The Gender Gap: Autoimmune Diseases
One of the most striking statistics I think I have seen is that upwards of 80% of autoimmune disease diagnoses are held by women. I truly had to sit with this one for a while. Why would this be? In order to understand such a staggering number, we first need to look at what an autoimmune disease really is. What is happening in your body when you have an autoimmune? Then, what is the Western medicine view on why it is that women suffer so much more from these conditions ranging from arthritis and lupus to celiacs disease and MS? On the other hand, what are the true, possible root causes? We are going to deep dive into all of it in this blog post.
Autoimmune Diseases
A properly functioning immune system is working constantly to be on the look out for and defend your body against dangerous pathogens and viruses. Of course, we very much need this system to be in place. The danger starts to happen when your body struggles to distinguish between self and non-self.
What this looks like pathogenically is the production of autoantibodies, which are essentially antibodies that are programmed to react to your bodies own proteins, as opposed to those of a dangerous foreign invader.
Autoantibodies are produced by B and T lymphocytes and when they bind to self-antigens (antigens synthesized by you bodies own immune system, such as a liver or kidney cell) they begin to cause severe damage that manifest as disease. Of course, autoantibodies are not all bad. They serve as very important disease biomarkers and help us to understand the immune system significantly, on top of serving as protective in maintaining immune system homeostasis. When any balance is thrown off in nature, something designed to be protective can very quickly become the danger itself. Sometimes called connective tissue disease, autoimmune disease develops when these autoantibodies begin to attack entire bodies of tissue/organs/organ systems.
Common Symptoms of Autoimmune Disease
Joint pain and swelling
Fatigue
Abdominal pain and/or issues with digestion
Swollen lymph nodes
Rashes and skin issues
Recurring fever
Common autoimmune diseases in women
Type 1 Diabetes
Multiple Sclerosis (MS)
Rheumatoid Arthiritis
Lupus
Thyroid Diseases (Hyper or Hypo- depending on if your body is producing excess thyroid hormone or not enough)
Psoriasis
Clearly, autoimmune diseases are rampant. They impact over 50 million Americans with one or more diagnosis, and that rate is only increasing every year. So, before we begin to explore what we can do to stop this, let’s look at various explanations in the medical community about why it is happening in the first place.
Allopathic View: The X-Chromosome Hypothesis
In short, modern Western medicine truly does not have an answer as to why so many more women are suffering from these diseases. However, much of the recent research has been put into a hypothesis regarding the X-chromosome. For a brief overview: men and women both carry 22 sets of identical chromosomes, but in women the 23rd one is different, we have two X’s, while men have an XY. According to research, it is this extra X that is causing all the trouble.
Given that we have an extra X chromosome, it is crucial that one of them is “silenced” so that we do not have a complete double dose of gene expression compared to men. This silencing is done by an Xist protein, and it believed by Dr. Chang in this late research, that when Xist proteins are recycled in a natural cell dying and turnover process, the body has trouble distinguishing them as non-self, leading to a cascade of attacks.
Other studies support the X-chromosome hypothesis as well but in a slightly different way. Given that the X-chromosome carries many proteins that act as signaling molecules between immune cells, it is noted in a recent study that it is possible if one of these fails to be silenced, it can lead to a cascade of dangerous rampant signals that confuse the immune system and lead it to attack self.
All of this has very sound logic, but to most of us, it doesn’t feel like enough. It seems that something is missing, there is an underlying link here that research studies and crunching numbers and analyzing genes simply cannot touch on.
Self vs Non-Self: The Emotional Warfare on Women
We know that the body expresses what the mind suppresses. At this point, we really do not need data and research for that statement. You can speak to anyone with a disease and the evidence of the mind body connection becomes evidently clear. Connect this now to what we know it is like to experience life and society as a woman. From an early age, we are trained to take on the stressors of others and hold their pain for them. This is empathy, right? No, it is boundary-less connection. The very word compassion comes from the Latin meaning “to suffer with” and this is what women do-we suffer with everybody.
