Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - REPLAY ｜ Question Your Doctor, Save Your Life ｜ Guest： Dr. Casey Means

00:00:00.740 After her mom received a diagnosis of stage 4 pancreatic cancer and was pressured to endure

00:00:06.500 invasive procedures that would ultimately do more harm than good, Dr. Casey Means had a

00:00:11.660 revelation about the medical system. It is not working. Instead of helping Americans get healthy,

00:00:18.340 it is, in a lot of cases, making us sicker. It treats symptoms without ever getting to the root

00:00:24.180 cause, and it often prioritizes profit over patients. One of my favorite and most fascinating

00:00:31.940 interviews I've ever done in all of my 1,000 almost episodes of Relatable, Dr. Means unravels

00:00:40.100 what she has learned about the corruption in American healthcare while also giving us really

00:00:45.760 practical tools to take charge of our health. Also, a very optimistic outlook on our future if we start

00:00:53.880 moving in the right direction. You guys are absolutely going to love this conversation.

00:01:00.280 She is the author of Good Energy, the surprising connection between metabolism and limitless

00:01:06.020 health. We're going to be talking about all of this and so much more on today's episode

00:01:09.900 of Relatable. It's brought to you by our friends at Good Ranchers. Go to goodranchers.com. Use

00:01:14.320 code Allie at checkout for a discount. That's goodranchers.com, code Allie.

00:01:23.880 Dr. Means, thanks so much for taking the time to join us. First, could you tell us who you are and

00:01:32.720 what you do? My name is Casey Means. I'm a medical doctor. I'm an author of the upcoming book,

00:01:37.760 Good Energy, and I'm a co-founder of Levels Health, a metabolic awareness company.

00:01:42.560 Okay, and I first heard of you. I saw a tweet thread sometime last year about you losing your mom

00:01:49.940 and an article that you wrote that basically said, look, I'm a doctor. I've been in the medical field

00:01:56.440 for a long time, and you can't always trust us. And that statement accompanied with your mom's story

00:02:03.920 was really powerful for me, I think, for a lot of people who realize that we can't always trust the

00:02:10.120 experts during COVID. So just take us back. Take us back to that tweet thread, why you wrote that

00:02:15.400 article, and of course, your mom's story. Yeah. Well, I think my mom's story is very almost like

00:02:22.100 archetypal of what so many Americans are going through today, kind of realizing that something is

00:02:27.380 not quite right when it comes to our own health, the health of our kids, the health of our parents.

00:02:32.340 People are so sick in our country, and they're getting sicker. And we're put on this chronic

00:02:37.360 disease, sort of pill-taking surgery treadmill, and yet we're not really getting better. So my mom's

00:02:45.380 story really just is so emblematic of this and played off so much of my own experience in medicine

00:02:51.840 as a surgeon. So my mom, she was very vibrant and from the outside looked pretty healthy, but

00:03:00.580 in her 40s, she had me. I was an almost 12-pound baby. I was big. Everyone kind of congratulated for

00:03:07.020 that. No one really thought much of it. She had trouble losing the baby weight. She was in her 50s,

00:03:11.440 had a tough menopause. Then in her 60s, she started getting, you know, the diagnoses that so many

00:03:16.340 Americans have. High blood pressure. Here's an ACE inhibitor. High cholesterol. Here's a statin,

00:03:22.000 you know, prescribed 200 million times per year in the U.S. High blood sugar. Here's metformin. Very

00:03:26.400 common. This is, you know, pre-diabetes. It's a pre-disease. Nothing to worry about. And then all of a

00:03:31.620 sudden, she's 72, and she's hiking with my dad near their house in Northern California, and she gets a pain in

00:03:37.840 her belly. And that's unusual for her. It lasts her a couple of days. So she goes to her primary care

00:03:43.120 doctor. They order a CT scan, and it turns out it's stage four, widely metastatic pancreatic cancer.

00:03:51.040 And 13 days later, she was dead. And, you know, at the time of her death, she was seeing what a lot

00:03:58.720 of people would call like the best doctors in the world. She was being seen at Stanford. She was being

00:04:03.880 seen at Mayo Clinic. You know, really access to high-quality health care. And the oncologist

00:04:09.200 looked at my family in the eyes and said, you know, I'm so sorry. This was so unlucky, the pancreatic

00:04:16.360 cancer. And knowing what I know about really more a connected root cause perspective on health,

00:04:23.020 to me, it's very clear that this cancer was not actually unlucky. It was totally predictable.

00:04:27.220 But in our Western medical system that is so reactive, it's so siloed, it's like whack-a-mole

00:04:33.800 medicine. They saw all those things that my mom had throughout the past 30 years as separated,

00:04:39.280 isolated things. The big baby, the trouble losing the baby weight, the tough menopause,

00:04:44.480 all the metabolic issues, blood pressure, blood sugar, cholesterol, and then cancer. In our system,

00:04:50.240 in our reductionist Western medical system, they all look separate and it seems unlucky.

00:04:54.640 But what I'm really, I think, on this planet to share and what my book is about and what all my

00:05:00.640 work is about is that through a different lens, through a root cause lens, through a true physiology

00:05:06.300 lens, what we'd understand is that all those symptoms and diseases she had are actually trunks

00:05:12.060 of the exact same tree. And that tree is metabolic dysfunction. It's a core physiologic problem that's

00:05:20.620 affecting 93% of American adults have some aspect of metabolic dysfunction. Some of the most obvious

00:05:28.280 ones you'd think about, it would be like diabetes and obesity, but actually cancer, heart disease,

00:05:33.300 stroke, depression, anxiety, having a big baby, which is called fetal macrosomia, trouble losing

00:05:39.460 the belly fat.

00:05:40.120 And is that caused by, just because I don't know, and a lot of people don't know the through line

00:05:44.580 of the different diagnoses that you're talking about, like going back to you being a 12 pound

00:05:50.460 baby. The only understanding I have of why that typically happens is if a woman has gestational

00:05:57.020 diabetes. So is that part of what you're talking about? And all of these things are somehow connected

00:06:02.460 to each other?

00:06:03.360 Absolutely. Yeah. So the trunk of this tree, this metabolic dysfunction, it can show up like

00:06:08.900 gestational diabetes and at its very core and not to get too science and technical, but

00:06:14.620 in our society today with the rapid changes in our diet and our lifestyle over the past,

00:06:20.160 just like 50, 75 years, really since World War II, our industrialized diet, our chronic stress from

00:06:27.700 our devices, we're getting 25% less sleep on average than we were a hundred years ago. The incredible

00:06:33.580 amount of synthetic toxins in our food, water, air, and homes, it's fundamentally caused a problem

00:06:40.100 with our cells that is super fundamental. It's a breaking of this metabolic machine in our cells.

