December 2, 2025 • 31 mins
In this episode of the Believe Big Podcast, Ivelisse sits down with Dr. Jay Richards of the Heritage Foundation to explore the powerful intersection of faith, science, and culture in today’s healthcare landscape. Together, they unpack the major shift from truly holistic, patient-centered care to a system focused primarily on disease management—and what it will take to change that.
Dr. Richards sheds light on why metabolic flexibility is essential for long-term health and breaks down the regulatory and financial barriers that prevent many patients from accessing integrative and natural therapies, including mistletoe therapy. He and Ivelisse discuss why these barriers exist, how they affect patient choice, and what steps can be taken to move healthcare toward a more integrative model.
Whether you’re a patient, caregiver, or advocate, this episode offers clarity, encouragement, and actionable steps for advancing a healthcare future where conventional and complementary therapies work together to support whole-person healing.
Learn more about Dr. Jay Richards at the Heritage Foundation.
Suggested Resources:
- BOOK: Infiltrated by Dr. Jay Richards
- BOOK: Indivisible by Dr. Jay Richards
- BOOK: Money, Greed, and God by Dr. Jay Richards
- BOOK: Eat, Fast, Feast by Dr. Jay Richards
- BOOK: The Anxious Generation by Jonathon Haidt
- Events at the Heritage Foundation
- Believe Big Integrative Cancer Symposium - Replay (link to purchase the bundle)
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Ivelisse Page (00:06):
Hi, I am Ivelisse Page and thanks for listening to
the Believe Big podcast, theshow where we take deep dive
into your healing with healthexperts, integrative
practitioners, biblical faithleaders, and cancer thrivers
from around the globe.
(00:35):
Welcome to today's episode onthe Believe Big podcast.
My name is Ivelisse Page andit's always a pleasure to spend
this time with you.
Today I am happy to have as myguest, Dr.
Jay Richards from the HeritageFoundation.
He's the Director of the DevoCenter of Life, Religion and
Family, a senior research fellowand the author of more than a
(00:56):
dozen books, including Money,Greed God; Eat, Fast, Feast; and
the New York Times Bestsellers,Infiltrated and Indivisible.
He also produced severaldocumentaries that have aired on
PBS.
And most recently, Dr.
Richards was a keynote speakerat our Believe Big Integrative
Symposium.
(01:17):
Dr.
Richards has such a unique wayof communicating faith, science
and culture.
Today he's helping us unpacksome of the big shifts happening
in healthcare, why patientfreedom matters, how cultural
trends are influencing medicineand what it looks like to make
wise values-based choices inyour own care.
(01:38):
So welcome to the show, Dr.
Richards.
Dr. Jay Richards (01:41):
Thanks so much, Ivelisse.
It's great to be with you.
Ivelisse Page (01:43):
Well, everyone always likes to know what our
guest's favorite health tip is,and so to start it off, would
you be able to share one withus?
Dr. Jay Richards (01:50):
Yeah, absolutely.
Eat for metabolic flexibility.
So that is sort of embeddingmultiple ideas into one simple
piece of advice, but I really dothink that the way God made our
bodies, is we're supposed to beable to survive in different
kind of climates in times whenyou'll have plenty and in times
when there's want.
(02:10):
And as a result, he's given usthese two metabolic systems.
We're like walking aroundhybrids like Priuses.
We don't have of course,batteries in gasoline tanks, but
what we have is that the sortof, glucose side of things in
which our body convertscarbohydrates to glucose and can
store and use that for energy orit can use, uh, dietary fat or
body fat and convert it toketones that our cells can use
(02:32):
that for energy.
Unfortunately, because of thestandard American diet, most of
us never use that second system.
We use the first system wherewe're just constantly on this
carbohydrate glucose cyclethat's about every four hours
and so, the idea of say, going along period of time without
eating a sale, extended fast, oreating ketogenically, it's
(02:52):
terrifying to most people.
But I think what we're doingwhen we do that is that we're
recovering this natural designplan because we live at a time
in which, the, you know, our,our bodies don't, by necessity
have to go without food.
And so we have to actually makeit a practice.
But I think if you do that, ifyou, you eat in such a way that
it's easy for you to switchbetween these two different
(03:16):
metabolic modes, that all thingsbeing equal, you'll more likely
be healthy than not.
Ivelisse Page (03:22):
Yeah.
That is such great advice andit's something that a lot of our
integrative practitioners thatwork with cancer patients are
sharing, that it's reallyimportant to be flexible in that
way.
So thank you for sharing that.
Dr. Jay Richards (03:33):
Sure.
Ivelisse Page (03:33):
So from your perspective, you know, how has
our culture's approach tomedicine shifted over the years
from caring for the whole personto primarily managing disease?
Dr. Jay Richards (03:44):
Yeah, I mean, I think that it happened in
several stages.
I mean, if you read the originalHippocratic Oath, it was very
patient-centered and, uh,Hippocrates of course is not a
Christian, maybe the sort ofclassical Greek and the
Hippocratic Oath was theninfused into the sort of
Christian, European way ofviewing these things for
centuries.
And I always remind people that,even in the Christian West, it
(04:07):
took us about 1800 years tofully get that all men are
created equal.
You know, I mean, I, I say howis it that Christians for
centuries, couldn't abolishslavery.
I said, that's how hard it is,right?
That it took even almost 2000years of a culture being told
all men are created equal tosort of figure out the
implications of it.
And that's the case here.
I mean, the reality is that if,if you're a Christian, you
(04:28):
believe the human being is thisintegrated spiritual and
material whole, and the whole ismuch greater than the sum of his
parts.
And so you need to treat thewhole person and the Hippocratic
Oath respected that in thatyou're dealing, you're not
saying, okay, what's the kind ofcommon good solution to my
treatment of this patient, orhow do I sort of plug in the
interest of this patient intosome big social good?
(04:50):
It's like, no, what is thebenefit, of this particular
patient?
And so I think honestly, first Ia kind of collapse of that, that
worldview that understood humanbeings in their holistic sense
in the 19th century, uh, kind ofmaterialism in which everything
that matters is made of matter.
I came to the fore, that's stillthe kind of dominant
intellectual orthodoxy, at leastin the academy.
(05:13):
So that was part of it.
And then I think a hyperspecialization as we learned
more, you know, so we learnedmore about things.
It turns out even, just studyingan eye or, you know, even just
the nose, right?
You can be a specialist in thesethings.
And so by necessity, no one canhandle all that stuff.
And so you end up with all ofthese, sort of hyper specialized
fields.
(05:33):
And so no one is really askingthe question, okay, what if I'm
dealing with a, a symptom ordisease and what's this kind of
systemic source of this?
It says, look, I was trainedwith this set of blinders.
And so I don't think it'sgenerally a kind of intellectual
deficiency on the part ofphysicians.
I think its that kind ofphilosophical framework we've
been schooled in.
And then I'd say, here's theslightly nefarious part of that
(05:54):
is that there was a concertedeffort, I'd say early in the
20th century to specialize thepractice of medicine so that it
looked like something you'd havein a department, at a research
university.
So anyone, for instance, thatstudies pediatrics will know,
you know, the pediatrics thatwhen it was initially formed was
basically a bunch of scientists,males that wanted to wrest
(06:17):
control of the birth processfrom the midwives.
I mean, it was kind of thatshameless, right?
And so now we have these medicalorganizations that, lots of
great doctors that are membersof them, but if you think the
American Academy of Pediatricsis mainly about patients, you
don't know what's happening.
It's actually, it's an industryorganization.
