How to Protect & Magnify Your Energy, Feel Healthy & Limitless, and Reach Your Highest Potential with Dr. Casey Means

This episode delves into the crucial subject of metabolic health, focusing on how improving it can mitigate chronic diseases and enhance overall well-being.

1. Understanding Metabolic Health: Poor metabolic health is a common root cause for numerous chronic diseases.
2. Simplifying Health Strategies: Health can often be significantly improved through straightforward and fundamental lifestyle changes rather than complex medical interventions.
3. Economic Influences on Health: Many industries thrive on the public's confusion about health and wellness, benefiting financially from ongoing consumer uncertainty and dependency.
4. The Power of Diet: A healthy diet, rich in unprocessed foods, plays a crucial role in improving metabolic health.
5. Proactivity in Health: Individuals have the power to dramatically influence their own health through informed choices and lifestyle changes.

1: Introduction

Dr. Casey Means is introduced as a key figure in metabolic health, with a discussion on the prevalence of metabolic issues in America. Yasmin Nouri: "Today we are chatting with our very good friend Doctor Casey Means about how most Americans are now struggling with chronic disease and what we can do about it."

2: The Root Causes of Poor Health

Dr. Means discusses the fundamental misunderstandings and misdirections in current health dialogues, emphasizing simplicity and a return to common sense in health practices. Casey Means: "We're kind of, like, debating about the minutiae of, like, how much zone two training to do and, like, how many minutes of coldplay to do."

3: Economic Interests vs. Public Health

A deep dive into how economic interests shape public health narratives and practices, promoting a dependency on the healthcare system that often fails to address root causes of illness. Casey Means: "And I think part of getting back to health is actually going to be understanding this, like, Matrix that we're living in of a $4 trillion healthcare system, $6 trillion food system, $800 billion fitness industry."

4: Practical Steps Toward Better Health

Discussion on actionable steps individuals can take to improve their health, focusing on metabolic health indicators and lifestyle adjustments. Casey Means: "And then we can understand it, track it, make changes to our diet and our lifestyle, and then track it over time and see how we're doing."

5: Conclusion

Summarizes the key points discussed and reiterates the empowerment individuals have over their health. Yasmin Nouri: "You're essentially telling people you have the power to take control of your health, and you don't have to rely on any other person except for yourself to do that."

1. Monitor Metabolic Health: Regularly check key metabolic indicators such as blood sugar and cholesterol.
2. Adopt a Whole Foods Diet: Prioritize unprocessed, organic foods to reduce exposure to harmful additives and improve overall health.
3. Increase Physical Activity: Incorporate simple exercises and more movement throughout the day to enhance metabolic function.
4. Manage Stress: Engage in mindfulness and relaxation techniques to reduce the impact of stress on metabolic health.
5. Educate Yourself: Stay informed about health topics to make empowered decisions regarding your wellbeing.

Despite spending more on healthcare than ever before, the majority of us are sicker than ever. You might be shocked to learn that 93% of Americans have some form of metabolic disease, which can be linked to practically any symptom or disease including hormone imbalances, PCOS, infertility and more. Knowing this, there is good news. The steps we need to take are the same, and can transform the way that we feel across the board.

In this episode you’ll learn:

* The surprising connection between metabolism and health
* Steps to reclaim your power on a cellular level
* How to protect and magnify your energy
* Top foods everyone needs to eat for optimal health today
* How our healthcare system keeps us sick

Casey Means, MD is a Stanford-trained physician, Chief Medical Officer and co-founder of metabolic health company Levels. Her mission is to maximize human potential and reverse the epidemic of preventable chronic disease by empowering individuals with tech-enabled tools that can inform smart, personalized, and sustainable dietary and lifestyle choices. Her perspective has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, The New Yorker, Men's Health, Women's Health, and shared in her debut book “Good Energy”.

People

Casey Means, Yasmin Nouri, Kaya Perawit

Companies

Levels

Books

Dr. Casey Means's upcoming book on metabolic health

Guest Name(s):

Casey Means

Content Warnings:

None

Yasmin Knouri

Hey, everyone. We're back this week with our health series called Hormone Happy Hour that I do with Kaya Perawit, my co host and co founder. In our business, be a wellness. We interview the top experts in women's health, hormones, mindset, sexual health, and so much more. Health is a huge part of running a successful business and having a fulfilling life.

So it's my honor to share these interviews that show us how to eat, think, move, and live in a way that is designed to help us feel great so, so we can build our own empire. Now, let's jump into this week's episode. Today we are chatting with our very good friend Doctor Kasey means about how most Americans are now struggling with chronic disease and what we can do about it. This episode is so powerful because Casey shares how just a few basic healthy habits can transform our health and give us a life that we deserve, which I love. And it all starts with something called metabolic health.

Kaya Perawit

If you don't know what that means or if you don't know if you have good or bad metabolic health, you're going to want to listen to this episode because poor metabolic health actually impacts almost 90% of Americans, which is really crazy. And it's the root cause of most things like heart disease, hormonal imbalances, including PM's, diabetes, Alzheimer's, migraines, acne, and low energy. So this episode is chock full of really good information. Doctor Casey Means is a Stanford trained physician and co founder of Levels, a health technology company with the mission of reversing the world's metabolic health crisis. Her book on metabolic good energy comes out this week.

Yasmin Knouri

She received her BA with honors and MD from Stanford, was the president of her Stanford class, and has served on Stanford faculty. She trained in head and neck surgery before leaving traditional medicine to devote her life to tackling the root cause of why Americans are sick. She has been featured in the New York Times, the New Yorker, the Wall Street Journal Journal, Forbes, Women's Health, and more. We know you're going to love this episode with Casey, so let's get into it. Casey, we're so excited that you're here today, and I actually want to talk about one question that we get a lot in terms of there's so many debates in the health space of what diet is the best, what supplement is the best, what we need to do for longevity.

But you say this is all a distraction of what really is happening. Can you talk more about that? Yeah, I think, you know, there's so much beautiful stuff happening in the research, landscape, and really good research groups doing amazing work. But I think sometimes we're missing the forest for the trees. Like, literally, american health is nosediving.

