Welcome to Grounded Wellness, your go to podcast for
simplified and trusted information on how to live a
more non-toxic and holistic life.
We are your hosts. I'm Bethany McDaniel, founder of
Primarily Pure biohacking enthusiast and mom of three.
And I'm Courtney O'Connor, holistic esthetician with over
15 years experience in the healing power of touch and
holistic skin care rituals. The United.
States spends a staggering $4.5 trillion on healthcare each
year, yet the reality is clear, we're only getting sicker.
Dr. Casey Means, a Stanford trained physician, has seen
first hand how the medical system is not only broken, it's
rigged. The structure and incentives of
our healthcare system are not designed to promote health, but
to keep us dependent and sick, rewarding doctors for managing
illness instead of preventing it.
In today's episode of Grounded Wellness, we dive into the deep
rooted corruption within the medical system system, the blind
spots that keep us stuck, and why reconnecting with God,
nature, and ourselves is the only path to true healing.
Let's dig in. Casey, welcome to Grounded
Wellness. I'm so excited to be chatting
with you today so. Excited to be here on your
beautiful farm. Oh my gosh, I know.
And we're drinking liver smoothies.
It's the first time you've ever tried a liver smoothie and
you're like, I'm. Almost done with it.
I'm so glad. It's really good.
It's really, really good. I'm going to be done with this
in 2 minutes. Yeah, you can barely taste it in
here. Amazing.
I was really nervous because before we started recording,
Casey told me that she the last experience with liver was when
she was 10 years old and she threw it all up.
And so this is this has maybe been a redemptive experience for
you. I'm.
I'm I'm going to start making this.
This is good. So you have been everywhere this
last year. You have exploded in popularity.
You launched your book Good Energy earlier this year, and
you have since been on so many popular podcasts, including Joe
Rogan, Tucker Carlson, Andrew Huberman.
You have testified before Senate regarding the current state of
health or lack of health in America, petitioning for
government change in that area. Everyone I know is posting about
you and talking about you. How has all of this been for you
and did you see any of it coming?
I mean, it's been, it's been amazing to see the reception
that this message and obviously I'm not the first person to talk
about this. There's dozens, hundreds,
thousands of practitioners and people and advocates who've been
talking about metabolic health and holistic health and a return
to natural healing for a long time.
And I think that then these are all so many of these people are
like my, my heroes who have come before me.
And, you know, I think something that I, I've really come to to
realize is that for these monumental problems that we're
facing in culture right now, like we need many different
messengers and many different doorways to get into really
understanding the topic. And I've been given this life
experience with climbing the ladder of academic medicine and
getting very sick and disillusioned and then losing my
mother to preventable metabolic disease.
And so for me, it was all about like, I think that my journey in
life has been to help me have a particular doorway into this
issue and share it in a book was just felt something that I had
to do. And then it's almost like
there's this moment in America and the world right now where I
think things are getting so challenging for so many people
in terms of health and lifestyle and something's just not quite
right in our culture. Like there's just some, I think
everyone sort of feels like something's off.
We're going in maybe the wrong direction.
That the book hit in an interesting way at this moment.
And then of course, with an election coming up and sort of
this being a topic that was starting to also be talked about
by Bobby Kennedy, it was just a fascinating confluence of events
that happened and my brother being tied in more with the
political world for for many years, he ran campaigns back in
his 20s and did political PR. And so, you know, it kind of in
retrospect and hindsight, it all makes sense.
And I just feel very fortunate to be part of what I think is a
much more collective movement of people striving for a better
world for themselves and their families.
And also a deeper understanding it's happening about the
relationship between the environment and the body.
Like that our path to healing the Earth is not just about
carbon capture. It's about understanding this
complex ecosystem we live in that's in flux between the the
body and nature and all of those things coming together.
So yeah. So it's it's beautiful to see
how that the book played into it.
And, you know, I think, but I think it's something so much
bigger that's happening and, and the funny sense, like I, I'm
such a believer, you know, and sort of like energy and sort of
just like that at every step of the book.
And, and I think ever since my sort of awakening in the
surgical world of like the system is broken, we're just
really denying like some of the obvious things that are
happening around us and being told to just like trust the
experts when actually like Rome is burning and, and sort of
really getting in touch with trusting my intuition more.
I've really followed my intuition and sort of like the
energetic pull of, you know, really trying to get quiet and
listen to like what is needed of me in any given moment.
And this book sprung out of that energetic state of just writing
what was true for me and what felt right.
Even if it, you know, who knows, like maybe it would put me under
different. I talked about doing
psychedelics in the book. I talked about a lot of personal
things in the book and but I really focused on just letting
energy flow through me onto the page as honestly as possible.
And so in a sense, because of my faith, I believed that if I did
that and I committed to that, the book would actually really
resonate with people. And I think that if I'd done
anything where I tried to make the book something that wasn't
the actual energy flowing through me, I don't know if it
would have been, if it would have resonated with people as
much. So that kind of feels very
validating to continue doing that in my life because I think
a lot of it, a lot of the world wants us to actually suppress
our intuition and do things the way we think we're supposed to
do them. And I don't see that working out
really well for me or or most people I know who who do that.
So. Totally.
I love that. I think it's amazing what
happens when we honor that, that calling that, that we're feeling
and, and follow that instead of like suppressing it and, and
like you said, kind of going the direction that maybe you feel
like you're supposed to go in. In this last season of life for
you, how have you honored your your body and like what helps
you to feel grounded? I know you've been traveling so
much, like you've been doing so much, but how are you like
staying well and healthy and prioritizing that in this season
of life? Yeah, it's been a big challenge
and it's definitely been a year that's tested me from that
standpoint because you write a book about health and holistic
health and honoring your body and then you go launch it and
basically a book launch is like the opposite of that.
So I think I would actually do things a little bit differently
because I do think I I burned it out a little bit too much this
year. And you know, the things that
were like pretty non negotiable for me are food.
And so I even on the road and I traveled so much this year, I
always was packing just massive bags of home cooked food and
literally freezing food to bring on the plane so that it would be
defrosted in the place that I went and packing, you know, the
regenerative beef sticks and the wild caught tuna packets and all
of it just so that I would always have real food.
Because to me that's like, I cannot function at my highest
level if the atoms going into my body each day or suboptimal.
Like we need the food to be right.
That's to me, food is so foundational, so.
I've heard with flying too you can bring an extra bag full of
food or can a carry on right? Literally my motto of this year
is this is my food bag. Yeah.
And and I don't sat out tonight. MY2 good stuff.
Sonia, who who jokes about this because she's the food bag
queen. But I will walk through TSA and
they'll say, ma'am, you got a you, you can't have that third
bag. And I go, this is my food bag,
which it is. It's a bag full of 20 lbs of
organic food. And they just go, Oh, yeah, go
ahead, go ahead. And I'm like, Oh my gosh, this
is. It's an amazing hat.
Everyone needs to know about that.
You can also. Bring frozen liquids on a plane
you can bring so if you freeze. Things I didn't know that I knew
that with like breast milk, but. It's not solid when it goes
through TSA. That's that's OK.
Wow. So that's, that's another
little. And I mean that's go ahead, take
my word on that. Totally.
TSA can do whatever they want. But typically if something's a
solid, it's OK. So, so that, so food was a big
one. I really did try my best to
sleep like I am such a big fan of my aura ring because I think
that something I've learned in my life is that I pretty much
need 7 1/2 hours of sleep time asleep, You know, because if you
wear wearables, you know, like you actually have to be in bed
for about 8 1/2 hours to get 7 1/2 hours of sleep because you
lose a bit, a little bit of sleep with.
But if I can average about 7 1/2 hours a week, I'm pretty much
able to be OK. So the weeks where that was
suffering and I was more at like 6 hours and 45 minutes of sleep
on average for the week, I would just cut stuff.
I'd be like, you know what Saturday like I'm putting my eye
mask on, I'm putting my earplugs in, I'm taking Valerian route,
I'm cancelling everything in the morning and I'm sleeping for
like 9 hours. And that's not the best way to
to manage sleep where you like overdo it and under do it.
But for me having the data to tell myself you have permission
to cut so you can get to what you need was really valuable.
Tried to get at least 10,000 steps in a day whenever I could.
I also scheduled Zoom like sessions with my trainer and my,
my amazing trainer, Monica Nelson.
We would do Zoom training where I'd be like, OK, I'm going to be
in a hotel room on this state. I'm going to have no equipment,
no yoga mat. I'll just have my bands and like
I'd let her know so she'd be able to plan a workout for
whatever I had. So kind of just trying to make
it work. But I think, you know, I think
that travel is a big wear and tear and I've really realized
that flying too much and changing time zones, especially
at this moment in my life, it was like a cycling mid aged
woman. It's it's not great for my
biology. So actually, I think what I
would do differently is less travel if I launched another
book and trying to do as much remotely as possible.
I've been astounded by how air travel and time zones, they're
just, they do take a big when you're really in tune with how
you how good you can feel. I think that hit of too much
travel has become very pronounced for me.
So I try to really say no to to events where I have to travel
over time zones and be back and forth very quickly because it'll
wreck me for a couple days and I feel it.
So if I am going to do that, I try and really maximize sleep on
the day after. And then I just load up with
antioxidants. I'll take 2000 milligrams of
liposomal vitamin C, I'll take 2000 milligrams of turmeric.
I'll take more of the sort of antioxidant supplementation to
help quell some of that radiation stress and and all of
that from the travel. Yeah, that can be so draining.
And I think just having the tools to know like how to
mitigate some of that is so powerful.
And also like it's just a season of life at the same time, like
you are doing something that's so powerful and purposeful.
And in that there's I think that is healthy.
Like I think having a mission in life is healthy and following
that and living into that and it's like super fulfilling.
And so I think like maybe that's not it's not what your life's
gonna look like all the time. But I think those kinds of
seasons are also OK. Like even if you are making some
sacrifices health wise. I agree.
I really do think about life in terms of seasons.
And you know, we've got the seasons of the month, you know
that 4 cycles of the menstrual cycle and you know, they
basically correspond to spring, summer, fall and winter, you
know, ovulation, summer and menstrual phase, winter.