00:06:46.320 And metabolism is how we convert food to cellular energy. And the reason that this can look like

00:06:53.840 so many different diseases is because if you have a problem converting food energy to cellular energy

00:06:59.840 to power our cells, in different cell types, this can look like all different things. If it's,

00:07:05.760 you know, in a liver cell, it can look like fatty liver disease. In a blood vessel cell, it can look

00:07:09.740 like heart disease. It can look like in the brain, it can look like depression and anxiety. So

00:07:14.200 essentially there's this core issue that's caused by our lifestyle and our food system that is really

00:07:21.360 breaking our bodies on a fundamental level, showing up as all these different diseases across the

00:07:25.880 spectrum. Um, and our healthcare system is totally, totally blind to it, which is why they wait until

00:07:34.240 the symptoms emerge and they treat those isolated symptoms, but they never get to their actual root

00:07:39.420 cause because that's not the way our system works. It's about separation, not connection. And it's such a

00:07:45.700 blind spot, but it's such a lethal blind spot that it's really why it inspired me to write a book about

00:07:51.460 it. Because, you know, you look at the trends that are happening today, which is that the more we spend

00:07:57.020 on healthcare, we're spending $4.5 trillion a year on healthcare in America and outcomes are getting

00:08:03.300 worse. The more studies we do, the worse the outcomes are getting. The more specialized we get

00:08:08.780 in healthcare, the worse the outcomes are getting. Uh, you know, it's, it's sort of the definition of

00:08:14.100 unsustainability. And the reason is because we're actually focusing on the wrong problem. We're focusing on

00:08:17.940 reactive symptom-based medicine as opposed to the connected root cause that's actually underlying

00:08:23.560 most of the American diseases that we're facing today. And in the case of the big baby, um, you know,

00:08:31.660 in a mother who has this metabolic dysfunction, her blood sugar starts rising that then transfers in 1.00

00:08:38.140 the blood through the placenta to the baby. So the baby is exposed to that high blood sugar that then

00:08:43.280 causes the body to make more insulin in the little fetus's body. And that insulin is a pro-growth

00:08:48.980 hormone that causes the baby to put on more weight and more fat. So it's how those metabolic blood

00:08:55.220 sugar issues are actually showing up in the fetus and then being born above about 8.5 pounds, which is

00:09:02.840 considered fetal macrosomia that sets up the baby for metabolic issues for the rest of their life. Um,

00:09:08.480 and also as a sign of the mother having issues. So really at every step along the spectrum, um,

00:09:14.700 yeah, it was all pointed to the same thing, but the healthcare system is totally blind because it's

00:09:19.540 so focused on reaction. Yeah. Each individual diagnosis, no one's taking a holistic look,

00:09:25.960 even the top doctors. And I want to talk about how this all relates specifically to your mom's story,

00:09:32.000 because I know that there are a lot of people out there who either they've been recently diagnosed

00:09:36.960 with cancer or a loved one has, or they wish that they would have known this, or I could see this

00:09:42.740 conversation, someone having this conversation or listening to it. And then next week they're going

00:09:48.280 through a similar thing and they're going to be so glad that they heard your story and heard

00:09:51.560 everything that you're saying. So you're saying that your mom, when she was diagnosed with pancreatic

00:09:57.780 cancer, that looking back over her life and some of the things that she suffered from, that it was

00:10:02.520 pretty predictable, maybe not entirely preventable, but pretty predictable. Um, it seems like it came

00:10:09.000 out of nowhere because she was just hiking and she got that pain and she got it checked out and then it

00:10:14.100 was stage four. Um, and when you talk to the doctors, you said these top doctors, they didn't have

00:10:21.700 anything to say about her previous diagnoses. They weren't interested in that conversation at all.

00:10:27.040 No, I mean, really, if you look at the way the system is designed, it's so hyper specialized. We

00:10:34.720 have over 42 medical specialties and really like to climb the ranks as an American doctor, it actually

00:10:43.160 is getting more and more specialized. So I trained in ear, nose, and throat surgery. And to really be at

00:10:50.760 the top of my field, I would actually specialize further into either ear, nose, or throat, you know,

00:10:55.840 become a rhinologist, a laryngologist or an otologist. And then even within those specialties,

00:11:01.300 you might focus on one specific disease and become the world expert in that. So specialization is

00:11:06.940 literally built into the very foundation of prestige in our system. And what that does is it gets doctors

00:11:14.560 to, you know, really ignore the rest of the body and how things might be connected. There's also a

00:11:21.600 financial incentive for that, right? That the business model of our healthcare system is to do

00:11:29.080 more to more people over long periods of time. The stark reality, the stark economic reality of the

00:11:35.680 American healthcare system, which is what needs to change if we're going to actually improve the

00:11:40.480 health outcomes of America. But the stark economic reality is that every institution that touches our

00:11:47.720 health from hospitals to clinics to pharma, even to insurance companies will make more money if you

00:11:57.540 are sick and less money if you are healthy. And so chronic diseases, these isolated chronic diseases,

00:12:05.440 like what my mom had, diabetes, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, the system profits off treating

00:12:12.700 those as separate things that you do things to for long periods of time, chronic disease management.

00:12:19.060 So not actually healing it, but managing it. And so because that's built into the deep finances of

00:12:27.520 the largest and fastest growing industry in the United States, which is the healthcare industry,

00:12:33.520 there is no incentive for people to back up and look at all of the things going on and say,

00:12:41.500 wait a minute, maybe we're looking at this wrong. Maybe there's something more fundamental,

00:12:46.700 the trunk of the tree leading to all of this. Maybe we could just intervene there. And a lot of this

00:12:52.580 stuff would melt away. And that is the reality biologically. But because of the trillions and

00:12:59.540 trillions of dollars that are baked into the way the system operates right now, no one has any real

00:13:06.060 incentive to stop and to do that. And so the pieces actually get actively held apart. If you think about

00:13:12.540 going to the doctor, how often, if you have several specialists you're working with, how often are they

00:13:18.800 talking to each other? Never. Usually the health records are in different systems and it's almost impossible to

00:13:24.380 even have one doctor see the notes of another doctor from another specialty. It's literally baked in on every

00:13:31.360 level, the separation, which is not serving patients. It's serving the financial interests

00:13:36.400 of a reactive sick care system that is fee for service. After your mom was diagnosed, what did the 0.64

00:13:43.100 doctors recommend? So this was what was so funny was that the second she got the stage four pancreatic

00:13:50.220 cancer diagnosis, it was like full court press from so many different doctors. They wanted a hematologist

00:13:57.080 to help her because her blood counts were low. The cancer was sort of causing her to destroy her 0.86

00:14:01.620 red blood cells. There was radiation oncologists, surgical oncologists, medical oncologists, you know,

00:14:07.820 radiation surgery medication. There was a liver doctor who wanted to put a stent in and everyone

00:14:15.040 was talking and it was incredible how much of a flurry it was. And, you know, we all kind of looked at

00:14:20.480 each other and thought, wow, 40 years of symptoms that, that we kind of know are all connected.

00:14:29.420 And not once was there like a flurry of activity to like truly get my mom healthy, to truly get

00:14:35.360 her cells to heal. But the second there was this big diagnosis, you know, very late stage, everyone

00:14:41.300 flies into motion. And what was interesting is that the diagnosis was so bad, you know, pancreatic cancer

00:14:49.580 outcomes are so bad. And my mom was so in touch with her body and her really spiritual knowing

00:14:54.280 that she knew like she was, this was very bad. And she had this sense that it was going to be fast.

