How To Fix your Busted Metabolism with Dr. Casey Means

Mark Hyman, MD

Full Transcript

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Dr. Mark Hyman:
Coming up on this episode of the doctor's farmacy.

Dr. Casey Means:
So you need to load the body with the highest quality food possible unprocessed from good soil because you are gonna increase the probability that those little cells are gonna have the right thing floating around them to do what you wanna do, which is be healthy and not be sick.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
Before we get into today's episode, I'd like to take a minute to remind you some exciting news My new cookbook, the Young Forever Cook Bookbook will be released on Tuesday, June 4th, nationwide. In my new cookbook, the cooking companion to my book, Young Forever, you'll find over 100 mouth watering anti inflammatory recipes that are gonna help you live a longer healthier life. You can preorder the young forever cookbook atyoungforevercookbook.com. Just click on the pre order button at the top right. I'm so excited to share these recipes with you and so much more.

And, again, the young forever cookbook comes out on Tuesday, June 4th. Preorder yours today. Hey, everyone. It's doctor Mark. Time is our most valuable asset.

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And now let's get back to this week's episode of the doctor's pharma Welcome to the doctor's farmacy. I'm Doctor Dr. Mark Hyman:. That's farmacy gonna have a place for conversations that matter. And today's conversation is about good energy Who doesn't want good energy? You're gonna love this conversation with a good friend of mine, a brilliant physician, doctor Casey Means.

She's a Stanford trained physician and cofounder at Levels, a health technology company with the mission of reversing the world's metabolic health crisis. Her book on metabolic health, good energy is out now, She received her BA with honors and MD from Stanford. She's just a legend. She's a president of her Stanford class. She is served on the Stanford faculty, and she also trained as a head and neck surgeon and would left that amazing career to devote her life to tackling the root cause of why Americans are so sick and overweight.

She's been featured in New York Times in New Yorker, Wall Street Journal Forbes, Women's held in lots more. And Casey and I dive deep into a topic of her new book, good energy. You know, we all have bad energy. Our body's ability to make energy and our resulting fatigue and cognitive function and metabolic health dysfunction are all caused by a lack of proper energy we're gonna get into what that means and why it's important and how we have such an epidemic of poor metabolic health that affects 93% of Americans how her own story through discovery of this topic and through her mother's illness changed her view of everything. She talks about how you need to trust your own body.

I'm not just, the doctor. Right? The most intelligent person in the room in terms of your own health is your own body. Don't trust the doctors. Don't trust science.

Don't trust me. Trust yourself. We'll talk about that. It's a really interesting frame. We also talk about the 6 principles of good energy eating that can apply any dietary pattern or philosophy from vegan to carnivore and simple rules when it comes to food and lots Mark.

Very exciting conversation about this as well as things we can do to really fix our food policy So I hope you'll love this conversation coming right up with Doctor Casey Means. Casey, it's so great to have you back on the podcast today.

Dr. Casey Means:
Mark, it's such a joy to be here with you always.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
You know, I I was thinking about both of us and how our medical careers took such a different trajectory. We're both trained in the orthodoxy of traditional conventional medicine into top medical schools, top residency programs. You're at Stanford. You're at the pinnacle of medicine. You were a head and neck surgeon.

You had this incredible career ahead of you, and then something changed in your mind about what you were learning. You realized that maybe the orthodoxy wasn't completely true. Not that it's all bad or wrong, but like something fundamentally was flawed about medicine.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
And about how we're trained, about how we think about disease and health, you know, how we get indoctrinated in ways that make us blind to what's really true about human health and biology. And I've heard you talk about this in podcast. And I just I just think you have such an incredible story to tell about this being this top doctor at the one of the top institutions in the world, and you're just like, nah, I'm getting out of that cult. What happened?

Dr. Casey Means:
I think that The easiest way to describe how I got out of the cult is that I did the most dangerous thing that you can possibly do I think as an American living today, which is you you can start to ask the question, why?

Dr. Mark Hyman:
Why?

Dr. Casey Means:
Why?

Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah.

Dr. Casey Means:
Why is it that I'm 9 years into my medical training, and I don't really understand why patients are sick. Why is it that we're spending $4,300,000,000,000 on health care costs, and we're getting sicker every year. Why is it that the more 100 of millions of prescriptions for chronic disease medications were prescribing. We're actually increasing the rates of the chronic diseases. Why the more specialties that we literally invent in medicine, the sicker that we are getting why the more surgeries were doing our patients getting sicker, asking the question why this doesn't really make sense.

So what's really going on here. Yeah. And once you start opening that box,

Dr. Mark Hyman:
you know

Dr. Mark Hyman:
box inside.

Dr. Casey Means:
You can't go back. Yeah. It's over. Yeah. Because you start to see that the true foundation that the whole system is built on is actually so fundamentally flawed that it's not gonna be an incremental fix that gets us out of this monumental you know, devastating hole that we're in in America where literally we're getting sickier sicker, heavier, more depressed, more infertile every year life expectancies going down and it's getting worse.

We're not gonna get out of that hole by changing, you know, a few words on the Medicare Mark d, page 250. It's gonna be a

Dr. Mark Hyman:
That's cover Ozempic on Medicare Part b, the drug benefit. That's gonna fix everything.

Dr. Casey Means:
Yeah. So it's it's a wholesale reimagination of the foundation of the whole thing of the whole health care system, of our relationship with our bodies and building it from the ground up. And that's why I wrote this book, good energy, and that's, of course, why I just so honor the work that you've been doing because it's not about incrementalism. It's about it's about following the rabbit hole of the question why and getting to the root cause of why we're sick and reimagining the future of humanity, not just the health care system, but actually future of human thriving.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
Wow. I love that. That's so beautiful. You know, and I I think about the question why it reminds me of a couple of things. 1, my mother used to say to me when I got home from school, Mark, not what did you learn in school today, but what questions did you ask?

Like, what questions did you ask? And so I've been that question asked her. I'm like that annoying kid in the front of the class. Hey. What about this?

What about that? And I literally would not leave a medical classroom until I actually asked all the questions that I need to know. And functional medicine, the way I describe it to people, is is traditional medicine is the medicine of what? What disease do you have? What drug do I give?

Functional medicine is the medicine of why? Why is this happening? Why is my immune system so pissed off and I have an autoimmune disease? Not what drug do I give it and what do I call this particular disease? And when you start asking why the whole world is up?

And we began to wonder Wait. Wait a minute. We did not learn about health in medical school. We did not learn about anything that really matters about how to create health for people. And my daughter right now, she's in her 3rd year medical school.

I said, Rachel, did you learn about the microbiome? No. Did you learn about insulin resistance? No. Did you learn about

Dr. Casey Means:
The mitochondria.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
Mitochondria. Well, the Krebs cycle in 1st year medical school biochemistry. Did you learn about nutrition? No. And I'm like, well, what are you learning about?

These are the fundamental things that are wrong today in human beings in the 21st century that we have to address that are at the root of our dis ease and dis ease. And and your book good energy, the surprising connection between metabolism and limitless health, is is just a tour de force. I think even that's a quote I give you on the cover. It's it's it's one of those books that I think is a paradigm shifting book. Because it helps us to understand what's really at stake here, what the problem is with the why, the answers to all the whys of the questions that you were asking, you went not just asked the questions, but you made sure you dug deep to finding the answers of why.

And then you built the sideways career. Not a next surgeon, but you started a company. You want to empower people with their own health and information about own metabolism. And this is really what good energy sort of came from was this insight about what really matters and how do we start to think about what's making so many people sick in this country. Yeah.

And I talk about this head nausea. I mean, you're probably probably sick on the podcast, but Metabolic Health is the fundamental barometer of everything that's wrong with with our society today. We're seeing over a 120,000,000 Americans with pre diabetes or type 2 diabetes I think it's way more than that because if 93% of us are metabolic and healthy by the definition according to NHANES trial, which is basically the government national health and nutrition examination survey. It's a massive study. It's been going for decades decades that attracts people's lab tests and all their biomarkers and their health status.

And basically said, hey, you know, like, 95% have high cholesterol, high blood sugar, high blood pressure, have had a heart attack or stroke, or or overweight.

Dr. Casey Means:
Yeah.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
93% of us. And all of that All of that is about metabolic health and good energy. Your book is really the insight into why that's happening, what to do about it, and how to fix it for yourself. So everybody other than the 7% who don't need this book, 95% of you listening out there have this and you know, I just to kind of go on for a second. I know you this is your podcast.

Like,

Dr. Casey Means:
I could listen to your talk all day.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah. One of the things that one of the things that was striking is, I co founded company function health. You heard me talking about it, and we we tracked over 3,000,000 biomarkers now. And these are health forward people. These are not, you know, necessarily people who are you know, just the average Americans, these are early adopters.

Right?

Dr. Mark Hyman:
Who are,

Dr. Mark Hyman:
like, who are the first producing of iPhones or, you know, Apple Watches? Like, these are early adopters. 95% have elevated Olympic particles and 9 89% have elevated, small lipid particles or LDL particles. And and, 56% have high APO B, which is a marker of poor metabolic health. So you're looking at these numbers.

