Passion Struck with John R. Miles - Dr. Casey Means on Mastering Metabolism for Limitless Health EP 428

Episode Date: March 14, 2024

https://passionstruck.com/passion-struck-book/ - Order a copy of my new book, "Passion Struck: Twelve Powerful Principles to Unlock Your Purpose and Ignite Your Most Intentional Life," today! Picked by the Next Big Idea Club as a must-read for 2024. In this enlightening episode of Passion Struck, host John R. Miles engages with Dr. Casey Means, a pioneer in the field of metabolic health, to unravel the common root cause of a myriad of health conditions, such as depression, anxiety, heart disease, and more. Dr. Means delves into the critical role of metabolic function, highlighting its influence on our physical and mental well-being. Full show notes and resources can be found here: https://passionstruck.com/dr-casey-means-on-mastering-metabolism/  Sponsors Brought to you by Indeed. Head to https://www.indeed.com/passionstruck, where you can receive a $75 credit to attract, interview, and hire in one place. Brought to you by Nom Nom: Go Right Now for 50% off your no-risk two week trial at https://trynom.com/passionstruck. Brought to you by Cozy Earth. Cozy Earth provided an exclusive offer for my listeners. 35% off site-wide when you use the code “PASSIONSTRUCK” at https://cozyearth.com/ This episode is brought to you by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at https://www.betterhelp.com/PASSIONSTRUCK, and get on your way to being your best self. This episode is brought to you By Constant Contact:  Helping the Small Stand Tall. Just go to Constant Contact dot com right now. So get going, and start GROWING your business today with a free trial at Constant Contact dot com. --► For information about advertisers and promo codes, go to: https://passionstruck.com/deals/ The Metabolism-Health Link: Insights from Dr. Casey Means for Limitless Wellness The conversation covers a broad spectrum of topics, including debunking common dietary misconceptions and establishing universal nutrition principles that cater to diverse dietary preferences. Dr. Means also explores the interplay between sleep, circadian rhythms, and metabolism, and presents a novel perspective on integrating movement into daily life for better health outcomes. All things Dr. Casey Means: https://www.caseymeans.com/  Catch More of Passion Struck My solo episode on Why We All Crave To Matter: Exploring The Power Of Mattering: https://passionstruck.com/exploring-the-power-of-mattering Catch my episode with Kara Collier On How Real-Time Glucose Monitoring Systems Can Transform Your Health. Watch my interview with Dr. Gabrielle Lyon On The 3 Keys To Being Forever Strong. Listen to my interview with Cyrus Khambatta & Robby Barbaro On The Plant-Based Path To Mastering Diabetes. Catch my episode with Dr. Dominic D’Agostino On Ketogenic Diets, Ketosis, And Optimizing Metabolic Health. Listen to my interview with Dr. Cynthia Li On Intuitive Healing Using Qigong And Ecosystem Medicine. Like this show? Please leave us a review here -- even one sentence helps! Consider including your Twitter or Instagram handle so we can thank you personally! How to Connect with John Connect with John on Twitter at @John_RMiles and on Instagram at @john_R_Miles. Subscribe to our main YouTube Channel Here: https://www.youtube.com/c/JohnRMiles Subscribe to our YouTube Clips Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@passionstruckclips Want to uncover your profound sense of Mattering? I provide my master class on five simple steps to achieving it. Want to hear my best interviews? Check out my starter packs on intentional behavior change, women at the top of their game, longevity and well-being, and overcoming adversity. Learn more about John: https://johnrmiles.com/   

Coming up next on Passion Struck. All of these different things are just fascinating ways that really show us that our genetic code, the three billion base pairs that make up our DNA are one piece of the puzzle. But a huge, I would say even bigger part of the puzzle is how we activate them, how we turn them on, how we turn them off, how we fold it. And that is all through our choices. We share between 96 or 99% of our genome is like shared with dogs and almost every other land animal we see. So it's not just

about the actual sequence. It's a lot about how it's expressed. And so I focus a lot on the fact that is where we should really focus our energy because that is totally in our control. Welcome to Passion Struck. Hi, I'm your host, John R. Miles. And on the show, we decipher the secrets, tips, and guidance of the world's most inspiring people and turn their wisdom into practical advice for you and those around you. Our mission is to help you unlock

the power of intentionality so that you can become the best version of yourself. If you're new to the show, I offer advice and answer listener questions on Fridays. We have long form interviews the rest of the week with guests ranging from astronauts to authors, CEOs, creators, innovators, scientists, military leaders, visionaries, and athletes. Now let's go out there and become passion struck. Hello, everyone, and welcome back to episode 428 of passion struck consistently ranked the number one alternative health podcast. A heartfelt thank you to each and every one

of you who return to the show every week, eager to listen, learn, and discover new ways to live better, be better, and make a meaningful impact in the world. If you're new to the show, thank you so much for being here, or you simply want to introduce this to a friend or a family member and we so appreciate it when you do that. We have episodes starter packs, which are collections of our fans' favorite episodes that we organize into convenient playlists that give any new listener a great way to get acclimated to everything we do here on the show. Either go to Spotify or passionstruck.com slash starter packs to get started. Are you curious to find out where you stand on the path to becoming passion struck? If so, dive into our engaging passion-struck quiz. Crafted to reflect the core principles

shared in my latest book, this quiz offers you a dynamic way to gauge your progress on the passion-struck continuum. Just head over to passionstruck.com to embark on this insightful journey. With just 20 questions and roughly 10 minutes of your time, don't miss this chance to gain valuable insights into your passion struck journey. Take the quiz today. In case you missed my interview from earlier in the week, it featured Jason Redman, a former Navy SEAL, who turned his battlefield experiences

into lessons of overcoming adversity and achieving personal triumph. Redman shares his journey from the front lines to the forefront of inspiring change, discover how to embrace challenges, lead with courage, and live a life marked by perseverance and success. I also wanted to say thank you for your ratings and reviews. And if you loved today's episode or that one with Jason Redman, we would appreciate

you giving it a five-star review and sharing it with your friends and families. I know we and our guests love to see comments from our listeners. Today we are delving deep into the world of metabolic health with an expert who's blazing a trail toward a healthier future. Our guest today is Dr. Casey Means, a Stanford-trained physician and the driving force behind levels, a groundbreaking metabolic health company. Dr. Means is on a mission to revolutionize the way we think about our bodies and our health, armed with tech-enabled tools that empower us to make informed, personalized,

and sustainable choices. Now, I know what you're thinking. Metabolic health might sound complex, but trust me, it's fascinating. We'll be exploring some eye-opening topics such as how your mind wields remarkable influence over your metabolism, why glucose is the primary key to unlocking your body's energy potential, and the critical importance of blood sugar regulation. But that's not all. We'll also venture into the shadowy territory of too high or too low blood sugar levels and how they can impact your health. Plus, we'll unravel the intricate dance between stress and glucose,

uncovering secrets that will transform your wellbeing. If you've ever wondered how to supercharge your metabolic health, or if you're curious about the hidden connections between metabolism and chronic diseases, then you're in for a treat. Thank you for choosing Passion Struck and choosing me to be your host and guide

on your journey to creating an intentional life. Now, let that journey begin. I am so honored today to have Dr. Casey Means on Passion Struck. Welcome, Casey. John, I'm thrilled to be here. Thank you. Casey, I understand that you started your medical career specializing in ear, nose, and throat medicine. How did you transition from traditional medicine to a more focus on optimal or functional medicine? For me, it started actually at a very young age.