And so honoring that within a month, but also honoring it in
like bigger periods of time. Like this was a season of Yang
from basically like January to October.
And it was amazing and it was purpose driven and it was the
best time of my life. And it also took a lot out of
me. And now it's winter, actually,
it's November and I've made the decision to like not do that
much, right. We're not actually traveling for
two months and so. We're.
Recovering and like getting and and also less talking, more
thinking, you know, I mean, we're talking now, but but
really intentionally being like I'm going to focus on my
newsletter, I'm going to focus on reading.
I'm going to focus on generating rather than just expressing.
So that season as well of like cultivation verse sharing.
And to me, when I get into that, that mode takes a lot of
boundary setting because it means disappointing people and
saying no and this and that. And yet I think part of the
journey, especially as a woman, has been honoring what I know it
takes to actually cultivate my own light and having faith that
that can help others. And then setting the boundaries
to let myself cultivate light and knowing that the constant
Yang is actually going to, over the long term, suppress it.
And I think that's a challenge that like in the modern world, I
personally, and a lot of women like have to kind of go through.
How do you trust what you can create that requires you to
actually sometimes set boundaries so that you can rest
and cultivate? Yeah, that word trust is like so
key, I think like trusting, like, OK, I'm not gonna become
irrelevant if I'm not like doing every single thing that's asked
of me all the time. Like I can take time and and
then come back to something later and and that'll be OK,
Yes. And then my message isn't going
to like disappear. The message isn't going to
appear. The algorithm's not going to
totally forget you. I've heard everything you know
you've got to post every day. You got to post on every
platform. I'll go weeks without posting if
it's not because again it and it is trust and faith.
If you believe that honoring what what you feel needs to come
through you on a given day, a given week, a given season, a
given year, then and trusting that over the lifetime that is
going to give the most. But that does take trust because
we live in a world where it's all about every day, Monday
through Friday, 300 days a year, you must be productive.
And so to actually say like, it's November and it's Tuesday
and I don't know if I'm going to do anything work productive
today and then thinking, but this year has been the most
productive of my life. This is OK.
This is what I might need to have another spurt.
And that's like lost in our culture.
I'm just realizing now that we're talking, you are barefoot
and I am not barefoot. And we.
Oh my. Gosh, I didn't even notice it.
Also reminds me one of the things that actually has really
helped me this year to beat to feel grounded is I will find a
park in any city that I'm in. And you know, if I'm in Austin
and I will go lay in the grass and literally just lay there and
take some deep breaths like a like a starfish.
And so if someone has seen a six foot tall redhead rolling in the
grass in a random city, like that's me trying to come down
from travel. And it's like, it's actually so
this feels so good. But like, I am astonished when I
just lay in my backyard for 10 minutes in the middle of the day
in between calls it it actually feels like a total state change
for me. It does so much like it is the
most underrated health hack out there.
And I have a lot of like biohacking equipment at home.
And I talked about this on the podcast.
Sometimes I have an infrared sauna, hyperbaric chamber, all
these things like grounding is at the top of my list on like
things that recharge me and help me to feel good.
And especially after flying, like when we're exposed to
radiation and all of these things that are just unnatural,
connecting with the Earth is such a powerful way to mitigate
that. Totally just like on your back,
fetal position, whatever it is on the grass and in the sunshine
especially those two things together with a deep breaths can
transform an entire day. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
And especially like near a body of water, like a lake or an
ocean, just kind of takes it to another level.
I've heard recently that grounding in the like the ocean
is one of the most grounded things cuz of the electrons or
whatever. I don't know the details
exactly, but like it's so interesting because I always my
fiance, he's the most Zen person I've ever met and he's in the
ocean a lot, you know, and he goes to the ocean as his reboot
and it's just I. Don't really want.
Coincidence there? Yeah, Yeah.
Well, all of this is not being wasted.
I mean, your message is is so powerful and it's been received
very well by so many people. And I think the thing that's
cool about it is no matter where someone is at in their health
journey, there is a take away there like from all of the
information that you share, like I'm 1012 years in now to like
really being mindful of what I'm putting in my body and how I'm
living my life. And I learn so much every time I
listen to you. And then people that listen to
you for the first time, I think things like really start to
click for them. I know when I started to hear
things like, you know, all these years ago about how Coca-Cola is
like funding the American Diabetes Association and how
medical textbooks are heavily influenced by Big Pharma, it
just all kind of made sense to me of like, OK, I can see how
these companies and associations are seeing dollar signs and are
seeing an opportunity to make money at the expense of people's
health. And like, I want to opt out of
that. I don't want any part in that.
I'm going to do my own thing. But I think that's like, partly
due to my rebellious nature and not everyone, it doesn't like
click for everyone right away. And I think people just kind of
trust the status quo. But you are breaking things down
with so much validity and credentials and like sound
information that you're presenting that people are like
really starting to listen. And I think it's so exciting.
So can you give us a breakdown of kind of the current state of
health in America and share some of the statistics that really
like highlight where we're at as a country?
Yeah, for sure. I mean, it's, it blows me away
to just think about some of these statistics.
But so in the US right now, 2024, over 50% of American
adults right now have type 2 diabetes or pre diabetes.
So that's almost 100% preventable.
This is not type 1 diabetes, it's type 2 and pre diabetes.
And that's 52% of American adults and over 30% of teenagers
now. So they used to call type 2
diabetes, adult onset diabetes can't be called that anymore
because so many kids have pre diabetes and even type 2
diabetes. Unbelievable.
You've got, of course, overweight and obesity and 74%
of American adults now and close to 50% of kids.
I always think it's wild when I see those pictures.
I've seen a lot of these lately of like a beach in the 60s
compared to like a beach now and just the difference in how
people look is. Astounding.
Yeah, it is. And it's really, it's so
interesting when you kind of think about it and back up, it's
like taking all the emotionality or anything about body shaming
out of any of the conversation. And we just think about like,
what is fat? Like fat is the storage form of
energy. It is our body taking excess
resources that it can't use to make energy and putting it in a
storage form. That's what fat is.
And when you think about the fact that the thing that makes
us alive and not dead is the ability to convert potential
energy to human energy through the mitochondria, that that's
the only reason we're all here and not disintegrated into the
soil is because of mitochondria converting energy from outside
of us to inside of us to keep everything working.
And the world is so now hostile on every level to our
mitochondrial function, environmental toxins, synthetic
pesticides, circadian biology, disruption, not moving enough,
not sleeping enough, eating ultra processed foods, food
additives, all these things are poisoning this beautiful part of
our body that converts potential energy to human energy.
And because of that, and because we are eating so many ultra
processed foods that drive us to eat more than we need, those two
things together, like the broken machine and the weaponized food
together, obviously create a situation in which we are not
converting that substrate to human energy, life force, and
instead we're storing it as fat. So the fat that is in, you know,
excess in 74% of American adults is actually a representation of
something fundamentally disharmonious between our world
and our cellular biology that's leading us to have a
dysfunctional process of the most miraculous thing that we
do, which is convert things outside of us to life force
within us and. That's such a good breakdown.
It's just crazy though, like, and we, we, we, we Add all this
like cultural stigma to the idea of fat being fat or being obese.
And it's like it doesn't that that that that distracts the
conversation. You all seem to just look at it
from a mechanistic level of like.
What's really happening? Yeah, why are we 3D printing a
storage form of energy instead of using it?
And simultaneously, why is chronic fatigue and chronic pain
and brain fog and Alzheimer's and all these things that are
essentially subjective signs saying that our life force is
being dimmed? We're literally losing our minds
and our thoughts. We are.
We don't have attention, we don't have energy.
So life force being dimmed, energy storage going up, all
because we live in a world now that we've created out of hubris
for efficiency that's destroying our core cellular biology.
Like this is not that complicated, but it's so it's so
valuable for people to distract that conversation towards oh,
you know, we can't talk about it because it's shaming people or
because of equitable access to food or this or that.
Like as a physician, as a medical person, like those
things matter. And also like we must speak the
truth. There's a problem going on
inside our bodies that's actually disturbing the flow of
energy through our bodies. And that's showing up as both
all these different multitude of symptoms and the 3D printing of
excess energy that can't be used.
So it's just an imbalance in Archie, you know, in like prana,
in the thing that we're meant to do, which is be conduits of
solar energy to human energy. It's blocked.
That's dark. We should talk about it like
we're not. We're distracting the
conversation. And when you talk about
metabolism, so I grew up and I think a lot of us grew up
thinking of your metabolism as just either how quickly or how
slowly you burn fat. But there's like so much more to
it than that, right? That goes into like how we
utilize like food for energy and, and how that works.
And I know you talk a lot about metabolic dysfunction, but how?
What? What does that mean exactly?
Yeah, I mean, well, the mitochondria so.
So when we talk about metabolic dysfunction, we're we're
fundamentally talking about a problem with how the body makes
energy. Like where these incredible
machines were made of 40 trillion plus cells, human
cells, a lot more bacterial cells.
But all those cells are like little cities.
Each one is like a little individual city that is doing
trillions of chemical reactions per second.
So trillions of cells each doing trillions of chemical reactions
per second. And all of that activity
fundamentally bubbles up into this conscious experience of our
life. And when that activity stops,
we're dead. And when that activity slows, we
get sick and or isn't working properly, we get sick.
When it's all buzzing along properly, we're healthy and
we're thriving and aging is slowed and all of this.
So metabolism is how we transform energy.
So that whole machine, every chemical reaction, all of it, it
all requires energy. It all has to be paid for and it
gets paid for by our body. Be able to convert the 50 metric
tons of food we take it in our lifetime into an actual form of
energy that we can use to power ourselves.
So that that beautiful process, that's metabolism.
It's a conversion process, very complex orchestration in our
bodies through digestion and hormones and circulation and
intracellular metabolic processes and mitochondrial
function, all this stuff that if everything's kind of unburdened,
it goes through and we're well powered in our little cities are
40 trillion little cities of cells work well and we have
health and we're happy and we, you know, we live a long time
and then we usually die very quickly when sort of that time
is up. And it's not the slow decline
towards death that we're all experiencing.
