enjoying yourself reduces pain

Where would we be without those who push at the frontiers of human knowledge?

The world, as we have reported before, can be divided between pogonophiles and pogonophobes. Sporting a beard I am in the former camp but I keep it trimmed. For those tempted to ape the Moeen Ali look, a word of warning from the ever popular journal, Applied Microbiology (vol 15 p899). Manuel Barbeito of the Industrial Health and Safety Office at Fort Detrick, Maryland and three of his colleagues are clearly in the latter camp and were trying to dissuade a colleague from growing a beard. Being the sort of people you find in ‘Elf and Safety they decided that actions speak louder than words and grew beards, 73 days’ worth actually, and then, as you do, sprayed them with harmless bacteria. They were able to demonstrate to their disbelieving colleagues that it was harder to wash germs out of the beard then off clean-shaven chins. To make their point further, they took a mannequin, put a false beard on it and then sprayed it with pathogenic bacteria. Some chickens and guinea pigs were exposed to this menace and, lo and behold, some got sick. You have been warned!

When something unfortunate happens or you hurt yourself, a natural, almost involuntary reaction, on the part of many of us is to mouth a few oaths. This makes us feel better but does it actually? Well, naturally, there are academics who are willing to spend part of their lives and our taxes to find out. A team from Keele University, led by Richard Stephens, conducted an experiment by asking volunteers to stick their hands in icy water and then either swear or say something neutral. They found (NeuroReport, vol 20 p 1056) that after a good cuss the volunteers experienced increased pain tolerance, increased heart rate and a decrease in perceived pain compared with those who didn’t swear. So, the occasional curse does you good – glad we’ve got that sorted.

If you want to distract yourself from your problems, have some fun, at least according to some research conducted by Simon Rietveld of the University of Amsterdam and Ilja van Beest of Tilburg University. Their research consisted of asking young women suffering from asthma what symptoms they were feeling whilst waiting for a rollercoaster ride and how they felt after it. I have heard some chat up lines but that takes the biscuit! The scientists’ conclusion, published in Behaviour Research and Therapy (vol 45, p 977) – it is not clear if they had time for reflection in a police cell or not – was that women felt more wheezy before the ride than after, even though their lung function was actually worse than before. Amazing!

Of course, as any fule kno, pain is modulated by cognitive factors such as attention and emotions. To demonstrate the point a group of Italian scientists, led by Marina de Tommaso, conducted a bizarre experiment. They measured the relative pain suffered by shooting them in the hand with a powerful laser beam while they were looking at pictures they had previously deemed to be beautiful, so-so or horrible. Those gazing on the beautiful pictures produced lower pain scores than the others. Explains my reaction to modern art!