I've always been passionate about prevention, and I've been passionate about the concept of healing and the innate just really spectacular healing capacity of the human body of all natural systems. And so that's really why I got into medicine. I wanted to help be a facilitator of healing. And as I progressed through my medical career and was nine years into it, medical school and surgical residency as an ear, nose and throat surgeon. There was a big divide between what I had really intended to do in healthcare, which was be

a healer and what I was actually doing on a day-to-day basis, which felt much more reactive and more like band-aid medicine where we were approaching each separate symptom after it arise and managing it rather than truly healing things. And this really came to a head for me about five years into my surgical training when I was on a sinus surgery rotation. And sinusitis is fundamentally, it's a chronic inflammatory disorder. There's immune cells that create swelling in the tissue, it blocks off the nasal passages. And fundamentally, what sinus surgery is, is you bust swelling in the tissue. It blocks off the nasal passages and fundamentally what sinus surgery is

is you bust holes in the sinuses and you let that inflammatory pus drain. And it's kind of like plumbing in a way. But what really struck me as I'm doing these surgeries day in and day out is that while I'm releasing this pus and this inflammatory fluid, I'm not actually really doing anything to actually get at the root of what's causing that inflammation. seeing this pus and this inflammatory fluid, I'm not actually really doing anything to

actually get at the root of what's causing that inflammation. You can't operate on the immune cells, you can't operate on the immune system. So at best, you're doing an anatomic rearrangement of things that can relieve some symptoms. But was I really fundamentally getting to the root of the problem? I did not feel that I was. And that really hit me like a ton of brick because I was at the very end of my surgical training about to take a job, a faculty academic position where this is really gonna be the rest of my life. And I really stopped at my tracks and said,

I don't think I can do this in this way. I want to be helping people really get to the root cause of what's causing their problems and not just react and manage the downstream symptoms. So that led me on a five, six year journey to where I am today, which really was all about asking these questions of like, why? Why are people sick? Why are so many of the conditions that are causing morbidity and early mortality in the American body, fundamentally rooted in chronic inflammation all across the body, in the nose for ear, nose and throat.

But also we know that heart disease and Alzheimer's dementia, even depression, a lot of cancers, there's this sort of fundamental problem with the core biology in our body. And we're not really talking about that as a medical system. And then I got really quite interested in the health care economics of it, too, which is that we're spending over $4 trillion, $4 trillion of taxpayer money on healthcare costs in the United States. And the crazy thing is the more money we spend, the worse the outcomes are getting for American health. Life expectancy is going down

and chronic disease rates are going up. So it's really the definition of unsustainability. The more we spend, the worse it's getting. And my belief is that the reason that dynamic is happening is because we're actually addressing the wrong problems. We're not actually putting that money towards the core physiology that is leading to so many of the chronic diseases we're seeing in the Western world today. By just approaching the downstream symptoms, we're not actually leading to a root cause solution and that's why the more we spend, the worse the outcomes are getting. So that's what I really devoted my life to as a more holistic prevention focused doctor. Now I

left the surgical world and I'm just fundamentally focused on asking, why are we sick and what can we actually do to heal and be healthier? And that has then led me to becoming what I would call a metabolic health evangelist. Because when you really step back and you look at the science of what we call network biology or systems biology, which is this actually quite new sort of part of medicine, where we look at on a cellular level, what are the actual connecting points between most of the diseases and symptoms we're seeing in the Western world today? On the true cellular level, what is going on? And when you look at that level, not on the symptoms level, sort of describing the symptoms, but really on the true

cellular biology level, what is connecting all these symptoms? What do we really need to be addressing? And fundamentally, it's a problem with metabolism and a dysfunction of metabolic health. And when you look at nine of the 10 leading causes of death in the United States, all of them are either rooted in or accelerated by metabolic dysfunction. And so that's what I've turned my attention to as a physician is how do we heal dysfunction in this country, address that in our patients. And what we see when we actually do that is that a lot of people's varied symptoms kind of melts away because we're actually getting to the root of the issue.

There are so many different directions. I can take what you just said. So I'm going to take it in this direction. I happen to interview Dr. Cynthia Lee, and I'm not sure if you're familiar with Cynthia, but she herself was having all these inflammatory issues that were going on. quite striking to hear her talk about it because she was a classically trained medical doctor and became her own patient and really was at odds end at what was causing all these things to happen and I think she gives one of the best analogies that I've heard anyone say and that is we tend in the western world to treat the body as if it's the leaves or branches on a tree, but we don't look enough at the entire tree or what you call the system. And it's interesting because recently I've done a few different episodes on paradoxical thinking, which to me is really when you get into black and white thinking. And when I think a lot about the medical system, what I think about is this paradox

is about this black and white thinking when it comes to health. Could you explain a little bit how you think this type of thinking affects our wellbeing, possibly why we need to have more both hand thinking when it comes to the medical realm? Absolutely, it's such a great question. And I think that what comes to mind, there's a couple directions we could take this in, but what really comes to mind for me is

that roots itself and incentives of our health care system. So unfortunately, with the way that health care and the system, the economic system of healthcare is designed in this country, really leads us to be very black and white thinking. Because ultimately healthcare is the largest and fastest growing industry in the United States. And there's no wiggle room in terms of that industry, in terms of should we grow? Because it is what, will shareholders be okay

if we slow growth a little bit? It's just not a question. It is in our economy, in our system, these things need to grow. And the current way that the system is designed economically, the way that it grows is by seeing more patients in shorter time periods doing more to them over longer periods of time.

So chronic disease management is honestly like the cash cow in the American healthcare system which employs millions of people because you have people who over the course of long periods of time are being managed with regular visits. And that's even with the best intentions of the doctors out there. And I will be totally honest, I know hundreds of doctors, probably thousands of doctors, every single one I know, I can pretty much say is a good person who got into medicine to help people. But the incentives are an invisible hand that are going to guide our decision making, they're going to guide what is taught in our textbooks, in our medical schools,

how we incentivize doctors. And right now, the incentive is see more patients as quickly as possible and do as much as possible to them, because that is how you get paid. And that is how these gigantic industries, again, largest and fastest growing industry in the United States, millions of jobs are going to grow. So what you've got is a very black and white system where are going to grow. So what you've got is a very black and white system where anything that's focused on prevention or root cause healthcare or seeing things holistically or treating the trunk of the tree as Dr. Lee talks about, that's actually honestly become pro bono work.

