The Skinny Confidential Him & Her Podcast - Calley Means - How Big Pharma & Big Food Is Harming Us & How To Take Control Of Your Health & Well Being Today

Episode Date: July 22, 2024

#729: Today we’re sitting down with Calley Means, a former lobbyist turned advocate and NY Times best selling author. Calley is the founder of TrueMed, a company that enables tax-free spending on food and exercise. We discuss his evolution of careers from a food and pharma consultant, to now exposing practices those companies use to weaponize the public’s trust surrounding nutrition. We also discuss how you need to be your own advocate and do your own in depth research to guard your personal health and the health of your loved ones.    To connect with Calley Means click HERE   To connect with Lauryn Bosstick click HERE To connect with Michael Bosstick click HERE Read More on The Skinny Confidential HERE To Watch the Show click HERE For Detailed Show Notes visit TSCPODCAST.COM To Call the Him & Her Hotline call: 1-833-SKINNYS (754-6697) This episode is brought to you by The Skinny Confidential Head to the HIM & HER Show ShopMy page HERE to find all of Michael and Lauryn’s favorite products mentioned on their latest episodes.   This episode is brought to you by Lipton Green tea is a great ally for wellness and a simple way to up your everyday healthy habits. Try new Lipton Green Tea!   This episode is brought to you by Branch Basics The Branch Basics Premium Starter Kit will provide you with everything you need to replace all of your toxic cleaning products in your home. It’s really a no-brainer. Go to branchbasics.com and use code SKINNY for 15% off their starter kit and free shipping.   This episode is brought to you by Betterhelp BetterHelp is online therapy that offers video, phone, and even live chat-only therapy sessions. So you don’t have to see anyone on camera if you don’t want to. It's much more affordable than in-person therapy & you can be matched with a therapist in under 48 hours. Our listeners get 10% off their first month at betterhelp.com/skinny.   This episode is brought to you by Vegamour Give your hair the power of the little pink bottle. Visit vegamour.com/SKINNY and use code SKINNY at checkout to receive 20% off your first order.   This episode is brought to you by Ritual Start a daily ritual that you can feel good about. Visit ritual.com/SKINNY to receive 25% off your first month of Ritual.     Produced by Dear Media

The following podcast is a Dear Media production. She's a lifestyle blogger extraordinaire. Fantastic. And he's a serial entrepreneur. A very smart cookie. And now Lauren Everts and Michael Bostic are bringing you along for the ride. Get ready for some major realness. Welcome to The Skinny Confidential, him and her.

Here's my theory of change. We've got to take matters into our own hands. We've got to understand the basics. There's nothing more revolutionary, quite frankly, there's nothing more subversive to our existing systems than to thrive and be healthy. And that is really auditing what you're feeding your kids. And I just, those three ingredients and just cutting ultra processed food. I just can't stress this enough. Ultra processed food is a science experiment. Hello, everybody. Welcome back to the Skinny Confidential Him and Her Show. Today, we are sitting down with Callie Means, a New York Times bestselling author and the founder of TrueMed, a company that enables tax-free spending on food and exercise. Today, we discuss his evolution of careers from a food and

pharma consultant and lobbyist to now exposing practices those companies use to weaponize the public's trust surrounding nutrition. We also discuss how we can break systematic issues that block us from healthy lifestyle by being more curious and asking more questions, educating and learning from experts, how our food is littered with ingredients that are harmful, how to be your own advocate for better access to health, food, exercise, and how to remove ultra processed foods from our diets. This episode is an eye-opening episode, just teaching us how to be more aware of our surroundings, what we eat, what we think about ingesting, and just how we think about living our day-to-day lives for a better, healthier version of ourselves.

With that, Callie Means, welcome to the Skinny Confidential Him and Her Show. This is the Skinny Confidential, him and her show. This is the Skinny Confidential, him and her. Why is America sicker than ever? So I think there's a lie that's being propagated. My sister, the first day of Stanford Medical School, she was told that the American patient wants to be sick, that they want to eat their crappy food, that they want to be sedentary. This is like indoctrinated into doctors that it's kind of a foregone conclusion that we're all going to be depressed and sick and infertile and overweight. And I think we've really, a lot of us have believed that, that Americans kind of want

to be unhealthy, that we're lazy. And I think the key issue in the country right now is that's just not true. And a key stat I look at is I think we kind of wave our hands and say, this is the case all over the world. The childhood obesity rate in Japan is 3%. Here, 50% of US teens are overweight or obese. 25% of kids are obese. There's an order of magnitude difference. In Europe, life expectancy is six, seven years more than the United States. That's a lot when we're talking about 75 as the age. So there's something uniquely happening to Americans. And I don't think it's that we're lazier. I don't think it's that we want to be more depressed. I don't think it's that we want to be more sick. What I saw working for the food

and the pharma industries early in my career, it was just very simple. It's how do we rig institutions of trust to accomplish the interests of those two industries? And let's not get conspiratorial. Let's just be very specific. The food industry wants our food to be addictive and cheap. And the healthcare industry, just as a statement of economic fact, they want people to be sicker for longer periods of time. The sad economic reality that we need to come to grips with in this country is there's nothing more profitable than a sick child. A sick child with chronic disease, right? Imagine this, right? 33% of young adults have prediabetes. That's unthinkable a generation ago. for the system because that child is not told to eat healthier by the medical system. The standard of care from the American Diabetes Association, which I help fund working for the pharma industry, it's fully funded by pharma, you can actually eat whatever you

want as long as you take your diabetes medications, your metformin. That child is prescribed metformin and told, this is your cure. And they continue to have bad habits. They continue to eat poison. And they get sicker. And they get more comorbidities. They inevitably get high cholesterol. They inevitably are infertile. They continue to eat poison. And they get sicker and they get more comorbidities. They inevitably get high cholesterol. They inevitably are infertile.

They inevitably have mental health issues. You're four times more likely to be depressed or suicidal if you're pre-diabetic. They rack up these additional comorbidities, which we treat with lifetime drugs, but they don't die right away. They just suffer. And getting kids on that treadmill of treatment and not really a path of curiosity about why this metabolic dysfunction, these things are all happening all at once. You know, the last thing I'd say is we're at a really crucial moment now in 2024.

This year, among children, cancer rates, diabetes rates, fatty liver disease rates, autoimmune conditions, autism, Literally the top 10 chronic diseases are at all-time highs this year among kids. Everything's going up all at once. And I'm a personal responsibility guy. I grew up and was an advocate on conservative causes. This is not a personal responsibility issue. Kids are not epidemically sick out of personal choice by the kids or their parents. There is something happening uniquely in America from our system. And unpacking that, I think, is key to our economy. It's key to our spiritual well-being in this country.

We are being poisoned and then we're being drugged for profit. But here's a question that's like chicken and egg. As a parent, don't you think, and you could prove me wrong, please, that there has to be some accountability of the parent to be looking what they're feeding their child. We know that there's poison out there. We know there's red 40 and blue this and blue that. There has to be. Not everybody knows.

Not everybody's educated. Not everybody's plugged in. That's the problem. And these companies spend a lot of money and a lot of effort to make sure people stay uninformed. But then there has to be accountability that we have to get educated. Of course, accountability is important. People, your podcasts, Joe Rogan, on down the list. When Americans aren't censored of what they can listen to from the media, the mainstream media, which is 50% funded by pharma.

When people actually gravitate to what they're interested in, they're buying books on metabolic health. They're listening to podcasts about feeling healthy. This issue of us not feeling right and our kids being sick is the biggest issue in the country. And people, when left to their own devices, are gravitating to that. And absolutely, a bottoms-up revolution is essential. People listening to your podcast, people reading these books, people wearing bio-wearables, there's two elements there. And I want to be really clear. We are not going to survive as a country when our largest and fastest growing industry, the healthcare industry, is incentivized for us to be sick. We absolutely have to take some matters into our own hands,

and there are a lot of people changing their lives, but we are not going to serve the lower income and the neediest people among us when the largest industry in the country profits from their demise, essentially. We have to not wash our hands of the fact that we have these top-down incentives. Again, I just can't express this clearly enough. It's just a statement of economic fact, 95% of healthcare dollars, $4.5 trillion of spending, again, growing faster than any other industry, is interventions on people that are already sick, not curing, but managing. So what you're saying is it's hard to take accountability when you're going up against such a huge beast.