And what do they mean? Well, they basically mean that we're seeing 89% of people at least have poor metabolic health in this group of people. And this is this was stunning to me. Yeah. And I'm like, holy crap.

Weren't too big deep doo doo. So how we ended up like that? And how do how do we have have people having this metabolic dysfunction, which at the root is something called insulin resistance. Yeah. Which is sort of the thing I talk about a lot, but what what one should explain that what that is and why why we ended like this.

And why why is it half or maybe more than half? Maybe it's 93% of the population. And it's like, you know, it's a it's a continuum. Like, you don't just go, sick. It's Right.

You don't get pre diabetes one day and then diabetes the other day, you have this continuum from wellness to illness. And this transition happens slowly over time. And so this 93% is those people on that transition.

Dr. Casey Means:
Yeah.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
How do

Dr. Mark Hyman:
we get here? What are we doing?

Dr. Casey Means:
And I so agree with you. I think Mark than 93%. Because if you actually look at the 1 of the 93%, that's that's just looking at people who fall into the normal range for all the metabolic health criteria. But if you look optimal range, I'd get I'd guess it's less than 1% of Americans are actually optimally healthy, but

Dr. Mark Hyman:
Well, I wanna be a net 1%.

Dr. Casey Means:
I think you probably are, Mark, but, you know, to get at your question of, like, how how did we get here where 93% or more of the American adults in our population have a fundamental problem with metabolic health. Meaning how their cells are powered. And I could go into the food and the lifestyle and the sedentary behavior and the systems issues and Rockefeller and the bad economic incentives. And I'm sure we'll talk about all of that. But I think at the highest level, the real root of why we're here is fundamentally, it's about disconnection.

And I think the way that I can most easily explain that is to just give people a picture of what happens your last year of medical school. You went through this. I went through this. You are asked to choose from one of over 40 medical specialties. Separate specialties to devote your entire life to.

Yeah. And climbing the ladder in the Western Healthcare System means becoming more and more specialized on a smaller and smaller part of the body, that is success in our system. Like, if you're in a just two focuses on a one square centimeter part of the entire body. That is prestige.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah.

Dr. Casey Means:
And so you're you're in that system of hyper specialization. And what is built into that fundamentally is fragmentation. It's an idea that the body is all these different separate parts that are disconnected. And so we have these fragmentation goggles as doctors that don't let us practice medicine and treat medicine as, you know, this whack the mole game of symptom management, but also in the way we view the fundamental nature, of the body. So you in that system, it's almost blast me to to ask the question or think, how is erectile this function connected to Alzheimer's dementia.

That just seems so out of left field through our conventional system. How does

Dr. Mark Hyman:
your microbiome think his autoimmunozy or depression or autism. Right?

Dr. Casey Means:
Exactly. It's all about disconnection. And, actually, there's a disincentive to focus on other parts of the body from what your special tie specialized in because of liability. That's out of your lane. What if you do it wrong?

And that's a problem. And because of this, we don't the basic framework to see the blaringly obvious fact that all of the symptoms and diseases that we are facing and suffering from in the modern western world are fundamentally the same disease. They are disease of metabolic dysfunction, insulin resistance, as you said. And

Dr. Mark Hyman:
It's like the blind Hyman in the elephant. None all the specialists taking care of all the different parts of your body can actually see the hole and don't understand the root causes and it's what you're talking about. I mean, there's other things that drive it, but that's like, I have a huge one.

Dr. Casey Means:
Disconnection. And I think, you know, the first part of my book is called Everything is Connect. Did because I really do think that we could just keep throwing more money at the problem, but unless the actual foundation of what we're dealing with is true is based in truth, which is an interconnected system, we're just not gonna heal. And I think, you know, a real a real call to action I have for people when reading this book is to to re embrace an idea of connection on all aspects of our individual lives and of the system. And I I really think about 44 main key things.

The first is this fundamental, internalization that the root cause of most of the things that we are truly suffering from that are shortening the lives of our parents, of ourselves, that are hurting our children, are fundamentally rooted in the same things, metabolic dysfunction, insulin resistance, and how ourselves power themselves, seeing that connection between all parts of the body. The second It's

Dr. Mark Hyman:
an energy crisis.

Dr. Casey Means:
It's an energy crisis, an underpowering energy crisis this manifesting in all these different trunks of that tree in different cell types as different diseases. So number 1 is understanding that the root cause of what is making us sick is metabolic dysfunction. The second piece of connection that people need to internalize oh, yeah.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
The second one, just just unpack a little bit specifically the conditions diseases that are linked to this that because people say insulin resistance. I don't want it that. I I my doctor never talked to me about it. I never had a test for it. I don't know what she's talking about.

Like, what are the what are the diseases just quickly? And then I wanna hear your second point.

Dr. Casey Means:
So fundamentally metabolic dysfunction, insulin resistance is a problem with how cells are powered. How these Beautiful machines of our cells are powered. We have 40,000,000,000,000 plus cells in our body. They all are doing trillions of chemical reactions per second. Every single one of those kind of glick reactions needs a currency of energy to pay for that work.

That energy is ATP, that energy is made by ourselves by our metabolic processes to pay for all that work. In 93% of American adults, that process is damaged. The flow of food energy, which is a potential energy, to human energy, which is ATP, that process is blocked. So that is the fundamental issue.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
What it means diabetes is diving in the midst of plenty.

Dr. Casey Means:
Exactly. It's

Dr. Mark Hyman:
like your cells are starting to, like, type 1 diabetes essentially as they they can eat 10,000 calories a day, but it without insulin, it's not getting in the cell. So insulin, not working properly. Right. You're not getting the energy. So this is this is a really important point.

Dr. Casey Means:
Absolutely. And every aspect of our rapidly changing environment has hurt the Beautiful structure inside ourselves, the mitochondria that converts this cosmic energy, food energy to human energy. So we are blocking that miraculous flow of potential energy into human energy. And because of that, we have underpowered cells. And because we have over 200 cell types in the body.

We have all these different types of cells. We've got retinal cells. We've got astrocytes. We've got glial cells. We've got hepatocytes.

We've got kidney cells. We've got know, we've got

Dr. Mark Hyman:
Fibrocytes and

Dr. Casey Means:
Oh, various Zika cells, myocytes. Because we have all these different types of cells, the underpowering of different cell types looks like different diseases, because, of course, the manifestation of dysfunction in a particular cell type will look different based on where it's showing up. And so to get to your question, what does that look like? It can look like anything from polycystic ovarian syndrome The leading cause of female infertility to erectile dysfunction, fatty liver disease, stroke, heart disease, Alzheimer's dementia, cancer, depression, anxiety, migraine, fibromyalgia, It can look like almost anything gout, premature blindness. And so and and people might say, god, these things are totally different, but the the key thing that people need to realize is that these are different cell specific manifestations of the same underlying process, which is under powering due to mitochondrial dysfunction that's caused by our modern environment that is blocking us from converting food energy to human energy.

That is the core of our metabolic crisis, and that is what this book is about is how to both understand that. Learn about how that process is going in your own body and then take the the steps, the evidence based steps to rapidly improve that in own life so that we can cultivate the internal cellular life force that powers every cell of our body to do good work And when we have cells that are functioning properly and are powered properly, that is health. So And

Dr. Mark Hyman:
and that that's just such a beautiful breakdown of this. And, you know, as you're talking, I'm just thinking, you know, yes, we we we really don't think of medicine properly. We don't think of is fundamental root causes. And and what you're talking about, it was sort of even insight for me. I've been doing this for a long time, is It it's linked to everything.

Right? It's heart disease, diabetes, cancer, Alzheimer's, fertility issues, mental health issues, on and on and on. And so the the conditions that we're all suffering from, that we're all getting sick, all the things that you laid out at the beginning, the health care costs going up, the diseases going up, are all related to this phenomena. Hey, everyone. It's doctor Mark.

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Dr. Mark Hyman:
One of

Dr. Mark Hyman:
the problems is why aren't we fixing this? Like, our health care institutions profit when we're sick. We lose money when we're healthy. The whole system thrives on perverse financial incentives. The more things you do, the more you get paid as a matter of a patient gets better or not.

You know, we have a huge food industry in this country, $10,000,000,000,000 processed food primarily, and health care is kind of a a a huge industry all connected to, you know, this one problem, and it's all predicated on our disease care system and our dependency. In fact, I think, I think fast food, in industry was is is invested in by the insurance companies.

Dr. Casey Means:
Like, it's just like So dark.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah. And that

Dr. Mark Hyman:
and recently, I don't even heard this, but the the fast food makers and and, processed food makers called the CEO of Novo Nordisk stressed about losing their market or stomach share.

Dr. Casey Means:
That's right.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
So, you know, why why is this system working like this. Why is our help not a priority for these institutions? How do we take back control? Why is the system so screwed up?

Dr. Casey Means:
It's very simple, Mark. It's it's a devil's bargain. It's a devil's bargain that involves 10 plus $1,000,000,000,000 of industry that form a revolving door of customers. And I would say the 2 main industries that we're dealing with, like you mentioned, are the ultra processed food industry and the health care system, which comprises hospitals, doctors, offices, the pharmaceutical industry, and insurance. And The stark financial reality is that every institution in America that touches our health makes more money when we are sick and they make less money when we're healthy.