Casey Means

We are dealing with chronic disease rates and symptoms in children, in adults, in our parents, at astronomical rates. And life expectancy isn't going down. So there is, like, this big fire blaring, and we're kind of, like, debating about the minutiae of, like, how much zone two training to do and, like, how many minutes of coldplay to do. And I think in some ways, it gets us, like, all in a flurry about, like, what am I supposed to do? It's so confusing.

And I think a real message that I have seen by, you know, going basically so deep into the research and then coming out is like, actually, I think it's a lot simpler than we think. And, you know, I look at some trends that just kind of make me laugh a little bit. It's like we have published over 500,000 papers on nutrition and fitness over the past 15 years that are on PubMed. And in that time, we have gotten more sick and more obese, and people are more confused about nutrition than ever. But you look out into the world, and there's no other animal species that has a chronic disease or obesity epidemic, and yet we're the ones with pubmed and papers and experts.

So what. What is the mismatch here? And I think what it comes down to is, unfortunately, kind of a stark economic reality, which is that so many industries depend on our confusion, and they depend on us being divorced from our common sense, and they depend on us just constantly searching for different answers and purchasing different solutions to all of our angst about what to do. And I think part of getting back to health is actually going to be understanding this, like, Matrix that we're living in of a $4 trillion healthcare system, $6 trillion food system, $800 billion fitness industry, which essentially profit of all of us being confused and spinning around, when, in fact, inside of us, I think there is deep knowing and understanding about what is healthy. And in the kind of charade of the last five years of trust, the science kind of being the mantra du jour, the subtext of that is don't trust yourself.

And in that stew, we've gotten sicker than any other culture in human history. So I think that's kind of what I'm getting at with some of that is like, there is beauty to the science and the evidence, but there's also a level of common sense and body awareness and coming back to just the joy of health that I think is so missing from the conversation right now. Yeah, it's such a good point. You know, I think these little nuances of playing with our diets or playing with the types of therapies we're doing are really interesting, but that only speaks to maybe, what, 3% of the population or something like that. And we really want to be speaking to everybody in this nation because, as you said, we're seeing crazy rates of chronic disease out there.

Kaya Perawit

It's getting very frightening, and even it's affecting our kids. So you talk about this idea of being disconnected from our bodies, which I see as such a big part of all of this. We're constantly. All some of us are looking for the next big health guru or the next big diet that's going to change us. But why do we need to kind of come back home, come back to our bodies?

Casey Means

I mean, I think a lot of this comes down to this culture that we've normalized, which is sort of like the distraction and industrial complex or the busyness industrial complex, where we, I think, all in a way, have bought into this system, this value system, where busyness and quote, unquote, productivity is sort of associated with our inherent value. And one of the outcomes of this, I think, very sort of like, rigid, very capitalistic sort of system that we're in is that we have very little time to just, like, sit quietly with our bodies and hear the signals that it's saying. And the body is literally constantly talking to us to tell us exactly what it needs if we choose to listen. And I think we are so busy, for many of us, it is really hard to actually tune in and listen. And I think it's so funny, you look at something like norms on every strip Mall street corner, there's like a CV's or a Walgreens, these pharmacies.

And, like, if you really think about what these stores are doing, they're not actually generating health. They are symptom squashers. They are about. If you have a symptom, come in here and peruse our aisles and we will squash that symptom for you. Headache.

Here's Advil reflux. Here's nexium rash. Here's a cortisol cream. Cramps. Here's my doll.

So the subtext of this that we just consider so normal is that symptoms are actually intolerable and they're there to be squashed, as opposed to curiosity of really thinking about, what does this mean? The symptoms are a language from our cells that cannot speak in words to say, I am not getting my needs met, or I am being overburdened with something that I cannot handle, and where that showing up is what that symptom is going to be. And we've basically been taught to ignore that. So that's like sort of step one of being disconnected from our bodies. I think the second piece is more technological.

The way our healthcare system has been built, very paternalizing, very infantilizing. It's sort of this idea of like, the doctor is the owner of the health information, and we'll kind of parse that out to you as they see fit, to the extent that it's built into law, where in many of our states, our doctors actually, or the hospital system owns our health records, our own health records and our lab data. And so what happens with that side of the coin is that we don't end up being the owners of our health information. And the beauty of the time that we're living right now is actually that the easy access to lab tests and biomarkers and wearables and bio wearables. The fact that we can now actually access all this stuff, we have this really incredible moment in history where we can learn what this data means.

It's not that complicated. I am a doctor, and I feel like genuinely, every single person, like 8th grade and older, can understand their basic biomarkers and what they mean about their cellular health. And then we can understand it, track it, make changes to our diet and our lifestyle, and then track it over time and see how we're doing. And we don't have to be caught in this confusing web of never being certain of whether the choices we're making are actually serving our goals. We can really tune into our symptoms, we can really understand our basic biomarkers and how they're trending, and actually feel certain about where we stand and how we're doing in terms of our choices and our long term health.

And I think that's incredibly empowering. But that right now, kind of is happening totally outside the conventional healthcare system that in many ways totally benefits off of us not fully understanding our health picture and unfortunately, staying dependent on the system. I feel so grateful to have, you know, women like you on the podcast and just learning so much because, you know, I'm not a doctor. I don't come from the health world. Certain things get me very overwhelmed.

Yasmin Knouri

But just thinking about my own journey, you know, I was on levels, the company you co founded, the glucose monitor, and that was maybe like one of my early steps. And just even being able to understand what blood sugar is, what foods make a difference, like, that was fundamentally game changing for me. And I am not someone who is, like, leaning into science. That's why I have kaya around. I'm always pinging her and you.

But it's just we live in such an incredible time where we have access to, like you said, different wearables and can see different biomarkers. So if we're just educated on where to start, which is so much of what you preach, like, it truly is game changing. And, you know, one thing I want to talk more about, you know, you, you are an MD, you are a doctor. You've seen the impact firsthand of our sick care system, not only as a physician, but also as a family. Do you mind sharing a little bit more about that aspect?