It's usually captured byparticular industries that have
(06:38):
an interest in financialinterest.
And so all of those thingstogether, I think they squeezed
out both a holistic view of thehuman person in treatment, and
then also tended to alienate anysort of practice or care.
The patients might say, Hey,this works really well, but
doesn't fit in any of the sortof traditional boxes.
(06:58):
And so I think that's why we're,we are where we are.
Why your insurance company canpay for one thing, that you
might say, I don't know howgreat this is gonna be and you
have to pay out of pocket foranother thing.
But that's just the moment inwhich we live.
Ivelisse Page (07:11):
All right.
So why do you think innovativeand integrative medicine or
natural therapies like mistletoefaces so many roadblocks in
today's healthcare landscape?
Dr. Jay Richards (07:22):
Well, I'd say so there's a kind of a perfectly
understandable reason, and thenthere's a sort of dark side.
The dark side is always, and asyou mentioned in my bio at the
beginning, I've written a lot onintersection of economics and,
and ethics.
And the funny thing is, is youmight think we live in a free
market economy in the UnitedStates.
So, everybody loves that andowners of businesses love sort
of open competition.
(07:43):
The dirty little secret is thatif you're a large company that
has massive market share, thelast thing you want is
competition.
And in fact, you might even likeregulations as long as the
regulations give you a carve outand make it hard for small
upstarts to compete.
And so that's what we tend tohave over time in industries is
you'll have massive regulationsthat the massive companies and
(08:05):
entities are actually in supportof,'cause they've, they've
written them for the most part,right?
And they can afford them,whereas a kind of small
entrepreneurial upstart cannot.
Now, so apply that to medicine.
Almost anything that's a, let'ssay a fairly simple natural
compound or, or take something,not like mistletoe, take
something like fasting, right?
If fasting has therapeuticvalue, nobody's making money off
(08:26):
of that, right?
I mean, you're literally noteating.
And so there's not a massivefinancial incentive to promote
that.
Whereas if companies spenthundreds of millions of dollars
to get a drug approved, they'vegot an obvious financial
incentive.
Now, I'm not saying you'd haveto doubt everyone and that
everything that happens is theresult of nefarious financial
incentives.
No.
Most people that I think aretrying to develop products,
(08:48):
they, they are trying to dosomething for the benefit of
their customer.
Nevertheless, if you have thosekinds of interests, then if
someone finds something that,you know, in the case of
mistletoe is a traditionaltreatment, it's widely used in
certain parts of Europe, notthat expensive.
It is, literally though, there'ssome processing involved, this
natural compound compared tosome massive expense like
(09:09):
radiation or chemotherapy, itmight as well be free.
Now it's not, in fact, peoplehave to pay for it out, out of
pocket, but that creates a kindof market situation in which
it's very hard to penetrate itand think of that happening over
and over and over again withtherapies, with medical devices,
with drugs, and all of a suddenyou can see what's gonna happen
(09:30):
over time is you're gonna get akind of alternative market,
that's in, I hate to say it, butkind of a luxury good for people
that are able to afford it.
And then the kind of officialmarket in which all of the sort
of powerful entities involved,whether they're the insurance
companies or HMOs or drugcompanies, they, they all sort
of control that market.
And so, that's why it is sort ofodd that you can get things that
(09:52):
you think, gosh, there's suchlow efficacy and such, such high
risk for this treatment and itcosts a hundred thousand
dollars.
My insurance will cover that,but they won't cover this thing
that costs a couple hundreddollars a month.
That's the problem.
And then of course, there's, youknow, the truth of the matter
is, is some things people trymight genuinely be bad for them.
And so I'd say that's the kindof positive side.
(10:13):
There's the desire to protect,but that desire to protect is
always used as a justificationto prevent innovation as well.
Ivelisse Page (10:21):
Yeah.
And I see that in, in the casewith the, the mistletoe in the
sense of, they'll say, well, ithas to go through all three
phases of a clinical trial, andit's really difficult for
natural substances that can't bepatented like mistletoe to go
through that.
Because like you're saying,there is not a financial benefit
to companies when there's notsomething that can be patented.
(10:42):
So that's why organizations likeBelieve Big and and
philanthropic efforts to makethese natural therapies go
through all three stages here inthe U.S., even though there's
been 160 completed clinicaltrials all over the world on
mistletoe therapy for a hundredyears, it's still not able to be
done, used here conventionallyuntil it's gone through all
(11:03):
three phases.
So yeah, I find that another,you know, huge roadblock.
Dr. Jay Richards (11:07):
Absolutely.
And that's part of the market,right?
Is that the regulatory regime.
Okay.
It's set up obviously to, ifwe're gonna test some substance
that has never been ingested orinjected into a human before,
right.
It makes sense that we'd havethose kind of rigorous
processes.
But as you said.
If this is a natural substanceor an extract of a substance
that humans have been, may beingesting or consuming in
(11:29):
certain ways, for long periodsof time, clearly there should be
some kind of other pathway forthat.
And this is what I always say,look, if something's been in the
human food supply for thousandsof years.
it gets the benefit of thedoubt.
If somebody wants to propose,let's try this weird cotton seed
oil thing, that's where theburden of proof should be.
And it's the same way ifsomebody wants to propose a
highly unusual chemicalcompound, hey, that we need to
(11:53):
have really, really high, uh,rigorous standards for that.
If it's something that's naturalthat humans have experience
with, we're dealing with adifferent situation.
Ivelisse Page (12:01):
Yes, I agree.
I agree.
You know, you've written thattrue human flourishing includes
body, mind, and spirit.
What would it look like if ourhealthcare system truly embraced
that vision?
Dr. Jay Richards (12:12):
I mean, uh, honestly, this is, it's actually
part of what I do at theHeritage Foundation.
I chair an initiative calledRestoring American Wellness,
that is essentially trying tobuild out a policy portfolio
that Robert F.
Kennedy Jr.
articulated in that famousspeech in August of 2024 when he
said that we have this massivechronic disease crisis, uh, we
need to start focusing on theroot causes of disease and not
(12:35):
just treat symptoms, think abouthealth and, and wellbeing and
not just sickness.
And so, that is, you know, it'sa perfect way of framing things
because we're, we have thechronic disease crisis because
of things we've been doing overthe last few decades, and we've
been doing those things in partbecause we're not thinking of
this stuff holistically, and yetthere's scads of evidence for
(12:57):
this.
There's scads of evidence thatwe're body, mind, and, and soul.
In fact, in a couple of weeks atthe Heritage Foundation, we're
gonna have the socialpsychologist Jonathan Haidt, who
has just written this amazingbook, The Anxious Generation,
and it's just about the data wealready have, about the damage
that social media and kind ofhyper interactive screens can do
to the brains of children.
Now, I'm not saying everybodyhas throw there's screens away,
(13:19):
but look, these are untested,right?
And we now have data that thisactually harms kids.
And then so, and that's truejust from the kind of physical
effects of this.
Now remember the fact thatsocial media and the internet
can be disease vectors of toxicideas like gender ideology,
right?
That tells kids they might beborn in the wrong body.
(13:40):
Guess what?
We've had like about 5000%increase in gender dysphoria
diagnoses over the last decadeor so, as smartphones have
proliferated.
And so if you understand that,that humans are not, we're not
just bags of chemicals, we'rebodily, of course, um, we're,
we're mammals, but we're notmere mammals.
We also are spiritual beings.
(14:00):
And our ideas actually have aneffect, can have an effect on
our health and, and on ourbodies.