And as you know, health care is both the largest industry in the entire United States. And it's also the fastest growing industry. It's a business that's designed to grow. And right now, with the incentives that we have at play in the United States, the way that the health care system grows is more patients engage in the system for a longer period of time having more things done to them and put into their bodies or taken out of their That is how the system grows. Yeah.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
It reminded me. I wanted I wanted to cut you up, but I do.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
You

Dr. Mark Hyman:
know, I remember this slide I used to show, looking at the health care costs. In 2000, when I started doing talks on this stuff, it was $1,600,000,000,000. Now it's 4,300,000,000,000. This is in 24 years.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
Mhmm.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
It's staggering. Right?

Dr. Casey Means:
The largest economy in the world. Right. R richest country in human history 25% of the GDP and growing. It's wild. It's absolutely wild.

And so you've got the food system that benefits, of course, and it gets its shareholder returns by having more people addicted to their products and essentially

Dr. Mark Hyman:
eating themselves to death

Dr. Casey Means:
through addiction to their food products. And then you have a health care system that happily is there to take on those patients who have made made sick due to those ultra process addictive foods, and then sent and then, of course, they aren't incentivized, trained, or taught, or even have the framework, the connection goggles, to teach the patients about how food is related to their health care issues, sends them right back out to eat that food. And it's just a

Dr. Mark Hyman:
Doesn't really matter with this disease. Just do whatever you want.

Dr. Casey Means:
Yeah. Whatever you want. Yeah. So it's just a it's a cycle that's based in these Mark economic realities. And I think it it's probably similar for you as a doctor.

Like, every doctor I know is a good person. Yeah. They went into health care to help people. Yeah. But when you have $10,000,000,000,000 of an invisible hand that has insidiously corrupted every aspect of the system from the research that's published, to how the medical school classes are taught to how you get paid in health care What happens is that you become entrenched in a system that is abjectly harming patients when it comes to chronic disease management, which is now the the, of course, the biggest part of what we treat and also takes the wins we had in the last century of health care, which were all based on treatment of acute illnesses.

And you take the trust that was in gender from that.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
And he

Dr. Casey Means:
asked people to trust the science with chronic illnesses, which has been an abject faith failure. And so that's what's happening in doctors. I think in in a sense, doctors are also victims, but I I remember vividly when I was in my surgical residency. And I was heading into my 5th year of surgical residency about to launch in the world as an independent surgeon, and the doctors would sit you down at lunch the attendings and say, we gotta talk about the business of this because, you know, you're gonna have to make money. And in surgery, the unofficial mantra and euphemism of how to make money as a surgeon is you eat what you kill.

Yeah. And that's a Mark that's dark. That's one that's

Dr. Mark Hyman:
one of the punches you hear in medical school. You do. Kill.

Dr. Casey Means:
And what that means, of course, it doesn't mean you actually kill the patient, because that would be losing a customer. But you you are the amount of surgeries that you that you book Yeah. Will determine your livelihood. And so And the the

Dr. Mark Hyman:
the nice way of saying that as a chance to cut as a chance to cure, but it's it's still incentivizes surgery. Right?

Dr. Casey Means:
Yeah. And of course, that that exact statement is why we all go into surgery. Those of us who go into surgery, it's that a chance to cut is a chance to cure. I remember deeply thinking, you know, you're at the end of medical school, and I'm like, I wanna be a badass. I wanna be hardcore.

So I'm gonna become a surgeon. I want that drill. I want that bone. So I'm gonna get in there a badass. And you think I'm gonna be a hero.

And then the rude awakening is to realize that What we've put on a pedestal in our society and our intervention first reactive system is that who is the hero in medicine? When you think about the hero, you think about the old white guy in the operating room with a bone saw doing a heart surgery or doing a brain surgery. That's the hero. And when you really step back and think about it, that person in that 8 hour surgery with a patient on bypass with you know, probably a $250,000 surgery, the patient in the hospital for several weeks, that heart surgery does absolutely nothing And I mean literally nothing to change the underlying physiology that caused that heart blockage 0.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
Right. We have another terrible, you, you, the thing we say, treat them and treat them.

Dr. Casey Means:
Treat them and treat them.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
Email, like, you get them. You could do your procedure. You do your treatment and then you get get them out of the office, which is horrible to say, but it's

Dr. Mark Hyman:
it's

Dr. Mark Hyman:
one of the things we say because it's like we don't really wanna deal with all the things that actually have to be done, which is how do you address the root cause of why they're sick? How do you change their lifestyle? How do you change what they're eating? How do you change their social network?

Dr. Mark Hyman:
How do

Dr. Mark Hyman:
you change their nutritional status? None of that becomes part of what we do.

Dr. Casey Means:
No. And then Somewhere on that ward, somewhere down the hall is a tiny little broom closet where a nutritionist is sitting, who is, you know, an after in the system who might be tailing around on the rounds and, you know, but not the hero, not the center. In fact, probably like in afterthought, sort of like the wimpy part of the team. That's the way nutrition has looked at. And that nutritionist, if trained properly, a functional nutritionist, has the potential to reverse the heart disease for which that patient is on the operating table.

So our paradigm of who is a hero and who is a wimp is very much dictated by the financial incentives and has just clouded us. And I would sit in the workroom as a head and neck surgery, cultrainy, and and bring in papers that said, hey. Think if we try this diet on this patient with sinusitis, you know, they might they might do better. We might wanna get rid of some of these inflammatory things in the diet. And I was told, and I quote Really?

Don't be a pussy.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
Wow.

Dr. Casey Means:
And that was that was the mantra was, like, you did not come here to give nutrition advice.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
Wow.

Dr. Casey Means:
So of course, now I've embraced that. And I I'm thrilled. You know, I and so and so but it's really dark. What what the financial incentives do to drive us to see something as heroic and

Dr. Mark Hyman:
I think you're you're just hitting on something. I just wanna unpack because it's it's it's I don't think most people understand the nature of our system. And it's not is not their bad people, but the system itself creates perverse incentives that allow people to do and encourage people to do the wrong things for the bad things. And and what's happened is that our entire like as you unpack our entire educational system, research infrastructure, professional associations, like the American Heart Association, Academy Nutrition of Nutritional Analytics, are all co opted and funded in large part by pharma and food. And it creates

Dr. Mark Hyman:
a very muddied waters

Dr. Mark Hyman:
for anybody navigating the science And we think science is this sort of high level, perfect, ethereal sort of discipline where The truth is told. And once it's out there in a published period of journal, that's the truth. And, unfortunately, friends, that is not true. What's really true is that most of the system is corrupt. Most of the funding is from pharma even the NIH funding doesn't fund nutrition, doesn't fund root cause analysis, doesn't fund systems thinking, doesn't fund systems approaches, and we have a very reductionist model.

It's based on a very outdated paradigm. There's really been this corporate capture of our entire health and food care system. And it's like the people in it, the doctors, the nurses, hardworking

Dr. Casey Means:
Good people.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
Good people are in the matrix.

Dr. Casey Means:
Yeah.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
They're in the freaking matrix, and they don't know they're in the matrix. And so it it's hard for them to see outside the box. So if you bring an independent paper that says, oh, here's data that shows that if you change this diet, this this health problem will go away. That's not really in the paradigm. Right?

So don't bother me with that. Piece of information. Even if it's good science.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
And so we get really focused in a very narrow way with blinders on and only looking at data that's really promulgated and pushed by food and pharma.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
That's right. I mean,

Dr. Mark Hyman:
I I was I was, got someone said, oh, listen, artificial it aren't so bad. And they sent me a couple of papers. I'm like, oh, really? Okay. I'll look at the paper.

I'm very interested in science. So I looked at the paper, read the paper. Oh, this is interesting. It doesn't seem to be a problem. Oh, who funded the study?

Oh, yeah. It was entirely funded by the American Beverage Association also previously known as the American SOTAP Association, and the other study was funded by by this guy who worked for was, done by this guy who worked for Coca Cola, was on the board of the international sweeteners association.

Dr. Casey Means:
Yeah.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
So guess what? You know, science isn't pure and perfect. You have to be very Mark. And I would say the first thing you look at is who funded the study.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yes. What are

Dr. Mark Hyman:
the conflicts of interest? And even if they're not listed, do a little homework. You might find there's another layer that you might not know about. And so it's really important when you start to look at this to understand it. And it's unfortunate for consumers out there for people wanting to take care of their health or patients.

It's very tough to know it's true. Casey and folks like her and what I've tried to do over my life in my career is try to bring a sense of what what's the wheat from the chaff? What's true? What's true? How do we navigate this horrible landscape that we're in?

Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah. And I

Dr. Mark Hyman:
think good energy your book is just is just a really beautiful road map for people to follow to understand how we got here Yeah. And how we out here because, you know, the truth is there's good energy to be had. Yes. But right now, most people have bad energy.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
So let's talk about What is actually causing, good energy? How do we think about what is

Dr. Mark Hyman:
the root cause of the

Dr. Mark Hyman:
bad energy and how do we shift that to create good energy. And that and that good energy isn't just like, I have more energy. It's really about fundamental metabolic energy that drives our life force and is at the root of all diseases. So whether you have Parkinson's or Alzheimer's or cancer or diabetes or many, many diseases, they're often rooted in Hyman energy issues, which have to do with all the things you're talking about in your book. So help us sort of unpack that.

Dr. Casey Means:
Yes. Absolutely. So, you know, good energy as well.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
Sorry for the diatribe on that. On the corporate capture of our food system.

Dr. Casey Means:
It's my dream. So let's just listen to you talk about this. Everyone read food fix. The way I think about how bad energy created is I is created is I think about health as really like a matching problem. Our cells have basic needs.

They have basic inputs that they need to function properly And when they get those needs met and they are not overburdened with things that they do not need, we have health. It's really that simple. Sometimes I think about these 40,000,000,000,000 cells that as this whole self, we are essentially here to care take these cells and meet their needs. And I think about them sort of as it's like we have 40,000,000,000,000 little children that we're caring for, like babies and infants. And if you think about like an infant, If an infant is crying, then you go through your basic checklist of what a baby might need.

It's like, are they hungry? Do they need a diaper change?

Dr. Mark Hyman:
Do

Dr. Casey Means:
they need to sleep? Is the temperature okay?

Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah.

Dr. Casey Means:
And you run through it because they can't speak to you. They can only cry. Yeah. And so you run through it, and then you Do you change the environment? Yeah.

And they'll settle down. That's

Dr. Mark Hyman:
why I say that the body has only so many ways of saying out.

Dr. Casey Means:
It only has right. And with the cells, they also can't speak. They also can't speak, and they can't cry like a baby. So what do they do? They generate symptoms.

And that is what's happening, which is that our cells are not getting their basic needs met, and so they're crying out and they're crying out through these symptoms and these diseases that are fundamentally rooted in the mitochondria not getting what it needs. And for a baby, it might be diaper change. Milk or sleep. For the cells, it's just a basic set of things. It's what's the food that's going in, how is our stress, how is our sleep, How is our movement?

What's the toxin exposure? What's the light exposure getting? And what is the temperature around us? I think about those seven things as some of the key vectors that we can just run through in our head very simply. Like, okay.

How am I doing on food? Or is it getting what it needs? Are we taking away the things that are bad? How's the movement? Are we getting enough?

Are we stimulating the cells in the way they need? How's our sleep getting to? Are we getting good consistency, quality, quantity of sleep? Just run through the checklist. And so the book has very clear sort of quizzes that you can take to to to really take an honest stock of the different vectors that we need to think about to see if we're meeting the needs of the cells and taking away the things that can over burden them.

Because when we run through that and we do that, health emerges fairly effortlessly.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
So busy, we're saying take out the best at putting the good stuff, and your body knows what to

Dr. Casey Means:
And have intense compassion Yeah. For your cells. Symptoms and diseases do not arise in a you. They are fundamentally and necessarily related to dysfunction in ourselves and dysfunction in ourselves is necessarily caused by ourselves getting too much of what they don't need or not enough of what they do need. And, of course, you've been talking about this for years, but

Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
By the way, this is every doctor learns this in 2nd year medical school in a textbook we all read called The Pathologic Base of Disease by Rob is in Cotran. And in that book, in the first chapter, and I reread it a number of years ago, it basically says that that every disturbance, every pathological change, meaning anything you can see on a microscope or you can see like clara arteries or damage to the brain, every pathological change is preceded by a biochemical change. And that's biochemical changes are related to all the things you're talking about that we have influence over. Yeah. And also to back up mitochondria folks is basically the little things in your cells that make energy.

And it's a powerhouse of ourselves. It takes food and oxygen. It combusts it and produces energy. And that's a very straightforward process, but It's screwed up by what we do and how we live. Yeah.

And that's what you're really talking about. It's just as key to life. And you can, you know, you can live 30 days without food. You can live a week without water, 11 days without sleep, maybe 4 minutes without oxygen. But if you poison your mitochondria, you're dead like that.

Yeah. But if you take cyanide, you're done. Right? Yeah. Yeah.

Which poisons a mitochondria.

Dr. Casey Means:
So Yeah. I think a lot of our health journey can actually improve if we really start to meditate on how really miraculous these these structures and ourselves are. We have you know, tends to literally hundreds of thousands of mitochondria and different cell types. And they are the powerhouse of the cell. They convert, you know, food to energy.

But If you really think about it, it is miraculous what they are doing. They are taking this cosmic energy, food energy that's, like, literally created when the sun hits the the leaves

Dr. Mark Hyman:
of plants and is and the sun's energy is stored in

Dr. Casey Means:
the carbon carbon bonds of plants And then we take up that

Dr. Mark Hyman:
energy into our bodies, break

Dr. Mark Hyman:
it down, and unleash that

Dr. Casey Means:
incredible cosmic sun energy in our mitochondria Yeah. To create a currency of energy that powers us loving living, thinking, and reaching our highest potential. We're solar powered. Exactly.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
I love that. And so anything

Dr. Mark Hyman:
that we do

Dr. Casey Means:
to hurt our mitochondria, which we do through eating ultra processed food, eating refined sugars, or fine grains, or fine seed oils, not eating real food, by not sleeping enough, by not managing our trauma and our stress, by seeing artificial light at night, by not seeing the sunlight in the morning, by living a thermonetrol existence by not protecting ourselves from environmental toxins, anything that we do to hurt that miraculous structure of the mitochondria Yes. What it does is it creates insulin resistance. It creates metabolic dysfunction, but really what it's doing is blocking the unbridled flow of light energy, of cosmic energy through our form to power our life force and our highest potential. And so it's it's bigger than just these clinical terms. It's bigger than insulin resistance.

It's about giving our bodies what they need to create form that can that can process energy in a way that allows us to to to reach our highest purpose. And and so it's it's beautiful. And it's so simple. It is actually so simple to improve mitochondrial health. And I think a message I really wanna get across to people is that the system depends on you thinking that it's complicated.

Some profits off you being confused about what exercise is

Dr. Mark Hyman:
gonna cost?

Dr. Mark Hyman:
Industrial food complex. Is that what you're

Dr. Casey Means:
talking about? The influencers, the fitness industry, the health care industry, the food industry. They have us all running around, like, chickens with our heads cut off consuming every strategy, you know, this month, I've gotta do resistance training. Now I've gotta do yoga. Now I've gotta do hot yoga.

Now I've gotta do pilates. Now I've gotta do keto. Now I've gotta do paleo. Now I've gotta do vegan. You know, now I need this mattress.

It's like it's it's fascinating to just step back and realize the more research, we're publishing on pubmed about nutrition and fitness, the sicker we're getting.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
Well, something applied. That's part of it.

Dr. Casey Means:
Yeah. I think it's deeper than that, though. I think when you just like you talked about with the funding of a lot of this research.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah. Yeah.

Dr. Casey Means:
There is an incentive to make it complicated when it's actually quite Simple.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
Michael Pollan, eat food, not too much mostly plants.

Dr. Casey Means:
Yeah. You know, maybe start by, like, not not putting toxins all over our food. Right? Maybe maybe we start by just, like, eating food that came out of the ground. You know, if if people literally just did that, like, didn't get most 70% of their calories from a factory, We'd cut health care costs by 90%.

Like, it's it's really quite I don't it doesn't matter if that's carnivore or vegan. If it's real unpoisoned food, we're gonna be a lot healthier. And so I think the system benefits off our confusion, and that's built into every layer of our research industry, our medical education, etcetera. And so the real empowerment is to understand that and then just blow it up and take total control in your own life. And, I mean, I think a message that I put in the book that can be scary to people, as I say, don't trust doctors.

Don't trust the science. Don't trust influencers. Trust yourself.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah. Yeah.

Dr. Casey Means:
Because we are living Yeah. In an age where the incentives are working against us, it's an uphill battle. And in the last three years, we now have the tools at our disposal, at home to understand more about our bodies and how our personal choices are working for our biology than we've ever had in human history. We literally can have the answers and don't need to give away our trust to other people outside of us that profit off our confusion. Yeah.

All you have to do is step back and look at the world and realize we're the only species with experts, and we're the only species with a chronic disease epidemic.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
I love that. I would say the smartest doctor in the room is your own body. Yes. Let's into that.

Dr. Casey Means:
You know? And we have the tools now to do that. And everyone can access it. Literally, this is function health that you created that I invested in, which allows people to go deep inside of the center of the cell and know is it working? Yeah.

Is it working? And if it's not, There will be clear biomarker changes that are saying that your cells are crying. Your cells are the babies that are wailing, and that's a clear signal Shift your strategy. It's not working. Yeah.

It doesn't need to be confusing. It actually can be quite black and white. If I wake up in the morning, And I look at my function health results, and they are pretty much all in the optimal range. And I look at my continuous glucose monitor and I am in the very healthy normal range with minimal glucose spikes over the past 24 hours. And I wake up and I feel incredible with no symptoms, and I feel happy joyful, creative, and limitless, I know that my strategy is working.

