studies that wordwas fouch, and so they would
utter that in a very loud way,but of course that's not a taboo
word, and so it was a way oftesting whether it was the word
itself or the taboo element ofit.
(10:16):
Now, there's many differenttypes of testing of pain
tolerance, but in this case theysubmerged the subject's hand in
ice water and they asked thesubjects two different things
how quickly did you detect pain?
And then, secondly, how longcould you keep your hand in that
(10:38):
ice bath up to a certain limitthat they set?
And what they found is that, ifthey swore, they could increase
their physical tolerance topain by 20% or more.
And it really happened andreally worked well when it was
(11:00):
an actual taboo swear word asopposed to the made-up one.
Well, now we get to the study ofinterest.
Now, this is actually one ofthose studies, of studies, or a
review article, and they askedthe question is there an impact
(11:22):
of swearing on athleticperformance?
Now, they had a swearingprotocol.
Of course you have to have aprotocol.
So the test they were doing wasthe strength you could do for
30 seconds.
Sometimes they did hand grips,sometimes they did a cycling
(11:45):
where you'd be on a sort ofstationary bike and you would
pedal all out for 30 seconds andin the protocol many of them
would have you swear every threeseconds, so it wasn't just a
one and done.
You would swear.
A couple seconds later youwould swear again.
A couple seconds later youwould swear again.
(12:06):
Sometimes you would swear 10seconds before you started this
whole protocol.
And they did it just like theydid with the ice water bath,
where sometimes you didn't doanything, sometimes you uttered
a made up what sounded like aswear word and then, of course,
(12:26):
the actual swear word swear word.
Well, they found that it worked.
That swearing made a hugedifference.
That power increased by fourand a half percent.
On the bicycle the grip went upeight percent.
Chair push-ups went up by 15percent.
(12:49):
A wall sit how long you couldsit next to a wall 22%.
And then the length of time youcould do a plank went up by 12%
.
Now, these 5, 10, 15%improvements let me put that
into context.
If you're an elite weightlifterand you're working out all year
(13:10):
long, you might hope you couldincrease the amount of weight
you could lift by 3% and theswearing was increasing by 5%,
10%, 15%.
If you look at Olympicsprinters and you compare in the
2024 Summer Olympics, thedifference between the first
(13:31):
place sprinter of a hundredmeter race versus the eighth
place was 1% difference, andhere swearing is giving five or
10 times that in terms of poweroutput.
Well, here's another wrinkle.
There's always wrinkles.
There's a wrinkle, like itworked with grip strength but
(13:52):
didn't work with a deadlift.
If you are a regular swearer nowI don't remember what they
exactly defined as a regularswearer, but we can just assume
they swear regularly it wasn'tas effective.
So again, this comes back tothis taboo element that if you
(14:15):
are never a swearer, then whenyou say that bad word, that's
taboo, that brings up somethingin our brains, whereas if you
swear all the time, it doesn'tseem to have the same effect.
Well, you know, I love evidence, but for me to believe that
this is a real phenomenon, yes,the evidence is critically
(14:36):
important, but I want tounderstand.
Is there a plausible theory?
Because if I can't explain itthen I don't know what to make
out of this.
So here's a number of studiesthat tried to explore what the
issue was, and there are threereigning theories as to why
(14:57):
swearing might increase yourpain tolerance or might increase
your strength in a test.
The first is physiologic, thatwhen you utter these words,
there's a sympathetic response.
Your heart rate might go up,your blood pressure might go up
and that might prime you to dothis much greater effort.
(15:19):
Well, when they've done thatand they measured these things,
no difference, all right.
So that theory is interesting,but doesn't seem to be the
operative one.
Well, the second one ispsychological arousal.
The theory is now there's not alot of evidence here is that
(15:39):
when you swear, it in essencewakes your brain up.
You're more confident, you'remore excited.
Perhaps you're distracted andthe thought is the amygdala,
which is your emotional centerin your brain.
There might be activation there, but I'm not sure anybody's
(16:00):
done this study with a fast MRIscan to show it.
In essence, maybe your brain issaying well, let's throw
caution to the wind, as I amalready throwing caution to the
wind by swearing, and I can letmyself go with this athletic
attempt.
(16:21):
The last one, which I actuallythink may be the most important
although the throw caution tothe wind I think has some appeal
as well is that it increasesyour pain threshold.
We talked earlier about the icewater bath and how we
definitely found that swearingincreased your ability to
(16:43):
tolerate pain with the ice waterbath.
