Some Thoughts on 'Good Energy' by Dr. Casey Means

“…what it's threatening is their livelihoods, it's threatening their jobs, it's threatening the way that they do things. And every time that happens, whether it's the government or a way of doing business or whatever it is, the people that are holding the reins that have their hands on the switch. They go bat shit crazy.” 

—Speech by John Henry, owner of the Boston Red Sox in the film “Money Ball”

The book Good Energy: The Surprising Connection Between Metabolism and Limitless Health by Casey and Calley Means makes several charges against food manufacturers, any nonorganic food, doctors, medical organizations like the AMA and the American Dietetics Association, medical schools, Pharma, and food regulatory agencies. Alternatively, the Means offer support for activist organizations like the Environmental Working Group (EWG), eastern religions, and psychedelics. 

The Means have discussed the book in interviews with Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly, Joe Rogan and a Senate Hearing but, before we go bat shit crazy, we should ask what evidence exists to support the charges.

For a start, whether you are reading the book or listening to the authors on a podcast, in a testimony, or in an interview, there is a lot of uncertainty in both the science and the recommendations. Good Energy is not a sacred text. In fact, there is no way that the science of nutrition can come close to producing a sacred text. One FDA Commissioner shortened “nutrition” to “not science” and shortened that to “nonsense” (read about it in Fixing Food). The data used in most nutrition studies, including those used in Good Energy, rely on what people “remember they have eaten”—not exactly a reliable foundation for scientific accuracy.

They also charge doctors for not knowing about nutrition as most doctors haven’t taken any nutrition courses or if they have, it’s just been one class.  But with a full four-year undergraduate degree followed by three to seven years in residency, what should be eliminated to fit in nutrition?

Next, go to the science. I confess, I haven’t checked all of the sources in the book, but I’m always suspicious of the science received from activist organizations who do not follow risk principles, the World Health Organization, and its subsidiary, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC). I also don’t know how many of the studies cited are associations (e.g., more ice cream is consumed in summer and there are more sunburns so ice cream causes sunburns). 

But the book does have several intriguing hypotheses that should be investigated, particularly the claim that chronic inflammation is typically in lockstep with metabolic dysfunction and is the underlying cause of depression, anxiety, infertility, insomnia, heart disease, erectile dysfunction, type 2 diabetes, Alzheimer’s, dementia, cancer, and many other health conditions. 

Even though this book has been brought into the political process, it should not be a political investigation. Instead, I think President Kennedy had it right:

“Let us not seek the Republican answer, or the Democratic answer, but the right answer.”

I also worry about the jump to policy and there are several ways the recommendations in Good Energy could wind up in policy:

Physicians—Doctors currently train for four years after undergraduate school and take three to seven years in residency. Given that, what would we remove to include nutrition and other recommendations? There are potential policies covering food, exercise, meditation, light exposure, sleep, temperature, mind-body connections, and environmental toxins. Would physicians need to know all of these as well as having insurance for not advising patients to get the recommended “twelve cumulative minutes (of) cryotherapy, cold showers, or cold immersion in a cold plunge tub or cold lake, river, or pool per week”?

Government Food Programs—Would food programs like SNAP, Women, Infant, and Children, National School Lunch, Summer Food Service Program, Meals on Wheels, and the Commodity Supplemental Food Program be required to provide the recommended meals such as “Arizona Pepper’s Hot Sauce, Wildbrine Raw Organic Sauerkraut, NuttZo Organic nut butter, and Brami Italian Snacking Beans?

Federal Insurance—Would Medicaid, Medicare, and the ACA cover Yoga, Taio Chi or Qigong, or forming a “relationship with a mental health therapist, coach, or counselor for one hour per week of “introspection on your “being imprisoned by maladaptive thought patterns?”

Regulations—Would the Consumer Product Safety Commission ban retail receipts because of absorption exposure to bisphenol S, which might be an endocrine-disrupting chemical linked to cancer?

Of course, the problem with suggesting nonsensical policies is that they actually may wind up in laws or regulations.

Other recommendations in Good Energy are suggestions for monitoring vital signs, glucose, sleep, exercise, and other health endpoints. These are good ideas and perhaps we can start to use the information from voluntarily purchased monitors to gather more causation evidence. This would include food and health practices’ effects on biomarkers and the link between biomarkers and disease.

One useful policy would be one that allows us to capture data that can be accessed by any researchers and one that protects private users from having their data exploited. An open access database would allow any researcher to use the data to investigate the many claims made in this book.

So, to the extent that some of the science and recommendations gather interest, this marks the start of the process, not the end.