00:15:00.640 So we actually declined all the crazy amount of interventions they wanted to do and went home.

00:15:06.920 And she was able to die peacefully at home, you know, 13 days later, everything they recommended,

00:15:12.080 nothing would have even basically had any time to have an effect before she died. And none of it would

00:15:17.600 have been worthwhile. You said that there was a, in your article, you said there was a 33% chance

00:15:23.280 that it would extend her life just a little bit, just a little bit. And then 33% chance that it would

00:15:28.220 do nothing. 33% chance that it would actually kill her, that the remedy so-called would actually kill

00:15:35.540 her and curtail her life even more. And so even if you did, even if you took that 66% chance that she

00:15:43.040 could live a little bit longer or that it would do nothing, she would still possibly, if she took

00:15:48.460 those routes that the doctors were recommending, because this was COVID era, she would have been

00:15:54.120 dying in a hospital by herself. She would have been going to these procedures by herself. And you all

00:15:59.780 knew that that's just not the end that she wanted for her. That's not what she wanted.

00:16:03.560 Yeah. Yeah. And those numbers that they gave us didn't even take into account the additional

00:16:09.300 complications she had. When she showed up at the hospital, the diagnosis, she was in liver failure

00:16:14.800 because of the metastases in the liver and her blood cells were depleted. So I think even that 66%

00:16:21.480 of maybe having a benefit was so overblown. And so we looked at all this and, and said, you know,

00:16:28.280 no, like we don't want to give my mom up to the hospital where she would have almost unquestionably

00:16:32.860 generated what $500,000 plus of revenue for that hospital and had to die alone in a, in a COVID

00:16:39.060 lockdown unit. So we asked questions and they of course were super shaming to us about, you know,

00:16:45.560 not doing the internet, you know, just that it's irresponsible. Literally the liver doctor,

00:16:49.720 if this was my mother, I would absolutely have her in there for that liver stint. I mean, 1.00

00:16:53.960 she's in fulminant liver failure. She can barely, this is a few days after the diagnosis,

00:16:58.120 she was getting worse really quickly. She was feeling super weak and they were saying, you know,

00:17:03.320 you got to get her in here. And you know, it's just so wild. If you think that people who might

00:17:09.740 not have the confidence or the background in medicine to ask some of the deeper questions,

00:17:14.280 I think probably 95% of people would just kind of go with whatever the doctor said. Again, they're like

00:17:18.700 the best doctors in the world and it would have done nothing but hurt her. And that's not to say

00:17:25.300 that people shouldn't take the intensive route, but we absolutely should be asking questions.

00:17:30.280 And I think the system, one of the ways it's become so damaging, especially more recently,

00:17:35.000 is that the system has really created an environment where people, I think, struggle to

00:17:41.580 ask questions. We've been told, you think about the last five years, plastered on billboards,

00:17:47.240 practically trust the science, you know, trust your doctor. And what's, what's so alarming to me.

00:17:56.680 And again, one of the reasons why we wrote this book is that the system, when it comes to chronic

00:18:01.960 health issues has really done very little to earn our trust. As we've started medicalizing

00:18:09.660 these chronic diseases, which are primarily based in diet and lifestyle, and many of which didn't even

00:18:15.040 exist 75 years ago. At the same time, we've been asked to trust the science. These diseases have

00:18:22.980 exploded in their rates and are going up every single year as we spend more money on them.

00:18:29.240 So what I think the healthcare system has done, I mean, it has produced miracles. Of course,

00:18:34.240 life expectancy has gone up in the last hundred years, but what our healthcare system has done

00:18:39.260 well at is acute issues, things that are immediately going to kill you like an infection or a trauma

00:18:45.780 surgery or something like that you need to have. So acute issues. And that's primarily treating those,

00:18:50.640 which are like the patient comes in, they get treated, they're gone. Those, I think the healthcare

00:18:56.020 system does a miraculous job at, but what the healthcare system has done has asked to take our

00:19:00.800 trust on its success in acute issues and apply it to chronic issues, issues that last for a long time

00:19:06.840 that need to be treated for life. If you think about an acute patient, that's not recurring revenue,

00:19:11.560 but a chronically ill patient is recurring revenue for decades. And so essentially the system is asking us to

00:19:17.680 not ask questions and to trust blindly because of the trust they engendered from acute issues,

00:19:22.780 apply it to chronic where they're abjectly failing at keeping us safe. They're not preventing these

00:19:27.560 conditions. They're certainly not reversing these conditions. They're just managing them.

00:19:31.680 And the message that I really want people to understand is that it's actually much less complex

00:19:38.160 than we think to really improve our foundational metabolic health, to improve really the way our cells

00:19:45.380 function and to really generate true health in our bodies. But we've got to focus on the right issue,

00:19:51.160 which is helping to clean up the environment that our bodies and our cells are living in right now

00:19:57.220 that are breaking them. And when we do that, and we really do truly heal the foundational pathways of

00:20:03.840 our body related to metabolism and cellular health, we end up getting just incredible health across all

00:20:09.900 these different systems. But unfortunately right now, that's not what the system is going to help

00:20:16.960 you with. Their revenue model is based on more patients going through the system as quickly as

00:20:23.880 possible, which lends itself to going in, getting a prescription, and leaving.

00:20:29.680 And you mentioned, both in the article and you mentioned it in this conversation too,

00:20:34.120 the profit incentive. You talked about how your mom going through all of these procedures would have

00:20:39.280 generated $500,000 for the hospital, but you've also mentioned how the doctors specifically have

00:20:46.040 a financial incentive, right? To push some of these routes to go down when it comes to diagnoses like

00:20:53.300 your mom's? Yeah, certainly. I mean, I would say just to start, like every single doctor I know

00:20:58.120 is like a very good person who went into healthcare with noble intentions. That is the reality. But

00:21:04.360 unfortunately, we're taking these very bright, eager minds who want to help, and we're putting

00:21:10.940 them in a system with just one dictum, which is economic growth. And so what happens is that

00:21:19.380 every level of the education and the way we practice and the science gets corrupted, right? Because

00:21:26.120 of that financial incentive. And so I think in many cases, doctors feel like they are practicing good

00:21:32.360 medicine because they're following the science, they're following the guidelines, not totally

00:21:36.880 realizing all the ways in which the science and those guidelines are heavily influenced by

00:21:42.740 things like the pharmaceutical industry or the ultra processed food industry. You know, 95% of people

00:21:49.520 on the recent USDA food guidelines for America had conflicts of interest with food companies. And so at

00:21:57.000 every level, it's been influenced and corrupted. And so you've got these good minds practicing in a bad

00:22:05.340 system. And I remember when I was in my fifth year of surgical residency going out to like launch out as an

00:22:13.440 independent surgeon in the world, you know, the senior surgeons would sit down and talk to you about the

00:22:19.120 business of medicine and say, you know, as a private practice surgeon, you eat what you kill. And that's