You have to do that out of the goodness of your heart. You're not gonna get paid for it. And so it's a very odd system that drives people towards reactionary medicine and long-term management and not really towards prevention and root cause thinking. So I think that's one thing that comes to mind when we're talking about black and white. And fundamentally, we need to change the incentives

of the system if we're gonna get people to practice a more systems-based root cause trunk of the tree type of health care and think about what does that economic model look like? The second thing I would just totally different direction, but when you were talking about black and white thinking, and this goes into a little bit more of an out there perspective, but I've listened to a lot of your episodes and I think that we can do this is that with the Western system of thinking about the body and of life, there's a very

black and white dichotomy between life and death. And that's a very Western thing. We're alive and then we die and that's the end. And unfortunately, I think, and many other cultures obviously don't think this way. It's much more of we think about the cycles of life and of the body. The Taoists, they think of the body as a process, not an entity. But Western medicine very much thinks of the body as an entity. It's this fixed thing that lives and then dies. And if you actually zoom in and look at the body under a very big microscope, you'd realize that none of that's really true. We're constantly dying and being reborn all throughout our life. We have trillions and trillions of cells We're constantly dying and being reborn all throughout our life. We have trillions and trillions of cells

that are constantly dying and being reborn. And then there's obviously many spiritual traditions in the world that don't see death as this finite end. But the reason this matters is because of this very Western framework we have, this black and white framework, we are able to weaponize the concept of death very aggressively, I think, against patients to really make

this sort of death be this capital D death be this thing that is so scary and so black and white and so binary and so terrifying that you can get a patient to do anything, take this pill, have this surgery, be in the ICU for this, under all these different awful conditions because it might just cause you to not die. And I think it's a disservice to our system and to patients. It creates a big power divide between doctors and patients

because when you think of doctors as these people in the system that just might help you escape death, which is of course, that death is the one thing we can be certain of. And I think because we really have this terrified nature around death for both doctors and patients, it creates a little bit of a toxic system within medicine that drives people in both an energy of fear and also an energy of intense intervention. And so what I'd like to see is the system really be a both and as you said, where of course we wanna avoid death

and we wanna maximize every moment that we have in this particular conscious incarnation, whatever you wanna call it. But also because when we get into sort of more the abundance mindset, get into the idea of the body being this process that's constantly in this transmutation, alchymal relationship with everything else

in the natural world, in the energetic world, coming from that space of awe and abundance and limitlessness and eternal truth, I think it actually helps us live our healthiest lives here in this time as well. Because of course, how we think about our body, how we conceive of life has a huge impact on our physical health. The mind and body are so tightly linked. And so even exploring and examining, engaging with some of these thoughts around life and death and coming to it from a place of real awe and abundance, I actually think helps us reach

the highest level of physical health in our lifetime because it stems from a place of much more comfort and limitlessness. So those are two ways to kind of answer your question. But I think we need a lot more yes and both and in our system. Yes, well, I absolutely agree. And one of the things I often talk about on the show question, but I think we need a lot more yes and both and in our system. Well, I absolutely agree. And one of the things I often talk about on the show is the analogy that our life is a stool. In most people's life, they have maybe one core component of that stool, which is the constant grind or whatever might be in their life. And I think it's so important for us to look at our life as something that's got four or five different legs to that stool. And the way I like to approach my own is to think of it in terms of emotional health, physical health, mental health, relationship health, and then that spiritual health

all need to be aligned together because they each kind of work off each other in that overall system. Can you explain for the listener if they're not familiar with the concept of metabolic health? Can you do it in simple terms? Absolutely. Metabolism is fundamentally how we convert food energy to cellular energy. So we take in about 70 metric tons of food in our lifetime. And we have to convert that food to an energy form that our cells can use to do their work. Our physical body is 37 plus trillion cells, all of which individually are doing trillions of chemical reactions

every day. And all of those chemical reactions bubble up into this life that we experience. And all of those chemical reactions need to be paid for by cellular energy. And metabolism is how we convert that 70 metric tons of food energy to cellular energy that powers every chemical reaction that ultimately bubbles up into our life. And metabolic dysfunction is when that process of food energy to cellular energy is broken. And most people will recall from high school this word mitochondria, which is a part of our cells. There are many mitochondria in each of our cells, but they are the powerhouse of the cell. They are at

the final stage of taking in the breakdown of food products and turning it into cellular energy, which is what we call, in the American body, 93.2% of American adults have a metabolic problem. So the process through which we convert energy from food, which means basically energy from the external world, the cosmos, the energy outside of us and convert it into energy that powers our life is somehow not optimal in 93% of American adults. And that is research that came out a couple years ago. Basically, the way they looked at that was showing that at least 93.2% of American adults have at least one biomarker of metabolic dysfunction, some signal that this process is not going perfectly.

And what that means is that we are having essentially underpowered cells. And if you think of any underpowered machine, if you think of every cell is like a little city, a little factory, a little machine, anything that doesn't have enough power is going to become dysfunctional, like a sputtering car or a dysfunctional factory. And that's basically what's happening with our cells. And we have over 200 different types of cells in our body, which is so cool, because of course, we came from one cell and now we have 37 trillion cells, or that's the rough estimate and 200 plus different types that all came from one. But you can imagine if a ovarian cell is underpowered, it would look like some set of symptoms like infertility

or menstrual irregularity or hormone dysfunction. And if a brain cell is underpowered, metabolically dysfunctional, well, depending on which brain cell it is, it could look like a lot of different things. It could look like migraines, chronic pain, fibromyalgia, Alzheimer's dementia, neurodevelopmental disorders, depression or anxiety. And interestingly, both infertility and all those brain diseases that I just said, all we now know have an element of metabolic dysfunction. Different cell types underpowered can look like different things. And the way we treat medicine now is we take each of those different things, all those

different brain disorders, infertility caused by theca cell dysfunction, the ovaries, and then take any other example of fatty liver disease, stroke, heart disease, diabetes, obesity, peripheral vascular disease, chronic kidney disease. You take all these different things and you look at them and they all look so different because the cell type is different. If you zoom in on what's happening inside the cell, what we know now from the most recent research is that actually in each of those cells, there is likely a metabolic problem in underpowering mitochondrial dysfunction. The so the reason this is happening

is because over the last 100 or so years, as our lifestyle has so rapidly changed over the course of human history, the changes that have happened in the last 100 years have been so dramatic. The industrialization, the 80,000 plus synthetic chemicals that are now created in factories that live in our food, water, air, personal care products, the technology that's interrupted our sleep and caused chronic low-grade stress and made us more sedentary. The changes in our professional lives, it used to be that over 50% of the country was involved in agriculture on their feet all day. Now it's less than 1%.

We're sitting, we're knowledge workers. So much has changed across industrialized food, less sleep, more chronic low-grade, constant low-grade stress, deeply sedentary lifestyles, environmental toxins, artificial light, microbiome decimation through chemicals and pharmaceuticals. So all of these different vectors have changed exponentially in the past hundred years. And all of those different vectors uniquely hurt our mitochondria. And that is why so many Americans have metabolic dysfunction right now.

And so what we're looking at is a chronic disease epidemic. We see all these different chronic diseases, cancer, heart disease, stroke, Alzheimer's, dementia, type two diabetes, fatty liver disease, obesity, et cetera, et cetera, depression, anxiety, chronic pain. And it looks really overwhelming, but the secret that is my life's work to get out there is that it's not actually as overwhelming

as it seems. It's very predictable. These very well understood lifestyle factors are very uniquely hitting a key part of our cell that makes energy. This is causing a lot of cellular dysfunction that looks like a lot of different symptoms to diseases and we have to fix the metabolic dysfunction and we can greatly transform the health and thriving and prosperity of the human body. But, Anz backing up again on, that's the sort of biology of what's happening right now in our Western industrialized world.