So that's metabolism. And you know, I think what's so
interesting is the mitochondria, the part of our cells that
actually convert at the, the end stage of the food energy to
cellular energy, a form from outside of us that we can't use
to an energy that we can use. That mitochondria.
It does more than just convert energy, create ATP like we all
remember from high school biology.
The mitochondria, it's, it's not just the powerhouse of the cell,
it's the motherboard of the whole cell.
It is an immune it It determines our immune function.
This the mitochondria. If it's not getting what it
needs, it can incite what's called the cell danger response,
which is actually the cell sending out distress signals to
recruit the immune system. It creates hormones.
The mitochondria can can is part of hormonal generation.
It also the mitochondria emits photons.
The mitochondria literally is a light emitting organelle.
We are bioluminescent. We actually have the ability to
emit. We don't just take in photons.
We also emit photons weekly. But that's amazing.
And so it does all these different things aside from just
being the powerhouse of the cell and what good energy is really
about. And what the, the point of the
message I'm really trying to share is that there's just,
there's a unique thing happening in the modern world right now
that's very recent, which is that all aspects of recent
industrial urbanized modernity for whatever reason are all
hurting our mitochondria. So the ultra processed food
hurts the mitochondria. The lack of nutrients in our
food because of our soil depletion under resources, our
mitochondria. The sleep deprivation hurts our
mitochondria. The blue light hurts our
mitochondria. Not getting enough sunlight
hurts our mitochondria. Not moving enough hurts our
mitochondria. Sitting too much hurts our
mitochondria. Environmental toxins, the 10,000
food additives, many of them directly hurt our mitochondria.
The stuff in our personal care products hurts our mitochondria.
The chronic stress hurts our mitochondria.
So it's so and I can't, I don't know why God's doing this right
now. I don't know what the reason is,
but for some reason the last 100 years basically, I mean, I would
say like since the light bulb was an invent and until last few
100 years, there's been this March towards a world that is
antagonistic to our mitochondria.
That's interesting. I don't, I don't know why, but
that's what's happening. And that's what this book is all
about is like the evidence for that, that each one through
different mechanisms is destroying the seat of our life
force. And so because of that, we don't
we aren't able to convert energy properly.
So we store it fat and we don't get enough energy dysfunction of
our cells, underpowered cities in our body, ultimately cellular
dysfunction, organ dysfunction symptoms that happens all over
the body. So the trunk of the tree of our
chronic disease epidemic is metabolic dysfunction and
underpowering of our body. And it's showing up as 100 plus
diseases because in different parts of the body, underpowering
looks like different things. In the retina, it could look
like retinopathy. In the penis, it could look like
erectile dysfunction. In the ovary, it could look like
polycystic ovarian syndrome. In the blood vessels of the
heart, it can look like coronary artery disease.
In the brain, it could look like Alzheimer's, ADHD, autism,
fibromyalgia, migraines. All of these we know are rooted
in the process of metabolic dysfunction.
But our siloed medical system and our disconnected, siloed
world doesn't see connections. We are all indoctrinated to not
see the connections between things because silos are
profitable. If you have a patient seeing 15
specialists, it's a lot more profitable than a patient who
learns how to support their mitochondria, heals it, and
everything kind of melts away. So.
How about how I've always thought of it is like at its
core, any symptom, any issue, health issue is it's cellular
dysfunction, but it shows up differently depending on like
where you're vulnerable, right? Like, so I think in the past
we've always thought of everything as being genetic,
like anything you get must be genetic, But it's like, no, I
mean, yes, maybe that plays a role in it and where where
you're kind of vulnerable. But also like often times the
cure is like the same for for, you know, something is an issue
and you're gut or something as it would be for any name, any
given medical condition. You know, it's like getting your
cellular biology to work how it's supposed to.
But like you said, we're up against so much in our modern
world. And I think that people
generally think like, well, this is all normal.
Like we think of everything, you know, the foods that we see at
the store that everyone's eating, like everyone's doing
it, It can't be that bad. The products like we think of as
being safe because they're sold on a store shelf and they must
be OK, but that's not really the case.
Yeah, no, it's not. And I think this is the
awakening that I think is happening right now is that
basically since like World War 2, I mean, we didn't really have
ultra processed foods before. People don't realize in our
lifetime, maybe being in our 30s, yeah, it all seems normal.
That's what we've always seen. But in the course of human
history, this is just a blip. It's a, it's an experiment gone
awry. That's just, it's not working.
And you know, so we started having ultra processed foods
after World War 2, shelf stability, all sorts of things.
And then 1970s it really started skyrocketing, especially after a
bunch of cigarette companies bought ultra processed food
companies when that. Was a shocking revelation.
I did not realize that. How do you weaponize food to get
people to eat more? Because that's going to increase
quarterly returns. And yes, I've heard you guys
talk about this, you and your brother.
So all of the scientists, the food science or the scientists
from the cigarette industry, once that was kind of on its way
out, got moved over to the food industry to try to figure out
how to make food as addictive and cheap as possible.
I mean, addiction is the best business model for a
capitalistic society where you don't have any responsibility
for externalities of your business, which is the way it
is. We don't live in community.
We don't think about anything other than quarterly returns.
So it doesn't matter what you're doing to health or the
environment or anything. That is the unfortunate reality
when the thing that we worship is money.
And so nothing could be more profitable than getting someone
to be addicted to someone, whether that's food or
medication or a general victim mindset that makes them, you
know, feel addicted to stress and wanting drama, you know, and
then creating a chaotic world where everyone's in need of
purchasing solutions for their problems.
Yeah, and it's happening. And the the younger it happens,
the better it is for everyone profiting off of it, right?
So like kids now are being inundated with these foods that
are wrecking their health and then being prescribed drugs to
help with those symptoms and, and you've got a lifetime
customer. That's right.
So talk to us a little bit about how, like kids specifically are
being impacted by all of these, like, modern stressors and
toxins. I mean, it's so wild right now.
So yeah. So 30% of teens are pre
diabetic. close to 50% of kids are overweight or obese.
One in 32 kids in America or one in 36 kids in America has autism
now. It was like one in 100 and 5020
years ago. One in 22 kids in California,
where we live, have autism. Yeah, what is it about
California? I think it's hard to know.
I, I mean, I think it's, it's, it's certainly must be
environmental because these numbers are going up
astronomically. But you know, it's really hard
to know. I think it's, you can speculate.
Was it the we're huge agricultural state that uses a
gigantic amount of pesticides and so there's a lot of
environmental toxins? Is it, you know, something about
the way our waters manage? Is it the fact that we have no
religious exemptions for vaccine?
So we have a very high vaccine rate and doctors who there's a
new I think it's a law in California where if a doctor
gives more than five medical vaccine exemptions per year,
they start to get a watch. List.
I've heard that. Yeah, so you, you have a very
high vaccination rate, you have a high pesticide use.
You, you know, we'd have to look at the water, the air quality,
the, you know, what's happening with support of pregnant women
and nutrition and pregnancy and things like that and just all
the different factors stress, so.
But but the rates are going up so astronomically that like we
know this is environmental. So the, the fact that we're not
really allowed to talk about that.
And it's somehow, again the the playbook of saying it's shaming
families to talk about the modifiable factors that are
leading to these childhood chronic diseases.
That's asking questions. Not even.
That's not even allowed. No.
So autism is going up, fatty liver diseases, 18% of children
now have fatty liver diseases. That disease you really only see
in like older Alcoholics in the past, you know, chronic liver
failure from metabolic disease is now starting to surpass other
causes as the leading cause of liver transplants.
We've got asthma going up, autoimmune diseases going up in
kids. We've got depression, anxiety,
ADHD going up. We've 36% of 18 year olds have a
mental, behavioral or emotional issue It's it's and
developmental milestones seem to be slowing down and this the CDC
is actually putting out new timelines for meeting
developmental milestones because kids are falling behind It's
astonishing and so. Why are we changing the goal
post based on where people are at?
We're in when we're in such a dismal place.
Because apparently it's too challenging to stop poisoning
kids. You know, right?
That's, that's literally what the message is.
We, we and then of course, it's like how much, how many kids can
we medicate? Because that's actually the
public health solution. Instead of figuring out how to
actually just get kids healthy food and more time outdoors and
better sleep and good less toxins, we're actually going to,
it's a simpler solution to medicate them for life.
And you know, and, and it's just, we're living in a bizarro
world. That's the reality.
And we all need to wake up that this is eminently solvable.
And there's nothing simpler about medicating kids for life
than figuring out how to get organic food to kids for life.
It's not more, it's not more expensive to do that.
It's just not the priority because it's profitable, right?
So, so kids are being destroyed and there's just there.
The reality is I there is nothing more profitable in
America right now than a sick child.
Because if you can get a kid from fetal life, which is what's
happening now, kids are being born chronically I'll because
they're getting sick in utero from toxins and metabolic
dysfunction. If you can get them sick from
the moment they're born, then you have someone who can be
addicted to ultra processed food and requiring medication for
7080 years and. And Western medicine's really
good at that, at at keeping people alive regardless of
whether or not they're thriving. Yes and no.
I mean life expectancies, we are living seven years less than the
Japanese and the Swiss. Like it's we, we always say
like, well, America's good at keeping people alive.
And I kind of thought that. And then like, but we're
actually not, not like our life expectancy is going down every
single year for the last three or four years.
And, and there are countries in, in the world where people are
living on average 10 years. So a Japanese man versus an
American man, the Japanese man will live 10 years longer than
the American man. And if people from those
countries come to the US, they will get that life expense hit
because it's about our environment here.
So we're not even that good at keeping people.
I mean, we have the highest infant and maternal mortality
rates of any developed country in the world.
So we're not even people alive. We are stringing people.
Along we, we are we, we don't value life in this country.
We don't value the life of the soil.
We don't value the life of people.
People are, I don't think there's any necessarily like
pharma executive or food executive who actually sees
people this way. I think it's actually just a
system of incentives that's kind of blinding us.
So what's going on? But the way we're acting in
America right now is that human life is a box that you can stick
things into or take things out of for profit.
And once that box is eliminated, like there's more, there's
another, there's, there's 300 million more we can.
So we need to get our priorities straight.
