All Episodes
Previous Next
Jan. 15, 2025 - Epoch Times
22:27
Why Americans Are Getting Sicker and Dying Younger: Calley Means
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
We're being lied to about chronic disease.
That's 90% of medical spending.
92% of American deaths are chronic disease.
It's only 8% are infectious.
And we have this system that profits from that.
But what we could do, which what President Trump and Bobby Kennedy talked about, is get to the root cause.
In this episode, I sit down with Kelly Means, co-author of Good Energy, the surprising connection between metabolism and limitless health.
He has been working in the MAHA, the Make America Healthy Again movement, on a blueprint for reforming the public health establishment.
This is American Thought Leaders, and I'm Jan Jekielek.
Kali Means, such a pleasure to have you on American Thought Leaders.
Oh, I'm pumped to be here.
So you were for years a consultant in the food industry.
And I guess I want to find out, you know, right now you're speaking a lot.
Kind of against the practices of the existing food industry.
And I want to just find out how you got there.
Well, you know, in D.C., growing up as a young conservative, it was the right thing to just really not question our great industries.
I mean, I was, you know, an intern at the White House for Bush and the Heritage Foundation, did campaigns, and it was just what you did.
You went and consulted for the great corporations of America and helped...
You know, push innovation with pharma and help push food innovation.
And I thought it was the right thing to do.
I thought I was on the right side.
But, you know, over years I've put together, and I think the country's spreading together, it's really corporate capture is a big issue.
I think there's been this shift from 15 years ago.
You would never question these big industries.
So now a lot of skepticism.
And I think that's very warranted.
But definitely put those pieces together while working for these industries.
First of all, how did you transition into working for these industries from government, right?
It's a revolving door.
It's what everyone does.
When you're done with the campaign, you go and lobby, you go consult, and you go back and forth.
And you find yourself at these public affairs and lobbying firms, and then inevitably at these firms, you're working with people across the aisle, people that you were competing against with during the campaign.
You're working with, you know...
Me working for McCain, I was working with the Obama administration and Obama campaign people to help the biggest spenders in D.C. Pharma and the healthcare industry in mass.
So you just kind of find yourself there.
Everyone's talking about innovation and helping these industries, but I found myself helping food companies pay the NAACP to say that taking Coke and soda off of food stamps was racist.
I found myself working for opioid makers, lobbying for pharma, to pay off researchers to say that opioids weren't addictive.
I mean, the reason food industry spends 11 times more on nutrition research than the NIH and the lifeblood of scientific research comes from the pharma industry, they're not trying to advance unbiased scholarship.
They're trying to get a result.
Well, so clearly what is it that you discovered and what caused you to find your...
Is it the come-to-God moment?
I don't know what it is.
Well, I'll take the last part of the question, which is, what helped me?
I left the industry.
It didn't quite feel right.
I didn't put all the pieces together.
I became an entrepreneur for the past 10 years.
My sister...
The star of the family, Stanford Med School, NIH researcher, head and neck surgeon, she left the system after realizing she'd never learned at Stanford during residency what actually makes people sick.
She was doing surgery all day on inflammation, but she didn't know why people were getting inflammation.
She just knew how to bill to cut it out or to prescribe a drug for it.
So she put together this idea that it's simple, but we have a sick care system.
You know, when you wind it down, 95% of medical spending is on managing people that are already sick.
So that was really formative to me helping with that.
And then, you know, having a child or my mom abruptly getting a cancer diagnosis and dying, but hearing that was unlucky when it wasn't unlucky.
What I put together with my sister is that she was on five other medications, my mom.
And each of these medications, each of these chronic diseases that we're all dealing with in America are missed opportunities to get to the root cause, you know.
You know, if you have high cholesterol, that doesn't cure the issue.
You know, high blood sugar, metformin, you're a little depressed, SSRI. These drugs are being prescribed like candy right now.
It's making money.
It's very profitable to really ignore the root cause and just be managing these conditions for life.