Listen, there was an article that I got, I didn't see it until Lauren shared with me today, from the Wall Street Journal of all places. Right. And I read the Wall Street Journal and I've always, and I've liked that. I think there's some smart people that write for the journal and I think there's great opinion call.

And I've read it, you know, but I read everything now skeptically. But the whole article was all about raw milk and influencers. And I put it on a story and Lauren's in there and they're talking about how, but what was interesting to me is it was a fear mongering article. And what is so funny to me is like for years, and we had Gwyneth Paltrow on the show, I'm like for years, people just called raw milk, milk, right? Like there's passion. There's all these different techniques I would encourage. Like, and I don't mean to say this arrogantly for people that are just listening. There's also a YouTube version. If you were to look at me specifically, I don't

necessarily, and I'm not saying this to be arrogant. I'm just being honest. I don't fit the profile of an unhealthy person. Like I take care of myself. I'm in shape and I drink these kinds of things. But I read these articles and I see people being fear monger to, and being told how bad these things are. While at the same time, these same agencies will put all of these chemicals we're talking about as safe. They will talk about experimental medicines that are not, they will, they will put medications out there that we know keep people sick.

And then they'll do things like write articles like that, that I think it's, it, it makes people listen, drink raw milk or don't, I don't care, think it makes people, listen, drink raw milk or don't, I don't care. But it makes people wonder like, well, if that is the really unhealthy thing that people shouldn't be doing that even people like myself that I would say are healthy are doing. That we've been doing for thousands of years. Promote things that we know are terrible for you. How do you trust an organization then? And now I'll let you go. No, no, totally. No, it's such a good point. So let's unpack this. So as you're exactly right,

I actually recently spoke to someone who helps legally get people raw milk and they got a cease and desist order from the USDA. The USDA, which just last week questioned whether ultra-processed food causes obesity. They put a stamp from the lead nutrition group in the country where 95% of the members, 19 out of 20, are paid for by the food or pharma industry. There's zero conflicts of interest of the people making our nutrition guidelines. They are saying soda's okay. They're saying ultra-processed food isn't linked to obesity, and they are bringing the hammer down on raw milk. Let me unpack this. I don't even care about the milk. What I care about is what you were talking about,

which is take the milk out of it. You can't trust an organization like that, that will talk about raw milk, which people have been drinking for thousands of years, and then talk about these things that people haven't had for thousands of years that are clearly making people sick. I think what you guys are hitting on is this is just a complicated issue and it sounds so conspiratorial. It's almost hard. And it's so evil almost that we're actually being poisoned and then drugged for profit. It's hard to get our heads around. Let me give you another specific example of the playbook I saw working for the food and the pharma industries, the two biggest spenders in DC after working in politics, went to work

for them. A great example is Ozempic. So let's look at what's happening. As I mentioned, 50% of young adults are overweight or obese. That's a moral standard in our country. Obviously that's because of our ultra processed food. It's because of simple, as we talk about in the book, I mean, we all know this. It's not very complicated why this is happening. It's a simple list of metabolic habits, our environmental toxins, our food, our sedentary lifestyle, which we incentivize. 77% of young adults aren't eligible

to join the military right now because they're so sedentary. So what happens? So you have this issue. And parents, parents are trying to make the right decision. They're trying to make the informed decision. Ozempic, Novo Nordics, they actually paid the American Academy of Pediatrics, which is the trusted organization for pediatric guidance, sets the standard of care. And the American Academy of Pediatrics has given guidance that if you're 12 years and up, Ozempic should be the first line defense for if you're overweight or obese. It says explicitly, not after dietary interventions fail. It says obesity is a scorch in the country. It's a disease. It's genetic. I'm not even kidding. And you should, if you're a parent and your child is overweight, immediate lifetime injections of Ozempic. That's funded, so Zovonordix, a Danish company, one of the top 10 funders of politicians themselves,

one of the top 10 funders of medical research, chief funder of the American Academy of Pediatrics, and they've made 420,000 individual payments, bribes, consulting payments to doctors themselves. This is all recorded. One of those doctors, Fatima Cody Stanford, the top obesity doctor at Harvard, could you have a better credential? Harvard obesity doctor goes on 60 Minutes recently. She says, quote, this is a genetic condition. And she said, quote, throw diet and lifestyle out the window. This is not about what you're eating. It's not about moving. It's about genetics. And we need Ozempic as a first-line defense. And it's actually a civil rights issue because there's such disparities with lower income folks to get government funding

from Ozempic. Here's where it all ties together with that parent. That parent, who is she or he to go against Harvard Medical School, to go against the American Academy of Pediatrics? We are on the verge. I want every parent to know this. And I think this is a microcosm. When your child is sitting there and has the high cholesterol or has the high blood sugar, or now is a little bit overweight or is a little bit sad, the medical system is lunging to get those chronic disease treatments. And I'm not fully anti-drug, but that's just not right. That's just not right. And the way it connects to our system and really, I think, will be the downfall of our country is the lobbying is all about government payment.

So we're on the verge of Medicare and Medicaid. That's a program for lower income people. Medicaid for a lower income American is on the verge of paying $1,800 of taxpayer money per month, per month, $1,800 per month of taxpayer money for any lower income person who's overweight. We're going to pay that as taxpayers. The reason this company is so valuable is because they are expecting US taxpayers to be paying, if you add it up, over a trillion dollars for this drug. That's why I'm so concerned, quite frankly, particularly about the neediest population, because Medicare,

I can't stress this enough, the actual lower income health insurance from the government, that's the piggy bank for the largest industry. The government, the US government spends more on diabetes and associated mitochondrial disorders than the entire defense budget. I am not by trade a conspiracy person. I'm just not. I never have been. I'm skeptical. I read a lot of things. I want to get as much information as possible. It's interesting because we have been labeled a lot of things, talking to people like yourself or people that are maybe questioning some of the greater narratives. But I think people are waking up to the fact that you mentioned someone like a Joe Rogan, which whether you agree or disagree with him, he's what, almost a 50 something, maybe almost a little mid fifties year old man that's in phenomenal shape, that has his life in order, that's in a good marriage, all these things. And you see him like, okay, well,

maybe some of the things that he's eating and doing, I don't care about his ideas. I'm just saying about some of the things he's doing, his workouts, his diet, maybe working. Or God forbid, you listen to this show, maybe you say, okay, like Lauren and Michael seem to have their health together. Maybe some of the things they're saying aren't so crazy. I think people are waking up to the fact that if you're some sloppy person with a credential and you're metabolically out of shape and your life is not in order, like maybe the credential doesn't matter as much as what you're actually doing in your life. I think too, maybe you can talk to us about how these high profile people are even able to have a platform because

I have a feeling you're going to say there's money in politics behind it. What kind of high profile people you say this woman from Harvard is on 60 minutes. Is she getting paid? Does she want fame? How does she get that platform to go say that a 12 year old's on Ozempic because you can't get a tattoo until you're 18 and you can't drink until you're 21, but you can that a 12 year old's on Ozempic because you can't get a tattoo until you're 18 and you can't drink until you're 21, but you can give a 12 year old Ozempic and obesity they're saying is now genetic. How does she get a microphone to speak? What is behind it? Yeah. So kind of tying what both of you guys said together, what my sister and I are trying to do is we were on this credentialist path, right? We both went to Stanford. I did

economics. She did pre-med. She was top of her class, Stanford Med School, top of surgical residency. I went into politics. I was very proud then to be a lobbyist and a consultant for the food and pharma industry who I thought- Which we got to circle back to that. But I thought was like, so I was brainwashed. My sister was brainwashed. We spent most of our careers kind of trying to prop up and evangelize these industries, and we really believed it. What Casey realized and what I realized, we kind of put together, is that people sitting around conference rooms for these industries understand that that credentialism really matters. There's nothing more powerful than that report from Stanford Med School or the report from the NIH.

