09/16/ 09/16/22 [captioning made possible by democracy now!] amy: from new york, this is democracy now! >> epidemic revealed to us how toxic our idea of normal has been because it showed us that desperate need for human connection we all have in a culte that has been isolating individuals for a long time. loneliness has been an epidemic for decades. amy: we spend the hour with the acclaimed canadian physician gabor maté, author of the new

book "the myth of normal: trauma illness, healing in a toxic culture." we will talk to him about his childhood as a holocaust survivor from hungary, the surge of addiction and suicide in the united states, as well as healing and the need for the medical and educational communities to rethink how trauma is addressed. >> isolate people, you make them fe guilty or weak for their illness and tell them to get over their trauma, you are just shaming them or isolating them more. what people need is community, contact, compassion, safety. amy: all that and more, coming up. welcome to democracy now!, democracynow.org, the war and peace report. i'm amy goodman.

immigrant justice advocates are denouncing ongoing efforts by republicans to send dozens of buses with asylum seekers to sanctuary cities across the united states. about 100 asylum seekers from colombia, cuba, guya, nicaragua, panama, and venezuela were dropped off in front of vice president kamala harris' residence thursday. the buses were shipped by texas republican governor greg abbott. this is an asylum seekers from venezuela. >> it was a very long trip, quite tough. we did not expect to be left adrift here. amy: asylum seekers were on the road for over 30 hours. at least two of them, including an infant, were taken to the hospital while others were able to get food and shelter. this is an immigrant rights advocate in washington, d.c. >> so while we are doing this

political show, we have human beings feeling they have been exploited. they have come to the united states to seek asylum and they have been told to get on these buses and promised an organization would receive them here, give them food, shelter, and a job. amy: this comes after florida's republican governor ron desantis sent two planes with some 50 asylum seekers to martha's vineyard, an island off the coast of massachusetts. desantis spoke wednesday. >> if you have folks that are inclined to think florida is a good place, our message is we are not a sanctuary state and it is better to be able to go to a sanctuary jurisdiction. yes, we will help us let take that transport for you to be able to go to greener pastures. amy: community members in martha's vineyard welcomed the asylum seekers with food, water and other resources. many had journeyed for months until reaching the u.s.-mexico border in search of refuge.

they were lied to buy florida officials, told they boarded the plane's, that would be sent to boston to receive jobs and housing. on thursday, the white house condemned governors for using asylum-seekers for "political ponds." the united nations human rights office says it will send monitors to izyum after hundreds of bodies were reportedly discovered mass graves by ukrainian forces who retook the city from russia earlier this month. ukraine's defense ministry said the largest of the mass burial sites contained 440 unmarked graves and said most of the victims are civilians. in kyiv, european commission president ursula von der leyen met thursday with president volodymyr zelenskyy, pledging eu support to ukraine "for as long as it takes." von der leyen's pledge came as the biden administration said it is sending another $600 million

in military aid to ukraine. on thursday, russia's foreign ministry warned the u.s. against providing longer-range missiles to ukraine. >> we have repeatedly stated pumping ukraine with western weapons leads to a prolongation of hostilities and new casualties amongst the sibley population. moreover, this brings a situation closer to the dangerous line of a direct military clash between russia and nato countries. amy: russian president vladimir putin and chinese leader xi jingping have met. the pair met thursday at a regional summit in news bethke stand. a chinese foreign ministry statement after the meeting made no mention of the word "ukraine," but xi reportedly told putin that russia needs to "demonstrate the responsibility of a major country to play a leading role and inject stability into a turbulent world." put did internet strains by referring to president xi's

qutions and concerns about ukraine. >> we highly value the balance position of our chinese friends when it comes to the ukrainian crisis. we understand your concern about this. amy: putin pledged russian support for china's territorial claim on taiwan. the summit was their first face-to-face meeting since russia invaded ukraine. it was also present she's first trip outside china since the start of the pandemic. in pakistan, waterborne and mosquito borne diseases are surging after unprecedented monsoon rains and glacial melt left a third of the nation under water. doctors in the southern sindh province report a big rise in cases of malaria, severe gastric infections, and more than 4000 cases of dengue that have led to at least nine deaths. >> dengue is spreading fast these days.

out of every 100 patients, 90 are suffering from dengue. some come with severe symptoms. amy: pakistan's floods have killed nearly 1500 people and displaced an estimated 33 million. this week climate experts at the world weather attribution initiative reported climate change increased the intensity of pakistan's record rainfall by up to 50% during the flooding. back in the united states, a house congressional committee has uncovered documents revealing how oil company executives' private actions contradicted their public promises to fight climate change. one set of emails obtained by the house committee on oversight and reform shows how exxon sought to undermine an oil industry pledge to uphold the paris agreement. other internal emails reveal shell's public pledge to go carbon-neutral amounted to corporate greenwashing. this week lawmakers heard testimony on how public relations firms worked to mislead the public over the climate crisis, while organizing phony grassroots campaigns to battle proposed regulations. this is environmental lawyer raya salter.

