Calley Means

Supporting President Trump and RFK’s mission to reverse the childhood chronic disease crisis.

[Calley Means @calleymeans]

In a burst of energy before she died, my mom urged us to take her to where she'd be buried.

Cupping my dad's face, she talked about how magical their life was together.

It was the most profound moment of my life, and it wouldn't have happened if we listened to her doctors.

Just 13 days before, in January 2021, my mom was apparently healthy.

She felt a pain in her stomach during her morning hike and got a scan. Stage 4 pancreatic cancer.

She called me and said she wouldn’t meet her future grandchildren. The family rushed to her side. My sister @DrCaseysKitchen and I learned three things over those next 13 days... Lessons that we think provide an explanation - and solutions - for the largest issue our country faces: the fact that we are getting sicker, fatter, more depressed, and more infertile at an increasing rate while bankrupting our country with healthcare costs.

The first was that the predominant incentive in medicine is to intervene after you get sick.

Right after my mom's unexpected cancer diagnosis, a medical team out of Stanford and Palo Alto Medical Foundation jumped to action, recommending a laundry list of surgeries and procedures—biopsies, blood transfusions, and a liver stent. In most cases, the patient would have agreed to these procedures, and the meeting would wrap up quickly.

These recommendations were coming from some of the most prestigious institutions in the world, after all.

But based on my sister's experience in medicine (Stanford MD and surgical residency), she started asking questions. We learned that these procedures had about a 33 percent chance of extending her life a few more months at most, a 33 percent chance of shortening her life span, and a 33 percent chance of not impacting her life span (yet keeping her away from the family). In all cases, the invasive route would mean that my mom would need to sit in a hospital room alone, because of Covid-19 protocols, and potentially longer if the surgery had complications, as they often do with immunocompromised cancer patients.

My mom made it clear to the oncologist that she was not afraid of her rapidly impending death, but she wanted to minimize unnecessary pain or nausea in her final days. Despite being clear, the system pushed the exact procedures that would yield pain and nausea and aggressively shamed our family for questioning the full-court press approach.

Thank God we had my sister - who had routinely seen doctors push unnecessary surgeries to terminally ill patients during her training - who had the wherewithal to push back.

In 99.9% of cases, my mom would have died alone in a hospital room and we would have missed the life-changing final days with her.

The second lesson was that my mom's cancer was not "random." Her oncologists said it was "bad luck." It wasn't.

In the decades leading up to my mom’s cancer diagnosis, she was informed her rising cholesterol, waistline, fasting glucose, and blood pressure levels were conditions that she could “manage” for life with a pill. But instead of isolated conditions, all of the symptoms my mom experienced leading to her death were warning signs of the same thing: dysregulation in how her cells were producing and using energy.

But through decades of symptoms, my mom—and most other adults in the modern world—are simply prescribed pills and not set on a path of curiosity about how these conditions are connected and how the root cause can be reversed.

The third lesson was that there is a better way than our current system, and it starts with understanding that the biggest lie in health care is that the root cause of why we’re getting sicker, heavier, more depressed, and more infertile is complicated.

Depression, anxiety, acne, infertility, insomnia, heart disease, erectile dysfunction, type 2 diabetes, Alzheimer’s dementia, cancer, and most other conditions that torture and shorten our lives are actually rooted in the same thing.

And the ability to prevent and reverse these conditions—and feel incredible today—is under your control and simpler than you think.

After leaving traditional medicine and working with patients to understand their biomarkers and take simple root causes actions - my sister routinely saw quick reversals of formerly intractable conditions.

The siloing and medicalization of chronic disease in the past fifty years has been an abject failure. Today, we’ve siloed diseases and have a treatment for everything:
✅High cholesterol? See a cardiologist for a statin.
✅High fasting glucose? See an endocrinologist for metformin.
✅Depressed? See a psychiatrist for a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI).
✅Can’t sleep? See a sleep specialist for Ambien.
✅PCOS? See an ob-gyn for clomiphene.
✅Erectile dysfunction? See a urologist for Viagra.
✅Sinus infections? See an ENT for an antibiotic or surgery.

But what nobody talks about—what I think many doctors don’t even realize—is that the rates of most of these conditions are going up at the exact time we are spending trillions of dollars to “treat them.”