And that's what my sister, I really...
Put together after my mom's death.
We decided to write a book.
The thesis of the book is simple.
It's that we're being lied to about chronic disease.
That's 90% of medical spending.
92% of American deaths are chronic disease.
That's only 8% are infectious.
And we have this system that profits from that.
But what we could do, which what President Trump and Bobby Kennedy talked about, is get to the root cause.
I mean, we spend $4.5 trillion on medicine right now.
There is a world where that could be steered towards reversing chronic disease, towards incentivizing thriving among the American people.
So, you know, it's not about making people eat healthy or making people exercise, but we could be incentivizing those things with our public policy.
And that's what we really wanted to divide our lives to pushing.
You kind of answered both questions, I think.
Well, tell me a little bit, what do you know about how President Trump and Bobby Kennedy...
You know, ended up having a meeting of the minds.
I had my kind of political eye from being in D.C. on this issue because I wanted to, if I was going to contribute one thing to this, it's how does the politics reflect the policy we want?
There's not change in America unless you get voters behind it in our system.
So I could see that there was all these parents frustrated with kids getting sick, all these adults kind of anxious about the fact that we're dying younger and getting sicker.
How do you channel that into a movement?
So my sister and I began advocating, went on Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly, you know, the independent media, non-corporate owned media is so important, what you guys are doing.
And Tucker connected me with Bobby and I got connected with the Trump campaign through Fox News and shared, just started sharing ideas.
Bobby obviously knows them well, but the Trump campaign was very interested.
And then something happened with the Butler shooting.
So I was watching on TV after Trump, the assassination attempt with the blood.
It's pouring down his face.
It was very emotional.
So I called Bobby, and there's a movement, Bobby, that he built, where he was getting 20% of the vote around this idea of combating chronic disease.
Really the same ideas that Trump talks about of combating corruption.
And he called Trump that night.
So I think a huge part of the Maha movement, and the Maha movement was really forged in this conversation just hours after Trump was shot.
And from my small vantage point, they really bonded.
I think Trump was obviously really thinking about unity, thinking about big ideas.
And they had hours of future conversations.
And I think there was something special that was forged between them.
You see it to this day.
They really like each other.
Trump really gets it.
Bobby was really, I think, able to bring Trump along and explain how sick kids are a great...
Great example of the swamp, of the bad incentives that Trump talked about.
So then Bobby just busted his butt to help Trump during the campaign.
I think that led to a lot of respect.
And it led to help.
It led to electoral help.
You had the gender gap close.
You had independence vote Trump for the first time.
You had different demographic groups, young people.
I think the Maha movement really helped politically, and that's what's giving this movement power to really take on these entrenched interests.
It's just interesting to me how much stemmed from that assassination attempt, that unbelievably close call.
Because that was also the moment, I think, that Elon Musk decided to officially endorse.
That was one of the most important events in American history, I think.
I think this election was one of the most important elections in American history, I think, of my lifetime.
And I think the biggest story in the world of our generation is populist backlash against these institutions that have really let us down, experts that have let us down.
It's manifesting throughout the world, right?
And Trump represents that, and they took a shot at him.
And he got up, and he put his fist up, and he said, fight.
I mean, it was one of the most extraordinary moments in American history.
So that led Elon to support.
That led Bobby to make the call.
I think a lot came out of that.
Well, and so how are you involved in all this?
Well, so after helping to facilitate the introduction...
I stayed close to Bobby in the Trump campaign, participated in events, helped as much as I could with messaging during the campaign.
And then I've been in Palm Beach with Bobby.
I mean, Bobby, I think what's cool about this is he's got an informal group of people.
You know, that I think have come to this for the right reasons, you know, that are really passionate about helping kids.
At an off-the-record closed-door meeting with Bobby Kennedy and the Trump campaign, there's no ideology.
It's how do we create policies to get transparency?
How do we get policies to change the incentives that profit from kids being sick?
Callie, we're going to take a quick break right now, and we'll be right back.