But it's also, it is also a spiritual crisis because we are underpowered bodies. We are dim, our life force, which comes from how we make energy in the body, it is dimmed because of metabolic dysfunction, because of mitochondrial dysfunction. And the way in which we convert external energy, cosmic energy, food energy, all these different forms of energy that we can take into our being, into our body, and convert into life force, into cellular energy, that process is now blocked in some way. Mitochondrial dysfunction is basically, you can think of it as a veil, a block between our ability to just flow energy from the outside

world through our inside world to help reach our highest potential. And that is now being blocked because of metabolic dysfunction. So we have to fix this for our human potential, our spirit. We have to fix this for our bodies. We have to fix this because it's going to create insolvency. It is creating insolvency in our economy. It's really, I believe, the first order issue that we're facing in society today because all human behavior, all societal issues, they ultimately come from human behavior. And right now the human body is metabolically dysfunctional.

That's what healthcare needs to shift its focus on if we're going gonna make any progress. Yeah, I remember interviewing both Kara Fitzgerald, who you probably know, and then I interviewed Katie Milkman, who's a behavioral scientist, and both of them cited the same study, which is that somewhere between 20 to 40% of our lives or what they said was around 60 to 66 percent of our lives, or what they said was around 60 to 66 percent of the U.S.

population, that 20 to 40 percent of our life is spent with one to two chronic diseases, which to me is not the way any of us wants to live, especially that latter portion of our lives, which is why it's so important to balance this health span with your lifespan and to elongate both. I've recently been rereading Limitless by Jim Quick because I've got him coming up in an episode and I'm trying to rush up. And one of the things I was reading about today was where he starts talking about, for such a long time, people believe that their IQ

or their brain power was fixed. And it was just who they are, but we've learned that it's not fixed and you have the opportunity to enhance it. I think in the same way, many people believe that our health is fixed based on the genetics that we were born with. How can we balance genetic predisposition with lifestyle choices to erase or to alter that path that I described?

Hmm. Well, this brings me back to something that path that I described. Well, this brings me back to something that originally inspired me. Actually, when I was a college student, I'm like 18 years old, freshman at Stanford, and there were two things happening during that time. It was around 2005, which was the Human Genome Project was wrapping up,

and 23andMe was just founded. And so, and this was both happening very right around me and I was studying genetics. And so it was an exciting time. But I think my biggest takeaway from that time was this study of nutrigenomics, which was essentially this concept that many of the food, the chemicals and the natural chemicals,

the naturally occurring molecules in food that we eat actually go into our bodies, are broken down and can change our genetic expression. So two examples of this would be in turmeric, there's the substance called curcumin, which you can buy as a capsule as well, but curcumin actually goes into our cells and changes a genetic pathway called NF-CB, which is our master inflammatory pathway

and causes it to be less expressed. And then on the flip side, you've got isothiocyanates from cruciferous vegetables like broccoli sprouts and broccoli, cabbage, bok choy, which are, first of all, have to be activated through an enzymatic reaction that happens when you chop vegetables and then leave them out to air, which is pretty cool. And then that substance goes into the cells and upregulates a genetic pathway called nRF2, nuclear receptor factor two, which actually increases our antioxidant genes that protect ourselves from metabolic damage. So here's just two examples that basically are just all you need to know to realize that genes are just a part of the picture.

And every day, the choices we make with how we're interacting with the environment change the expression of the genes in either ways that can directly contribute to disease or that can directly contribute to healing and protection. And we could go on and on for a whole hour about this because we know that with stress or sleep deprivation, it changes another aspect of gene expression, which is like methylation and epigenetics, how the genome is actually folded and expressed. And that's actually heritable across generations.

We know that there are certain foods you can eat that actually improve our DNA repair mechanisms. So as you replicate your cells and replicate your genome, there are mistakes that are made. And there are certain foods that can actually improve the function of these little protein machines that repair the genome. And so there's just some amazing stuff that we know. So no matter what you're kind of born with, there's a lot of opportunity for modulation. Essentially, I like to think of it as turning little dials all the time with the choices that we're making. Another interesting one is actually even light. So much of our metabolic pathways are actually controlled by circadian genes, things like clock genes that actually are activated on 24-hour cycles. And there's

an internal clock in the body that sort of knows when certain genes are supposed to be expressed in a 24-hour period. But these genes are actually entrained, the word entrained, so they basically get reinforced through light signals. Think about the inside of your body. It's pitch dark. It doesn't know what time it is. One of the ways you can tell your body what time it is, well, actually, there's three main ways you can tell your body what time it is.

One is when you look at light and those photons that go from the sun and hit your retina and then go back into your brain, the suprachiasmatic nucleus tells your brain, oh, it's morning. It is the morning right now because photons are hitting your retina and heading back to your brain. And that actually entrains the clock genes to have the metabolic pathways be expressed at the right times. A second and third way briefly that you can entrain your body to time is having consistent bedtimes and wake times. So just keeping your body at a regular rhythm of when you go to bed and when you get up and then meal timing.

So kind of letting your body know what time it is by having more regular meal time. So those are entrainment systems. But all of these different things are just fascinating ways that really show us that our genetic code, the three billion base pairs that make up our DNA are one piece of the puzzle. But a huge, much, I would say even bigger part of the puzzle is how we activate them, how we turn them on, how we turn them off, how we fold it. And that is all through our choices. I think we share 99% of our genome with, that could be wrong, it's either between 96 or 99% of our genome with that could be wrong with it's either between 96 or 99% of our

genome is like shared with dogs and almost every other land animal we see. So it's not just about the actual sequence. It's a lot about how it's expressed. And so I focus a lot on the fact that is where we should really focus our energy because that is totally in our control. 50 years ago, less than 1% of the human population had type 2 diabetes. Now, 13% of Americans have type 2 diabetes and 50% of American adults have pre-diabetes

or type 2 diabetes. Our genome has not changed in 50 years, measurably. However, the environment has changed massively and we call this an obesogenic environment. 74% of the United States overweight or obese. These numbers were single digits 100 years ago. Obesity was barely even described over 100 years ago. And so a lot of people talk about this concept of obesity being genetic. And we have to be careful with our words because sure, there are genes that are being expressed that are promoting obesity,

but they are being expressed because of the relationship between those genes and the obesogenic environment. And there's nothing we can do right now about the genes. So we should focus a huge amount of our energy on the environmental factors that are unlocking the potential of those genes to basically 3D print fat in our bodies. I just look at the whole genetic

conversation as which aspects of it can we be empowered by and just focus a lot. But we need to be focusing a lot more of our attention on that and how to understand and turn the knobs that essentially generate and create health in our bodies. Yeah, I just always go back to the fact that for centuries and millennia really we were hunter-gatherers and so the body got used to intermittent fasting because it had to because we were out there hunting or foraging for our meals and when we did eat so much of it was a plant-based diet because that was what was available to us and our bodies were so much in many ways better regulated because of that. And one of the things that I think is so alarming is not only do we have obesity and chronic diseases on the rise, but as Chris Palmer really laid out in his book Brain Energy, he found that all mental disorders are underpinned by metabolic disorders, which to me was huge. And I want to ask you this in the flip side way, and that is how does the mind control metabolism

