The Power of “Root Cause Health Care” – with Marianne Williamson

Dr. Mindy Pelz  

On this episode of The resetter podcast, I am bringing you Marianne Williamson. So you might know Marianne from a lot of different places return to love was her famous book that launched her into the world. She has written many New York Times bestselling books since then. But the most recent adventure that she has taken on is running for the Democratic nomination for president of the United States. And I have known Marianne for several years now, I was blessed to be a part of a author group where she took her wisdom as an author, which is phenomenal, by the way, and just poured it into a small group of us. And I learned so much about this woman’s heart. And in that time, I also learned so much about her values, and what she cares about when it not only comes to the American people, but also when it comes to health care. So when I heard that she had a plan in her presidency, to create a root cause health care system, I wanted to know what that was. And I wanted to bring that to you all. So what you are going to hear in this conversation is many pieces, but two major pieces. So and this applies, by the way, for I know we have a worldwide audience. So this applies to both, you know, people in America and other countries, because what I want you to hear is that so many countries are dealing with a dysfunctional health care system. And here in America, we are one of the worst, it not only is expensive to get health care here in America, but our chronic disease rates are skyrocketing. And our health care system does not have a solution. It is time that we go back to the root of our health, and find a way to stay healthy collectively. And this is what you’re going to hear in this in this conversation as you’re not only going to hear about some of the troubling things going on in our healthcare system, but you’re going to hear solutions, I would never bring you somebody who would only present a problem. I wanted to dive into this root cause health care system that she has very eloquently mapped out. And what does that mean? And it’s everything. Oh, the conversation was so good. It was everything from how do we change the food system to how do we change our tastebuds to what do we do when we are all working so hard just to live paycheck to paycheck, to why are we isolating ourselves and not living in communities and looking at community as a health care habit. We went in so many directions. And what I’m really hoping that you all will do is a listen through with an open mind this, there’s some things you’re going to love that she’s saying there’s some things that you’re going to disagree with in this world where we just cancel people out because they’re not for the right political party, or we cancel people out because they don’t believe what we believe. This is an opportunity to sit. And let’s collectively have a discussion about how we can bring health back to the American people. And there are so many nuggets in this conversation. The second thing that I’m going to encourage you to do with this episode is if you resonate with it, send it out into the world, not so you can just support Marianne, I’m not here to tell you who to support. But I am here to open up a conversation around health care that is not being had. And I wanted to bring her on to have it because at some point we have to say enough is enough. At some point we have to look at our lifestyle as the door out of poor health. And Marianne has some incredible solutions for it. So I bring you my friend Marianne Williamson, enjoy this conversation. And if you love it, share it with the world. And more importantly, let’s all come back to root health care. Because the time has finally arrived, that we are out of options. Root cause health care is the next wave of a doctor Vinnie here and welcome to season four of the resetter podcast. Please know that this podcast is all about empowering you to believe in yourself again. If you have a passion for learning, if you’re looking to be income control of your health and take your power back. This is the podcast for you. Enjoy. Let me just start by welcoming you for the second time to my podcast. Marianne, I’m so happy you’re here. Well, I’m

Marianne Williamson  

so happy to be here. And thank you for having me. And congratulations to you and Dave, for the big splash you’re making in the society today. Congratulations. Yeah, thank you.

Dr. Mindy Pelz  

I want to start off with this health plan that you have. Because what I want everybody to understand is that root cause healthcare is not normal. And it will change the world as we’re going to discuss in the over the next hour. But what really caught my attention was the quote on your page of what you’re suggesting for health care from the Washington Post, and I want to read it because it is it needs to be highlighted. And we all need to understand how we can change this. So the quote that Marianne has, it’s from the Washington Post, and it was recently published and it says after decades of progress, life expectancy long regarded as a singular benchmark of a nation success peaked in 2014. At 78.9 years, it then drifted downward, even before the Coronavirus pandemic, and an extreme it’s an extreme manifestation of an underlying deterioration of health and a failure of our health system to respond. And the article goes on to say chronic conditions thrive in a sink or swim culture with the US government spending far less than pure countries on preventative medicine and social welfare. Generally, the calamity of chronic disease is a not so silent pandemic. With that in mind, can you please help us understand why and where we have gotten so lost with our current health care system?

Marianne Williamson  

Well, first of all, we do have a higher level of chronic illness in the United States than in any other advanced democracy. And all of those advanced democracies, as that quote points out, do think in terms of preventative measures, you and I come from a kind of thinking with our work where we understand that health is not the absence of sickness, sickness is the absence of health, you can’t just not take care of your body, not take care of your lifestyle, not take care of your nutrition, and other factors involved in proactively creating health. And then when the almost inevitable sickness arises, use external remedies to seek to suppress or eradicate symptoms. That’s the old allopathic model that for millions of people has been dissolved long and long ago. But let’s look at what we have. We have carcinogens in our food that they do not have and other advanced democracies, you can look at a bottle of ketchup in the United States, versus a bottle of ketchup in Canada or Europe, for instance, there are all kinds of carcinogens that increase the shelf life of a product that are allowed here that in other countries would not be 46% of our urban wells, contain P Foss, and our water, these forever chemicals, and obviously the toxins in our air, then you add to that a lifestyle which is so dominated for the majority of people by constant and chronic economic stress and anxiety. Now all of those things put together and they are a toxic brew, out of which sickness is almost inevitable on some level of physical breakdown. Then you add to that the fact that we’re the only advanced democracy that does not have universal health care. Now, what is all of this about what’s the common denominator, the common denominator is the fact that in all of these instances, you’re talking about a situation where short term profits, short term profit maximization for some huge corporate entity is placed above the safety and the health and the well being of people. The crisis is that our government because of the undue influence, financially of those forces, actually enables those forces rather than doing what its purported job is, which is to advocate for the American people. So none of this should surprise anyone. And it would have been in was in some cases predicted very long ago. So when we talk about and you know, last time that I ran for president last time, when I set out on the on the debate stage, we don’t have a healthcare system, we have a sickness care system, because even the conversation of how we’re going to treat sickness is limited to this old mechanistic way of thinking, where you’re only asking, how do we treat the symptoms, rather than how do we address the root causes, in almost every other area of our lives. People get that now, it’s a very 21st century thing, you know, the mindset of the 20th century is different than the mindset of the 21st, just like the 19th was different than the 20th, the 20th century mindset was very mechanistic. The world is a machine, you have a problem, you just tweak the pieces of the machine. Clearly, that has left us in many ways where we are the 21st century mindset, far more holistic, far more whole person recognizes the issue of consciousness so that when we talk about something like economic stress, we understand the role that this plays in the creation and the continuation of sickness. So one of the last knots we need to crack is politics. Because politics, not being of this new thinking, has made a lot of us go, I don’t want anything to do with it. And now a lot of us are going except that they’re killing us all.