Yeah, yeah. Let's talk about the medical
system, because you you have said that the medical system
isn't actually broken, it's rigged.
What I mean by that is that the fundamental incentives of the
healthcare system are not to create healthy patients, it's to
create more profit. It's a business.
It's a business designed to grow.
The healthcare industry is the largest and fastest growing
industry in the United States, and it makes more money by
having more people in the system, having more things done
to them over a longer period of time.
So that creates the incentive structure and business model of
healthcare. The just reality of it is that
every institution involved in our health in America makes more
money when we're sick and less money when we're healthy.
So because of that simple business model problem, there's
really no incentive for these gigantic industries and hospital
systems and clinics and surgery centers to be focusing on
prevention, nutrition, exercise, sunlight, non-toxic living,
because all of that actually feeds into less profit.
So until that business model changes, any doctor.
In the system who's focusing on intensively focusing on
prevention, nutrition, the modifiable aspects of disease is
basically doing pro bono work. They're not really getting paid
for it. You get paid.
I mean, imagine. And again, every doctor I know
is a good person. Every doctor I know went into
medicine to help people. And also, we live in a system
where our paycheck is tied to how many patients we can see
every week. And if that business model has
influenced how research is done, even at the NIH, that has a
rampant conflict of interest in the industry.
So the the way the research is being done pushes us towards
sort of a reactionary sick care model because that's profitable.
And the way medical schools are teaching about health is all
about reaction sick care model. Wait till someone's inevitably
sick and then swoop in. That's what we're learning in
medical school. So the research tells us that.
The medical school education tells us that no one's
mentioning that like, Oh yeah, the, the hot, the, the medical
schools are expects accepting millions of dollars from
pharmaceutical companies and food companies.
And then you go into practice and the guidelines are all based
on reactive sick care whack of all medicine and you get paid
for that. You end up being a doctor with
the noblest of intentions who's only seen one playbook across
research, education and practice and payment.
And so then at age like 35, to be like, wait, I trust this
system. I believe in this system.
Could it be all wrong? That's a big step to take, but a
lot, a lot of people are doing it.
Especially when you think about how much the cost involved in
the time and everything that goes into half a million.
Dollars into your education, sacrificing the prime years of
your life, divorces, depression. I mean, doctors and all
healthcare practitioners go through so much, which I think
is also a little bit by design, because if you can get people to
like give up so much, it's going to be especially hard to have
them reject it. And I, I'm not, I don't think we
should reject the Western medical system.
And I make this very clear in my book, is that the healthcare
system does produce miracles and it is incredible for acute
issues. Acute issues are issues like
trauma, car accident, gunshot wound, overwhelming infection,
something that's going to kill us immediately.
When you have an issue like that, I and everyone should go
to the doctor and get help. And there's no, there's, there's
no shame in that. It's like there are, there's an
amazing resource for that that's based on the tools of modernity.
And I appreciate it. I respect it.
It's incredible. But 90% of our healthcare costs
are not going towards acute issues right now.
They're going towards chronic issues which are rooted in our
lifestyle and our diet and the world that's no longer conducive
to cellular biology. So we've essentially taken the
trust that's been engendered by our incredible approach towards
acute issues, which is intervention, aggressiveness,
drugs, surgery, and said, well, that works for this bucket of
things. We're going to apply it to this
whole bucket of things. But though that huge bucket of
things over here isn't caused by an accident or a bacteria, it's
caused by decades of being poisoned by our environment.
And so it doesn't make sense to use that hammer for for those
issues, right? And I always had such an
awakening when I was in, had a neck surgery, ear, nose and
throat surgery because I kind of remember thinking like I was in
the operating room with this patient.
I think it was like a little delirious because I've been like
on call so much. And it was like the fifth
surgery of the day. And this I talk about this
patient in the book, which is that she had, she was on like
her third revision sinus surgery.
And we were going to put her on conscious and do another
surgery. And I just kind of was thinking,
she's going to be back. What about this surgery is going
to fix this issue? She's back every year for her
antibiotics and her steroids and ultimately her surgery.
She's got all these other health conditions that I never think
about because that's not my lane.
And like, what are we really doing here to help this person?
We're kind of changing the plumbing.
And then it kind of occurred to me.
Every disease I treat in ear, nose and throat is inflammatory
sinusitis, laryngitis, thyroiditis, otitis, Cellulitis,
perititis, itis is inflammation. All the conditions we treat in
ENT are conditions of inflammation.
And I, I just felt both like excited and dumb at the same
time when I had this sort of awakening of like, you can't
operate on the immune system. Inflammation is the, the revving
up of the immune system in response to a threat.
But I can't cut out the immune system.
I can't operate on the immune system.
So what are we doing? What is causing this patient's
body to think there's a threat? What is the threat?
And then realizing I went to Stanford for eight years.
I'm five years into my surgical training and I've never once
thought about this question. What is the threat?
Why is every patient I'm seeing? Why is there immune system on
high alarm? It's like it had never occurred
to me to ask why it what the way it works is you just have a
patient in front of you who has chronic inflammation, their
immune system's revved up and that's just a fact of life.
You never go backwards to say, well, why?
It just is. It just is this patient just has
heart disease. This patient just has sinusitis.
And once I once I had that thought, once those two neurons
fired, I was like, shit, I can't really.
I knew it that I knew it was Pandora's box opening.
And now we're like eight years later and everything about my
life has changed, but. Yeah, Let's back up a little bit
and talk a little bit about your background.
And, you know, you were at the top of your class on Stanford
Medical School surgeon, you know, super like just what
everyone strives for. And.
And you get to this point where you realize that what you've
been taught isn't actually like fixing problems for people.
Yeah, in in medical school, was there ever any talk about like
prevention or, or lifestyle or diet, Like was that ever a topic
of conversation or something that you learned?
I think that there were like nods to the concept of
prevention, but I wasn't given any tools to really help
patients with that. You know, of course, in a
cardiovascular disease block, it's like primary prevention is
important. And we do that through
counseling patients to eat healthy and exercise. 5 minutes,
right? Like a throwaway comment.
What does that even mean? How do you counsel a patient?
That's not enough information to really help someone.
And then it's like days and days about pharmacology and surgery
about those conditions. So I'm not going to say that
like the word prevention wasn't mentioned, but I did not, I was
certainly not equipped to actually help a patient reverse
disease through dietary and lifestyle antigens or even know
how to test for what are the underlying true pathologies that
may be leading to a patient's problems.
And then nutrition, there was none, absolutely none.
No, no court, no actual class on nutrition.
And four years of medical school we had, I remember 1 lecture
from Christopher Gardner, who's like a very famous nutrition
researcher at Stanford who does really cool nutrition work.
But it was like a little like he popped in for a lecture about
how garlic extract in a randomized study that they did
at Stanford, like didn't prevent heart disease.
And like that was the lecture. And I was sitting there like, is
this really all we're going to learn about?
I was very interested in nutrition even at that time.
And I'm like, is this a joke? Like is this, is this actually
like, like this is it? And, and that was, that was
literally all the nutrition. I mean nothing.
And of course, now looking back and really understanding like
one of the biggest threat signals to our bodies in the
modern American world is this Frankenfood industrial ultra
processed food that we're eating.
You know, we're putting, we put 2 to 3 lbs of food in our body
every single day and that food is a foreign substance now.
Ultra processed food is a threat signal to the body.
End of story. And to think that I was a
chronic inflammation Dr. An ear, nose and throat doctor.
Basically a chronic inflammation Dr. And you could say that about
probably any, any medical. Doctor, cardiologist,
endocrinologist, obesity medicine, everyone.
'S an inflammation of different parts of the body exactly.
And I just, yeah, I just so much of my perspective on the body
now comes from a sense of compassion.
And it's like so many people, most of us at this point are
probably chronically inflamed. It's the, in the book I talk
about the trifecta of metabolic dysfunction is chronic
inflammation, mitochondrial dysfunction and oxy of stress.
So chronic inflammation is one leg of that stool, and they're
all interrelated. Chronic inflammation is the body
mounting a war against a threat. That's what it is.
It's in the immune system mounting a war against a
perceived threat. And that war generates all these
war bombs, cytokines, immune chemicals that go around the
body to activate more immune cells to help it can calm down
if the threat goes away. So if it's a bacteria or a
virus, the immune cells eat those cells, they destroy those
cells, they get rid of it, they clean it up, and it settles
down. But if the threat doesn't go
away, the chronic inflammation and the war and that collateral
damage never goes away. That's the average American body
from fetal life until old age now.
And all our symptoms in part are the collateral damage to being
bombed all day by immune activity.
And there's not a single doctor coming out of conventional
training who has a mindset from their training.
They might personally have learned this stuff on their own
time to ask the question, what are bodies afraid of?
What is the body mounting a war against?
If we asked that question with curiosity and compassion, we
would all go down the road of looking at our world and looking
at what's in our food, water, air, homes, our stress, all of
it, and realize our cells are afraid because the world has
changed and we no longer know how to handle it.
And so. Genetics haven't changed in the
last 50 years. Everything around us has.
And so you get to this moment where you're starting to ask
these questions and have these realizations.
Where did you go from there? Well, I, I discussed it with
people in my medical in the world that I was in of ENT and
it was really met with intense disparagement.
Like you didn't go to medical school to be a nutritionist.
You know, a lot of worse things than that were said with profane
language, but like, essentially like stay in your lane.
You're a surgeon like what are like.
Which is a huge part of the problem, right?
Everyone's staying in their lane and not looking at the body as a
connected being. Yeah.
And I actually, it really, it wasn't just the department that
was resistant. I also found it was so
interesting that the patients were resistant because I would
kind of like in your fifth year of residency when you're chief
resident, you're just about to launch to be like a totally
independent surgeon. You have your own clinic
basically where you don't have as much supervision because
you're kind of like practicing the launch.
And so I could do a little bit more of what I wanted.
So I would talk to some of these patients about nutrition.
And something interesting I found was a lot of patients
didn't really want to hear about it because they had come in with
their 250 pages of chart notes from 10 years of different
specialists, revolving door, different medications, nothing's
working. Everything's getting worse.
And they come to the office. And if you, this young medical
doctor says to them, have you tried nutrition?