and what role does our mental state play in our overall health? Because he showed that our metabolism impacts our mental health, but also our mind impacts Our metabolism and our overall health. Yeah, I think at the highest level the way I would frame that is that Your cells in a sense that your cells, in a sense, hear every thought that you're having through our biochemistry, through the way that those thoughts transmit through nerve impulses and transmit through hormonal signals. If you have a stressful thought, your body will likely release certain stress hormones that bathe your cells in a chemical signal that will change the biology of those cells. Thought is an abstract concept and consciousness is an abstract concept,

but what's not abstract is the way that those thoughts impact true biochemistry of our bodies. And so if we're gonna protect our bodies from the chronic damaging threat signals of hormones and nerve impulses and the way it impacts our microbiome, which we know that stress impacts our microbiome heavily through the gut brain access, then we actually have to be really vigilant

about our thought patterns. Even if we're faking it sometimes, telling yourself, I'm feeling good. I'm feeling positive because your body will transmit it through these chemicals. And I think it's no surprise that as social media and just media generally has become so pervasive and we're really being asked as humans now to essentially bear the emotional and psychological weight of the entire world. Something that up until, sure there were newspapers and whatnot over the past century, but the poignancy through which essentially the pain of an entire planet of 8 billion people is funneled towards a device in your hand that you can see 24 hours a day and how that then is going to create a different biologic reality in your body, whether you like

it or not. That is, I think, an under recognized factor in why we are so sick right now as a culture because if your body is constantly in a fear or a threat state on a biochemical level, it is going to divert biologic resources towards protection and defense rather than repair healing and thriving. It's a zero sum game. So a lot of what and one book that really I think does a beautiful job of talking about this is Johann Hari's Stolen Focus, which is a book that's about really about how technology is taking our attention. But it talks a lot about this just the fact that these this technology and the access to this information is changing our biochemistry in a profound way. And so that is really one of the

big ways I think the mind controls metabolism. A lot of what we're dealing with now is how fear is controlling metabolism. The mitochondria, they're the powerhouse of the cell and they create our ATP, our cellular energy. But we're learning more and more that the mitochondria actually have lots of different roles above and beyond just making ATP. They're actually another way to think of it is they are almost like a sensor inside our cells that's constantly evaluating what the cellular conditions are. They're nutrient sensors. They know whether we're in a scarcity time, they know whether we're in an abundance time, they can sense what's going on in the cell and around the cell, and then they're

going to modulate our energy production correspondingly. And there's a really fascinating process in the body that is called the cell danger response that's mediated by the mitochondria, where basically if there's anything that's creating a sense of threat or fear around the cell, the mitochondria elicits what's called a cell danger response and totally changes the way the cell is operating. We are just a workhorse, we are a factory, we are producing ATP, we are thriving to essentially wartime. We're hunkered down, we're storing, we are sending out signals around the cell to recruit the immune system. It's a coordinator of essentially protection.

Now imagine a body with our trillions and trillions of cells where it's constantly kind of thinking that things are scary and there is a threat, whether it's through psychology, whether it's through ultra processed foods that confuse ourselves because they're foreign, whether it's through sleep deprivation that is a threat signal. Any of these things from our external world that are telling the cell there's danger totally changes its metabolic operations through the mitochondria. So to wrap it up, I would just offer that no matter whether all the physical things are dialed in across food and sleep and avoiding toxins and moving, if that psychological piece

is missing, we are not going to be able... And when I say that psychological piece, a sense in the mind that things are safe, things are abundant, things are fundamentally okay. If we are missing that piece, it is going to be, I believe, virtually impossible to reach our ultimate health potential because the body will be in a biochemical state of defense, threat, and protection. And that is going to channel resources away from thriving, reaching that full health potential. So that means that we essentially each are tasked to address that in the way that we need to in our own lives. So that might be stress management techniques.

It might be reframing simple strategies to reframe the stressful things going on in our day-to-day lives. It might be deep meditative work, you know, create the neuroplasticity to respond to things differently. It might be deep psychological trauma, addressing that with a therapist to unpack what our deepest core beliefs are from childhood or from intergenerational trauma that lives in our epigenetics. It might be psychedelic assisted therapy. It could be any of these different things, but for each of us, we have to take stock of what is causing psychological fear, pain, and limiting beliefs in our body and unpack them like our life depends on it because fundamentally, it's all going to be picked up on a biochemical level that's going to impact our metabolism. And so everyone's journey on that path is going to be different, but it's work that we do need to do if we're going to reach our

most limitless health. And I think, you know, Peter Tia just came out with his hugely popular book Outlive, which is about longevity. And his whole last chapter is about this, which is that he has been such an academic, rigorous physician, but he had to address some of the personal emotional challenges that he had, I think, have been putting to the wayside because it was more psychology. And that had to happen for him to truly reach the highest stage of moving towards maximal health span. He is one that I keep getting requests to have him on the show and I keep asking and I keep saying no. So hopefully. He's a busy, I know he's a busy man. Yeah.

Well, I think he got overwhelmed there for a little bit with all the episodes he was doing to help support the book and then he just needed a break. So I'm hoping I can get him to come on now that it's been a few months since that great book came out. Casey, I wanted to go deeper into the topic of glucose and blood sugar regulation. Can you elaborate on the significance of glucose as the primary precursor for energy in the body? Sure. Yeah. So we've talked a lot about metabolism and how we make energy in the body. And then sometimes it's a little bit of a jump to be like, wait a minute, there's this whole talk about blood sugar. How is that related to everything else that we're

talking about? And so we know that the sort of overt metabolic disease that most people know about is type 2 diabetes, which is where the blood sugar rises. And sugar, glucose, is one of those food molecules that can be converted to cellular energy. So it's a little bit confusing because wait, if the blood sugar is high in people's bodies, wouldn't we expect we'd make more energy because we have more glucose around? But that's not the way it works. So the way to think about it is that let's go back to the cell and back to the mitochondria.

And you've got this mitochondria that has to convert food energy to cellular energy. And one of the food energies it can convert to cellular energy is glucose. And one of the other things that can convert is fat. So fat and glucose can be converted to cellular energy. However, when the body has been bombarded with far too much sugar over time, you're basically tasking the cell and the mitochondria to do so much work.

