Calley Means
Appearances
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
Type 2 diabetes used to be never seen.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
you know, among kids in their career. Right. It used to be called early onset. They don't call it early onset anymore. As Casey said, 33% of young adults now have prediabetes. I mean, this prediabetes is not some isolated thing. It's the branch of the tree. It's cellular dysregulation. And every single disease is going down. Alzheimer's is now called type 3 diabetes.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
fundamentally is that we are profiting the biggest industries the biggest spenders in the country are profiting from kids particularly getting addicted sick and fear and then and then drugging them and profiting from that what what is the conversation like when you guys are formulating a strategy to try to pretend that opioids aren't a problem
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
If you don't have prediabetes or diabetes, you have a very diminished chance of having Alzheimer's. And, you know, so it makes total sense. But somebody from Harvard Medical School that specialize in Alzheimer's, their entire course load, their entire training, their entire focus is on accepting Alzheimer's that it's there, that it's growing, and then figuring out marginal improvements for it.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
There's literally people that are the highest educated people in the world do not even understand what causes these diseases. They're just accepting that and making the cures for them, the marginal treatments for them.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
The institutional design of the system, which was greatly impacted by Casey's Awakening, is that it takes good people and gives them plausible deniability. Nobody's in those back rooms conspiring and trying to be an evil person. They're literally talking to these junior staffers like me about the scourge of pain and how we have to get this innovation of opioids to the American people.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
Now it's about obesity and trying to get Ozempic to 60-year-olds, which is now... the standard of care. In the rooms, it's about doing what's right and getting this innovation to the American people and everyone can kind of fool themselves. With the food, it's about getting cheap calories to kids.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
You know, it's not we're going to buy off and weaponize these academic research institutions like Harvard to say sugar doesn't cause obesity and then pay the NAACP to say lower income people need to be getting their government subsidized Coke. It's that we're promoting choice. And I really did believe that and people believe that. I think...
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
This is where I think my experience ties is that on the foundational level why this is happening, it's because these studies are all funded by the chemical companies, by the food companies. We've almost been, I think, misled by the experts when it comes to chronic conditions and when it comes to nutrition to take leaves of our common sense.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
Do we need to wait for a double-blind, placebo-controlled, human-randomized control study to know whether 0.5% of our brains being plastic is a good thing right now.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
Do we need to have a human randomized control 10 year study to know whether an herbicide like glyphosate that's being sprayed on almost all of our food and our children's food that people have to wear hazmat suits to spray and kills every single organism in sight. Do we need to wait for a study?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
Like, like we've been, we've, we've just as the medical system is siloed, we'd siloed all these questions and just taken leave of our common sense. Like, Animals in the wild, wolves in the wild are not getting chronic rates of obesity, diabetes, metabolic dysfunction.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
We're born with an innate sense of knowing what's good for us, of knowing that the sun is good, of knowing that steak is good, that broccoli is good. We can't overeat those things. The problem is we've been lied to by the professors at Harvard, at Stanford, at Tufts Nutrition School.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
that I believe are essentially, from my experience, PR for the food industry and the pharmaceutical industry that accepts all these things as a given. I mean, Tufts Nutrition School, 80% of their budget is from food companies. By our estimate, 50% of Stanford Medical School's budget somehow touches pharma.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
So just fundamentally, on the grassroots micro level, these industries have co-opted our institution of trust and let us... You ask why we're the only people speaking out, because... Because we've made it that evidence-based medicine really accepts all this disease growing and happening. And 95% of medical spending right now is on disease once it's happened. It's on managing conditions.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
And there's no higher levels of trust in our society than the NIH, than the FDA, than Harvard Med School, than Stanford Med School. So all of them are enforcing this. And then it's really just interesting where their emphasis is.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
There's pings that's coming through in so many ways of people realizing this really isn't going the right direction. I think you see it with suicide rate among doctors, the burnout rate among doctors, the fact that every friend I have from Harvard Business School who went into the pharma industry, who went into the food industry, there's chronic rates of depression among elite business people.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
Like I was just reading the other day that California, the medical board, is checking the licenses of doctors, putting them under review if they write five vaccine exception notes. You literally are on the verge of losing your license if you even go outside the orthodoxy on vaccines. But where is that level of emphasis? Where is that level of focus?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
Where is that level of rigor around metabolic health for kids, around nutrition for kids? I think it is a big deal of kids getting polio, but 50% of teens are obese or overweight right now. We have prediabetes skyrocketing. The medical system knows how to focus on something. They know how to tell Congress that there's no cost too high for something.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
When it comes to pharmaceutical interventions, we're bankrupting the country with interventions once people get sick. I truly believe, and this gets to the solutions and how I actually think this is an optimistic story, people waking up, why it's an existential kind of knife's edge we're on right now. We can change this really quick.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
The issue is that interest that profit from us being in fear, that just fundamentally is a statement of economic fact, profit from us being sick, profit from us being depressed, profit from us being infertile. They have co-opted our institutions of trust and they've co-opted the clinical guidelines.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
Like literally when I was a junior employee, I helped Coke funnel money to the American Diabetes Association. OK, the American Diabetes Association says that if you have diabetes, you don't need to worry about your sugar intake. They say it's not tied to food. Right.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
The American Academy of Pediatrics right now is saying that if your child is overweight, slightly overweight, overweight, 12 years old. Dietary infertility, don't wait. It says do not wait to see if dietary infertility works. Ozempic. It's now being studied on six years old. The American Psychiatry Association, right? The psychiatrist, the standard of care. If your child is a little sad, SSRI.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
immediate intervention, right? SSRI rates have doubled among high schoolers in the past five years, right? If your child's a little fidgety, the standard of care, right? It's not asking whether they're in the sunlight, not asking if they're too sedentary, not asking if they're being force-fed ultra-processed food, which would make any animal crazy if we subject them to what kids are subjected to.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
No discussion of that. It's just not in the clinical guidelines. So these doctors, these good people like Casey, go into the medical system. We're this magnet for smart people. We get them in for the right reasons. There's easier ways to make money. But they come in and they get saddled with one skill. They get saddled with a bunch of debt. And then they're realizing this is a rigged system.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
Some people, few people, unfortunately, had the courage like Casey to drop out. I thought she was an idiot. I was like, what are you doing? We were kind of brainwashed to do the traditional system. I couldn't believe it. We didn't talk for a year. But it just is hard for people to understand that you can walk away from this because our society stamps these credentials on people.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
Like what's better than being the dean of Stanford Med School? The dean of Stanford Med School right now was Casey's same specialty, head and neck surgery. And the way you rise up in medicine is you do a specialty, you focus on a couple inches of the face, and then he focused on a fellowship on an even narrower part of the body. Like that's how you rise up. You've siloed the situation.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
Anything that's not siloed is considered not scientific, is considered wacky. They've called us the woo-woo caucus, talking about these nutritions. The medical system enforces this siloed view where diabetes, heart disease, depression, kidney disease, cancer, they're all separate things. If you have those conditions, you're seeing five separate doctors. They aren't speaking to each other.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
I think people are starting to realize this, but still, in these rooms, it's about doing the right thing. You convince yourself of that.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
