Stanford-Trained Physician Dr. Casey Means: Fatigue, Obesity and Diabetes May All Stem From Metabolic Dysfunction
Explore the link between metabolic health, fatigue, weight gain and diabetes from the perspective of Stanford-trained physician Dr. Casey Means, and learn how cellular energy and daily habits shape whole-body health.
[Healthcare 520 Report] Dr. Casey Means, a Stanford-trained physician and one of the leading figures in the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement, believes that a common factor may underlie many everyday chronic health problems, from long-term fatigue and obesity to type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease: metabolic dysfunction in the body.
Make America Healthy Again is a health advocacy movement that has drawn attention in the United States in recent years. It calls for addressing chronic health problems related to modern lifestyles through food safety, eating habits and lifestyle changes.
Most Americans Have Less-Than-Ideal Metabolic Markers
A 2022 study published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology (JACC) found that fewer than 7% of American adults met ideal levels across multiple cardiometabolic health markers at the same time, including blood sugar, blood pressure, blood lipids and body weight.
Means believes modern lifestyles may be one of the major factors affecting metabolic health. Diet, activity levels, sleep, stress and environmental exposures may all, over time, affect the body’s ability to maintain normal metabolism.
Does Seeing a Different Specialist for Each Problem Miss a Common Cause?
Means co-authored the bestselling book Good Energy with her brother, Calley Means. In the book, she emphasizes that the body needs to continuously and steadily convert food into energy to sustain its many physiological functions.
When metabolism stays in a less-than-ideal state for a long time, it can show up differently in different people. Some may first notice fatigue, low energy or poor concentration; others may see weight gain or changes in markers such as blood pressure, blood sugar or blood lipids.
She believes one challenge of modern medicine is that different health problems are often handled separately by different specialties.
For example, a middle-aged patient might face several health problems at once: high blood pressure sends them to a cardiologist; high blood sugar, to an endocrinologist; a checkup that finds fatty liver, to a gastroenterologist; and if they sleep poorly and feel tired during the day, they may need to seek help from yet another specialist.
Each healthcare professional may address the problem within their own specialty, but from the perspective of overall health, it’s worth asking: when several problems appear in the same person at the same time, could there be shared lifestyle or metabolic factors behind them?
Means’s view is that some seemingly different health problems may be linked to the same metabolic environment. Focusing only on individual numbers without also adjusting lifestyle factors such as diet, activity, sleep and stress may still make long-term health management difficult.
Western Medicine Has Seen the Connection; TCM Has Long Looked at the Whole Picture
In fact, modern medicine has also noticed that several metabolism-related problems often occur together, and calls the combination of abdominal obesity, high blood pressure, high blood sugar, high triglycerides and low HDL cholesterol (HDL-C) metabolic syndrome.
In clinical practice, each metabolic risk factor still needs to be assessed and managed according to the individual’s situation. Blood pressure, blood sugar and blood lipids, for example, each have their own monitoring and treatment approaches.
From the perspective of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), the emphasis on looking at the body as a whole goes back a long way.
TCM emphasizes a “whole-body view,” seeing the body as an interconnected whole in which the internal organs influence one another. In TCM theory, a symptom in one part of the body may be seen as an expression of an overall imbalance, rather than simply a local problem.
So when making a diagnosis, TCM usually considers a person’s diet, sleep, emotions, constitution and lifestyle together, rather than focusing on a single symptom.
TCM also has the concept of “treating different diseases the same way”: when different conditions are found, after pattern differentiation, to share the same or similar underlying mechanisms, the approach to treating them may overlap. Conceptually, this has some similarities with the modern health management approach of looking for shared lifestyle factors behind multiple health problems.
In addition, the Huangdi Neijing (The Yellow Emperor’s Classic of Internal Medicine) put forward the idea that “the superior physician treats illness before it arises,” emphasizing prevention before illness develops. This also invites comparison with modern health management’s focus on diet, exercise, sleep and lifestyle to reduce health risks.
Five Lifestyle Factors That May Affect Metabolic Health
Means points to several aspects of modern life that may harm metabolic health, including:
- Highly processed foods and refined sugar: Eating too many highly processed foods and sugary foods and drinks over the long term may lower the overall quality of your diet.
- Not enough sleep: Chronic short sleep or an irregular schedule may disrupt the body’s normal physiological regulation.
- Sitting too much and not moving enough: Long hours of sitting and too little daily activity may make it harder to maintain good metabolic health.
- Chronic stress: Living under constant high stress may affect sleep, eating and daily habits.
- Environmental exposures: The many environmental factors we encounter in daily life are also an area of ongoing focus in modern health research.
How Can You Start Caring for Your Metabolic Health in Daily Life?
Improving metabolic health doesn’t have to start with complicated methods; many of the changes involve everyday habits.
- Choose more natural, minimally processed foods.
- Eat more dietary fiber and adequate protein.
- Cut back on sugary drinks and excess refined starches.
- Keep a regular routine and get enough sleep.
- Take a walk after meals and increase your daily physical activity.
- Learn to relieve stress through exercise, leisure or other suitable activities.
- Get regular checkups to track health markers such as blood pressure, blood sugar, blood lipids and body weight.
Chronic health problems usually develop from multiple factors, including genetics, environment and lifestyle, and can’t be attributed to a single cause. Still, lifestyle is an important area that many people can actively change.
Building healthy habits, starting with daily diet, sleep, exercise and stress management, is an important foundation for maintaining metabolic health.
From “Single Markers” to “Whole-Body Metabolic Health”
Blood sugar, blood pressure, blood lipids and body weight are all important indicators of health, but they aren’t completely independent numbers.
When several markers are abnormal at the same time, in addition to getting any necessary tests and treatment as advised by healthcare professionals, you can also take a closer look at lifestyle factors such as your diet, sleep, activity level, stress and weight management.
Whether from the perspective of modern metabolic health or TCM’s whole-body view, staying healthy shouldn’t mean focusing on a single number, but starting with your lifestyle as a whole.
Metabolic health builds up over time. Rather than waiting until several health markers go wrong at once before making changes, start today with one meal, one walk, one regular sleep habit.
This article is for general health information only and does not constitute medical advice. The views presented are those of the relevant experts or health advocates and do not represent a consensus of the medical community. If you have concerns about your blood sugar, blood pressure, blood lipids, weight or other health issues, please consult a qualified healthcare professional.