And so really getting a grasp ofthat, I think that's the kind of
key thing.
If we can get the truth aboutthe human person right in our
medicine and in our publichealth policy, that's gonna help
us orient toward this new way oflooking at things that, okay,
we're gonna focus on root causesand not just on the kinda
(14:24):
specialized symptoms that wemight be looking at in
isolation.
Ivelisse Page (14:28):
Yeah, that's really good.
Um, I actually already signed upfor that event.
Great.
And, to watch it virtually.
We'll also put the link in theshow notes for anyone else who's
interested in, in watching andlistening.
At Believe Big, you know, weoften remind patients that
healing isn't just physical likeyou mentioned, it's emotional
and it's spiritual too.
How do you see faith and hopeinfluencing the healing process?
Dr. Jay Richards (14:52):
No, I think it's absolutely crucial.
In fact, this isn't just ahunch.
I mean, there's, there's realdata on this.
It's true with respect tophysical healing and healing
from disease.
It's true for things as simpleas whether you're gonna get
married and have kids.
If you don't have hope in thefuture, if you think, okay,
every kid that is born as just aone other carbon footprint,
right?
You're much less likely to havechildren than if you think,
(15:14):
okay, God told us to be fruitfuland multiply.
Children are gifts.
Might be hard, but we should doit.
That's gonna have a differentoutcome, in the same way, if you
have now, of course, you mightsee death as an enemy and it is
the death and and illness arethe result of a fall and we
should fight it.
But, there's also a transcendenthope that we have.
(15:36):
None of us wanna suffer death,but we also know that death is
not the end.
And what's funny is that whenunbelievers hear that, they say,
well, if you're always thinkingabout sort of dying, going to
heaven, you're not gonna have agood life here.
It's actually not true, is whatit does, is it allows you to
detach a bit from that so thatyou're not constantly in a state
of panic.
And so I really do think thatfaith, which is faith, isn't
(15:59):
just believing a bunch of crazythings for no reason.
It's a trust.
It's trust, and robust faith,it's trust in the goodness of
God, is just absolutely crucial.
And I think people that, uh,live a life of faith and
struggle with something like,you know, advanced cancer very
often will tell you this.
But we also do know from thesocial science literature that
faith and prayer and andspiritual practices have this
(16:21):
kind of healing effect.
And, you know, again, it's hardto nail that down in a
randomized control trial, butthere is actually some, some
pretty darn good evidence evenin those terms, for this
phenomenon.
Ivelisse Page (16:32):
Yeah, and I think you even mentioned it at the
symposium is that, you know,we're, we're all gonna die at
some point.
Mm-hmm.
No one escapes death.
And I think that's where faithplays a role is that whether
it's now, or whether it's yearsdown the road, we have this hope
of a future of knowing that oureternity is secure in Christ.
And so, that faith gives uspeace in the moment of dealing
(16:55):
with a crisis.
I know it did for me in my lifewhen dealing with cancer and
knowing that no matter howthings ended, I still won.
Yeah.
So I think, you know, faith alsohelps our body to heal.
Like you are saying, the scienceshows that when you're in a
state of peace, your body canheal and restore.
Yeah.
But if it's in a state ofanxiety and stress, it's tight,
(17:18):
it's, anxious and mm-hmm.
It's not gonna be able torestore and to heal.
So faith I agree, plays such acrucial role in, in the healing
process of everyone.
Dr. Jay Richards (17:29):
Absolutely.
And we know the opposite of likeextreme anxiety, right?
It increases your cortisollevels, it increases
inflammation.
It makes you unable to sleep forhealing.
And so now I almost hate to saythat because then if someone is
having anxiety, then they, thatmakes them more anxious.
Right?
But, but it, it's, at least itsort of describes this, this
reality I think peopleexperience.
(17:50):
'cause everybody knows whenyou're in an anxious state.
It's not good for you, you know?
Yeah.
And so if it's true, then agenuine faith is almost
certainly gonna be healing.
Ivelisse Page (17:58):
Exactly, yes.
And reading scripture, you know,when you are in those anxious
states and those breath prayers,that, that really help to get
you through those momentsbecause we all do face fear and
anxious thoughts at, at pointsin our lives, but it's how we
move forward with them, thatallows us to get through that.
So yeah, thank you for sharingthat.
Sure.
Believe Big (18:19):
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Ivelisse Page (19:39):
So, in overcoming barriers and encouraging change
in our, medical system, what doyou think innovative or natural
approaches or, why do you thinkthey're often resisted by
mainstream healthcare?
Are there barriers more thancultural, financial, or
educational?
Dr. Jay Richards (19:56):
Well, I mean, there's definitely the, the
financial part of that.
There's also, what in WashingtonDC is, is what policy wonks call
this regulatory capture.
And what that is, is you mightimagine, okay, so the FDA or the
CDC, or let's just take the FDA,that's, that's simpler, okay?
Their job is to hold drug andfood companies accountable.
And so there'll be this kind ofadversarial relationship in
(20:18):
which a drug company really hasto prove to the FDA, that
they're on the up and up.
But if you look, it's like,okay, well who funded the drug
study that you're using toapprove this?
Oh, the company that wants thedrug approved.
That seems a little odd, likethere might be a conflict of
interest there.
Where does the FDA get itsfunding?
Very often from privateindustries.
(20:39):
Thousands of of employees at theNIH actually get royalties from
private companies, from privatedrug companies, even while being
government employees.
When I tell people this, they'llsay, why?
Why aren't those people in jail?
I said, because it's legal.
That's, that's how the systemworks.
And so what regulatory capturerefers to is this basically a
collusion or a fusion of whatyou would think of as private,
(21:01):
entities and public entities inwhich you might imagine that
they're adversarial.
Uh, but if you look forinstance, at at, at some of the
folks that had been fired fromthe FDA and the CDC recently,
the really, the, the higher uppeople.
Where did they go?
They inevitably go to serve onthe board of a drug company that
they were supposed to beregulating two weeks ago.
(21:22):
And so, you know, it doesn'ttake a cynic to realize that
okay, a system like that, isprobably going to have some
serious problems.
And, and that's a sort of ironyis that then you can get
substances and technologies thatend up not working really well,
but pass through the officialsymptom or through the system.
Then you'll have alternativetreatments that you have massive
(21:42):
clinical, uh, okay, anecdotal.
But if you've got thousands ofpatients and physicians that
know individual patients tellingyou, look, this made a
difference.
And that's just almost entirely,uh, uh, disregarded or even
treated with contempt.
It's really frustrating,especially, I know for
physicians that arewell-trained, uh, but also
integrative and functional intheir approach, and yet there's
(22:04):
kind of no, there's no slot atthe moment, bureaucratically for
them.
Ivelisse Page (22:08):
Okay.
Well, what practical steps couldhelp to shift policy and funding
of medical education so thatintegrative medicine becomes
more accessible.
Dr. Jay Richards (22:18):
I almost hesitate to to say this because
in some ways, once a practicebecomes official, it kind gets
sucked into this, this sort ofcorrupting system.
And I also think that thebenefit we have right now is
there's a kind of wisdom ofcrowds.
And so, you know, I benefit as aresearcher dramatically from
being able to be on social mediaand I can watch people sort of
(22:39):
argue things.
And so people, if they have somebasic competence, can actually
have the ability to do a lot ofresearch on their own that we
didn't have before the wholeworld is connected, as it is.
And so I think in some waysthat, that, that makes the
integrative, medical approach,quite healthy, being sort of on
the outside, but I also thinkbeing on the outside, it's
(22:59):
preventing a lot of people fromgetting healing, that, that
aren't getting it right now.