In his book “The Myth of Normal” Dr. Gabor Mate touches heavily on this topic. He explains that women do not allow themselves to be angry. As resentment grows for the the sheer amount of emotional turmoil they take on and hold inside, both theirs and not theirs, they are unable to express anger about it all and this manifests as disease.
Essentially, being kind with creating boundaries between yourself and those in your life is going to signal to your inner world that truly, there is no distinction between self and non-self. Of course, no one person can handle all of this. So, what happens? Your body attacks it all to try and protect you.
Dr. Gabor Mate explains, “…putting people’s emotional needs ahead of themselves, repressing healthy anger, and had the belief they were responsible for other people’s feelings, never disappointing anybody. These patterns lead to illness. When you identify with your socially determined role and responsibilities rather than the needs of the self, you are creating stress for yourself. These patterns are not conscious, deliberate, culpable. They’re trauma responses,”
He explains further that true, healthy anger is a response of the moment, not something that should be fed with guilt and kept in the basement until it combusts. This is the pattern and response seen in some women who suffer from autoimmune diseases. They take on what is not theirs for years and years, they harbor stress and shove down their anger, and then eventually everything combusts and their body being to self-deprecate.
The term emotional labor is really not a play on words at all, taking on the emotional needs of others on top of our own is true work-and we can only handle so much of it. I mentioned earlier that autoimmune diseases are sometimes called connective tissue diseases given how they attack, it is no coincidence that Dr. Gabor Mate describes women as the connective tissue between societies, holding everyone together.
From a young age watching our mothers take on everyones’ pain and burdens and then growing up being told this is how we attain approval…it eventually takes a toll. As women, we need to develop ways to honor ourselves and create boundaries that do not communicate to the very cells of our bodies that there is no distinction between self and non-self. There is, there is a very clear distinction. You are here to honor and care for yourself, not everyone who crosses your path. There is a way to love and spread your light without wearing yourself to the bone. Nobody can escape the impacts of stress, and you cannot lie to your body about how you feel.
The Hormone Connection
There is always a way to bridge together science backed, modern medical views and a more root cause emotional viewpoint. This is true holistic medicine. The bridge here between the past 2 explanations given on autoimmune diseases and women, is hormones.
We know that while men follow a 24 hour cycle that is identical every day, women are of a monthly cyclical nature that varies day to day. This is beautiful and aligned with nature, but it certainly comes with its struggles.
A hormonal imbalance can begin to lead towards inflammation and disease states. Stress and emotional burdens can most certainly lead to this imbalance, as can a plethora of environmental factors. Estrogen is well known to actually enhance immune activity in the body, supported by some research where rates of autoimmune disease actually go down in menopausal women when estrogen is lower. On the other hand, progesterone is largely protective and immunosuppressive, given its calming nature.
Estrogen is really a key player here.
As estrogen dominance is becoming a more prevalent issue due to environmental toxins and lifestyle changes, caring for ourselves in these years is crucial. It is not rare at all to see an onset of autoimmune diseases correlate with estrogen dominance.
Oestrogen actually have the ability to enhance inflammation by increasing the amount of antibodies you are producing, which may increase amounts of autoantibodies as well.
A type of oestrogen called estrone can also be converted to a metabolite that wreaks havoc on your body and actual DNA. Direct links have been looked at between this metabolite and lupus
Chronic stress can lead to your cells becoming desensitized to cortisol and causing a dysregulated stress response…which leads to rampant inflammation
Hope
Living in a world filed with an increasing number of toxins, pollutants, stressors, medications….all of the above, meanwhile watching statistics like that of autoimmune diseases in women rise can be overwhelming. I completely understand.
This is where it is important to change your outlook. We always have autonomy over our own health. At the very minimum, we can control the food we put in our bodies and the ways we move everyday. We can control how we aid our bodies in detox, the relationships we keep in our lives, the boundaries we draw between what is ours to carry and what is not, the ways we manage perceive and manage our stress levels, and overall being aware of our cyclical nature and keeping our hormones in harmony.
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