Working. Right. And that is gonna be a different strategy from you and everyone else. And so but with that empowerment of looking at my sensors, looking at my biomarkers, and looking at my body, awareness and my knowing and my symptoms. With those things, I can say with absolute certainty that I know my plan is working, know compromised research necessary.

So I think there's a a movement that's gonna It's

Dr. Mark Hyman:
actually we talked about this before in the podcast, but the highest level of evidence according to the institute of health is end of one studies. Meaning, you're your own control. You do something, you change something, you see what happens. Yeah. You know, I I I had a patient who used the continuous glucose monitor and you created levels that really allows people to be democratizing their own biomarkers in real time by having a a monitor that you stick on your skin that tracks your blood sugar over time and you get instant feedback about what's happening.

And, you know, most of the time is the obvious stuff. Right? It's, you know, what we're eating. It's not exercising. But what was really interesting with this patient, I I had just, talking about on Saturday, Basically, he he, has been involved in optimizing his health for a long time, but his sugar was still dysregulated.

Exercise is great. Eats great. Doesn't do anything bad. Doesn't drink. And what we decided was he probably had some level of toxins, which we now know are another factor that drive insulin resistance.

So it's not only what we eat. It's petrochemicals, plastic phthalates, PCBs Yeah. BPA, heavy metals, all these things, arsenic. All this we know is linked to diabetes. It's this is in the literature.

Yep. But, of course, if you go to endocrinologists, they're not talking about this. We put him on a cellular detoxification regimen. And he's like, man, my sugars for the first time are actually normal. This is amazing.

And I was like, wow, that's really interesting feedback. So now we're able to get feedback in real time about what's happening in embody. So you could you could say, well, where is a randomized controlled trial that you know, environmental toxins with your detoxify someone using this protocol actually fixes their blood sugar and regulates that You might not find it.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
And that's and this is what happens in medicine. There's this discrediting of anything that doesn't fit the orthodoxy with this rubric of evidence based medicine, which essentially says that if it doesn't meet the standard of the highest level of evidence, which is a randomized controlled human trial, then there's no evidence for it that ignores an entire set of other types of evidence, basic science evidence, animal studies, smaller clinical trials, population studies, cohort studies. There's a lot of evidence, and we have to sort of read the tea leaves. It's not like black and white. And so anything that doesn't fit the orthodoxy against this credited, and the way research is done is only to drive these large trials for pharma.

So you're not getting trials on cellular detox protocols for diabetes. You're not getting trials on big trials on nutrition for diabetes. Right? You're getting little bit here and there, but it's not really building the evidence base that conventional orthodoxy says has to meet Yes. That standard in order to actually believe it or do And so what it means is it's it's it's a way of discrediting anything that people don't wanna include in their in their framework or that doesn't fit this medical industrial food complex.

Dr. Casey Means:
What you just brought up is a perfect example of how we are so blinded to the influence of some of these, these industry forces on something as foundational as our research and the hierarchy of evidence. At the top of that pyramid, is double blind placebo controlled randomized studies, you know, and baked into that, the fact that you'd have a placebo and an intervention is that it must be a pharmaceutical. Cause, obviously, if you're doing exercise or a dietary intervention, you can't have a placebo. You know what you're doing. So baked in to our hierarchy of evidence is a bent towards medication intervention.

And this is where, of course, I have one studies where you're just looking at your interventions, your complex, interdependent suite of choices that you're making and how they're affecting your core biology. And we can look at that with these incredible tools and technology that we have today coupled with slowing down and making the time in our lives to hear the signals from the body in the form of symptoms, intuition, and body awareness. So

Dr. Mark Hyman:
Essentially, that's what your book is about. It's empowering people with the knowledge, the data, the information. To actually do this for themselves. You know, and I I I think you and I both believe in democratizing health care, democratizing what we do getting out of the, you know, guilt of medicine where everything is protected by health care systems and doctors. And you can only get your health data from them and you have to ask you have to beg for it and maybe they won't do it or maybe they will do it or maybe they'll do a little bit, but not all what you want.

Yeah. Or not even what actually should be done because they might not know about it. No. I'd I'd asked the head of, Quest Labs and I was like, how many of your, lab tests include, you know, insulin? Right.

There's less than 1%.

Dr. Casey Means:
Yeah.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
Know, how many include life approaching fractionation less than 1%. But these are things that are the most essential things you need to know, and then we're completely blind to Yeah. So your book is is just is just so good in that way that helps us think about this and and empower people. So what are the what are the, principles for for good energy and for how we eat. And what do we what do we, do with the information that you've learned in researching all this data?

I mean, you're like, Stanford train doctor. Super smart. You've dug into this. You've kinda try to sort through what's true, what's not true.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah. How

Dr. Mark Hyman:
how what did you come up with as as, the principles of good energy and how do we do that per ourselves?

Dr. Casey Means:
Well, I think one thing that every single person can do literally today as their listening to this podcast is they can go back to their health record from their last annual physical and find out if they are making good energy or bad energy. And it's very simple. There are 5 key biomarkers that can give us a sense of where we are on that spec term. And so those 5 biomarkers to understand if you have good energy or bad energy are fasting glucose.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
My biomarker is like a blood test or Right. Any kind of thing that tells you anything about your body. Right? It could be your wearable. It could be blood tests.

It could be urine. So these are these are things we have to know. So what what are the biomarkers?

Dr. Casey Means:
Yeah. And and, you know, you can go down the rabbit hole of getting very complex about these things. But again, I I really wanna bring forward this idea that it can actually be quite simple and quite inexpensive. And so 5 of the signals from your body that there may be bad energy brewing are your levels of lasting glucose, triglycerides, HDL cholesterol, blood pressure, and waist circumference. So if you look And

Dr. Mark Hyman:
you mentioned insulin.

Dr. Casey Means:
The these are the 5 biomarkers of simple biomarkers of metabolic syndrome. Absolutely. We can go so many layers deeper with insulin, and we talk about that in the book, but just foundational, like cheap, pretty much free. And probably on your last physical would be those biomarkers, fasting glucose, triglycerides, HDL, blood pressure and waist circumference.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
And so

Dr. Mark Hyman:
triglycerides, you said. Yeah.

Dr. Casey Means:
Tregulatory. Yeah. Fasting glucose, HDL, triglycerides, waist circumference, and blood pressure. And so if you look at those, which are probably on your your panel from last year. And if you're fasting glucose is under a 100 triglycerides under a 150 HDL above 40 for men above 50 for Hyman, waist circumference than 35 inches for women, less than 40 inches for men, and blood pressure less than 130 over 85.

If all of those are true, and you are not on medication for any of those, then you are part of that 6.8% of American adults who are categorized as quote, unquote, metabolically healthy, AKA making good energy. So that's the just the first place to start is look at those 5 pretty much free biomarkers and see where you are. Yeah. So if triglycerides are above 150, if fasting glucose is above 100, if blood pressure is above 130 over 85. If your woman and your waist circumference is above 35 inches or HDL is lower than 50, you need to start looking at what's going on in your cells because even though they're pretty simple biomarkers, what they're each saying is something about what's happening on the inside of the cell.

But as doctors, we're not actually even trained to think about how these biomarkers relate to internal cellular physiology, we just look at them in an algorithmic way.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
Does a drug treat this one or that one?

Dr. Casey Means:
Right. Fasting glucose up, give Metformin or insulin. If the, you know, triglycerides are high, we don't even know what to do that with that because there's not a drug. You know, it's if the you know, waist circumference is high. We need to give those them thick.

Right? And so but but if you think deeper to really the core of of this mitochondrial, paradigm, you can actually know more than probably your doctor knows. Let's think about it for a second. If you're mitochondria, this powerhouse that converts energy, food energy, the literally the 7 70 metric tons of food we take in our body in our lifetime to convert to cellular energy. If that mitochondria is broken because of all the things we talked about.

The food, the exercise of sleep, the stress, the toxins, the artificial light, the the lack of temperature swings, these these vectors that we can talk to our mitochondria with, if they're broken because of all these issues, sleep, liberation, sedentary your overabundance of toxins. If the mitochondr is broken, it's not gonna be able to convert that food energy to cellular energy. And so the cell is gonna say, we can't do it. We don't have the capacity because I'm broken from this modern world that we're living in. And it's gonna protect self by blocking the cell from taking in more food energy, I.

E. Glucose into the cell to convert to energy because it can't process it. So now the body creates insulin resistance. And of course, insulin resistance is the body essentially making the cell impenetrable to glucose by blocking the insulin receptor from working, insulin is, of course, the hormone that binds the cell and lets glucose in. So now you have insulin resistance essentially as a protective mechanism.

And So what will happen is the body the the glucose will rise in the bloodstream because it's not able to come into the cell because the mitochondria is fundamentally broken. So how does this show up on these basic Mark? Well, our fasting glucose goes up and then also our cerides go up because the body doesn't know what to do with all that extra glucose floating on the around in the bloodstream. So one of the things it does

Dr. Mark Hyman:
right from the

Dr. Casey Means:
Yeah. Exactly. And it'll convert a lot of that glucose to our triglycerides. So through this framework of of mitochondrial function and the overburdening of the mitochondria, we start see these basic clinical biomarkers of metabolic syndrome and really understand what they're actually saying about the inside of the cell and what they're saying is that the mitochondria is suffering. So that's just 5 basic biomarkers that you can look at.