And I'm not a conspiracy theorist ever. I just try to go to the raw economic incentives. My first job working for the pharma industry was the opioids. It was 2010, 2011. How does one get into that space and become interested in the first place? You were going through, you're about to graduate. Oh, I grew up in Washington DC. I didn't care about food or pharma. This is how it works. This is how people get into it. I was passionate about U.S. competitiveness politics. I grew up in D.C., interned at the White House, the Heritage Foundation. I was a good young conservative, went to Stanford, was the annoying conservative in class there. It was all about defending pharma,

defending American industry. Went on campaigns. When campaigns are over, if you're in anywhere tangential to politics, you work for the biggest spenders in DC, you inevitably consult. So I was working with people across the aisle, working for the pharma industry and the healthcare industry, which spends more than any other industry times three. They're the lifeblood. There's three pharma consultants and lobbyists for every single member of Congress. So you just inevitably are working for them, I learned. And then you're inevitably working for the second spender, which is the food industry. The first kind of topic on my desk was opioids. So just getting to your point, working for these companies, it's like, okay, they're questioning opioids. What do we do? We need to pay off high credential people. So we directly channeled money to the Dean of

Stanford Med School, Philip Pizzo, who was a pain specialist. Is this all above board? Like if people search this, you could see like this money gets funneled. Oh no, no, no. This is all, Google Dr. Philip Pizzo complex event did. This is all. So this just doesn't get as much coverage because people don't pick it up, but this is all above board. This is happening today, but this is a case of, this is happening today with obesity and many other issues, but this is just, I think it's helpful to just understand precisely how we do this. So, okay, Philip Pizzo, we funnel consulting money to him. So through these national pain associations, these different groups, we funnel hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars to him. That's very strategic. It's like, okay, let's get him money. Good. The lifeblood of his work

is research. So boom, $4 million donation to Stanford to him on research for pain. Boom. Good. The lifeblood of his work is research. So boom, $4 million donation to Stanford to him on research for pain. Boom. Good. Okay. So we did that literally. And then a month later, pushed to have him pointed to the NIH panel overseeing opioid guidelines. You can't have in this country a more credentialed person than that Dean of Stanford Med School. There's nowhere else we can go. He's completely compromised. And 15 of the 19 people he put on that NIH panel to make recommendations for the country were directly paid for, we helped organize, by opioid companies, all with incredible credentials. So I'm going to keep pausing here a little bit just to keep it so

everybody's keeping up. So this credentialed person, you guys, when you're working as a lobbyist or you're working in big pharma and you seek a person like this out that you know has the credentials that you know has the authority, that you know has the authority, you funnel money in this case to them to fund their research and basically fund their practice. And direct bribes and consulting. Okay, and consulting.

And then I guess it's like, hey, we now need you to go do this. And by the way, if you don't, what's the consequence? Great point. No, no, no quid pro quo. No quid pro quo. It creates an environment where with this pain crisis in the country, the medical system isn't asking what's the root cause of that pain.

The medical system isn't asking why rates of diabetes are skyrocketing, why rates of heart disease, why rates of cancer are skyrocketing. They're asking, it creates an environment where serious medicine is, it's a foregone conclusion that this problem is happening. How do we profit from it? How do we treat it? So the problem is here. We all know the problem is here. Nobody's going to question how it got here, but now it's just, let's get to the treatment. And this is the person now that is going to be vocal about, hey, we found the great solution. Yeah. The money makes it that nobody at Stanford Medical School, nobody, and my sister saw this and we talked about in the book, nobody is asking why people are getting sick. You would think that the upper echelons of medicine from the NIH, where my sister worked as

well in Stanford Medical School and Harvard Medical School and the FDA, they'd be asking, how do we prevent disease? This money creates a situation where serious medicine is treating and managing conditions. So the head of the Stanford Med School, the top pain doctor, is not saying what's the root cause of why pain and every other chronic issue is going up all at once. They're like, how do we treat it? And is that because the funding can go a lot further with creating these interventions or these medicines as opposed to just like, there's not a lot of money in the preventative stuff? If you have a child who's slightly overweight, right. And you have a doctor that

says you are on a treadmill of, and tells the parent too, of depression, of infertility, of fatigue, of brain fog, of a lighter, shorter lifespan, because you're inevitably with these cascading comorbidities gonna get a life-threatening disease, and shows them those statistics and actually writes down an urgent exercise, just basics, exercise and food plan. And that's what they had at the NIH is saying,

and that's what our government guidelines are saying, and that's what the USDA. If that force is brought to any child with a chronic condition, that child is going to lose the system millions of dollars. It's millions of dollars, particularly a lower income child on Medicaid, getting them on the chronic disease treadmill. And this is an important point. 95% of spending in the US is on chronic disease. There's never been a chronic disease treatment that's lowered rates of the chronic disease. So the more stans we prescribe, the more heart disease goes up. The more we spend on cancer, cancer's at its highest rate right now ever. We've never slowed any of this down.

Why? Because it's a moral hazard. Because cancer's a preventable condition. Cancer's preventable. My mom abruptly died of pancreatic cancer after being on five medications. And, starting to get a little emotional there. I mean, she's our

life force on this and she was really trying to be healthy. And she went to a primary care visit several weeks before her diagnosis. And they said she was healthy. She was on five medications for 40 years, for 40 years. She had the high cholesterol, Stan, the high blood sugar, metformin. At 70 years old though, her doctor said she was healthy because she was on less medications than the average American. This is a rite of passage. You know, 40% of people over 50 are on a statin. This is normal. Oh, it's pre-diabetes. The problems in her body that these represented, it was pill, pill, pill. Then she's taking a hike, gets stage four pancreatic cancer, feels an issue, goes in to get a scan. She's dead in three weeks. So that's the typical American patient. And the problem with these drugs, the reason all chronic diseases are going up as we prescribe more drugs is because heart disease is not a stand deficiency.

Metformin, you know, is not the cure for diabetes. They attack one biomarker. But think about the American patient. They're taking all these pills. They're being told this is the savior. And I'm not joking. The American Diabetes Association and the American Heart Association says you can keep eating whatever you want as long as you take your drugs. Where does that come from? That comes from the fact that the American Heart Association is a

fully-fledged subsidiary of pharma. It is crazy. One thing about podcasting is my voice gets a little tired. And when it gets tired, I like to reach for a cup of green tea. Today, we have Lipton's green tea. It's absolutely amazing and full of flavonoids, which are so great for your immune health. The ginger peach tea is my favorite, Lauren. Okay. Well, guess what I do? I like to have it hot for when I podcast, but then when Michael comes home from a hard day of work and he's dripping sweat from the hot Austin sun, I have a pitcher of ice green tea. So what I'll do is I'll put like four tea bags in a pitcher with a bunch of ice. I'll add a little mint from the garden and then maybe

even add some fresh ginger slices and some lemon. And it is like the best thing a man could ask for when he comes home after a hot, hard day. It sure is a hot, hard day as a podcaster. You should know that Lipton's been one of America's most loved tea brands since 1871. It's kind of iconic. What I love personally about tea is that I am a coffee drinker typically in the morning, but I always like to switch to something different in the afternoon. And green tea is such a great way to not get the jitters and support my immune system while also supporting my voice for

podcasting. If you're looking to support a wellness habit or you just want a midday pick-me-up, check out Lipton Green Tea. Try some of this delicious Lipton Green Tea today. Quick break to talk about what has quickly become one of our favorite products and one of our favorite partners on this show, and that is Branch Basics. Lauren and I have been using Branch Basics in our home now for the last two years, and it has been absolutely incredible, the changes we've experienced. We have more energy, we have less allergies, we feel better in the home, our kids are thriving. When we had the founder of Branch Basics, Allison, on this show talking through all of the harmful chemicals that are in our everyday household cleaning supplies, our minds were blown. And for me, making that change, I was

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The Skinny Confidential, him and her podcast is sponsored by BetterHelp. Lauren and I have been talking about BetterHelp for years now on this show, and that is because we believe that online therapy and therapy in general is one of the most impactful things someone can do for themselves. We have had the pleasure of sitting across the mic from so many amazing thought leaders, entrepreneurs, self-starters, and just people that seem to have it all together. One of the tools that they have in their toolbox is therapy. And like I said earlier, this could be one of the most impactful things an individual can do for themselves. Lauren and I get to talk about all of our thoughts and feelings so regularly, and I believe that this show has been therapy in itself. That being said, so many people bottle up the way they think, the way they feel. They don't share their thoughts. They don't talk to anyone. And this can be so damaging to the individual psyche, especially now in summer where comparison can be the thief of joy. It's so easy to envy other

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If a cardiologist goes against the American Heart Association guidelines, they can lose their license. They have a statutory authority legally to actually create the standard of care. 90% of their funding comes from pharma. It's where do you get the money to the credentialed organizations? What's shocking and what honestly listeners probably should research because it sounds almost hard to believe, is that there are no conflicts of interest rules. It recently came out last week that during COVID, $700 million of pharmaceutical money went secretly to NIH researchers. NIH researchers pocketed $700 million. You just hear that, you can't even believe it. What is NIH? The National Institute of Health, which is the main body that doles out research where dr what do you think like let's let it rip what do you think now that we're outside of all this shit what what's your vibe on this vaccine go right there i'm going

right there i mean like we're trying to get bad for you know i like i think when people hear like okay this agency that is supposed to protect the general public and health and then we have the pandemic who is in charge of making these decisions for people is now being funded which has now come out and it's like we're not there's not a conspiracy it's clear that this has happened like this is people should be scared and they should be questioning and they should when they read these articles that are potentially questioning alternative health pass be skeptical i don't agree that people should be scared. I don't agree with you on that.

