Bottom Line/Health: Women totally get the short end of the stick when it comes to autoimmune diseases. Of the people with autoimmune diseases, 78% of them are women. So what is it about women that make us so vulnerable?

Dr. Brooke Kalanick, ND: With the exception of one, all autoimmune diseases are more common in women. One reason is when you think about what an autoimmune disease is, it’s the inability for us to recognize ourselves versus the things we should normally be attacking—viruses, toxins, things like that. Now we’ve started to inappropriately recognize parts of ourselves and cause an attack.

Women have a more fluid and adaptive immune system because we’re meant to carry a baby, which is kind of part us but not totally like us. So we can down-regulate and adjust our immune system to be able to carry a pregnancy. That’s one reason—we just have more fluidity, so when something triggers an autoimmune issue, we’re going to be more likely to go from level to unlevel easier.

Bottom Line: Because we have to deal with foreign bodies in our body, you’d think that we’d be more able to handle autoimmune.

Dr. Kalanick: Well, the less adaptable you are, the less you’re going to get it. We have to be able to adapt, so that’s going to skew us one way or the other. And other reason is estrogen and hormone fluctuations. Women go through puberty, sometimes pregnancy, and menopause, and those are times of wildly fluctuating hormone levels and big surges in estrogen, which can make this immune system seesaw get a little bit more out of balance a little quicker.

Bottom Line: So, self-defense?

Dr. Kalanick: Possibly. Yes.

Bottom Line: What can we do to protect ourselves? Does it have to do with keeping ourselves a little more even-keeled?

Dr. Kalanick: Yeah, when we go through these changes, it’s important to get checked for these things. Many women come to me 5 years after having a baby and say “everything just completely went upside down when I had my baby. No one checked me for, for example, Hashimoto’s or autoimmune hypothyroidism.” So be sure you’re getting checked.

And there’s so many things we know now help us be more able to defend ourselves in our current environment. So things like high doses of vitamin D within an appropriate range. Most doctors and most conventional medicine will recommend as long as you are above 30, you’re okay. For autoimmune treatment and prevention, we like you above 50.

Compounds like curcumin and turmeric, keeping your blood sugar balanced, and all those things we talk about for healthy lifestyle—stress, sleep, keeping your cortisol levels in check and your stress balanced—those all impact your immune system. So doing a good job on all of those things is a really good defense against autoimmune issues.

Bottom Line: So for women in particular, we start taking care of everyone outside of the world, then we really do have to give ourselves permission and say it’s a priority to take care of ourselves with regard to diet and lifestyle and stress and sleep and all that sort of stuff—or else we are more vulnerable to these autoimmune diseases.

Dr. Kalanick: Absolutely. And we can’t take care of our families when we are falling apart and feeling badly. So it feels selfish, but it’s actually I think more selfish when we don’t take care of ourselves and let everything fall apart.

Bottom Line: Let me just clarify; you mentioned vitamin D. In terms of supplementing with vitamin D, what are the safe levels of supplementation?

Dr. Kalanick: It depends where you’re at. If you get your vitamin D level checked and you’re at 18, you might need 5,000, 6,000, up to 10,000 to get that level up. With autoimmune disease in particular, trying to keep it in that 50 to 100 range on your blood work can sometimes be tough. Oftentimes people with autoimmune disease have a genetic defect in that receptor.

So it’s important to get them checked regularly. If you’re supplementing with high levels of vitamin D, you need to get that level checked every 30 to 90 days, and then dial-in the dose. While you may need 8,000 IUs a day to clear the 50 on your blood test, you might only need 4,000 to keep it there. So it’s important to get checked.

Bottom Line: When you high dose anything, it should always be done under proper supervision.

Dr. Kalanick: Absolutely.

Bottom Line: I know that there was a while where everyone was saying that people should just naturally supplement 5,000 IUs a day, but in fact then they discovered that that was too high and now the safe zone seems to be more closer to like 3,000 a day for the average person, not with an autoimmune disease.

Dr. Kalanick: Yeah. It’s important to know where you’re starting and how that dose affects you. Different supplements are going to be effective to various degrees also. Capsules don’t tend to raise it as much as a liquid, so that would be the one you want to be extra careful with.

Bottom Line: Got it. All right, bottom line, women: we have to take care of ourselves. We are very, very vulnerable to autoimmune diseases, and once you get one, it really will change your life. So prevent it. Take care of yourselves. Stress, lifestyle, proper nutrition. Get that sleep. It’s okay.