And so, I do think that, both atthe N-I-H-N-I-H and the FDA,
there need to be a regulatorystructure set up to recognize
this particular approach.
I mean, this happened with MDsand doctors of osteopathy.
It's happened, you know, ithappens at the state level.
(23:21):
Now it is states, that areprimarily responsible for
regulating the practice ofmedicine in their states.
That's not the federalgovernment.
The federal government regulatesthe, the use and the approval of
drugs.
So a lot of this stuff couldactually happen at the state
level if say, the state ofFlorida, which is very
entrepreneurial.
They have a, a board of health,a board of medicine, a board of
(23:43):
osteopathic medicine, and Ithink a board of a chiropractor
even.
Right.
And so a board of integrative,and functional medicine or
something like that, could be areally good first step because
the Justice Louis Brandeis saidthat our system is a laboratory
of democracy.
In other words, things can gettried in different states,
before you sort of federalizeit.
And so that's the, that's thesort of thing I'm hoping for.
(24:06):
And then also, um, just a kindof release of some of the
owner's regulations at thefederal level that are within
the jurisdiction of NIH or or atAt HHS largely, I mean, I don't
wanna assume everybody remembershow these things work, but H,
health and Human Services,that's the big monster
bureaucracy that Robert F.
Kennedy Jr.
(24:26):
Is in charge of.
And then you have the NIH.
It's an agency at HHS that doesmedical research effectively,
and it's headed by JayBhattacharya.
There's a lot that can happenover a two or three year period
in the so-called rulemakingprocess just to loosen up on
some of the regulations.
But I really do think that theinnovation is likely to happen
in some states and there'll besome leaders, and I wouldn't be
(24:47):
surprised, honestly, if it wasFlorida.
Ivelisse Page (24:49):
Okay.
That's, that's reallyinteresting and it's, it's a
really good point that startingat the state level before making
it a federal is, uh, is a greatway to go.
And, and you often talk aboutthe human flourishing, but what
does that look like when appliedto medicine and patient care in
the future?
Dr. Jay Richards (25:06):
Well, I mean, that's the question because, so
essentially right now we have asick care system, that it's not
focused on health andflourishing.
And the word flourishing youknow, I use that because it
incorporates both the kind ofthe spiritual destiny of people
as well as our physical needs.
And so it's not like, okay, wedon't want for our children,
(25:26):
well, I want them to be reallyspiritually deep and also hungry
and never able to pay the bills.
What you want is that got a fulllife that includes all of these
things.
And that's what medicine shouldwant.
And so if you're focusing on thewhole rather than the parts,
well, focusing on the whole isgonna, A big chunk of that is,
okay, what should we be doingnormally every day when we're
(25:47):
not sick to maintain our health,which is what makes it so
outrageous that that medicaldoctors don't, either one, don't
know anything for the most part,about nutrition.
And if they have learnedsomething, it's almost certainly
wrong because it was, you know,it's based on outdated science.
But a focus on things likenutrition and your natural
environment, the types of toxinsyou may be exposed to that's
(26:09):
focusing on the soil.
And if you don't get that right,then ultimately all you're gonna
be doing is treating symptoms ifyou've got the soil right, most
people, most of the time will bein good health.
And the ideal is that, that welive forever this side of the
kingdom of God.
But the ideal I would say isthat people live long, healthy
lives and then when they, whenthey die, they have a very short
(26:30):
period of time where they getsick and they die.
What we have right now is, we'regood at keeping sick people
alive for decades.
We have excelled at that.
The question is, why are peoplesick for decades before they
die?
And so increase the lifespan,increase the health span too.
But to really do that, we'regonna have to focus on the, uh,
the sort of root causes and thethings that, that keep us
(26:51):
healthy, rather than justfocusing on the incidents in
which it breaks down.
And then you go to the doctor.
Ivelisse Page (26:57):
Yes.
Yes, a hundred percent.
Well, as you imagine ahealthcare system that honors
both science and the sacrednessof life, what encouragement
would you offer to patientstrying to make sense of all
their options?
Dr. Jay Richards (27:11):
My encouragement would be this,
that there's, in some ways neverbeen a better time, to be able
to access this information.
I mean, I was involved as, asyou know, for several years and
still am fighting pediatricgender medicine, trying to close
these clinics down.
And I can tell you, nine timesout of 10, the mother whose
child has been transitionedsecretly at school knows more
(27:34):
about the issue than her child'sprincipal, probably the
pediatrician, uh, the schoolcounselor, because she has such
strong motivation and becauseshe's not only, it's not just
motivation, she has access tothe information.
And that's what's amazing aboutthe time in which we live.
I mean, the fact that BelieveBig exists and can, you know, a
(27:55):
aggregate and can bringinformation and experts together
from all over the place wherepeople don't have to necessarily
be in, in Maryland or Coloradoto be able to access this stuff.
That's, that's the good news.
I mean, if somebody's watchingthis right now, they should
remind themselves, Hey, I'm inthis amazing informational
environment where if I, I workand I use some discernment, I
might, I can find some answersto the problems that I'm, I'm
(28:16):
suffering from.
Ivelisse Page (28:17):
Yes, yes.
Yeah, that was, that was achallenge, for my husband and I,
because back in goodness, 2008.
Dr. Jay Richards (28:26):
Oh yeah.
Ivelisse Page (28:26):
You know, we, we, we, we were searching and
thankfully he knew where tosearch, but it's not what it is
today with the information thatwe have and the tools.
So, absolutely.
Yeah.
It is, you're right about theoptions for today.
And so finally, you know, what'sone piece of wisdom as we close
the episode, would you like toleave with our listeners,
especially those navigating hardmedical decisions right now,
(28:49):
like cancer.
Dr. Jay Richards (28:51):
Well, first what we've already talked about
is the necessity of hope.
And so my wife, right around her30th birthday, we're a lot older
than 30 now, but she wasdiagnosed with papillary
carcinoma.
So it's a thyroid cancer.
She had very severe anxiety andfound peace listing at the time
to CDs by, uh, Christian SingerJohn Michael Talbot, singing the
(29:12):
Psalms over and over.
And I've still got'em burnedinto my neural pathways from
this.
Now we had, she had terrificdoctors, thyroid cancers
actually one of the bettercancers to have'cause it could
be treated really decisively.
But still, I mean, it was also aspiritually, uh, trying
experience in, in, in thatsolace was a absolutely crucial.
(29:33):
The other thing kind of on the,how do we think about this
level, is to think about therise of chronic diseases.
And, and the increase of certainkinds of cancers in particular
that I've been in looking into.
As an example of what's calledin the literature discordance.
And so there's this originaldesign plan.
Think of our human commonancestors, right, that, that all
(29:54):
of us descended from probablymore genetically diverse than
any of us individually.
And the different people groups,we adapted to different
locations and different climatesand different latitudes, uh, but
had all these cer certain thingsin common, we tended to go
outside a lot.
We tended to have experience ofthe Song of Birds.
We tended not to eat 110 poundsof sugar a year.
(30:15):
In fact, nobody did that.
You can list about 50 thingsthat we have changed in really
in the 20th century.
They perfectly correlate withthis massive increase in chronic
diseases, including increases incancer.
And so just a kind of a way tothink about that is, okay, what
if that's true?
How do I, what kind of thingspractically can I do, that will
(30:35):
get closer to the naturalenvironment of the original
human design plan?
It doesn't mean throw away yourphones and you gotta go out and
sort of, uh, revive thepaleolithic lifestyle.