>> the climate crisis is an unprecedented global crime and the smoking gun lies in the hands of big oil and gas. they have known as precision for over 40 years that they were doing no less than creating a mass extinction event. amy: a court in louisiana has revoked air permits for a massive petrochemical complex in a part of the state known as cancer alley for its large number of polluting industries. the defeat of formosa plastics corporation's proposed $9.4 billion plant is a major victory for local environmental justice groups, including the louisiana bucket brigade and rise st. james, who've spent years fighting the project. in wisconsin, a federal judge has ruled in favor of an indigenous tribe on the south shore of lake superior after it

challenged construction of enbridge's line 5 pipeline. judge william conley found the bad river band of the lake superior tribe of chippewa indians acted within its rights when it revoked permission in 2013 for the pipeline to css tribal territory. the judge ruled the company is trespassing and must pay damages to the tribe. mississippi has lifted a boil water advisory for jackson, 40 days after the state's department of health reported the city's water supply was unsafe to drink. the problem was compounded in august when torrential rains caused the pearl river to overtop its banks, flooding jackson's main water treatment plant. republican governor tate reeves said thursday tap water in mississippi's capital city is now safe to drink, though he admitted the system is "still imperfect." the head of mississippi's chapter of the american academy of pediatrics warns jackson-area

caregivers preparing baby formula should continue to use bottled water because infants remain at risk of heavy metals or other toxins in the water supply. the billionaire founder of patagonia has given the outdoor apparel company away to a specially designed trust and a nonprofit that will use all the revenue to combat the climate crisis and protect the environment. yvon chouinard founded patagonia nearly 50 years ago. the company is valued at about $3 billion. in an interview with "the new york times," he said -- "instead of extracting value from nature and transforming it into wealth for investors, we'll use the wealth patagonia creates to protect the source of all wealth." the world health organization has given its most upbeat assessment on covid-19 since

declaring the disease an international emergency in january of 2020. who director-general tedros adhanom ghebreyesus said wednesday the number of newly rerted infecons has dropped dramatically. >> the number of weekly reported deaths from covid-19 was the lowest since march 2020. we have never been in a better position to end the pandemic. we are not there yet but the end is in sight. amy: this week the number of global confirmed covid-19 deaths topped 6.5 million. but the who reports the mber of excess deaths during the first two years of the pandemic totaled nearly 15 million. a federal judge has rejected a request by the justice

department to resume its investigation into documents seized by the fbi from donald trump's mar-a-lago estate in florida. on thursday, the u.s. district judge eileen cannon upheld her earlier ruling which bars the justice department from further examining the documents. many of which are labeled top secret, until a special master has a chance to review more than 11,000 pages. she formally named retired federal judge raymond dearie to the position. it will add lengthy delays to the justice department's criminal probe into trump's mishandling of government records. judge cannon was nominated to the federal bench in 2020 by then-president trump. senate democrats have once again delayed debate on a bill to ban lawmakers and their families from trading stocks. on thursday, oregon democratic senator jeff merkley told business insider any vote on the congressional stock trading ban will have to wait until after november's midterm elections. massachusetts democrat elizabeth

warren responded -- "every day that we delay on passing meaningful restrictions on stock trading among members of congress is a day that further erodes the credibility of this body." ethics watchdog walter shaub of the project on government oversight accused senator merkley of slow-walking the legislation until the senate's calendar ran out. this week "the new york times" reported at least 97 current lawmakers, or their close family members, have bought or sold stocks or other investments that intersected with their legislative committee work. el salvador's president nayib bukele has announced he will seek reelection. each term is limited to five years. his announcement came one year after he and alice appointed new judges to the salvadoran supreme

court in an effort to allow bukele's illegal re-election efforts. his government has been accused of severe human rights violations, including the arbitrary detention and torture of people accused of being in gangs. his term is set to end in 2024. and in mexico, a retired general and at least two other members of the military were arrested thursday and a connection with the 2014 disappearance of the 43 students from ayotzinapa. retired army general josé rodríguez pérez was the commander of the military base in iguala, guerrero when the students were ambushed and kidnapped. last month, a truth commission established by mexican president andrés manuel lópez obrador confirmed the military's involvement in the crime and said their disappearance was a crime of the state. mexico's former attorney general jesús murillo karam, who served under former president enrique peña nieto, was also arrested in