It's sort of like, are you effing kidding me?
Like, I'm, I'm debilitated. Like if nutrition was going to
work, someone would have mentioned it.
Like kind of like, how dare you? And so it made me realize like
even the patients who of course want the best of their lives, we
are indoctrinated on every level of society to not believe that
the simple natural things will work because we are just wedded
to glorifying technology and innovation as the answer.
When in fact, actually gentler nudges are usually what is
needed in nature to make systems work better.
Not domination and control Med surgery, but actually like
multimodal holistic nudges. But because we were not born
into a world that values that, it's hard for a patient
sometimes to even hear that recommendation because it's
like, what are you talking about?
Like what's the next generation thing we can try, not what's the
the simpler thing we can try. So there were of course patients
who loved having more of a holistic minded resident doctor,
but both in the department challenging the world view
that's not really accepted because if they have to, if they
want to engage with me, they have to then in some way reject
their belief system. And for the patient, it's a
little bit of having to reject the identity of trusting what
all those past doctors had said. So what I came to realize is
like, well, first of all, that I couldn't practice in this system
because on every level being in that system, I knew I couldn't
change it from within. I I just somehow knew inside my
body. I had to actually change it from
the outside. Some people warriors are inside
the system still academic doctors like a raw Lustig and
they're still fighting this from within.
I knew I had to be. I was being so depleted from
being in that system, I had to leave.
So I started Co founded levels and I got trained in functional
medicine and I ended up writing the book and all of this stuff.
But but I do think what a lot of that brought up for me was this
is more than just, oh, I'm just going to tell people about a
great way that we can help people and everyone's going to
accept it. No, this is actually about
people have to change their identity in a way and have the
the sense of boldness and self trust to actually be able to
question what they've built their life on both patients and
clinicians to move forward. And that's scary.
This is more of a tribe issue. So it's a different kind of
strategy we have to take to move the world forward because it's
not just about like here's a great option, everyone come,
that's not happening. You see what's happening in the
newspapers. We people talk about holistic
health. They're called all right or, or
woo woo. This is happening because it's a
threat to an identity system and a tribe and tribalism is
hardwired into our, into our, into our brain stem and so.
I think about that a lot. Like, what is it going to take
for people to change their mindset on this stuff?
Because I see this with my parents and my grandparents.
Like when I first learned all of these things, I was like,
shouting it to the rooftops and probably not in the best way,
but like, wanted everyone to do what I was doing and to, like,
abandon conventional thinking when it comes to health and
food. And I, I just thought that
everyone I knew would be like, oh, wow, like, thanks for
telling me. Like, yes, yeah, I'm going to
start like buying all my stuff at the farmers market and
getting morning sunlight. Like, why would I not?
But that's not what that was met with.
I mean, my parents now, like 10 years later, are really starting
to make a lot of changes. But it's taken so long and so
many conversations and then them learning their own things and,
and they've come so far. My grandparents still pretty
resistant still, you know, trusting the doctors fully.
So I wonder like if some of it is going to be just generational
changes. But what do you think that it
would take for people on like a massive scale to change their
thinking on this stuff? I think what I've seen happen a
lot is that people face personal adversity or adversity in their
families or communities that and they feel let down by the status
quo and the systems that were told to trust and something in
them cracks open where they kind of are more open to a different
way. So that's what happened with me.
You know, I got sick. I saw my patients not getting
better, my mom ended up dying of a preventable metabolic disease
and so for me it was like poof I'm in.
I'm now awoken into all of this and it can't go back.
It took my brother who's my co-author of the book when I
quit being a surgeon. Was so angry at me, so
disappointed in me, didn't talk to me for a while.
Just thought I was throwing away my life, thought I was burnt out
and this was emotional and such a.
Different reaction from your parents, right?
They were so happy for you. But my brother was just so could
not understand. But then my mom died and he
witnessed the broken health care system viscerally first hand.
Them really trying to like squeeze every ounce of profit
out of my mom and her last two weeks of life for no benefit.
And for anyone who hasn't heard the story of your mom, would you
mind sharing a little bit about that?
Yeah, so she she was essentially, you know, very much
I think represents what so many Americans are going through,
which is that she was like generally seemed like a healthy
person and was like very happy and like vibrant, but was
actually racking up like tons of diagnosis.
So like high cholesterol, high blood pressure, pre diabetes,
gaining weight around her midline 50s, sixties, early 70s,
just kind of racking up American diagnosis and was being seen by
great doctors at like Stanford and Powwatta Medical Foundation
and was kind of always at a doctor's appointment like, oh,
I'm going to see this doctor. You know, that's that's when you
talk to parents these days. It's kind of like everyone's
always going to a doctor's appointment, you know, So she
was going and she was following the recommendations and she was
printing out everything she need to print out to bring the
appointment and filling all her prescriptions, taking all her
pills. And so she was kind of like
doing OK, but like nothing was getting better.
Like her pre diabetes wasn't going away.
Her hypertension wasn't going away her.
So she was following all everything they said to a letter
being the perfect patient, not really getting better.
Then all of a sudden she's 72, she has stomach pain.
She it lasts for a few days. She calls her PCP, they order
ACT scan and she has stage 4 widely metastatic pancreatic
cancer. And 13 days later she was dead.
And they literally were just like, Oh my God, we're so sorry.
This is so unlucky. All the doctors like just really
bad luck of the draw. And I'm just, you know, I knew
enough to know. Like, no, it's not.
And you were at what point in your career?
About two years after quitting surgery and so like just had
started levels and was like really just like on this path
and was working with my mom on trying to reverse her metabolic,
you know, issues the high blood pressure and cholesterol and all
that stuff. But it really was not working
very well, which now in retrospect makes so much sense
because fundamentally her her blood sugar issues, like her
pancreas was being destroyed by a tumor, like she couldn't
really make insulin and so. And the tumors were gigantic by
the time they showed up. And so, you know, by the time we
sort of really started intensively working on her
metabolic issues, I think most likely, she probably already
had, like, a lot of liver dysfunction, a lot of pancreatic
dysfunction, all that stuff. It was kind of the cat was out
of the bag. But, you know, this idea that
these things like cancer and Alzheimer's just pop out of the
blue, it's just false. These are conditions on a
spectrum. They are branches of a tree that
usually have a lot of warning signs of branches that seem a
little bit less bad, like the depression and the PCOS and the
and the belly fat and the high cholesterol and the high blood
pressure and all these things that everyone seems to have.
That's just branches on the same tree as cancer and Alzheimer's
and stroke and the things that are killing us.
And because we're not trained to see those connections, we're not
trained to look at root cause of Physiology or ask why.
We're just trained to see everything is different, all
siloed, go to 10 different specialists and we're all good
here. We're all practicing good
evidence based medicine because that's the way it is.
I think genuinely to the oncologist and all these people
she was seeing when she got the diagnosis, they were like, yeah,
this is just out of the blue and surprising.
But that's because of the myopic, distorted lens we have
about the human body that fundamentally is interlinked
with the broken business model that makes us see things as
separate. So my mom was a victim of the
the missed warning signs that we don't see because we don't see
the connections between the body and we siloed the body into a
million different parts. And what was interesting about
that, she only had 13 days between the diagnosis and her
death. What was so I think compelling
to my brother that really evangelized him to help me write
this book. And now he's become in his own
right, a total health warrior, is that the moment she had a
lethal diagnosis, it's like the entire healthcare system sprung
into motion. We had everyone calling us, no
trouble getting appointments. It was like, we need a liver
stent, we need to do a transfusion, we need to do a
biopsy, we need to do a transesophageal this.
And it was. And it was sort of like, whoa,
like, where were you the last 30 years when she was like getting
sick to like, really be they? Were that would have happened
with the first warning sign. When she was 45 and was starting
to gain a lot of belly fat, which we know is a sign of
metabolic dysfunction, insulin resistance, visceral fat, the
first step in the whole sequence that ultimately led to her
cancer. But no, no one was, you know,
they were just like billing her for each of the appointments
she'd come in for. But when he saw the way that if
she'd said yes to all this stuff, they basically said at
the last two weeks of her life, she probably would have
generated, I don't know, $500,000, a $1,000,000 for the
hospital. She ultimately said no to
everything because she actually, she's a very intuitive, very
spiritual person. And she kind of knew the second
she got the diagnosis that this was that she was actually that
this was a death sentence. And so she chose to do Hospice.
And we just hung out at home and had a beautiful 2 weeks.
And it was the most beautiful time of my life.
And that would have all been robbed from us if she just got
in sucked into the vortex. Not to say people should not
pursue therapy for cancer, but she had stage 4 widely
metastatic. Her liver and pancreas were
destroyed. Yeah, all of that has to be
weighed out with exactly your circumstances and also like
where you're at and what you're feeling and what what you want
for your life. And her deep, knowing that she
was on her way out. Yeah, exactly.
So, yeah. So that's her story.
And that that is what it took to wake my brother up.
So to get back to your original question of how do people wake
up, I think a lot of people end up having personal experiences
or they're let down by these institutions of trust, and it
sends them on a learning journey.
And then I think for some people, you can get disappointed
by the institutions of trust, but because there's something in
their constitution that struggles to be a rebel, that
struggles to break away from the tribe, they actually doubled
down on the system. And I think that's kind of what
we saw during COVID is it's like COVID was a disaster the way it
was handled, in my opinion. And some people doubled down on
their allegiance to that system. And some people said there's got
to be a better way. And so I think a lot about that,
like what are the factors of someone's internal beliefs
support that they have all these different things that make you
grip to something that's not working versus say, I'm going to
go out a little bit on a limb here and question and it's going
to be scary, but I believe there's actually a better way.
Yeah, it's like you mentioned COVID and I think that made a
lot of people feel fearful and and people either went one way
or another, like I'm going to do something different.
I'm going to take this into my own hands and do something
different or kind of double down on the status quo.
Recommendations. Right.
Yeah. So but I think there's something
that's got a shift here in our culture and I don't have the
answer where people can feel safe both respecting the good
parts of the medical system and also seeking holistic
preventative care maybe outside the system and a yes and
situation where it's not a religion like we're either fully
a leads to it or not. Like I think with technology and
algorithms and a lot of the way our media works today,
polarization is sort of it is the business model.