And then the next level is to go deeper into other biomarkers that can give you even more nuance. So this is things like the fasting insulin and the high sensitivity CRP and the liver function. Yes. Liver function tests. And essentially these other lab tests that tell us what arises in the body when that mitochondria is dysfunctional.

And so uric acid, And and so in the book, we talk about this this higher level of tests. And, of course, those are the tests that your doctor probably isn't gonna those are the all included

Dr. Mark Hyman:
in the function health basic panel for 4 99, then you go to function health dot com. It's forward slash Mark. You jump right in and pass the wait list, and you can get all this data And what's really important, and I just wanna sort of emphasize something, you you did the numbers you quoted for those 5 biomarkers are are numbers that are accepted by traditional medicine as the thresholds for when you kinda cross over into pre diabetes. But the truth is that those numbers are not optimal in any way. Like, your blood your triglyceride should not be a 150.

It should be in the seventies. Your blood sugar shouldn't be a 100. It should be in the eighties. Right? Your blood pressure shouldn't be 130 over 80.

It should be like 110 over 70. Right? Right? Your waist of covering shouldn't be 35. It should be, like, 32 or 33 or 34 depending on how big you are.

But I and so all these numbers that are that we think of as sort of the threshold Mark really you're already way down the road.

Dr. Casey Means:
Oh, yeah.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
And so I I think by the time your blood sugar starts going up, the this can be going on for decades. Right? The insulin resistance and the insulin that you mentioned is a better way to test for it. So you really need to do the right test, and that's really why we created function health. That's why, you know, you create levels and help people actually see what's going on inside their bodies.

Dr. Casey Means:
Yeah. And I actually believe that every single person listening to this absolutely has the capability to understand their key metabolic biomarkers interpret them and understand what the tea leaves are saying. And I not only think that they are able to. I think it's that it's imperative that they do because meta school is not changing in the next 5, 10, 15 years, unfortunately. I would hope so.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
My daughter's in and out. It's like their

Dr. Casey Means:
Doctors are not learning how to read the tea leaves so you have to. Yeah. And I absolutely believe that everyone can. You make it simple. I make it simple in this book.

Sit down with a printout of your lab tests. With the book, with your articles and books, and figure figure it out. And I think there's such a infantilizing perspective within the health care system of of patients not able to understand this, or even to go as far to say it is dangerous for patients to have this information because what are they gonna do with it?

Dr. Mark Hyman:
Right.

Dr. Casey Means:
You know? And I think that that is something I really wanna bunch

Dr. Mark Hyman:
of health. Trained to never give people their lab results. Just tell me. Your everything's fine. Your panel is fine.

Your cholesterol is fine. Your blood chemistry is fine. You know,

Dr. Casey Means:
they might freak out. They might freak out. Yeah. And it's like, when you actually wake up from the matrix and realize, oh my god. That perspective was put into me of not trusting patients, thinking patients are noncompliant and can't handle their data.

They're not educated enough to understand their data. That's part of the system. Very paternalistic. Essentially to drive not only the industry, but to truly get us to be divorced from our common sense so that we put our trust outside of us and feed into this huge industry. And a big call to action and good energy is to actually reclaim our internal power and our internal knowing of what's right for us and our body.

Couple that with tools and technology. And use your, you know, dot find good doctors and use your doctors as a counselor and a coach and, of course, use the health care system for acute issues. Of

Dr. Mark Hyman:
course. Yeah.

Dr. Casey Means:
But for the chronic issues, we really do need to be the CEO of our own health, as so many people have said, and and that's a key message of actually realizing that the The the infantilization of patience is part of the whole game.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah. It's it's true. I think that's really why why you created levels, why we created function health was to empower people with their own health data.

Dr. Casey Means:
Yes.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
And to make them the center of their health and the C of their health and not the health care system and take back your health from the health care system. Mean, I actually created a bill in Congress, with with, Mike Rosen, a few others, years ago called the Take Backer fact of 2009 during Obamacare. I never made it into the law, but it was basically about empowering people to actually change their lifestyle, change their behavior, and take back their health. So going back to the 6 principles, but let's go kind of through them a little bit because they're I think they're quite good. The first one you sort of talked about was how food determines the structure of ourselves and a microbiome.

Right? So so just give us

Dr. Mark Hyman:
a give us a

Dr. Mark Hyman:
little unpacking of that.

Dr. Casey Means:
Yeah. So in my chapters in the book about How to eat. It's really saying, like, the we need to stop with the dietary dogma. We need to stop with the food wars, and we need to focus on principles. Of eating.

And the first principle And

Dr. Mark Hyman:
so I wrote the vegan diet because

Dr. Casey Means:
I was like

Dr. Mark Hyman:
making a joke between paleo and vegan. And I'm like, yeah.

Dr. Casey Means:
Yeah. And and actually just think first principles. Like, food, you this is a quote from Dr. Mark Hyman:, but food is molecular information. And when we see food as molecular information, It becomes so much simpler to say, okay. There's lots of different ways I can get the proper molecular information for my body.

My job is to get that information to the body, but there's a lot of different ways that you can do it. All of them are thoughtful and all of them need to be based in real whole foods. But there's many different ways to do it. So so the first principle I talk about in the book is that, you know, food determines really the structure and function of our body. And so from a structural perspective, you know, just think about, like, the cell membrane.

The cell membrane is made of fatty acids that that come from our diet, and we want there to be a healthy ratio of omega threes fat to omega 6 fats, and that is totally determined by what we put in our mouth in just a few days. We can change the composition of our cell membranes by what we're actually

Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah.

Dr. Casey Means:
Putting in our mouths, and then that has a huge trickle down effect for how our cells fundamentally function and how our immune system functions because a lot of the inflammatory mediators our immune system makes are actually done by snipping fatty acids off our cell membranes and train them into inflammatory chemicals. And so based on what that ratio is that you're eating, you'll change the structure of the cells, which then changes the function of the cells. Similarly, if you think about Neutrogenomics, which I think is probably like one of the coolest things in all of health care, you realize that this gene. These we've we had this idea that genes are our destiny, but then when you learn about nutrients, no makes you realize every single bite of food you take into your mouth are actually these little little pieces of information that change our gene expression, not only our gene folding, but which genes are actually expressed and how much and when it's absolutely incredible. So I talk about things like Curcumin and things isothiocyanates and these chemicals

Dr. Mark Hyman:
in foods. Yeah.

Dr. Casey Means:
So cruciferous vegetables. We're not

Dr. Mark Hyman:
gonna find that in the grocery. Right?

Dr. Casey Means:
Choy, arugula, you know, these crystal just literally Google crucible's vegetables and eat them, and it's gonna change your gene expression of your antioxidants. Accident genes. Eat the curcumin from the turmeric and the curry, and that's gonna change your expression of of inflammatory genes. And so Food is the structural and functional information that we put into the body. And if you really just know some basic concepts about what the information your cells need, you can choose to eat properly.

And that feeds into the 5 elements of good energy eating that I tell people to just Just learn these and learn what the sources of these are and put them on your plate. And we I talk about how the information for structure and function that your body needs comes from a fiber antioxidants, healthy protein, omega 3 fats, and probiotic sources. And if you can learn, basically, your favorite food in each of those categories and just craft your meals based on those principles, which can come from any dietary pattern. You are going to give yourselves the building blocks and the information to have good structure.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
It's not that hard to learn. You know, like, you just have to do a little homework, read the book, look at look at what

Dr. Casey Means:
It's simple.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
Casey's done. And and when you go to the grocery store, think of it as your farmacy. So when I go to the grocery store, I'm like, looking, I'm hunting, like hunting and gathering. I'm hunting for the medicine. When I think of it as my farmacy

Dr. Casey Means:
Yes.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
Like p with an f, but still, even not even in William F. It could be pH, you know. And I think it those drugs in the good drugs

Dr. Casey Means:
Yeah.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
Good modulators of biology that are in the grocery store. We need to understand what they are where to go for them. So I'm always going for the christopher festival. I'm going for the Shiitake mushrooms. I'm going for the phytochemical rich berries.

I'm I'm going for the omega-3 rich sardines. I'm going I'm going for the olive oil with the oleuropean, which is an antioxidant. I I know what to choose because I and then the rest stuff just kind of fades into the background, you know. And I think if you just learn a little bit about these things, you can really be your own advocate and navigate how to do the right thing because we just don't learn that. We don't know.

And I think, you know, what Casey's talking about is not just abstract. Oh, your cells, you know, aren't great and you you make yourselves better. But, you know, we both had surgery training. I mean, your actual surgeon I was and, you know, I was a family doctor who did some surgery on the side, but I didn't know, assist in a lot of surgeries. And I remember these patients who were super unhealthy, overweight, really metabolic and healthy, and we would try to operate them on them and they're they're tissues.

