Conspirituality

Brief: Re-reading Casey Means

February 28, 2026

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  • The episode critiques Casey Means's performance during her Surgeon General confirmation hearing, highlighting her non-answers regarding vaccine encouragement, and pivots to dissecting the misinformation in her book, *Good Energy*. 
  • The book *Good Energy* is fundamentally flawed by promoting a single-cause fallacy, attributing virtually all diseases to metabolic dysfunction while ignoring established genetic, infectious, and environmental drivers. 
  • The Means siblings' promotion of metabolic pseudoscience, including misleading claims about statins, cancer, and the necessity of continuous glucose monitors for healthy individuals, is framed as a financial 'grift' tied to their business interests like Levels and supplement sales. 

Segments

Casey Means Hearing Clip
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(00:00:01)
  • Key Takeaway: Casey Means avoided directly encouraging MMR vaccination during questioning, emphasizing individual conversations with pediatricians.
  • Summary: A clip from Casey Means’s Senate hearing shows her equivocating on encouraging MMR vaccination despite measles outbreaks. She stated that every parent needs a conversation with their pediatrician before administering any medication. The host critiques this as a non-answer for a potential Surgeon General nominee expected to be a national mouthpiece.
Revisiting Good Energy Thesis
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(00:04:15)
  • Key Takeaway: Good Energy posits that nearly every health problem stems from poor cellular energy creation and usage, a claim unsupported by science.
  • Summary: The episode revisits Casey Means’s book, Good Energy, co-authored with her brother Kelly, who runs the supplement shop Trumed. The book’s central thesis is that metabolic dysfunction, or ‘bad energy,’ is the root of virtually every modern ailment. Neither sibling is trained in endocrinology, yet they claim expertise in the subject.
Debunking Animal Analogies
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(00:06:03)
  • Key Takeaway: Analogies comparing domesticated pet health issues (obesity, cancer) to wild animals are invalid due to differences in lifespan and care.
  • Summary: The Means siblings incorrectly claim outdoor cats have less obesity than indoor cats, ignoring that outdoor cats live significantly shorter lives (2-5 years vs. 12-18 years for indoor cats). Similarly, domesticated dogs live longer due to veterinary care, vaccines, and consistent food, making lifespan comparisons to wild wolves irrelevant for cancer incidence.
Single Cause Fallacy Critique
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(00:10:22)
  • Key Takeaway: The book commits the single cause of all disease fallacy by claiming poor metabolic function causes genetic, autoimmune, and infectious diseases.
  • Summary: The scientific literature does not support metabolic health as the necessary or sufficient cause for most chronic diseases cited, such as MS, Type 1 Diabetes, or Lupus, which are primarily driven by genetics and environmental triggers. Cancers like lung cancer (smoking) and cervical cancer (HPV) have distinct, non-metabolic primary drivers. Genetic conditions like Huntington’s disease are caused by specific gene mutations, not mitochondrial function.
Grift Motivation Revealed
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(00:13:16)
  • Key Takeaway: The book’s reductive focus on metabolic causes aligns perfectly with the business models of Casey Means’s CGM company, Levels, and her brother’s supplement sales.
  • Summary: Casey Means co-founded Levels, which markets continuous glucose monitors (CGMs) to non-diabetics based on metabolic fluctuations. Her brother, Kelly, partners with supplement companies selling solutions to the problems identified by this marketing. This structure explains why the book frames metabolic health as the central crisis requiring their technological and product solutions.
Misinformation on Pancreatic Cancer
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(00:14:08)
  • Key Takeaway: The Means family falsely labeled their mother’s pancreatic cancer death as a ‘preventable metabolic condition,’ ignoring its primary genetic driver.
  • Summary: Pancreatic cancer has a very low five-year survival rate (11-12%) and is difficult to prevent or detect early. While obesity is a modest risk factor, the dominant driver in nearly 90% of cases is a specific gene mutation that is not metabolic in origin. Implying better metabolic choices could have saved their mother is unsupported by evidence.
Misrepresenting Metabolic Health Data
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(00:15:55)
  • Key Takeaway: The claim that 93.2% of people have metabolic dysfunction misrepresents a study defining optimal health by five stringent, medication-free criteria.
  • Summary: The statistic that 93.2% of Americans have metabolic dysfunction is derived from a 2022 study where only 6.8% met all five optimal criteria (glucose, triglycerides, HDL, blood pressure, waist circumference) without medication. This definition of ‘optimal’ is not equivalent to having ‘metabolic disease,’ rendering the statistic misleading for suggesting widespread sickness.
Anti-Statin and Cholesterol Claims
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(00:17:17)
  • Key Takeaway: The book falsely advises discarding total cholesterol, downplays LDL-C as a risk factor, and incorrectly claims statins only target large LDL particles.
  • Summary: LDL cholesterol is a proven causal driver of cardiovascular disease, supported by decades of clinical trial evidence showing that genetically lower LDL correlates with lower lifetime risk. Statins reduce all LDL particles, contrary to the book’s claim that they only affect large, buoyant LDL. The claim that heart attack patients often have ’normal’ cholesterol uses a low conventional bar that ignores elevated risk levels.
Critique of Functional Medicine Terms
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(00:19:23)
  • Key Takeaway: The book promotes ’leaky gut’ as solid science, despite it being a functional medicine marketing term, while ignoring established psychiatric genetics for conditions like depression.
  • Summary: Intestinal permeability is a real diagnosis linked to specific conditions like Celiac disease and IBD, but ’leaky gut’ is a marketing term used to sell supplements. The book incorrectly posits poor metabolic health as the root of depression, whereas stressful life events and genetic predisposition are far more powerful predictors. The term ‘Type 3 diabetes’ for Alzheimer’s is a hypothetical concept from 2005 never adopted by the scientific mainstream.
Anti-Doctor Stance and Irony
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(00:23:16)
  • Key Takeaway: The book’s core message, ‘Trust Yourself, Not Your Doctor,’ ironically mirrors the profit-driven system it claims to oppose by pushing unnecessary tests and supplements.
  • Summary: Chapter three explicitly advises readers against accepting pushback from doctors regarding tests like fasting insulin, framing the medical system as profit-driven. The irony is that the Means siblings simultaneously recommend numerous tests and implicitly supplements sold by affiliated companies. The host concludes that Casey Means’s failure to mention socialized medicine as a solution disqualifies her for Surgeon General, given America’s profit-over-people healthcare issues.