And we're back with Callie Means, co-author of Good Energy and co-founder of TruMed.
I think there's quite a number of Americans that are honestly concerned.
For example, one of the mantras here is he's going to get rid of the polio vaccine, right?
People are afraid that their children will suffer because of policies.
They actually believe that.
I'm not talking about people that are looking to sabotage it for some other reason.
Bobby Kennedy is focused on one thing and one thing only when it comes to vaccines, and it's getting information to the American people.
I mean, if there's things that guide Bobby, it's transparency.
And I think there has been, and I think most Americans agree with this, it's troubling when there's an attack on information even getting out.
I mean, it is true.
It is actually wild when you dig into this, how little information is actually out on the vaccines we're giving our kids.
How stigmatized and attacked anyone is for even asking questions.
Bobby is going to instruct the NIH with President Trump.
To do unbiased research on every single area that impacts American public health.
That's what they're going to do.
And it's going to be much, much wider than vaccines.
You know, 50% of pharmaceutical trials that underlie FDA approval for the 4.6 billion prescriptions Americans get per year aren't able to be replicated.
I mean, we have junk science.
Just as a demonstrable fact, the two largest vaccine makers in America have settled $5 billion in criminal penalties.
You can have great public health advancements and still be skeptical and continue to do science.
So that's the big agenda for Trump.
It is transparency.
We're going to let information out.
We're going to do new research on why we're getting sick.
We're also going to release the existing research.
We're going to stop infantilizing the American patient.
We're going to trust Americans that they're trying to make the best decisions for their health and their kids.
The problem with public health in America right now is we've relied too much on the experts.
We should have expertise.
We should have to read science.
But we should have it open and then really unlock flexibility for Americans to make the best decision for their personal situation with their doctors.
Right now we don't have that.
The American Medical Association has a stranglehold over American practice of care.
This is a pharma lobby group.
This is a pharma lobby group.
It's a lobbying group that has the judgment to recommend gender transition surgeries to two-year-olds, which is literally what the American Medical Association does today.
They have no age limit on gender transition surgery.
This is an industry, a group, that we've outsourced 20% of the U.S. economy to.
So this is the Trump maha agenda.
It's transparency, and it's trusting patients to make the best decisions for themselves.
Science is constant questions.
Science is constant hypotheses.
Science is asking taboo, unpopular questions.
Science is researching areas we're told not to look into.
That's science.
I believe, and I truly believe this, and I think it will shock many on the left, the Trump administration is going to go down in history books as a return to science.
There has been an absolute war on science where people say that we can't ask questions.
People say that we should be locking down schools, wearing masks, causing a generation of developmental issues with kids.
The war on science has happened from the captured...
The NIH researchers have made billions of dollars of unreported, conflicted royalties.
From drugs.
Every single institution that impacts our health makes money when Americans are sicker.
They're not asking why we're getting Alzheimer's.
They're not asking why we died four times higher rate of COVID deaths in America than other countries in Asia, right?
They're asking how do we profit from people being sick.
It's just a demonstrable economic fact that every institution that impacts our health, insurance companies, pharma, hospitals, med schools, profit when we're sicker.
One would think that should be examined.
Yeah.
Pharmaceutical companies make more money when people are prescribed drugs for long periods of time.
Hospitals are fee-for-service.
The more patients, the more beds.
My friends from Harvard Business School who work at hospitals now, it's how many beds are you filling and what's your capacity of beds and how many people are in the beds.
That's their economic model.
They lose their job if the beds aren't full.
With insurance companies, Obamacare was a disaster.
Obamacare was a sick care bill.
It made it that insurance companies can only get 15% profit margin, but they can raise premiums to get that 15%.
If you can only take 15% profit margin, but raise premiums to get that 15%, your incentive clearly is for costs to go up, i.e.
people getting sicker.
There's no cost controls with insurance.
What has happened?
Premiums have doubled in the past 10 years.