So the solution is truly just having the clinical guidelines of how diseases are assessed and how they're intervened changed to following the science, which is these are metabolic conditions. Ninety percent of the U.S. medical budget is tied to managing preventable and reversible lifestyle conditions.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
If we had people on Medicaid, instead of jamming with the Stans, jamming them with Ozempic, jamming them with SSRIs, lower-income people were going bankrupt from Medicaid, $1.3 trillion. It's growing. It's a bigger part of the budget than the defense budget. If we literally just ask how do we have that money to spur thriving, to incentivize exercise, to incentivize healthier food for these folks –
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
we'd be a transformed country. It's literally that simple. But it takes that moral courage. It takes Americans actually saying, no, I am going to go against the NIH. I am going to ask questions. But of course, we have violent, just reading, you know, back, what was it, 2022?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
I mean, the highest level, Joe, you know, I think we don't realize that there's a defining existential issue in our country where our major institutions have been captured. I think there's like pings of consciousness trying to alert us to this, like, you know, you having people on that are calling this stuff out, trying to ring the alarm bell and people flocking to this show.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
Like every single public health official in America said you were like the enemy number one for talking about sunlight and talking about food and talking about healthy eating. COVID was a metabolic condition. COVID was a foodborne illness. Like if you were metabolically healthy, you did not die of COVID, like pretty demonstrably. And you were threat number one. Go ahead.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
you know, iconic class from the military industrial complex, from the healthcare industrial complex. I think Elon being the richest person, the world's trying to sell us something. It's like, let's get resources to these people calling these things out. I think it's like Donald Trump. Like, I've been thinking about this a lot. Why is he the defining figure of our lifetime?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
Like, why have voters again and again and again gone to him and said, you know, this MAGA movement, like, Why are we like supporting this person, making him the defining person of our generation? What does he represent? He represents like putting finger on something that's just not quite right with institutions.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
Yeah, I think Jamal talked a little bit about this, but I think it's so important because nobody realizes this. I think a lot of people listening to us years ago, it's just like this sounds conspiratorial. And it's just like what actually happened? And there's a couple like really important dates that happened that are historical that I think like set this structure really intentionally.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
The first was 1909, the Flexner Report incident. So literally John D. Rockefeller's personal lawyer wrote the report for Congress that basically set the standard today for medical education. And it literally says in the binding guidelines that holistic health and nutrition and anything about interconnections to the body is pseudoscience.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
And I think the problem is we can't quite wrap our hand head around how bad it is and how so many people are complicit. But there's all these signs right now. And I think I think we're going to be brought to our knees if we don't realize this, that our institutions have been captured. Like to me, health care, what Casey talks about is.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
It says we need to name the condition and cut it out or prescribe it.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
That is so crazy. But like rescinding the Flexner Report and having updated scientific education and standard of care guidelines based on what we learned since 1909 about the majesty of the interconnectedness of our body is a really good first start because we're binded under a law. Just demonstrably, just like, again, not conspiratorial. John D. Rockefeller's personal lawyer wrote this report.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
Why? Because John D. Rockefeller is the father of the pharmaceutical industry and created pharmaceuticals from byproducts of oil production and was the first investor into Johns Hopkins and other major medical schools, University of Chicago, and started the modern education program for health.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
There were some big issues in the health of the Wild West, but he created Johns Hopkins and the standard of residency training as a way to silo diseases very intentionally, and then prescribe his products and interventions as the top pharmaceutical maker. And the medical schools that he created were basically a distribution system to him. Okay, so you get to World War II.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
Up until World War II, around that time, the 1950s, 1960s, I would argue almost any medical miracle you can think of or any listener can think of was created before that time. It's all acute situations, emergency surgical procedures, sanitation procedures, antibiotics to make an infection not deadly.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
Almost every medical miracle we can think of was something that was going to kill you right away, infectious disease. And then you take the pill or take the treatment for a finite period of time and you stop it or do the surgery quickly and you're cured. Those are medical miracles. And we had a lot of good things happen up until World War II.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
Very intentionally, the medical industry saw the birth control pill in the late 1950s, 1960s. And the birth control pill was the first pill in world history that people took for longer than a couple weeks. It was the first pill ever that is like, oh, interesting. You can actually convince someone to take a pill for years, for almost most their life, recurring revenue.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
And there was a huge emphasis of the medical industry to take the trust engendered up until 1960. RFK talks about this. We didn't spend money on chronic disease management. All medicine was acute issues. Chronic disease, diabetes, obesity, that was outside the doctor's office. They saw that you could medicalize chronic conditions. Today, 90% to 95% of spending is on chronic conditions.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
It's a really visceral example of something just not right with what's happening to food, what's happening to our kids' health. And I think it's happening to the military, too, or the military industrial complex.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
So what do we do? In the 1970s, literally the Sackler family, their grandkids and kids did the opioids. Their forebears created Valium. And 30% of women in the United States in the 1970s were on Valium, Time Magazine, Valium Nation, Mommy's Little Helper. So we started creating all these psychiatric conditions. We started medicalizing heart disease.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
We started medicalizing all these type 2 diabetes, started creating academic research totally funded by the pharmaceutical industry saying that type 2 diabetes isn't reversible, that it's basically genetic, heart disease, all these things, and started pilling them, started pilling them. Then what happened to food? Chronic disease wasn't that big of a deal in the 1970s, 1980s.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
You look at the graph. You look at the graph of all chronic conditions. There's just a sharp turn in the 1980s. It's literally almost to the year of the Surgeon General report saying smoking wasn't great. So the second that report came out, Philip Morris and R.J. Reynolds were two of the largest companies in the world. It wasn't like Microsoft and Google on the top companies list.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
It was like cigarette companies. You know, dopamine is a really good thing to sell, which the tech companies do now. And they used their cash piles. And by 1990, the three largest M&A deals in American history, in world history, were cigarette companies buying food companies. So you had Nabisco bought by R.J. Reynolds. You had Kraft and U.S. Food buy.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
Like, I'm truly worried that we're on the verge of almost a societal level collapse with what's happening to our food, what's happening to our health, what's happening with the potential nuclear war.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
And you see those graphs of all the food companies owned by like a couple companies? That was the cigarette companies. And they did two things very, very intentionally. They took over the institutions of trust to say ultra-processed food was healthy, and then they took their scientists and rigged the food itself to make it more addictive. Not to kill kids, but to make it more addictive.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
So you had that literal food pyramid, which said ultra-processed food is great, low-fat, carbs, base of the pyramid. That was constructed literally by the cigarette industry to promote their addictive products. And this weaponization of food, as I call it, it's not just like this conspiracy.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
Those two companies, Philip Morris and RJ Reynolds, were the two largest food producers in the United States. Like 50% of American food were created by cigarette companies in the 1990s. And they have got us addicted and weaponized this food, and all chronic conditions have just shot up.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
It's because that ultra-processed food, literally, by tobacco industry scientists, hijacks our evolutionary biology. Again, you can't overeat grass-fed steak, but these food, with scientists much smarter than any of us, That's what they're doing. They're shutting off our society signals.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
The byproduct of this cheap addictive food, which we don't even have research for yet, is that it's sprayed with all these chemicals. It's sprayed with 10,000 chemicals that are allowed in the United States when only 400 are allowed in Europe. to make the food addictive, to make the food cheap, to do the monocropping.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