It's just that you sort of startgoing through those things and
what you'll find is.
Oh, we kind of know a lot ofthese things that actually
probably causing the problems.
Ivelisse Page (30:54):
Yes.
Yeah.
That's great advice.
Well, thank you so much fortaking time today to be with us
and to share your insight andyour wisdom.
We really appreciate it.
And uh, and God bless you.
Dr. Jay Richards (31:05):
God bless you.
Great to be with you.
Hope to talk to you again.
If you enjoyed this episode andyou'd like to help support our
podcast, please subscribe andshare it with others.
Be sure to visit believebig.orgto access the show notes and
discover our bonus content.
(31:26):
Thanks again and keep BelievingBig!
Hi, I am Ivelisse Page and thanks for listening to
the Believe Big podcast, theshow where we take deep dive
into your healing with healthexperts, integrative
practitioners, biblical faithleaders, and cancer thrivers
from around the globe.
(00:35):
Welcome to today's episode onthe Believe Big podcast.
My name is Ivelisse Page andit's always a pleasure to spend
this time with you.
Today I am happy to have as myguest, Dr.
Jay Richards from the HeritageFoundation.
He's the Director of the DevoCenter of Life, Religion and
Family, a senior research fellowand the author of more than a
(00:56):
dozen books, including Money,Greed God; Eat, Fast, Feast; and
the New York Times Bestsellers,Infiltrated and Indivisible.
He also produced severaldocumentaries that have aired on
PBS.
And most recently, Dr.
Richards was a keynote speakerat our Believe Big Integrative
Symposium.
(01:17):
Dr.
Richards has such a unique wayof communicating faith, science
and culture.
Today he's helping us unpacksome of the big shifts happening
in healthcare, why patientfreedom matters, how cultural
trends are influencing medicineand what it looks like to make
wise values-based choices inyour own care.
(01:38):
So welcome to the show, Dr.
Richards.
Dr. Jay Richards (01:41):
Thanks so much, Ivelisse.
It's great to be with you.
Ivelisse Page (01:43):
Well, everyone always likes to know what our
guest's favorite health tip is,and so to start it off, would
you be able to share one withus?
Dr. Jay Richards (01:50):
Yeah, absolutely.
Eat for metabolic flexibility.
So that is sort of embeddingmultiple ideas into one simple
piece of advice, but I really dothink that the way God made our
bodies, is we're supposed to beable to survive in different
kind of climates in times whenyou'll have plenty and in times
when there's want.
(02:10):
And as a result, he's given usthese two metabolic systems.
We're like walking aroundhybrids like Priuses.
We don't have of course,batteries in gasoline tanks, but
what we have is that the sortof, glucose side of things in
which our body convertscarbohydrates to glucose and can
store and use that for energy orit can use, uh, dietary fat or
body fat and convert it toketones that our cells can use
(02:32):
that for energy.
Unfortunately, because of thestandard American diet, most of
us never use that second system.
We use the first system wherewe're just constantly on this
carbohydrate glucose cyclethat's about every four hours
and so, the idea of say, going along period of time without
eating a sale, extended fast, oreating ketogenically, it's
(02:52):
terrifying to most people.
But I think what we're doingwhen we do that is that we're
recovering this natural designplan because we live at a time
in which, the, you know, our,our bodies don't, by necessity
have to go without food.
And so we have to actually makeit a practice.
But I think if you do that, ifyou, you eat in such a way that
it's easy for you to switchbetween these two different
(03:16):
metabolic modes, that all thingsbeing equal, you'll more likely
be healthy than not.
Ivelisse Page (03:22):
Yeah.
That is such great advice andit's something that a lot of our
integrative practitioners thatwork with cancer patients are
sharing, that it's reallyimportant to be flexible in that
way.
So thank you for sharing that.
Dr. Jay Richards (03:33):
Sure.
Ivelisse Page (03:33):
So from your perspective, you know, how has
our culture's approach tomedicine shifted over the years
from caring for the whole personto primarily managing disease?
Dr. Jay Richards (03:44):
Yeah, I mean, I think that it happened in
several stages.
I mean, if you read the originalHippocratic Oath, it was very
patient-centered and, uh,Hippocrates of course is not a
Christian, maybe the sort ofclassical Greek and the
Hippocratic Oath was theninfused into the sort of
Christian, European way ofviewing these things for
centuries.
And I always remind people that,even in the Christian West, it
(04:07):
took us about 1800 years tofully get that all men are
created equal.
You know, I mean, I, I say howis it that Christians for
centuries, couldn't abolishslavery.
I said, that's how hard it is,right?
That it took even almost 2000years of a culture being told
all men are created equal tosort of figure out the
implications of it.
And that's the case here.
I mean, the reality is that if,if you're a Christian, you
(04:28):
believe the human being is thisintegrated spiritual and
material whole, and the whole ismuch greater than the sum of his
parts.
And so you need to treat thewhole person and the Hippocratic
Oath respected that in thatyou're dealing, you're not
saying, okay, what's the kind ofcommon good solution to my
treatment of this patient, orhow do I sort of plug in the
interest of this patient intosome big social good?
(04:50):
It's like, no, what is thebenefit, of this particular
patient?
And so I think honestly, first Ia kind of collapse of that, that
worldview that understood humanbeings in their holistic sense
in the 19th century, uh, kind ofmaterialism in which everything
that matters is made of matter.
I came to the fore, that's stillthe kind of dominant
intellectual orthodoxy, at leastin the academy.
(05:13):
So that was part of it.
And then I think a hyperspecialization as we learned
more, you know, so we learnedmore about things.
It turns out even, just studyingan eye or, you know, even just
the nose, right?
You can be a specialist in thesethings.
And so by necessity, no one canhandle all that stuff.
And so you end up with all ofthese, sort of hyper specialized
fields.
(05:33):
And so no one is really askingthe question, okay, what if I'm
dealing with a, a symptom ordisease and what's this kind of
systemic source of this?
It says, look, I was trainedwith this set of blinders.
And so I don't think it'sgenerally a kind of intellectual
deficiency on the part ofphysicians.
I think its that kind ofphilosophical framework we've
been schooled in.
And then I'd say, here's theslightly nefarious part of that
(05:54):
is that there was a concertedeffort, I'd say early in the
20th century to specialize thepractice of medicine so that it
looked like something you'd havein a department, at a research
university.
So anyone, for instance, thatstudies pediatrics will know,
you know, the pediatrics thatwhen it was initially formed was
basically a bunch of scientists,males that wanted to wrest
(06:17):
control of the birth processfrom the midwives.
I mean, it was kind of thatshameless, right?
And so now we have these medicalorganizations that, lots of
great doctors that are membersof them, but if you think the
American Academy of Pediatricsis mainly about patients, you
don't know what's happening.
It's actually, it's an industryorganization.
It's usually captured byparticular industries that have
(06:38):
an interest in financialinterest.
And so all of those thingstogether, I think they squeezed
out both a holistic view of thehuman person in treatment, and
then also tended to alienate anysort of practice or care.
The patients might say, Hey,this works really well, but
doesn't fit in any of the sortof traditional boxes.
(06:58):
And so I think that's why we're,we are where we are.
Why your insurance company canpay for one thing, that you
might say, I don't know howgreat this is gonna be and you
have to pay out of pocket foranother thing.
But that's just the moment inwhich we live.
Ivelisse Page (07:11):
All right.
So why do you think innovativeand integrative medicine or
natural therapies like mistletoefaces so many roadblocks in
today's healthcare landscape?