But when you think about a verydifficult exercise challenge,
there's pain associated with it.
We typically pull back fromsomething that's painful.
So maybe the taboo word, thegrunting with that taboo word,
(17:07):
distracts us, increases our paintolerance and therefore we can
do more.
This seems very compelling tome.
Well, I wanted to test it inmyself.
Now, I didn't go to a publicgym and swear and see what
happens.
I figured, well, that'sprobably not something good,
(17:29):
they'll probably kick me out.
But I did my own N of 1 study,and that was I went for a run.
Now, it wasn't exactly the30-second burst of athletic
energy, but I was getting tiredwhile I was running.
It was feeling painful and Itried grunting every couple of
(17:51):
seconds.
Well, that didn't do very much.
I then experimented with thefake word.
I tried the fouch as a fakeswear word.
Nah, that didn't do much for me.
But then I tried a couple ofchoice swear and, believe it or
(18:11):
not, for me it helped.
I was momentarily distracted.
You know, what came out of mymouth was something that doesn't
normally come out of my mouthand I was focused for a moment
on that, like, ooh, I just saidthat.
And when that happened.
For a short period of time Iwas distracted.
(18:35):
I was not aware of thediscomfort.
Then, of course, a few secondslater or so, the discomfort came
back.
I didn't feel like I could runquite as strong and I would
repeat it, and it worked anumber of times.
So for me, in my end of onestudy, it corroborated the pain
(18:56):
tolerance of the ice bath workand corroborated the findings of
the studies I've talked about.
Now keep in mind, as I've said afew times, it's a taboo.
You're not going to be allowedto swear in the gym, and it
(19:16):
turns out that if you justquietly swear, or you swear
internal to your brain but don'tutter the words, it doesn't
quite work.
So it really has to besomething that you say often,
you say it loudly, for it towork.
Well, this very fun episode, orat least a fun episode for me,
(19:39):
is coming to an end.
This was a really enjoyablestudy, not because it talked
about something that we all canprobably laugh a little bit
about, probably laugh a littlebit about, but the deeper
message is that we perceivelimits in ourself in so many
(19:59):
aspects of life.
And, as I talked about the carand the lifting of a car and I
hope none of you ever have to befaced with that situation.
But what that tells us is thatthere's more to our capabilities
than we believe possible and,as we talked about, at least one
(20:19):
or two of the theories supportwhy this may occur.
I encourage you to try your ownN of 1 study and if you've
forgotten how to do that, by allmeans go to episode 27 or go to
my website, and all of thesethings are written about in
various blogs.
I believe, as a parting message, that you are more powerful
(20:46):
than you think you may be.
This tiny little set of studiesgives us a window into that,
which I hope you will try outand carry with you.
May you live long, well andpowerful, knowing that swearing
may make you even more powerfulthan you thought you were
(21:10):
capable of doing.
Thanks so much for listening toLive Long and Well with Dr
Bobby.
If you liked this episode,please provide a review on Apple
or Spotify or wherever youlisten.
If you want to continue thisjourney or want to receive my
(21:35):
newsletter on practical andscientific ways to improve your
health and longevity, pleasevisit me at
drbobbylivelongandwellcom.
That's, doctor, as in D-R Bobby.
Live long and wellcom.
What if you could increase your pain tolerance by
20% and your athleticperformance by 8%?
But it would make you sociallycriticized.
Would you do it?
Well, swearing every threeseconds does both of these.
Not just an interesting finding.
(00:22):
More importantly, it tells usthat we can tolerate more
discomfort and are stronger thanwe think.
Hi, I'm Dr Bobby DuBois andwelcome to Live Long and Well, a
(00:45):
podcast where we will talkabout what you can do to live as
long as possible and with asmuch energy and figure that you
wish.
Together, we will explore whatpractical and evidence-supported
steps you can take.
Come join me on this veryimportant journey and I hope
(01:06):
that you feel empowered alongthe way.
I'm a physician, ironman,triathlete and have published
several hundred scientificstudies.
I'm honored to be your guide.
Welcome my listeners to episodenumber 32.
What the bleep?
(01:27):
Can swearing really improveperformance?
Well, I ran across a studyrecently about how swearing
improves athletic performanceand I thought now this is a
really fun topic.
And I thought now this is areally fun topic, but as I
looked into it, there really arestudies that support it and
(01:51):
theories as to why it mightoccur.