00:22:26.680 unfortunately a very unfortunate euphemism that basically just means your income is based on how

00:22:32.180 many surgeries you do. You eat what you kill. Your income is how much you do. And so because that is

00:22:39.080 the way that you'll get paid, that's how your mortgage is paid and your kid's tuition, of course you want to

00:22:44.860 do as many surgeries as possible. So I would not say it's like you're pushing surgeries on people

00:22:49.820 knowing that it's not what they should have or something like that. But when you have a hammer,

00:22:56.260 everything looks like a nail. And so it's just really baked in. And certainly on a deeper level,

00:23:02.380 many physicians, you know, are paid by hospital systems based on how many RVUs they generate. RVUs are

00:23:10.240 essentially billing units. And so the more you bill, sort of the more supported you are as a

00:23:17.500 surgeon. And so it's just built in on every level. And interestingly, with the Affordable Care Act,

00:23:24.700 you know, Obamacare, which kind of paid lip service to this idea of value-based care, which in theory

00:23:31.020 sounds really good. As opposed to paying for doing stuff to people, we would pay for better value. And

00:23:38.140 value is outcomes over cost. So that kind of sounds great. Wow, if we have better outcomes,

00:23:45.340 lower cost, we'll get paid more. And the cheapest way that you're going to have better outcomes,

00:23:50.820 lower cost is just having people eat healthy. So like, wow, maybe this will push doctors to push

00:23:56.300 nutritional interventions or exercise. Unfortunately, the whole thing got very corrupted.

00:24:04.120 The outcomes measures that doctors would report on for value-based care, many of them were not

00:24:13.720 actually, did the patient have better health outcomes? It was things like how many of the

00:24:19.260 patients in a doctor's panel were prescribed long-term medication therapy. So instead of the outcome being,

00:24:26.660 did the patient actually get healthier? The outcome was, was the patient well-medicated?

00:24:35.080 And if you're not looking closely, you could be like, well, yeah, we want all the patients with

00:24:39.540 diabetes to be on metformin. And of course, we want all the patients with asthma to be on

00:24:43.660 long-term control inhalers. But because the outcomes were defined by essentially medication adherence

00:24:50.680 and not actually, is the patient actually healthier, it drives to more of the same system,

00:24:57.320 which is intervention-based. So it's a way that sort of like a good idea can still get shunted

00:25:03.180 towards that reactive intervention-based system.

00:25:08.220 And as you're talking about the more funding that this institution, that this system has,

00:25:14.820 actually the worst outcomes have gotten. That is true in a lot of institutions. It's true in a lot

00:25:20.240 of different sectors of society. It's true in education too. We actually spend more per pupil

00:25:25.400 in real dollars than we ever have. I mean, times more than a hundred versus what we did 50 years ago

00:25:34.780 and outcomes are getting worse. And it's just, it's interesting. It is nice sounding that we need

00:25:42.640 to fund something. Of course, this good thing needs more money. If we just give it more money,

00:25:47.520 then it will be able to accomplish what we want it to accomplish. But that's kind of an easy way to

00:25:53.040 put a Band-Aid on something and not look at what's happening underneath the surface, what's really

00:25:59.880 going on. You've explained really well what's going on in the system and why corruption happens.

00:26:07.040 Do you think that how doctors are educated in the medical school has anything to do with this? Or do you

00:26:15.680 feel like this really kind of starts after they get out of medical school, once they start practicing,

00:26:20.940 once they see how the so-called game is played? And again, I'm not trying to ascribe bad motives to all

00:26:27.060 doctors, but as you said, this is just kind of how everything works. Like, do you think it goes all the

00:26:32.900 way back to education or do you think it happens after they're in the field and they're just playing

00:26:37.120 the game as it's played? Oh, unquestionably. I mean, I think it starts, oh, it starts as early

00:26:43.600 as college. Like if you think about it, everything in our system funnels you towards fragmentation

00:26:52.500 and specialization as a marker for increased success. So in high school, you learn about,

00:26:59.380 you know, all biology. You learn about like plants and bacteria and cells and human cells. You kind of

00:27:05.520 learning about everything. Animals. Then in college, if you're a biology major, you know, you focus on

00:27:11.400 human biology. Like my major in college was human biology. So you go from all life to humans. And then

00:27:17.740 medical school, you start focusing on each organ system within the human. Like literally the way the

00:27:23.280 education is structured at Stanford Medical School, where I went, is like you have a nephrology block and you

00:27:29.520 have a hepatology block and you have a neurology block and you have a cardiology block and you have a

00:27:34.180 gastroenterology block. It's like the body is just these individual parts. And then you go into

00:27:40.680 residency and you specialize in one of those and then you go to fellowship and you go deeper. So

00:27:45.540 built into the brains of people is disconnection. It's not seeing things as a system. And what's

00:27:52.360 interesting is that it's basically like we're just practicing outdated medicine because 75 years ago

00:27:58.680 when we didn't have, you know, metabolomics and proteomics and we couldn't visualize inside the cell the way

00:28:04.140 we can today. The only way we could describe diseases was basically like how they looked like

00:28:09.580 the symptoms. So like, oh, depression is this constellation of symptoms. That's how we define

00:28:16.940 the disease. And only recently have we been able to define to see diseases based on what's actually

00:28:23.560 happening inside the cell, more like physiologic pathways. Okay. So the mitochondria is dysfunctional

00:28:29.280 and we have chronic inflammation and we have oxidative stress and these like invisible processes

00:28:34.280 that we can't see. But, and when, when you look at that level, what you find is that those same

00:28:40.180 disturbances, these invisible microscopic cellular disturbances are actually happening all over the

00:28:46.660 body. Obviously we're one body and they're just showing up in different places as different symptoms,

00:28:52.500 but medicine hasn't caught up to describe diseases based on what they really are, which is what's going on

00:28:58.800 on that invisible layer. They're still describing diseases based on collections of symptoms because

00:29:04.800 that's what we can see. And so of course, depression looks different than cancer. Of course, arthritis

00:29:10.120 looks different than erectile dysfunction. Of course, infertility looks different than a stroke

00:29:14.760 on the outside. But when you zoom in and really look at what's happening inside the biology, it's all the same

00:29:21.300 thing. And so there's, so yes, I think from the education standpoint, it's basically like very

00:29:28.000 fragmented look at things not to mention that pharma underwrites like so much of the actual medical school

00:29:35.620 education. Like when I was at Stanford medical school, Pfizer donated $3 million to Stanford. And, and that

00:29:43.400 was during the time that the new opioid guidelines were being released. So there are currently on the

00:29:50.140 Stanford website articles that say that that money from Pfizer had no impact on how medicine would be

00:29:57.460 practiced. There's no conflicts. It's an educational grant, but like money is money. You know, it's of

00:30:03.980 course, you're not going to be absolutely issuing opioid use for holistic therapies like acupuncture and

00:30:12.520 micronutrients and stress management in the face of a $3 million grant. So, I mean, maybe I'm wrong,

00:30:18.520 but I'm just, that just feels kind of logical that you would not be really putting down the