Casey Means

Absolutely. Yeah. So, you know, I think, unfortunately, what my family experienced is what I think a lot of american families are experiencing right now, which is faithfully and dutifully kind of going through the revolving doors of the healthcare system specialist office, taking the pills, going to the appointments, and unfortunately never really healing. And this is what we saw in my mom, who unfortunately, she ended up dying very prematurely of pancreatic cancer. And it was really after 40 years of, again, dutifully going through the system and doing everything her doctors said and then winding up with a lethal condition.

And so just to briefly share my mom's story. So, in her forties, she had me when she was about 40, and I was a really big baby. I was like almost twelve pounds, which is actually classified as fetal macrosomia. Basically, like a clinically very large baby that's usually driven by insulin resistance. And, you know, it's so funny is that the whole lore of my childhood, it was like, congratulations on being such a big baby.

Congratulations to my mom. You had this big, healthy baby. No one really, like, saw that as a warning sign. Then she went on to have a really tough menopause, hot flashes, sleep issues. And then in her sixties, she got all the american diagnoses, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, high blood sugar.

And so many of the doctors kind of were just, I think, said, like, oh, yeah, this is super common. You're in your sixties, and, you know, it's pre diabetes, it's a pre disease. And so it's like, here's the metformin, here's the ace inhibitor, here's the statin. These are just like rites of passage in America. Like, we literally prescribe 220 statins, million statin prescriptions per year in the US.

And the more we prescribe, the more the heart disease is actually going up, which is crazy. And then she's in her seventies, and she has abdominal pain. She gets a TCT scan, and she has stage four widely metastatic pancreatic cancer, and she died 13 days later. And the part that is just so interesting and astonishing to me is that at the time of her death, her ecologist, who, you know, we're being seen at Palo Alto Medical foundation, which is closely associated with Stanford, and she'd been getting executive physicals at Mayo. So what people would say, like, some of the best healthcare in the world, but, you know, they looked at our family and said, oh, my gosh, we are so sorry.

Like, this is so unlucky, we're so sorry. And I think through our conventional western lens, where we look at the body as all these separate parts, and we treat in silos, and we classify diseases based on their symptomatology, based on what the symptoms of the disease are, we don't classify diseases based on their actual cellular physiology. So in that system, sure, the big baby, the bad menopause, the cholesterol, the blood pressure, the blood sugar, the cancer, they all do seem unlucky and unrelated because of that particular lens that we're looking at them as. But through a different lens, which is just as real and actually more accurate, which is looking at what is the invisible physiology happening inside the body. With each of these conditions, the true cellular physiology, what we find is that her cancer was totally predictable, and each of these conditions that she racked up are just branches of the same tree.

And that tree is fundamentally metabolic dysfunction, a core foundational problem in the body that can show up in different cell types as different symptoms. And so I think a lot of people are feeling so overwhelmed with the number of symptoms and the numbers of conditions and all the things that everyone's kind of racking up in the US. And I think the hopeful message is that what the science is really telling us is that these are actually all connected. And the physiology they're connected by metabolic dysfunction is trackable, understandable, and improvable very quickly. But it is going to be slow for the system to move from the outdated approach of the fragmented, siloed symptom management, whack a mole goggles to the root cause, metabolic function connected network biology goggles.

And so, whether we like it or not, that is our job to do as individuals, because it's either that or we wait for the system, which is going to take a long time, because right now, the stark reality is that the. The system benefits off long term chronic illness, and so it's not going to catch up very fast. So it's both a dark message, but also a very hopeful message, because it is something that we can take control of, and it's really not that complicated. Hey, everyone, it's Yasmin here in 2020, I was struggling with some debilitating health stuff. I just got off birth control, and suddenly I had acne, mood swings, breast tenderness, and really painful periods.

D

I tried so many things, but the one thing that worked was something called seed cycling. I know you're probably thinking, seed cycling. What the heck is that? It's a natural way to support your hormones using four specific seeds throughout your cycle. The challenge is that seed cycling can be a little complicated to do and kind of time consuming.

So I decided to make an organic seed cycling product that is so easy to use. We make it effortless for anyone to get started today. It's called bea, and it's a super easy way to add something powerful to your diet, to support your hormones, regulate your cycle, and bring back balance. To learn more about Bea and join our community with thousands of incredible women all over the world, go to beawellness.com. And that's spelled Beeya wellness.com and check out the show notes for our promo code to get $10 off your first purchase.

Thanks so much for listening. And now let's get back to today's episode. Yeah. I find your work to be so empowering, especially coming from a physician, that you're essentially telling people you have the power to take control of your health, and you don't have to rely on any other person except for yourself to do that. I remember in my last pregnancy, towards the end of it, I started to have some high blood pressure.

Kaya Perawit

I was talking to a doctor, like, what's going on? And she said, well, you're 35. It's that age that that could happen. And I thought, gosh, I'm pretty young. Like, what?

I don't understand. And she said, you know, if there's a history of family having high blood pressure, and I don't blame her because that's probably what she learned in school, like, that these things can happen. They're genetic. Not taking into the account that maybe I was going through a lot of stress, I had a family member pass away. I had all these things going on.

And then pregnancy is this huge burden. Maybe that could be, like, part of the issue. But I just love that what you're saying is that anybody who's going through these things, they start to see their blood pressure creeping up, their cholesterol creeping up. They're starting to see more belly fat, whatever it is, they're starting to have these symptoms like, these do not just exist in silos. Take them as, hey, 10, 20, 30 years down the line, this could lead to something bigger, and I can do something about it now.

And luckily, with, like, books like yours and education that you provide, people have the tools to actually reverse these things at home. Do you like, would you say that, like, we have the control to essentially reverse some of these major chronic diseases at home? I think there's lots of evidence that almost every major chronic disease can be improved and in some cases, reversed. I mean, you look at what's going on with Virta health, amazing. Direct to consumer organization that's using the ketogenic diet to reverse type two diabetes, something that we literally didn't think was possible.