This relates to episode numberfive that we talked about some
time ago on mind-body connection, and we're going to explore
what that mind-body connectionis here Now.
(02:13):
The study is fun, the findingsare really interesting, but I
believe what's really moreimportant truly important is
that we can do more than wethink.
We are more capable than webelieve possible.
Sometimes you read stories abouthow a woman lifts up a car
because her loved one is trappedunderneath.
Well, swearing gives us a tasteof how much more we can
(02:41):
possibly do, and there'sevidence to support it.
So it's exciting, it's fun, andnow let's dive in together.
Well, why now?
Of course, there's always astory behind the story.
I was recently chastised byGideon, my nine-year-old
soon-to-be nine-year-oldgrandson, that I sometimes swear
(03:04):
and, as he says, I shouldn't dothat.
Now the question is could thisstudy and what it shows and this
podcast episode justify myswearing, absolve me from my
sins?
Well, you listeners can decide,and of course, gideon can and
(03:25):
his mom can.
Well, let's start with a bit ofbackground and something that's
more socially acceptable thanswearing and that's grunting and
, as we'll get into later,actually the taboo element is
really a critical piece of thispuzzle, and I'll explain why.
(03:46):
Now, if you ever watch tennisand I used to play tennis in
high school.
Quite a lot you hear gruntingnowadays when players hit the
ball.
Now this probably goes back toJimmy Connors decades ago.
Serena Williams was famous forthis.
Maria Sharapova was able to,you know, grunt at about 100
(04:06):
decibels, so pretty, pretty long.
And basically what's happeningis you're exhaling when you're
exerting yourself and it focusesyour energy at the moment of
contact.
Now that's all nice andinteresting in theories, but
there's actually scientificstudies to show that grunting
(04:27):
changes your abilities in tennis.
So this is a study of 32collegiate tennis players, both
men and women, and in thisexperiment, some of the time
they grunted and some of thetime they didn't grunt, and they
measured the speed of theirserve and their forehand strokes
(04:47):
and they put EMG monitors ontheir muscles so they could see
how much force was beinggenerated.
And lo and behold what did theyfind?
That with grunting velocity,the speed of the ball was 5%
greater and the force they weregenerating from those muscles
increased by 20%.
(05:08):
Now it also turns out that whenyou grunt, it distracts your
opponent a fraction of a second,so they can't quite as well
tell where the ball might begoing.
So this is grunting and it'sinteresting if you're a tennis
player, but this concept ofgrunting also has been shown to
(05:31):
work for weightlifters.
So here's a study of 30 men andwomen about age 25, and they
were looking at hand grip inthis study.
So how hard can you grip adevice and how many pounds of
force can you generate?
And it was a two-second handgrip and they tried it three
(05:52):
different ways.
One they grunted.
Another, they didn't grunt, sothere's no big sound.
But they exhaled when they didit and, of course, there was a
control where they didn't do it.
It and, of course, there was acontrol where they didn't do it.
And what they found is that ifyou exhaled at the moment you
were doing this, you had 11%increase in the force you
(06:13):
generated, but if you grunted,it was 25%.
Now, that's huge.
Like everything we talk abouthere, the evidence is never as
clear as we'd like.
So it worked for for hand grip,but when they did the same
exact study or another studythat looked at this, it didn't
(06:35):
help deadlifts.
So is it unique to hand grip?
Is it unique to tennis?
Well, it didn't generalize toall activities, so there's a
wrinkle in this already.
Well, let's move on fromgrunting to swearing.
Now there's a couple of piecesof the puzzle here.
(06:55):
Grunting is generally singular,you do it a single time while
you're trying to do somethingforceful, whereas swearing at
least as the way it's done inthese studies is done multiple
times.
You swear over and over everycouple of seconds.
I mentioned this earlier.
Grunting is somewhat sociallyacceptable, whereas swearing is
(07:19):
viewed as a taboo.
And there may be a component ofthe taboo which is really
important.
Well, what is swearing?
We must define our terms, andthat is defined as use of
potentially offensive taboowords.
(07:39):
Again, this issue of taboo,something that you don't
normally say, you're going tosay when we do these athletic
tests.
Well, this of course, goes backto the Bible, and probably
thousands of years before theBible, where in the Bible it
says thou shalt not take theLord's name in vain.
(08:00):
So swearing, or at least thataspect of swearing, was
prohibited in the Bible In theyear 1250, one F word, which in
this case was fart, was one ofthe very first times that it was
written down.
