REPLAY ｜ Question Your Doctor, Save Your Life ｜ Guest： Dr. Casey Means
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Summary
After her mom received a diagnosis of stage 4 pancreatic cancer and was pressured to undergo invasive procedures that would ultimately do more harm than good, Dr. Casey Means had a revelation: the medical system is not working. Instead of helping Americans get healthy, it is, in a lot of cases, making us sicker.
Transcript
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After her mom received a diagnosis of stage 4 pancreatic cancer and was pressured to endure
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invasive procedures that would ultimately do more harm than good, Dr. Casey Means had a
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revelation about the medical system. It is not working. Instead of helping Americans get healthy,
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it is, in a lot of cases, making us sicker. It treats symptoms without ever getting to the root
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cause, and it often prioritizes profit over patients. One of my favorite and most fascinating
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interviews I've ever done in all of my 1,000 almost episodes of Relatable, Dr. Means unravels
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what she has learned about the corruption in American healthcare while also giving us really
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practical tools to take charge of our health. Also, a very optimistic outlook on our future if we start
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moving in the right direction. You guys are absolutely going to love this conversation.
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She is the author of Good Energy, the surprising connection between metabolism and limitless
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health. We're going to be talking about all of this and so much more on today's episode
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of Relatable. It's brought to you by our friends at Good Ranchers. Go to goodranchers.com. Use
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code Allie at checkout for a discount. That's goodranchers.com, code Allie.
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Dr. Means, thanks so much for taking the time to join us. First, could you tell us who you are and
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what you do? My name is Casey Means. I'm a medical doctor. I'm an author of the upcoming book,
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Good Energy, and I'm a co-founder of Levels Health, a metabolic awareness company.
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Okay, and I first heard of you. I saw a tweet thread sometime last year about you losing your mom
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and an article that you wrote that basically said, look, I'm a doctor. I've been in the medical field
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for a long time, and you can't always trust us. And that statement accompanied with your mom's story
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was really powerful for me, I think, for a lot of people who realize that we can't always trust the
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experts during COVID. So just take us back. Take us back to that tweet thread, why you wrote that
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article, and of course, your mom's story. Yeah. Well, I think my mom's story is very almost like
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archetypal of what so many Americans are going through today, kind of realizing that something is
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not quite right when it comes to our own health, the health of our kids, the health of our parents.
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People are so sick in our country, and they're getting sicker. And we're put on this chronic
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disease, sort of pill-taking surgery treadmill, and yet we're not really getting better. So my mom's
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story really just is so emblematic of this and played off so much of my own experience in medicine
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as a surgeon. So my mom, she was very vibrant and from the outside looked pretty healthy, but
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in her 40s, she had me. I was an almost 12-pound baby. I was big. Everyone kind of congratulated for
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that. No one really thought much of it. She had trouble losing the baby weight. She was in her 50s,
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had a tough menopause. Then in her 60s, she started getting, you know, the diagnoses that so many
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Americans have. High blood pressure. Here's an ACE inhibitor. High cholesterol. Here's a statin,
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you know, prescribed 200 million times per year in the U.S. High blood sugar. Here's metformin. Very
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common. This is, you know, pre-diabetes. It's a pre-disease. Nothing to worry about. And then all of a
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sudden, she's 72, and she's hiking with my dad near their house in Northern California, and she gets a pain in
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her belly. And that's unusual for her. It lasts her a couple of days. So she goes to her primary care
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doctor. They order a CT scan, and it turns out it's stage four, widely metastatic pancreatic cancer.
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And 13 days later, she was dead. And, you know, at the time of her death, she was seeing what a lot
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of people would call like the best doctors in the world. She was being seen at Stanford. She was being
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seen at Mayo Clinic. You know, really access to high-quality health care. And the oncologist
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looked at my family in the eyes and said, you know, I'm so sorry. This was so unlucky, the pancreatic
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cancer. And knowing what I know about really more a connected root cause perspective on health,
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to me, it's very clear that this cancer was not actually unlucky. It was totally predictable.