And that food is absolutely, and we don't need to wait for the research on this, these chemicals, these neurotoxins are destroying our cells, destroying our microbiome in ways we don't fully understand. So I just want to make clear to everyone, this has happened very intentionally. And it can be undone pretty quickly too, but we have to realize this isn't a conspiracy.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
and i think we have people starting to realize this and they're trying to like lunge out for it um but we're being told it's alarmist we're being told it's a conspiracy theory and and to me that that's what we've kind of landed on this health issue let's just bring it down to the facts of what's happening to kids let's bring it down to just like let's forget the conspiracy theory what even anyone's saying this room let's look what's happening to our food and looks what's happening to kids because by the stats we're seeing there's something really dark happening like like
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
It's true corruption that happened deliberately.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
outside any conspiracy theory, just the statistics of what is happening to our health in this country and uniquely in America, it's dark.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
The only answer of double-blind placebo-controlled studies, which every guest comes on is just like that's just the gold standard. Everyone just accepts that that's what you need. A double-blind placebo-controlled study, the only answer is a pill, like essentially. You can't test psychedelics on that way. You can't test food. You can't test exercise. You can't blind those things.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
So anything that actually – recognizes the unison and the interconnectivity of why we're getting sick, can't be studied through a double-blind placebo-controlled study.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
You actually have the FDA that's basically created, you saw this with the recent MDMA decision, it's basically rigged that the only thing that can be approved through the top way we study things and approve drugs is a synthetic pill. That's the only thing that it can basically lead to through a double-blind placebo-controlled study.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
No, it's been exploding like every single other chronic condition. I'll just quickly go to ties to Casey's point she just made. This year in 2024 is the highest rate in American history of Alzheimer's, cancer, autoimmune conditions, heart disease, diabetes.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
Cancer, kidney disease, autism, every single chronic disease you can think of is at an all-time high, growing at an increasing rate as we spend more money to treat those conditions. So I think one point we're trying to make is that all of the NIH, all the FDA, it's all on accepting that trend as a given. It's totally wash their hands of it.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
And how do we find marginal pills to make this a little bit better? Not asking why. And that question about Alzheimer's, the point we're trying to make is that when it comes to chronic conditions, which Alzheimer's is, you have to really not quit.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
It's the Alzheimer's question. You have to ask why that's one branch on this tree, obesity, right? This tree. And we talk about, and I think Casey has this amazing framework, you can literally look at five biomarkers, the biomarkers of metabolic dysfunction, HDL, triglycerides, blood sugar, blood pressure, and your waistline. And I'm not joking. I'm not being hyperbolic.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
If we fired every single researcher and canceled every single grant in the U.S. government for all chronic disease research and all nutrition research and created all policy to maximize those five biomarkers in America, you, by definition, don't have type 2 diabetes. you almost have a 0% chance of getting heart disease. You have very close to 0% chance of getting Alzheimer's.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
You are not obese by definition. Literally, you go down every single chronic condition that is torturing American life. If you're diabetic, you're four times more likely to be depressed or suicidal because there are cells in our head and diabetes is cellular dysregulation. So literally, on the research and the science thing,
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
I think there's great heroes who've been getting into the weeds on the research, but chronic disease is interconnected to basic lifestyle factors. I think this is a political issue, honestly. Every American needs to ask, is this an incremental issue where we need slightly better pharmaceutical interventions and slightly better research?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
Or is this a radical shift of understanding how our bodies are interconnected and understanding that that needs to be a shift in medicine and, frankly, how we view the environment? Like, that is a question that we actually think is relatively urgent and relatively existential. Modern society is amazing. But as Casey said, this is dark right now.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
Like, if you believe what Casey is saying about these statistics about chronic disease and you actually look at the math that we're growing two times with health care spending the rate of GDP. It's the largest and fastest growing industry in the country. The fastest growing industry in the United States is not AI. It's not tech. It's healthcare.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
And as it grows, we get sicker, fatter, more depressed, more infertile. It is going to bankrupt the country and it's not slowing down. So if you actually believe this, believe we need a new paradigm, is it about getting better research or is it about actually saying the research is wrong? This whole paradigm of seeing chronic disease in silos is wrong.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
So I'm sure you can talk more about Alzheimer's, but it's interconnected.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
I'll just say there's kind of just a question with all we're hearing about these diseases. Is the reason Alzheimer's is skyrocketing because we don't have enough research and don't have enough drugs? Is the reason obesity rates are skyrocketing among kids because we don't have enough drugs or not enough research? That's the argument that's being given to us. We're literally being told.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
After the lessons of COVID, which the COVID lockdowns and what the pharmaceutical industry did with their co-option of our government with COVID was the most significant public policy mistake in American history, at least since World War II. In modern times, I think we can all agree on.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
We are still saying – and it's just people, I think, because we trust the medical system still so much, we are literally thinking societally that – that the fact that there's an obesity crisis among six-year-olds is a drug deficiency issue. It's a dark, I think, blind spot in our culture right now.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
Yeah. So with Max, actually, with Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, with Marty McCary, Chris Palmer, a number of voices, we're engaging members of Congress. We're talking to helping whatever we can with RFK and Trump's leadership on this. But I had a somewhat out of body experience that kind of hits on what you're getting at. I was sitting across from the member of Congress
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
and I think it's the exact same issue on obesity, who introduced this Treat and Reduce Obesity Act. It has 150 co-sponsors, and it's to jam government-funded ozempics. So it starts with Medicare. 80% of people on Medicare, old people, are obese or overweight. So the second this bill is signed, You have open season on all people on Medicare.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
And then the second something's approved for Medicare always goes to Medicaid for lower income people because why would an old person be eligible for something but not a poor person in the United States? So that immediately goes to Medicaid. That's the game. And then Medicaid, right, it's six years old. It's now being pushed for on six-year-olds.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
The second this bill is signed, $1,600 per patient per month, taxpayer money, which is why Novo Nordics is the ninth most valuable company in the world right now, this Danish company expecting 90% of their profits from the United States on expectation of this bill's passage. So we're sitting across from him. And I bring these things up. And I bring up a simple question of,
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
Why is this one-size-fits-all jamming Ozempic into the average American's arm instead of opening up flexibility to potentially explore regenerative food or exercise or incentivizing those things? It's not even fully anti-drug, but why is this? What clinician said this is the cure, like this is the one cure?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
Because it's not opening up any money for food or exercise or any other modality that could actually cure the root cause of obesity. And he looked at me fully, fully serious and said, I'd never thought of that.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
And I told them that it's being pushed on kids and that there's an aggressive effort where Dr. Fatima Cody Stanford, the top obesity researcher at Harvard, was funded significantly by Novo Nordics and millions of dollars in research grants and went on 60 Minutes where the top funder of 60 Minutes is pharmaceutical companies and said obesity is a brain disease and a genetic. She said that.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
Top Harvard researcher. And she said, it needs to be aggressively intervened for kids. I said, there's open season on kids. The guy who introduced the bill, he said, that's not true. I'm going to put in the bill that kids can't use. I'm like, you'd be going against the FDA guidance on that. You can't do that.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
I go, you understand, based on the JP Morgan estimates, where they literally presented the estimates of increasing obesity rates at the JP Morgan conference in San Francisco.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