august. and those are some of the headlines. this is democracy now!, democracynow.org, the war and peace report. coming, canadian doctor gabor mate, author of "the myth of normal: trauma illness, healing in a toxic culture." stay with us. ♪♪ [music break]

line amy: this is democracy now!, democracynow.org, the war and peace report. i'm amy goodman. today we spend the hour with dr. gabor maté. the acclaimed canadian physician and author. he is just out with a new book "the myth of normal: trauma illness, healing in a toxic culture." dr. maté has worked for decades in vancouver as a family physician, palliative care director, addiction clinician, and observer of human health. dr. maté's work has long focused on the centrality of early childhood experiences to the development of the brain and how those experiences can impact everything from behavioral patterns to physical and mental illness. over the years, he has written a number of bestselling books, "in the realm of hungry ghosts: close encounters with addiction," "when the body says no: exploring the stress-disease connection," and "scattered

minds: the origins and healing of attention deficit disorder." in a moment, we will speak to dr. gabor maté. but first, i want to turn to trailer to a documentary about his work titled "the wisdom of trauma." >> ieed the u.s., the richest societies have to citizens with high blood pressure or diabetes, anxiety amongst young people is growing. asthma is on the rise as is addictions. depression is rising. youth suicide is rising. all is not well. >> started heroin i-26. to takehe pain away. >> the question is, can human beings in the mist of civilization? what we call civilization

demands that tomorrow of human beings -- denial of human beings. cooks please welcome dr. gab maté. >> genuine that excel. the trauma that is the nnection and the healing. why do we get disconnected? it is too painful to be ourselves. >> a bit like in the matrix, look at people and see all their trauma and damage. >> trauma is not the bad things that happens to you, but what happens inside you as a result of what happens to you. >> my father would take a belt to us. >> who did you speak t >> nobody.

>> that is the trauma. people are much more lonely and isolated than they used to be posted literally because of the inflammation in theody and suppressive immune system. you've been diagnod with prostate cancer. in my view, people who develop cancer have a hard time expressing. >> fighting to govern traumatized world. >> these are the people that our society rewards with power. >> our schools are full of kids with learning disabilities. the average teacher never gi ves a single lecture on trauma. trauma informed educati. if we are a trauma-informed

society, we look much more compassionate. >> you have made a big difference in my life. >> i don't feel like i am a bad person anymore. >> how are you? >> i just want people see the truth. solutions arise out of people when they confront themselves with t truth, when they are not afraid of the truth. >> i think the biggest thing this whole healing journey has taught me is how to be human. amy: the trailer for the film "the wisdom of trauma" about the work by our guest today, dr. gabor maté who has just written a new book with his son daniel titled "the myth of normal: trauma illness, healing in a toxic culture." dr. maté will be appearing tonight in new york city at the 92nd streety. on thursday, democracy now's nermeen shaikh and i spoke to gabor maté. i began by asking him about the pandemic and what he calls the myth of normal.

>> so the pandemic actually revealed to us how toxic our idea of normal has been, because it shod us the desperate need for human connection that we all have. but this isn't a culture that has been isolating and atomizing individuals for a long time where loneliness has been an epidemic for decades. it showed the noxious effect of cism and inequality, because the people who had the greatest risk for being affected by covid were those of lower social class and of people of color. the normal that we came from, in my perspective was already a toxic normal. we don't want to go back to it. because my contention in this book is what we consider to be normal in is socie is actually neither natural or healthy. and in fact, it's a cause of much human pathology, mental and physical. and actually, people's pathologies, what we call abnormalities, whether it's mental or physical illness, are actually normal responses to what is an abnormal culture.