We'd like fall apart in your hand and you try to sew them together and the the tissues wouldn't stick. It's literally their cells were not functioning and the inside. And when you saw that, it was like really shocking. You know, we even had a terrible nameprint PPP. But remember what that is?

Dr. Casey Means:
Oh, no.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
PISport protoplasm. Oh. You heard that? Dark.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
And it was like, PIP Protoplasm is like, what you're made of. Right? So it's It's just really bad tissues.

Dr. Casey Means:
Oh, yeah.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
And it was a thing in medicine that we never talked about. We didn't really understood. We never

Dr. Casey Means:
thought about it.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
I was like, oh, this person has that. But it's It really affected the ability to stir surgically repair something.

Dr. Casey Means:
Yes. Oh, I saw that. I I remember saying to my family once after a day of surgery, I said, The number one motivator at this moment in my life for me to be healthy is that if I ever have to have an emergency surgery, I don't want to be a body that is you know, so, like, yeah, like, mal functional that when that the person has to operate on me, I'm making it more difficult for them because you go in and you we were working in the neck and, you know, people who had weight, you know, so much extra fat, it's like you're digging through the fat for the nerves. And these are nerves that control every aspect of your facial motion and your voice.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
And

Dr. Casey Means:
it makes it so much harder to even see the nerves if it's surrounded by in and inches of fat. Similarly, if the patient is really unhealthy, the tissues almost fall apart under your, you know, four steps. And so it's much difficult to stitch things. So I'm with you. It's like, if you really see the tissues up close and personal, but but of course, this is happening on our the surface of our bodies.

You don't need to have surgery to know this. You can look at one and look at their skin and how healthy it is. And that can be a a such a signal of what's happening

Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah.

Dr. Casey Means:
Under the surface. So and all of this, you know, is is a reason why I talk in the book about how so much of this actually also comes down to the food quality that

Dr. Mark Hyman:
you

Dr. Casey Means:
buy because if you if you really, really internalize that food is the building block and the molecular information of how your body will function. Of course, you are going to invest in higher quality food, but you have to believe it.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah.

Dr. Casey Means:
You know, and you really need to internalize it. So I think one of the quickest ways that people can move towards health is to just buy more of their food Yeah. From the farmers Mark. Yep. Because We take in 70 metric tons of food matter into our bodies in our lifetime, and that's constantly turning into and 3 d printing the next version

Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah.

Dr. Casey Means:
Of our body, literally 3 d

Dr. Mark Hyman:
printing. 100%.

Dr. Casey Means:
And if we we, you know, because our soil is so depleted, coupled with the fact that we are processing all our food, we are literally just The micronutrients and the antioxidants and this information is literally falling out of the food because the soil's poor and we're processing it. So the closer you can get to food that is from good soil, so it's enriched with more nutrients and unprocessed. More of that 70 metric tons of information that you're both building yourself from and that is dictating the function of your body will be helpful material. Right now, it's not only empty, it's harmful.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
Well, well, I think I think the the the Michael Pollens had eat food. Right? What does that mean? Well, what is food? And I I talked about another podcast you know, the definition of food, if you literally go to the dictionary and look it up, it's it's something that maintains life or growth.

So If it's not doing that, it's not food. Right? So if it's some processed junk, if it's Cheetos, Doritos, or things that even resemble real food that aren't real food, even like the Impossible Burger, which is a science project that's made from weird GMO soil that I wouldn't touch. That that's not food. It doesn't maintain life or growth.

And I think we have to be really straight with ourselves. I'm like, what am I doing? This is what I put, like, you know, water in my gas tank. What I put dirty gasoline in? What I Yeah.

I mean, it's not your your car is not gonna run. I had someone do that. I I left my car in residency to a friend of mine. It was a diesel Mark, and he put gasoline in it. And the thing wouldn't go, and it ruined the car.

And so, like, that's we're doing, we're putting the wrong fuel in. And what you're talking about with good energy is how do we fuel ourselves? Yeah. How do we fuel ourselves as the as the answer to not only our our own well-being, but to our collective social and and economic well-being as a society.

Dr. Casey Means:
Another sort of piece about the body, like, framework that I really think about all the time is like, our cells are blind. They don't have eyes and they don't have arms. Right? They just are cells with little receptors. And So they're in the dark and they're all all this stuff is just floating around.

And what's floating around is determined by what we're eating. And so let's say a a cell wants to make a solenoid protein, like glutathione, an antioxidant, or a protein that's gonna be a critical factor of our immune response, and it requires zinc or selenium to actually build that protein. Well, you get to determine whether that cell's gonna be able to reach out and grab that micronutrient to build that protein or that amino acid based on what you're putting in your mouth. So you need to load the body with the highest quality food possible, unprocessed from good soil, because you are gonna increase the probability that those little cells are gonna have the right thing floating around them to do what you wanna do, which is be healthy and not be sick. And You know, to have the the the support to free up the mitochondrial function so it can process that energy and power your life.

Cause fundamentally, Our life and everything we're experiencing is just the bubbling up of the trillions of chemical reactions that are happening every second. And and what we when how we view food is is such a big piece of that. And it's it's another piece of the connection conversation, because I think, you know, a second kinda going back to the beginning, it's like, second piece of connection that we've so lost is is this idea that we're connected to everything else in the environment. We are connected this body to the soil, to the air, to the food, to the water, to the sunlight. All of these material and energetic forces are in constant conversation with our bodies and There's this fascinating statement that I love from the the Dallas philosophy that's this idea that that we need to look at the human body for what it is, which a process.

Yep. Not an entity. Yeah. And we have been entrenched in this system of thinking of the body as a thing that is separate from everything else. We are a body that lives and dies.

I'm a body. You're a body. This is a miracle.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
Found on. It was individual.

Dr. Casey Means:
Not mutualism.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
And because of

Dr. Casey Means:
that, not mutualism. And because of that, it has entrenched to view that that sunlight and that artificial life and the computer and the food and the water and the air and the soil are all separate from us rather than the true which is that we are this swarm, this buzzing hive of of material of atoms that's constantly exchanging matter and energy with everything around us. It is all us. And because of that individualistic sort of very western mindset, We actually it it allows us to trash the environment and not really understand how that's what that's gonna do to us. It allows us to totally kill the soil with industrial agriculture and pesticides and not realize that we're just poisoning ourselves because it's all the same thing.

So there's an element of the book where I really ask people to internalize and meditate on our true nature, which if we had a microscope that could actually see what our bodies really are and and see how we are are just these swarms of material, we would get that but because of the limitation of our visual system, we think of ourselves at these separate things and I'll never forget in, medical school and histology class. It was really one of impactful classes for me because, you know, you take these slides.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
Is basically the study of the cells.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
They learn

Dr. Mark Hyman:
all about the different kinds of cells in the body. Yeah.

Dr. Casey Means:
Well, you cut the body up. And you look at the tissue under the microscope. Timeline. Yeah. You're like, okay.

Here's skin, but really what is skin? Skin is these your little teeny thin piece of tissue is tens of 1000 of individual cells that are actually in all stages of life. Some are being born. Some are dying, some are replicating. So this this idea that we're a thing and we're alive and we're separate, it's all false.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah.

Dr. Casey Means:
And until we get back to that true understanding of our true nature and of that interconnection, we will continue to build the healthcare system on a false premise, on a false god of individualism and separation that dictates every aspect of what we do and points us in the wrong direction. So

Dr. Mark Hyman:
So you're talking about in your book a lot of things. I mean, you cover so, so many things that have to do with not just food, but exercise and dealing with your environment, circadian rhythms, you you have a 4 week plan. It's really very robust. And I I think it's almost like a like a Bible snake for for health, and then it takes you from a to z. So we couldn't cover all of it during this podcast, but I encourage you really get this book.

It's good energy. The surprising connection between metabolism and limitless health. It's by Casey and her brother, Cali, who's also been on introduction podcast. And and it's it's I think it's gonna make a big big big impact. I I wanna just close by, you know, zooming out because a lot of the things we talked about were the forces that are driving us to have bad energy and that are preventing us from having good energy.

In other words, from being healthy and vibrant and having our metabolic health great and our mitochondrial are great. And and there's things we can do about it. And a lot of these have to do with with Mark social political issues that that are kind of a little out of people's reach, but I think it's important to touch on them. And I I wrote a book called, of Whofix, and, and we talked about some of the policy issues that some of these can be done with executive orders. They can fix things tomorrow.

Sort of kinda run through a few of the ideas. Are gonna be the most impactful because I think people need to understand that they need to be advocates when they're at the voting booth. When they're voting for their Congressman or senator or president, they need to think about what do they stand for on these issues.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
What are they doing about this?

Dr. Casey Means:
Yeah. I mean, first of all, no one In I think the world has brought this more to the forefront than you and Cali and I are truly just, like, foot soldiers in this mission. And, you know, but I think when we really step back and think, like, what would make big difference tomorrow if this changed in our culture. 1 is we we need to not have the pharmaceutical industry controlling our media. And the way that happens is by the pharmaceutical industry essentially paying for 60% of all advertising on mainstream media.

So I think what Who

Dr. Mark Hyman:
spends the other 40%.

