Dr. Gabor Maté on the Joe Rogan Experience #1869, fact-checked
“70% of American adults are on at least one medication. 70, yeah. 40% are on about two at least.”
What the evidence shows: Maté's figures echo a widely cited 2013 Mayo Clinic/Olmsted Medical Center study (Mayo Clinic Proceedings), which found that 68.1% of a defined American population (all ages, not just adults) received a prescription from at least one drug group in 2009, and 51.6% received prescriptions from two or more drug groups, 21.2% from five or more. Maté's 70% figure is a close, if slightly rounded-up, restatement of that widely reported 68.1% statistic, but his 40%-on-two-or-more figure understates the study's actual finding of 51.6%. A separate, methodologically distinct NHANES-based JAMA study found that 59% of US adults aged 20+ reported using at least one prescription drug in the prior 30 days as of 2011-2012, somewhat lower than 70% because it measures a 30-day recall window rather than a full year of pharmacy records; the same study found polypharmacy (5+ drugs) at 15%. Both studies confirm that a majority of Americans use at least one prescription medication and that a substantial share use multiple, though the exact percentages vary by data source, year, and methodology. The claim is broadly consistent with published research on medication prevalence, though it conflates a study population that included minors with "American adults," and its 40% figure for two-or-more medications is lower than what either underlying study actually reports.
“30% of my clients were indigenous people. They make up 5% of the population. 30% of the people, of the men in jail in Canada, 50% of the women in jail in Canada are indigenous people.”
What the evidence shows: Maté's figures track closely with Canadian government data on Indigenous incarceration, though exact percentages vary by year and by whether provincial or federal custody, and admissions versus population snapshots, are being measured. Indigenous people made up roughly 5% of Canada's population as of the 2021 census. Indigenous men have represented around 30 to 33% of male admissions to federal custody in recent years, matching Maté's figure closely. For women, the disparity is at least as large as Maté described: Canada's correctional investigator reported that by April 2022, Indigenous women reached parity with non-Indigenous women in federal penitentiaries, making up about half of the female federal inmate population, up from roughly 40% just a year or two earlier. Overall, the claim's population percentage and the general order of magnitude for both male and female incarceration rates are well-supported by official Canadian statistics, even though Maté did not cite a specific year or source and the precise women's figure has fluctuated around, rather than sat fixed at, 50%.
“So, for example, there was a study out of Harvard University, I think three years ago, women with severe PTSD have double the risk of ovarian cancer.”
What the evidence shows: A 2019 study by researchers affiliated with the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, using data from the Nurses' Health Study II, did find that women reporting high levels of PTSD symptoms had roughly double the age-adjusted risk of developing ovarian cancer compared with women with no trauma exposure (hazard ratio 2.10, 95% CI 1.12-3.95). However, this association weakened and lost statistical significance once the researchers adjusted for known ovarian cancer and health risk factors such as smoking and hormonal history (adjusted HR 1.86, 95% CI 0.98-3.51, meaning the result was no longer statistically distinguishable from no effect). The study was observational and prospective/retrospective in design; the authors explicitly framed it as showing an association requiring further mechanistic research, not proof that PTSD causes ovarian cancer. Maté's citation of "double the risk" is accurate to the study's headline unadjusted figure and the timing (roughly three years prior, matching the September 2019 publication) is correct, but presenting it as an established causal finding overstates what a single observational cohort study, with a weakened and non-significant result after adjustment, actually demonstrates.
“the more adversity you had as a childhood, the more risk you are for addiction, for mental health issues, for relational issues, and also for autoimmune disease and malignancy.”
What the evidence shows: Maté's claim draws on a well-established research tradition, beginning with the CDC-Kaiser Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) studies of the 1990s, linking childhood adversity to a range of adult health outcomes. A 2026 umbrella review in eClinicalMedicine pooling 36 meta-analyses/systematic reviews and over 6 million participants found ACEs are associated with elevated risk of non-mental medical disease generally (odds ratio approximately 1.57, graded 'highly suggestive'), but the strength of evidence varies substantially by condition: headache, irritable bowel syndrome, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease showed the most consistent, highly suggestive associations, while cancer and autoimmune disease were among the conditions covered by the reviewed literature but were not highlighted among the top-tier evidence grades. Individual reviews of specific autoimmune conditions, such as a 2022 systematic review on childhood trauma and multiple sclerosis, found associations in most included studies but explicitly cautioned that results should be interpreted cautiously due to inconsistent measurement, small study sizes, and confounding. Overall, the evidence supports a real but modest and multifactorial association between childhood adversity and later disease risk, including for autoimmune conditions and cancer, rather than the strong, near-deterministic causal link implied by framing adversity as directly driving these outcomes; genetic, environmental, and lifestyle factors are considered co-contributors rather than adversity alone.
“Now there was a study out of Massachusetts, I think, which I quote in the book. I think 2,000 women were followed over 10 years. Those who were happily married and didn't express their emotions were…”
What the evidence shows: No study matching Mate's description (a Massachusetts study of 2,000 women followed for 10 years, finding a 4x mortality risk) could be located. The closest identifiable research on emotion suppression and mortality is Chapman et al. (2013, Journal of Psychosomatic Research), which used a nationally representative US sample of 729 adults of both sexes (the 2008 General Social Survey-National Death Index cohort), followed for 12 years, and found emotion suppression was associated with hazard ratios of 1.35 for all-cause mortality and up to 1.70 for cancer mortality, well below the 4x figure Mate cites. Current evidence supports a modest association between emotional suppression and increased mortality risk, but nothing near the magnitude or specificity Mate describes.