I don't agree with you at all. I think people should be scared of the fact that they can no longer trust. The wrong word. No, no. I think that people should be an advocate for themselves and they need to be really informed. And now whatever that looks like for that individual looks like that.

I think the word scared, Michael. Yeah, but it's hard. The news is scary. But let me tell you, it's hard because you're an advocate. And a lot of us that were advocates during that time were shamed or told that we were crazy or told or even canceled. There's a lot of people that there was a real concerted effort to shut people up that had any kind of saying, hey, let me raise my hand. No, you can't say anything. Can I ask a question about something that people are saying has to go in my body?

Meaning like there's, and I think we have the, you know, the fortune now to look back and say many of those people that were raising their hand weren't wrong about a lot of things. And it's kind of like, well, crazy time, greater good. Let's just move past it and forgive everyone. It's like, no, there's people that were sounding alarm bells that should have been listened to that just weren't listened to. I'm happy with my decision. That's all I'll say. I'm happy with my decision. No shit. I love that we're getting right into it. Okay. A couple of things. First, quick, higher level message for the audience. I do agree this is a story of hope not to not to get in the middle of this uh conversation you guys agree with the woman but but but um this is

doom and gloom here the fundamental premise of our book and the fundamental kind of really mission of my life is that this credentialism has been completely used to make us think a lie, which is that it's complicated. What's happening? We're the only animals that are getting systematically obese and having chronic disease. We're born with innate sense of what's right for us. And I can't stress this enough. We're losing our way in chronic diseases,

which are the scourge of the country right now. If you have an acute issue, a complicated childbirth, or a gunshot wound or a burst appendix or infection, go to the doctor. But the point of talking about this is anyone listening who's on that path of questioning, that's good. We should be questioning the system. So let's get into your question on the vaccine. We can talk about that? We can talk about whatever we want. All right, let's do it. So here's my take. Because again, I think these

specific case studies are very useful and I can link it to the opioid issue. So it's not like evil. I think very rarely anyone behind closed doors from what I've seen is like really conspiring to poison and drug the American people. But what the money does and what this incentive that the Dean of Stanford Med School or various researchers at the NIH are making hundreds of millions of dollars from pharmaceutical royalties, their vacation house, their identity, it's all tied to the growth of the industry. People like to make money. And the fact that interventions make money, right, creates this invisible hand where serious medicine is interventions. My sister at Stanford Med School, when she asked whether the migraine patients she kept seeing could potentially need dietary interventions, she was reprimanded by the attending surgeon who said, don't be a pussy. We are not nutritionists. We are serious doctors, and serious doctors do surgeries and they prescribe pills. That is serious medicine. I cannot express to you how ingrained this idea of intervention is ingrained in the medical system,

and it is by design. We can get into the whole story of John D. Rockefeller actually creating this whole structure, but it is literally systematically by design that anything holistic, anything about diet, anything about curiosity and awe about what's happening in our body and how disease is connected is completely and utterly shunned in the traditional medical system and interventions count. That gets to the vaccine. And here are my points on that. I think the big problem where the corruption comes in, even taking that question of vaccine effectiveness aside, which we can get into as well, is it was one small part of the story.

COVID was a wake-up call. Just following the science, COVID was a wake-up call about our weakened immune systems in America. We died three times at a higher rate than the Japanese. Three times. We had by far the highest per capita death rate of any country in the world. Okay. This is a, if you were metabolically healthy, if metabolism, metabolic health, waistline, HDL, triglycerides, blood sugar, blood pressure, if you were in standard ranges, you had an almost 0% chance of dying of COVID. COVID was a foodborne illness, in my opinion. COVID was this absolute warning sign that we need to harden up in the United States and we need Dr. Fauci and the president and the secretary of defense, quite frankly, and, number one checks go to them, said, put literally said Joe Rogan's the number one enemy in the country. It said that, that was a leaked email. It said this guy,

and this is when I first started listening to Joe Rogan. I'm like, oh, interesting. And it's like talking about going out in the sun. He's talking about being a good person. He's talking about reducing cell phone use for his kids. He's talking about like working out and like his best exercise regimen and fortifying his immune system.

And I'm like, this is like a health podcast. Like what are, that is a threat. So is Dr. Fauci saying I want everyone sick and to jab everyone? I don't know. But what the environment is, is that anyone who doesn't support this intervention-based situation is anti-science. Well, let me tell you how this happens.

Lauren and I started this podcast in 2016 to talk about relationships and marketing and building a brand online. And through that, we get to meet all sorts of people and all sorts of interesting people like yourself. And then all of a sudden, out of nowhere, this whole thing happens. And all the things we've talked about, which is being healthy and looking at alternative and grounding and sleeping and all the things that we've tried to carry this audience on, we're not all of a sudden going to turn around and be like, take a fucking shot that we don't know. Like we're going to, we're going to all lean into the stuff that we know has kept us healthy for years as the first step. Listen, there's a, there's a place for medicine. There's a place for antibiotics. There's a place for all this.

But I think where a lot of us felt with microphones felt very strange like we were living in the twilight world. It was like, everyone was like, hey, click your heels and talk about this one thing that the government is pushing

and stop talking about all the stuff you've been talking about for years that has been working for you in your life, right? And people also don't realize that the people

that did speak out on the vaccine who are influencers or podcasters were getting paid huge amounts of money. And when I say huge... Travis Kelsey made like $20 million.

That's something crazy. I'm talking eight, nine figures, guys. Let me just not disillusion you here. I run Dear Media, this media company. I cannot tell you how often we get approached by pharmaceutical companies, political pundits that want to pay... Huge.

Huge dollars to talk about specific things. And listen, I don't begrudge anyone make a living how you want, but I just think people should understand like some of this stuff is not organic. Some of this stuff is being, and this is what we're talking about here. What, what I have a problem with is when those people then also spend the money in the effort to try to shut other counter voices down, which is what you've seen and what you've, you know, and that, that I think becomes problematic because to your point and why I think people should be worried at some point is, and again, there's some positives here if people recognize this, but a lot of people, a lot of people just aren't aware that this happens.

Like they're shocked that media could be funded by these, or they're shocked that food companies could pay for their shock that some of a credential could be swayed to do something that they don't necessarily believe in. You know what I mean? I'll just say this again, because I think it's so important just to understand, not the conjecture, just getting specific. I'm sitting at a desk for the food and farm industry. It's like, who can we pay to narrow the acceptable level of

debate it's like these people are thinking this way this is how you used this is how you think it's not complicated coke i helped pay the naacp to call opponents racist who are saying that we should get coke off of food stamps how does that work we spent i'll tell you this is important for people to understand it's not like this evil language it's you go into the nwcp from coke and you say you know it's really unfortunate as you know a lot of your community loves their soda and we really believe in you know choice and uh they can eat whatever they want but it's choice and you know the coke is cheap calories and and a really important thing that your community enjoys. There's even research here questioning whether it even causes obesity. Throw the fake research down, throw all that. Everyone's head nodding. They go,

we'd really love your support. I think this is a mutually beneficial issue to talk about the importance of choice. There's some really bad forces, frankly, that we think are almost racist, telling lower income moms and children what they can and can't eat. We need to push back on this. And by the way, Coke is also making a donation to, you know, we'd love to give an honorarium of a couple million dollars. They gave $3 million, reported by the New York Times at the time. And it's like, oh yes, of course, we all agree. The next hour, we're at a conservative think tank. And we say, well, gosh, there's the nanny state coming and there's there, you know, the food stamps are, you know, they're going to they're going to dictate what the American people can eat. This is just an outrage. This is an assault on choice. I use conservative messaging there. So all of these cultural issues and all these messages are banned. Of course, the nanny state is coke rigging the system to have our lower income nutrition program fund sugar water to kids. That's very addictive, which absolutely makes no sense. But they use that argument to conservatives saying that actually de rigging the system is rigging the system.

