Gabor Maté

But I was working too hard.

which means I was depleted.

I was in my workaholic state, which means I was depleted, and when I'm depleted, I'm not very nice to be around, including and especially for my wife.

And so my wife said to me, literally she said, Buddy, you've written a book called When the Body Says No, and you better write one called When the Wife Says No.

And my good fortune has been to be married to somebody who doesn't put up with my stuff, who challenges me.

Do you want to be with me?

You have to grow up.

And so it's been a, now that works both ways, but there's something that happens, and I talk about this in the myth of normal, and autoimmune disease, for example, happens mostly to women.

80% of people with rheumatoid arthritis or lupus or chronic fatigue or fibromyalgia, inflammatory disease of the bowel, you know, and so on, are women.

And why is that?

It's genetics.

No, it isn't.

For example, in autoimmune disease, multiple sclerosis, in Denmark, in women it doubled in 20 years, not in men.

In the 1930s, the gender ratio of MS was one to one.

Now it's three and a half women to every man, which proves that it's not genetic.

By the way, there was an Australian study in 1967 that systemic lupus, which is an autoimmune disease that really attacks the whole body, but the immune system turns against the organism.

The more childhood neglect and adversity people experienced, the greater the risk for multiple sclerosis.

If you look at who gets autoimmune disease, not just according to my own observations, but a lot of research, is people who tend to suppress their healthy anger, who tend to be nice, who tend to look at the emotional needs of others more than their own.

Now, which gender in this culture is programmed to be that way?

Not by genetics, but by culture.