In the face of these unprecedented trends happening to our brains and bodies across our life span—which all have metabolic dysfunction as a root—we are told to “trust the science.” This obviously doesn’t make sense. We have been gaslighted to not ask questions over the past fifty years at the exact time chronic disease rates have exploded.

The truth: we should consider listening to the medical system if we have an acute issue like a life-threatening infection or broken bone. But when it comes to the chronic conditions that plague our lives, we should distrust almost every institution giving the advice. The answers are much more simple and under our control.
___

In the days following my mom's death, my sister and I affirmed to devote our lives to changing these broken health incentives. And Casey expressed a passion to write a book with lessons she's learned working inside and outside the medical system. I have helped her write this book over the past several years and it will be coming out in May.

A lot of issues will be discussed as we enter 2024, but the most important is that our human capital in America (particularly kids) is being decimated by preventable and reversible metabolic conditions. Thank you @bariweiss @TheFP for publishing an excerpt.

[Calley Means @calleymeans]

The position of the US government and the scientific community is that ultraprocessed food consumption is highly tied to our chronic disease crisis that is killing Americans and bankrupting our country.

[FOX & Friends @foxandfriends]

'THIS IS PROOF': Consuming ultra-processed foods increases the risk of brain damage, according to a new study highlighted by @DrMarcSiegel:

Middle-aged adults who eat high amounts of ultra-processed foods are 40% more likely to show small areas of brain damage on MRIs:

"They looked at MRIs of the brain and found areas... where blood flow is impacted directly, leading to silent strokes... development of vascular dementia in people that ate a ton of ultra-processed foods.

We're talking about hydrogenated oils. We're talking about processed sugars. We're talking about additives, preservatives, chemicals, empty foods—not whole foods."

[Calley Means @calleymeans]

@politico This crisis was handled spectacularly, but Politico is fretting a year later that the government didn’t forcibly jab 200 million birds in the U.S. food supply with an unproven gene therapy.

[Secretary Kennedy @SecKennedy]

This week, I joined @NIHDirector_Jay, @DrOzCMS, and @DrSchwartzCDC at NIH to open a historic clinic dedicated to studying and caring for patients experiencing health problems following vaccination.

We must listen to patients and families who report vaccine injuries—not dismiss or gaslight them. President Trump and I are building a health system that takes them seriously, follows the evidence, and uses what we learn to make vaccines safer.

This is how we earn back trust in our public health institutions.

[Calley Means @calleymeans]

@HealthRanger Is your insinuation that we’d be in a better place today if this movement didn’t happen.

[Calley Means @calleymeans]

There’s predictable deluge of stories talking down the MAHA movement. We should not lose perspective:

MAHA has been one of the most successful and fastest growing political movements in modern American history.

In two years, the Overton window of what is acceptable discourse has radically shifted: dangers of ultraprocessed food as an epochal health issue, corporate capture of health institutions, vaccine injury, the central importance of the chronic disease crisis - these are all now prominent and central paradigms in how major institutions think about health that were thrust into discussion by this movement and aren’t going away.

DC moves incrementally and slow. That is not an excuse, it is a fact. But given this, policies that have been unthinkable two years ago (flipped food pyramid, landmark food safety reform, soda off snap, psychedelic pathways, vaccine schedule reforms). Despite a relentless effort by protectors of the status quo to smear the movement in the media, these policies are among the most widely supported issues in American politics.

Outside of politics, there is a sledgehammer coming to traditional medicine with the wave of personalized health services that patients are demanding - this isn’t going back in the box. Americans are dramatically changing to healthier habits - as evidenced by record growth in real food purchases last year. The majority of moms are asking more questions about vaccines and other pharmaceutical products that pediatricians harangue to them are safe and effective. I can say with certainty that boardrooms do not see MAHA as a failing movement - they see these issues as the most disruptive social force their companies have ever encountered.

On the issues where advocates feel progress is slow, the Trump admin has been consciously and deliberately encouraging discussion and debate on these topics (as evidenced by the MAHA report - which is the bravest document released by the government in modern times and consciously invited scrutiny of disruptive topics and the government itself). Culture is not going back, and that is a historic accomplishment of the Trump admin.