And all the investors clapped like seals, standing ovation, standing ovation as they presented a chart on rising obesity rates showing that as Ozempic increases in prescription rates, obesity in the United States will increase. Unpack that one for me. They show that graph and everyone claps because it's a lifetime drug, because it's a crash diet. It's liquid anorexia.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
It makes you not want to eat. Crash diets don't work, right? And of course, more than 50% of the people that even have insurance funding for it go off of it within six months because it's the highest rate of side effects of any mass drug prescribed in American history. But he didn't know all that.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
And he looked at me in the eye, the person who introduced this bill that is going to be one of the most expensive bills in American history, the market cap of the ninth most valuable company, the most valuable company in Europe. They passed LVMH, the fashion company. The most valuable company in Europe rests on this bill. This is the guy that essentially wrote it. He said, no, no, no.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
It's a short-term solve. Ozempic's a short-term solve. Look at me right in the eyes. I'm like, no. It literally says there's metabolic issues and it warns somebody going off the drug. It says you have to take it for life. He did not know that. The corruption is you have Brad Winstrup.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
If somebody wants to do something, if we want to change the world, email members of Congress, email Brad Winstrup, call his office and say, we think before we jab six-year-olds with Ozempic, we should fix our food system. This thought literally didn't occur to him. So what's happening with this corruption, what's happening with obesity, with Alzheimer's,
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
Is the corruption is like it doesn't even get to people even understanding that the boiling frog. It's just so it's just obviously we're just going to find a drug, not ask why people are getting Alzheimer's. Obviously, we're just going to jam 60 year olds with Ozempic and not ask why people are getting obese.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
And they and then, you know, literally get talking points in the room as he starts thinking about it. Oh, it's hard. Dietarian instruments are hard. It's like what's happening now is hard. Like going to a playground with my two-year-old son and seeing every kid clearly having issues, clearly dealing with obesity, like 60 years old, you know, seeing processed food all over the playground.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
Like what's happening now, poisoning ourselves en masse is pretty hard. So there are simple ways to do this. If Dr. Fauci in 2020 said COVID has strong metabolic links and we need to harden up our immune system, it's a problem. We're dying three times at a higher rate than the Japanese per capita. That's 16% of all COVID deaths are in the U.S. and we're like 4% of the population. Like-
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
This is a warning sign for our immune system. We need to shift the healthcare budget to getting fit, to incentivizing exercise, to fixing and talking to Will Harris and other regenerative farmers and consulting them on how to transform our food system, seeing that the medical system has co-opted what drugs are and what medicine is.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
It's nothing short of a moral blind spot that food and exercise aren't seen truly as drugs. They aren't seen as interventions from the $4.5 trillion we spent on medical systems. They do that in Europe. The Italians are three times less obese and diabetic than us. I don't think the Italians are more vigorous. I don't think Americans are lazier than Italians.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
There's something systemic happening where they spend three times less per capita on health care and two times more per capita on food.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
Industry capture. I met with Nancy Pelosi two weeks ago. Looked her in the eyes because, you know, we've been helping RFK, helping Trump. And we should talk about that. I think there's a really, really important societal dynamic happening with that unison. But but I'm preparing as much as I can to foster this bipartisan conversation. I can tell you everyone in the room. Right.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
Like is horrified by the statistics. Right. But every time, their staffers are slithering behind them. And the healthcare staffers in Congress are waiting for their next job with the pharma industry or the insurance industry, and they really drive the place and make the bills. But a real problem with the corruption is these people making policies, literally chairs of healthcare committees.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
The simple ideas you're talking about, and we're trying to express on metabolic health, on this simplicity, really, of why we're getting sick, it's not being like corruption is leading them to deny it. It's like they just do not understand it. Like these meetings we're doing with – and this hearing we did with Max and Brigham and others, Julie Michaels and so many great people.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
It literally was giving these ideas to these members of Congress for the first time. There will be a lot more on this. But I truly – it's so simple. But literally letting your lawmakers know. I hear two things again and again from meeting with over 40 members of Congress. It's like I don't understand this. I don't know this. And my phone is not ringing off the hook.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
If I go against pharma, they're getting all the old people to call and say don't kill me. Right. Like, to me, this issue, why this issue is becoming so resonant is because we're all feeling, and I think it's actually, we're hitting on the most important issue in the country. I think it's why everyone's flocking to books on this issue. Why podcasts? Like, why your podcast is the number one podcast.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
I mean, I consider you, I've learned more about metabolic health and healthcare listening to guests on your show than I think Casey's probably learned at Stanford Med School. So it's like people left to their own devices are flocking to this, and we need to channel We need to make a statement with our politics. This is unfortunately a political issue.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
Yeah. I mean, when I think about that story, I literally think about 2021, our mom abruptly dying of pancreatic cancer. She was taking a hike, got a pain in her stomach, got a text the next day after getting a scan saying she has stage four pancreatic cancer. We rushed to her side. She died 12 days later, just totally surprisingly. And Casey and I
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
on her grave site, literally hugged each other and said, we want to write a book and we want to make this and evangelize this, inspired by you and others. We want to evangelize this and add the chorus to prevent what's happening because so many Americans are on this pharmaceutical treadmill. And then the cancer is random. It's not random.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
Like all these warning signs that were missed with my mom, her prediabetes, her high cholesterol, her high blood pressure, those were pilled, not seen as gifts to get to the root cause. And then she was Chopped down by cancer. This is happening to everyone. So we want to evangelize that. And we've been on the path as best we can with companies and evangelizing.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
And through these amazing podcasts like like Tucker, we got connected with people. So got to know RFK, got to know Democrats and got to know the Trump campaign. And in the past year, I will say this, the Trump campaign has been extremely interested in the policy of why kids are getting so sick.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
And if you go back a year ago, President Trump actually at rallies to loud applause has been talking very similar points to RFK. So we got to know RFK sitting watching the first assassination attempt. I had like a spiritual what I can call it kind of out of body experience. And I felt the need to call Robert. I think what he has done is historic.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
The fact that he was getting up to 20% of the vote, highlighting this issue, tapping in, I think, to this consciousness and tapping into this stream that you're tapping into, I think it really showed something. And I had this vision for a year. Actually, it sounds very woo-woo, but I was in a sweat tent with him in Austin at a campaign event six months before.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
And I just had this strong vision of him standing with Trump and how what RFK represents is actually what Trump represents and actually what almost every American's feeling, which is this frustration and this rigged thing and this thing that doesn't quite feel right that you can't quite put your finger on.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
We were born and raised in Washington, D.C. And I thought being a good young conservative was supporting the farm industry or supporting the food industry, defending those industries. So I went to Stanford with Casey. She studied biology. I studied political science and economics and went on campaigns, but then was a lobbyist. Everyone bipartisan in D.C.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
And it was so clear to me that how RFK talks about health personifies this overall kind of institutional capture. It makes it real for people in a really visceral way because it's clearly impacting their kids. So That was all the context.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
Pick up the phone, called him and just urged him, you know, as a supporter, as a lowly supporter to consider maybe this is the time as President Trump put his fist up. You know, with all this momentum, there's rare moments in history where the deck can change.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
And I really felt and he felt like this could be a realignment of American politics because that that moment felt very heavy after the assassination. So we went back and forth and he asked to, you know, he's like, let me talk to him. So I worked with Tucker and we connected them that night. And here's the key point I want to make from my small vantage point here. They had weeks of conversations.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