Dr. Mindy Pelz  

The high rates of sickness

Marianne Williamson  

and the asthma and our children and, and the toxins in our air and the poisons in our water in our food. And I think what’s happening now is people are recognizing that we are paying far too high a price for the fact that our politics is stuck in this, let’s treat the symptom and ignore the cause type of mindset, because it is becoming increasingly unsustainable, as you said, our life expectancy is lower. And it’s not even just that we’re living less long, the quality of our lives, you know, many people’s lives are falling apart, I don’t need to tell you that just the level of chronic anxiety, whether it’s that you can’t survive on just one job, 62% of our people live paycheck to paycheck, the majority of people can’t afford $1,000 Unexpected expenditure, that kind of chronic anxiety right there, whether it’s your physical health or your appraisal health, and this situation won’t stop unless we fundamentally stop it. It’s built into the status quo at this time. So if we keep voting for the status quo, nothing fundamental and any of that is going to change.

Dr. Mindy Pelz  

So when we look at things like Big Pharma and big food, and how they funnel, I’m just gonna say it money into the political system? Do we have a system where our politicians are making decisions based off of these two major industries and how they are being rewarded? And I may be wrong, and there’s one love about you, is that you’ll correct me if I’m wrong. But are they are they swayed by the two major industries that are contributing to our health? There’s

Marianne Williamson  

something funny about the fact that you think, Ooh, can I say this is what we need to say? Oh, really? Can I say that? Better? Excellent. So well, big food and Big Pharma are part of a larger matrix. It’s big insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies, as you said, big food companies, big chemical companies, the chemicals and pesticides, for instance, big agricultural companies that started with the monocropping and the desecration of the soil. And then of course, you have gun manufacturers, big oil and defense contractors. So it’s a matrix of corporate power. But when it comes to our health, the ones that affect us most, of course, are big pharma, and big food. So big food does what we were talking about before, which is the carcinogens back in the 1980s. Before Ronald Reagan, they couldn’t even do pharmaceutical ads on television. Right? Yeah, part of what Reagan Revolution represented was this orgy of deregulation, and they call them job killing regulations. Well, first of all, that’s a lot because you actually had to hire people to make sure that you were in compliance. And what does this have to do? It had to do with getting rid of any barrier to what the corporation would feel was its capacity to make more money for its stockholders. So if you put a carcinogens in a food and or all of the other things that we know the, you know, the sugars and the chemicals, etc, if that the idea of that economic paradigm was the idea that if it, if it increases financial value for the stockholders, then that is somehow for the betterment of society, because those stockholders would create more jobs, and the money would trickle down and it would lift all boats. Now, at this point, clearly the canard there is obvious to everyone. First of all, it they weren’t job creators, the business model, there was job elimination rather than job creation. And it was the idea of moving resources in whatever way possible getting rid of safety regulations, squashing unions, anything to put more money in the hands of the stockholders, which was then at the expense of other stakeholders, the workers, the safety, the community, the environment, and so forth. And so when that’s how it works, in terms of big food, just get rid of any kind when, when I was growing up, an FDA agent could go into a grocery store. And if something was proven, to be carcinogenic, could say, out off off the shelves now. And they have so de juiced the Food and Drug Administration, that for the most part, the most that the FDA John could do now is write a polite nice letter to the CEO Playstore. Would you Would you kindly consider given the fact that we have proof of what this does to a child’s brain? Would you please sir, consider, and this is what’s called Corporate capture of these agencies, that these agencies which were set up such as the Food and Drug Administration, or the Environmental Protection Agency, or whatever, these agencies were set up to advocate for the people. And instead, they have turned into this dual function, where so many corporate Titans control with their people within these agencies, that sometimes these agencies are meant to advocate for the people do more to advocate for the corporate donors don’t know what we’re talking about. So years ago, there was a I think, was in 2013. I think it was 2013, there was a Supreme Court decision called Citizens United. And it allowed as per that decision. It corporations can give unlimited what’s called dark money to influence these these campaigns. So routinely, our legislators will vote in ways that do more to increase profits for their donors than to serve the safety and the health and the well being of the American people. They’ve just turned Washington into a it really into a system of legalized bribery. Now, when it comes to big pharma, this is this is what’s so mind boggling about Big Pharma, we pay billions of dollars in corporate subsidies to not only big pharma, but all kinds of industries that are already making billions of dollars in profits. So this is how it works. Your tax dollar goes to subsidize a company that’s going to use that money to create a product that then they will turn around and price gouge you with. You’re paying for your own price gouging. Now there is a law, a bill that was passed in 1980, called the buy door bill, which gave the government marching rights and marching rights means there is a if a medicine, a pharmaceutical medicine is made with even $1 of taxpayer money, which essentially is everything practically, then the government does have the right to lower the price. But they rarely use their marching rights because they don’t want to offend Big Pharma. And years ago, the government actually gave away they surrender to Big Pharma, the right to negotiate so weird, it’s it’s a form of corporate tyranny. It’s economic tyranny that is being exercised, and it’s our food. It’s our water, it’s our air. It’s our workplaces. It’s wars. It’s it’s everything and really to the point where people are realizing that people are going to have to step in. Why? Because it’s how Washington writes at this point.

