London – Crying out when we get hurt is a natural and unstoppable instinct designed to help us withstand the pain, a study suggests.
The effort of shouting ‘ow’ interferes with pain messages travelling to the brain, researchers believe.
Biologists have previously suggested we have evolved to shout out spontaneously in order to warn others of danger.
The latest research indicates that we may actually do so to distract ourselves from the feeling of pain.
The scientists, whose study is published in the Journal of Pain, say expressions of pain are shared across language barriers.
‘Ow’ or ‘ouch’ are shouted in English, some South Africans yell ‘eina’, Italians say ‘ahia’ and the Chinese ‘aiyo’.
The researchers, from the National University of Singapore, tested for how long volunteers could keep their hands in painfully cold water.
First, the 56 participants were allowed to shout ‘ow’ when they felt pain, then the experiment was repeated with the volunteers asked to stay silent.
When allowed to shout out they withstood the pain for nearly 30 seconds on average, five seconds more than when they were told to sit and do nothing.
Exactly how the process works is not clear, but the scientists think the automatic messages travelling to the vocal part of the brain interfere with the pain messages.
Daily Mail