And there was not a discussion of polling. There was not a discussion of the horse race and how this would impact the race. These were tear-filled conversations about why kids are getting so diabetic, about why we have such obese children in the United States, about why we have a fertility crisis.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
This was a true connection of these two men and a true deep bond, which I think you're seeing out there on the campaign trail, that this transcends politics and Trump wants this to be a generational issue for him. And I just want to say something. I think we're at a big moment here. We're debating trivia. I think the two most existential issues are nuclear war or what's happening to our health.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
And whatever you think, and I used to be a never-Trumper. Watching him care about this issue, watching what's happening with the RFK, watching what's happening of how that's resonating with voters, seeing from my small vantage point inside, there is tremendous connection of these two men and moral clarity of seeing what's happening.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
And my question is this, and to anyone kind of considering voting in this election, Trump is going to say stupid shit. He is Trump. We know who he is. There's two important questions to ask. Who sees this corruption and institutional capture that's going to destroy our country, I think, to an existential level? And who is willing to suffer that blowback?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
Who is willing to go up against these military-industrial complex, the healthcare-industrial complex, the education-industrial complex that's making us a non-competitive country? Like they are ready. Who is going to appoint? This is a question I have. Who do we believe is going to appoint people like RFK, people like Elon Musk? to stir stuff up. Who is gonna do that?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
Like that to me is the foundational question. And I do consider this the most important election of my lifetime watching these two men, because it is so genuine. And there is like a genuine desire to truly transform, to see our broken corruption and institutions for what it is. And really, truly, I think prevent nuclear war and dramatically reverse
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
Our health crisis, Trump has said that his one big mistake last time was personnel, was that the pharma and the ag slithered in and gave him the list of names. Everybody should ask, do you think RFK is going to have an influence on those names based on what Trump has said? And I think he is. And I think people like Elon are going to be involved.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
I think there's this coalition of people that are coming together and Trump's going to put in power and listen to. And this is a bipartisan issue. And no matter what happens, we have to solve this issue. But I will say this so clearly with the most conviction I can. We will vote.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
be on the verge, I think, of a health population collapse, societally destabilizing event, unless true executive leadership sees this corruption and this issue for what it is, and says we need a radical transformation in how we see agriculture and how we see health, our two largest industries. I think we have to have that.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
And every single member of Congress I meet with, including Democrats, say that in order for this issue to get done, we need a president to make this the priority to talk because that gives us air cover. And there could be transformational change if a president does that. So that's what I've seen from being in this.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
And I can tell you, President Trump has kept every promise to RFK and deeply cares about this issue.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
Look what they're saying about free speech. Yeah. Right now. You know, you probably covered this. It's just absolutely wild. The free speech comes from the rigging of the scientific research. Bill Gates said this week that we need immediate A.I. to scour the Internet and take any vaccine misinformation out the out of the Internet automatically on any format, any private Web page. This is wild.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
And he said, because the second that virus spreads in people's minds, the damage is done. So his number one use case for AI is to scour the Internet and remove any vaccine misinformation from the Internet. That is because the largest and fastest growing industry in the country has completely co-opted the most trusted vaccines. parts of the country.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
There's no higher level than the NIH, than Harvard Med School. They know that. Harvard Med School is a subsidiary of pharma, just demonstrably. The FDA is 75% funded by pharma. This isn't a conspiracy. And there's a revolving door. And you've got people like Scott Gottlieb, I think the people like Trump's talking about, still thinking he's going to have power.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
This person that goes straight to Pfizer. And you've got him and people like this. And I've met with many of them. Oh, this book is amazing. Good Energy is amazing. The food, you know, of course, we've got to get kids healthier. We've got to work with pharma. We've got to work with all the stakeholders, insurance companies. You know, we've got to be incremental here.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
There's a war right now between incrementalists. and radical change. We are living in a great time, but we have existential threats. And the question before everyone in this very important election is, do we need more incrementality or do we need a fundamental rethink of some of our major systems? I really think that's what's before us.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
And as Casey said, I think we're in a good period of history right now, certainly, but we're facing, I think, more existential threats that I really think we don't fully appreciate.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
These are questions that... I can talk a little... This game is known, so it may be obvious, but I don't think people realize this. The reason there's such a fight against you is because it's this... 100 year change of information sources where the biggest issues in the country can no longer dictate right what the information sources are so when we when we worked for when I worked for pharma and
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
The advertising budget, all this stuff you hear about like how much they spend on cable news and 50% of TV news spending is pharma. It wasn't to impact consumers. It was to impact the news itself. Like the spend on news shows came out of D.C. lobbying offices, not the New York, like Madison Avenue, like advertising offices. It was like we're going to –
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
put our budget it was in the lobbying budget it was like we're going to pay off all the news so we have a direct line so if you're paying 50% and a huge funder of all the tech companies ads their ad companies then you've got a direct line and then you've got the Harvard study
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
So when you have the Harvard study that's fully funded by pharma or the food industry, like the food industry, processed foods spends 13 times more on foundational nutrition research than the NIH, but even the NIH is really conflicted saying that Lucky Charms are healthier than beef, literally.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
uh... you've got those studies so what so what is this person at the news station or or youtube to do when you got the harvard study right they've realized that you can weaponize this thing so that's how it's connect and then time and time and time again i hear from members of congress on major committees they're just that's the corruption that's for the corruption happens they got the lobbyists just throwing studies you know if you
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
restrictions on childhood nutrition, on federally funded school lunch programs, which is the top source, one of them, of calories for young kids. If you take sugary cereal like Lucky Charms off that, you're going against the science. You're going against the NIH. You can't be asking for farm fresh eggs. Farm fresh eggs are down here. Lucky Charms are up here.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
Like, it's funny, these studies, but that's what they do with them. And then I hear time and time again from these members of Congress who are good people, but it's like, Callan, I'm a military guy, or I come from business. I don't understand this stuff. You just got to defer. So that's how the corruption works and that's that that's how the research connects to PR.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
But there's pings of that consciousness happening. That's why I think the leadership is so damn important here, Joe. It's like when this stuff is under the shadows and when the FDA is able to lobby to fund the organization that's supposed to regulate it, when the USDA is lobbying – excuse me, when food companies are lobbying – you know, to have the USDA not have any conflicts of interest.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
When these things, there's not attention on them, and Americans aren't being explained this, like, mass corruption that's compromising all of our scientific guidelines and standard of care where $4.5 trillion of incentives flows to. Like, it's hard. But I would push back.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
I mean, I just... I don't think it's fully formed in people's heads, but, like, I think people are, like, clamoring to put these pieces together. Yes. And that is what... That is... I think RFK standing on the stage with Trump and them grasping hands and saying, make America healthy. I think it was one of the biggest political realignments and important moments in American history.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
Kennedy endorsing Trump like like I cannot. I think a lot of us feel it. Like, I think you see it on the ground. Like this Kennedy Trump thing is powerful. Like the media denigrates it. But like Kennedy is explaining this.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
They're clamoring to this message. Watching RFK and Trump at a rally, it's the most electric political experience I've ever seen. It was the loudest applause I've ever heard. There's something visceral. When RFK starts talking about the CDC needing Dr. Jay Bhattacharya on there and the FDA...