Dr. Mindy Pelz  

Yeah. And do you know that one of the biggest mind blowing parts of putting fast like a girl out into the world is the hundreds of 1000s of 20 and 30 year old women who have messaged us emailed us and have asked, how, what do I do if I don’t have a cycle? Okay, I want to just stop for one minute, when when I was 20. Nobody ever said they didn’t have a cycle unless they had an extreme eating disorder, or they were really hardcore athlete. We now have that as more of the norm than the exception. And then on top of that, I was talking to a friend who’s an oncologist and I said to her, and she does breast cancer. I said, What do you seen as far as the rates of breast cancer, they stay in the same going up going down and she goes, Oh, they’re skyrocketing. And my youngest patient now is 27 years old. When we look at those two statistics, something environmentally is deeply wrong. How Are we going to be able to help these women?

Marianne Williamson  

Well, it was and I’m running for president. So obviously, I believe that a president who gets out is willing to say it is certainly a part of it. There’s no one silver bullet, but you cannot leave the electoral process out of it that, you know, in Mindy, I’ve been saying, in our kind of world higher consciousness transformation, I’ve been saying forever. Good luck with all that green juice, the poison in the food, the poison in the water, the poisoning the air, you can’t put yourself in a bubble of I only shop at Whole Foods. It’s so much bigger than that, even at Whole Foods. But the at this point, these are laws. These were bad laws that replace decent laws, and we have to repeal the bad laws and put back in good ones, we have to put guardrails up. This is a form of unfettered it’s called vulture capitalism. It’s a malevolent, it’s beyond dysfunctional, it’s moved into malfunctioning a strain of of an economic system that is so soulless that that no ethical, you know, hey, this we know, for instance, there was a particular pesticide, that I had a particular kind of chemical, and it starts with cloth I’ve never been, it’s almost like I can’t pronounce it exactly.

Dr. Mindy Pelz  

Oh, they’re hard to pronounce.

Marianne Williamson  

It is it was proven for a long time to harm a developing child’s brain. Now, they finally just recently put some limits on it. But it took years because that chemical company, and we know what Monsanto does we know about we know, they have such gargantuan financial power. So you and I might say, Okay, we are going to show up to vote every two years or four years, these people have corporate lobbyists in the office of our legislators, every single hour of every single day, there has to be a revolution at the ballot box. You cannot leave electoral politics out of it. And no president has a magic wand. It’s you know, it’s one of three co equal branches of government. So it’s not like if you had a president who gets this could go in there and just with this, you know, magic wand make it all different right away. But a president who lays it down says the truth and is not afraid of the repercussions of Big Pharma or big, big insurance companies, because you’re not over big food, because you’re not out of that system. And you’re just there for one term anyway, I think would be a very good idea. And that’s why I’m running.

Dr. Mindy Pelz  

Yeah, yeah. And I think it’s a rare, very rare candidate that’s willing to stand up against two of the largest financial backers, for politicians. It’s a very bold and brave step. And I and maybe they’re not the largest, but they’re the they have this hold on us. And for a politician to stand up and say enough? I don’t I don’t see anybody else doing that.

Marianne Williamson  

No, you’re not seeing anyone else do it, not because they don’t know what we’re talking about. But because they’re part of a system. And within that system, their careers are threatened, oh, somebody will primary you where you will lose your seat on the Appropriations Committee. It will take someone from outside. Now they would have you think that the only people you should consider qualified, are people who know how to maintain and perpetuate that system. What you and I realized is no, it needs someone we need someone who knows how to disrupt that system. And the the most powerful disrupter at this time is somebody who just says it like it really is, who says the quiet part out loud, because millions of people, and I want to tell you something else about this. This is not a left right issue. Not only that our health isn’t. But even the realization that these corporate powers with their complete lack of moral centeredness or sense of ethical responsibility are dominating our society and hurting people’s lives the way they are. People on the right are waking up to this as much as people on the left. And we’re really beginning to see I think something’s going on in this country. People realizing this is not left versus right. This is powerful versus powerless. This is people who with their money, can cause this much damage to people’s lives versus people who just feel powerless. Like there’s nothing we can do. That’s why it must be revolution at the ballot box.

Dr. Mindy Pelz  

Yeah, yeah. So let’s go back to this 2530 year old. One of the challenges that I see being down in the trenches trying to get women to change and men to change their health habits is that big food has sprayed so many chemicals on food that everybody’s addicted to it. So it’s like when you hear a wait, my favorite potato chip is causing my menstrual cycle to go away. Ooh, that’s really inconvenient. And then I walk into my doctor’s office and my doctor says that there’s no there’s no is behind that that’s not what’s going on. And so the 2530 year olds really confused as to, and they even will say it’s not bad that you’ve lost your period. Usually it’s your lucky you don’t have it. And it’s there the whole system. This is exactly what we’re hearing this word of

Marianne Williamson  

what is the doctor said about that? Yeah,

Dr. Mindy Pelz  

right. Well, but there’s another system, there’s infertility, there’s a whole infertility arm of our healthcare, that will happily take all your money to do that.