Dr. Jay Richards (07:22):
Well, I'd say so there's a kind of a perfectly
understandable reason, and thenthere's a sort of dark side.
The dark side is always, and asyou mentioned in my bio at the
beginning, I've written a lot onintersection of economics and,
and ethics.
And the funny thing is, is youmight think we live in a free
market economy in the UnitedStates.
So, everybody loves that andowners of businesses love sort
of open competition.
(07:43):
The dirty little secret is thatif you're a large company that
has massive market share, thelast thing you want is
competition.
And in fact, you might even likeregulations as long as the
regulations give you a carve outand make it hard for small
upstarts to compete.
And so that's what we tend tohave over time in industries is
you'll have massive regulationsthat the massive companies and
(08:05):
entities are actually in supportof,'cause they've, they've
written them for the most part,right?
And they can afford them,whereas a kind of small
entrepreneurial upstart cannot.
Now, so apply that to medicine.
Almost anything that's a, let'ssay a fairly simple natural
compound or, or take something,not like mistletoe, take
something like fasting, right?
If fasting has therapeuticvalue, nobody's making money off
(08:26):
of that, right?
I mean, you're literally noteating.
And so there's not a massivefinancial incentive to promote
that.
Whereas if companies spenthundreds of millions of dollars
to get a drug approved, they'vegot an obvious financial
incentive.
Now, I'm not saying you'd haveto doubt everyone and that
everything that happens is theresult of nefarious financial
incentives.
No.
Most people that I think aretrying to develop products,
(08:48):
they, they are trying to dosomething for the benefit of
their customer.
Nevertheless, if you have thosekinds of interests, then if
someone finds something that,you know, in the case of
mistletoe is a traditionaltreatment, it's widely used in
certain parts of Europe, notthat expensive.
It is, literally though, there'ssome processing involved, this
natural compound compared tosome massive expense like
(09:09):
radiation or chemotherapy, itmight as well be free.
Now it's not, in fact, peoplehave to pay for it out, out of
pocket, but that creates a kindof market situation in which
it's very hard to penetrate itand think of that happening over
and over and over again withtherapies, with medical devices,
with drugs, and all of a suddenyou can see what's gonna happen
(09:30):
over time is you're gonna get akind of alternative market,
that's in, I hate to say it, butkind of a luxury good for people
that are able to afford it.
And then the kind of officialmarket in which all of the sort
of powerful entities involved,whether they're the insurance
companies or HMOs or drugcompanies, they, they all sort
of control that market.
And so, that's why it is sort ofodd that you can get things that
(09:52):
you think, gosh, there's suchlow efficacy and such, such high
risk for this treatment and itcosts a hundred thousand
dollars.
My insurance will cover that,but they won't cover this thing
that costs a couple hundreddollars a month.
That's the problem.
And then of course, there's, youknow, the truth of the matter
is, is some things people trymight genuinely be bad for them.
And so I'd say that's the kindof positive side.
(10:13):
There's the desire to protect,but that desire to protect is
always used as a justificationto prevent innovation as well.
Ivelisse Page (10:21):
Yeah.
And I see that in, in the casewith the, the mistletoe in the
sense of, they'll say, well, ithas to go through all three
phases of a clinical trial, andit's really difficult for
natural substances that can't bepatented like mistletoe to go
through that.
Because like you're saying,there is not a financial benefit
to companies when there's notsomething that can be patented.
(10:42):
So that's why organizations likeBelieve Big and and
philanthropic efforts to makethese natural therapies go
through all three stages here inthe U.S., even though there's
been 160 completed clinicaltrials all over the world on
mistletoe therapy for a hundredyears, it's still not able to be
done, used here conventionallyuntil it's gone through all
(11:03):
three phases.
So yeah, I find that another,you know, huge roadblock.
Dr. Jay Richards (11:07):
Absolutely.
And that's part of the market,right?
Is that the regulatory regime.
Okay.
It's set up obviously to, ifwe're gonna test some substance
that has never been ingested orinjected into a human before,
right.
It makes sense that we'd havethose kind of rigorous
processes.
But as you said.
If this is a natural substanceor an extract of a substance
that humans have been, may beingesting or consuming in
(11:29):
certain ways, for long periodsof time, clearly there should be
some kind of other pathway forthat.
And this is what I always say,look, if something's been in the
human food supply for thousandsof years.
it gets the benefit of thedoubt.
If somebody wants to propose,let's try this weird cotton seed
oil thing, that's where theburden of proof should be.
And it's the same way ifsomebody wants to propose a
highly unusual chemicalcompound, hey, that we need to
(11:53):
have really, really high, uh,rigorous standards for that.
If it's something that's naturalthat humans have experience
with, we're dealing with adifferent situation.
Ivelisse Page (12:01):
Yes, I agree.
I agree.
You know, you've written thattrue human flourishing includes
body, mind, and spirit.
What would it look like if ourhealthcare system truly embraced
that vision?
Dr. Jay Richards (12:12):
I mean, uh, honestly, this is, it's actually
part of what I do at theHeritage Foundation.
I chair an initiative calledRestoring American Wellness,
that is essentially trying tobuild out a policy portfolio
that Robert F.
Kennedy Jr.
articulated in that famousspeech in August of 2024 when he
said that we have this massivechronic disease crisis, uh, we
need to start focusing on theroot causes of disease and not
(12:35):
just treat symptoms, think abouthealth and, and wellbeing and
not just sickness.
And so, that is, you know, it'sa perfect way of framing things
because we're, we have thechronic disease crisis because
of things we've been doing overthe last few decades, and we've
been doing those things in partbecause we're not thinking of
this stuff holistically, and yetthere's scads of evidence for
(12:57):
this.
There's scads of evidence thatwe're body, mind, and, and soul.
In fact, in a couple of weeks atthe Heritage Foundation, we're
gonna have the socialpsychologist Jonathan Haidt, who
has just written this amazingbook, The Anxious Generation,
and it's just about the data wealready have, about the damage
that social media and kind ofhyper interactive screens can do
to the brains of children.
Now, I'm not saying everybodyhas throw there's screens away,
(13:19):
but look, these are untested,right?
And we now have data that thisactually harms kids.
And then so, and that's truejust from the kind of physical
effects of this.
Now remember the fact thatsocial media and the internet
can be disease vectors of toxicideas like gender ideology,
right?
That tells kids they might beborn in the wrong body.
(13:40):
Guess what?
We've had like about 5000%increase in gender dysphoria
diagnoses over the last decadeor so, as smartphones have
proliferated.
And so if you understand that,that humans are not, we're not
just bags of chemicals, we'rebodily, of course, um, we're,
we're mammals, but we're notmere mammals.
We also are spiritual beings.
(14:00):
And our ideas actually have aneffect, can have an effect on
our health and, and on ourbodies.
And so really getting a grasp ofthat, I think that's the kind of
key thing.
If we can get the truth aboutthe human person right in our
medicine and in our publichealth policy, that's gonna help
us orient toward this new way oflooking at things that, okay,
we're gonna focus on root causesand not just on the kinda
(14:24):
specialized symptoms that wemight be looking at in
isolation.
Ivelisse Page (14:28):
Yeah, that's really good.
Um, I actually already signed upfor that event.
Great.
And, to watch it virtually.
We'll also put the link in theshow notes for anyone else who's
interested in, in watching andlistening.
At Believe Big, you know, weoften remind patients that
healing isn't just physical likeyou mentioned, it's emotional
and it's spiritual too.
How do you see faith and hopeinfluencing the healing process?