And that's what's happening in our bodies today, because there are some estimates that we're eating 25 to 100 times more glucose, more sugar than we were 100, 200 years ago, just like monumentally bombarding the body with sugar. And you can imagine if this mitochondria is a little machine that's tasked to convert that to ATP, it can't do it. It's going to get overwhelmed. And the mitochondria, when it is overburdened, is going to release damaging byproducts like exhaust, which the word for that is free radicals or oxidative stress. And so you've got this system where you've got the cell is totally bombarded with way too much energy to convert food energy

to convert to cellular energy, it gets overwhelmed, it creates damaging byproducts, that creates even more cellular dysfunction. And the cell in its infinite wisdom is we cannot take more of this glucose up into the cell because we can't process it. So that leads to a block of sugar getting into the cell. And that's called insulin resistance. That is the physiology of why blood sugar rises because it can't get in. The inn is, we're full, we can't deal with this, we're not letting into the cell anymore. So as we see blood sugar levels rising, that is a sign

of an internal problem within the cell and the cell responding to protect itself by blocking more sugar from getting in. And that's why blood sugar is an excellent biomarker to track, because if it starts creeping up in the bloodstream, it's a clear sign that there is cellular dysfunction going on the metabolic level and that we need to address that. And the way we need to address it is by creating conditions where the mitochondria is essentially more able to do its work. So that might mean really reducing a lot of the sugar from the diet to kind of free up the mitochondria to do its best work and to not be so overburdened. But it's also doing all the other things in our lifestyle that protect the mitochondria, like reducing the chronic stress and reducing the synthetic environmental toxins that directly harm the

mitochondria and getting more sleep so that you can clear out the waste products in the cell, eating more antioxidants to protect that cell from that oxidative stress and that free radical damage. It's supporting the microbiome with fiber. So microbiome actually creates these protective molecules called short chain fatty acids that help the mitochondria with their efficiency. It's exercising, which is one of the best signals to the mitochondria to replicate, to get rid of the old sort of damaged mitochondria and to actually become more efficient. So there's this element

of... And the way I think about it is as a human, as a complete body with all these little cells inside of me, I'm a parent to all my 37 trillion cells. And right now, when you see the blood sugar going up, it's a sign that these little mitochondria and all your cells are suffering. So then how do you take stock of your life and think about all the levers that impact mitochondrial health and essentially chip away at making them better, free up that part of the cell to do its best work. And what you'll find is that as you improve those factors, blood sugar typically comes down. And the reason for that is because the cells, again,

are able to process more of that glucose and we become more metabolically functional and blood sugar improves. So that's kind of how I think about it. We talk a lot about insulin resistance and all these different concepts, but I hope that kind of creates a little clarity around. It's a problem within the cell

from an overburdened damaged metabolic mitochondrial system that ultimately creates a protective response in the cell to block blood sugar from going in. And that's why blood sugar rises. And that's why it's important to track. And one of the best signs that you are metabolically functional is that your blood sugar is in a low and healthy range at baseline. And when your blood sugar goes up after a meal, it comes back down quite quickly because it's a clear sign that your cells are able to take up that glucose out of the bloodstream, process it, use it.

Another sign of metabolic functionality, a general gestalt, is that you're at a healthy weight because as the mitochondria become dysfunctional and can't process all that glucose, the glucose has to go somewhere. So it goes into the bloodstream and rises, but it also gets converted to fat and gets basically stored as triglycerides that are either in the bloodstream or in fat cells. So high triglycerides, excess fat in the body, high blood sugar. These are some of the key signals that there is a problem ad abolically going on. And many of us only realize what our levels are when we do our yearly, for most of us,

physicals and get our blood work. However, you co-founded a company called Levels to focus on leveraging modern technology to enhance individual health. Can you talk a little bit about Levels and what you're trying to do? Sure. So, Levels is a health technology company that is focused on really helping people understand their metabolic health and take control of it and become empowered to really see how food and lifestyle factors

are affecting their metabolism in real time so we can make better choices. The way we do this is by pairing a technology that has existed actually for probably over 10 years called continuous glucose monitoring. So it's a small wearable. It looks like a quarter size that you put on the back of your arm. And it actually has a little 4-millimeter tiny little probe that goes under the skin. It's painless, but that is actually sampling your glucose 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and sending that information to your smartphone. So you're going to see a movie in real time of what's going on with your blood sugar. And the reason that's valuable is for a few reasons. One is that you can

see what is your baseline? Are you in a low and healthy range? Or are things... Have they crept up? So you can get a sense of your general baseline. But also you can see exactly how food and the different things that you're eating, your favorite meals, what you're eating on a regular basis, how they're impacting your blood sugar levels. So if you have a really big spike after breakfast where your blood sugar kind of goes way up, that's a sign that food that you're eating is probably putting a lot of kind of burden on your body. You have to process all that. So a very big spike, just one, not a huge problem. Your body will figure it out. But if you're doing that several times a day for every meal and snacks, which I would say is what's happening for most Americans because we're eating so much refined grains and refined sugars, all of which are going to turn into

a glucose in the blood. If you're doing that day in and day out, really big spikes that you can see on your blood sugar monitor, that is a sign that you are putting a lot of that sort of strain on the body. Excess substrates to process and over time that will probably become a problem for your cells and your mitochondria. So what you can then do with that information is say, Oh my gosh, I didn't realize the snack that I have every day is causing this huge spike. Maybe I will change that snack. Maybe I will swap it for a

healthier option. Maybe I will lower the portion. Maybe I'll take a brisk walk after I eat it to soak up some of that glucose into the muscles and use it. Maybe I will pair that food with more fiber and more protein to slow the spike. There's lots of different things you can do to create a healthier situation. But it's very hard to do that without the awareness of what's actually happening. And in a system now where there's so much health washing on all our food, everything has eight taglines about how healthy it is. Gluten-free, low-fat, organic, no added sugar, no... All these are... It's really hard to know, I think, what is actually healthy. And so just by being able to see with a monitor what's going on

in your own body, it can be really empowering and helpful. So the goal really is with this monitor on that you would figure out what's spiking you, how to modulate those spikes to keep them more like low rolling hills, as opposed to big spikes and valleys. The idea is that over time to create a metabolically most healthy environment in your body. And another really, and so there's the benefit towards long-term metabolic health, but another thing that we hear a lot is that

it helps people on a day-to-day level, even in their right now in their current lives. Even if you don't have diabetes, even if you don't have a chronic disease, there is a sensation about big spikes and big crashes lives, even if you don't have diabetes, even if you don't have a chronic disease. There is a sensation about big spikes and big crashes that doesn't feel good. Often when people have a large glucose spike and then they will crash afterward, that post meal slump that people feel, that post spike crash is called reactive hypoglycemia, where

your body essentially overcompensates for a huge glucose load by releasing a ton of insulin, overcompensating, and there's a dip after the meal. And that's often when people feel tired, anxious, brain fog. Often when they have more cravings, there was actually a really interesting paper in Nature Metabolism two years ago that showed that the extent of crashes after a big spike actually predicts our cravings for higher carbohydrate foods throughout the day. So the key point is that by keeping your blood sugar a bit more stable throughout the day, there's not only long-term benefits over time, but it actually can make you feel better and higher performance and more stable just

day to day. Well, thank you, Casey, for sharing that. And for those of you who are listening, we are also on YouTube at our two channels, John R. Miles and PassionStruckLibs. And I have this great box here from Levels that I got, thanks to Casey. And in here, this is a device that goes on your stomach, not your arm. You can put it on either. Most people like to put it on the back of their arm. Holding this applicator here, can you explain what this is? And then I have this other piece here. Yeah. And how they go together.

Yeah. So the larger device that you're holding is the applicator. And inside of that is actually, yeah, that one is this continuous glucose monitor in a hub, and then it's a spring loaded device. So you would put that up on the back of your arm and then you'd press down on the button and it would, with a spring loaded device, push it onto your arm. What will happen is that there is actually a small needle, very small needle in that applicator that's going to push the glucose filament into the arm and then retract immediately. So no needle stays in your arm, really just this four or five millimeter little dental floss stays on the skin.