Insurance premiums are the top source of American inflation.
I mean this, just literally, every single institution.
Let me get back to that for a second.
You said that insurance premium increases are the prime source of inflation?
No, they're the single largest source of American inflation.
That's an astonishing amount because there's been a lot of sources of inflation.
The biggest source of inflation is healthcare.
Healthcare is the fastest growing industry in the country and largest.
You're basically saying that the cost inflation in healthcare is greater than anything else.
It's by far the largest driver of American inflation.
I've been looking at reports that are telling me that essentially on average since 2020 it's about 40%.
Multiple sources are telling me that.
Overall inflation?
Yes, exactly.
Overall inflation across since 2020. Four years?
Yeah.
Okay.
No, no, and I agree.
I'm not trying to dispute it.
I'm just saying you're talking about a massive, massive number, right?
Well, it's the largest part of our economy.
It's the fastest growing part of our economy.
It's the fastest growing price of our economy.
You know, again, premiums, healthcare premiums have doubled 100%.
They've doubled.
So, I mean, so is the healthcare or, you know, you call it something else, industry, is it going to, you know, suffer because of this?
Well, that's really what they're arguing.
I mean, again, people don't argue that their industries are profiting from sick kids.
They're arguing that Bobby Kennedy's policies are going to lead to worse outcomes for their companies.
Think about a, you know, we're here in Phoenix, right?
The biggest building in town is a brand new children's hospital.
You can see it from all over town.
It's a towering monument to failure, in my opinion.
When there's a new children's hospital open, right?
It's a bipartisan thing.
The governor comes and cuts the ribbon and says this is going to bring 40,000 new jobs to Arizona.
They celebrate.
It's in the press.
Everyone's there.
Everyone's celebrating.
I was recently with the governor of Texas.
He's a good guy.
But he was bragging that you could see the Texas Medical Center from space.
It's the biggest complex in Texas.
That's not good.
It means there's more sick kids.
The fact that healthcare...
It's so fast-growing because we're getting sick means it's intertwined to the jobs.
The biggest employer in most states is a healthcare system, is a hospital system.
So the fact that we're getting so sick has made the healthcare industrial complex the most employed industry in the company.
And it shouldn't be surprising.
I know it's shocking, but it shouldn't be surprising that they use the fact that they're so intertwined with jobs as the argument.
In your minds, What are the top reforms, like if you were going to give me line items, okay, that could actually shift this and kind of restore a more reasonable set of incentive structures?
Directing the NIH to no longer be a pharmaceutical R&D factory.
Propelling research, directing them to study what glyphosate is doing, studying what atrazine is doing, other food chemicals that we allow that no other country allows, studying various pharmaceutical standards, doing reproducing FDA studies that are underlying the trillions of dollars we spend on pharmaceutical products.
So reproducing studies, gain the root cost, gain the science right.
Throughout the orgs, but particularly the FDA, getting conflicts of interest out of the agencies.
Just why is the FDA funded by pharma?
75% of drug approval budget is funded by pharma.
Why don't people have access to better diagnostic technologies?
Let's let patients work with their doctors.
Let's have Medicare money go to food if somebody's obese instead of straight to a Zimpik.
So loosening up, making flexible these Medicare Medicaid standards to help patients make the best decisions with the doctors.
So what are the principles?
Transparency, reducing conflicts, flexibility for patients, medical freedom, trusting patients.
Those are the principles that are going to be guiding a flurry of agency actions from Robbie Kennedy.
And also, you know, the one thing that I've been thinking a lot about since COVID is the kind of the erosion of the application of the Hippocratic Oath.
Have you been thinking about that?
It's why doctors have the highest burnout and suicide rate of any profession in America.
They are hurting patients.
Many doctors, most of them.
Almost all of them got in for the right reasons.
We are a criminal system that attracts the best and brightest minds, saddles them with $500,000 of debt, and then throws them into a system where they're janitors.
They're janitors to follow corrupt American Medical Association billing codes.
