Shortly before the 2024 election, Dr. Casey Means shared a health-focused list of desires for the incoming Administration with subscribers to her Good Energy newsletter.
Her priorities aligned with those of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Secretary of Health and Human Services, including investigating toxins in food, incentivizing healthy food purchases through food stamps, and replacing factory farming with regenerative methods.
“Above all, I want the next White House to inspire Americans to prioritize health and fitness,” wrote Means, a physician nominated by President Trump for U.S. Surgeon General on May 7. This nomination came after Trump withdrew his initial choice, Dr. Janette Neshiewat, just before her scheduled Senate committee appearance.
Means, co-author of the 2024 book Good Energy: The Surprising Connection Between Metabolism and Limitless Health with her brother Calley Means, shares several health beliefs with Kennedy. She frequently discusses the overuse of drugs and the prevalence of preventable lifestyle-related conditions. She advocates for more nutritious school lunches for children and voices . She also believes that the U.S. food supply contains excessive chemicals.
President Trump mentioned these similarities as a reason for her nomination during a May 8 news conference. “Bobby really thought she was great, I don’t know her,” Trump stated, regarding the selection. Means’ pinned celebrates Kennedy’s White House swearing-in, which she described as a “BEAUTIFUL AND MOMENTOUS DAY FOR AMERICA.”
Means and her brother Calley, a startup founder, are in the Make America Healthy Again movement. In the months leading up to the election, they jointly appeared on and podcasts. Their father, Grady Means, for President Gerald Ford as an aide to Vice President Nelson Rockefeller, a political moderate.
In their 2024 book, the siblings highlight points likely to resonate with Democrats, such as the significant impact of nutrition and exercise on overall health (similar to Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move! campaign addressing childhood obesity) and the excessive influence of the pharmaceutical and food industries on Americans.
However, some of Casey Means’ ideas are more divisive. In a Tucker Carlson interview, she argued that birth control pills are overprescribed and represent a “disrespect of life.” She stated has “a stranglehold on the U.S. population,” convincing people that a pill can solve chronic health issues. She also questioned the routine hepatitis B vaccination for newborns in America, a practice supported by the .
She further questions the safety of childhood vaccines, writing in her newsletter, “There is growing evidence that the total burden of the current extreme and growing vaccine schedule is causing health declines in vulnerable children.”
While many doctors disagree with Means’ medical stances, some suggest that her nomination could improve Americans’ health.
“I’m pleased to see a nominee for surgeon general who prioritizes food and diet-related exercise,” said Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian, director of the Food is Medicine Institute at Tufts University. “This is the biggest health challenge facing Americans.” Means previously criticized Mozaffarian for heading a 2021 that assessed the healthfulness of foods, criticizing it for being funded by companies that manufacture . (He declined to comment on the criticism.)
Means’ emphasis on health and exercise aligns with functional medicine, which aims to identify and address the root causes of diseases rather than just treating symptoms. This challenges traditional medicine’s reliance on prescription drugs—a positive shift, according to Dr. David Perlmutter, a neurologist and proponent of low-carb diets and functional medicine.
“Casey brings the perspective that we should focus on health and maintaining wellness,” says Perlmutter, who has known Means for eight years. “Our health care system is now more about treating disease than promoting health.”
Perlmutter was featured on a episode for Levels, the tech company Means co-founded in 2019 to help users track real-time metabolic data through continuous glucose monitoring. (She is the company’s ; it is unclear whether she would relinquish this role as surgeon general.) Means has also appeared on Perlmutter’s podcast. In 2021, they co-authored an in MedPage Today, a website for health professionals, criticizing the Biden Administration and federal guidelines for not recommending a low-enough daily added sugar limit.
Means attended college and medical school at Stanford University. She began a medical residency in otolaryngology-head & neck surgery at Oregon Health and Science University but left during her fifth year, realizing she wasn’t learning the underlying causes of illness, as she wrote in her book.
From 2019 to 2022, she served as an editor for the International Journal for Disease Reversal and Prevention, a peer-reviewed publication focused on nutrition and lifestyle science. According to Kim Allan Williams, the journal’s editor in chief, Means primarily edited poems, essays, and artwork. “I can’t answer much except outside of her eye for art and literature. She was great at that!” he wrote in an email regarding her tenure.
Means has also explored poetry in her newsletter. A (created with AI assistance, she notes) titled “The Devil’s Wellness Plan” begins: “If I were the devil, I’d ditch the disguise—/No pitchfork, no flames, just marketing lies.”
The poem addresses vaccinations, marketing, and medications, containing stanzas that echo talking points of the MAHA and MAGA movements:
“I’d give boys man-boobs through toxic food,/And call masculine strength aggressive and lewd./I’d whisper, “You’re too much, too loud,”/And shame men’s fire as something rude.
I’d flood your screens with porn on demand,/Till touch means pixels, not holding a hand./I’d teach women that cooking is something to dread,/That birth needs control and a hospital bed.”
