The next time you cut your finger or stub your toe but choose, out of propriety, to suppress any foul language, you might want to think twice. A recent study published in the journal Neuroreport has found that swearing might be more than simply an uncontrolled response to an injury, it might actually help lessen the pain.

While swearing is a common reaction for people suffering from an injury, it can often times exaggerate the degree of how much it actually hurts. In light of this, researchers in England initially set out to test whether cursing might in fact lower a person’s tolerance to pain. What they discovered was that the opposite was true.

Test subjects were asked to endure the pain of submerging their hands in a tub of icy cold water for as long as possible. One group was allowed to utter their favorite expletive, while another group employed a less offensive vocabulary. It turns out that the foul-mouthed group was able to endure the pain and discomfort longer than their more civilized counterparts.

Interestingly, the researchers found that swearing also increased the subject’s heart rate, which is tied to our fight or flight response and by extension, our survival. Because of this, it has been suggested that profanity might also linked to aggression and the desire to appear stronger and more capable.

Swearing has been a part of the human language for centuries, and while it is not exactly clear how it might help assuage pain, scientists believe that it might have to do with our neural circuitry. Most of our language skills occur in the left hemisphere of our brain, which is responsible for communication. Swearing, on the other hand, seems to be focused more in the right hemisphere, where emotions are derived. Swearing might therefore be thought of as an extreme form of emotional expression, or venting, if you will, even if it is inappropriate in many social circles, irregardless of how much one is suffering.

It has been estimated that upwards of 75 million Americans suffer from some sort of chronic or recurring pain. Stemming from this is a $50 billion dollar pain medication industry, which harbors its own set of problems in the form of ineffectiveness, abuse, and addiction. With this in mind, maybe expressing a few choice expletives instead might not be such a bad idea.

The authors of the study suggest that, like many things in life, the ameliorating effects of swearing might lose their emotional potency over time if they are abused, thereby rendering them less effective.

So choose your profanity wisely and, like salt, use sparingly.