Marianne Williamson  

And people realize that that doctor who said that probably took maybe half a year, maybe half a year in medical school of any anything about food and nutrition. And you don’t know much about food and nutrition, then how would you know, to be horrified when you say how bastardized bastardized and and poisoned it has become?

Dr. Mindy Pelz  

Yeah, yeah. So we could go so much so far down the rabbit hole on the problem. And I know, you know, like you, I, it when I actually start to pull the parts of the dysfunction of our healthcare system apart and the sickness that and the suffering that’s going on, it moves me so deeply, I can I can barely function. So let’s flip it. How do we how do we what is root cause health care? How do we change this? How do we do it from the individual level? Because it’s got to be done from both?

Marianne Williamson  

Well, first of all, I want to point out, as I said, Before, when you just said the dysfunction, it moves past dysfunction to malfunction. And I think that’s a really important thing for us to get. Because if it’s only dysfunctional, there’s so the suggestion that can be fixed. Now, functional means no, we have to scrap What is this business of incremental change. So what we need is for these agencies to be cleaned out, what that means is the corporate forces that have so much control, so this is how it works. You have some big CEO of some big food company or chemical company, or agricultural company, somebody really big, who says, Who, whose company has paid, you know, millions of dollars, and I have to do with the election of presidents and so forth. And they make it clear they’d really like this is the list of people that they would like to head that agency. Mm

Dr. Mindy Pelz  

hmm. The take note, everybody and what was just said?

Marianne Williamson  

And that’s who they choose from, because it’s their club. Right? Yeah. So you need a president who says, I’m not going to appoint one of those people to this agency, and everybody who has a pass, and you know, there’s this revolving door in Washington, that you work in Washington, then you go work in the corporation, then you come back, and you work in, in, in, in government. And so if you’ve worked in government, and then you go work in the corporation, you get you can tell the corporation, well, this is how it works, you get what you want. And then if you worked in the corporation, and you then come work in the agencies, then you say, well, this, this is what the companies really want, even in our Secretary of Defense, used to be a board member at Raytheon. Wow. So you have a big ag and the Agricultural Department, we should be talking about regenerative agriculture, we should be talking about sovereign nation, you know, if so many of the things that really have to do with solutions at this time, don’t provide short term corporate profits. So you’ve got the solutions over here and the power over there. And this applies to food and nutrition as much as anything else. So you need a president who knows that she’s appointing people, those people are not welcome during this during my term, right, that we will not have the Can we will have the people who know about the repair work and know about the solutions. And you know, as well as I do Mende not only in this area, but in every era, we have the people who understand who stands for alternative ways of being we don’t lack that in this country. It’s just that they are not invited to the seat of the table of power. And then you have a president who proposes such things you were mentioned my whole health plan. My whole health plan does not just have to do with how we treat sickness, which needs to be a universal health care system, like every other advanced democracy has. We have now one in four Americans living with medical debt. We have 18 million Americans who cannot afford to pay for the prescriptions their doctors give them you were talking about that lowering life expectancy. We have 85 million Americans who are underinsured or uninsured. Now, what that means is you have a lot of people in this country whose insurance will pay for them to go to the doctor, but it will not pay for them to take the test that the doctor prescribes or to have the operation that doctor prescribes. Or take the medicine that the doctor do you know a doctor in Detroit told me there were two doctors who said things to me that really stayed with me. One was a woman who said when I have said for To diagnose a patient and say the treatment that I was prescribing, the most common question I used to get was, what are the side effects? Today? The most common question is how much would it cost? This kind of thing is so prevalent that a cardiologist in Texas said to me, I don’t even know why I’m bothering to practice medicine anymore. People come into my office, I know what’s wrong, I know what to do, but the insurance won’t cover it. Right? So you’re not prepared? Well, so I’m in my plan, let’s say you go to the doctor, I love this one. Let’s say you go to the doctor, now, that doctor has been gone to a Western, you know, might be a very fine doctor, but really trained and you know, mainly pharmaceutical treatment. So, according to my plan, you go to the doctor, the doctor tells you, this is the medicine that I prescribe, and pharmaceutical Well, it is mandated by law, that the doctor also has to open their computer and for that particular sickness or condition, if there is a proven only effective, non pharmaceutical remedy, you have to be told about it. And then you get to the side. And then there are also some such things as gym memberships, you know, they I did, there was so much that we could do even parks, there is so much that we could do to make sure that we are actively proactively cultivating health. And where I’m very concerned, as I’m sure you are, a has to do with early childhood.

Dr. Mindy Pelz  

You know, well, that there, that’s where a healthy body is made.

Marianne Williamson  

That’s right. Well, even on the brain, we have 90% of a child’s brain is developed in the first five years. That’s why I want the Department of Children and Youth we have to transfer resources and focus to the lives of children under 10. If you want a thriving society, 10 years from now, we’re gonna have to pay more attention to children under the age of 10. We have hungry children in the United States that mean hunger right there. We just so out rageous but we have the highest level of poverty and child poverty in this country. What does poverty mean? Hunger, we have over 30% of Americans who now report regularly skipping meals. Well, what does hunger do to developing child’s brain?

