Transcript of Why women suffer 4x more from autoimmune diseases than men | Mel Robbins #Shorts

Dr. Saul, do autoimmune diseases impact women more than men?

Absolutely. Four times more women than men. There's a number of reasons. There's sex differences, which are biology, things like X chromosome versus Y chromosome. But then more concerning are the gender differences, and those are socially constructed. That's the fact, for instance, that women experience more stress than men. They experience more trauma than men. They experience experience trauma earlier. When men and women are exposed to the same trauma, women have higher rates of post-traumatic stress disorder. We've got huge hormonal differences. We go through pregnancy and postpartum, perimenopause and menopause. This idea that a lot of people have that it's just a biological difference, it's just next chromosome, that's an oversimplification. It's necessary, but it's not sufficient for this dramatic rise that we're seeing in autoimmune disease, especially among women.

Well, I think it's shocking that in the last 25 years, based on the research, MS, for example, women are experiencing it four times more than men. When I think about the number of female friends of mine that are the primary care or they are the breadwinner in the household and the caregiver, or the chronic levels of stress that women feel, the rise in anxiety, the rise in depression, are these all factors, too?

They're all factors. What's important to realize is we can measure these things. We can measure the cost of not being able to say no. We can measure the cost of caregiving and over functioning and giving until you're depleted. We know that women are at greater risk of burnout. I think it's important to take it out of the purview of women just aren't measuring up in some way and to say that there's something wrong with our environment. It's a health hazard to be female in our culture. It makes me sad to say that because I was here in Boston in 1989 learning about how it was a health hazard to be a woman in our culture. If anything, it's gotten worse smell. We've got double the rates of depression, double the rates of insomnia, four times the rate of autoimmune disease, twice the rate of Alzheimer's disease, more regional and chronic pain. Most of the research is done in men and assumed to apply to women. There's a gender bias in the way that doctors take care of patients, females versus males. There's a treatment gap. If you have perimenopause or menopause and you go to your doctor for some help, 73% of women don't get the treatment they need.

That's the situation in which autoimmune disease is increasing.