Aru Nair

Well, we kind of don't.

Well.

Metaphorically speaking, our medical system tends to sort people into two buckets, a blue bucket or a pink bucket.

And it's really easy to do that.

But a lot of researchers say that that might cause some problems.

Okay, so the most common symptom of a heart attack, regardless of your sex or gender, is chest pain.

But the American Heart Association says that women may experience a wider, less recognized range of symptoms like fatigue or indigestion.

Alice McGregor is a doctor at the Medical University of South Carolina.

She spent years looking into women's health and medicine and how it might be different than men's, including whether those differences are why women with heart attacks are treated later than men and die at a higher rate.

It misses overlaps.

Yeah, it totally can.

And this leads to our second problem because when you store people into two big buckets, you're just going to get averages.

And so Marina says that when we do this, we can miss the diversity within those categories.

So I'll give you an example.

The three of us identify as women, but we might actually be really genetically different.

So I can be more similar to a male coworker than I am to the two of you.

And Emily, you're not going to believe this.

There is another problem with the two-bucket system.

Yeah, it only lets you ask questions about two buckets.

And if you find a difference, then you might think it's about the buckets.