It is a fact that both parties have stunted dialogue on these issues for decades and have done almost nothing to address the root cause of disease. The union of President Trump and RFK is a pre-eminent reason this movement is where it is.

This is not to say the diverse MAHA movement should not continue advocating or expressing disappointment. There are civilizational stakes here and millions of Americans are still dying needlessly because of the orgy of corruption that underlies our food and health incentives.

But we should also NOT let the media talk this movement down - or imply that it hasn’t been one of the most successful coalitions in American history in changing culture and policy - and that is also just getting started.

[Calley Means @calleymeans]

@MichaelRCaputo Congratulations Michael

[Calley Means @calleymeans]

@CindyHoedel I’m not saying to blindly trust ai. It is absolutely my experience tho that answers are more personalize and less poisoned by corrupt Top-down groupthink you will hear from traditional medicine.

[Calley Means @calleymeans]

Today, it is medical negligence for a doctor to give you advice (particularly on drugs you or your child should take) without advising you to get a second opinion with Super-intelligence.

[Calley Means @calleymeans]

My thinking is that there’s much to be concerned about with Ai - many of them outlined in the comments. But right now, the largest search category for Ai is personalized medical and nutrition advice. It’s clear to me there’s a positive vision where this technology can help empower personalized medical advice.

Grok does not say the Covid vaccine is safe and effective when you question about your personal circumstance. It gives a much more nuanced answer on this topic - particularly as you push follow up questions. Biden tried to embed “expert” opinion and woke groupthink in models but that failed.

When my child had a medical issue, a doctor said to take drugs and ai (upon follow up questions) outlined the issue was gut related and gave extremely detailed root cause intervention that worked.

[Calley Means @calleymeans]

@grok You gave this answer recently. Can you think critically (not regurgitating what other people said) and give me a recommendation.

[Calley Means @calleymeans]

@julie4butte5 @MaryBowdenMD It is negligent to not get a second opinion with Ai.

[Lee Zeldin @epaleezeldin]

The Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement would not be possible without the exceptional leadership and partnership we are witnessing from President Trump and @SecKennedy. Every day, they are advancing consequential policies to make our families stronger, healthier, and more enduring.

[Calley Means @calleymeans]

@MAHA_Action We’re never going back

[Calley Means @calleymeans]

At the MAHA summit, a major food executive said “we all support the MAHA goal of healthy food.”

Respectfully, this is dead wrong.

Case in point: junk food companies just started a shadow group to attack the Trump admin and undermine confidence in regenerative agriculture and healthy food executive orders.

Make no mistake - there are trillions of dollars of incentives that rely on Americans staying addicted, metabolically unhealthy, and dependent.

Every major MAHA win - food dyes, soda off SNAP, GRAS reform, dietary guidelines, regenerative agriculture - has major detractors and the admin has demonstrated real political bravery to go against them.

On earnings calls, CEOs openly talk about their existence being dependent on Americans eating more unhealthy food at more regular intervals. The executives also talk about millions in R&D investment to make the food more addictive to kids.

These entities are actively fighting against efforts by the NIH, FDA, and CDC to give Americans more transparency into their food.

While these companies are lecturing the Trump admin about “the science,” they fail to mention that the companies funding this work settled criminal penalties for bribing the EPA and forging research for major pesticide reviews. The Trump admin - across all regulatory agencies - is now insisting on transparency.

Everyone should be heartened that these craven efforts will fail - and the policy/cultural momentum unleashed by the Trump admin is not going away.

[Calley Means @calleymeans]

@JasonT28358737 @SecKennedy We are having a more open and robust conversation about vaccines - supported at the highest level - than could have been possibly imagined three years ago.

[Calley Means @calleymeans]

President Trump and @SecKennedy bonded over the mutual desire to get BIG things done against the dark, pernicious, corrupt forces of the status quo in DC.

And that is happening.

If someone can’t admit that the past two have seen unprecedented positive cultural and policy momentum to improve our food system and address the root cause of disease, they have a cognitive impairment where their brains are not able to separate political bias from reality.

And this momentum is showing incredible results. This admin has overseen:

✅the largest growth in U.S. life expectancy ever.
✅the first decline in obesity in modern history.
✅an 8% increase in real food purchases.
✅ ultraprocessed company stocks underperforming the S&P by 60% because Americans are buying less of it.