We need attention. So we need to make people angry
and scared and fearful. And what that does is it gets
people gripping to different things.
But like a return to nuance and trusting people to weigh pros
and cons and make decisions and sort of moving away from
tribalism and coercion and black and white and polarity, I think
is, is where a lot of the future needs to go.
I mean, that's the vision I, I would, I hold for the future
because everything with nature is nuanced.
Everything with health is nuanced.
So we need to get back to, to feeling comfortable with the
Gray because life is Gray. Life has risk.
We're going to die. You know, there's no real
security. And so I mean, I do think
there's real security and spirituality.
And I think that's also a problem with our culture right
now is people don't have a really stable footing like in
something bigger than themselves to then be able to live in the
world in a way that they can accept Gray.
That's why we grip to things like the healthcare system.
And so I just think we're in a moment of real interesting
evolution for humans right now, and I'm hoping we all go in a
good direction, you know? Absolutely, yeah.
And we're obviously we're up against so much, our our bodies
are up against so much these days.
But there are still practical steps that we can take to
improve our health and well-being.
And in the book you talk about the six, I think it's the six
principles of good energy eating.
Can you talk to us a little bit about that?
Yeah. So, you know, in the book I just
talk really about a framework for thinking about food more
than just like, oh, it's this thing that we put in our body
and it's we got to eat each day. But like, really thinking about
like, what is food? Actually?
It's miraculous. Like it's this crazy substance
that's alchemized between the soil and soil microbes and the
sun and trees that create oxygen.
I have. We've got a dog visitor.
What a tree. Oh my God, that is so sweet.
Look at your face. Yeah, they're sweet dogs.
So all this alchemy happening that creates this substance that
goes into our body and basically 3D prints the next version of
our self because we're constantly turning over, you
know, like. Ourselves and everything, yeah.
People think like I'm Casey and you know, you're, you know John
Smith and like I'm this person for my whole life and you're
that person for your whole life. It's not true at all.
We actually 600 billion approximately cells die every
single day in each of our bodies and are reborn.
So this height whole idea of like we're alive and we're dead.
I'm me and you're you. It's actually a constant swirl
of transfer of energy. And part of that is by taking
this miraculous substance that is literally solar energy
transformed into physical matter that goes into our body to both
re 3D print our bodies of 5 minutes from now, a day from
now, a year from now, turning us over.
And then also chemicals in the food that totally transform our
genetic expression or cell signaling pathways, everything
about the way our body functions.
So food is both a messenger and a tool and also a brick to build
ourselves. And it's just kind of not how
we're taught to think about food.
And so with that, with that alchemical miraculous substance,
you can create the life you want, the body, you want, the
mind, you want, the neurotransmitters, you want the
hormones, you want the the state of being you want to be in, the
feeling you want to feel if you know how to use it properly.
So the way it kind of gets unfolded in the book is like how
to really work with food in a really beautiful, mystical way
to transform your life and to respect food in that way because
that food, everything in that soil is you of tomorrow and when
you. Think about everything that
you're putting in your mouth in that light.
It's like, why would you not want to put the most nutritious
foods possible that you can in your body if that is what is
influencing your your cells and your your body creating new
cells? It's like if we had that
perspective every time we ate a meal, I bet we would choose our
foods very differently. I but I think part of the
problem is we don't actually love ourselves that much.
There's a lot of self hatred and self talk.
I mean, our culture is built around not honoring, you know,
even our it's, it's so interesting.
Like I agree with you, but you have to really love yourself to
do that for yourself. And we live in a very you also
have to love the earth. There has to be this respect for
everything and I think. Yeah, we have to see how we fit
into into it all. As a cycle.
Right. But but we're so disconnected
and and then trained to kind of separate ourselves.
From that and we're born, you know, thinking we're broken in
some way. And I think part of the health
journey for me and the spiritual journey have intersected so much
and sort of this more understanding of like we are in
like in my perspective, it's like there's this ocean of sort
of source and a spirit and like each of us is sort of a wave of
that ocean that's constantly, you know, we're all connected.
And it's like when you see God in everyone and you see God in
yourself, I think you start to see this physical body as a
temple for connecting with that and you want to feed it good
food. But again, if we're just seeing
the body is this thing that's like here and we want some
thrills and some pleasure, and if it gets screwed up, we'll fix
it with medicine and then we're going to die.
So it doesn't really matter. It's harder to make that
commitment. But I think a real turning point
for me and the sort of people say, oh, isn't it hard to like
everyday, like eat the healthy stuff and to, to spend the time
going to this farmer's rocket. And it's like, it's not, it's
truly not for me. Because I've come to the point
in my life where I believe that this body, this physical body is
half of the duality of spirit and material that together help
us connect with everything in this precious lifetime.
Being conscious. So of course I want to, I want
to reach bliss and ecstasy and Nirvana and connect with God in
his lifetime. And so therefore I have to
respect the physical thing that lets me do that, which means I
have to put healthy food in my mouth.
And so to me, it's like it's so simple.
But if we're in that constant distraction industrial complex
on our phones and the computers and we're disconnected and we're
disembodied from our body, we're isolated and we're indoors and
we're not in nature. The average American spending
93% of their time indoors, we're not even outside seeing them.
The miracle of the tree, you know, and the the the sky, then
it's like it just undermines the majesty of it all.
And then we trash our bodies and then we have a fix medication.
And so it's like it's bigger than the food.
Yeah, We're not living into the fullness of what we've been
created for and what our how our bodies were intended to
function. I'm a Christian, and so that is
the lens with which I view the world.
And I think this is something that sadly has been avoided by
the church, even though to me the Bible is very clear about
like our bodies are a temple and our bodies are we're made in the
image of God. And all of these things that to
me make me want to steward my body to the best of my ability
and kind of TuneIn when things aren't right and and listen and
figure those things out, rather than outsourcing that to
pharmaceutical companies that don't have my best interests in
mind. I think that connection is just,
is so missing and we're really, things are not set up for us to
be connected, sadly. But but we still do have a say,
you know, and, and I think part of this part of the answer maybe
is like policy changes and, and things changing on that level.
But I also think that it's personal responsibility and
really taking ownership and doing what we can do within our
control to effect change in our lives.
Yeah, I agree. I think it's there are some
important political things they need to think need to happen
because the the magnitude of industry is so big now and so
just unchecked that there is actually potential for industry
to destroy life on planet Earth. And so there's some and I think.
Those less rebellious people that we were talking about, like
that's what I think will help those people maybe.
Cuz then the world will just be different.
And so the choices will be easier.
Like if you can get a Persimmon that doesn't have poison all
over it, that's better. That's great.
Like I would love to see Bobby Kennedy and all, you know, work
on that. But I do think it, it, it's, we
kind of forget, I think sometimes when we think too much
about like the importance of the election and the politicians and
this and that. It's like fundamentally, you
know, Kellogg's isn't going to exist if we don't buy Kellogg's.
We have that choice or whatever. You know, if if no one buys
another piece of non organic food, Monsanto's not going to
have a Goodyear, right? Like so it's we also have those
choices and you know, I think, but it's also more than just a
purchasing decision. I think it's also a decision of
how we're going to prioritize our lives.
Like are we choosing in this lifetime to go along with the
flow of the extraction industrial complex that wants to
take our attention and our health and our kids health and
keep us busy and distracted? Or are we going to actually say,
I understand that's how it seems like you climb the ladder in
America and get respect. But for myself and my family and
my children, we're actually going to do it this way.
And like that's a hard. But The thing is, there is a
tribe there too. It seems scary.
And yet you find the people who are doing that and then it
becomes a ripple effect, I think.
But you, when you were mentioning how that you're
Christian, I was, I was at this fascinating exhibit at the Getty
last weekend called Lumen, which is all about light imagery in
religious texts throughout like the past 2000 years.
And if you look at almost every religion, the spiritual figures
like Jesus or Virgin Mary, like they have the Halos.
And there's a lot of there's, there's a lot of imagery of
Jesus sitting on a rainbow like in ancient texts.
It's fascinating. And I just, I do think it's
fascinating to think about this relationship with light and
metabolism and health because there's something that people
knew like even before understanding their fraction of
light, that rainbows and sun and Halos and all of this.
And in a lot of imagery, it's like the angels have the most
sun rays around them and then the Saints have a little less
and then people have very little.
So there's something about light.
And when I think about it ties into health and metabolism
because I think and food because we just, I think we forget that
all the energy that we're extracting from food to fuel our
life force and our lives and our thoughts and our feelings, it
all comes from the sun. Photons come through space,
92,000,000 miles from space. And this miraculous process of
photosynthesis in the leaves of the plants converts that sun
energy to the energy and carbon to carbon bonds.
And then that becomes starches, which either we eat or the
animals we eat eat, and they convert into protein and other
things. And then we ultimately, in our
mitochondria, liberate what was the sun's energy into a form of
energy that can power our conscious experience of this
life and allow our mitochondria to then emit light back.
It's wild, but it is fundamentally there's something
here around food and light and spirituality and meaning that I
just, I, you know, I do think there's, it has to, we have to
bring some of these concepts of like the miraculous of all this
back into the conversation because I think it helps
motivate the deeper motivation for why we need to eat healthy.
It's not just to feel good, it's to actually embody, like you
said, our full potential as Transformers of cosmic energy.
So that we can then fulfill the purpose that we were put on this
earth to do. And that's different for all of
us. We used to say at primarily
pure, our slogan was nature is smarter than science.
And we don't really say it anymore, but I still resonate
with it so much. And you could, you know, you
could also say God is smarter than science, Like, and I think
we're really doing ourselves a big disservice by losing our
connection with nature. What do you think is at stake if
we don't course correct on this? I I think that the survival of
the species is at risk. I I mean I, I really do I.
Think, I mean, that's not that may sound crazy to some people,
but when you think about it, it's not.
I mean, infertility is going up 1% every year.
Sperm counts going down 1% per year.
Yeah, it's like. Life expenses going down every
year. Mass extinction event of other
animal or other life forms on planet Earth.
Happening right now, I think. Like what?
