One nerd’s quest to find out why we know next to nothing about period pain. Tired of suffering from "death cramps" with no diagnosis for 20 years, Kate Downey has to look for her own answers. She interviews top doctors and researchers, and delves into topics from Greek history to sitcoms to TikTok wellness scams, all to figure out why menstrual pain is so often dismissed and untreated. What she finds will change how you think about your own body and the medical system. Because having a microphone gets you more answers than having a uterus.
Created & hosted by Kate Helen Downey
Editorial producer: Kelsey DiLanzo
Sound Design & Mixing by Kelly Kramarik at Maven Post Media
Associate Producer: Katelyn Sabater
Theme song by Farideh
Podcast art: Nicholas Scheppard
This podcast is supported by the Simons Foundation’s Science, Society & Culture InitiativeFiscal partnership provided by Arkansas Podcast Collaborative
Published in partnership with Multitude. Contact them for advertising inquiries here.
EPISODE TRANSCRIPTS & Citations
Supported by a generous grant from the Simons Foundation
PERIOD PAIN ISN’T TREATED LIKE OTHER KINDS OF PAIN.
When I was 14 I had the first of what I came to call “Death Cramps”. I literally crawled the last 50 feet of empty hallway from my science classroom to the nurse’s office. I had never felt pain like this before in my life, and I thought for sure I was dying, or that my appendix had burst, or that an alien was emerging from my abdomen. The nurse rolled her eyes after hearing I was on my period, and gave me a hot water bottle. I threw up every 10 minutes for an hour, and kept passing out from the pain, so she finally called my parents and sent me home. My doctor later told me “Some women have bad cramps, it’ll go away when you have your first baby”.
Severe Dysmenorrhea (menstrual pain that limits daily activity) affects between 2-29% of menstruating people
Between 2 and 29%?? We don’t have any better research than that??
That’s 36 - 522 million People worldwide in severe pain. Millions of people left to deal with their pain alone, desperate for information, solutions, and community.
CRAMPED will provide that information, and investigate why this pain is under researched, under treated, and dismissed -
despite being extremely common.
E1: Death Cramps: Is This Normal?
E2: The ER: Why Isn’t Period Pain Treated Like Other Kinds of Pain?
E3: How Many People Get Death Cramps?
E4: Who’s Trying To Cure Period Pain?
E5: What Is Hormone Balancing And Why Is It Everywhere?
E6: What Does My Diagnosis Mean?
E7: How Does Untreated Period Pain Affect My Mental Health?
E8: How Do I Protect My Body From Politics?
E9: Why Aren’t There More Period Pain Stories in Media?
E10: What Do I Do With All This Period Pain Knowledge?
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