Casey Means

The Dean Ornish program is reversing cardiovascular plaques. There are even physicians like Dale Bredesen who are talking about reversing Alzheimer's dementia. Of course you can reverse obesity. So it's. It's sort of amazing that this is even possible.

And, you know, it's something to definitely a point that we make in the book. But it's important to realize is that this is not like an anti doctor book. And I do think there's a role for doctors, for sure. I think that when it comes to metabolic conditions and this protection of our cell on this very fundamental metabolic level that we know is a root cause in so many conditions, the system is really blind to it. And so we can really.

That is a place where we need to take a lot of ownership, because otherwise, we will probably get swept up in sort of like, the standard norm. But for acute issues, I mean, that's really where our healthcare system shines. If we have an acute, life threatening infection, if we have a trauma, a broken bone, complicated childbirth, something where an acute, self limited intervention can really help us, like, certainly that's great. It's where we've medicalized chronic conditions, these conditions that are usually driven by lifestyle and that last for years. That's where our system's really not doing a good job keeping us out of them or reversing them, and where there's exciting things happening outside the system and where just some really basic lab testing can give us a really great sense of where we are, and there are labs that we can get through our doctor, or we can order direct to consumer from amazing companies that are cropping up, like, you know, inside tracker levels.

Function, health, next. Health. Where they're really making it easy to get our hands on some of these markers without having to, you know, haggle with our primary care doctor about it. So it's an exciting time. Yeah.

Yasmin Knouri

And, Casey, just for anyone who's listening, I know we've been throwing around the word metabolic health. Metabolic dysfunction. Can you just, like, give us a brief overview of what that is? And you mentioned there's so much we can do to take ownership of it, so maybe a few things that we can do to improve our metabolic dysfunction. Oh, my gosh.

Casey Means

My favorite topic in the world. Yes, absolutely. So, you know, metabolism, if we think of health as, like, a pyramid, it is the base of the pyramid metabolism, and it is just the most core foundational process that happens in our body. And what it is is it's how we make energy in our bodies to power essentially every single chemical reaction that's happening every second of our lives. So, metabolism, simply put, is actually how we convert food energy to human energy.

And so we take in 70 metric tons of food in our lifetime, around that two to three pounds a day, one metric ton per year. About 70 tons in our lifetime. You know, food is many things, but one of the things it is is its potential energy. It's not energy our bodies can use. It's energy that has to be converted in our body to something we can use.

And every single one of our 40 trillion cells is like a little machine, a little factory, a little city, doing just, like, tons of little jobs all the time. And those jobs happening, well, that all bubbles up into our life. That's what our life is. Our life is the sum total of all these chemical reactions happening in our body. And those chemical reactions have to be paid for by human energy.

And that human energy is created through metabolism. And right now, that's why it's foundational. Like, it's every cell all the time. And if that process isn't going well, we get dysfunction. We get dysfunction in our cells, then we get dysfunction in our organs, and that ultimately looks like symptoms and disease.

And so the crazy part is that right now, in America, 93% of american adults have metabolic dysfunction. 93% of american adults have a fundamental breaking of their cell, where they cannot effectively convert food energy to human energy. So this is an underpowering crisis. This is a battery crisis. This is a dimming of our light crisis.

And why is that happening? It's happening because, uniquely, at this moment in human history, pretty much every aspect of our environment has rapidly changed due to urbanization, industrialization, just the very quick pace of technological advancement. Over the past hundred years, it's adjusted the norms for sleep, for our diet, for our movement patterns, for our emotional health and stress, for our toxin exposure, for the way we even interact with things like light, natural light versus artificial light, the way we interact with temperature, we're in this sort of thermo neutral, 72 degree existence. So across all those seven things I just mentioned, food, sleep, exercise, stress, toxins, light and temperature, the world is radically different in the past several decades than it was for all of human history. And when you actually go deep into the research and look at what is damaging our mitochondria, our metabolic health, the mitochondria is where that conversion process happens.

All these changes are uniquely, synergistically hurting our mitochondria, where we actually do that conversion process to energy. So the chronic disease epidemic is fun. And all this sort of like symptoms that, these chronic symptoms that have exploded over the past 50 years, it's essentially the downstream result in different cell types of fundamental, underpowering metabolic dysfunction caused by a rapidly changing environment that's destroying the part of our cell that makes energy. And this is, you know, kind of makes it clear why there's not a real surgery that can actually fix that. There's not even really a drug that can fix that, because none of these interventions that we rely on in the western healthcare system change our environment.

And this is why the more we spend on healthcare every year, it's now 23% of our GDP in the US is just health care dollars. And for every incremental dollar we spend, the outcomes are getting worse. So, obviously, we're focusing on the wrong part of the problem. That's what metabolism is. Sort of a brief overview of why metabolic dysfunction is happening.

And so in terms of how to. How to help it, step one is figure out where you stand in terms of metabolic health. And that can be done with a set of five or six very simple, essentially free biomarkers that your doctor will order for you. Essentially, it's figuring out if you fit into the definition of metabolic syndrome. So this is looking at fasting glucose, triglycerides, hdl cholesterol, hemoglobin, a one c waist circumference, and blood pressure.

And those together can actually give you, like, a pretty basic snapshot of metabolic health. And then from there, looking at your life, taking honest stock of each of those pillars, emotional health, sleep, stress, food, toxins, et cetera, and looking at where we need to kind of get back to basics, to more natural basics. How do we give the cells and the mitochondria the information they are expecting in each of those pillars, and in a very unemotional way, you know, like, am I getting sunlight during the day? Am I getting too much blue light at night? Am I doing my stress management practices?

Am I eating real unprocessed food? Am I using non toxic products and just really unpacking these things and then making some changes that feel sustainable and rechecking your biomarkers every three or four months and see if it's working. And it really is, in many cases, that simple. And so, so that's sort of the landscape of what it is and where we need to start. I love what you said there, especially kind of this detached sort of view, like, taking inventory, taking stock of where we're at, and then making changes.

Kaya Perawit

Drew, who we all know and love here, he would always tell me, when it comes to your health, because I used to get worked up and, like, what does this number mean about me? Like, what does it say about me? He would say, like, pretend you're an alien. You came down into this body. You see something that needs to be fixed, you fix it, and you're, like, detached from your story.

