Good Energy

A bold new vision for optimizing our health now and in the future from a medical doctor and pioneer in health technology A few years ago, Dr. Casey Means was in her surgical residency at a prestigious hospital when she realized a pattern: As Dr. Means explains, if you are battling “minor” health issues like fatigue, brain fog, anxiety, or infertility, it’s important to realize that the underlying cause of these conditions is generally the same as what will lead to a “major” illness like cancer, heart disease, stroke, or dementia sometime later in life. But here’s the powerfully good news: Improving good energy is simple, Weaving together cutting-edge research and personal stories, as well as groundbreaking data from the health technology company Dr. Means founded, <Good Energy< will empower you with information about how your body functions, so that you can optimize your ability to get well and <stay well< as you age....

Autorentext

Casey Means is the Chief Medical Officer and co-founder of Levels, a health technology company with the mission of reversing the world’s metabolic health crisis. She has been on faculty at Stanford University, lecturing on metabolic health and health technology. She received her undergraduate degree with honors from Stanford, where she was President of her class. She graduated from Stanford Medical School and trained in Head & Neck Surgery at Oregon Health and Science University before leaving traditional medicine to devote her life to tackling the root cause of why Americans are sick. Calley Means is Co-Founder of TrueMed, and an advocate for policy to change health incentives. He is a graduate of Stanford and Harvard Business School.

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A bold new vision for optimizing our health now and in the future

What if depression, anxiety, infertility, insomnia, heart disease, erectile dysfunction, type 2 diabetes, Alzheimer’s, dementia, cancer and many other health conditions that torture and shorten our lives actually have the same root cause?
Our ability to prevent and reverse these conditions - and feel incredible today - is under our control and simpler than we think. The key is our metabolic function - the most important and least understood factor in our overall health. As Dr. Casey Means explains in this groundbreaking book, nearly every health problem we face can be explained by how well the cells in our body create and use energy. To live free from frustrating symptoms and life-threatening disease, we need our cells to be optimally powered so that they can create “good energy,” the essential fuel that impacts every aspect of our physical and mental wellbeing.
If you are battling minor signals of “bad energy” inside your body, it is often a warning sign that more life-threatening illness
may emerge later in life. But here’s the good news: for the first time ever, we can monitor our metabolic health in great detail and learn how to improve it ourselves.
Weaving together cutting-edge research and personal stories, as well as groundbreaking data from the health technology company Dr. Means founded, Good Energy offers an essential four-week plan and explains:

• The five biomarkers that determine your risk for a deadly disease.
• How to use inexpensive tools and technology to “see inside your body” and take action.
• Why dietary philosophies are designed to confuse us, and six lifelong food principles you can implement whether you’re carnivore or vegan.
• The crucial links between sleep, circadian rhythm, and metabolism
• A new framework for exercise focused on building simple movement into everyday activities
• How cold and heat exposure helps build our body’s resilience
• Steps to navigate the medical system to get what you need for optimal health
  Good Energy offers a new, cutting-edge understanding of the true cause of illness that until now has remained hidden. It will help you optimize your ability to live well and stay well at every age.

Leseprobe
At the end of medical school, I had to choose one of forty-two specialties: one part of the body to devote my life to.

Separation defines modern medicine. Starting from my first year of medical education, I funneled from a broad perspective on the body to increasingly narrower and narrower ones. When I picked a premed major in college, I left the study of physics and chemistry behind to focus solely on biology. In med school, I memorized all the facts on human biology, no longer focusing on other biologic systems like plants and animals. As a resident, I was focused on performing surgeries on one specific area: the head and neck, and thought little about the rest of the body.

Had I completed five years of that training, I would have been eligible to zero in even further on a subspecialty within that specialty. I could have become a rhinologist (focused solely on the nose), a laryngologist (focused solely on the larynx), an otologist (focused solely on the three tiny bones of the inner ear, plus the cochlea and eardrum), or a specialist in head and neck cancer (among other options). The primary goal for my career would have been to become better and better at treating a smaller and smaller part of the body.

If I were really good at what I did, maybe the medical establishment would even name a disease of a body part after me, as they did for the dean of Stanford Medical School-a world-renowned otologist named Dr. Lloyd B. Minor, who focused his entire career on about three square inches of the body. In the condition named after him, Minor's syndrome, microscopic changes in the inner ear bones are thought to lead to various balance and otologic symptoms. Dean Minor represented a physician's ultimate model of success: stay focused on your specialty and climb the ladder. You also protect yourself that way: for the average clinician, staying in your lane ensures you don't incur liability for incorrectly treating something out of your scope of practice.

By my fifth year, I was the chief resident in otology, a subspecialty of head and neck surgery, focusing on those three square inches of the body around the ear that control hearing and balance. I frequently saw patients like Sarah, a thirty-six-year-old woman who visited the otology clinic gripped with intractable migraine, with attacks occurring more than ten times per month. Since dizziness and auditory symptoms can be a feature of this debilitating neurological condition, sufferers often find their way to this specialized department as they make their way through a labyrinth of providers. After a decade of bad migraine episodes, Sarah's world had shrunk dramatically in scope. As she was living on disability and largely housebound, her existence revolved around her condition. She was so light-sensitive that she always wore wraparound sunglasses and walked with a cane due to her inflammatory arthritis. A support dog always stood by her side.

Reviewing her hundred pages of faxed medical charts, I discovered she had seen eight medical specialists in the past year to address a larger cluster of persistent and painful symptoms. A neurologist had prescribed medications for her migraine attacks. A psychologist had prescribed a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) for her depression. A cardiologist had prescribed hypertension medication. A palliative care specialist had prescribed additional remedies for the unremitting pain throughout her joints. Despite all these interventions and medications, Sarah was still suffering.

Carefully paging through the documents, I felt stunned. What could I possibly offer this woman that she had not already tried?

As part of my routine migrai…