Believe me, the man flu is real!
BURTON W. COLE, Editor
By Burton W. Cole
I am relieved to report that I’m nearly over my cold. It was real touch and go for a while.
Not to sound overly dramatic, but I was suffering from a severe case of the man flu.
For you wives out there, you already know that the man flu is three to five degrees more painful than childbirth, and six or seven degrees more potent than when you powered through the same thing a month earlier.
Women often make cruel, snide remarks, such as if it was up to men to carry and deliver babies, humans have gone extinct centuries ago.
But I’m here to tell you that man flu is real. Science says so. Sorta kinda. More on that in a minute.
For a while there, I was in a deep, committed relationship with my tissue box. We have since gone our separate ways.
Oh, sure, I still snuggle up to the occasional cough drop, but that’s just a fling.
Complicating my case is the sad fact that my wife passed away two years ago. She’s no longer here to cater to my every whine, cough and sniffle. I had to endure the man flu alone.
When Terry was alive, I would explain all of my symptoms to her in great, groaning detail — often. I made sure to repeat my observations about every ache, pain, sneeze and wheeze for a very sound medical reason: I didn’t want to be misdiagnosed. She might have missed something the first 15 or 20 times I reported in.
Wives have an irritating tendency to ignore our suffering. And they claim that we don’t listen!
A variety of studies have delved into the man flu but so far, no cure has been discovered.
A few years back, Dr. Robert H. Shmerling of Harvard Health Publishing wrote that women who refer to man flu as “wimpy man syndrome” very well could be committing a horrible injustice.
“Some have suggested that early man evolved to require more prolonged rest while sick to conserve energy and avoid predators,” Shmerling wrote.
“In more modern times, the advantage of a longer recovery time (for men) is less clear beyond the obvious. When you don’t feel well, it’s nice to be taken care of.”
The good doctor noted that the same is true for women, but we guys find it nearly impossible to take care of our wives.
Our sick and suffering wives are so busy cooking, cleaning, going to work, taking care of the kids, shoveling the walk, running an Uber service for juveniles who missed the bus and whipping through reams of household finances and paperwork that they hardly slow down enough for us to catch them, much less take care of them.
That’s strong evidence that colds and flus don’t hit women as hard or they wouldn’t be able to do all that stuff. We sure can’t when we have man flu. We’re laid up on the couch for days.
As Dr. Shmerling concluded, “While the evidence is not definitive, they suggest that the flu may, in fact, be more severe in men.”
In a 2022 article in Men’s Health, Dr. Heather Bartos of Texas Health Frisco said, “Remember that evolutionary speaking, we need more women than men. One man can repopulate the whole bunch. So women need to be stronger.”
And according to Wikipedia, that font of wisdom written by anyone with access to the internet, “Scientific investigation into ‘man flu’ and its journalistic uptake have been disorderly. Some researchers refute outright the existence of man flu while one study has suggested substantial evidence for the phenomenon while nevertheless remaining inconclusive.”
Well, I’m just wrapping up my own personal study that proves man flu is real. Trust me. If you have any questions, I’ll be on the couch.
List your case with Dr. Burt at news@falmouthoutlook.com or on the Burton W. Cole page on Facebook.