Dr. Mindy Pelz  

Oh, yeah. Wow. Yeah, and normal health,

Marianne Williamson  

maternal health. Women, even while they’re pregnant, you know, we have food deserts in this country, where they don’t even have fresh fruits and vegetables. A lot of the obesity issue in children is not that they’re not getting enough to eat. It’s that they keep trying to eat more calories. But where are they going? They’re going places where the maybe they knit corn nuts? Yeah, yeah. Or because one is just trying to get in there not. So all of these things, of course, produce sickness. And then of course, society pays for it on the other end.

Dr. Mindy Pelz  

Do you see that when we look at a preventative plan, like the doctor having to tell you have a lifestyle tool, the big picture challenge that I see with that is you’re going to take these major corporations, you know, financially out, and, you know, is there a way to see preventative care as a profitable way to approach health care, since we know profits? Are are what so many corporations are looking for? Is there a way to even make prevention profitable?

Marianne Williamson  

Well, I think, you know, you could look at the health food business. I mean, obviously, there are those that do somebody that we have. When you have one of four people living with medical debt in a society, you have an $88 billion medical debt. Meanwhile, if you take the top five pharmaceutical companies, last year alone, their profit was $80 billion. So there is such a thing as righteous profit, you and I sell books, and there’s a win win. That’s one of the reasons I love the book selling, you put in energy and get something back. Your, your publisher put in energy gets something back, the consumer who buys the book, puts in energy and gets something back. It’s a win win. That’s healthy capitalism. That’s right to that profit. But when you have one party taking so much of the profit, I mean, right now you say their profit we’re paying for it with our lives.

Dr. Mindy Pelz  

That’s right. That’s right. Yeah. So

Marianne Williamson  

you know, what I’m saying is there’s profit and then there’s, there’s profit that’s actually not even profit, it’s theft. Yeah, and when you’re in the life force out of People in order to make your profit, you know, here’s your profit. Here’s my life.

Dr. Mindy Pelz  

Right, right, you know,

Marianne Williamson  

session about healthy capitalism.

Dr. Mindy Pelz  

So one thing that I’ve heard from a lot of doctors is that they say when I give a lifestyle choice to a patient, they don’t want it. Sometimes

Marianne Williamson  

it we all know that. I mean, sometimes it’s easier to pop a pill. Yeah, I think we all have a little bit of that in us. You know, it’s like, you know, your book, right? Yeah, I called you and told me how to do them? Well, it’s hard, you know. So I think that’s we’re all facing that, you know, that we were brought up in a culture that was all about, well give it to me quick, and give it to me easy. And we’ll pop in was part of that. And now people are recognizing what, but also, there’s something else involved there. The lifestyle changes would be much easier if the entire society was healthier. Who Yeah,

Dr. Mindy Pelz  

yeah, no, no. Yeah. Yeah, sorry. One of the things that I see in the in food, you know, there was a beautiful, it wasn’t really beautiful. But there was an interesting article that came out a couple years ago, saying that the F is silent in the FDA, that we don’t have any good regulation around the chemicals that are going in our food. And so again, I’m going to come back to and I want everybody listening to think this through because when you hear what Marianne saying, to me, it’s like, this is so logical, why would we not have a government that’s going to bat for us to make sure that we’re healthy. But then we also have to ask ourselves, well, our favorite foods that we love, and we eat over and over and over again, that are sprayed with chemicals, are we willing to give that up? Are we willing to make a change to be healthy? And I think and I’m just offering this up to Marianne, that I feel like if we could get that the regulations around ingredients in food, and we could make it so that food isn’t addictive, it’s not creating dopamine responses in everybody’s brain. Now we have a door in to getting people to being willing to be more responsible for their lifestyle and the food changes that they make. Is that do you? What are your thoughts on that? Well, of course,

Marianne Williamson  

you know, when you said that the F and the FDA has been taken out. It’s like I was saying to you before the FDA agent used to be able to say get this off the shelves, and today they have so D juice the FDA, they’ve taken the power away from the government. And if you try to suggest that it’d be put back there PR is, oh, you’re a socialist. You know, they they are they call that big government. You know, government has a role, you know, you can drive a car, but there are traffic laws, it’s understood that the government has a role in making the roads safe. It’s understood that there’s an a federal aviation, you know, it’s understood that the government has a role in making sure airplanes are safe. And there’s nothing to be apologized for that we think the government has a role in making sure that food is safe. The opponents to all this, they have their PR, which is that overreaching government, and of course our response to that is no, it’s overreaching corporate power that’s happening right now. We all know, and you would certainly know that our tastebuds get addicted, as you were saying our brains got to do we all and it takes some time, doesn’t it? It takes time to sort of clear all that out and get to the point where the cherry really tastes good. The grape really tastes good. On the other hand, at this another factor there is how often because of everything we’re talking about the cherry doesn’t taste that good anymore. The grape doesn’t taste that good anymore. There’s so much dead food in the United States, you know, so, yeah, it’s all of the above. And I think that the most essential factor here is awareness. You know, I got stuck a few minutes ago when you were talking about the girl, the young woman eating potato chips. I mean, I would have thought that any woman reading your books at this point would know that poison. I mean, they do. Yeah. Well, you know, that’s why books such as yours are so important. And I also think if you really there are so many things about our lives these days. That if you allow it, you can’t chew the whole thing at once. This is just to pay this just lean in, lean in. Yeah. I have a thing for green grapes. There’s something about the natural sugar and green grapes. It helps me not have a craving for bad sugar, right? But it does take time. I think and awareness to, to cultivate better habits. And to release back on tonight, it’s if we start shaming ourselves or making ourselves wrong that obviously the change happens more slowly rather than more quickly. But one thing we must start doing is holding our government accountable. And our politics was quite simply lied to us. And some of them don’t even know what’s going on over the FDA.

