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Doctors Say That Period Cramps Are Comparable To Heart Attacks, Women Say ‘No Duh’

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Overshare time: as a hormonal, pimply-faced teen, I once experienced cramps so bad that I almost had to be taken to the hospital because the school nurse feared they might be symptomatic of ovarian cysts. I remember everything vividly because when you’re forced to curl up on the floor of a public bathroom in despair, the moment tends to stick with you. This kind of pain is not out of the ordinary for many women. Some women experience menstrual cramps so severe that they can’t even get out of bed.

Unfortunately, it seems that men are just now starting to take the severity of these pains seriously.

A (male) doctor recently confirmed that menstrual cramps can be as painful as going into cardiac arrest. As Marie Claire reported on Tuesday, “Professor of reproductive health at University College London, John Guillebaud, told Quartz that patients have described the cramping pain as ‘almost as bad as having a heart attack.’”

The statement was first made to Quartz in 2016 but is just now gaining traction. As BuzzFeed reports, “About 1 in 5 women have dysmenorrhea, or painful periods, according to the writer of the article. She notes that every month she ‘spent hours lying on the floor, unable to move, and literally crying out in agony’ with pain worse than a slipped disc. Some conditions, such as endometriosis, are known to cause extremely painful periods.”

While it’s nice to finally have some validation about the extreme pain we’ve been forced to shut up and endure quietly for centuries, it’s also kind of annoying that people are just now getting with the program.

Women everywhere are reacting to the news in the same way: “Um, yeah. We’ve been saying this for years. Welcome to reality.”

And the kicker is, it doesn’t even get better when you’re pregnant because then the menstrual pains are just replaced with other discomforts.

Here’s to menopause, ladies. It can’t come soon enough.