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But in our Western medical system that is so reactive, it's so siloed, it's like whack-a-mole
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medicine. They saw all those things that my mom had throughout the past 30 years as separated,
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isolated things. The big baby, the trouble losing the baby weight, the tough menopause,
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all the metabolic issues, blood pressure, blood sugar, cholesterol, and then cancer. In our system,
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in our reductionist Western medical system, they all look separate and it seems unlucky.
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But what I'm really, I think, on this planet to share and what my book is about and what all my
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work is about is that through a different lens, through a root cause lens, through a true physiology
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lens, what we'd understand is that all those symptoms and diseases she had are actually trunks
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of the exact same tree. And that tree is metabolic dysfunction. It's a core physiologic problem that's
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affecting 93% of American adults have some aspect of metabolic dysfunction. Some of the most obvious
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ones you'd think about, it would be like diabetes and obesity, but actually cancer, heart disease,
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stroke, depression, anxiety, having a big baby, which is called fetal macrosomia, trouble losing
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And is that caused by, just because I don't know, and a lot of people don't know the through line
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of the different diagnoses that you're talking about, like going back to you being a 12 pound
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baby. The only understanding I have of why that typically happens is if a woman has gestational
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diabetes. So is that part of what you're talking about? And all of these things are somehow connected
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Absolutely. Yeah. So the trunk of this tree, this metabolic dysfunction, it can show up like
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gestational diabetes and at its very core and not to get too science and technical, but
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in our society today with the rapid changes in our diet and our lifestyle over the past,
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just like 50, 75 years, really since World War II, our industrialized diet, our chronic stress from
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our devices, we're getting 25% less sleep on average than we were a hundred years ago. The incredible
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amount of synthetic toxins in our food, water, air, and homes, it's fundamentally caused a problem
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with our cells that is super fundamental. It's a breaking of this metabolic machine in our cells.
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And metabolism is how we convert food to cellular energy. And the reason that this can look like
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so many different diseases is because if you have a problem converting food energy to cellular energy
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to power our cells, in different cell types, this can look like all different things. If it's,
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you know, in a liver cell, it can look like fatty liver disease. In a blood vessel cell, it can look
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like heart disease. It can look like in the brain, it can look like depression and anxiety. So
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essentially there's this core issue that's caused by our lifestyle and our food system that is really
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breaking our bodies on a fundamental level, showing up as all these different diseases across the
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spectrum. Um, and our healthcare system is totally, totally blind to it, which is why they wait until
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the symptoms emerge and they treat those isolated symptoms, but they never get to their actual root
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cause because that's not the way our system works. It's about separation, not connection. And it's such a
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blind spot, but it's such a lethal blind spot that it's really why it inspired me to write a book about
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it. Because, you know, you look at the trends that are happening today, which is that the more we spend
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on healthcare, we're spending $4.5 trillion a year on healthcare in America and outcomes are getting
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worse. The more studies we do, the worse the outcomes are getting. The more specialized we get
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in healthcare, the worse the outcomes are getting. Uh, you know, it's, it's sort of the definition of
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unsustainability. And the reason is because we're actually focusing on the wrong problem. We're focusing on
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reactive symptom-based medicine as opposed to the connected root cause that's actually underlying
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most of the American diseases that we're facing today. And in the case of the big baby, um, you know,
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in a mother who has this metabolic dysfunction, her blood sugar starts rising that then transfers in
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the blood through the placenta to the baby. So the baby is exposed to that high blood sugar that then
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causes the body to make more insulin in the little fetus's body. And that insulin is a pro-growth
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hormone that causes the baby to put on more weight and more fat. So it's how those metabolic blood
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sugar issues are actually showing up in the fetus and then being born above about 8.5 pounds, which is
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considered fetal macrosomia that sets up the baby for metabolic issues for the rest of their life. Um,
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and also as a sign of the mother having issues. So really at every step along the spectrum, um,
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yeah, it was all pointed to the same thing, but the healthcare system is totally blind because it's
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so focused on reaction. Yeah. Each individual diagnosis, no one's taking a holistic look,
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even the top doctors. And I want to talk about how this all relates specifically to your mom's story,
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because I know that there are a lot of people out there who either they've been recently diagnosed
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with cancer or a loved one has, or they wish that they would have known this, or I could see this
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conversation, someone having this conversation or listening to it. And then next week they're going
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through a similar thing and they're going to be so glad that they heard your story and heard
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everything that you're saying. So you're saying that your mom, when she was diagnosed with pancreatic
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cancer, that looking back over her life and some of the things that she suffered from, that it was
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pretty predictable, maybe not entirely preventable, but pretty predictable. Um, it seems like it came
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out of nowhere because she was just hiking and she got that pain and she got it checked out and then it
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was stage four. Um, and when you talk to the doctors, you said these top doctors, they didn't have
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anything to say about her previous diagnoses. They weren't interested in that conversation at all.
