#586. Modern Life Is Making You Sick, but It Doesn’t Have To | Gabor Maté
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There’s so much to be grateful for in modern medicine. We can all agree that we would not do as well in a world with no Advil or dentistry. And yet, our guest today, who is a renowned doctor, says modern medicine is overlooking something crucial: the pernicious impact that modern living has on our minds and bodies. In other words, we are surrounded by these hidden societal and structural sources of stress and we aren’t thinking about how to treat and prevent these factors that are degrading our happiness and our immune systems.
Dr. Gabor Maté is a bestselling author with an expertise on everything from stress to addiction to ADHD. His latest book is called, The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture
Content Warning: This episode has mentions of child abuse, sexual trauma, suicide and addiction
In this episode we talk about:
- What he means by “the myth of normal”
- How diseases, such as autoimmune conditions, are an “artifact of civilization"
- How to begin to tackle what Dr. Maté calls, “the social sources of illness”
- His definition of trauma and the difference between “big T traumatic events” and the trauma of “wounding”
- How trauma in society is so normalized that we don’t even recognize it
- Whether the term trauma is overused
- Why comparing suffering is a fruitless endeavor
- What he means by “the necessity to be disillusioned”
- The power and possibility of psychedelics
- Why he thinks we should incorporate shamanic medicine into our western medical framework
- And what he means by “undoing self-limiting beliefs” and how these beliefs show up in our everyday lives
Where to find Gabor Maté online:
Website: drgabormate.com
Social Media:
Books Mentioned:
- The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture
- When the Body Says No: Exploring the Stress-Disease Connection
- Scattered Minds: The Origins and Healing of Attention Deficit Disorder
- In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction
- Hold On to Your Kids: Why Parents Need to Matter More Than Peers
Other Resources Mentioned:
- The Wisdom of Trauma
- Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Is Associated with Increased Risk of Ovarian Cancer: A Prospective and Retrospective Longitudinal Cohort Study
- Decrease in depression symptoms is associated with longer survival in patients with metastatic breast cancer: a secondary analysis
- Marital Status, Marital Strain, and Risk of Coronary Heart Disease or Total Mortality: The Framingham Offspring Study
- George Engel
- How spanking may affect brain development in children
- The Trauma of Everyday Life by Dr. Mark Epstein
- IntraConnected: MWe (Me + We) as the Integration of Self, Identity, and Belonging by Dr. Dan Siegel
- A. H. Almaas