nermeen: and dr. gabor maté, you say in the book, in fact, that there are no clear lines between normal and abnormal. could you explain what you mean by that and how you understand the spectrum along which these things lie? >> well, the key here is trauma. trauma is a psychological wound that people sustain. and i'm saying that in this society, most of us because of the nature of the culture, the way we raise children, the way we have to relate to each other, the very values of a society are traumatizing for a lot of people so that it's falsto say that some people are normal and others are abnormal. in fact, we're all on the spectrum of woundedness, which has a great impact on how we relate to each other in our health. nermeen: dr. maté, explain what how you understand it, as you say in the book that the term trauma has a greek origins, but

that it's come to mean something quite different. i mean, in the greek origin, it referred to a physical injury or a physical wound. but in psychiatry in the work of freud and psychoanalysis, in medical literature, generally, now trauma is understood as a wound to the mind. >> it's a wound to the psyche, to our emotional being to the soul. and trauma is not what happens to us. when people think of trauma, they think usually of catastrophic events like it's a tsunami or a war or parents dying or sexual or physical, emotional abuse of a child. these evts are traumatic, but they're not the trauma. the trauma is the psychic wound that we sustain. and our psychological traumas ha lifelong impacts. and in my medical work, i found that psychological trauma woundedness underlies much of

what we call disease, whether autoimmune illness or cancer, or the various mental health conditions. and in our society, psychological woundedness is very prevalent and it's a rider -- i is a rider of an illusion to believe. some people are traumatized and others are not. i think there's a spectrum of trauma that crosses all layers and all segments of society. naturally, it falls heavier on certain sections, on people of color, people wi gende that are not fully accepted by society, people of economic inequality, who suffer more from inequality. but the traumatization is pretty general in our culture. amy: gabor, i was wondering if you could take some time and talk about your own journey from trauma and how it shaped you as an infant in nazi occupied hungary to where you are today

and how that has influenced who you are. >> well, you know, theirst chapter of the book opens with my arrival home to vcouver where i live from a speaking trip. and i'm feeling really good about myself because it was a good trip. my talk was well receive i had a good flight home. and when i get the airport in vancouver, i get a from my wife saying, i haven't told him yet. do you still want me to come and also the switches become dark, i become angry, i become withdrawn. i become sullen. and when i get home, i barely even looking at her. now, what actually happened here, all that happened was that my artist wife, typical of an artist was the middle of creative flow in her studio, and she forgot that her husband was arriving home at the airport. what was triggered in me, however, was the wound of a one year old infant who was abandoned by his mother in an

effort to save my life, actually, but the meaning i made of it is that i wasn't lovable that i wasn't wanted. and even 71 years later, when this woman are lying to be there, for me doesn't show up e woundedness of a one year old infant shows up. and that's what my friend peter levine calls the tyranny of the past. and so these early wounds, in my case the sense of abandonment, would still show up seven decades later over a relatively trivial incident. and these early woun of ours -- well, that is o wayhat it showed up. it shows up in my relationship to my work. so i was a workalic physician for many decades. why was i a workaholic? because the message i got as an infant under the nazis was that the world didn't want me. and if the world doesn't want you, one way to cope with it, is to make yourself very important, become a helper, become a position. but that is very addictive

because you keep trying to prove to yourself something you don't believe in the first place, which is that you are wanted. so the more people rewarded me with either financially or with their attention or their gratitude for my medical work, the more i needed it, the more i became dependent on it. it shows up in so many ways -- the early wounds show up in so many ways. it shows up in our relationships and our marriages in our relationship to our children in our relationship to work. it shows up in politicas we've seen doing covid. so in these early wounds in my life, had wide ranging implications, and as they do in the lives of many people. amy: you have intrigued us because you said at the time you thought your mother abandoned you. but you of course, now understand she was doing it to save you. can you explain what happened? >> se. i was 11 months of age. my mother was a 24-year-ol jewish wan living under the nazi occupation under viciously anti-semitic fascist regime in

december of 1944. and she found refuge in a safe home run by the swiss embassy. but there were two dozen people living there in home meant 400 meant for 100 people. the saniry condions were terrible. food was very uncertain. i was very sick and she didn't think i would live. so she went out into the street, gave me to a christian woman, a complete stranger, and asked her to take me to some relatives who are living under relatively safer conditions. her intention was simply to ve my life. and she did. but as an 11 month old, i could only interpret that as an abandonment because i don't understand the conditions. now, who gets abandoned? somebody who's not wanted. so i developed this fixed belief, ok, i'm not lovable. i'm not wanted. you don't need conditions of war and privation and such drama, to

give children the sense that they're not wanted. in this society, a lot of parents are advised not to pick up kids when they are crying. that's enough to give the child a sense they are not wanted, not accepted. the trauma is not that my mother gave me to a stranger. the trauma is what i made it mean. the wound inside, that i'm not lovable, not wanted. rmeen: let's go back precisely to how you understand and how we should understand the event of trauma. first of all, can trauma arise from a single episode? or is it something that has to in some form, even if not precisely the same one, be repeated? and to what extent is the fact that you cannot know the trauma when it actually occurs? for the fact that its effects endure, and as you say, show up