And then the sensor, which is about the size of a quarter, is adhered to the skin just with an adhesive. So kind of like a bandaid. So you'll end up with a four millimeter small probe under the skin that basically gets inserted, the sticker against your arm. And then in the other small box that you held up is what's called a transmitter and that actually gets snapped on top. You just push it on. And that is what sends the Bluetooth signal to your phone and transmits the glucose signal to your phone.

And then this here is this what goes over- That goes over the whole thing. And that basically just makes it more waterproof. It's called a performance cover. And so that when you shower or you sauna or go on the cold plunge or whatever, workout, it stays on. That sensor will stay on your arm for 10 days.

And every 10 minutes or so, send a glucose data point to your smartphone. And then after 10 days, the sensor will expire, it will no longer send the information to your phone. And then you actually just pull the whole thing off, the performance cover, the sensor itself, you keep the transmitter, that one that came in the little teeny box, because that actually lasts for 90 days and you snap it on each time you have a new sensor. So after 10 days, you'll have another applicator that you'll put on the back of your arm, stick it on, put the transmitter on, and you can keep doing it as long

as you want. So I think in the box that you got, there's three applicators, which means three 10 day sensors. So that'll last you 30 days. So then you have an app on your phone, which is the levels app, which will interpret the data and help you understand which aspects of your meals were probably causing the spike, alternatives, shopping lists, recipes, tips about how to stabilize a spike through exercise, walking, etc. So a whole comprehensive experience for keeping blood sugar more stable. Okay.

And Casey, I just had a couple questions related to this. In your experience, how does the mind-body connection become more apparent with the data-backed insights from CGMs? Certainly the biggest way is that people will find that if they are stressed during the day psychologically, they will often see a glucose spike on their monitor. And that is

often a really powerful breakthrough moment for people. We will hear about it often when people go on a podcast, when they're giving a talk in front of their work colleague, often if they're having an argument with a loved one or are in a heated driving situation, anything like we often hear things like this, that if people are feeling that sort of triggered sense of stress, it will show up as a glucose spike on their glucose monitor, even if they haven't eaten any food. And this is actually a really fascinating physiology that I'll describe very briefly, which is that when we release stress hormones into the bloodstream, like cortisol and catecholamines. It actually tells the liver, which the liver actually stores a small amount of glucose for emergency situations. If you need to run from a

lion and you need glucose for your muscles or your brain, the liver stores a very small amount for moments like that and stress hormones cause the release of it and store it in chains called glycogen, which are glucose chains. So under times of stress, your liver will literally dump glucose into the bloodstream and that will look like a glucose rise on your blood sugar monitor. And in a situation historically, where we actually did need to run from a threat and we did need to use our muscles, that could have been really useful. But now all the psychological stressors I just described, we're usually sitting in a chair when they are happening. It's not like we need to run from the stressful email that we got or the podcast that we're

on. And so what happens is you end up getting this dump of glucose into your bloodstream with nowhere to go because your muscles aren't using it. And so that's a really maladaptive, it's basically a process in the body that was meant to be helpful, but in our modern society is working against us. And so I think as a mindfulness tool, something really helpful is to start identifying

when you have these stress-related spikes and tap into your toolbox of mindfulness techniques. This might be the time to take a few deep diaphragmatic breaths or do some visualizations or even repeat a mantra to yourself that you are safe. Create a different condition in the body that counteracts some of that stress hormone release and even maybe do it in a proactive way before a situation in which you know it's going to be stressful. That's one of the ways that the glucose monitor can act as a mindfulness technique.

Okay. And then specific to exercise, I have a two-part question. How can wearing the glucose monitor help people to understand their response to exercise? And then the second part of that would be what type of exercise have you found proves the most effective in combating or combating elevated levels of glucose? Yeah. Well, if you look at the literature, basically any movement of the body is going to be positive for metabolic health. And that can include very gentle stuff like walking, zone two exercise, which is that more low grade cardio activity, which is really helpful low-grade cardioactivity, which is really helpful for mitochondrial biogenesis. Literally printing more mitochondria and more mitochondria means more glucose processing. So that's good.

High intensity interval training is really good at improving insulin sensitivity. So that's like really intense spurts. And then power like weightlifting resistance training because that's going to build actually like muscle hypertrophy and build more muscle cells that have more mitochondria and become a big giant glucose sponge in your body, both at baseline, but also when you work out. So the average American is not getting even remotely enough movement throughout the day. So I would just say big picture, whichever of those feel good to you, do it, just do more of it. It's the exercise, one of the best things we can do for our metabolic health. If you can do a little bit of all of that, that's also great. But basically all types of exercise are positive.

To zoom in a little bit more specifically, one of the things we've seen that is profound is that walking or doing light cardio after a meal can greatly reduce the glucose spike. And that's been shown in many studies. We've also shown it in our levels population. So if there's one sort of simple habit that I think can really be so transformative for metabolic health, it's just commit to taking a walk around the block yourself with your family, with whoever after a meal. It could be right after the meal. It could be 15 minutes after a meal. Just use those muscles after you eat because it will just pull the glucose out of the bloodstream and use it to fuel the muscles. And so that's fantastic.

In our levels data set, we actually saw that when people take a short walk after a meal, they tend to have almost 30% lower glucose peak compared to eating the same meal without a walk. So over the course of a lifetime, that's a lot. That's a lot of glucose, lesser glucose spike. One other thing I'll say, and I have to shout out my good friend, Dr. Gabrielle Lyon, who just came out with the amazing book, Forever Strong, which is the Tour de Force. I know she's been on your podcast and it's being released, I think tomorrow. But that book, I can't recommend highly enough, especially for women, because we are living in a culture where resistance training has really not been emphasized for

women. And I really think of muscle as this metabolic armor on the body. It's a glucose sink. It releases hormones that are good for metabolic health, myokines. It is on so many levels critical for metabolic health. And because women haven't traditionally been encouraged to lift weight and our muscle mass naturally starts declining after age 35, we're really missing out on this incredible tool in our body to basically regulate our mitochondrial function and metabolic health. So for any woman listening, who's not actively lifting heavy weights several times a week, start now. Start today. Go to a gym, find a trainer, go on YouTube, find a program online, especially after menopause when our metabolic health takes a huge hit because our estrogen declines, we have to be actively building muscle. And I talk to a dozen levels members

a day, a week, and I ask every woman if there is a sense training and the vast majority say no, and they're not getting the health results they want. They're gaining weight over time, their blood sugar is creeping up. And so that is as close to a magic bullet as we can get. So I would just, that's my public service announcement of the day for both men and women, but especially women. Okay. And then I have two final questions for you, Casey. What do you see as the future of metabolic health and how do you envision it shaping healthcare and wellness? Great question. So I think that there is definitely a metabolic tidal wave happening right now. It's happening outside the mainstream system, I would say, but it's Peter Tia, it's Dom