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
you know, and the NIH and starts naming those agencies and starts saying we're going to get to the bottom of why our food for our kids is poison and we're going to reverse childhood chronic disease by taking on this corruption. When they say that, it's electric. It's like a release. It's like a release. So it's everything.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
Everyone's been listening to you, reading these books, trying to put the pieces together. I think RFK is more effectively putting the pieces together. And I think people ask, oh, President Trump, he eats unhealthy. No, no. President Trump's the foundation of his existence is taking on corruption. Like that is why he's on the political stage.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
That is why he's been the defining for whatever you think of in the defining political figure of our generation. Like because he's tapped into this frustration of voters that something isn't quite right. Yeah.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
And that they're good people, and if we can get this corruption out of the way, that he's staying in the way of this corruption, and we can unleash the American people if we get this corruption out of the way. That thesis is correct. What he has tapped into is the defining political trend of our lifetimes, this populist uprising that's happening throughout all the world.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
He has tapped into that in a very powerful way. He's talked for a long time about pharmaceutical corruption and these issues. He understands it innately. But RFK, really, I think better than anyone alive, is sharpening this issue. And he's arguing, as we're trying to argue, it's very simple. It's actually not that complicated.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
You just need to put, truly, as a first step, put Dr. Jay Bhattacharya at the CDC, right? Put someone who's not trying to get their next job at pharma, who's aligned with this fundamental agenda at the NIH, at the FDA, at the HHS. And then have people like Elon. Elon saying he wants to run government efficiency. He wants to look at how government's performing.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
HHS is the largest and the most expensive department in all of government. What if someone like Elon, people like Bill Ackman, who joined this cause, what if they were given an executive order to analyze the HHS and against the goal of promoting health and thriving and disease reversal for the American people. You have the smartest people in the world doing that. I mean, you'd have radical change.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
If you can learn what the pharma has known for the past 30 years, that co-opting our institutions of trust, everything else is downstream of that. There's nothing upstream in culture or trust of those agencies because where do we go about that? Right. So they dictate everything. They dictate the nutrition guidelines. They dictate our agriculture incentives.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
They dictate our standard of care that's jamming a drug down 40% of teens' throats right now. If you can not co-opt them like pharma is doing, but get them back to unbiased science. The NIH right now, 95% of NIH grants they're spending is on marginal pharmaceutical R&D. It's literally an outsourced R&D lab for pharma. Every person listening would expect the NIH job is to do foundational research.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
That's literally what everyone's saying. It's not. Not at all. If you just with a swipe of a pen and leadership just demand day one that the NIH goes back to population-wide fearless studies about why we're getting sick. That's what we need. We literally need the NIH only asking that question. Why are we getting sick? What variables are tied to chronic disease?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
Like, I have a company. I'm meeting with members of both sides. This doesn't change without executive leadership. It's just a factual statement. I hate that health is political. It's not. It's bipartisan. It is political in the next 40 days. This will not change if this issue resonates.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
And if we believe that what's happening to our soil and to our bodies and to our kids' health is really the most important issue, it doesn't change without strong moral clarity and executive leadership, even if the person says stupid shit and tweets weird stuff.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
every single member of Congress. Let me make this super clear. I want everyone to understand this. It's powerful, these interests, but we all know this. I think we can feel this too. They're not monolithic. It's a paper tiger. We can overcome this. It's because there's not focus and marshaling of the American people and light on these things.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
Every single member of Congress tells me, they said, the only thing that beats money is grassroots focus, is Americans focusing on the issue. The most powerful issue in American politics actually aren't money issues. They're grassroots issues. Guns, abortion, those aren't money issues. Those are issues that people are focused on and vote on.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
So what Trump and RFK are starting to do is really tie the foundation of Trump's candidacy, in my opinion, which is really taking the corruption out of the swamp. And there's other issues. Of course, we've got to get the border right, you know, defense, economic agenda. But health care is a glaring example of that.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
where there's been a focus on the campaign and a promise of focus you know in real political i think uh... validity in focusing on that because people are getting really fired up about this i can express the stuff watch the rallies of our can trump there's real visceral political on focus on it so that if that anger right if that same energy stream that's leading people to listen your podcast and leading people to flock to you on
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
And leading, you know, leading to I think people, frankly, to go back to church. I mean, millennials are flocking back to religion. I like like there's all these streams inside where people are kind of like trying to check if leadership can channel that. You know, these are paper tigers. These are paper tigers. But you need the president to say F you.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
to these industries that are profiting from kids being sick. And tell Congress, I'm giving you air cover. Tell those lobbies to get the hell out of your office. That's the message from the president. With that leadership. Now, are these powerful interests? Is this the biggest industries in the country? Right? Are these the most powerful industries in the country?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
Yes, but again, whatever Trump is tweeting, whatever he's saying, you have to just ask yourself, and this comes from a person who used to be an ever-Trumper, who has the courage to stand up to these interests? Who has the courage? Does anyone think that Trump is afraid to put RFK, put Elon, put brave doctors in charge?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
to put people that are distrustful of the military industrial complex in charge of our military. Does anyone think he's not going to do that? Does anyone think he's going to really stand their way and not take some blowback from these industries? He said this very clearly. The biggest mistake of his last presidency was not trusting his gut, was listening to the list of people from the industry.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
So from my opinion, from my small vantage points, what happens is you get bombarded with complexity, right? What the industries do, oh, you can't touch agriculture incentives even though they're broken. That's going to hurt farmers. You can't, you know, oh, health care. Oh, the PBMs. I'm hearing this all the time. The PBMs and the insurance companies, all these players.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
You have to have clarity of vision and an agenda, which President Trump and RFK are talking about, that's super, super clear. It's like we are going to get pharma funding out of the FDA. We are going to reorient with an executive order the goal of the NIH back to foundational research. We are going to disallow people that make nutrition guidelines for kids to take money from Kellogg's.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
Like there's 30 things that you can do. And I think I think what President Trump has talked about and what he says is like, let's stay high level. We're not going to have nuclear war. Right.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
We're going to aggressively call out and push on major policy objectives to take the corruption out of the health care institutions to attack the incentive that every single health care institution in America today makes more money when a child is sicker for a longer period of time. Just demonstrably. Insurance companies, they make 15% by law profit margin. They want premiums to grow.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
That's what's happening. Pharma companies make money on interventions when people are sicker for longer periods of time. Hospitals, as Casey talks about, makes money on interventions, does not make money when people are healthy. Medical schools make money from the sick care system. Just a clear-eyed set of objectives, I think it can fit on a small piece of paper.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
What you do is you have a lobbyist come in and say it's complex. Right. There's just simple questions. Why are we paying 10 times more for drugs than Germany? Why in the United States is 10 times more expensive to buy Ozempic than in Germany or Scandinavia? There's these simple, simple things. You can do that. Trump's talked about it. Biden's talked about it. It's bipartisan.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
It's not free market that we're paying 10 times more than Germans. We're the biggest buyer of drugs in the country. Why are we subsidizing the rest of the world and subsidizing the pharmaceutical industrial complex? That could be one stroke of a pen, right? One stroke of a pen to...