decades later? >> well, as your question implies, trauma can be induced in people in a number ofays. it could be a single dramatic event -- the death of a parent, a tremendous loss in life, a terrible explosion, you know, it occurs that way sometimes. and those are relatively easy to identify. and tually, th're easy to deal with. but for a lot of people, it's much more insidious and much or chronic than that. for example, certain child rearing practices. for decades, dr. spock was kind of the guru of parenting advice parents not to give intohe infants tyranny, that infants resistance to sleep. what he calls the infants tyranny is the infants desperate need to be picd up and held by the parent. that is just a trait we share with all other mammals. you tell the mother baboon not

to pick up the baby or a mother cat not to respond to the child's distress. but inorth amica, we've been telling parents for decades to ignorehe children's cries. and -- or for example, when a child is angry, a two year old is ang to make give them a timeout, which is to say, to threaten them with the loss of the attachment relationship that they desperately need. those events are just as traumatic over the long term, but they are harder to identify because they seem so normal. and they don't seem dramatic. but they do show up later on in life in all kinds of dysfunctional patterns. nermeen: dr. maté, you speak in the book about unresolved traumas. so in the examples that you're giving now, or indeed, in the case of the trauma more generally, if one can speak generally about trauma, what kinds of practices can lead, if at all, to the resolution of a trauma?

>> well, whatever is speaking about on the social level, which we have to speak, or whether on the individual level, which is what it strikes most of us, the first thing that has to happ is recognition that how arwe living or some aspect of our lives is not working for us, and that there's a cause for it, which we can actually uncover by some compassionate inquiry. and very often, there needs to be a wakeup call. now, covid could have been a keup call r this culture, but i don't think it will have worked that way. it should have but it didn't because of the nature of this society to transformation, the resistance to social transformation in sculpture is so deep that the covid lessons i don't think have been learned nor wi be applied. on the individual level, very often it is an illness. whether depression and anxiety, psychiatric diagnosis, or relatiship breakup, or a physical illness like an auimmune disease, or malignancy, that serves as the

wakeup call. so there's got to be some kind of event that happens that says this is not working, we need to understand why not and need to move past it. and once we get that wake up call in whatever form -- and one of my intentions in his book is to help people not get to that dire dramatic point where some significant illness has to wake them up. but once we get to the point of waking up, thewe're going to look at an inquiry. ok, what was driving my behaviors? why was i always driving myself on the job as if my life depend on it? why was i workaholic, stressing myself? why was i so hard on my children? what is it that makes me feel so hurt when my partner doesn't pick me up at the airport? you know, so then we start looking at what happened to our lives and we find the answers, in our history. and then it's a matter of letting go of those patterns. and that takes some kind of

work, usually therapy or some kind of spiritual work or psychological work, some kind of different way of taking care of ourselves. usually it takes some inquiry, what i call a compassionate inquiry, of looking at ourselves with real curiosity. what is causing me to live the way i'm living? amy: your book comes out and an extraordinary time given your topic, and i know it took you years to write, but now in the pandemic you have according to the cdc, hospitals reported a 20% increase in mental health emergencies for children between the ages of, what, five to 11. an issue of mental health overall so critical at this point. you talk a lot also about loneliness.

but can you start by talking about this mental health crisis among youth and the escalating suicide? >> yes. so "the new york times" about three weeks ago, had a front page article in their sunday edition about a teenager who was on 10 different ychiatric medications. can you imagine 10 different psychiatric medications. and there's been articles in "the new yorker" and "the new york times" with the last four or five months about the rising tide of childhood suicides. there is a vast increase in a number of children being diagnosed with adhd. attention deficit hyperactivity disorder with anxiety, depression, self-cutting, obsessive compulsive behaviors, and so on. now, we can make two assumptions. either there's some accidental totally unexplainable ri in childhood pathology that has no specific reason whatsoever for its instigation, or we can

recognize that we live in a toxic culture by its very nature affects student development in such unhealthy ways that childr are increasingly mentally unbalanced and desperate to the extent that they're cutting themselves and ev trying to kill themselves. so we have to look for those conditions, not an individual mind or brain or personality of the child or youth, we have to look at themnto social conditions that drive children in those directions. and unfortunately, in a public conversation around it, it's all about the pathology and how to treat it and it's not about the social-cultural causes that are driving children in those desperate directions. amy: so can you talk about how you view this, and how this not just this country, the world can heal, especially focusing on youth? >> well, we need to begin right at the beginning. and the beginning is actually in

