How much period pain is too much? A question nobody answers clearly.

There is no universal threshold, which is precisely the problem. In the absence of one, people default to comparison, and comparison is unreliable, because nobody describes their own pain accurately to anyone else.

A more useful test is function. If pain regularly keeps you from class, work, sleep or standing upright, that is worth evaluating, regardless of how it compares to anyone else’s month.

Bring specifics rather than adjectives. How many days, which days, what you have already tried, what it stops you doing, and whether it is getting worse over months. Written down, this is far harder to wave away than “bad cramps”.

Ask for a plan with a checkpoint: what we are trying, how long we are trying it, and what happens if it does not work. An appointment that ends without a next date is the one most likely to become a year of nothing.