00:30:24.140 medications of the people who are donating huge amounts of money. So yeah, I think it's not only

00:30:28.740 money. It's also just like the real framework of healthcare that needs to be updated. And when I

00:30:34.280 talk about the fragmentation and disconnection, I think it's, it gets into almost a more like esoteric

00:30:41.840 and spiritual issue with our system, which is that we've asked people to really look at their bodies

00:30:49.360 as these like fragmented separate things and not as like this miraculous system that all works

00:30:56.540 together. And I think people, I think people in America feel very almost, you know, healthcare and

00:31:07.060 the body seems so complicated. It seems so complex to be healthy. Everyone's really putting the trust

00:31:14.040 like outside of themselves with the experts, you know, and with the science. And it's almost like

00:31:20.700 the system has designed this whole ecosystem that gets us to distrust our own internal knowing about

00:31:29.280 what's right for us and how to be healthy. And what I really want to share with people is like,

00:31:34.040 to really just not accept that. Like, I believe that every person has such deep internal knowing

00:31:40.480 about what's right for them. And we've just been asked to be like divorced from our common sense in

00:31:45.640 a way when it comes to the health of ourselves and our children and our parents and to really put that

00:31:49.840 agency outside of us to our great detriment. And like, just step back for a second. We're the only

00:31:57.240 species in the world with a chronic disease and obesity epidemic. And we're the only species in

00:32:04.000 the world with experts and PubMed, you know, where all the scientific papers are. It's like,

00:32:09.580 we are the only species that is eating ourselves to death. And so maybe we need to actually wake up a

00:32:18.320 little bit and get back to really trusting ourselves, getting in touch with our bodies,

00:32:24.920 seeing our bodies as this miraculous connected ecosystem that it is. And like tapping a little

00:32:30.600 bit into that confidence that the system really wants to disempower in us. Because when we feel

00:32:36.420 weak, when we feel that it's too complicated for us, when we feel disempowered, what does that do?

00:32:42.400 It gets us to be, you know, rabid consumers of solutions and of experts outside of us, which

00:32:50.920 unfortunately isn't really working very well for us. So I think getting back to like real trust and

00:32:56.500 agency in our own, you know, common sense is really an important part of this too,

00:33:02.680 that the system has divorced us from. Wow. I have so many thoughts and questions about everything

00:33:08.780 that you just articulated so well. I was just thinking about my own medical history. I have

00:33:14.060 hypothyroid. And so I take medication for that and have for a long time. And there have been various

00:33:20.520 times where I've had other symptoms and they have sent me to specialists, the nephrologist or whatever,

00:33:25.280 when really, at least in my case, of course, I can't speak from a medical professional standpoint,

00:33:30.640 and I can't speak for anyone else. But it ended up that it was all actually connected to my thyroid

00:33:37.180 and getting on there, you know, the right level of medication or lifestyle choices. I actually didn't

00:33:43.080 need in my case to go see the specialist, there was nothing wrong with me, there were just these kind

00:33:47.380 of like, off symptoms. And so I'm thinking about that fragmentation and how my nephrologist at the time

00:33:53.280 had no idea what was going on with my thyroid, didn't even care what was going on with my

00:33:58.400 thyroid. It was just, you know, this is how I look at your kidneys, your kidneys seem to be doing

00:34:02.900 fine. And so then it's left up to the patient. Okay, so I have to bridge the gap. So when I go to

00:34:08.220 my endocrinologist, and I say, well, my nephrologist said that my kidneys are fine. And the thyroid

00:34:12.720 doctor says, well, we're still seeing this. So me without any medical degree, and I'm speaking

00:34:17.600 probably for a lot of people, I have to be the one to go to WebMD and be like, well, okay, well,

00:34:24.040 what is going on here, which just causes a lot of anxiety. And then what you have to go see another

00:34:28.240 specialist that's supposed to bridge the gap between those two things. And so we're simultaneously

00:34:33.500 being expected to have the level of confidence and expertise of a doctor, while also being told 1.00

00:34:41.600 you are too stupid to even ask basic questions about your health. And so we're putting this 1.00

00:34:46.660 very tenuous situation of having to be our own healthcare experts and advocates, because our

00:34:54.260 doctors are like, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know. Even with thyroid, asking my

00:34:58.020 endocrinologist, is there anything I can do outside of medication to help? Nope, nope, nope, nope. The

00:35:03.980 answer is always no. So okay, I have to become an expert in nutrition, I have to become an expert

00:35:08.980 in metabolic health, I have to become an expert in thyroid. But if I ask you these questions, it's like,

00:35:14.080 how dare you ask? So it's just so difficult to be a patient in the United States. It is maybe

00:35:21.720 anywhere. Maybe it's that like that everywhere. I don't know. You Well, I think a lot of it's unique

00:35:26.320 to the United States or other countries that have moved towards a system like ours. But you speak to

00:35:31.620 such an important point, which is this sort of trap that we're in where we are both dependent on the

00:35:38.980 system, but also, you know, really aren't getting good quality out of the system. And so it's like,

00:35:44.480 it's such a tug of war, like, you know, you're kind of not getting the full answer. But we're also

00:35:49.320 kind of dependent on it, because, you know, things are pretty bad with health right now. So we have to

00:35:54.160 keep going to see these specialists, but not quite getting the answers that we want. But there's not

00:35:58.860 really a good alternative, right? Unless you're like, finding your own functional medicine doctor,

00:36:03.460 which like, I recommend for everyone, like someone who's really trained to see the body

00:36:08.740 as a unified system, whether it's functional medicine, precision medicine, naturopathic

00:36:14.180 medicine, doctors that have a bit more of that, like, put it together perspective. But what I

00:36:20.360 actually think is so exciting about this time, I'm actually extremely optimistic. And what I think is

00:36:26.940 so exciting about the time that we're living in right now is that while some of the trends are like

00:36:31.640 very, very concerning. I mean, we could run through stats, but like, children's health,

00:36:38.500 terrible, you know, life experience going down in the United States, like six and 10 adults have a

00:36:43.680 chronic illness. It's all bad, you know, 70%, I think, are technically obese, or at least over 75%

00:36:50.300 overweight or obese, 50% of American adults with prediabetes or type two diabetes, almost totally

00:36:56.820 preventable. 30% of children with prediabetes, that was 0% 50 years ago, 45% of children overweight or

00:37:05.880 obese, nearly 20% of kids with fatty liver disease, things that doctors would never have seen in their

00:37:11.360 career 50 years ago, 40% of 18 year olds with a mental health diagnosis. It is bananas, like what is

00:37:19.280 happening with the stats and the trends. But I'm very optimistic, because we are living in a time

00:37:27.100 where just in the last two to three years, there's sort of this personal empowerment revolution,

00:37:35.520 I think, happening in our healthcare system. Part of it's technology. And part of it is I think the

00:37:41.840 response from COVID, people are feeling a lot more like I need to like be more of an active participant

00:37:46.600 in my healthcare because the healthcare system really let us down during that period. So with

00:37:51.820 the technology side, just in the last few years, there's now tons of companies doing direct to

00:37:58.700 consumer lab testing. So you don't have to like beg your daughter. So you don't have to beg your doctor

00:38:04.520 for basic lab work on their timeline. You can literally just go online and order 100 biomarkers for

00:38:10.760 $499. It's amazing. And then with like deep interpretation. So that's one. There's,

00:38:16.600 now wearables, you know, so you can really understand a lot of your core vital signs.