And I think that changed things for me completely, because I used to feel like, okay, I did something wrong. I'm the problem here. I'm not doing it right. But it's like, no. If we can kind of take a step back, look at the data for what it is, and then take the steps and make that happen, I think that kind of related to what you were just saying, which I think is so important.

A lot of doctors can share that with their patients, because it can feel really overwhelming sometimes to get all this information back and then feel like I'm lost. I don't know what to do. I'm the problem. For anybody who's listening, who metabolic health is new to them. Some of the most major chronic diseases of our time are related to metabolic dysfunction, and then even some things that they might not be thinking about.

Can you share what some of those are so people can kind of make. The relation so the metabolic spectrum of disease is vast. And what that means is that there are dozens and dozens of conditions that we know, know can be directly caused by, or in some way accelerated by this underpowering issue. Now, this is not to say that this is the only cause of these symptoms or diseases. And this is kind of an important framing that I think is helpful for people to understand all symptoms, every single symptom from a minor headache to cancer.

Casey Means

Like a full blown disease, it has to result from cellular dysfunction, because all we are is cells. So if there's a symptom, mood, mental, physical, it's a result of cellular dysfunction. So part of understanding why the disease is happening, why the symptom, how to reverse it, is to understand, like, what's causing dysfunction in the cells, which can be many things, but this is, this is the key thing. In 93% of Americans, metabolic dysfunction is part of that, because we know that there are so many Americans with metabolic dysfunction. So this is a bold claim, but I would say for almost any symptom or disease that you're facing, which we know must necessarily be rooted in cellular dysfunction, this is a path to go down because it's affecting 93% of american adults as a cause of dysfunction in our cells, and it's understandable and in many cases improvable very quickly.

So the claim there is basically saying that you could name almost any chronic symptom or disease, and there is evidence in the literature to support that on some level, it can be caused by or worsened by metabolic dysfunction, since underpowering and metabolism is so fundamental. But to give a couple ones that we know are related, like on the sort of more, I would say there's a spectrum from, like, the sublethal, very frustrating things that can really hit our quality of life to the things that kind of are more immediately going to kind of kill us. So on that. On that former, it's like gout depression, anxiety, polycystic ovarian syndrome, leading cause of infertility, erectile dysfunction, migraines, fibromyalgia, autoimmune diseases of almost any kind. Those are all we know related to blood sugar, insulin resistance, mitochondrial dysfunction.

Then you go to some of the ones that are really, like, taking a toll on our lifespan, and it's cancer, Alzheimer's, dementia, type two diabetes, fatty liver disease, and chronic liver disease. As a result, chronic kidney disease, heart disease, and even increased risk of dying from infectious diseases like COVID-19 or influenza. If we have a metabolic problem, we're much worse off in the face of infectious diseases. To add a few more, actually, to that first category, a lot of skin conditions, eczema, acne, premature wrinkles, and then, of course, belly fat, you know, like just excess fat around the midline, and then on the more severe spectrum, like true obesity. So everything I just mentioned, there's research to suggest that metabolic dysfunction is a big contributor or can sometimes be the main driver of these conditions.

And so, so I think that framing of, like, if you have something going on, even if it's just, like, low energy and fatigue, and you just kind of don't feel your best metabolic health, is an amazing avenue to just investigate because we can understand it and because we can improve it. So even if you're working with a conventional western doctor on, you know, with medication and strategies or whatnot for any of these things, this is still a good avenue to go down, because if. If you improve it, it may improve your condition that you're dealing with, and it may also help set you up to avoid some of these other diseases farther down the road. It's crazy. Casey, as you were going through that list, there was just people that I know who are dealing with it myself having issues that I've dealt with in the past.

Yasmin Knouri

It's like we all know how frequent it is. I mean, you mentioned 93% of Americans have some kind of metabolic dysfunction, which is just wild. So I know you mentioned already throughout the interview a few things, like getting your biomarkers checked and a few lifestyle hacks. But where else do we start? Right?

I know food is a big component of that, but where does someone start if they're wanting to kind of get those first few steps going for themselves? I think one interesting thing is that everyone's journey to having well functioning mitochondria is actually going to be different, because there are so many things that affect mitochondria that for me, it might be sleep consistency and more meditation and less blue light at night. And for you, Yasmin, it could be, you know, more unprocessed food and more steps throughout the day and actually, like, doing more resistance training. So there's different. Like, it's.

Casey Means

It's a lot of it is about sort of taking stock of where. Where there's opportunities in our own life. And in my book, good energy. There's all these quizzes to basically look at each component of your life and just, like, really, again, take that, like, just unemotional stock of, like, what is going on that we could work on, because it's going to be different for everyone. But I think, broadly speaking, the biggest one that we need to really all focus on in this country is the food.

You know, our bodies are 100% molecularly built from food, and food is the energy substrate for our metabolism, and food is the molecules that serve as instructions for our cell signaling pathways and our genetics. So it's kind of unavoidable that we've got to get food right? And the way we get food right, is we eat unprocessed food that is not covered in toxic pesticides. And we eat the vast majority of our, of our food from whole, unprocessed, fresh food that isn't covered in additives or toxins. And, you know, it kind of just sounds basic to say that, but, like, we have so internalized a culture where 70% of our grocery store shelves are the opposite of what I just said.

They are ultra processed, factory created, covered in glyphosate and other environmental toxins, and filled with additives. And that is just step one. We need to make as much of that 70 metric tons of food that goes into our mouths in our lifetime as helpful as possible. So in the book, I talk about that as sort of an overarching principle. Like, we can ignore literally all diet wars, all nutrition controversy.

It's like this is, again, we're missing the forest for the trees. Our food supply is poisoned. Like, we have things in there that we know promote cancer, promote neurodegenerative disease. Like, we got to clean up the food system. And that means, you know, buying on the perimeter of the grocery store, buying at the Fargard's market, not buying the food with 50 ingredients that we can't pronounce.