Dr. Jay Richards (14:52):
No, I think it's absolutely crucial.
In fact, this isn't just ahunch.
I mean, there's, there's realdata on this.
It's true with respect tophysical healing and healing
from disease.
It's true for things as simpleas whether you're gonna get
married and have kids.
If you don't have hope in thefuture, if you think, okay,
every kid that is born as just aone other carbon footprint,
right?
You're much less likely to havechildren than if you think,
(15:14):
okay, God told us to be fruitfuland multiply.
Children are gifts.
Might be hard, but we should doit.
That's gonna have a differentoutcome, in the same way, if you
have now, of course, you mightsee death as an enemy and it is
the death and and illness arethe result of a fall and we
should fight it.
But, there's also a transcendenthope that we have.
(15:36):
None of us wanna suffer death,but we also know that death is
not the end.
And what's funny is that whenunbelievers hear that, they say,
well, if you're always thinkingabout sort of dying, going to
heaven, you're not gonna have agood life here.
It's actually not true, is whatit does, is it allows you to
detach a bit from that so thatyou're not constantly in a state
of panic.
And so I really do think thatfaith, which is faith, isn't
(15:59):
just believing a bunch of crazythings for no reason.
It's a trust.
It's trust, and robust faith,it's trust in the goodness of
God, is just absolutely crucial.
And I think people that, uh,live a life of faith and
struggle with something like,you know, advanced cancer very
often will tell you this.
But we also do know from thesocial science literature that
faith and prayer and andspiritual practices have this
(16:21):
kind of healing effect.
And, you know, again, it's hardto nail that down in a
randomized control trial, butthere is actually some, some
pretty darn good evidence evenin those terms, for this
phenomenon.
Ivelisse Page (16:32):
Yeah, and I think you even mentioned it at the
symposium is that, you know,we're, we're all gonna die at
some point.
Mm-hmm.
No one escapes death.
And I think that's where faithplays a role is that whether
it's now, or whether it's yearsdown the road, we have this hope
of a future of knowing that oureternity is secure in Christ.
And so, that faith gives uspeace in the moment of dealing
(16:55):
with a crisis.
I know it did for me in my lifewhen dealing with cancer and
knowing that no matter howthings ended, I still won.
Yeah.
So I think, you know, faith alsohelps our body to heal.
Like you are saying, the scienceshows that when you're in a
state of peace, your body canheal and restore.
Yeah.
But if it's in a state ofanxiety and stress, it's tight,
(17:18):
it's, anxious and mm-hmm.
It's not gonna be able torestore and to heal.
So faith I agree, plays such acrucial role in, in the healing
process of everyone.
Dr. Jay Richards (17:29):
Absolutely.
And we know the opposite of likeextreme anxiety, right?
It increases your cortisollevels, it increases
inflammation.
It makes you unable to sleep forhealing.
And so now I almost hate to saythat because then if someone is
having anxiety, then they, thatmakes them more anxious.
Right?
But, but it, it's, at least itsort of describes this, this
reality I think peopleexperience.
(17:50):
'cause everybody knows whenyou're in an anxious state.
It's not good for you, you know?
Yeah.
And so if it's true, then agenuine faith is almost
certainly gonna be healing.
Ivelisse Page (17:58):
Exactly, yes.
And reading scripture, you know,when you are in those anxious
states and those breath prayers,that, that really help to get
you through those momentsbecause we all do face fear and
anxious thoughts at, at pointsin our lives, but it's how we
move forward with them, thatallows us to get through that.
So yeah, thank you for sharingthat.
Sure.
Believe Big (18:19):
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(18:41):
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Ivelisse Page (19:39):
So, in overcoming barriers and encouraging change
in our, medical system, what doyou think innovative or natural
approaches or, why do you thinkthey're often resisted by
mainstream healthcare?
Are there barriers more thancultural, financial, or
educational?
Dr. Jay Richards (19:56):
Well, I mean, there's definitely the, the
financial part of that.
There's also, what in WashingtonDC is, is what policy wonks call
this regulatory capture.
And what that is, is you mightimagine, okay, so the FDA or the
CDC, or let's just take the FDA,that's, that's simpler, okay?
Their job is to hold drug andfood companies accountable.
And so there'll be this kind ofadversarial relationship in
(20:18):
which a drug company really hasto prove to the FDA, that
they're on the up and up.
But if you look, it's like,okay, well who funded the drug
study that you're using toapprove this?
Oh, the company that wants thedrug approved.
That seems a little odd, likethere might be a conflict of
interest there.
Where does the FDA get itsfunding?
Very often from privateindustries.
(20:39):
Thousands of of employees at theNIH actually get royalties from
private companies, from privatedrug companies, even while being
government employees.
When I tell people this, they'llsay, why?
Why aren't those people in jail?
I said, because it's legal.
That's, that's how the systemworks.
And so what regulatory capturerefers to is this basically a
collusion or a fusion of whatyou would think of as private,
(21:01):
entities and public entities inwhich you might imagine that
they're adversarial.
Uh, but if you look forinstance, at at, at some of the
folks that had been fired fromthe FDA and the CDC recently,
the really, the, the higher uppeople.
Where did they go?
They inevitably go to serve onthe board of a drug company that
they were supposed to beregulating two weeks ago.
(21:22):
And so, you know, it doesn'ttake a cynic to realize that
okay, a system like that, isprobably going to have some
serious problems.
And, and that's a sort of ironyis that then you can get
substances and technologies thatend up not working really well,
but pass through the officialsymptom or through the system.
Then you'll have alternativetreatments that you have massive
(21:42):
clinical, uh, okay, anecdotal.
But if you've got thousands ofpatients and physicians that
know individual patients tellingyou, look, this made a
difference.
And that's just almost entirely,uh, uh, disregarded or even
treated with contempt.
It's really frustrating,especially, I know for
physicians that arewell-trained, uh, but also
integrative and functional intheir approach, and yet there's
(22:04):
kind of no, there's no slot atthe moment, bureaucratically for
them.
Ivelisse Page (22:08):
Okay.
Well, what practical steps couldhelp to shift policy and funding
of medical education so thatintegrative medicine becomes
more accessible.
Dr. Jay Richards (22:18):
I almost hesitate to to say this because
in some ways, once a practicebecomes official, it kind gets
sucked into this, this sort ofcorrupting system.
And I also think that thebenefit we have right now is
there's a kind of wisdom ofcrowds.
And so, you know, I benefit as aresearcher dramatically from
being able to be on social mediaand I can watch people sort of
(22:39):
argue things.
And so people, if they have somebasic competence, can actually
have the ability to do a lot ofresearch on their own that we
didn't have before the wholeworld is connected, as it is.
And so I think in some waysthat, that, that makes the
integrative, medical approach,quite healthy, being sort of on
the outside, but I also thinkbeing on the outside, it's
(22:59):
preventing a lot of people fromgetting healing, that, that
aren't getting it right now.
And so, I do think that, both atthe N-I-H-N-I-H and the FDA,
there need to be a regulatorystructure set up to recognize
this particular approach.
I mean, this happened with MDsand doctors of osteopathy.
It's happened, you know, ithappens at the state level.
(23:21):
Now it is states, that areprimarily responsible for
regulating the practice ofmedicine in their states.
That's not the federalgovernment.
The federal government regulatesthe, the use and the approval of
drugs.
So a lot of this stuff couldactually happen at the state
level if say, the state ofFlorida, which is very
entrepreneurial.
They have a, a board of health,a board of medicine, a board of
(23:43):
osteopathic medicine, and Ithink a board of a chiropractor
even.