00:38:22.820 There's... Is that what that is?

00:38:24.100 This is an aura ring. Yeah. So this tells you how my sleep, my steps, my oxygen saturation,

00:38:28.520 my heart rate variability, stress levels, all sorts of things. So that's really amazing. Because then

00:38:33.120 if I start to see something going in the wrong direction, I can take action myself, you know,

00:38:37.200 before it gets to be a problem. We've got biosensors, like continuous glucose monitors that can tell you

00:38:44.120 in real time what's happening with your blood sugar, as opposed to waiting a year from now for your

00:38:50.340 doctor to give you a single data point about your blood sugar and maybe say, oh, it's getting worse

00:38:55.040 or whatever. You can see it now in real time without having to go to your doctor. So there's

00:38:59.060 these trends of personal empowerment and data that are very, very exciting. And currently those aren't,

00:39:05.760 they're expensive. They're not necessarily accessible to everyone, but it's a movement towards,

00:39:09.720 okay, I'm going to be in control of my day-to-day health to hopefully avoid some of these chronic

00:39:15.700 lifestyle diseases that are totally plaguing us. So that's very, very exciting. And then to speak to

00:39:24.240 what you were talking about with the thyroid and the kidney, I think a big message that I want to

00:39:30.040 really share with people is that

00:39:32.660 it's, it's, it's, it's not as complicated as we've been led to believe. So if we think about

00:39:39.920 symptoms anywhere in the body, liver, kidney, thyroid, all symptoms, like all symptoms that we

00:39:48.500 have are necessarily the result of dysfunction within ourselves. They have to be, we are, our entire

00:39:55.380 bodies is just like 40 trillion cells and we don't have a symptom arise out of thin air. It has to arise

00:40:02.480 out of dysfunction and how our cells are working. And there's not, there's not actually that many

00:40:09.620 things that affect how our cells function. It's literally like food, sleep, movement, stress,

00:40:19.320 temperature, light, and toxins. Of course there's genetics, but those pillars, which I talk about

00:40:25.640 in extensively in my book, those are the knobs that we can turn to like change, you know, how we're

00:40:32.260 meeting the needs of the cell. So if you have a symptom, it means there's cellular dysfunction.

00:40:37.700 And if you have cellular dysfunction, then you need to run through the list of what's affecting

00:40:41.840 your cells and take stock of what could be hurting them or helping them and make adjustments. And most

00:40:48.240 of the healthcare crisis we're in today could really be wiped away if we actually just sort of ran through

00:40:53.960 that list and of those different pillars of sort of lifestyle and environment and thought about like,

00:40:59.220 how am I meeting the needs or not? And then a question would be like, well, how do I know?

00:41:03.100 And one of the ways is by just looking at your own biomarkers. Like I just talked about getting the lab

00:41:07.920 testing, whether it's from a direct consumer company or from your doctor, basic lab markers that

00:41:12.820 your doctor orders and look at what the biomarkers are saying. So if you have symptoms and your biomarkers

00:41:19.020 are off, it means you need to turn some of those knobs probably on those dietary and lifestyle things.

00:41:23.380 And again, like pretty simple how to do that. It's like, get more sleep, move more, eat more real

00:41:28.640 food, less processed food, et cetera. Again, all outlined in my book, but starting there with like

00:41:35.400 a real first principles framework about what's going on, I think can be really, really empowering.

00:41:41.120 Um, one of the ways that I look at my body is I'm like, it's sort of like I, Casey, I'm like the

00:41:49.160 mother to my 40 trillion cells and they're all like little infants and they can't speak in words. So if

00:41:57.420 they're not getting their needs met, they speak in symptoms. And just like a baby, there's not that

00:42:04.340 many things that you would necessarily adjust. If you have a crying baby, it's like, do they need a

00:42:08.720 diaper change? Are they cold or too hot? Do they need to sleep? Do they need milk? Like with our

00:42:14.120 cells, you kind of just run through the checklist as well. It's like food, sleep, exercise, stress,

00:42:19.180 temperature, light, toxins, et cetera. And it's just really doing an inventory of like, how do I

00:42:26.440 help meet the needs of what these cells need? And then how do I not overburden them with things that

00:42:32.540 they don't need that are going to cause them to break? They're just little machines. They're just

00:42:35.820 little factories and we know how they work. Like that's the beauty of our scientific world is that

00:42:40.000 we do really know how cells work. And so I believe that all could sound a little intimidating, but like

00:42:45.960 it's actually not, not that challenging. The system wants us to think it's complex, but if we got

00:42:51.940 ourselves into this chronic disease mess in 50 to 75 years, clearly it's not that, that complicated,

00:42:59.200 you know, we know how the environment's changed. We know how to protect ourselves, but we have to be

00:43:03.800 empowered, understand a little bit about the biology, understand a little bit about how to

00:43:08.360 interpret our own biomarkers, which I'm happy to talk about if you want to, and then just have the

00:43:13.160 boldness to take action in our own lives. And sometimes that means being a little counterculture

00:43:18.200 and doing things a little differently than everyone else in your community is doing. And

00:43:21.600 it's worth it because being sick is not fun. Yeah. Speaking of counterculture, there is kind of

00:43:28.340 the movement and I don't know how prevalent it is in the actual medical world. It's kind of something

00:43:32.800 that we see more on social media. The body positivity movement, which I think has some

00:43:38.620 positives to it. Absolutely. I don't think that everyone needs to look to a supermodel who is

00:43:47.380 underweight to be, you know, the standard of beauty or the standard of health. And so moving into a more

00:43:55.460 realistic view of the body and health and strength and all of that, I think can be good. But just like

00:44:02.040 any trend or movement, it can swing too far. And we have seen kind of an either normalization or

00:44:09.460 even glorification of unhealthy lifestyles and obesity and a push against what is referred to

00:44:18.820 as fat shaming, even by doctors. And so I think there is a fear of saying one type of choice or one type

00:44:30.560 of lifestyle or one type of diet is bad or being a certain weight is bad or being fat is bad. Like

00:44:37.860 there's almost a growing stigma around that now because we don't want to say that anyone is making

00:44:44.380 the wrong choice or doing something bad or unhealthy. Like, do you see that in the medical world?

00:44:49.980 Oh, this is definitely happening in the medical world. People are petrified to piss anyone off in

00:44:56.960 our world right now. It's I mean, I think we have, unfortunately, an epidemic of cowardice that's

00:45:03.820 happening in our country because people are so afraid to get any backlash about because of the

00:45:10.320 way our digital world works. It's so easy to for people to like weigh in and to, you know, tell you

00:45:16.320 you're, you know, horrible if you say this and that that people are really, I think, silencing

00:45:20.620 themselves. You are not one of those people. This is why your platform is amazing. And I think but I do

00:45:25.140 think there is such, such fear of being perceived as anything but like the good girl and the good

00:45:35.440 boy. And it's, it's, I mean, great. So we can just like please everyone as our, as Rome burns. And as

00:45:41.900 the country gets closer to a hundred percent of people literally being sick, but you know, it's crazy.

