Our Bodies, Ourselves: The Role of Gender in Disease

Heart disease is an equal-opportunity killer, the number one cause of death in men and women. Cancer follows at number two, irrespective of gender. But from there on out, the way women leave this world compared to men begins to diverge.

The CDC offers the following ratings of the top 10 causes of death in the United States. ^3,4

The leading causes of death among American women by percentage:

1) Heart disease - 22.9 percent
2) Cancer - 21.8 percent

3) Stroke - 6.1 percent
4) Chronic lower respiratory diseases - 6.0 percent
5) Alzheimer's disease - 4.7 percent
6) Unintentional injuries - 3.7 percent
7) Diabetes - 2.8 percent
8) Influenza and pneumonia - 2.3 percent
9) Kidney disease - 1.8 percent
10) Septicemia - 1.5 percent

The leading causes of death among American men by percentage:

1) Heart disease - 24.6 percent
2) Cancer - 24.1 percent
3) Unintentional injuries - 6.3 percent
4) Chronic lower respiratory diseases - 5.4 percent
5) Stroke - 4.2 percent
6) Diabetes - 3.1 percent
7) Suicide - 2.5 percent
8) Alzheimer's disease - 2.0 percent
9) Influenza and pneumonia - 2.0 percent
10) Kidney disease - 1.8 percent

More women than men die of Alzheimer’s disease (4.7 percent vs. 2 percent). The cause of the gender discrepancy in Alzheimer’s diagnoses is still not completely understood, but research is beginning to focus on the role genes play, specifically the APOe4 gene.

In the Washington Post, Walter A. Rocca, professor of neurology and epidemiology at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota was quoted, “We have now seen again and again that women that have [APOe4] have a much higher risk of getting Alzheimer’s than men of the same age who don’t have the gene.”

Scientists suspect that the interaction of the gene with the female hormone estrogen may play an underlying role in the development of Alzheimer's.

Suicide, the seventh leading cause of death for men, doesn’t make the list for women. Women are twice as likely as men to attempt suicide, according to Science Daily. But three-quarters of the 30,000 suicides that succeed each year are men.

George E. Murphy, M.D., an emeritus professor of psychiatry at Washington University School of Medicine, posits in the journal Comprehensive Psychiatry that women are more likely to seek help for emotional problems than men. He said that women are also more likely to consider how suicide will affect those around them.

For more on men and depression, read Men and the Stigma of Mental Illness.

No matter our risks of a particular disease, we seem genetically predisposed to live longer than our male peers. Even in an era of ever more gender equality, when most women work outside the home and endure the same levels of stress as their male counterparts, women continue to outlive men by an average of five to six years.

Thomas Perls, a geriatrician at Harvard Medical School, believes that women have been living longer than men for centuries. Perls attributes female longevity to natural selection.

"The longer a woman lives and the more slowly she ages, the more offspring she can produce and rear to adulthood. Therefore, evolution would naturally select the genes of such women over those who die young."

Despite our best efforts at a healthy lifestyle, our gender and genetics play roles in our health that science has yet to completely understand.

Be well! As well as your genes and gender allow!

Sources:

1) Diseases More Common in Women. medicinenet.com. Retrieved June 23, 2015.
http://www.medicinenet.com/womens_health/page4.htm

2) Social Relationships and Mortality Risk: A Meta-analytic Review. journals.plos.org. Retrieved June 23, 2015.
http://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.10...

3) Leading Causes of Death in Females United States, 2011 (current listing). CDC.gov. Retrieved June 23, 2015.
http://www.cdc.gov/women/lcod/2011/index.htm

4) Leading Causes of Death in Males United States, 2011. CDC.gov. Retrieved June 23, 2015.
http://www.cdc.gov/men/lcod/2011/index.htm

5) Why Women Live Longer Than Men. scientificamerican.com. Retrieved June 23, 2015.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-women-live-longer-than-men1

6) Why Women Are Less Likely Than Men To Commit Suicide. ScienceDaily.com. Retrieved June 23, 2015.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/1998/11/981112075159.htm

7) Why women have more Alzheimer's disease than men: gender and mitochondrial toxicity of amyloid-beta peptide. NIH.gov. Retrieved June 23, 2015.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20442496

8) Why do more women get Alzheimer’s? Research points to genetics, other factors. washingtonpost.com. Retrieved June 23, 2015.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/with-women-perhaps-facing-higher-ris...

9) Why Women Live Longer than Men. harvard.edu. Retrieved June 23, 2015.
http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/1998/10.01/WhyWomenLiveLon.html

Reviewed June 24, 2015
by Michele Blacksberg RN

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• Alzheimer's Disease
• Wellness