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
uh... reset and say what we do know price setting you can charge whatever you want but we're not gonna be more than germans charger if you want we have every right to do that that's one stroke of pen and then you get the blow back you get all you're gonna hurt innovation it's not our job to fund innovation for europe like chart charges the same price you're gonna hurt um... you know you're gonna lead to drug shortages will have few like charge a higher price it's like you can do he but it but it's like literally just like clear focus and and i think trump like he's talking about this he's seen it
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
So, you know, to anyone kind of and I've gone through this process, it's like he we know who he is, but we also know that he's going to put good people in charge and not stand in their way and wants to be bold.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
goes to work for the food and the farm industry. And on one morning, I'm working with the farm industry to literally steer money to the dean of Stanford Med School, who's a pain specialist, to be put on an NIH panel to say that opioids in 2011, that the issues around addiction were overblown. And we actually helped engineer an NIH panel to issue a report to say, opioid's okay, pain is a crisis.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
Many listeners are battling surely chronic conditions, diabetes, obesity, heart disease, et cetera. I don't think any listener in their head wants to be sick. I don't think any man wants to not walk their daughter down the aisle. My mom wanted to be healthy. She wanted to meet her grandchild, which she wasn't able to do. Think there's the slur and this lie. We are a free country.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
We should have sugary filled foods, right? We should have beer drugs should be legal, but we should not be subsidizing coca-cola with food stamps This standard of care is wrong. Like after my awakening with Casey. I thought what do I want to do with my life? I started a company and it writes letters of medical necessity doctor's notes for food and exercise and
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
We realized something that nobody in the healthcare system knows. Casey didn't learn this at Stanford.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
Our company, TruMed, this year will do 500,000 gym membership recommendations from providers. We initially got a lot of questions from the industry because they've never heard these letters of medical necessity. We've walked in the law.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
As much as Pfizer has tried when I worked for Pfizer, the definition of medicine in the IRS tax code is not a synthetic pill made by a large pharmaceutical industry. The definition of medicine is something that's recommended by a medical practitioner for the prevention, reversal, cure, mitigation of a condition.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
The problem is that they've co-opted what medicine is in our brains, and at Stanford Med School, nobody understands this. So we've actually been educating members of Congress about this. But there's $150 billion in these HSA funds, and this is a message to everyone. Our company's doing it, but I would say it's much wider than that.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
Go to your doctor and demand a letter of medical necessity when they're taking out the prescription pad for the statin, for the metformin, for the SSRI. Study after study shows they have two cohorts of people. They've got people that exercise and eat whole foods, and then they have people that do antidepressants and go to therapy.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
the people that don't go to therapy no drugs but exercise any better food demonstrably better outcomes in depression so i think it is all over its road and this is an important thing i think from conservatives liberal it's not it's not about lecturing americans the answers of lecturing americans what do you mean they're buying books there no listening to doctor human a lot of people on a health journey with our clinical incentives we should be incentivize in the clinically appropriate
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
intervention for what health issues we're facing. We are facing a chronic disease metabolic health crisis. It's nine out of 10 killers of Americans and 95% of medical spending. So just clinically, and Europe is actually doing this, right? If you have PCOS, infertility,
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
in Europe, most countries, you get a subsidized keto diet because PCOS, which is the leading cause of female infertility, is insulin resistant. It's basically on the diabetes spectrum. And the most effective intervention to reverse PCOS and become more fertile is going on a 12-week keto diet. So what happens in the United States?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
Doctors, good friends, and actually my good friend that I always reference is an OBGYN from Harvard now is educating his patients about this, and we've had good conversations. But doctors from Harvard Medical School who are OBGYNs do not know when they're sitting across from a patient who's infertile what causes PCOS. It's immediate.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
The standard of care, the standard of care is immediate jamming hormone pills down that woman's throat and on a quick route to IVF. IVF should absolutely, of course, be legal, but that's an invasive procedure. procedure, right? And no woman listening, I'm sure, who's going through the traditional medical system and most women, many, it's an epidemic right now, PCOS, they're not told this.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
They're not told this. So the key and the policy here is opening up flexibility for Americans to work with their doctor, to trust that they don't want to kill themselves. Sometimes drugs might be the answer. But we're way, way over-indexed on that right now.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
Like, could you imagine what would happen if, you know, Americans who are pre-diabetic or their kids are obese had the ability, instead of the $1,600 that we're mandating for six-year-olds a month of government-funded money to get Ozempic, if that could give mom the choice? Give mom the choice. We would have a transformation of our food system.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
And yeah, so that's what I kind of decided to push on in my life. And really, every American, the most defiant thing you can do personally, 80% of people have an HSA and FSA account. Max those out. If you're battling a chronic condition or even trying to prevent a chronic condition, get your eight sleep, get your athletic greens, get your gym membership. Talk to your doctor about it.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
We want a revolution of people actually demanding – something Casey and I talk a lot about, acute versus chronic. This is very important. If you are about to die with an infection, a burst appendix, a gunshot wound – Go to the doctor. Go to the doctor. Take pause on chronic. Kids are being now kind of, you're anti-science if you don't get on those metformin, statins, SSRIs, Ozempic.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
The studies are being kind of shaming those moms, these poor moms on Medicaid, single moms trying to make ends meet. Medicaid is just a disaster. We poisoned poor kids and then jammed drugs down their throat. Moms don't know what to do. Um, we just, we, uh, we just have to incentivize and just ask that question. And, and, and, and every patient should know you have the ability to, to step back.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
Your, your kid's not going to die tomorrow if they don't take the statin. Like there's another route you can go. And our, we have a chapter, don't, uh, don't trust your doctor. What is it?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
We don't incentivize cigarettes for kids.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
Regenerative ranchers like Will Harris, you know, who's a hero. And truly, I mean, if people want to do something before the election, they're trying to slide the Farm Bill five-year extension under our noses right now. They're trying to vote on that right now because they're trying to get it in before Trump gets in because they know Trump's going to blow stuff up.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
If you want to call your member of Congress, take one minute, ask them to do food and, you know, not have just government-funded Ozempic before fixing our food system, the Treat and Reduce Obesity Act, and tell them it needs to be a one-year extension on the farm bill. This is happening right now. I'm getting literally from heroes and members of Congress are asking me to talk about this.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
They're trying to jam this farm bill that it's 90% subsidizes ultra-processed food ingredients. I mean...