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No, I mean, really, if you look at the way the system is designed, it's so hyper specialized. We
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have over 42 medical specialties and really like to climb the ranks as an American doctor, it actually
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is getting more and more specialized. So I trained in ear, nose, and throat surgery. And to really be at
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the top of my field, I would actually specialize further into either ear, nose, or throat, you know,
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become a rhinologist, a laryngologist or an otologist. And then even within those specialties,
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you might focus on one specific disease and become the world expert in that. So specialization is
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literally built into the very foundation of prestige in our system. And what that does is it gets doctors
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to, you know, really ignore the rest of the body and how things might be connected. There's also a
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financial incentive for that, right? That the business model of our healthcare system is to do
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more to more people over long periods of time. The stark reality, the stark economic reality of the
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American healthcare system, which is what needs to change if we're going to actually improve the
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health outcomes of America. But the stark economic reality is that every institution that touches our
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health from hospitals to clinics to pharma, even to insurance companies will make more money if you
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are sick and less money if you are healthy. And so chronic diseases, these isolated chronic diseases,
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like what my mom had, diabetes, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, the system profits off treating
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those as separate things that you do things to for long periods of time, chronic disease management.
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So not actually healing it, but managing it. And so because that's built into the deep finances of
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the largest and fastest growing industry in the United States, which is the healthcare industry,
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there is no incentive for people to back up and look at all of the things going on and say,
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wait a minute, maybe we're looking at this wrong. Maybe there's something more fundamental,
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the trunk of the tree leading to all of this. Maybe we could just intervene there. And a lot of this
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stuff would melt away. And that is the reality biologically. But because of the trillions and
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trillions of dollars that are baked into the way the system operates right now, no one has any real
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incentive to stop and to do that. And so the pieces actually get actively held apart. If you think about
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going to the doctor, how often, if you have several specialists you're working with, how often are they
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talking to each other? Never. Usually the health records are in different systems and it's almost impossible to
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even have one doctor see the notes of another doctor from another specialty. It's literally baked in on every
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level, the separation, which is not serving patients. It's serving the financial interests
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of a reactive sick care system that is fee for service. After your mom was diagnosed, what did the
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doctors recommend? So this was what was so funny was that the second she got the stage four pancreatic
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cancer diagnosis, it was like full court press from so many different doctors. They wanted a hematologist
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to help her because her blood counts were low. The cancer was sort of causing her to destroy her
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red blood cells. There was radiation oncologists, surgical oncologists, medical oncologists, you know,
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radiation surgery medication. There was a liver doctor who wanted to put a stent in and everyone
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was talking and it was incredible how much of a flurry it was. And, you know, we all kind of looked at
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each other and thought, wow, 40 years of symptoms that, that we kind of know are all connected.
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And not once was there like a flurry of activity to like truly get my mom healthy, to truly get
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her cells to heal. But the second there was this big diagnosis, you know, very late stage, everyone
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flies into motion. And what was interesting is that the diagnosis was so bad, you know, pancreatic cancer
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outcomes are so bad. And my mom was so in touch with her body and her really spiritual knowing
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that she knew like she was, this was very bad. And she had this sense that it was going to be fast.
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So we actually declined all the crazy amount of interventions they wanted to do and went home.