I think 30% of the world's biodiversity has been eliminated
in the past 30. Years.
So like soil being depleted? But also extension of animals
and fish and plant. I mean, there's, there's an
actual mass extension event happening right now on planet
Earth. On top of this, you know, birth
rates are also going down from a more cultural standpoint, in
part because I think people are feeling very disillusioned with
just the, there's people I, I know, maybe you too.
We're not having kids because they think the world is so bad,
which is, I don't actually believe the world.
I think the beauty is of our world is that things can change
in a second. Like any reality is possible,
right? We live in this quantum crazy
universe, and it is actually possible that tomorrow all 8
billion people on Earth wake up and say, my God, we've been
doing things wrong. We're gonna protect life on this
planet and we're gonna change everything that is a real.
It's probably not gonna happen, but it is a possibility.
And I look at things like COVID, where in the course of two weeks
the whole world changed. We all decided.
That because of fear and an unknown, we are going to lock
ourselves inside and wear masks. And I think what, like 90% of
the country got at least one vaccine.
Like when we decide to do something as a collective, we
can go big. True.
So how do we channel that energy towards a global awakening about
connecting with nature and respecting life on planet Earth
and then making our decisions stem from that has to happen
because if it doesn't, if the graphs continue as they're
continuing now, infertility, sperm count, life strength
decline, child neurodevelopmental disorders,
it's not just follow the charts. It's not going to go well also
if we keep extracting from the Earth in the way we're doing.
I mean, there's by some estimates, and you would know
more than I that we don't have that many harvest left if if we
destroy our topsoil the way that we're doing it with industrial
agriculture practices. And so it's sort of like it has
to change. And I think people are seeing
that. And that's why there's an
exciting thing happening right now where everyone seems to be
like wanting to move to a farm and go to far.
There is something happening and I think they're good.
You know, something I've been really interested in reading
more about right now is like the fall of the Roman Empire, 'cause
these like huge empires and huge amounts of the globe have been
wiped out in the past. It's not inconceivable and it's
probably often rude and hubris. So I think we have so much to
learn from indigenous cultures. I think we have so much to learn
from literally just being outside and observing nature.
I think one of the reasons we're so lost and we can't seem to
think our way to the answers is because we're indoors trying to
think of the answers when the answers are already in front of
us. I mean, I said this on Andy
Kubrin's podcast, but like, if there's just one thing people
could do to change the world, it's go outside more because
everything comes to you when you're outside.
Health, inspiration, awe, connection.
It's much harder to destroy all of this if you're spending time
with it, but we don't. I always say my my favorite part
of my day is like spending 10 minutes outside in the morning,
bare feet in the sunlight. Yeah.
And and there's this data coming out that, like many kids in
America, are spending less time outside than a maximum security
prisoner. How do we expect them to
understand the concept of ecosystem harmony if we're not
in the ecosystem? And just, like, feel like a
human being. Yeah, totally.
Yeah, and also all the things circadian biology, fresh air.
Our air is more polluted indoors than outdoors mostly, you know,
the fact that like this tree is creating the oxygen that we need
to survive. How could you possibly
indiscriminately cut down a tree?
It is literally our lungs outside of our body.
But we don't spend time with trees.
We don't even have a moment off our phones to meditate on the
connection between all of it. So we don't respect it.
And then we go to college and think we're being a world saver
for like creating super advanced carbon capture technology when
in fact that is not, you know, that's it's an isolated, linear,
masculine single variable approach to a multi dimensional
problem. But when you actually just spend
more time with the ecosystem, I think in a way like the answers
will come to us. Yeah.
We were talking about this before we started recording to
how healing is literally built into nature on every level.
Like it's such a gift to us to be able to go outside and like
have our bare feet on the ground and get flooded with these
negative ions, you know, and, and to combat and mitigate the
positive charge that we get from technology.
And then to experience sunlight, which regulates our circadian
rhythms, which have such a big influence on our hormones to
breathe in fresh air. Like nature's truly, it's such a
gift and it's so healing and it's like accessible to
everybody, but we are not taking advantage of it like we should
be. Yeah, yeah, I think, I think if
we so right now, yeah, average person spending 7% of the time
outside of the prisons of the four walls of our like we're the
reality is, is that for comfort and and prestige we've chosen to
self impose beautiful prisons. Our houses are lovely, but we
are literally inside 4 walls almost 100% of our time.
How crazy is that? We are free and we're choosing
to be to lock ourselves in a nicely decorated cage and then
we're sick and we're like, I wonder why?
And, and so I just, I guess a call and I'm sure I'm preaching
to choir with your audience, but it's like if we're spending 7%
of the time outside, which I think is probably high, a high
estimate, What if we moved out to 30 by doing podcasts outside,
by eating outside, by chopping vegetables outside, by opening
our mail outside, by putting our computer outside, by if we have
a restaurant doing a, you know, setting up a tent outside in the
parking lot and cooking out, like, get creative.
Rome is burning like it's time, right?
We gotta go outside. And we just spoke about a lot of
the reasons why that's helpful. But it's gonna take creativity.
It's gonna take looking weird. And then everyone is gonna come
along and love it so. And then, yeah, exactly.
And then you'll get used to it. It won't be this, like thing
that you have to think about anymore.
It'll just kind of be what you do.
And same with eating. I think, like, it's hard in the
beginning, switching the foods that you're eating, but then it
just becomes second nature. Yeah.
Where do you see the future of
health going in America under the new Trump administration?
Oh, my gosh, I'm feeling so, so hopeful because of Bobby Kennedy
and his leadership. I mean, we just kind of
witnessed the most fascinating realignment of American
politics. I think maybe in American
history. I mean, I don't, I probably
shouldn't say that because I'm not an expert on American
history. But the fact that a Democrat who
ran as an independent joined a Republican who notoriously
hasn't cared a lot about health and the environment, but has
been very inspired by Bobby Kennedy's support.
You know, I think the way I see it is like, Trump really is
interested in in meaningful leverage and meaningful legacy
and impact. And even though maybe he doesn't
seem like a person who personally cares a ton about
health or the environment, Bobby Kennedy has created a wellspring
of support for all the issues. We're talking about regenerative
agriculture, the connection between human health and
environmental health, you know, corporate capture of government
agencies that control environment and health and how
that's all causing a problem, all of that.
And you see, like, I don't know if you saw the Trump's
acceptance speech, but like when he mentioned RFK, everyone in
the crowd, thousands, people just started chanting Bobby,
Bobby, Bobby, Bobby. And so I think there's this
really interesting thing where you and Trump literally said,
Bobby Kennedy, you go wild, like don't touch the oil, but you can
do it. And it's like Bobby Kennedy's
been fighting water pollution, Monsanto vaccine injuries, all
these things. For SO.
Long for 3540 years and now. Before it caught on.
Before it caught on to his great detriment, Yeah, like being, I
think, viciously disavowed by people in his family, by people
in the world. And, you know, it's kind of like
the American moms and others who are like, this is not working.
Someone speaking for us. It's just been.
It's so fascinating to watch. But when I hear everyone says
how could you possibly be hopeful?
Trump doesn't care. Trump has said in the last 24
hours that Bobby Kennedy, who wants to support foundational
human health, medical safety and environmental environmental
health, human health, foundational health and
basically like corruption industry.
Trump has said he can go go hog wild.
And I'm like that. I just I was I was hiking
yesterday and I was like, what if, what if in three or four
years, like more of the food is just organic because of this?
Like I've never felt that before.
I'm like I'm in. It's just, it's like, I don't
know, I, I think I'm, I'm, I'm choosing to trust everyone at
their word, which is that I know what Bobby Kennedy stands for,
Trump said. He's basically got a lot of
power to do that stuff. What's going to happen?
I think I have a lot of reason to be really, really hopeful.
So. Yeah, I would agree.
I think it's so cool to see this thing talked about on a national
scale. Yeah.
And it's just proof that this is like resonating with so many
people. Like you mentioned the chanting,
you know, Bobby, like people, people want change in this area.
And it's just, it's exciting that it's even being talked
about. And we'll see what happens.
Hopefully a lot changes. I get a lot of emails, mostly
nice. So I'm not so nice to my sort of
like my responses to my newsletter and whatnot.
But I got a really interesting e-mail from a person that I
really appreciate it because it was the day after the election
and they said, Doctor Casey, I followed you for a long time.
I voted for Kamala. And I feel so sad this morning.
And I'm writing you because I trust you.
And I just am looking for like, can you help me feel, can you
help share with me why you feel hopeful today?
Because I feel dismayed and I respect that.
I think a lot of people look at Trump and where they've heard
certain things about Bobby Kennedy, and they're like, how
could anyone possibly want this for our country?
So it was this really good faith e-mail that was like, share with
me why you feel hopeful. And then she said, for instance,
one of the reasons I'm petrified is because Bobby Kennedy wants
to ban vaccines. And I just thought, Oh my God,
here's this wonderful person writing a beautiful e-mail, and
actually whatever information's been fed to her through the
algorithm has somehow said that Bobby Kennedy wants to ban
vaccines in America. That could not be further from
the truth. He wants vaccine companies to
have to report their safety data.
He wants there to be actual long term safety data for vaccines.
So we even have the information about the safety of these 72
shots going into kids. Never ever has he ever said he
wants to ban vaccines. Maybe wants to reconsider
vaccine mandates because of medical freedom, but I don't so
so it's just what was astonishing to me is the way
that technology, the algorithm, social media, the advertising,
the the sort of the advertising attention based business model
of media today where essentially we just need to glue people's
eyeballs to stuff and therefore distort the information to
create fear so that they'll click more.
It's like feeding them the information that they're fearful
about exactly going to latch on to.
And I'm like, I didn't, I haven't responded.
I get so many emails, I haven't responded.
But what I thought what was so interesting to me was like, if I
just shared with like her and then the millions of people who
represent her, what actually is being said, which is what parent
would not want good safety data that we could at least look at,
but we don't have it. I mean, so it's it's I think
we're in a fascinating. The information economy is rough
right now, and that's why podcasts are so valuable.
And I think also just having compassion, like we're each
seeing a different reality based on what's on our screens.