And in the 16th century a monkscribbled the other F word, the
(08:25):
bad F word, in the margins of amanuscript.
So it turns out that, althoughswearing may have been
relatively common throughouthistory.
It was almost never writtendown.
That's part of its tabooelement of it.
Now, the most common swear wordswhich may or may not be your
(08:49):
most common swear words are theF word and the S word, and in
these studies they asked thefolks to think of what you might
say if you stubbed your toe orhit your head really hard.
So each person would choosetheir taboo or swear word of
(09:09):
choice.
Choose their taboo or swearword of choice.
Now, before we get into thestrength element and this is
going to be very importantbecause we're going to talk
about the theories of why thismight occur, and if we can't
come up with any good theories,then I don't know what to make
of the evidence.
So there's been a number ofstudies in the psychological
(09:31):
literature that swearingincreases your pain tolerance
and keep this in mind, becausewe're going to come back to this
concept in just a bit and someof these studies did something
very interesting.
Of course, they had the controlwhere you didn't say anything.
Then you had, of course, theswear word of choice, but then
(09:54):
they made up what sounded like aswear word.
In one of the studies that wordwas fouch, and so they would
utter that in a very loud way,but of course that's not a taboo
word, and so it was a way oftesting whether it was the word
itself or the taboo element ofit.
(10:16):
Now, there's many differenttypes of testing of pain
tolerance, but in this case theysubmerged the subject's hand in
ice water and they asked thesubjects two different things
how quickly did you detect pain?
And then, secondly, how longcould you keep your hand in that
(10:38):
ice bath up to a certain limitthat they set?
And what they found is that, ifthey swore, they could increase
their physical tolerance topain by 20% or more.
And it really happened andreally worked well when it was
(11:00):
an actual taboo swear word asopposed to the made-up one.
Well, now we get to the study ofinterest.
Now, this is actually one ofthose studies, of studies, or a
review article, and they askedthe question is there an impact
(11:22):
of swearing on athleticperformance?
Now, they had a swearingprotocol.
Of course you have to have aprotocol.
So the test they were doing wasthe strength you could do for
30 seconds.
Sometimes they did hand grips,sometimes they did a cycling
(11:45):
where you'd be on a sort ofstationary bike and you would
pedal all out for 30 seconds andin the protocol many of them
would have you swear every threeseconds, so it wasn't just a
one and done.
You would swear.
A couple seconds later youwould swear again.
A couple seconds later youwould swear again.
(12:06):
Sometimes you would swear 10seconds before you started this
whole protocol.
And they did it just like theydid with the ice water bath,
where sometimes you didn't doanything, sometimes you uttered
a made up what sounded like aswear word and then, of course,
(12:26):
the actual swear word swear word.
Well, they found that it worked.
That swearing made a hugedifference.
That power increased by fourand a half percent.
On the bicycle the grip went upeight percent.
Chair push-ups went up by 15percent.
(12:49):
A wall sit how long you couldsit next to a wall 22%.
And then the length of time youcould do a plank went up by 12%
.
Now, these 5, 10, 15%improvements let me put that
into context.
If you're an elite weightlifterand you're working out all year
(13:10):
long, you might hope you couldincrease the amount of weight
you could lift by 3% and theswearing was increasing by 5%,
10%, 15%.
If you look at Olympicsprinters and you compare in the
2024 Summer Olympics, thedifference between the first
(13:31):
place sprinter of a hundredmeter race versus the eighth
place was 1% difference, andhere swearing is giving five or
10 times that in terms of poweroutput.
Well, here's another wrinkle.
There's always wrinkles.
There's a wrinkle, like itworked with grip strength but
(13:52):
didn't work with a deadlift.
If you are a regular swearer nowI don't remember what they
exactly defined as a regularswearer, but we can just assume
they swear regularly it wasn'tas effective.
So again, this comes back tothis taboo element that if you
(14:15):
are never a swearer, then whenyou say that bad word, that's
taboo, that brings up somethingin our brains, whereas if you
swear all the time, it doesn'tseem to have the same effect.
Well, you know, I love evidence, but for me to believe that
this is a real phenomenon, yes,the evidence is critically
(14:36):
important, but I want tounderstand.
Is there a plausible theory?
Because if I can't explain itthen I don't know what to make
out of this.
So here's a number of studiesthat tried to explore what the
issue was, and there are threereigning theories as to why
(14:57):
swearing might increase yourpain tolerance or might increase
your strength in a test.
