PATREON-ONLY EPISODE TEASER

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I've spent spent years learning to advocate for myself, trust my body, and walk out of rooms where I'm not being listened to. So why did I stick with a provider who was dismissing my concerns, prescribing unnecessary medications, and wasting my time and my money?

This is the full story of a fertility acupuncture practice that wasn't right for me from day one, the sunk cost fallacy that kept me going back anyway, and the thousands of dollars in supplements, testing devices, and treatments that I'll never get back.

BEDUCATED QUIZ LINK: https://beduc.at/pd2623-cramped

CRAMPED episodes are intended for informational and entertainment purposes only, and are not medical advice.

Portia Nelson's poem Autobiography In Five Chapters: https://www.mindfulnesstherapy.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/autobiography-in-five-chapters-portia-nelson.pdf

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Scale of one to ten, how much does it hurt? If you have ever sat in an ER thinking "eleven" and said "seven," Golda Arthur of the Overlooked podcast understands completely. She did the same thing during a thunderclap headache episode, and has been thinking about it ever since.

Kate and Golda dissect the broken language of pain: the useless pain scale, the research showing doctors are trained to hear men's pain as physical and women's pain as emotional, and how even Virginia Woolf in 1926 complained that there aren't accurate words in the English language to describe pain.

Join the CRAMPED Patreon: https://patreon.com/cramped

CRAMPED episodes are intended for informational and entertainment purposes only, and are not medical advice.

BEDUCATED QUIZ LINK: https://beduc.at/pd2623-cramped

Overlooked Podcast: https://overlookedpod.com/

The Girl Who Cried Pain study: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11521267/

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Content warning: this episode includes a brief discussion of suicide attempts, please listen with care.

Melissa, known on TikTok as the Comorbidity Queen, has endometriosis, Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, pelvic congestive syndrome, May-Thurner syndrome, Nutcracker syndrome, thoracic outlet syndrome, POTS, MCAS, Lyme disease, chronic anemia, and a first rib that doctors want to remove.

In this episode she tells us everything: the nine-hour emergency surgery at 17, the $65,000 in medical debt, the severe depression that pain and overmedication tipped her into, and the treatment that has done more for her in five minutes than any surgery.

BEDUCATED QUIZ LINK: https://beduc.at/pd2623-cramped

Join the CRAMPED Patreon: https://patreon.com/cramped

CRAMPED episodes are intended for informational and entertainment purposes only, and are not medical advice.

CRISIS SUPPORT:

Call 988 anywhere in the US for free, 24/7 mental health crisis support

Text HOME to 741741

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

PATREON-ONLY EPISODE TEASER

Join the CRAMPED Patreon to listen to the full episode: https://patreon.com/cramped

Did we need a data science professor to tell us why a study titled "Attractiveness of women with rectovaginal endometriosis: a case-control study" is garbage? No, but it's more fun to tear this study to shreds with a professional.

This is a real study: university funded, ethics board-approved, peer reviewed, and published in a real medical journal in 2013. How did this study even get published? Were they even trying to help people with endometriosis? Is there ANYTHING useful we can get from this dumpster fire of a study?

Andrea Jones-Rooy: https://www.jonesrooy.com/

CRAMPED episodes are intended for informational and entertainment purposes only, and are not medical advice.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

There's a very obvious gap in the healthcare market: millions of people in serious pain every month, and almost no companies trying to solve it. In this episode, Kate talks to Sushma Ravindran, founder of Ask Nomi, an app in beta testing that aims to help people with endometriosis track symptoms, find the right care, and figure out what actually works for their body. Sushma spent 18 years undiagnosed, paid $20,000 out of pocket to finally get answers, and then quit her job to build a solution. They also gets into the genuinely uncomfortable question of whether an app is an adequate solution to a healthcare system that has catastrophically failed people with period pain, or whether it's a Band-Aid over a gaping wound.

Join the CRAMPED Patreon: https://patreon.com/cramped

CRAMPED episodes are intended for informational and entertainment purposes only, and are not medical advice.

American Heart Association Journal article on endometriosis and heart disease risk: https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/CIRCOUTCOMES.115.002224

Ask Nomi link to join the beta test: https://www.asknomi.ai/partners/cramped

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Your ears are pretty far away from your uterus, BUT THAT DOESN'T MEAN THEY'RE NOT LISTENING.

Dr. Natalie Crossland, an audiologist who specializes in tinnitus management (and also has endometriosis), explains the surprising ways that hormones, hearing, and the nervous system are all in conversation with each other. Like why estrogen levels affect your ability to hear in background noise, why tinnitus might pop up during hormonal shifts, and what you can actually do about it besides being told to ignore it.

Join the CRAMPED Patreon: https://patreon.com/cramped

CRAMPED episodes are intended for informational and entertainment purposes only, and are not medical advice.

Dr. Natalie Crossland: https://www.newyorkhearingdoctors.com/team/natalie-crossland-au-d/

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Severe period pain doesn't care who you work for. Diana Falzone is a journalist and current host of EndoTV, whose endo story is tangled up with Fox News, an NDA, and an endo-related near-kidney failure seven months after giving birth. She joins Kate to talk about 18 years of dismissed pain, an infertility diagnosis at 32, and how her journalism skills became her most useful medical tool.

CRAMPED episodes are intended for informational and entertainment purposes only, and are not medical advice.

Join the CRAMPED Patreon: https://patreon.com/cramped

Jane Myer's 2019 New Yorker story: https://archive.ph/cW3jr

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Pelvic floor physical therapist Caroline Gamwell experienced a strange constellation of symptoms from the time she was 4. After decades of misdiagnoses, unnecessary surgery, and overmedication, she brought her search to an AI chatbot.

Is it possible to use AI well in this situation? How do you protect yourself from potential AI hallucinations? Can someone with no medical background use AI to help get to a diagnosis?

The New York Times article: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/02/well/live/ai-illness-claude-chatgpt.html?smid=url-share

CRAMPED episodes are intended for informational and entertainment purposes only, and are not medical advice.

Join the CRAMPED Patreon: https://patreon.com/cramped

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

PATREON-ONLY EPISODE TEASER

Join the CRAMPED Patreon (even at the free tier!) to listen to the full episode: https://patreon.com/cramped

I started research for a totally normal episode about spiral arteries in the uterine lining, and SHIT GOT WEIRD.

Get ready for a deep dive into where period blood comes from, all the new organs and tissue you grow every month, and how science got the info on how it all works.

CRAMPED episodes are intended for informational and entertainment purposes only, and are not medical advice.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

When Riven first got her period at age 10, the debilitating cramps weren't even the worst part. Instead, she felt completely out of control for the first day or two of her period, sometimes sobbing for hours, sometimes losing time. But the scariest symptom was the intrusive thoughts of harming herself that came with her period pain. It took over 10 years, but after an incident involving her kid brother, she got a diagnosis of PMDD and a medication that she says saved her life.

CRISIS SUPPORT:

Call 988 anywhere in the US for free, 24/7 mental health crisis support

Text HOME to 741741

PMDD Support (not Crisis Support): International Association for Premenstrual Disorders - IAPMD.org

Studies mentioned in the episode:

Prevalence of depression in women vs men: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5532074/

Female-specific pharmacotherapy in ADHD: premenstrual adjustment of psychostimulant dosage: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10751335/

CRAMPED episodes are intended for informational and entertainment purposes only, and are not medical advice.

Join the CRAMPED Patreon (even at the free tier!) for ad-free & bonus episodes, plus the discord community and online ClamBakes! https://patreon.com/cramped

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.