You can't even make it up. But we weaponize the arguments and all these groups across the board. Whenever you see someone called sexist in a in a coordinated way or racist, that is corporate interest. What was your epiphany to wake up to all this to completely change? Yeah, in the swamp, right? And in the boiling water, you're kind of convincing yourself that you're defending industry and you are defending against the nanny state. You're also just, I think these people are practitioners and they're like, it's kind of a fun game. But again, we'll get to that. But, but like, it's like call people racist, be the top funder for social media. So you have a direct line when you're the top funder of social media ads. We saw this with the Twitter files coming out. When the top funder

of social media ads, you've got a direct line. Oh, you know, that, that thing questioning the red coloring, uh, being bad. Here's some studies. That's misinformation. Please take that down. Direct line. That's the goal of why they're funding the tech companies and why they're funding the media. Pharmaceutical companies are not funding the media to influence you and me. They're not funding it to influence consumers. We're all going to get the drugs anyway. These goofy ads don't really have a big impact. They're funding media to dictate the media coverage itself. I can't stress that enough. That was how media funding was seen.

We saw it as a lobbying budget, not a consumer marketing budget. It was to actually dictate the media. When you are paying 50% of the bills for NBC News, you know, you have a direct line to them. That's what I was asking you earlier. So to your point, you're controlling almost in a way what the media covers or what stories they make big. So if the funding went the other way and I was like, I need you to cover any time one of these pharma companies donates huge to a credentialed institution, and that's how I want that to run on the news for 50% of the time. That tactic would go to... Do you get what I'm saying?

It's not... Yeah, it's not... Tell me if I'm falling, but it's not fully quid pro quo as much. I'm not saying quid pro quo. I'm mostly saying if that got more coverage in the sense that these companies are donating to large... And that was a big headline all the time. I think what it would do is it would create a situation where people would say, wait a

minute, should we really trust that institution? That'd be outrageous. And I think, it's the first thing we were talking about. I don't think we're going to escape this problem without the median or neediest American, kind of the situation being changed for that. And when the information sources are just so compromised, it's a real problem. These things would be, I think these issues we're talking about, I really do, I think it's becoming the biggest story in the country. I think it's resonating,

look what's happening with RFK, even though being shut down. Look at what's happening on podcasts. It's all gravitate, as you guys said, it's gravitating towards this conversation. Well, you can only call me a crazy, racist, sexist, homophobe for so long until you realize like, wait a minute, like the actions don't really map out. And like, maybe this guy is like healthy and like, like show me the exam. Like it's when you say these things and when you hear it, it's, it's interesting because somebody starts to make a

point. Like, you know, we don't know RFK person. we've met him briefly like we talked about but like he's making points and it's interesting to see how fast people man up and like and they rally against him and the names they call him when you know he's been a career politician for how long 60 years right and like you didn't hear anything like this and all of a sudden now when he's starting to say a lot of stuff and i I just find it, I think people are waking up to the fact that like, you can't trust immediately, like just because somebody has called a certain thing by big, you know, tech companies, like you have to kind of like actually start to listen a little more. I think people are more open to that now.

But tying it to your question about when I realized and tying it to what you said and kind of realized this was bad, there's this sense of like righteousness almost when you're kind of in this environment. You know, I went to Harvard Business School and, you know, everyone writes their essay about changing industries and then 90% of the class goes and works for pharma or food or traditional industries, finance, there's industries that ruin the country. They all kind of know it. They're all kind of depressed, frankly, but like you kind of tell yourself stories. And I think that's what a lot of people do when their paycheck's dependent on it. I see it very clearly. But with the RFK thing, right? Who's pulling these strings? It's pharmaceutical

lobbyists. I mean, it's very clear. I think in their head, and I felt this, it's like, we're defending American health. There's a real disdain for the American people. It's like, they're too stupid. They're literally too stupid to have a conversation about pharmaceutical products. It's like, literally any nuance whatsoever will confuse the debate. And that'd be dangerous because people aren't going to take their pharmaceutical products that are helping so much. So it's like you whip yourself into this righteousness about it. And then you are a tactician and use your allies that you've paid off to delegitimize. You're aggressively emailing the social media companies saying that there's misinformation, using studies that you've paid for to say that this is wrong. You're aggressively

playing referee with the media. You're aggressively talking to various regulatory agencies. I cannot stress this enough. The FDA is 75% funded by pharma. The FDA is not funded by pharmaceutical industries. FDA is a revolving door with pharma. The head of the FDA under Trump is now on the board of Pfizer, right? It's a revolving door. These are people are all in bed together. They're literally, the FDA is an organization like any bureaucracy that wants to grow. It grows by the growth of pharma. They're all talking to each other. So you have the FDA, you have Stanford Medical School, you have Harvard Medical School. It's all a big club. They're all talking at the cocktail parties, not about being evil, but about how dangerous RFK is.

There's huge financial incentives underpinning that. So they're colluding to just undercut him. And there's a sense of like ultimate righteousness that they think that the actual health and existence of the American people is at stake, particularly with the vaccine and any means necessary. They absolutely are increasingly beginning to think any means necessary. They've convinced themselves that independent media and the American people being able to have discussions for themselves and not have the acceptable realm of debate refereed by the elite, they've convinced themselves that's an existential threat. They think it's any means necessary. I'm not trying to puff you guys up too much, but I do think that the independent media wave, I truly mean this, I think it's one of the biggest historical shifts in world history. Like if you actually look at shifts, it shifts of information. You know, the printing press, Time Magazine said was the most important historical event ever. Ben Franklin and the Federalist Papers and kind of this robust free speech leading to the revolution was big. function and change where for the past hundred years, we've had corporate control of media and real refereeing of what we're able to debate. And there is like, I can't express this enough how

with these industries, they are aggressively trying to batter that down and criminalize and stigmatize open debate on the vaccine. It's like my big point on vaccines in general is why the hell is a parent a bad person to ask a question about what they're injecting into their child's arm, right? Even if it's the right thing to do, there is a systematic effort to shame any parent as a bad parent for asking. And then they try to have it both ways. They say it's fine, but it changes the immune system for life. 72 shots now, it used to be 20, 20 years

ago. So it's like, it's like, it's like whenever there's an issue that's too important to even ask a question about it, when it's changing your child's immune system, that's a huge red flag. And it's by the way, the shaming is not on a macro level. It's on a micro level. Like I had a pediatrician in LA. I asked a couple of questions and I was like, I was like the worst mother ever. Well, because, and here's the thing, completely unacceptable. They prey on postpartum. It's like, I can go on and on. Like they know that you feel like shit after you have a baby and they'll prey on that energy. Here's what I want to say, because I, and I think this is important to say,

we've met a lot of people doing this show, like I said, and most people are well-intentioned, good people that are like, to your point, I imagine most people going to get these credentials or going into these fields to help children are good people. They have the right intention. What's interesting is hearing you talk about how easily kind of you get swayed or convince yourself that you're on the righteous side and you kind of you lose a little bit. I think the interesting thing doing this is we have to constantly question because we have so many different walks of life on the show. But the people Lauren's referencing, I don't think they're ill-intentioned. I think they have been indoctrinated to like, this is the only way. Don't look at another way. This is the right thing to do. There's a right way and a wrong way.

And I think we get into a dangerous space because to your point, it went from 21 to 72. How did we get there? Why are all these illnesses happening? Why can't people talk about this? Well, I think this is important to say, and again, let's just break down specific examples. When you get a vaccine approved, it becomes immediately, it's the only product I can think of of its kind. It immediately is mandated essentially for every American living, and it's paid for hundreds of billions of dollars by the government. So what an incentive to get more on the schedule, just as a pure economic incentive. If it was your business. What industry do you have that the second you're convinced to get it on the schedule,

you're mandated for the American people and you get the free money from the government, hundreds of billions of dollars. So it's an amazing incentive. Then you have this ultimate dangerous thing where the second it's approved, you've got the two groups that you fund. Actually, let's go three groups. You've got the three groups that you fund playing absolute referee, vilifying anybody who questions it. So you have the media, you have politicians themselves and regulatory agencies coming down hard on anyone. The second it's approved. I mean, this is just taking any validity, any type of effectiveness aside.