To manage and profit from disease.
It's a disaster.
We need to empower doctors.
There is no doctor-patient relationship right now.
There's no primary care where they're really trying to figure out and diagnose what's going on and make real root cause interventions.
They are janitors that have an algorithm and get reprimanded if they go outside that algorithm to prescribe a pill in 15 minutes.
And now 80% of Americans are overweight or obese.
We have an Alzheimer's epidemic, a cancer epidemic.
Every single chronic disease you could possibly think of as an all-time high this year, as we're spending $4.5 trillion on medical care, and medical spending is outpacing GDP growth by double.
Every single doctor should be speaking out, but we should also change the systems that they operate in.
Well, and so I think a lot of doctors just aren't somehow aware because there's this kind of I mean, I know I've spoken, I spoke with many doctors during COVID, some of which were of the kind, like your sister, who were kind of seeing some serious problems and trying to mitigate those problems or at least, you know, help people.
But a lot of people were just kind of along for the ride, but they didn't fully realize it.
That's letting them off their hook.
They're speaking to you from their house in Paradise Valley with their $3 million mortgage and their vacation house and their children's private school, which is funded by more patients being sick.
That is true.
They are band-aiding the disease and profiting from disease and not asking why people are getting sick if they are in the traditional medicine.
So the reason they are doing that and the reason fancy doctors with white coats at Harvard and Stanford are able to say that we're anti-science, we're talking about healthy eating, or talking about root cause interventions like looking at the sun or exercise is because the entire system is propagated on more and more patients being sick.
And they use these credentials to basically say that we're crazy for talking about this.
So, I don't want to fully let them off the hook.
They should be aware now and they should be speaking out.
This transition is being run very differently than past transitions, and I just wanted you to speak to that if you feel competent.
Literally what's happening right now is one of the most important moments in American history.
I think it was one of the three most important elections, maybe two most important elections, Trump beating Kamala Harris in American history.
What's happening now is absolutely historic.
We're going to see the biggest flurry of vigor and executive action.
Potentially in American history, at least since the New Deal.
There is a mandate from President Trump, not a word of ideology.
It's securing the military industrial complex, the healthcare industrial complex, the education industrial complex.
There is a huge directive to be disruptive.
This is a once-in-a-lifetime, once-in-a-century situation happening with the transition.
What you just described, one would expect there will be some resistance to this process that you're describing.
Well, there was resistance to an absolutely corrupt and insane continuing resolution that would have generally just been jammed through, that's giving just Christmas presents to all the special interests.
And then the second most powerful and richest person in the world, Elon Musk, called BS. They think that they can basically just sneak all these things under, CMS code changes, continuing resolutions, all this minutia.
But now you have the most...
Biggest microphones and most richest people in the world calling that out and scaring and saying that they're going to spend $100 million to primary any person who steps out of line.
This is a very good thing.
What happened with Elon Musk recently by using his weight to kill this continual resolution is absolutely historic.
We need more of this.
This is what we voted for.
We have slithering, unnamed, faceless people.
That are profiting from kids being sick and have completely co-opted government.
What do we have in the other side?
We have the richest person in the world shining light on this corruption.
We have the American voters who came together and voted Trump for the first time.
Many people who thought they would never vote for Trump.
They voted for Trump.
They gave leverage to this promise of Bobby Kennedy to get kids sick.
We've got to keep that momentum up.
We've got to keep getting wins for Trump.
Any final thought as we finish?
I think it's surreal being at a conservative conference talking about cleaning up our food supply, you know, root cause interventions.
These were hippie things five to ten years ago, and I think it's really positive that there's this really, I think, consensus around getting to the root cause and that things that would have been said at a Berkey rally ten years ago are now being said at AmericaFest.
I think it's great, and thank you for shining a light on these issues.
Well, Kelly Means, it's such a pleasure to have had you on.
Thank you.
Thank you all for joining Kelly Means and me on this episode of American Thought Leaders.
▲
Export Selection