Yeah. So our reality may not be truth,
which is why I spent a lot of time meditating and praying
because I want to tap into a bigger truth, but also like
trying to see multiple different sides of the media.
On election night, my fiance and I watched Tucker Carlson's live
screen, Megyn Kelly's live stream, MSNBCCNN, Barry Weiss,
the Free Press, see a little bit of all of it.
It's all different. Yeah, same.
We're just clicking back and forth the whole time.
More, yeah, nuance, you know, and compassion and humility.
Yeah. And so, you know, I think I'm
very hopeful and I just what I hope for people listening and
anyone is that like, no matter how you feel about the reality
that's emerging this week with election week, like our
consciousness is probably the most powerful thing in the
universe. If we can all detach from the
distraction industrial complex, get off our phones a little bit,
find internal peace within because peace on earth starts
with peace within. And from that place of peace,
hold a positive high vision for the future.
I think that actually makes a much bigger difference than we
think. Negativity, cortisol, fatalistic
views of the future is not going to help anyone.
So just like I just think that if everyone can just create the
space for a positive vision, no matter what, I think we'll be
better off than if we don't do that.
So, and it's free and it's simple to do.
Just imagine, imagine that we can get right back on track, you
know, as a world. I think we can, but we have to
be able to imagine that that's possible, so.
What do you think are the first things that need to change in
order to impact our our medical system, our food system?
From a policy level or from an individual level?
Policy. Policy.
I think there's a couple high leverage things that would be
very useful. I think it's very odd that the
NIH, which is a taxpayer funded institution, that they're
allowed to have rampant conflicts of industry with food
and pharma. So there were 8000 major
conflicts of interest reported with NIH research over the past
since 2012. This just came out recently like
that. That clouds how researchers are
going to be doing. Is that so then what happens?
Are we going to be doing foundational, unbiased research
about American health or are we going to be looking for ways to
incorporate like a drug study or a you know, it it, it's, I would
not say it's bribery, but when you're getting money from an,
from a company, you have a relationship with them and that
does on even subtle relational ways impact how we think and
what we do. So get the care that the
Pharmaceutical industry is the primary source of funding for
clinical studies in the US, Yeah.
And so that has to have an impact on the outcome of those
studies. On what do you think gets
studied? Yeah, not just the outcome of
the studies, but also what gets studied.
Because there's there's so much less motivation to study things
that can't be patented, right? Yeah, yeah.
Like sunlight, like. Sunlight and like also, I think
we do need to like this is not policy, it's more individuals.
But like we also need a return to common sense.
I mean, no one in human history has ever needed a peer reviewed,
double-blind, placebo-controlled study to tell us not to be able
to process foods and to eat food that comes from ground that
doesn't have glyphosate all over it.
Like I don't need 10 more years of research to know that that
that our food being sprayed with £6 billion globally of
pesticides per year is probably not great.
Like these are killing chemicals.
You know, I was so astonished by the statistic.
Like people say, oh, pesticides are fine.
It's the dose makes the poison, this and that.
First of all, we've never looked at the cumulative effect of all
these things together on human health.
And 20% of suicides globally are done by drinking pesticides.
Isn't that amazing? Totally safe, but it's the thing
that throughout the world people are actually choosing to drink.
To kill themselves. 20% it's obviously an estimate, but that
is from a pure that's from a paper on pub Med can look it up.
So policy get the get the conflict of interest out of the
taxpayer funded research. Obviously like 2.
You look at the FDA, 75% of the FDA's drug budget comes from
pharma. Why are the people who are
regulating the companies getting paid by the companies?
It doesn't make sense. It's a federal organization.
We pay so many tax. I love that they're sheep.
This is This is the best day of my life.
Oh, they're right here. This is the best day of my life.
And we just got a new herd of sheep at the farm and so.
Beautiful they're. For anyone listening and not
watching, they're kind of like encroaching on the podcast.
They're like 10 feet away. They're so beautiful, so cute
babies. So, you know, I think keeping
these industries clean, yeah, if they're federal, federal
agencies, like they should be working just for the American
people. So that's like, I mean, we,
there's so many levels of it. We have to, we have to get the
corruption out of the USDA on the most recent food guidelines
for America. So they come out every five
years, 2020 to 2025. Nineteen out of the 20 people on
the advisory panel that made those guidelines had a major
conflict of interest with the food industry.
We need people creating our food guidelines for America that
aren't being paid by the processed food industry.
Seems pretty obvious. That could be that could be
something that we change tomorrow.
The current USD, so 2020252025 to 2030.
The conflicts of interest, you can find them online with the
people making our guidelines are it's like a 10 page PDF document
just of the conflicts of interest.
This is insanity. We've unbiased people writing
our guidelines that aren't getting their mortgage paid by a
food company. Yeah, obviously.
And then the USDA. It's like, how does that, how
did it even come to be that way? It seem it seems very obvious,
like you said, that those are clear conflicts of interest that
should have never even happened. Yeah, it's wild.
And, you know, I don't want to be too inflammatory because I do
think conflicts are complicated. Like, I have a newsletter, my
newsletter has sponsors. Some of those sponsors are
supplement companies. If I were then asked to be on
the guidelines committee, people could theoretically say, oh,
well, you're really into supplements.
And, and so I, I do understand how it's messy.
It's and, and we all create a story for why it's, it's OK.
Like I'm sure there are researchers who are good people
who are like, well, if Dan and Yogurt and Barilla Pasta, two
companies that funded the Tufts Nutrition Compass research
that's helping to guide our food guidelines.
So the lead author on that is has multiple relationships,
financial relationships with companies like Dan and Barilla
Pasta. Well, from his perspective, just
to kind of like have the best possible good, assuming good
intent, it's like, well, I have to do this life saving research
for people on nutrition and these companies want to fund my
research and they're not going to influence what I'm doing.
So like, yeah, I'd like to take money from, it's like Robin
Hood, take money from the big industries and do foundational
nutrition research. But what I think we're seeing,
and we've actually seen this in the data that food studies
sponsored by industry almost invariably have a more
favorable. Result about the food that's
sponsoring it then if it was done without sponsorship from
the food industry that they've shown this with sodas.
I think it's like 90% of studies on sugar sweetened beverages
show no harm and like 80% or something of the independently
studied funded studies show harm.
So there's this huge thing that happens that, that, that's a
stat from my book. And I, I got it a little bit
wrong, but it's, it's somewhere around that.
So you got to get the conflicts of interest out of the USDA food
guidelines, which then dictates the USDA school lunch program,
which feeds 7 billion meals per year to children.
And right now the food is so bad, you see the images online
of like, what's an American school lunch?
There's now the USDA just formed broker to deal between Kraft
Heinz and the school lunch program to get lunchables in
schools. This stuff is not real food.
You look at the ingredients, it's like, I cannot believe this
is what we're fueling the future of America with.
So I would say corruption, or I don't even want to say
corruption, conflicts of interest out of the FDAUSDANIH
and of course CDCEPA, all those things too.
But those 3 really important. And how, how long would it take
to disentangle all of that? I'm not sure.
I think I, I don't know. I think it'll, it'll take a
while, I think. But I think that the reality is,
is that when you have leadership at the top political level, even
starting to implement this stuff and starting to put the voice to
power of these things, what it does is even before maybe the
research findings change or whatever.
What it does is it helps people feel permission to be more a
part of this tribe that takes their power into their own
hands. So it creates a bigger tribe, it
creates more power in the tribe that's doing things a little bit
differently. So I think you'd see more if
you're if you're starting to talk about it and start to enact
things at the top, it gives permission to other people to be
that person who's sort of like, yeah, it's going to take a while
to get, you know, the pesticides out of the food.
Or maybe if the farm bill changes and we start to put more
money towards regenerative agriculture grants, maybe that's
going to take five years before those farms actually convert
from conventional to regenerative.
Exactly All that that's federal. But in the meantime, the country
is now talking about why that's important and not being gaslit
by the top to say it doesn't matter.
So that's how I think the change would happen, almost like in a
they'd talk to each other bottoms up, top down, and that
would accelerate and catalyze progress.
Yeah. No, I think that's key.
I think that does give people permission to then go there like
mentally and and and start to live that way.
And it doesn't feel so different than it feels kind of like more
mainstream and and comfortable, I guess.
Totally. Yeah.
Well, I think you are just a, a huge part of, of making people
feel more normal in living this way and, and more, and I don't
know, less weird, I guess. And that takes a lot of bravery
and courage. Like the things that you're
sharing and just the, the information and soundness that
you're putting behind this message is like for so many of
us, it's like finally, like finally someone is giving a, a
voice to these things that like we have felt and known for so
long, so eloquently. And then also so many people who
are hearing this for the first time are really resonating with
it. And I just, I really appreciate
what you're doing and I'm so thankful for what you're doing.
So thankful to have you here on the podcast.
And I'm sure it hasn't been easy at times to to to kind of be on
the forefront of this movement, but.
Like it's, it gives me the opportunity to meet people like
you, which is so exciting and you're on the ground doing all
the work and then with this podcast and to be doing, you
know, what you're doing with your podcast and being outdoors.
It's like, it's exactly what you're saying to me.
It's like you're creating a vision that people can then
emulate of like, oh, I could work outdoors, I could have a
podcast outdoors, so. I think that's a good take away
from this podcast. Like, what are you doing indoors
that you could be doing outdoors?
Yeah, if if you just did that, that would make a big
difference, I think if everyone just changed that one thing.
Well, thank you so much. Where can people follow along
with you and learn from you and buy your amazing book?
Well, the number one thing I would love for people to do is
sign up for my newsletter cuz I just go.
I just basically sit down for 20 hours a week and write
everything I'm thinking about totally unfiltered in my
newsletter. It's a good time.
Amazing. Yeah, I need to get on that.
It's called Good Energy Living, but it's on my website
whichiskcmeans.com/newsletter. I just really love to write and
like because I do it every week. For this list, it's like pretty
just it's raw, which is fun. And so that's
kcmeans.com/newsletter and then my book is just everywhere,
Amazon, small bookstores. Good energy is the type of
energy. It's a good one.
It's on our Christmas gift list this year.
Of course. Yes, needs to be in every
household. Thank you so much for your time.