Oh, I thought the statistics were that half as many men as women have it. I don't know if I'd call that vast, though admittedly most people who have mentioned that they have it have been women. I probably just saw bad stats.
Like, yes, my life has been very stressful for years at a time. Those times weren't when it became progressive though, and good luck finding a control that has never had periods of stress and then doing statistics on them somehow...
I was more pointing out that males, when they get it, are more likely to have a hard time and more likely to get primary forms and the relapsing forms are more likely to turn progressive early on (women wind up catching up after menopause sometimes).
And yeah, everyone has stress. They thought that stress caused relapses at one time, though, but further research has ruled it out. They can look at folks that have had undue stress and look at timing of relapses vs times of major stress to see if the link is correct. The 'stress-free life' advice still gets passed around though.
Like, yes, my life has been very stressful for years at a time. Those times weren't when it became progressive though, and good luck finding a control that has never had periods of stress and then doing statistics on them somehow...