That is a terrible, terrible. It's just a bad system. It's a horrible incentive. And then this refereeing of speech, you know, this is a huge deal. I just, my soapbox, the American people want to be healthy. The American people aren't idiots. Casey, you're absolutely right. Casey, my sister, all of her friends and her got in for the right reasons. The tragedy of the American medical system is it takes some of the best and brightest and brings them in. There's much easier ways to

make money. It saddles them with that. It saddles them with societal expectations. And then almost to a person, doctors realize they're in a system thatdles them with societal expectations. And then almost to a person, doctors realize they're in a system that is not making patients healthier. And that's why the suicide rate, I believe, and the burnout rate and the depression rate is highest among doctors than any other profession. We've talked about the problem.

Yes. What is the solution? And let's take us through the solution on not just a macro level. What can people do at home right now? Great question. So the book is first unpacking this issues, unpacking Casey's stories. And through My Sister's Genius, I believe this book is the best guidebook of tangible

ideas we can execute right now. And just an example of how people are clamoring for this. My sister and I are both running companies. We haven't had organized PR. It debuted number one, 66,000 copies sold. There's been a real clamoring of this book, which has felt really good. And I think book goes through is that number one, we need bio-observability. In 20 states, roughly, patients are not allowed to see their medical records. They don't technically own their medical records until very recently the FDA said, no, no, no, discourage anybody using a continuous glucose monitor. They've discouraged to this day people getting pranovo scans and scans and understanding what's happening in their body. There's a war from having us understand what's happening in our body. I got woken on this path

when I had blood tests and I was told I was fine a couple of years ago, showed them to my sister. My sister analyzed and said, I'm very metabolic dysfunctional. I went back to the doctor. The doctor said, yeah, yeah, you're very metabolic dysfunctional, but you're not quite at the level for a statin yet. You're not treatable yet. The doctor just told me that I was healthy. So what the book goes into is there are very, very clear ways your doctor's not going to tell you of analyzing the free blood tests you get and probably asking for a couple more. You recently had Dr. Mark Hyman on function health, things like this. Understanding your personalized biomarkers, probably seeing you might have an autoimmune condition or understanding in a very clear way that you are at risk for

metabolic dysfunction, what that means. That means you're probably going to die earlier, like my mom, if you don't reverse that. Real talk. It's very important, and we go through a guide with that. Then it's about the basics. I cannot stress this enough, but we go through simple, simple things. In the nutrition debate, we have the diet wars. We've got everyone confusing. I think the entire goal of nutrition research is to confuse people. There's been 50,000 nutrition studies created in the past two years. It's all propaganda for all to process food and confuse us. If you can rid three ingredients from your body, highly processed grains, added sugar, and seed oils, if you can literally hunt for those three ingredients, just hunt your labels

for those. Give us some names though that they're under because natural flavors, like give us the little, the secret names. Don't even, we don't even have to talk about natural flavors yet. I'm just telling, if you look for added sugar, which comes under 40 names, dextrose, glucose, high fructose corn syrup, of course, any type of semblance of added sugar. And you have the added sugar label on label. So if you can hunt and eliminate added sugar, seed oils, safflower oil, soybean oil, canola oil,

these are the actually top source of American calories right now. Seed oils were created by John D. Rockefeller as a byproduct of oil production. It was actually used as engine lubricant he in addition to setting up the modern pharmaceutical industry actually lobbied for these oils that he was using as engine lubricants to be used in food much cheaper than the fats the natural fats like i like i read a bunch of stuff on him yeah and what's crazy is like what it's become but i think at the time him setting that like like this i'm saying like a guy like that was very philanthropic a lot of people don't realize yeah i think a lot of maybe people are skeptical of that now i i think that these systems that a lot of people said or even some of this technology that people

sort of use like they were doing this thinking that it was going to create more help than harm i think a lot of things happen with good intentions i mean i hold rockefeller a couple for a couple of things he started the modern educational system and said, I want a nation of workers, not thinkers. And I think our education system that kind of puts kids in a sedentary room at a desk here listening to lectures for six hours and being told to follow the rules and not think for themselves, I think that's a disaster and that ties to him. He did set up the modern kind of medical education system, the whole idea of residency, funding Johns Hopkins, this idea of evidence-based medicine where we have to silo conditions and then treat them.

And he did, I think, have economics incentives because he is the father of the modern pharmaceutical industry. So I think all these things started with good intentions. I think- Yeah, I'm not defending him individually. I'm just saying people, I don't think they think like, hey, in a hundred years, you're going to have these. Nobody does. Nobody. I think everything we're're tracing, the medical system's a miracle. You know, the medicals, life expectancy has increased double in the past hundred years due to acute solves, antibiotics and other things. The medical system took that trust and has made more money from it and lost its way. But like, it's a double-edged sword. Like a lot of things start with good intentions. I agree with you. Anyway.

To your point earlier, it's like, I think think most it's the systems and the incentives and the way and the parameters and the guardrails that we set up are really poor in this country. And the way that we, like when you even start talking, ah, there's an environment and you can donate this money. Like in any other world, that's like, you would just be like, Hey, this is a bribe and this can't happen. Like if you were like, if you were doing that in professional sports or saying, Hey, there's a system where like, Hey, this is a bribe and this can't happen. Like if you were like, if you were doing that in professional sports or saying, Hey, there's a system where like, you know, the referees, they kind of get this, you're donating to their kid. You'd be like, that can't happen. Or in, in, in any kind of other environment, if these kinds of like atmospheres exist, people like that can't happen. But when it comes to this, because there's so much money,

these things are allowed to transpire. And I think that's a big problem, which is there's nobody, the system is set up for such failure. So there's personal path empowerment. And the key thing there, I want to get to the root cause actually, because I think the solves for our systemic issues are easy, but here's my theory of change. We've got to take matters into our own hands. We've got to understand the basics. There's nothing more revolutionary, quite frankly, there's nothing more subversive to our existing systems than to thrive and be healthy. And that is really auditing what you're feeding your kids. And I just, those three ingredients and just cutting ultra-processed food. I just can't stress this enough. Ultra-processed food is a science experiment.

One thing that I have taken so seriously that I am so proud of is my hair. I have grown my hair like a foot. I'm not joking. It was so short. It was like above my shoulders. I was wearing clip and extensions. It was a total nightmare if I'm being honest. I used to have blonde hair, which has obviously contributed to it growing because I switched it to brown. But I've also done a lot of little micro habits every single day. And I've really compiled what works. The first thing I do every day is scalp massage. I do not miss out on this. I do not screw around. I have like a Gua Sha brush. I use my fingers. And I've also in the last year added a serum. So it's like a scalp serum that I use to take the massage up a notch. And the one that I use is Vegamore. You guys have seen this all

over my socials. I link it in almost all of my LTK posts because it works. And what I've noticed the most is it just visibly thicker, fuller, shinier, longer hair. And the serum that I like doesn't have harsh ingredients, which is awesome. It comes in a little pink bottle that I'm sure you've seen everywhere. All their products are 100% cruelty-free and never formulated with potentially harmful ingredients like parabens or hormones. And what I do is I just put it on my hands and I'll do my scalp massage in the morning, sometimes at night, whenever I can get it in. It's a quick, easy habit stack. For a limited time, all him and her listeners get 20% off their first order by going to vegamore.com slash skinny. Use code skinny at checkout. That's V-E-G-A-M-O-U-R.com slash skinny. Code skinny to save 20% off your first order.