D'Agostino, Ben Bickman, Jason Fung, Mark Hyman, Sarah Gottfried, Kara Fitzgerald, Terry Walls, David Perlmutter. These amazing thinkers who are writing books, doing podcasts, writing blog posts, have newsletters, they're on social, they're talking about metabolic health. And so I think that this is the start of something really big. As more people become aware of it, as people start asking their doctors for more metabolic testing, the doctors start hearing it more and more, and then they're going to become a little bit more aware. I think the doctors, unfortunately, are going to be kind of like the last to change because

our healthcare system is so not focused on a root cause approach that it can seem a little bit like odd and threatening to the healthcare system. But I think it's going to be a bottoms up revolution. That's what I'm seeing happen. And I think ultimately, we're going to get to a point with our healthcare system where people are so sick and the costs are so high that we're going to have to change. We're going to have to look for different solutions. And I think the obvious answer at that moment, at that crucible moment, which honestly, we're

really in right now is going to be focusing on metabolic health and the dietary and lifestyle factors that we know can rapidly improve metabolic health and the dietary and lifestyle factors that we know can rapidly improve metabolic health. It's very exciting to see a lot of entrepreneurial work in the space as well that's focused on this. You've got glucose monitoring, you've got lumen which tests metabolic markers in the breath, you've got biosense which is a breath-ketone monitor, you've got Keto-Mojo which people can test their glucose and their ketones with finger prick. You've got all these different companies popping up to empower people, again, outside the healthcare system, because there's not a lot of appetite for it right now

in the system. But I think what's going to happen is this really amazing surround sound that ultimately causes things to shift. I think it's exciting and I think there's a lot of hope for sure. Okay. And then lastly, Casey, what are some key takeaways or actionable tips that you'd like the Passion Strike listeners to remember when it comes to metabolic health and well-being? One is that when you're at the grocery store, if you're buying packaged food, I mean, we want to focus on whole whole real food as much as humanly possible.

And I think a key point I would tell people is a lot of people are struggle with their love of food and they feel like it's really hard to eat healthy and it almost feels impossible to maintain a diet or this and that. But the biggest takeaway, I would say, is to eat as much real unprocessed food as you possibly can. So before eliminating anything, just focus on getting as much real, whole unprocessed food you can as possible. So that basically means fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, beans, legumes, meat, chicken, eggs, fish, spices, like unprocessed food, because the body is brilliant. And it has the most exquisite self-regulatory hunger mechanisms where basically, if you give it real unprocessed foods, it will self-regulate hunger. It's the processed foods that have the refined grains, the refined sugars, the refined industrial seed oils, which make up now 68% of American calories come from ultra processed foods,

which are largely based on refined ultra processed grains, refined sugars and refined seed oils. It's those ingredients and so many of the additives that totally co-opt our satiety signals and basically make us feel endlessly hungry. And so the biggest life hack, and I'm someone who used to be 215 pounds, lost that weight through basically just focusing on putting as much real food in as I could. Because when you do that, the body will self-regulate hunger. So that's just like one kind of thing that I would recommend and is not focused on deprivation. It's focused on putting the good stuff in.

I would say when you're looking at packaged foods, try and avoid the refined, any refined grains, refined sugars, added sugars and seed oils. If you do that, if you limit those from packaged foods you're buying, you're gonna end up with healthier stuff in your kitchen. An example of a processed food, for instance, that's quite healthy would be like flax crackers, flackers. They're in a bag, they're made in a factory, 100% organic seeds and spices. And so you can still buy packaged convenient food. Just try and have anything that avoids, try and get stuff that avoids added sugars, refined grains, that's like flowers and those refined industrial seed oils, soybean, canola, vegetable oil, safflower, etc. And then I'll

give one more, which is just start incorporating walks after meals and start lifting heavy weights. Those two things will make you feel better mentally, physically, help regulate blood sugar and are free. Would recommend anyone listening to start bringing those into their lives. Okay. And Casey, if someone wants to learn more about you, what's the best place for them to go to do? Most of my content is actually on the levels channel. So at levels on Instagram and Twitter and then levelshealth.com. We have an incredible blog and we're top metabolic

health thought leaders are writing blog posts, guest posts. We have lots of shopping lists, recipes. That's levelshealth.com slash blog and our newsletter also puts a lot of that out. And then I'm at Dr. Casey's Kitchen on Instagram and Twitter. And then I'm coming out with a book in May of next year, May 14th of next year, called Good Energy, which is all about how to improve and understand metabolic health. So those are the best ways to find me and find our work at levels. Congratulations on your book launch. I have one coming out in February myself. I know how exciting a time that is. Yes, Passionstruck. I can't wait to read it. Well, Casey, thank you so much for saying that

and so much for coming on the show. It was such a joy to have you. Thank you. I thoroughly enjoyed that interview with Dr. Casey Means. And I wanted to thank Casey and my buddy, Dom D'Agostino, for the honor and privilege of having her appear on today's show. Links to all things Casey

will be in the show notes at passionstruck.com. Please use our website links to purchase any of the books from the guests that we feature here on the show. All proceeds go to supporting the show. Advertiser deals and discount codes are in one convenient place at passionstruck.com slash deals. Please consider supporting those who support the show. Videos are on YouTube at both John R. Miles and our clips channel at Passion Struck Clips. Please check it out and subscribe. I'm on all the social platforms at John R. Miles and our clips channel at Passion Struck Clips. Please check it out and subscribe. I'm on all the social platforms at John R. Miles, and you can also sign up for our weekly newsletter, which now goes out to over 30,000 consumers, which now goes out to over 30,000 Passion Struck enthusiasts who tune in every single week as we offer

them advice and give them challenges to help them on their journey to becoming Passion Struck. You can sign up at passionstruck.com. You're about to hear a preview for an amazing podcast interview that I did with Sharon Salzberg, a pioneer in bringing meditation and mindfulness to the Western world, a New York Times bestselling author and founder of one of America's first meditation centers. Sharon shares her wisdom on cultivating resilience, compassion, and the road to true happiness. Tune in to discover how Sharon's teachings can transform your life, offering practical tools for dealing with life's challenges, as well as enhancing your emotional well-being.

I think we actually do make change moment by moment. And sometimes when we look at the bigger problem, it's too much. You just think, I can't deal, that's overwhelming. But this moment, we can respond in a certain way. And then we forget, we lapse, we fall down moment we can respond in a certain way and then we forget, we lapse, we fall down, we can pick ourselves up and then this moment we can be different. And that's how I think genuine change actually happens. It's like taking that aspiration to be different, perhaps to be more loving in every encounter, for example. And then we've just lost

our temper or something has happened. Do we have some capacity to begin again and to in effect have resilience and say, okay, that was bad, now is now. Because that's the way progress I think actually happens. It's not through lamenting for a year and a half, oh, I blew it, I had a really bad issue. When we see there was a problem, and we're not denying that, but self-castigation and just endless self-laceration, it's not going to do anything. And so learning that ability to begin again, which is intrinsic to meditation practice, I think is really important. And also it's looking ahead at the issue, whatever it might be, and realizing, okay, this, in this

moment, this is what I can try to do. Or in this moment, if I listen, or in this moment, if I try to be more balanced, that's how it actually happens. The fee for this show is that you share it with family or friends when you find something useful or interesting. If you know someone who's looking for advice on longevity, how to improve overall health, then definitely share this with friends

who could use Dr. Casey Means' message. The greatest compliment that you can give us is to share the show with those that you love and care about. In the meantime, do your best to apply what you hear on the show so that you can live what you listen. Until next time, go out there and become Ash and Scruff.