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And she was able to die peacefully at home, you know, 13 days later, everything they recommended,
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nothing would have even basically had any time to have an effect before she died. And none of it would
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have been worthwhile. You said that there was a, in your article, you said there was a 33% chance
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that it would extend her life just a little bit, just a little bit. And then 33% chance that it would
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do nothing. 33% chance that it would actually kill her, that the remedy so-called would actually kill
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her and curtail her life even more. And so even if you did, even if you took that 66% chance that she
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could live a little bit longer or that it would do nothing, she would still possibly, if she took
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those routes that the doctors were recommending, because this was COVID era, she would have been
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dying in a hospital by herself. She would have been going to these procedures by herself. And you all
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knew that that's just not the end that she wanted for her. That's not what she wanted.
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Yeah. Yeah. And those numbers that they gave us didn't even take into account the additional
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complications she had. When she showed up at the hospital, the diagnosis, she was in liver failure
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because of the metastases in the liver and her blood cells were depleted. So I think even that 66%
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of maybe having a benefit was so overblown. And so we looked at all this and, and said, you know,
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no, like we don't want to give my mom up to the hospital where she would have almost unquestionably
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generated what $500,000 plus of revenue for that hospital and had to die alone in a, in a COVID
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lockdown unit. So we asked questions and they of course were super shaming to us about, you know,
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not doing the internet, you know, just that it's irresponsible. Literally the liver doctor,
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if this was my mother, I would absolutely have her in there for that liver stint. I mean,
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she's in fulminant liver failure. She can barely, this is a few days after the diagnosis,
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she was getting worse really quickly. She was feeling super weak and they were saying, you know,
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you got to get her in here. And you know, it's just so wild. If you think that people who might
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not have the confidence or the background in medicine to ask some of the deeper questions,
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I think probably 95% of people would just kind of go with whatever the doctor said. Again, they're like
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the best doctors in the world and it would have done nothing but hurt her. And that's not to say
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that people shouldn't take the intensive route, but we absolutely should be asking questions.
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And I think the system, one of the ways it's become so damaging, especially more recently,
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is that the system has really created an environment where people, I think, struggle to
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ask questions. We've been told, you think about the last five years, plastered on billboards,
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practically trust the science, you know, trust your doctor. And what's, what's so alarming to me.
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And again, one of the reasons why we wrote this book is that the system, when it comes to chronic
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health issues has really done very little to earn our trust. As we've started medicalizing
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these chronic diseases, which are primarily based in diet and lifestyle, and many of which didn't even
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exist 75 years ago. At the same time, we've been asked to trust the science. These diseases have
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exploded in their rates and are going up every single year as we spend more money on them.
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So what I think the healthcare system has done, I mean, it has produced miracles. Of course,
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life expectancy has gone up in the last hundred years, but what our healthcare system has done
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well at is acute issues, things that are immediately going to kill you like an infection or a trauma
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surgery or something like that you need to have. So acute issues. And that's primarily treating those,
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which are like the patient comes in, they get treated, they're gone. Those, I think the healthcare
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system does a miraculous job at, but what the healthcare system has done has asked to take our
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trust on its success in acute issues and apply it to chronic issues, issues that last for a long time
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that need to be treated for life. If you think about an acute patient, that's not recurring revenue,
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but a chronically ill patient is recurring revenue for decades. And so essentially the system is asking us to
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not ask questions and to trust blindly because of the trust they engendered from acute issues,
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apply it to chronic where they're abjectly failing at keeping us safe. They're not preventing these
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conditions. They're certainly not reversing these conditions. They're just managing them.
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And the message that I really want people to understand is that it's actually much less complex
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than we think to really improve our foundational metabolic health, to improve really the way our cells
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function and to really generate true health in our bodies. But we've got to focus on the right issue,
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which is helping to clean up the environment that our bodies and our cells are living in right now
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that are breaking them. And when we do that, and we really do truly heal the foundational pathways of
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our body related to metabolism and cellular health, we end up getting just incredible health across all
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these different systems. But unfortunately right now, that's not what the system is going to help
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you with. Their revenue model is based on more patients going through the system as quickly as
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possible, which lends itself to going in, getting a prescription, and leaving.
