Can women tolerate more pain than men?
Though Mythbusters has already weighed in on the side of lady endurance, one brave doctor has decided to take the experiment even further. After all, says Dr. Andrew Rochford, “there’s not one man in the world who’s been through the most painful experience of them all: childbirth.”
Guided by an obstetrician, Dr. Rochford decided to personally undergo simulated labor pains through low-voltage electrodes attached to his abdomen. The voltage was carefully timed by a physiotherapist to mimic the contraction patterns of a woman giving birth for the first time.
Only two hours into “labor”, Dr. Rochford ranked his pain level as “an eight out of ten” and immediately accepted nitrous oxide to relieve the pain. At three and a half hours, he was wrung out–and his smiling (female!) guides informed him that most women would have to continue laboring for another nine and a half hours. Wowza.
After calling it quits just past the three-and-a-half-hour mark, Rochford apologized to all the women out there, including his wife, for thinking he understood what it was like to go through labor:
“Men of the world, you have no idea. Leave it to the women. Forget the whole pain threshold debate. We have nothing. Women win. Men don’t. The end.”
You’ve gotta see it.
Photo and video clip via youtube.com
