Blog #4: "Women are from Venus and men are from Mars" (Lay Version)

Among the many paradoxes of the human immune system that we will be presenting throughout this blog and in its companion book, "The Paradox of the Immune System," the differences between the male and female immune systems may turn out to be the most puzzling to readers. But more important, the differences will also be among the most clinically significant. And almost all of our blog discussions, as well as most chapters in the book will directly or indirectly address these dilemmas, “for better and for worse,” an appropriate phrase for a “man and woman” topic.

I think we can all agree with relative certainty that everyone reading this knows that there are differences between women and men or females and males. Whether it’s their obvious anatomy or their biological functions, things like pregnancy or hormones, or even evolutionary changes over eons of time. Women are different than men (or as the author John Gray said in his 1992 book, “Women are from Venus and men are from Mars”). And medical science has proven that biologically, women are stronger than men, especially when it comes to the immune system. But that strength also carries with it the “sword of Damocles” or more simply, an increase in risks leading to paradoxes in womens’ health. The perfect example of this type of inconsistency would be a woman’s significant increased risk of autoimmune diseases. This will be a big part of our discussions.

Sex and gender are actually different. Sex measures differences in the biology of a person like genetics and functions of their body. Gender is more a measure of their cultural and environmental behaviors, like a person’s exposure, transmission and removal of microorganisms from their patterns of life or their access to healthcare. It’s worth understanding that both sex and gender influence the differences in the male and female immune system, but our discussions will focus mostly on the biological factors that produce these differences in the immune systems. These differences are due in large part to the evolution we mentioned above and its Darwinian or natural selection results over time.