Dr. Mindy Pelz  

But yeah, that’s that part is crazy. Talk to me a little bit about mental health, because I know this is another big issue that you are that you’re concerned about. And we all should be concerned about. And I want to tell you a story that I was in the UK speaking to a group at Amazon. And there was one woman who had spearheaded a whole support group for menopausal women at Amazon. And I came to speak to these women and I talked to this, this woman who had started the whole project or the whole support group. And she said that one of the most common times for women to leave the workforce is in her late 40s, early 50s. Because the pressure and the stress is so much for a woman who is in a major hormonal transition, like menopause. And what she’s identified is that actually, it is causing Amazon a tremendous amount of money to lose these women. And so she is trying to create support not only for the women, but to help corporations see that if you could just give her some lifestyle support, that they would actually save money. And you could take that and apply it across every corporate structure. Is there anything in your plan where if we can bring the power of lifestyle back, where corporations could see that they’re actually saving money and keeping people and people are staying healthy?

Marianne Williamson  

Well, there are a couple of ways to look at this. On one hand, you could even see this about, you know, once you have universal health care, it would save the government money to for not too many people to get sick. So it would be in the government’s interest to to support preventative health care, and so forth. With what you’re saying, good, good on her, I hope she can do it. And I would also ask you what particular thing she’s suggesting, on the other hand, something is still profoundly wrong in our society, that the only way to do something that could possibly save people’s lives is to be able to prove to some big corporate entity that it would save them money. That’s what it’s the mentally

Dr. Mindy Pelz  

that’s a good one. Yeah.

Marianne Williamson  

You know, money is not God. Love is God for each other. We have got to bring more care and compassion that some things you simply don’t do them because they’re wrong.

Dr. Mindy Pelz  

Yeah, yeah, that’s so well said, which takes me to to mental health and I, I want to read something that again, moved me to tears. I don’t by the way, I don’t read manifestos from politicians and get moved to tears very often. I read your root cause health plan, and I was literally like tearing up in my kitchen, I read it to my kids who are cooking in my kitchen, I was like, This is what healthcare should look like. And one of the things that you say, in here, and it’s so you and so much your heart is that it is a moral imperative that we lovingly care for one another, like the human family that we are. When we look at what’s going on with healthcare right now. Do we have too much of an individual approach to our health? And how do we bring back this idea of a loving community forming around each other supporting each other? Because I think that’s where we’ll start to see some changes in mental health, because people won’t feel so isolated.

Marianne Williamson  

Well, what has happened in our society is that we have stripped ourselves of some of the normal human relationships that have evolved over centuries and longer millennia. The presence of grandparents, cousins, big families, time spent together before there was television before there was tablets. You know, I was talking to a woman the other night, and she was talking about her son and some things that he had said, and she said to her, I was worried and I’m going to send them to a therapist. And I and I noted in my conversation with her. The parents are so quick sometimes to talk therapist rather than parenting. Oh, power. He’s becoming a man. He’s a puberty as he talked to his father. Why don’t you suggest that and it was interesting because she said we No, I told my husband that I was going to send him to a third. Now this was something else about her husband, I got two parts mixed up there. But the point remains the same, that we talked about the importance, particularly of a boy who’s growing up to be handed near the hands of the Father. So why don’t you suggest to your husband that they go away for a weekend? Yeah, they cultivate more communication between the Father and the Son, you know, we’ve just these bonds of relationship, because too many people are sending their child to. And I’m not saying don’t send your child to a therapist. That’s not what I’m saying. But it does seem sometimes that we farm out to the so called experts. roles that used to be handled much more by by family by deep connectedness. You know, just think about people used to have front porches, people. Um, they used to talk to their neighbors, kids used to go out and play that’s a large part of health. That’s a large part of health, fat, kids exercising social bonding, that would take place, we have to, you know, there’s such a big tear in the fabric of our society. And we have to just stitch it back together. You know, I remember something that happened. When my daughter was growing up, that should not have happened when I was out of town. And I remember one of my girlfriends saying, I should have just come by every day. I just was so busy. Now, when I was growing up, there was much more Mrs. Jackson and Mrs. Glassman and Mrs. Klein and Mrs. Williamson. Everybody knew where everybody’s kids were, if somebody went out of town for the weekend, the kids knew that not only are your parents looking after you, but if your parents were out of town, do you know what I’m saying? Yeah,

Dr. Mindy Pelz  

yeah. How do we bring that back? Sorry, I just, it was so well said I’m just how do we bring it back? If you

Marianne Williamson  

see the quote, unquote, mental health crisis, as only something can be treated on the level of symptom, this is where the same thing, level of symptom, we have to look at root cause. And you cannot, it’s impossible to overstate the, the the relevance of economic factors, I’ll give you an example. When I was growing up in the 1970s, the average American worker could afford a home could afford a house could afford a car could afford a yearly vacation. And one parent working the salary of one parent was enough to support a family of four and send their kids to college. Now, if one salary could do that, that men want parent if they wish to, could be home with the kids. Today, it’s only privileged an ever shrinking group of Americans where the family could afford that. Yes, so board it. So you know, the little things like somebody’s home, you know, to talk to the kid when they get home from school, not and that’s not to make anybody feel bad if they can’t be. But it’s little things we we have an economic system, if you have 62% of Americans who live paycheck to paycheck, if you have a majority of Americans who cannot afford a $1,000 financial unexpected expenditure, that so much chronic economic anxiety, and it’s wearing people down, it’s just people are worn down. This is why economics matters. Only 20% of Americans can really live with financial ease. And that’s that’s not enough. That means that that means no middle class left. And so what happens is people don’t have the bandwidth to really talk to their partners talk to their kids. So of course, everyone is living with anxiety and stress. And then we call it a mental health crisis. Well, it’s a social and economic justice crisis. It’s at the root, so much of this. And so they jump to brain chemistry. I’m not saying brain chemistry doesn’t have a role to play. But also sugar changes brain chemistry. Yeah, that yeah, they should change his brain chemistry. There are many things that affect chemistry. Food definitely affects brain chemistry. Yeah,