the womb. now, we already knowrom multiple, multiple studies, not even controversial, that the re stress there is in pregnant women, the greater the impact, even decades later, on the well-being of the of the infant. so how are we looking after pregnant women? the average physician -- when i was trained as a medical doctor to this day -- the average physician, when they trained in prenatal care, they're not trained to ask about the woman's emotional state. they're not trained to ask about how are you doing? how are your relationships? how is your work stress? what can we do to support you, willie look after the body. we know that stresses on the woman can already have an pact on the infant. then there is our birth practices. in north america, now in this invention rate is approaching 40%, now modern obstetrics is miraculous and its capacity to save lives -- and it should be

applied about 10% to 15% of cases for the benefit of the infant or the mother. but 40% c-section rate and the mechanization of natural birth as evolved by nature was designed to produce a bonding experience for mother and infant, including the release of bonding chemicals that will bring themogether foa lifelong relationshi when we medicalized birth, we interfered with at. we mechanize it. we create fear arounit. we are actually interfering with the mother-child bond on which the child's healthy development develops. then in the united stes, 25% of women have to go back to work within two weeks of giving birth. now, nature would have that mom be with the child for at least nine months, usually longer if you look at it historically. 25% of women hing to go ck to work for economic reasons, for lack of social support, amounts to a massive abandonment

of infants -- because that is how the infants experience it. that's the only way they can interpret it, just the way i interpreted my mother's giving me to a stranger, as an abandonment. then there's the child rearing practices that i've already mentioned, of not picking up children when they are crying. of parents being so stressed that their stress is absorbed by the infant. that the parents economic, racial, social anxieties relational anxieties, their own , unresolved trauma are absorbed by the infants. then there's parenting practices that focus on trying to control the child'sehavior without in any way trying to meet the child's needs. the human child is born with certain needs for unconditional loving acceptance, for being held, for the capacity to experience all their emotions with parental support. this society, it is denied

over and over again. and most of our children's spend most of the time away from their parents, so they lose the connection with the parent. do we wonder then that the child circuits of anxiety and panic in the brain are activated and extra over activated? these are natural consequences over an unnatural culture. amy: dr. gabor maté, author of "the myth of normal: trauma illness, healing in a toxic culture." back in 30 seconds. ♪♪ [music break]

this is democracy now!, democracynow.org, the war and peace report. i'm amy goodman. we continued our conversation with dr. gabor maté, physician and author. we spoke about his new book "the myth of normal: trauma illness, healing in a toxic culture." nermeen: dr. maté, could you elaborate on what you've been talking about now, namely the relationship between individual the effects of an individual and soal trauma? you said in a recent interview, "being left with an emptiness and insatiable craving creates addiction in the personal sense and capitalism in the social sense. and both these are taken to be coping mechanisms for the experience of trauma."

if you could explain. >> well, let me give you more simple example -- answer to that question. but first let me give you simpler ample ofocial trauma and illness. so it's been well shown that the more experiences of racism, a black american woman has to endure, e greater risk for asthma. in other words, the constriction of airways and the inclinaon of airways are the physiological product of a social malaise. now who's got the pathology here, society or the individual? can we even make a separation between the two? we know that if you look at the markers of aging, various biological markers of aging, they're much more advanced in black people the same age as their caucasia cohorts simply because ofacism. because social stress and trauma translate into the physiologic individual. you can't separate the mind from

the body. and you cannot separate individual from an environment. in canada where i live, an indigenous woman -- by the way indigenous people used to have , no autoimmune disease whatsoever prior to colonization. today, indigenous women in canada exists that the risk six times the risk of rheumatoid arthritis. and the same thing is true in the united states, by the way, that autoimmune disease strikes especially women and especially women of color at much higher rates. these reasons have nothing to do genetics and everything to do with social trauma. now the emptiness that you refer to in a society that tells you you're not enough, that you're not good enough, that you don't look good enough, that you don't have enough, that you don't own enough, that you haven't attained enough, creating this sense of emptiness is the fuel that runs the consumer society. you ways have to have more and more. you have to attain more and

more. obtain more and more. basically, it is a highly addictive culture that feeds off people's addiction to drive its profits. and they do so quite deliberately. when it comes to the food industry, for example, you probably remember this book a few years ago, salt, sugar and fat, where the food companies gularly tried to identify using sophisticated known science, the sweet spot, the bliss spot, that when you have the right accommodation of salt, sugar, and fat and your junk food, that is what gets people addicted. so the digital companies employ what is called neuro marketing. they try to find what's the be way to excite the circuits in the brain of the customer that gets most addicted in order to get them hooked on their products. what we're looking at here is the mass engineering of addiction. and we're not talking conspiracy theory. this is conspiracy reality.