But if we want to get another layer granular, like I talk in the book about, based on what we know about the science and about the molecules, the body needs to be metabolically and cellularly healthy. There's five main ones that are pretty simple to understand that we can try and get in all of our meals. And so I talk about an antioxidant source, a fiber source, a probiotic source, a healthy protein source, and an omega three source. And that's not, like, fully comprehensive of everything our cells need. But if you focus on getting those five things into each meal, you will cover so many of your bases for giving your body what it needs to function properly.

So the work there is really, and this is, of course, all in the book, but, like, having your mental list of your favorite sources of each of those components. So I think fiber. And I'm like, okay, I love basil seeds. I love chia seeds, I love beans. I love legumes.

I love avocado, which are actually, weirdly, very high fiber for omega three sources. I love sardines, mackerel, salmon, chia seeds for healthy protein. I love grass fed meats, poultry, eggs, et cetera, you know, antioxidants, colorful fruits and vegetables, probiotics. I love kimchi, sauerkraut, kvas, greek yogurt. So having your mental checklist of, like, the things in those categories that you like and what really hits those notes and then, like, eating, honestly, just becomes kind of like mixing and matching something from each and each of those categories, hopefully for, for every meal, but at least throughout the day.

And if you're making your child's lunch, it's like, how do I throw in, like, a little bit of probiotics and some healthy protein and, like, a little bit of omega three source? And it just makes it, I think, easier because if you're vegan or if you're keto, if you're a mediterranean or paleo or whatever you want to do, you can still get all those things in. Um, and so kind of moving past dogma to just what are the molecules ourselves need? And then what can we take out that hurts them, which is the processed sugars, processed grains, processed seed oils, and the additives like pesticides, artificial colorings, preservatives, emulsifiers, etcetera. So that's kind of the big picture, I think, for me, on food is just focusing on what our cells need to thrive.

Kaya Perawit

I love that. And something that I've heard you explain so beautifully recently, and you mentioned earlier, we're spending more and more on sick care or healthcare, whatever people want to call it, than ever before. Our country is more obsessed with diet than ever before, and we're more obsessed with things like exercise than ever before. But we're still seeing all of these problems. Why is our obsession around these things maybe part of the issue?

Casey Means

I think that we can get paralyzed sometimes by thinking that there's, it's very complex. You know, I think, like, I'll just speak for myself with exercise. Even I can fall into this trap where it's like, we know we need to walk 10,000 steps a day, but I also need to get resistance training three to five times a week. And I also need to do hit training at least, you know, 150 minutes per week. And then I also want to do zone two training because, you know, that's what Peter Tia's talking about.

So I need to get on the bike and it's like, what am I supposed to like, this is so crazy. And then you back up and you're like, the average American is walking 3000 steps a day. That's the exercise they're doing. So I think there's a part of it that it's like we get caught up. And at the end of the day, like, our bodies, you look at the blue zones and you look at the people who live to be 100, no one is doing exercise in the sense of like a focused hour of zone two training.

They're living an engaged, active life and doing, taking pride in purposeful work around their home and garden and their communities. And they're living to 100. And so a lot of what I think about in my own daily life is I know my body needs to move throughout the day to be healthy. We know that even just exercising, if you're sitting the rest of the day, it does not ameliorate the damaging effects of sitting. So I know my body needs to be more in motion because that, you know, pushes the glucose channels to my cell membrane and keeps them there.

I know I need to build muscle because that's my ultimate glucose sink. I know I need to get my heart rate up for cardiovascular activity. So how do I actually just build my days in a way that kind of, like, helps me get more of that? So maybe I'm more engaged in house projects where I'm lifting things and just making sure I'm moving things around. More like get excited about moving the picnic table in the backyard with my boyfriend as opposed to seeing it as a chore and parking farther away from the grocery store so I can get more steps in.

And not seeing that as like, oh, this is annoying, but like, oh, I get to get the steps in. Actually just looking at a lot of my activities and thinking, how do I make my seated indoor activities, moving and outdoors? So that just reframes everything. My boyfriend and I, at the end of the day, we're not going to sit on the couch and catch up. We're going to go take a walk or we're going to go throw a football in the park or take a hike.

If I'm seeing you guys or seeing friends, it's like, let's take a walk on the beach. Let's take a hike. Let's cook something healthy together. Let's meet at the farmer's market. Let's go to a breath work class.

Let's go to a meditation class. How do you actually just build in these signals for ourselves into the fabric of our daily life? I have a little box that I put on the picnic table in my backyard that I can use as a standing desk outdoors. You know, I have a walking pad under my desk that I use that was $120 on Amazon, and I can easily get 10,000 steps in two and a half hours. So it's really just, I think, taking stock of your life and building these things into the fabric of our lives as opposed to being obsessed with rigidly checking them off a to do list.

I think what will happen is you will look a little weird compared to other people, but it will end up being, like, fun and joyful, and it will just become part of the routine. And I just think there's almost, like, no going back once you start down that road. So we know our cells need movement. We know our cells need sunlight during the day. We know they need calming activities.

So how do you just kind of take the things you're already doing and just sort of try and add in those things and let them fold into your life, as opposed to being yet another thing we have to kind of check off the to do list? I think that's part of the reframe that can help us. I love that so much. I mean, even following. I mean, I know you.

Yasmin Knouri

I've been your house. I love your setup. But even following you on Instagram, like, I am always getting inspired. Like, I really love how you've built that fabric into your life because it is more sustainable. And even when I asked you, going back to my old question, like, what do we need to do to support our metabolic health?

And you responded saying, well, for everyone, it's different. Like, that is amazing because it's true. Like, sometimes I will get hard on myself. Like, oh, that person is doing resistance training for, you know, three times a week. Like, I'm barely trying to, like, get out to do that, but I'm like, you know what, Yasmin?

You're focusing on your sleep, three meals a day, getting sunlight and steps. And luckily, I have a husband who reminds me, like, stick to the basics. Do what works for you right now. And then you kind of add on top of that. But I think you're just such a role model in, like, how you show up in your life, how you've created these systems in place that are so natural and approachable to so many of us.

