“Man flu” is real. Science says so. Sorta.

A few years back, Dr. Robert H. Shmerling, a known man, wrote for Harvard Health Publishing 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 women also wish to be coddled when sick. We’d do it, too, but it’s impossible. Our sick and suffering wives are so busy cooking, cleaning, going to work, taking care of the kids, grocery shopping, and grousing something about aim while scrubbing the bathroom floor that husbands can’t catch them, much less take care of them.

Obviously, colds and flu aren’t as devastating to women as they are to men.

If a guy snags his ear with a fishhook, he’ll snap at his buddies who are howling with laughter to shut up and get the pliers before he uses the first guy he catches as bait. If he accidentally punctures his leg with a nail gun, he’s likely to smile as he realizes he’ll have such a cool story to tell the next time the boys sit around comparing scars.

But a simple cold — or worse, the flu — will reduce him to a miserable, whiney basket case who’s positive that he hasn’t long for this world.

You wives out there already know that the man flu MUST be much more painful and traumatic than, say, childbirth.

Even so, women often mutter cruel, snide remarks, such as if it were up to men to carry and deliver babies, humans would have gone extinct centuries ago.

But man flu is real. I know. I myself have suffered through the torture and agony — and endured the indignity of a wife’s uncalled-for derision.

I would explain all of my symptoms to my wife in great, groaning detail. I made sure to repeat my observations about every ache, pain, sneeze, wheeze and sniffle for a very sound medical reason: I didn’t want to be misdiagnosed. She might have missed something the first 30 times.

She would roll her eyes and tell me to grow up, which, hello, I did not find comforting at all. Didn’t she know she was supposed to make the moaning and whimpering stop?

“Keep up that bellyaching, and I’ll make it stop all right,” she said.

“Oh yeah, my belly aches, too,” I’d helpfully add to the list of symptoms.

Man flu is even worse than that time I got a sliver in my foot and she had to dig it out with a needle.

“Stop wailing and sit still,” she barked, and not very sympathetically, either. “I haven’t touched you yet.”

She got it after I passed out.

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 all wisdom as written by anyone with access to the internet, “Some researchers refute outright the existence of man flu while one study has suggested substantial evidence for the phenomenon while nevertheless remaining inconclusive.”

I’m telling you, based on my own personal research, man flu is a very real affliction. If you have any more questions, I’ll be on the couch. I might have a touch of the flu. What do you think, am I going to make it?

List your case with Dr. Cole at burton.w.cole@gmail.com. Whining is permitted