Dr. Mindy Pelz  

and one of the challenges we have with that I think I told you the story a couple years ago, that during the pandemic, I was invited to speak, do a zoom call with a group of teachers in South Carolina, and if the call was to be about immunity, and all the things they could do to improve their immunity through lifestyle, so I gave what I thought was a brilliant presentation to them. And at the And this very brave man raised his hand and he said, I hear what you’re saying. But if you’re saying that to improve my immunity, I should buy the nut butter with the better oil in it, then the nut butter I am buying with the inflammatory oil in it, that is an $8 difference. And I don’t have that $8. And then another woman, these are our high school teachers. Another woman says to me, I hear what you’re saying. But I get up at four in the morning and I drive to my classroom, I get my classroom already, I leave at four in the afternoon. And, frankly, I’m exhausted. And the easiest and cheapest place for me to do go is through a fast food line. And I sat there and I realized like, there’s so right, there’s so right, how are we going to help that person? Well, and

Marianne Williamson  

also it was such an awakening for you of what a privilege conversation it is that only an ever shrinking. A population kind of has easy access to health care, easy access to really healthy food, easy access to education, and so forth. That’s really profound what you said, that is just so profound. And that’s why economic matters.

Dr. Mindy Pelz  

And these are our teachers, these are our teachers, and those who

Marianne Williamson  

often are those who do have to get work in addition to that job. We know about this, we know about how many teachers have to add up their own pocket, buy school supplies, we’re losing teachers, because the there’s such a lack of dignity. There’s such a lack of, you know, too many teachers are saying I didn’t sign up for this, I didn’t sign up for this huge class where behavioral problems get in the way of my ability to actually teach, not even mentioned where I could be, you know, conceivably risking my safety. The societal breakdown we’re dealing with now Mindy is so multi dimensional, and they use the word intersectionality. For good reason. Everything affects everything does economics, there’s food. There’s health care, there’s social justice, you can’t. And I think that that’s what people you know, I don’t think it’s an Americans don’t care. I know it’s an Americans. It’s not that we don’t care. And you know that. Yeah, I agree. I think a lot of people think people are apathetic, I don’t think people are apathetic, I think people are paralyzed, standing, the enormity of the breakdown. And that’s why we have to be willing to look at these things. And at the same time, remember that we can also fix these things. Other generations are had problems before us. And they face the challenge, but not if we continue to vote for people who are part of the system that perpetuates the malfunction. Yeah. So

Dr. Mindy Pelz  

if you’re listening to this right now, and hopefully people are agitated, I really hope you know, I hate to say that because I never want to create discomfort on my podcast. But this is such an important issue, that I hope people are agitated and agitation can move you into action. So what can we do when we listen to what you’re saying? And in my eyes from what I’ve seen from sitting in the health trenches with millions of people is complete the dysfunction or the malfunction is completely accurate that you are describing what how do we get out of this? How do what’s the step out? It’s it’s so overwhelming when you put it in the totality that you just described it?

Marianne Williamson  

Well, it’s an inside outside approaches. They say outside we people like yourself, read people like Mark Hyman you know, read all of the the people who are writing these books, Michael Pollan, you know, Deepak Chopra, every I mean, we kind of know that people on the outside on the inside, you know, I don’t want it to be a self serving moment, but vote for me. You know, just stop already go. Just stop. We are under a trance. We are in thinking that the only people who are qualified to drive us out of the ditch are people who have had years of experience driving the car that drove us into the ditch. You know, the problem is not that we need more political car mechanics. The problem is we’re on the wrong road. Yeah, we don’t need the technical crowd. We need a visionary. And I’m not saying I’m the greatest visionary in America, but I’m the only one running for the Democratic nomination for the presidency. So I hope people will go website at Marianne 2020 four.com. Get involved financially contribute support, volunteer spread the word. Read the root cause healing section on these important poem. Read the whole health plan, share it with your friends. But politics matters, you can’t leave it out of the equation, because these are laws that that deregulated to such an extent that companies can just if it makes them more profit to how with your health, whether it’s an insurance company, you know, we have 1.3 million people in this country who ration their insulin. Right. And

Dr. Mindy Pelz  

food, that big food created a metabolic imbalance.

Marianne Williamson  

Right? That’s exactly right. That’s exactly why now in a country that has universal health care, you know, people rationing their insulin, you know, you were talking about England, I spoke at Cambridge University a few months ago. And I remember when I mentioned, people rationing their insulin, I remember how people looked at me in disbelief. That’s what do you mean rationing their insulin? We have people in this country choosing do I pay my rent or buy my insulin? Yeah. And you know, now they’re bragging because it will be capped at $35 a month for seniors people over 65? Well, first of all, not everybody who has diabeetus is over 65. Yep. And secondly, if there are a lot of people, you have half of our seniors living on less than $25,000 a year. So if you’re living on less than $25,000 a year, and it’s $35 a month. That matters. Most people you know, I live in Washington DC, as you know. And when I first moved there, I remember we’ve all heard the line that it’s a bubble. But you know, Mindy, it doesn’t feel like a bubble so much as it feels like a walled city. There are nice people there, don’t get me wrong. It’s not about not nice people. But you get the feeling that once people become part of that system, they become emotionally buffered to something. Yeah, emotionally buffered, from the, the suffering that all of this is causing. I mean, like when you were talking about young women, but with the skyrocketing breast cancer, I’ll tell you something else. When I was a child, you rarely heard about someone with brain cancer.