00:45:48.020 But when it comes to this sort of the, the fat positivity movement, I mean, one thing that's

00:45:55.200 coming out more and more is like how many of these nutritionists that are pushing some of these

00:46:01.040 messages are actually paid for directly by the processed food companies. So you always have to

00:46:05.360 follow the money. And this has come out in news articles in the past six months that a lot of these

00:46:10.860 TikTok and Instagram nutrition influencers are getting direct payments from ultra processed food

00:46:17.100 companies who, of course, it would absolutely be in their best interest for everyone to think that,

00:46:23.000 you know, it's terrible to talk about weight because their foods are designed by food scientists to get us

00:46:31.280 to be insatiably hungry and eat as much of it as possible. So always follow the money. But I think

00:46:39.200 the real reframe that needs to happen with the conversation about obesity or weight or BMI

00:46:46.000 is to ignore, maybe ignore the weight component and just focus on metabolic health. Like

00:46:53.360 there are people who are overweight who are metabolically healthy. It's a small percentage,

00:47:00.240 but what everyone needs to know is whether they are metabolically healthy, because if that's the

00:47:06.140 case, you're going to avoid a lot of the top killers of that are killing, killing people in the United

00:47:11.620 States, and you're going to have better longevity. But if you're not metabolically healthy, you are

00:47:17.120 more likely to suffer from many of the non-lethal symptoms that are plaguing us from depression,

00:47:23.060 anxiety, migraine, fibromyalgia, gout, infertility, erectile dysfunction, all the way to the things that

00:47:28.340 are going to kill us like stroke, heart disease, cancer, type two diabetes, Alzheimer's, dementia,

00:47:32.800 fatty liver disease. All of those are on the metabolic spectrum. So you have to know

00:47:36.860 if you're metabolically healthy. And the reason the conversation would benefit from switching from

00:47:41.400 talking about obesity to metabolic health is because it takes away a lot of, I think the stigma

00:47:47.480 about how someone looks, but right. That's true. And it's a little bit more like just feels more

00:47:52.280 sterile. It is very simple to know if you're metabolically healthy or not. You literally have

00:47:57.180 to look at five biomarkers that are generally free on your annual physical. And these are the criteria

00:48:03.960 for metabolic syndrome, which is fasting glucose, triglycerides, HDL cholesterol,

00:48:10.580 waist circumference, and blood pressure. And if people have a fasting glucose under 100 milligrams

00:48:20.040 per deciliter, a triglyceride level under 150 milligrams per deciliter, an HDL cholesterol above 50

00:48:27.800 for women or above 40 for men, waist circumference less than 35 inches for women and 40 for men,

00:48:33.680 and blood pressure under 120 over 85, they fit the criteria for metabolically healthy. And they

00:48:40.320 will likely have a much lower rate of all the chronic diseases affecting Americans today. It's

00:48:46.080 that simple. Those are basically free. And you can order those. They just, I mean, if you get a

00:48:49.980 cholesterol panel of fasting glucose and get your blood pressure taken at the doctor's office and a

00:48:53.700 waist circumference, which is pretty standard on every annual physical, you can know that.

00:48:58.320 The wild information is that only 6.8 of Americans now have the healthy levels of all five of those

00:49:11.600 biomarkers not on medication. So if you look at the recent research from the American Journal of

00:49:16.420 Cardiology that looks at those biomarkers, if you're in the correct, you know, the healthy range for those

00:49:23.480 biomarkers, it's only 6.8 of American adults. It should be a hundred percent. Those are all 1.00

00:49:30.360 lifestyle based. So we need to move away from the conversation. I think about just obesity,

00:49:35.600 which is so charged and talk about empowering people to take full ownership of, are you metabolically

00:49:42.480 healthy? Because if those biomarkers, one or more of them are not in the proper, you know, the healthy

00:49:49.220 range, it's a signal that there's a fundamental problem with how your cells are converting food

00:49:58.040 energy to cellular energy, which means that you're going to have essentially underpowering of this

00:50:04.180 miraculous body. And of course that will lead to dysfunction, which shows up as symptoms. So I would

00:50:12.700 just implore people to just make sure they understand their levels on those biomarkers. And then of course

00:50:17.440 there's lots more advanced testing you can do to know more about your health, um, fasting insulin

00:50:23.940 levels, uh, inflammatory markers, liver function tests that together can also add richness to the

00:50:30.980 picture of sort of underlying health. But like every American should know where they are, whether

00:50:36.580 they're in that 6.8% or not. And if they're not, they should do everything in their power to get there

00:50:42.340 and make that number bigger because it will have wide ranging positive impacts on every aspect of

00:50:50.380 health. And it's pretty simple to do. Eat real food, sleep, move your body, manage your stress.

00:50:57.140 Don't overload your body with synthetic toxins, et cetera, et cetera. So.

00:51:01.140 Oh my goodness. I feel like I've been to medical school. I feel like I've learned so much in this

00:51:05.100 conversation. That's great advice. And obviously people are going to get more details about all of those

00:51:10.900 things and even more specific, uh, specific advice in your book, good energy. Um, give us some tips,

00:51:19.200 if you will, as we kind of close this out on how we can advocate for ourselves to our doctors.

00:51:27.320 You have been in all the positions. You've been a patient, you've had a parent who has had a life

00:51:35.080 threatening, a fatal diagnosis, and you are a doctor. So from all of those different angles,

00:51:40.660 how should a patient best advocate for ourselves or our loved ones?

00:51:45.120 That is such a great question. The primary thing I would say is that never be afraid to ask questions

00:51:53.480 and always probe deeper. You know, you are the customer, like you get to ask the questions.

00:52:01.160 And if your doctor is not willing to sit with you and ask and answer your questions, like find a new

00:52:05.940 doctor. Um, I think one thing that people can do if they're feeling sort of lost in their health

00:52:11.220 journey and like they're seeing a bunch of different specialists and it just feels like

00:52:14.360 they're going through the revolving doors, consider seeing like a more holistic focused doctor,

00:52:19.760 like a functional medicine doctor. There's a great website called ifm.org, which is institute

00:52:24.600 for functional medicine.org. And these are going to be doctors who have this more like connected

00:52:29.400 systems view of the body and can often be that bridge that you were talking about of like looking

00:52:34.940 at all your records and helping you kind of put the pieces together of how they all relate.

00:52:39.900 They'll also often order more extensive lab work, but on that website, you can find practitioners

00:52:44.500 in your area who practice that type of medicine. Um, parsley health is a wonderful digital health

00:52:51.220 organization that's very affordable and takes insurance that practices functional medicine.

