As women, we all know how painful period pain can be. For those of us moms out there, labor pains can feel very similar and we all know how seriously those are taken in a hospital setting.
So why after so many years of enduring this every month is this pain still not taken seriously?
Well now a professor of reproductive health at University College London has compared period pain to having a heart attack, and said they do need to be taken more seriously.
A recent article in The Guardian said up to 20 percent of women suffer period pain so severe it interferes with daily activities, yet most of these women don’t say anything.
There are also countless stories of those women who do consult a doctor about their pain and are not taken seriously; simply advised to take over the counter pain killers.
‘Men don’t get it’
Professor John Guillebaud says it doesn’t have to be this way, adding that more research should be done into finding treatments, according to an article in Cosmopolitan.
“Men don’t get it and it hasn’t been given the centrality it should have. I do believe it’s something that should be taken care of, like anything else in medicine,” he said.
There is certainly a discrepancy in the way women’s pain is treated over men’s with data showing a woman waiting to be treated for abdominal pain will wait longer in an ER than a man suffering the same symptoms.
Whether this research will change anything in terms of pain medication and attitudes – only time will tell.
Don’t forget to share this important research finding with your friends and family and help to encourage change on this issue.