So I love it. I'm so inspired. I so appreciate that, Yasmin. And I would just add, the beauty is that no one has to take my word for it, right? Like, I can share the science, and I want to share the science, but, like, the real message I have in the book is, like, do not trust me.

Casey Means

Right? Like, you don't need to trust me. Like, there is a lot in the arsenal of stuff we can do to support ourselves, and we should do what we feel sort of, like, called to bring into our lives right now, and that feels sustainable that we can do that we can afford whatever it is, but you can figure out if it's working for you. You do not have to take my word for it. And the way that you do that is you check in with how you're feeling.

Do you have symptoms? Are you moving towards feeling incredible? Do you wake up with joy and energy and positivity and creativity? And, you know, are you feeling great? And then what are your biomarkers say?

Is your fasting glucose going down? Is your fasting insulin going down? Are your triglycerides going down? Is your resting heart rate going down? Is your blood pressure going down?

Is your hdl going up? Like, is your a one c going down? And, like, those are, those are able to really give you a sense of if the things you're doing are the right things for you to focus on. So I think it's that coupling of, like, you know, this is. I love sharing what I'm doing, and I love sharing what the science shows.

But fundamentally, we should not be comparing each other's yardsticks to each other or what someone else is doing on social media, because we can. We can do the things that we feel are going to most support our own journey when we tune in at the deepest level, and then we can also track it with biomarkers. And that's why it's such an exciting time to be live right now. And we really just need to understand 1015 basic biomarkers, which I think in my book, like, I explain all of them in 15 pages, you know, it's not that complicated. And then we can track how things are going for us, and.

And I think that's just, it's just, it's pretty exciting, you know, because we can surpass the marketing messages, we can surpass the diet wars, and we can feel comfortable with our own journey and not compare ourselves to anyone else. Yeah, I love that. I especially have that goal for my kids. I want them to feel like it's part of their lifestyle, rather than feel like they have to overthink it the way that I have. And I'm working on it, but I just want them to feel like, oh, I naturally want to move.

Kaya Perawit

I naturally want to eat. This way. I'm not obsessing over it. And in your book, and so much of the work that you and your brother do, and I just love that you work with your family, is advocacy. And you say how disturbingly a sick child with chronic disease is the most profitable thing for the largest industry in the world, and that's really upsetting.

To me, what does that mean exactly? Based on the business model of the healthcare system in America right now, which is the largest industry and the fastest growing industry in the United States, the way that that industry makes more money is by having more people in the system for a longer period of time, having more things done to them. That is just an economic reality. It's a fee for service system. That's how we get paid.

Casey Means

And I think sometimes we forget that, like, the healthcare system is not a philanthropic organization. It's not a nonprofit. It's a business. And with the current economic incentives, the business grows when more people are in it for a longer period of time, having more things done to them. So when you extrapolate that, what will be the most profitable a person who gets in the system, frankly, in the fetal life, right.

Yasmin Knouri

It's. It's how early can we get a person in the system? And incentives are powerful. And so while I don't think there's, like, necessarily even evil puppet masters, like, trying to create a world in which kids are sick, there's no incentive for kids not to be sick, because the food industry benefits off kids being addicted to ultra processed food. The healthcare system benefits by having, starting in young age kids racking up metabolic comorbidities, the behavioral issues, the infectious issues, the EnT issues, the ear tubes, the tonsillitis, the prediabetes that now 30% of teens have, the mental health issues that now 40% of 18 year olds have, the fatty liver disease that 18% of young adults have.

Casey Means

So the cancer rates that are going up in children and young adults, you know, and it's like, because of these very top line realities of how this whole confluence of interrelated industries, food, agriculture, chemicals, health care, school, even, are intertwined in an economic web. There is no incentive, really to keep children healthy, because that doesn't serve, actually any, anyone's bottom lines. And then you couple that with a culture that has, in many ways, I think, I mean, there's so many beautiful parts of feminism, but I think one of the darker sides of it is that, in a way, it said to people, like, your value is outside the home. Like, this is a capitalistic society, and everyone, there's an implicit subtext that, like, to live your most valuable life, you have to do something outside the home. And so in many ways, we've also destroyed the fabric of healthy home life, where there's rest and there's quiet and there's home cooked meals, and there's someone sourcing the food thoughtfully and preparing the food thoughtfully.

So we took women basically out of the home, but didn't replace that person with anything. And so we just gave that over to corporations. And, you know, this isn't to say that women should go back and be cooking all the meals, but the reality is that for healthy children, there needs to be someone in the family taking responsibility for three organic whole foods meals being prepared for children. That doesn't necessarily mean by someone in the home, but someone has to be taking responsibility for food because, like, we have to be eating nutritious food to be healthy. So you've got these amazing trends happening with economics of our major industries coupled with social movements that have essentially removed, you know, people from, changed the family structure such that health is not a priority with nothing to replace it but corporations.

And now kids are devastatingly sick. But the good news, I would say, is that, like, this has happened rapidly. This is like 40 years, you know, we know what's happened. It's kind of a failed experiment. The processed food, the eating 70% of our meals outside the home, like the constant social media and busyness, like, it's not, it's not working.

So it's not that complicated. It is simple, but not easy to go back towards what we need to do. But I think a lot of it, if we're really going to be truly healthy spiritually, mind, body and spirit, it's going to look like probably eating more meals at a table with people that we love, that were cooked from home, from food that we understand where the sources, you know, and slowing down a little bit and finding purpose and value again in doing the slower things that build health and taking walks with our families outdoors and playing and connecting with higher purpose and things like that. How do we build that into the realities of our modern life? I think that's the challenge and the opportunity for all of us right now.

And finding ways to do it hopefully with joy, but also just waking up to the realities of the matrix that we're inside of and not letting ourselves just blindly go down the path of what is really an exploitative system for us, for women, for children, for everyone. I've done both. I've been on maternity leave at home with my kid, and I've been working, and I don't know who got it twisted, but being raising a healthy kid and making sure they're good is more challenging than anything else outside of the home. And it's also more rewarding than anything else outside of the home. And I do see a little bit of a movement back toward women especially feeling like this is a big priority for them to raise healthy children and to make sure that they're taking control of their kids health at home.

