Aru Nair

But there are lots of other reasons we might see differences between the buckets or between the sexes.

And we talked about this with another expert, Sarah Richardson.

She says those reasons don't exclusively have to do with your sex, like your weight, your age, your hormones, even if you're taking other medication.

Sarah is the director of the Gender Sci Lab at Harvard, where she works with Marina.

So we would expect that drug usage is also higher.

Partially, this is because women tend to go to the doctor more often than men do.

Like, they just interact with hospitals and healthcare way more often.

Hmm.

So in 2013, the FDA actually lowered Ambien's recommended starting dose for women, which was a huge deal.

Wow.

Yeah.

It's the first and only drug where there is a dose based on your sex.

And many people saw this as a huge win for women's health.

It was also not entirely clear who was causing the sex difference.

Some people say that more research is needed and even say the lower starting dose could lead to women being undertreated.

And being more clear will also help us get at what the real problem is.

Marina says sometimes the focus on biology actually obscures the fact or distracts from the fact that women aren't always treated the same as men at the doctor's office.

And it could be both.

So lots of studies show that women's pain is taken less seriously.

This really matters for the heart attack issue.