that's how it works. but of course, from the point of view of profit, it works because people are going to buy junk foods that are going to kill them or make them ill. but the companies don't care. it is not that they'rerying to kill you, as i say anyone chapter of the book, they just don't care if you die because what matters is profit. this society runs on people's sense of deficient etiness, where more and more is what they think is needed to fill that hole inside themselves. amy: dr. -- dr. gabor maté, part of the power of your book is the examples that you use, particular people, especially women who are sick or chronically ill. some of them you name like v, formally eve ensler, you have a

whole section talking about her and if you can talk about how she fits into this idea of healing from trauma to other people. give us some case studies. >> sure, well, v in her astonishing book, which i think you've discussed on your program "in the body of the world," where she describes her near death and recovery from stage three or four uterine cancer, she asks herself at some point, do i have -- do i have rape cancer? because her history was that she was chronilly for years sexually and physically and emotionally abused by her father. now, we know from multiple studies, that the more trauma and the more abuse you suffered as a child, the greater the risk for autoimmuneisease o malignancy later on. so, for example, young girls sexually abused have a much higher rate of endometriosis, which is a risk factor for uterine cancer. we also know from a recent study

from harvard that the more symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder a woman has, the greater risk for ovarian cancer. so when eve asks, do i have rape cancer? the answer is very much yes, she's got rape cancer. and then she goes through this incredible process of healing, which involved the best services -- not aays delivered in the best way, but certainly astonishing achievements of modern medicine that really helped save her life. but eve also underwent a personal transformation, where she -- what happens is when you're traumatized, and she talks about this, is you get disconnected from your body. you get disconnected from your body because when you're a child being abused by your father, it is too painful to be on your body. so you disconnect. and all of a sudden v has this massive suery, and she wakes up with all kinds of lymph nodes and organs removed from her body and tubes in and out of her

body, that she is back on her body and she finds it exhilarating. so that loss of connection to the body is one aspect of trauma. the reconnection that happened in v's case, not just because of the medical cremation received but because of the emotional and spiritual support she received in that she opened herself to resulted in a complete transformation of her personality and her relationship to herself. the other thing that v has done is she became a powerful activist. and that social engagement which connects her to people and has given such deep meaning to her life and her activity, that is a powerful healing modality as ll. and i talk about that in the book. and v is a noble and spiring example of that. and in the bk, i give many examples of people who are faced with serious diagnosis written off by western medicine, but they have a powerful transformation in their

relationship to themselves. they regain that connection to themselves that they lost their thor trauma. and as a result, their illness takes very surprising trajectories, sometimes miraculous. and so in the book, i talk about women with rheumatoid arthris or multiple sclerosis who are told that you've got this disease for the rest of your life. that it's just a physical disease, nothing you can do about it. when they realize that both the rheumatoid arthritis and the multiple sclerosis have to do with trauma and stress -- for which by the way, there's all kinds of research evidence completely ignored in medical practice. but when they realize that how they live their lives, that the disease is not an accident, the disease is a manifestation of how they live their lives, informed by their unresolved trauma -- when they deal with the trauma, and they develop a different relationship to themselves, all, the disease lightens up for them.

as you expect, it would, once you realize that the mind and body are inseparable. and by the way, i'm not the only one who writes about this. there has been researchers from harvard and elsewhere who have documented similar cases. the point we're all making is that the mind and body is inseparable. the individual is inseparable from the environment. and so that when you look at the whole person in their whole environment and the whole context, we have powerful modalities of healing available to us that western medicine unfortunately seems unaware of. nermeen: dr. maté, if you could also talk about another aspect, another way in which society might exacerbate individual trauma. you talk in the book, you're critical in the book about this idea that people should simply push through it, this idea of resilience. what are the effects of that orientation towards trauma? and if you could link it also with what you've just said about

the way in which the medical establishment and western medicine understands the question of psychic wounds? >> the average medical student fes the dical system deals with traumas that doesn't. the average medical student does not get a ngle lecture on the relationship betweenrauma and physical or mental illness despite the documented evidence. so that's this huge gap between our science and what we practice. so that so many physicians have to figure this out after they leave medical schoo they have to figure it out on their own because nothing in their training prepared them for it. as a matter of fact, their own training is often so traumatic in itself and their own traumas are not dealt with, that they're just not prepared to deal with the traumas of their patnts. it's just a subject that's almost completely ignored across the practice of medicine. now come in terms of the "get

over it," the resilience aspect, there's a beautiful story or truth my friend dr. madrona, who's a lakota sioux background, psychiatrist and physician, and that she is an author as well. he told me that in the lakota tradition, when somebody gets il the community say thank you. your illness represents some dysfunction in our community, because we're not separate. your body is not separate from your mind. and your mind is not separate from the rest of our minds. we cook create each other. so your illness represents some dysfunction, some imbalance, you know, community. so your healing is our healing. how can we support you? that is the traditional indigenous way of looking at human beings -- which modern science, by the way, is more than amply validated by modern