Kaya Perawit

I know we're running up on time, but I want to just end with one final question. This idea of fearlessness is a big part of your book, and I don't think a lot of people have discussed that idea before. But you talk about how fear driving our choices is leading to a lot of challenges these days. How does modern society. We've talked about it a little bit, but how does modern society set us up to live in a state of fear?

And how can we kind of reclaim our courageousness? An important thing to realize is that our mitochondria inside our cells, they don't just respond to chemical cues like food and physical molecules, but they also hear every thought that we're thinking. And the mitochondria, because they are what create energy, but also channel energy resources in the cell. If we're thinking fearful thoughts or, you know, are in a state of psychological stress or fear all the time, that translates through our neurochemistry, through our hormones, through our electrical physiology in our body. To basically tell the mitochondria, we need to divert resources and energy towards defense and alarm and threat response, as opposed to healing, building, repair, and optimal homeostasis and physiology.

Casey Means

So we live in this interesting time with a confluence of factors that I think are gripping our psychology towards a lot of negativity and fearfulness. And we know this from studies like, the average middle aged american does not feel safe. Like, in their homes, in their cities, and people are not feeling safe. Depression, anxiety is at an all time high. And I think there's a couple of things that are happening.

One is that obviously social media and technology, we have a device in our hands which is streaming the burdens and fears and traumas and violence of 8 billion people directly to our eyeballs 24 hours a day, if we want it to, and we fall asleep with it, it's at the dinner table. It's with us. When we're with our kids, we have a little machine that's terrorizing ourselves through our eyeballs and our ears all the time. This is more than even the 70% of our calories coming from ultra processed Franken foods. This might be the most abnormal thing about our modern world, is that we literally have a sensationalist device streaming fear inducing media that in many cases is manufactured.

Right? Like, we. It's just the CNN technical director during COVID literally was caught undercover on camera saying, if it bleeds, it leads, because they will literally get more clicks if the. If the content is violent and gory. So that's one, two is that in our western world, it's very desanctified.

It's very despiritualized. We're very individualistic. We're very much like, I'm Casey, I'm a self, I am a body that lives and then dies. It's just all so sterile. And I think when you look at so many other cultures in the world, the stoics, a lot of eastern traditions, indigenous cultures, there is this intense curiosity about the cycle of life, about death, about birth and honoring of these cycles, and of the connection with nature and the natural world.

And we're just like, nope, a calorie is a calorie. And a factory farm cow is the same as a regular cow. And we can poison the Gulf of Mexico and it doesn't matter. It's just. It's just very dark.

And so what happens is we not only have the sensationalist media drilling into our eyeballs, we have an existential, bigger fear, which is we're petrified of mortality, were petrified of a sense of meaningless, I think, in our life from this sort of sterile, disconnected world we live in. And then I think just social isolation. Loneliness is an all time high. We accept it as a culture. We just let social isolation happen during COVID with barely any data to support that it was going to be valuable.

We're allowing disconnection, not realizing that connecting with people we love in person literally creates biochemical changes in our body that promote metabolic health and health. Oxytocin, serotonin, parasympathetic nervous system activity. So we're accepting a world that is fabricating fear, disconnection and existential angst on us so that we become small, dependent, fearful little beings locked in the four walls of our house, 93% of our time, not out in nature, seeing how beautiful the world really is, glued to our screens, and then consuming anything that could possibly mitigate our pain, which is all the dopamine surges we try and find in our culture. And so I think that this is probably the hardest journey we have to go to on the reversing the chronic disease epidemic, especially as women, because, and I think so much of, like, our true healing, if we really are going to, like, continue as a species and get back on track, because, you know, infertility, as you guys know, skyrocketing up 1% a year, this isn't going to end well. And I think and women's bodies are basically saying as loudly as they possibly can, this environment's not working for us because we're going to shut down reproduction because it's so effed up.

So I think a lot of it is going to be women sitting back and reflecting on the miracle of our bodies, not only to be alive, but to create life, to spend more time in nature. To say, I'm not buying into all this, I'm actually going to step back and slow down. I'm going to spend time in nature. I'm going to reflect on what matters. I'm going to reflect on the fact that I am a life giving miracle that can only create the most productivity, which is life, if I accept that there are cycles to life.

There are yang periods, summer, spring, and there are yin periods, autumn, fall, just like our menstrual cycle, just like the tides, just like all of it. And I think, so a big part of, I think healing is going to be people, and especially women, realizing that to actually cultivate life force within us, light and true, true health, we have to unplug from the fear sensationalist matrix that has been manufactured for us that we actually can unsubscribe to spend more time outside in nature, reflect on our miraculous bodies and our life giving potential, and then protect it and believe that it's worth protecting. And I think that that's just. I think that's a journey that I've had to go on. And I think that, you know, many of us have to go on because no one's going to hand it to us.

It has to start by believing we have something to protect. And I certainly believe in humans, and I believe in women. I believe that we do. So that's what I'm really talking about with that, that idea of fearlessness. I have full body goosebumps right now.

Kaya Perawit

Seriously. So beautiful. And I love what you said, casey, because I've been thinking a lot, like, this whole podcast, just listening to you for an hour, like, you really made me believe that it's worth protecting. I know that. But after understanding my cells and everything that happens inside myself, like, it makes me feel more protective of how I kind of operate and show up in this world, because sometimes there are days where I might not keep that up front of mind.

Yasmin Knouri

So I think, you know, your mission, you're doing it. You're putting it out there. We're so excited about your book and the quizzes and making it like, customizable for everyone. So big congrats. We can't wait to share it.

And this, this was such an honor. Casey, thanks for joining us today. Thank you, Casey. Thank you both so, so much.

D

Thank you so much for listening to this episode of behind her empire. If you enjoyed this conversation, it would mean the world to me. If you would consider leaving a review or even sharing this episode with someone who might be inspired to create their own empire. To stay updated on new episodes or join our private community, visit behindherempire.com to sign up. We send inspiring and short emails every week to your inbox.

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