The first is physiologic, thatwhen you utter these words,
there's a sympathetic response.
Your heart rate might go up,your blood pressure might go up
and that might prime you to dothis much greater effort.
(15:19):
Well, when they've done thatand they measured these things,
no difference, all right.
So that theory is interesting,but doesn't seem to be the
operative one.
Well, the second one ispsychological arousal.
The theory is now there's not alot of evidence here is that
(15:39):
when you swear, it in essencewakes your brain up.
You're more confident, you'remore excited.
Perhaps you're distracted andthe thought is the amygdala,
which is your emotional centerin your brain.
There might be activation there, but I'm not sure anybody's
(16:00):
done this study with a fast MRIscan to show it.
In essence, maybe your brain issaying well, let's throw
caution to the wind, as I amalready throwing caution to the
wind by swearing, and I can letmyself go with this athletic
attempt.
(16:21):
The last one, which I actuallythink may be the most important
although the throw caution tothe wind I think has some appeal
as well is that it increasesyour pain threshold.
We talked earlier about the icewater bath and how we
definitely found that swearingincreased your ability to
(16:43):
tolerate pain with the ice waterbath.
But when you think about a verydifficult exercise challenge,
there's pain associated with it.
We typically pull back fromsomething that's painful.
So maybe the taboo word, thegrunting with that taboo word,
(17:07):
distracts us, increases our paintolerance and therefore we can
do more.
This seems very compelling tome.
Well, I wanted to test it inmyself.
Now, I didn't go to a publicgym and swear and see what
happens.
I figured, well, that'sprobably not something good,
(17:29):
they'll probably kick me out.
But I did my own N of 1 study,and that was I went for a run.
Now, it wasn't exactly the30-second burst of athletic
energy, but I was getting tiredwhile I was running.
It was feeling painful and Itried grunting every couple of
(17:51):
seconds.
Well, that didn't do very much.
I then experimented with thefake word.
I tried the fouch as a fakeswear word.
Nah, that didn't do much for me.
But then I tried a couple ofchoice swear and, believe it or
(18:11):
not, for me it helped.
I was momentarily distracted.
You know, what came out of mymouth was something that doesn't
normally come out of my mouthand I was focused for a moment
on that, like, ooh, I just saidthat.
And when that happened.
For a short period of time Iwas distracted.
(18:35):
I was not aware of thediscomfort.
Then, of course, a few secondslater or so, the discomfort came
back.
I didn't feel like I could runquite as strong and I would
repeat it, and it worked anumber of times.
So for me, in my end of onestudy, it corroborated the pain
(18:56):
tolerance of the ice bath workand corroborated the findings of
the studies I've talked about.
Now keep in mind, as I've said afew times, it's a taboo.
You're not going to be allowedto swear in the gym, and it
(19:16):
turns out that if you justquietly swear, or you swear
internal to your brain but don'tutter the words, it doesn't
quite work.
So it really has to besomething that you say often,
you say it loudly, for it towork.
Well, this very fun episode, orat least a fun episode for me,
(19:39):
is coming to an end.
This was a really enjoyablestudy, not because it talked
about something that we all canprobably laugh a little bit
about, probably laugh a littlebit about, but the deeper
message is that we perceivelimits in ourself in so many
(19:59):
aspects of life.
And, as I talked about the carand the lifting of a car and I
hope none of you ever have to befaced with that situation.
But what that tells us is thatthere's more to our capabilities
than we believe possible and,as we talked about, at least one
(20:19):
or two of the theories supportwhy this may occur.
I encourage you to try your ownN of 1 study and if you've
forgotten how to do that, by allmeans go to episode 27 or go to
my website, and all of thesethings are written about in
various blogs.
I believe, as a parting message, that you are more powerful
(20:46):
than you think you may be.
This tiny little set of studiesgives us a window into that,
which I hope you will try outand carry with you.
May you live long, well andpowerful, knowing that swearing
may make you even more powerfulthan you thought you were
(21:10):
capable of doing.
Thanks so much for listening toLive Long and Well with Dr
Bobby.
If you liked this episode,please provide a review on Apple
or Spotify or wherever youlisten.
If you want to continue thisjourney or want to receive my
(21:35):
newsletter on practical andscientific ways to improve your
health and longevity, pleasevisit me at
drbobbylivelongandwellcom.
That's, doctor, as in D-R Bobby.
Live long and wellcom.
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