00:52:56.180 And then I would also just consider if you have a diagnosis that's stubborn, like a hypothyroidism or

00:53:02.140 something like that, like go into Google and search your symptom and then just write, you know,

00:53:08.560 functional medicine or like dietary and lifestyle strategies after it. And you're going to end up

00:53:14.520 going, seeing a lot of other types of like blog posts and articles that might give you like some ideas

00:53:20.400 for books or podcasts that can just sort of expand your thinking about what's possible.

00:53:26.420 Like, and it's not like this is fringe. The Cleveland Clinic, uh, which is one of the premier hospitals

00:53:31.620 in the country has the Cleveland Clinic Center for Functional Medicine. And at Thomas Jefferson

00:53:36.100 University in Philadelphia, there's Thomas Jefferson Marcus Institute for Precision Medicine,

00:53:40.960 which is practicing this way. Um, and so there's different hospital systems that are like

00:53:45.840 major and mainstream who are like practicing this way and they have wait lists for like years because

00:53:51.620 people want someone to put the pieces together. But at a very, at a minimum, you can start to like

00:53:57.440 shape the way you're researching online with a few of those like extra search terms to basically see if

00:54:02.960 there's, you know, thought leaders that, um, you know, that, that resonate with you. I also highly

00:54:08.860 recommend books by, um, obviously good energy is filled with this information. It comes out May 14th,

00:54:14.900 but Dr. Mark Hyman has written 19 books on a root cause approach to health. Many New York Times

00:54:21.000 bestsellers cannot recommend his books enough. Um, Sarah Gottfried, Terry Walls is an autoimmune

00:54:28.920 expert who's written books about autoimmunity and root cause perspectives. Jason Fung, Kara Fitzgerald,

00:54:36.720 uh, David Perlmutter. There's wonderful academic thought leaders out there who are talking about this

00:54:43.000 stuff. And, uh, I think books can often be a gateway to a whole new way of, of thinking about things.

00:54:49.240 So yeah, all of those have impacted me greatly. Wow. Dr. Means, can I just say that you have been

00:54:56.300 one of my favorite ever guests. And I really mean that we have almost a thousand episodes of

00:55:01.900 relatable. Now I've interviewed a lot of people. I love all of my guests, but you not only are so

00:55:06.820 knowledgeable, but you are so good at articulating the knowledge that you have. And not everyone has that

00:55:12.020 ability. So I really do believe that God has given you special gifts. And you said at the beginning

00:55:17.140 that you feel like you've been put on this planet to talk about this and I can see it. I really can.

00:55:22.080 I can see that this is something that you have been called to do. And, um, it, you know, it's really

00:55:28.240 interesting how God redeems tragedies because I'm sure you would not have chosen for your mom to get

00:55:33.740 that diagnosis and for it to unfold the way that it did. And yet he is so good at bringing beauty

00:55:40.160 out of ashes and then using something that no one ever would have chosen using something so dark and

00:55:49.000 so tragic to then not just help you, but to help countless people through the message that you're

00:55:54.560 conveying. So thank you for doing that. Thank you so, so much. Thank you for using your voice to

00:55:59.720 always push for a better world. I appreciate you so much. And that last point you just made resonates

00:56:04.860 so much. Nothing has helped me feel more spiritually grounded and more in touch with a bigger picture

00:56:12.100 than this experience with my mom. And then seeing how it's unfolded, seeing beauty come out of tragedy.

00:56:16.860 I think that that in and of itself and how it was transformed into beauty in my own life has made

00:56:24.040 me realize on a bigger level that there is, um, there's not as much to fear in the world as I think

00:56:30.980 we are thought we are made to believe. And I think that's a big part of our health journey too,

00:56:34.820 is waking up to realizing that like, there's actually, we live in a really beautiful universe

00:56:39.900 and we live in a really, you know, there's a bigger picture and, um, and kind of popping up into that

00:56:45.720 bigger picture, I think is actually also incredibly important for our health journey. Like that, um,

00:56:51.440 things can seem really bad, you know, here day to day, but it's like, there's actually a really

00:56:55.520 beautiful, bigger picture going on. And I think that knowing has actually been a huge part of my

00:57:01.060 health journey too. So I appreciate you saying that. And I think it's really true. And I think

00:57:04.800 when we can tap into that awe, it helps on every level. Definitely. Well, Dr. Means, thank you so

00:57:09.580 much. I really do encourage everyone. They can go ahead and pre-order your book. Yes. Okay. So they

00:57:13.800 can pre-order your book. It'll be out May 14th. I'm so excited for you. I hope it's a bestseller.

00:57:18.900 So I'm so excited to read it. I'm excited to go back and listen to this conversation to take notes on

00:57:23.800 everything that you said. So thank you so much, Dr. Means. I appreciate it. Thank you.

00:57:32.640 Okay. I hope you guys loved that conversation. I was thinking the whole time that she was talking

00:57:37.920 about the importance of seeing the body as one unit with many parts about how the church is described

00:57:48.240 as one body with many parts. Like, even though it is speaking metaphorically in scripture,

00:57:56.520 it still emphasizes this same principle that the body has different parts that are working together.

00:58:03.820 So I didn't have a way really to fit this into that conversation, but I wanted to use it as just a

00:58:09.660 closing encouragement to you and a reminder that God is so wise. So this is 1 Corinthians 13,

00:58:17.960 starting in 1 Corinthians 12, rather, starting in verse 14.

00:58:24.660 For the body does not consist of one member, but of many. If the foot should say,

00:58:28.960 because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body, that would not make it

00:58:32.580 any less a part of the body. And if the ear should say, because I am not an eye,

00:58:37.340 I do not belong to the body, that would not make it any less a part of the body. If the whole body

00:58:42.020 were an eye, where would be the sense of hearing? If the whole body were an ear, where would be the

00:58:47.280 sense of smell? But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose.

00:58:53.380 If we were all a single member, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts,

00:58:58.380 yet one body. And he goes on, of course, he's talking about the spiritual gifts

00:59:02.780 that each member of the body of Christ brings to the church. But again, the underlying principle

00:59:09.020 here is clear, that all parts are necessary, that all parts work together, that all parts depend

00:59:15.420 upon one another. Isn't it interesting that these biblical writers so many thousands of years ago

00:59:21.240 understood something that apparently many of our top medical doctors don't understand today.

00:59:26.060 And I was also reminded of Ephesians 4, 15,

00:59:30.220 rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head,

00:59:35.420 into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is

00:59:41.300 equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up

00:59:47.320 in love. God is so wise. And just as with everything, science is always

00:59:55.040 catching up to God. All of the things that become new discoveries today, we can always go back to

01:00:00.900 scripture and say the principle was always there because the God who created all of this, who is

01:00:05.620 the author of life, the creator of our bodies, he has known it from the beginning because he is the

01:00:12.260 source of all truth. And so we are just on a journey figuring out and catching up to the wisdom that God

01:00:21.040 has always had and has given us through his word. So I just wanted to end with that, with that spiritual

01:00:27.040 truth.

Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - August 29, 2024

REPLAY ｜ Question Your Doctor, Save Your Life ｜ Guest： Dr. Casey Means

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