-- but modern medicine still ignores. so now the onus is not just an individual to get over it. it is actually resilience is seen as a communal endeavor and as a communal attribute. and when you isolate people atomized them, you make them feel guilty or weak for their illness and tellhem to get over their trauma, you are just shaming them more, isolating them more,. what people need is community and contact, compassion, safety. that allows people to work through their traumas. unfortunately, that is not really available. amy: there is this amazing figure out from the national center for health statistics revealing that u.s. life expectancy fell from 79 years old in 2019 to 276 in 2021, the

largest two year decline in almost a century. with advances in modern medicine, it is astounding but maybe not astounding when you look at the kind of health system we have in this country that increases the disparities between those who have wealth and those who don't. and you look at, you know health , in a capitalist system. i was wondering if you could comment on that, dr. maté? >> well, the impact of inequality has been studied by a british epidemiologist and he is former head of the world medical association. and they talk about a social gradient, that the lower social class you are, the greater the risk to your health. and this has been known for decades. now, this decline in the u.s. left expectancy, you can look upon it again as sort of mysterious visual pathology or

we can actually look k at the social conditions that drive it. and much of that is due to the hollowing out of the american industrial heartland due to globalization and the loss of meaning and purpose and meaningful employment in people's lives. this is what has been called in the united states deaths of despair. so many of these deaths are due to suicide and to drug overdoses and jack wallace on. and suicide and drug overdoses and alcoholism are direct outcomes of a society that deprives people of meaning and belonging, a sense of connection, a sense of value, a sense of purpose. so that again, we can look upon these manifestations as dividual pathology which yields no explanation whatsoever, or we can see them as the outcomes of a toxic culture. you experience the same thing in the former soviet union with the collapse of the former soviet union -- loss of jobs, loss of

employment, loss of meaning and purpose. the life expectancy of men plummeted drastically within a few years. now we're seeing the same phenomenon in the united states. amy: the title of ur book, dr. gabor maté, is "the myth of normal: trauma illness, healing in a toxic culture." so why don't we end with that question of healing, both individually and as a society? >> yes. so healing, again, if you look at the word origins -- which i often do -- comes from a word from wholeness. so healing actually a movement towards our wholeness. now, if trauma is a split from ourselves, for example, is split from our bodies as in the case of v who had to disconnect from her body to survive her childhood, then healing is that reconnection with ourselves.

and -- trauma is not what the terrible things that happened to us, but trauma is the wound that we sustain an air caring. that's a very positive message. because it means that wounds can be healed at any time. you see the trauma that happened to me, now 77 years ago, that my mother gave me to a stranger, that will not have happened. but the trauma is what i made it mean, theound that i sustained that i wasn't the lovable, worthwhile human being, that wound can be healed at any moment in all of us. so the last and longest section of the book explores what we call pathways to healing or pathways to wholeness. that is the meaning of healing. the many different pathways, there is no one size fits for all, it needs to begin with the recognition that how are we living and how we're relating to ourselves and others is not healthy. it may be the norm in this culture, what is neither healthy or natural, and there are better ways. and the same thing is true for

our culture and the essential first step is what call being disillusioned, not people. usually think of disillusionment is discouraging and negative. no. would we rather be illusioned or disillusion would really like to see the world through rose colored glasses, not seeing what's in front of us? or would rather deal with reality the way it is? the final chapter i called james baldwin, the great, great james baldwin who said that not everything that's faced can be healed, but nothing that's not face can be healed. amy: dr. gabor maté, the acclaimed canadian physician and author with his son daniel of the new book "the myth of normal: trauma illness, healing in a toxic culture." dr. maté will be appearing tonight in new york city at the 92nd street y.

and that does it for our show. to see all dr. maté, you can go to democracynow.org. happy belated birthday to sam. democracy now! is looking for feedback from people who appreciate the closed captioning. e-mail your comments to outreach@democracynow.org or mail them to democracy now! p.o. box 693 new york, new york 10013. [captioning made possible by democracy now!]