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
We're just we, you know, as a conservative growing up, as a conservative growing up, I used to work for, you know, conservative think tanks used to pay us to along with the NAACP. Excuse me. We used to pay conservative think tanks, the pharma industry. So we rig the system, and then we pay conservative influencers to say it's nanny state to question the rigged system.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
Think about how screwed up that is, right? We rig the system beyond recognition, tens of millions of dollars of lobbying spending to ensure that sugary drinks, that diabetes water is on food stamps. And then the moment you question that... you get attacked by the conservative influencers saying you're nanny state. We are still in that situation.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
We're waking up, and I think Trump's really realigned the parties to where when I grew up as a young conservative, it's like you trust the farmer, trust food without question, and it's totally against orthodoxy on the conservative side to question any corporation. That's changed, which is a very good thing, but you still have little remnants of that.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
Fixing a rigged market is not an attack on the free market. It's a necessity. The pharmaceutical industry spends five times more on lobbying and public affairs than the oil industry. There's five pharmaceutical lobbyists for every single government official. The healthcare industry, just as the economics, is the highest funder of TV news. They're the highest funder of politicians themselves.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
literally by far. They're the highest spender on research. They fund the regulatory agencies themselves, right? They fund the NAACP and civil rights groups and weaponize issues like feminism, racism, and body positivity very strategically to get us to shut up. They are just demonstrably, the healthcare industry is the lifeblood of every single institution that we trust in America.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
And to question that is not nanny state. That's something Trump and RFK have kind of bashed through. We need a reset. We need to come together with the farmers. You know, with the brave people in health care and have a reset. And I would just ask you, does it feel like it's a marginal issue or does it feel like, you know, we kind of need to have almost a spiritual reset here?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
And that's kind of I think we can like if we keep focusing on this and keep pushing, I think we can really unleash what everyone wants, honestly. Yeah.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
This is it sounds complicated. This can be unwound very quickly. Nobody wants this. You need executive leadership, strong executive agenda and then a strong legislative agenda. priorities. And you need, with the executive agenda, to have transformational change eventually get to some real bipartisan.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
But I would argue, just listening to what Casey's talking about in these systems issues, we all think, oh, we got to... Who are the experts, the uncorrupted medical experts who can figure this out? I think people like Elon Musk are much more important healthcare thinkers, systems thinkers.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
We need systems thinkers to literally just start top down, looking at these agencies, looking at the web of incentives, and asking, what is something that makes sense to spur American health and disease reversal? We spend $4.5 trillion. This is on Parson, right? We spend $4.5 trillion. It's growing at double the rate of GDP on basically managing Americans poisoning themselves.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
It's like, how do we successfully use that money to reverse these trends? It's actually when you get down to it and start going down these rabbit holes, there's some major things you could do that are very dramatic. And it does get to core bureaucratic change. And you get to incentive change. You get to reorienting the incentives of these industries.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
And you get to eventually where all the money is, which is where are the subsidies going to and where are those $4.5 trillion of health care spend going to? And you just have to demand that that follows the science and go to the right standard of care. And frankly, again, I can't stress this enough. Just let Americans choose. Give the Americans the information. Like, fearlessly.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
Let's give them the information on diabetes. Let's give them the information on obesity. Let's give them the information on the 72 vaccines. Let's give them the information on everything. And trust that the American people aren't suicidal enough to just want to kill themselves. We've infantilized the American people with our healthcare industry.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
And I think there's actual cultural and spiritual ramifications from that. We have told, the USDA says that it's dangerous to grow food in your backyard. Right. Literally, there's a war on on whole food. Bill Gates says it's pseudoscience, as you said, that, you know, trees help with global warming. He's literally putting up sun blockers.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
He's saying that it's anti-science to say that the future for developing country and feeding them is anything other than lab grown meat and ultra processed food. Like we're in a bizarro world here. We need moral clarity.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
Do we need studies to tell us that regenerative ranching and more natural processes and not raping our soil to where there's only 40 crop cycles left and try to out hack everything and spray poison over all the crops? We just need to get back to basics.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
Well, just just think about these congressional meetings. And it's not a blink of an eye that that podiatrist, Representative Winstrup. Bill, Ozempic, $1,600, trillions of dollars in ramification. Not even a blink. He didn't even read the bill.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
He didn't even read the bill. And then we get lectured at the next meeting. about how not poisoning kids is too expensive.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
All the other comorbidities that kid is going to have because they're not addressing the root cause.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
There's no reason for this. Like you just hear this and if it makes sense and you ask like, how can this be undone? It's just like it truly like this could be undone. Like it's just it's just because we haven't had focus on it. But like you can get this done in a year. Like I truly believe that RFK, you know, and Trump will focus on this.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
Everyone wants this. Everyone wants this. I mean, again, we are idealistic, but this is a legacy issue. It's not a partisan issue. Again, I think that executive leadership, we have to be clear-eyed. If we don't have moral clarity and people that are going to say, go away to these industries and have clear, level-headed thinking on what's actually happening, we're screwed.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
But there are members of Congress and there's bipartisan appetite. Again, we've been meeting with dozens of them. I've been getting personal DMs from members of Congress on this journey, people are clamoring for answers here. And I do believe that a focus on chronic disease reversal can be a banner bipartisan initiative that will go down in history.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
I think in a history book, if we're still around 100 years, we'll talk about this moment where we... I mean, the shame we'll have for what we did to kids on obesity, like childhood obesity. there's no greater moral standard in our country. It's like 3% in Japan. It's like 50% of teens are overweight or obese here. So just like, what are we doing?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
And I think the most important thing we can do today is steer our medical dollars to these root cause metabolic interventions like exercise. We could do that right now with HSAs, FSAs, which is why I started TrueMed.com. Everyone listening should look at your HSA, FSAs. You can go to TrueMed.com, figure out how to spend that money if you qualify on real medicine.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
If we can get our dollars to real medicine and away from waiting to get sick for pharma, we can do some major things. And most people are doing their HSA contributions right now. Inchronicdisease.org is something I set up. It just connects you with your member of Congress with some scripts to talk about this. I do think if people are compelled, we talked about the political.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
There's a real spiritual level here. And I think getting a little bit more involved, just calling your member of Congress for a couple minutes does make a difference. So I'd urge that inchronicdisease.org. Thank you. Thank you.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2210 - Calley Means & Casey Means, MD
And then later in the afternoon, working for food companies, working for Coke, steering money to institutions of trust, steering money to the NAACP to say that taking Coke off food stamps was racist. Coke soda today, to this day, is the number one item on food stamps. What I realized