Right.
And so a board of integrative,and functional medicine or
something like that, could be areally good first step because
the Justice Louis Brandeis saidthat our system is a laboratory
of democracy.
In other words, things can gettried in different states,
before you sort of federalizeit.
And so that's the, that's thesort of thing I'm hoping for.
(24:06):
And then also, um, just a kindof release of some of the
owner's regulations at thefederal level that are within
the jurisdiction of NIH or or atAt HHS largely, I mean, I don't
wanna assume everybody remembershow these things work, but H,
health and Human Services,that's the big monster
bureaucracy that Robert F.
Kennedy Jr.
(24:26):
Is in charge of.
And then you have the NIH.
It's an agency at HHS that doesmedical research effectively,
and it's headed by JayBhattacharya.
There's a lot that can happenover a two or three year period
in the so-called rulemakingprocess just to loosen up on
some of the regulations.
But I really do think that theinnovation is likely to happen
in some states and there'll besome leaders, and I wouldn't be
(24:47):
surprised, honestly, if it wasFlorida.
Ivelisse Page (24:49):
Okay.
That's, that's reallyinteresting and it's, it's a
really good point that startingat the state level before making
it a federal is, uh, is a greatway to go.
And, and you often talk aboutthe human flourishing, but what
does that look like when appliedto medicine and patient care in
the future?
Dr. Jay Richards (25:06):
Well, I mean, that's the question because, so
essentially right now we have asick care system, that it's not
focused on health andflourishing.
And the word flourishing youknow, I use that because it
incorporates both the kind ofthe spiritual destiny of people
as well as our physical needs.
And so it's not like, okay, wedon't want for our children,
(25:26):
well, I want them to be reallyspiritually deep and also hungry
and never able to pay the bills.
What you want is that got a fulllife that includes all of these
things.
And that's what medicine shouldwant.
And so if you're focusing on thewhole rather than the parts,
well, focusing on the whole isgonna, A big chunk of that is,
okay, what should we be doingnormally every day when we're
(25:47):
not sick to maintain our health,which is what makes it so
outrageous that that medicaldoctors don't, either one, don't
know anything for the most part,about nutrition.
And if they have learnedsomething, it's almost certainly
wrong because it was, you know,it's based on outdated science.
But a focus on things likenutrition and your natural
environment, the types of toxinsyou may be exposed to that's
(26:09):
focusing on the soil.
And if you don't get that right,then ultimately all you're gonna
be doing is treating symptoms ifyou've got the soil right, most
people, most of the time will bein good health.
And the ideal is that, that welive forever this side of the
kingdom of God.
But the ideal I would say isthat people live long, healthy
lives and then when they, whenthey die, they have a very short
(26:30):
period of time where they getsick and they die.
What we have right now is, we'regood at keeping sick people
alive for decades.
We have excelled at that.
The question is, why are peoplesick for decades before they
die?
And so increase the lifespan,increase the health span too.
But to really do that, we'regonna have to focus on the, uh,
the sort of root causes and thethings that, that keep us
(26:51):
healthy, rather than justfocusing on the incidents in
which it breaks down.
And then you go to the doctor.
Ivelisse Page (26:57):
Yes.
Yes, a hundred percent.
Well, as you imagine ahealthcare system that honors
both science and the sacrednessof life, what encouragement
would you offer to patientstrying to make sense of all
their options?
Dr. Jay Richards (27:11):
My encouragement would be this,
that there's, in some ways neverbeen a better time, to be able
to access this information.
I mean, I was involved as, asyou know, for several years and
still am fighting pediatricgender medicine, trying to close
these clinics down.
And I can tell you, nine timesout of 10, the mother whose
child has been transitionedsecretly at school knows more
(27:34):
about the issue than her child'sprincipal, probably the
pediatrician, uh, the schoolcounselor, because she has such
strong motivation and becauseshe's not only, it's not just
motivation, she has access tothe information.
And that's what's amazing aboutthe time in which we live.
I mean, the fact that BelieveBig exists and can, you know, a
(27:55):
aggregate and can bringinformation and experts together
from all over the place wherepeople don't have to necessarily
be in, in Maryland or Coloradoto be able to access this stuff.
That's, that's the good news.
I mean, if somebody's watchingthis right now, they should
remind themselves, Hey, I'm inthis amazing informational
environment where if I, I workand I use some discernment, I
might, I can find some answersto the problems that I'm, I'm
(28:16):
suffering from.
Ivelisse Page (28:17):
Yes, yes.
Yeah, that was, that was achallenge, for my husband and I,
because back in goodness, 2008.
Dr. Jay Richards (28:26):
Oh yeah.
Ivelisse Page (28:26):
You know, we, we, we, we were searching and
thankfully he knew where tosearch, but it's not what it is
today with the information thatwe have and the tools.
So, absolutely.
Yeah.
It is, you're right about theoptions for today.
And so finally, you know, what'sone piece of wisdom as we close
the episode, would you like toleave with our listeners,
especially those navigating hardmedical decisions right now,
(28:49):
like cancer.
Dr. Jay Richards (28:51):
Well, first what we've already talked about
is the necessity of hope.
And so my wife, right around her30th birthday, we're a lot older
than 30 now, but she wasdiagnosed with papillary
carcinoma.
So it's a thyroid cancer.
She had very severe anxiety andfound peace listing at the time
to CDs by, uh, Christian SingerJohn Michael Talbot, singing the
(29:12):
Psalms over and over.
And I've still got'em burnedinto my neural pathways from
this.
Now we had, she had terrificdoctors, thyroid cancers
actually one of the bettercancers to have'cause it could
be treated really decisively.
But still, I mean, it was also aspiritually, uh, trying
experience in, in, in thatsolace was a absolutely crucial.
(29:33):
The other thing kind of on the,how do we think about this
level, is to think about therise of chronic diseases.
And, and the increase of certainkinds of cancers in particular
that I've been in looking into.
As an example of what's calledin the literature discordance.
And so there's this originaldesign plan.
Think of our human commonancestors, right, that, that all
(29:54):
of us descended from probablymore genetically diverse than
any of us individually.
And the different people groups,we adapted to different
locations and different climatesand different latitudes, uh, but
had all these cer certain thingsin common, we tended to go
outside a lot.
We tended to have experience ofthe Song of Birds.
We tended not to eat 110 poundsof sugar a year.
(30:15):
In fact, nobody did that.
You can list about 50 thingsthat we have changed in really
in the 20th century.
They perfectly correlate withthis massive increase in chronic
diseases, including increases incancer.
And so just a kind of a way tothink about that is, okay, what
if that's true?
How do I, what kind of thingspractically can I do, that will
(30:35):
get closer to the naturalenvironment of the original
human design plan?
It doesn't mean throw away yourphones and you gotta go out and
sort of, uh, revive thepaleolithic lifestyle.
It's just that you sort of startgoing through those things and
what you'll find is.
Oh, we kind of know a lot ofthese things that actually
probably causing the problems.
Ivelisse Page (30:54):
Yes.
Yeah.
That's great advice.
Well, thank you so much fortaking time today to be with us
and to share your insight andyour wisdom.
We really appreciate it.
And uh, and God bless you.
Dr. Jay Richards (31:05):
God bless you.
Great to be with you.
Hope to talk to you again.
If you enjoyed this episode andyou'd like to help support our
podcast, please subscribe andshare it with others.
Be sure to visit believebig.orgto access the show notes and
discover our bonus content.
(31:26):
Thanks again and keep BelievingBig!
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