V-E-G-A-M-O-U-R.com slash skinny. Code skinny. One thing that I always take that's essential is a multivitamin every day. Easy. And the multivitamin that I take is clinically backed. It's clean. It's bioavailable. And you can also trace all the ingredients, which I appreciate. And it is by Ritual. It's called Essential for Women 18+. I also took their vitamin when I was pregnant. There's a pregnancy vitamin that they make that's really great. So if you're pregnant, I would definitely check out their pregnancy vitamins. Everything is such high quality. They have nine key nutrients in a two delayed release capsule per day. So you take two a day. It's gentle on an empty stomach. I take mine in the morning. It has like a minty essence in every bottle, which is enjoyable. I don't want

to take a multivitamin and feel like it's coming back up. That's so gross. And Ritual is so easy to take, which is a big selling point for me. But most importantly, they really focus on vitamin D and omega-3 DHA. These are two things that a lot of women are low on. And I actually had my levels checked before I took Ritual, and those were the two things I was low on. And now I'm not low anymore. So thank you, Ritual and those were the two things I was low on and now I'm not low anymore. So thank you Ritual for helping me figure that out. It's a female founded company. It's beautiful. It's vegan, non-GMO, gluten-free, allergen-free. And like I said, everything's traceable. So no more shady business. Ritual's Essential for Women 18 Plus is a multivitamin

you can actually trust. Get 25% off your first month at ritual.com slash skinny. Start ritual or add essential for women 18 plus to your subscription today. That's ritual.com slash skinny for 25% off. I know you gave us three, but what are just like someone like me, I know to cut those three. And I'm sure there's a lot of people who are super savvy that are listening that know to cut those three. What are little ones that are hidden psychos? Well, then you get in.

So you get into the other ingredients. We're on a war against Kellogg's with the artificial colorings. Right. I mean, this is why I say cut ultra processed food. If you look at the back, all those ingredients, you don't understand. These are not good ingredients. These are ingredients that are literally not almost to the ingredient not allowed in Europe. So I partnered with a couple allies we know, and we've done a legal campaign against Kellogg's.

They changed their ingredients for the United States. Their ingredient list is two times longer and has these dyes that make the fruit loops really bright, but are linked to ADHD and neurological issues. Okay. The high level issue on all these ingredients, you don't understand. This is the point that very few people understand. The processed food industry was created by the cigarette industry. The cigarette industry, when they were declining in the 1980s, bought all the processed food companies. The three of the four largest M&A deals up until 1990 were cigarette companies buying food companies. To this day, today, Kraft is still owned by Philip Morris. A lot of the other companies were spun out. What the cigarette companies did is they very

systematically took two expertises that they have. They brought thousands of scientists into the food companies. And in 1990, the three largest food companies were cigarette companies okay this is a very not marginal thing and they made the food addictive so what what the high level thing to understand hopefully as people are shopping for their kids and you hear you know don't buy the ingredients you don't understand those ingredients are not there by accident they're to make the food more palatable they're to hydrate our biology, animals in the wild don't get obese. We're genetically made to be in harmony with the food that we're biologically made to eat. These ingredients, in various ways, through taste, through other addictive triggers, are hijacking us. And they're making us want to eat more. And they're really disarming ourselves.

These cigarette companies had scientists make the food more addictive and with their regulatory experts, they lobbied directly for the food pyramid. And the food pyramid in the nineties, of course, which said to eat carbs as the base of the pyramid, it led to carbs and processed food rising 20% of the American diet in the next five years. So I just can't express this enough. When you look at that long ingredient of the processed food, that's a science experiment from literally tobacco industry scientists to get us addicted to that food also they use words like homegrown right or like they they will greenwash the packaging where i mean there's these crackers that like is from one of the healthiest brands that i thought for kids

i looked on the back of the packages and it's sunflower oil. But here's the thing. Sunflower sounds healthy, right? It's so fucking manipulative. If a brand has the sunflower oil, you know, soybean oil, safflower oil, any of those seed oils, you want to look for avocado oil. And then you look, you're like, oh, I'm going to get almond flour or almond this. And then the almonds are sprayed with glyphosate. I don't even know how to pronounce it, but that's not on the label. So you have to know about almonds and then you're giving your kids almond milk and you think you're being healthy there. And then the almonds are sprayed with all this shit. It's to be honest, and I'm someone who gets access to some incredible

people. It's overwhelming. And I feel like they want us to be overwhelmed. Well, the invisible hand of the system, as we hopefully, you know, put some anecdotes in folks' heads, the invisible hand of the system, it's not people conspiring to be evil, although there's probably some of that. It's the invisible hand of the system. You know, the tobacco industry scientists wanting the food to be addictive, wanting to sell more. I mean, I'll leave it to other people to decide whether that's evil or not, but it is very calculated. We should not be clear on that. What the book makes, and this is what I would argue. I think a lot of you guys and a lot of

listeners are on that, but I really sympathize with you and I feel the same way. It's very confusing by design. I do think we are being confused by design and we can start on health. We talk about those three ingredients. We talk about what to hunt for, omega-3 fatty acids, fiber, antioxidants. We have a list. I mean, you can start with some basic principles of what not to eat and what to eat. And then you go on a path of curiosity. We have hundreds of other ingredients and exact shopping lists in the book. But starting with the basics, on exercise, you've got a lot of people coming on. And Peter T, who is amazing, had a huge impact on me. But he's like zone two. And then you need to do this amount

of hit. And there's a lot of complexity just as there are in the diet wars around the exercise, how to do it right. There's not an epidemic of unhealthy people that are eating minimal ultra processed food and moving for 150 to 180 minutes a week. Like, it's like, we need to get back to the basics. That's exactly what I was just going to say is what I'm doing is I'm going back to what the cavemen did. And the cavemen, they lifted weights, which were the stones, and they ate the meat and they ate raw milk. They drank raw milk and they ate eggs, I think. But it's like, I'm going to the basics. Putting my feet on the grass. I'm going outside in the morning.

Like, that's what I'm doing. We love Peter Attia. We love him. But like, what I would say for somebody who's starting on their journey and they're like, I just want to get metabolically healthy and get some maybe cleaner habits. I would not start with them. I think that's once you get rid of the ultra processed food and you start maybe exercising just a little bit and you do the things you're talking about, then once you feel good and you

got a base, then I would maybe jump to their stuff because it's overwhelming. But here's the truth. Anyone that starts that path of really committing to the 150 minutes, of really being curious about their food, you just inevitably start reading more books by Mark Hyman. You start reading Outlip. You start reading this. You start going and it starts becoming part of your identity. When we get to the policy and how we change this, the fundamental goal of U.S. policy on health should be opening every American to just curiosity and being on that journey. I think there's a real spiritual crisis where we become disconnected from our food. We've become disconnected from our soil. We've been told the medical system is a savior. We've been told that it's actually dangerous to farm for ourselves in our garden. We've been disconnected with our phone. Everything is about the disconnection. You have to sit with yourself. And that's a spiritual human capital crisis. I mean, it truly is. I do think we're becoming a, you know, infertile, depressed population. Your body tells you too. There's something to be, your intuition, if you sit in silence and you, you feel your body will tell you what it likes and what it doesn't like. I know a lot of women right now who are facing PCOS. Male infertility is going up too.

Sperm count's plummeting. There's a lot of problems with men. But specifically on PCOS, I talk to a lot of friends where they have this condition, which impacts fertility. They go to the OBGYN and it's immediate birth control or their hormones. And then it's a quick push to an invasive procedure like IVF. Women should be able to do whatever the hell they want, but they should be informed. And PCOS, what I have not yet to meet a patient, meet a friend

who is in that situation with an OB-GYN on PCOS who was told what the condition actually is. And the condition isn't tied to diabetes and insulin resistance. It is insulin resistance. I want everyone to know this. If you have a friend or you are battling this, it is insulin resistance. It is on the spectrum. So what does that mean? That's two things. Number one, a keto targeted diet is the most effective and very quick intervention to reverse the symptoms of PCOS. I have yet to meet a patient who's been told that by a traditional doctor. It is absolutely clear. And in Europe, when you have PCOS, there's a phase. They're paid for by the government, keto intervention.

If that doesn't work, then it goes to more medication. Then it goes to IVF. That's how the patients are counseled. So if you get the insulin resistance under control by a keto diet, then you can actually prevent it from getting worse. Is that what you're saying? Yeah, then you can actually prevent it from getting worse. Is that what you're saying? Yeah. And you become more fertile. And here's the tragic part. That PCOS, the medical system, and it's skyrocketing. 25%

of women with childbearing age have it. It's grown an order of magnitude in generation. I mean, it's an epidemic right now, like most other chronic conditions. The medical system should be viewing that actually as a welcome warning sign, as a sign that that patient is metabolic, is functional. They're not going to die right away. And we can reverse that.