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And you mentioned, both in the article and you mentioned it in this conversation too,
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the profit incentive. You talked about how your mom going through all of these procedures would have
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generated $500,000 for the hospital, but you've also mentioned how the doctors specifically have
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a financial incentive, right? To push some of these routes to go down when it comes to diagnoses like
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your mom's? Yeah, certainly. I mean, I would say just to start, like every single doctor I know
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is like a very good person who went into healthcare with noble intentions. That is the reality. But
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unfortunately, we're taking these very bright, eager minds who want to help, and we're putting
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them in a system with just one dictum, which is economic growth. And so what happens is that
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every level of the education and the way we practice and the science gets corrupted, right? Because
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of that financial incentive. And so I think in many cases, doctors feel like they are practicing good
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medicine because they're following the science, they're following the guidelines, not totally
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realizing all the ways in which the science and those guidelines are heavily influenced by
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things like the pharmaceutical industry or the ultra processed food industry. You know, 95% of people
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on the recent USDA food guidelines for America had conflicts of interest with food companies. And so at
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every level, it's been influenced and corrupted. And so you've got these good minds practicing in a bad
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system. And I remember when I was in my fifth year of surgical residency going out to like launch out as an
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independent surgeon in the world, you know, the senior surgeons would sit down and talk to you about the
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business of medicine and say, you know, as a private practice surgeon, you eat what you kill. And that's
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unfortunately a very unfortunate euphemism that basically just means your income is based on how
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many surgeries you do. You eat what you kill. Your income is how much you do. And so because that is
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the way that you'll get paid, that's how your mortgage is paid and your kid's tuition, of course you want to
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do as many surgeries as possible. So I would not say it's like you're pushing surgeries on people
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knowing that it's not what they should have or something like that. But when you have a hammer,
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everything looks like a nail. And so it's just really baked in. And certainly on a deeper level,
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many physicians, you know, are paid by hospital systems based on how many RVUs they generate. RVUs are
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essentially billing units. And so the more you bill, sort of the more supported you are as a
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surgeon. And so it's just built in on every level. And interestingly, with the Affordable Care Act,
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you know, Obamacare, which kind of paid lip service to this idea of value-based care, which in theory
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sounds really good. As opposed to paying for doing stuff to people, we would pay for better value. And
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value is outcomes over cost. So that kind of sounds great. Wow, if we have better outcomes,
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lower cost, we'll get paid more. And the cheapest way that you're going to have better outcomes,
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lower cost is just having people eat healthy. So like, wow, maybe this will push doctors to push
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nutritional interventions or exercise. Unfortunately, the whole thing got very corrupted.
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The outcomes measures that doctors would report on for value-based care, many of them were not
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actually, did the patient have better health outcomes? It was things like how many of the
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patients in a doctor's panel were prescribed long-term medication therapy. So instead of the outcome being,
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did the patient actually get healthier? The outcome was, was the patient well-medicated?
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And if you're not looking closely, you could be like, well, yeah, we want all the patients with
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diabetes to be on metformin. And of course, we want all the patients with asthma to be on
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long-term control inhalers. But because the outcomes were defined by essentially medication adherence
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and not actually, is the patient actually healthier, it drives to more of the same system,
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which is intervention-based. So it's a way that sort of like a good idea can still get shunted
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towards that reactive intervention-based system.
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And as you're talking about the more funding that this institution, that this system has,
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actually the worst outcomes have gotten. That is true in a lot of institutions. It's true in a lot
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of different sectors of society. It's true in education too. We actually spend more per pupil
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in real dollars than we ever have. I mean, times more than a hundred versus what we did 50 years ago
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and outcomes are getting worse. And it's just, it's interesting. It is nice sounding that we need
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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
00:34:41.600
you are too stupid to even ask basic questions about your health. And so we're putting this
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.
00:38:24.100
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
00:39:32.660
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
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.
00:59:30.220
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