Dr. Mindy Pelz  

Oh, never. Yeah, never not war. Although

Marianne Williamson  

on the other hand, strides in medicine are so great that you also hear about people living, you know, being able to recover from stage four cancers that you never heard before. So you know, the quality of the medicine, it’s about the quality of the food, the quality of lifestyle, the quality of the environment, the quality of the water. And this will not change unless we be, you know, decide as a population that this has got to stop. There’s an aberrational chapter of American history, it has been going on for over 50 years. And if you just try to tweak it here and tweak it there, that’s not going to be enough. We need to stand up revolution at the ballot box and say, we’re going to, we’re going to start over, we’re going to start

Dr. Mindy Pelz  

what do you what do you say to the person who maybe is stuck in their party line? And they’re like, this is the my candidate because I’m going to vote for him? Because I don’t want the other party’s candidate going into office? How do we get there? I hear a lot of that conversation of like, I’m sticking with this person, because I don’t want this person without thinking through everything that you just said. Well, I’m sure that that alludes to I don’t want to vote for Marian ways. And because I think that’ll help Trump get elected. So maybe that person forgot eighth grade civics or maybe they didn’t take eighth grade civics.

Marianne Williamson  

I don’t know what this is a primary. So you can’t I’m running for the Democratic nomination. Therefore, you can’t be a spoiler in a primary. That’s number one. Number two, I would point to that person and say that the President’s president’s popularity is sinking like a stone. His his approval rating is sinking so low that Now Trump is defeating him in poll after poll and five out of six primary states intact. So is DeSantis and Nikki Haley. So I would suggest to that person that if what your real interest is, is in not reelecting that other person, then you might want to open your mind to a more intelligent conversation, a more critical thought. I’m not saying more intelligent, but giving more critical thought to whether or not the President is actually the strongest candidate in a democracy. You know, the people get to decide. So that person that you just mentioned, has heard from the DNC, it’s got to be him. And that’s not supposed to be the role of a political party. The political party is supposed to step back and here until the people have weighed in, but the people need to be exposed to the various candidates and what they have to say and what happens now. You know, we’re talking about just like we have the food industrial complex and the pharmaceutical industrial complex, I’m sorry to have to tell you, there’s a political media industrial complex. And once again, it’s that profit, profit driven. And so like, for instance, in my case, a kind of invisible isation, and arratia, to many people who have not heard me talk about these things on mainstream corporate owned news. So people go, she’s running, I didn’t know she’s running. That’s crazy. But I’m doing very, very well, with the kids very well, with Gen Z, I’m 35%. Why? Because I can get to them on tick tock. And it’s free. So it’s a very corrupted system. And money is what’s going on here. Money is going on whether it’s a corruption of our food supply, or the corruption of our of our politics, it’s, it’s money that is at this point, having, you know, people with tremendous capital force of capital, that is actually overriding not only our safety, or health, or safety, or well being, but even our democracy. And it’s the people who are going to have to stand up and make this change to this revolution at the ballot box and getting involved. And not being afraid to say I couldn’t

Dr. Mindy Pelz  

agree any more. As I started this off with you, as your friend, I just want to say thank you for thank you for doing what you’re doing and for disrupting, because it can’t be emotionally or physically easy on any human. And you’ve stepped into one of the most chaotic times in human history. So thank you for enlightening us all and stepping in. Thank

Marianne Williamson  

you, and thank you for your support. Thank you for your encouragement. And yeah, none of us are going to achieve any of this by ourselves. This is going to be connectivity and collaboration on a level that probably most of us have not even experienced in our lifetime. But if we do rise up, and we rise up together, we’re going to change all this and we’re going to have the deep soul satisfaction of knowing we did that. Yeah, agreed.

Dr. Mindy Pelz  

How do people find you? And how can they get involved? And we’ll leave all the links there. Yeah, thank

Marianne Williamson  

you. Marianne 2020 four.com, ma, R I A N ne Marianne 2020 four.com. The first primary is less than three months away, and do what you can support, whether it’s money, whether it’s volunteering time, no matter where you are, you can phone bank, if you’re interested in getting involved, your heart will tell you what to do. And I so appreciate the opportunity Monday to talk to you and to your audience and, you know, an idea become stronger when it’s shared. Yes,

Dr. Mindy Pelz  

that’s, you know, I really want to point that out. And when I do the intro to this podcast, I you know, people now listening will hear this. But I want to point out that there was so much richness in this conversation that we can now take so many pieces of it and discuss it, we can actually have a conversation about it with other people. And we are not talking about these deeper issues because people are cancelling each other out. They’re saying one side versus the other side. But what you just presented to us was the beginning of many conversations we can have with friends, in our homes, with our colleagues, and so that we can start to heal together. So I just want to say thank you because I your voice and your mind is so brilliant. And I’m such a fan. Right

Marianne Williamson  

back at you, Mindy. Thank you so much.

Dr. Mindy Pelz  

Thank you so much for joining me in today’s episode. I love bringing thoughtful discussions about all things health to you. If you enjoyed it, we’d love to know about it. So please leave us a review, share it with your friends and let me know what your biggest takeaway is.