That is a sign that that woman, let's just speak facts, is going to have other comorbidities, is going to die earlier if that brewing metabolic dysfunction, that brewing insulin resistance is not reversed. And we need to see these, this goes to the story of my mom, who her first issue was gestational diabetes with me, which was like, oh, that's fine, it's normal. Like these issues that pop up, these non-deadly issues, we just pill them. We do a procedure. I think patients would want to know, right, what the condition actually is. I think a lot of patients, they're told that before, you know, a gruesome invasive procedure that's relatively

problematic, IVF, which should absolutely be available and is an important procedure. And again, people can, women should be able to do whatever the hell they want on this issue and make their own decision. They should have informed consent though. And that's where the policy comes in. I believe Americans want to be healthy like the Japanese. I don't think we're more lazy or more suicidal than the Japanese. We just have to demand that the... And it's not that hard. It's not that hard to pass an executive order tomorrow saying that NIH, and it's not that hard. It's not that hard to pass an executive order tomorrow saying that NIH researchers and the FDA bureaucrats cannot be conflicted. It's not that hard. It's not that hard to say that the USDA panel that makes our nutrition

guidelines should not be conflicted and paid for by food companies. And the USDA tomorrow should say that we should not be force feeding two-year-old sugar, which we do now. Everyone needs to go sign that Kellogg's petition. I think that that's an incredible petition. I have to give you one that I just experienced. I had a tooth scan and I was told immediately I needed a root canal. I needed a root canal right now. And that was all there was to do. And there was nothing else I could do. I took a pause. I called my people that have come on the podcast. All four of them said the same thing. You do not need a root canal. Root canals cause, we're going to do a whole podcast on this, all different kinds of things. They can actually- There's other interventions prior to you need to

do that. They actually said root canals are problematic, which we're going to do an episode on this. But the point is what I want to say after this episode. You brought you on to talk about root canals. Go. After this episode, I want to say this to you. If you are diagnosed with something, and I think this is the most important thing out of this whole episode. Question why, what. Call, do research. Don't just accept the diagnosis blindly. If it's not going to kill you imminently, absolutely step back. That is absolutely the most important message to the American people of this episode, of

this book. This is my theory of change. We need to arm people, and I know many listening are on this journey, to have the confidence to question your doctor. Again, chronic conditions. You look at the CDC top 10 list of killers, nine out of 10, except accidental injuries. Literally other than accidental injuries, it's all the issues, kidney disease, heart disease, diabetes, cancer. I mean, we could talk about cancer, but there's highly problematic ways we treat that.

But anything that's not imminently going to kill you, right? You have the ability to step back and ask what other treatments are. Or if a vaccine comes out for the whole world, you have the ability to step back and ask questions. If it's not going to kill you right away. And that is how we have a revolution of human empowerment in this country. I think your book is going to help.

I love that you have- To be clear though, if you have a gunshot wound or a knife wound or a staph infection, go to the hospital and get killed. One, the difference between, but when you're sitting and about to get that statin prescription,

your kid's about to get that SSRI prescription, you're signing up for a treadmill that's really problematic and robs you of understanding the root cause. You know, I would highly recommend using these services to have more understanding about what's going on in your body and go on that path. And I'm working really hard

on the high level incentive change. We're doing a lot of lobbying and stuff on that. I'll tell the parents out there a story, which I never thought about much until I got older and had kids of my own. We're doing a lot of lobbying and stuff on that. system wasn't the greatest for my particular personality. And I've obviously gone on to do things that are maybe not set up from the traditional schooling path and I've found some personal success in my life, but I just wasn't a good student is the way of saying it. I remember the teachers brought me in. I sat in the office with the counselor and my dad and they said, hey, we're going to prescribe this kid Ritalin or at the time, whatever it was. And I

remember my dad being there to his credit. He looked at me and said, listen, I've seen this guy sit down when he's interested in things, whether it's a video game or a book or whatever it is, and like completely focused. So I know he can focus when he's, when he wants to, but he's not interested. So he said, basically, no, we're not doing the medicine. If my dad had made the other decision, I would have clearly been put on that medication from the time I was in third grade till probably, you know, and I say this because there is a place for medications for certain cases and I'm not discouraging people from looking at that. But I would argue that in my particular case, that would have been a terrible thing to do because I've never used that and I've been able to focus and do things that I want to accomplish goals. And I just think about that all the time because I remember at the time, even being a kid being like, oh shit, do I need medicine? And my dad talking to my mom about it.

Luckily we didn't do it, but I just think that's a perfect example. It's like, they didn't know, they didn't really, this is like, Hey, out of control, not focused. Just give them the medicine. It's a great example. There's a great book called Blitzed. I don't know if you guys heard of it. It's about how Hitler was addicted to drugs and how Adderall was actually created by Nazi Germany in World War II as a drug to give soldiers,derall every day to be more aggressive. And it was actually discontinued because everyone got psychosis. Merck took that drug and actually made it stronger. You can't even make this up. They actually made it stronger. And now it's prescribed to 15% of US high schoolers. So, you know, I think it goes without saying in many cases, and again, my point is don't just take the prescription.

I mean, use critical thinking. Drugs have placed some places as part of, it's just not the whole toolkit. But if your kid, if they're taking out the prescription CAD, what I say is let's look at what's happening to kids. We're force feeding them ultra processed food. They have limited sunlight.

They're very sedentary, right? They're chronically stressed. They've got weapons of mass destruction for stress in their pockets with their phones. You know, if you do that to any animal, put them in those conditions, they're going to exhibit signs of attention. Which by the way,

and then at that same school for lunch, I would go and get a sugary apple juice, an ice cream sandwich, and a slice of pizza every day. Because of the food pyramid. Because of the food pyramid. And you wonder why I was out of control. And it's like, you really have a situation where we are poisoning kids and then drugging

them. You also would try to finger bang me in between the second and fourth period. So imagine if I was on Adderall. That would be too much for me. Good energy, the surprising connection between metabolism and limitless health. Go buy the book. I love that you have a grocery list in here of what we can go to. I love it.

It's like a compass. You can come back anytime. I could have gone on and on, but for lack of, we didn't have less time. So we have to go. You know what I would say though? It's interesting because I think, you know, you've been in media for a while. We've been doing, I think people are open to these conversations now more so than they've ever been.

People are hungry for this information. I think it's still like, you know, it's harder, but they're like, I guess maybe, and I'm jaded, but coming from the last four year cycle compared to where we are now, like these convert people are saying, okay, like maybe there is something to listen to here that we, you know, maybe they were turned off to in the we, you know, maybe they were turned off to in the beginning. I got, and we said we didn't with optimism. I feel so fired up, honestly, talking to you guys. And like, this is a story of optimism. I think the distrust that's growing in the medical system is a good thing. The last thing I'd add, if I could, you know,

there is, you know, we're really hope, you know, I think everyone's on this personal responsibility and bottoms up revolution that's happening with health and questioning our systems. We're working really hard. I'm leading a new group called InChronicDisease.org. We're working with the founders of Sweetgreen, Thrive Market, Athletic Greens, CrossFit, the leaders of these companies. And we're actually lobbying Congress. We're sharing positive stories about people that started getting off their meds and going to CrossFit and turn around their lives and reversing their autoimmune conditions. People that, you know, started supplementation instead of drugs for depression. We're actually just sharing stories.

I think, you know, these products we're all talking about and like actually supplements, food, exercise, it's like, that's where medical dollars have to go. I think there's this positive story of just like, if we could just empower those type of treatments, you know, we're going to be in a better place. And there's really some positive engagement where we're talking to, I've talked to a hundred members of Congress across the aisle, you know, presidential candidates.

I really think people are waking up on this. And I just want people to know, you know, I think it's, everyone's working on their own journey and we really are working with a great coalition from the top down. And I really am optimistic we can get some things changed. I love it. Where can everyone find you? Pimp yourself out. crisis and a roadmap for good energy available everywhere. My company is trumed.com. We quickly write prescriptions from third-party doctors for exercise and food interventions. We're working with Athletic Greens, Momentous, CrossFit, 24 Hour Fitness, Peloton, down the list of leading health and wellness companies. And we enable qualified patients to buy those products tax-free with

HSA, FSA dollars. You can actually qualify for using medical dollars for exercise, which is what our company does. So trumed.com and then on the social at CaliMeans, Instagram and Twitter. You got to check out the book and it's got some high praises from some of our favorite people, Dr. Gabrielle Lyon, Max Lugavere, Jillian Michaels, all been on this show, all great people. So if you got praises from them, praises from us as well. Thank you guys.