Dr. Casey Means:
Right. I mean, just

Dr. Mark Hyman:
Mostly big

Dr. Casey Means:
Process food. Yeah. Exactly. The rub off.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
11. Eleven commercials for junk food in the first half. I didn't watch the second half. I just got so disgusted.

Dr. Casey Means:
Yeah. It's hard to watch and and and watch that revolving door. And I think something that people need to internalize is that you are not the customer of the news network. The pharmaceutical industry is the customer of the food network because who's paying the bills. It's not you who's watching it for free.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
The ads. Right.

Dr. Casey Means:
It's ads. And so what does that do? It changes the core information that we're getting that we think of as journalism and truth.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
It's not

Dr. Casey Means:
Yeah. So you just you got your hand in your head.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
No. Because I have been involved and been on television so many times, and I how it works in the back end and how you can't say certain things. You can't talk about certain things. You can't discuss. I mean, I I I my Mark example is I went I was on the, I think it was a today show.

And I did a great segment without Roker, and it was like a great thing and I met the producer. And then I say, hey, I got a great idea for another segment. She's like, what? And I'm like, well, how about we do this 100 calorie comparison of a 100 calories of the snack packs of Oreos or whatever, whatever it And and compare that to a 100 calories of, like, blueberries or almonds. And let's talk about this sort of difference that these have on on your body.

What are the impact of these different foods as food as medicine. She's a great idea. So we did this thing. We got all set. I think she kinda didn't ask for higher ups, and the talent came on.

And literally wanted to sidetrack the entire conversation because it was basically showing that all of this processed food wasn't good and what and I was talking about the deep science of how the molecules in the real food were working on the body and how the molecules and things that weren't really food were affecting the body. Yep. And it was a little bit challenging. And I got I never got asked back on the today show.

Dr. Casey Means:
Wow, Mark. I mean, that's so telling. That's a perfect example. I think of what we're talking about. And so the basic place that we're getting our information is deeply influenced by a 4 that wants us to be chronically ill so that we can be customers of the pharmaceutical industry.

So that's number 1. I think number 2 is so basic, which is we've gotta change the farm bills to incentivize the production of nontoxic real nutrient dense food rather than talks and covered commodity crops that get current turn into processed food. So we are literally Yeah.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
We're working on that. How how to incentivize your cat

Dr. Casey Means:
a miracle. Yeah. And I I'm I'm I mean, I will if it's okay, I will literally quote you on your own podcast because I think it's it's one of the most important points that I think we just have to realize because so much the conversation about healthy food comes back to, like, that's elitist. And it's only for for wealthy people, but every person paying a taxpayer dollar in America, this matters for. If you are buying processed food in the United States, you are paying for that food at least four times over.

You are paying for the food in the store. You are paying for the farm bill subsidies that made that food cheaper, that unhealthy food cheaper. You are paying for the environmental damage of what that the way that food was grown is doing to our water, air, and soil, and you are paying the health care dollars taxpayer money for the health ramifications and the chronic disease of that food.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
For Medicare and Medicaid.

Dr. Casey Means:
Yeah. Is a $100, whether you like it or not. And we are the voter We are the consumers. It's our it's no one's responsibility but ours. And the first way that you can do that is invest your, you know, money in buying real food from sustainably you know, growing farmers, farmers markets, and making sure that you understand who your representatives are and getting in their face through letters emails going to their office and telling them what you care about because, you know, Cali and you, have been in front of Congress, have talked to these people.

And they got a million issues on their plate. They're not bad people, just like the doctors. But

Dr. Mark Hyman:
Right.

Dr. Casey Means:
The person who's in their office every single day lobbying is the person Yeah. That they're gonna get the most information from. And right now, that is the food industry who spends more on lobbying than any other industry.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah.

Dr. Casey Means:
Health care and food than oil. So food, the farm bills, We we need to understand how much of a root cause of our sickness right now is the fact that we are making the unhealthy food cheaper through taxpayer dollars. And refuse to allow that to happen because we are literally the citizens who can do that. So that's the second one. I think a third one is Get the added sugar out of this national school lunch program.

It's ridiculous that we're serving children added sugar in schools. This is criminal, literally criminal.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
No biological requirement. And it's, yeah, it's crazy.

Dr. Casey Means:
We need to get the money out of the FDA, the USDA, and the NIH. These federally funded organizations huge part of their budget is coming from the pharmaceutical industry. Yeah.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
And food industry.

Dr. Casey Means:
That's crazy. You know, these institutions should be representing the individuals, not the interest of the corporation. So if you're an academic institution. If you're an if you're accepting federal dollars, which would be, of course, academic institutions, NIH FDA USDA, USDA, no conflicts of interest with food industry on the advisory boards, and no money from these industries. Because, of course, you know, when 95% of the people who made the USDA food guidelines for America have a conflict of interest with the processed food industry, which is what it was.

Yeah. Of course, there's gonna be more leniency towards those foods. And the most egregious thing happened in the last food guidelines determination for the 20 20 to 2025 period.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
For America.

Dr. Casey Means:
Diitary guidelines for America, the scientific advisory board for the guidelines recommended that we decrease the percent of added sugar as total calories in the American diet from 10% to 6%. And the guidelines, the the the people who finalized the guidelines rejected Yeah. The scientific advisory board's recommendation. And so You gotta get the money out.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
It used to be the scientists that actually made the final determination, but under, president's George W Bush, that was chain and it became a political decision. Yeah. And now it's politicians who make the decision.

Dr. Casey Means:
It's very bad.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
It's

Dr. Mark Hyman:
very bad. The one thing that occurred to me though, and then this could be a, you know, really interesting framework for thinking about this. If we actually did the right research and it's a little bit of a chicken or anything, if we did the right research on nutrition, lifestyle, and all these things we know work, we actually funded that properly from the government, it would save us 1,000,000,000,000 of dollars in health care costs because the government pays in some way or another for about half of all health care costs in America. And so you're talking a couple of $1,000,000,000,000. What if we took some of that savings.

We pocketed and paid down the debt. And what if we took some of that savings and we invested it in research where the government's funding large trials and and basic science and other studies looking at this from a really dispassionate view and trying to get to the answers because I think we're able to do that and we got pharma out and we got the food industry out and we stopped funding all of our research and restructures through industry, we maybe maybe get you some of the answers.

Dr. Casey Means:
Yeah. And I mean, I think that is very important, but just as important is to, I think, also to realize that I don't think we're gonna research our way to the answer. Again, it's like no other animal in the entire war has a chronic disease epidemic. We I think it's it's a lot of it's actually, like, kinda getting away from the cult of we need evidence. And, I mean, I'm sure people will bulk and say like, oh my gosh.

This is, you know, not evidence based medicine, but evidence evidence based medicine is broken. It's corrupted. And so I'm not saying that because I'm saying you should absolutely verify what's going on in your own body with the data for sure. Yeah.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
And a lot of good energy is all backed up by scientific evidence and research and A

Dr. Casey Means:
lot of molecular biology research. And it's when we start to get into the, like, the nutrition interventional research that things get really hairy. And I think that we know enough right now in the science to know that nutrient dense, nontoxic, non pesticides covered, whole food, Unprocessed diets are better for health. So if I think about, like, what if we could take 2,000,000,000,000 of those dollars and literally just give people healthier food, which has been done, you know, or, like, or promote, put it towards the school lunch program, real food. And and so it's I think it's gonna be, But but but bottom line is we have to be eyes open in this.

And I think right now, a lot of people aren't even aware of the issues. So that's why of course, we have these conversations. Yep. So

Dr. Mark Hyman:
Casey, you are just an incredible spokesperson for the future where we all need to be going for how we need to rethink health care, rethink our own health, and rethink all our food policy. So you you just heard Twitter force, and the book is a Twitter force. To get a copy, good energy. It's out now. You can go find it anywhere you get your books.

It's called the surprising connection between metabolism and limitless health. And they can find you where?

Dr. Casey Means:
I'm at caseymeans.com. The book is everywhere. Books are sold. I'm on Instagram at doctor Casey's Kitchen, and everywhere else all the other social media channels, I'm Casey means I'm deep. So, and then levels health is levels health dot com.

And that's, of course, how you can get continuous glucose monitors to really under stand your own metabolic health and, be empowered to know how your diet and lifestyle is affecting you.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
Amazing. And we'll put all those links in the show notes get the book. You won't be sorry. KC, thank you so much for writing it for all of us Thank you.

Dr. Mark Hyman:
And for

Dr. Mark Hyman:
the world. It's a gift.

Dr. Casey Means:
Thank you, Mark. You you know you are my hero and my inspiration

Dr. Mark Hyman:
Thanks for listening today. If you love this podcast, please share it with your friends and family. Leave a comment on your own best practices on how you upgrade your health and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and follow me on all social media channels at doctor Dr. Mark Hyman: and we'll see you next time on the doctor's farmacy. I'm always getting questions about my favorite books, podcasts, gadgets, supplements, recipes, and Morin. Now you can have access to all of this information by signing up for my free Mark picks newsletter at doctor Hyman Mark I promise I'll only email you once a week on Fridays, and I'll never share your email address or send you anything else besides my recommendations.

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