Just a few months ago, Casey Means, MD (Casey’s Substack) took the main stage at the biggest US healthcare conference, Erin Martin and I were there and we recorded her. We’ve shared some of the highlights in the video above.
Erin ran into her, I had serious FOMO!
She is now the nominee for US Surgeon General. There is debate. There is excitement, there are naysayers.
She is a co-founder, of Levels which put continuous glucose monitors on the map for many pre-diabetics with easy access to CGMs and an easy interface to track the results. She is a NYT best seller - Good Energy: The Surprising Connection Between Metabolism and Limitless Health
To compare, our last Surgeon General was a Dr. Vivek Murthy, an internal medicine physician by training focused on youth e-cigarette use among youth, mental health stigma, the need for social connection and the opioid epidemic. Prior to Dr. Murthy we had Dr. Jerome Adams, an anesthesiologist, focused on opioid crisis, COVID-19 epidemic, health equity and community-based health initiatives and who prior to his appointment, was the Indiana State Health Commissioner.
Like I’ve said before, let’s not kill the message even if we don’t like the messenger when the message is what is needed. It’s bold and it could lead to the systemic change we write about. For most on this substack, the message is music to the ears.
As for the messenger I will let her speak for herself here. She has made her message clear over the past few years. Here are a few key quotes.
I like to stay neutral and listen, but on this one, I’m Team Casey.
“We can’t have a healthy society without well-functioning humans. We can’t have well-functioning humans without well-functioning cells. And we can’t have well-functioning cells with mitochondrial dysfunction, oxidative stress, chronic inflammation, and cellular and hormone disruption from toxic chemicals in our food. We combat those things through nutrient-dense, unprocessed foods grown in living, thriving soil.”
“More than anything, I would like to see our future White House rally Americans to be healthy and fit”
“I think about metabolic dysfunction as the trunk of the tree of all these branches that are actually quite connected... erectile dysfunction is one tree, and depression is another tree, and dementia is another tree, and heart disease is another tree... Fundamentally, they’re all linked by this core process that is totally hijacked by our modern diet and lifestyles.”
“What we know is that one of the key fundamental triggers of inflammation in the body is dysregulated blood sugar and metabolic dysfunction... And nine of the ten leading causes of death in the US are exacerbated by high blood sugar or metabolic dysfunction.”
“We’re on track this year to have more new cancer cases than any year in human history... autoimmune diseases skyrocketing, depression, anxiety, skyrocketing... And we are somehow still buying into this idea that the more money we throw at the problem with the same approach that we’ve been doing, the better it’s gonna get — and that is totally false... they’re all fundamentally metabolic driven issues.”
