Great presentation by dr. Casey Means

"The message I'm here to share and reiterate is that American health is getting destroyed. It's being destroyed because of chronic illness. And if the current trends continue, if the graphs continue in the way that they're going, at best, we're going to face profound societal instability and decreased American competitiveness. And at worst, we're going to be looking at a genocidal-level health collapse in our country and the world.

Over the last 50 years in the United States, we have seen rapidly rising rates of chronic illnesses throughout the entire body, the body and the brain, infertility, obesity, tied to diabetes and pre-diabetes, Alzheimer's, dementia, cancer, heart disease, stroke, autoimmune disease, migraines, mental illness, chronic pain, fatigue, congenital abnormalities, chronic liver disease, autism, and infant and maternal mortality, all going up. Americans live eight fewer years compared to people in Japan or Switzerland and life expectancy is going down. I took an oath to do no harm. But listen to these stats. We're not only doing harm, we're flagrantly allowing harm. While it sounds grim, there is very good news.

We know why all of these diseases are going up, and we know how to fix it. Every disease I mentioned is caused by, or worsened by, metabolic dysfunction, a word that it is thrilling to hear being used around this table. Metabolic dysfunction is a fundamental distortion of our cellular biology. It stops our cells from making energy appropriately. According to the American College of Cardiology, metabolic dysfunction now affects 93.2% of American adults. This is, quite literally, the cellular draining of our life force. This process is the result of three processes happening inside our cells. Mitochondrial dysfunction, a process called oxidative stress, which is like a wildfire inside our cells, and chronic inflammation throughout the body and the gut, as we've heard about.

Metabolic dysfunction is largely not a genetic issue. It's caused by toxic American ultra-processed industrial food, toxic American chemicals, toxic American medications, and our toxic sedentary indoor lifestyles. You would think that the American healthcare system and our government agencies would be clamoring to fix metabolic health and reduce American suffering and costs. But they're not. They are definitely silent about metabolic dysfunction and its known causes.

It's not an overstatement to say that I learned virtually nothing at Stanford Medical School about the tens of thousands of scientific papers that elucidate these root causes of why American health is plummeting and how environmental factors are causing it. For instance, in medical school, I did not learn that for each additional serving of ultra-processed food we eat, early mortality increases by 18%. This now makes up 67% of the foods our kids are eating. I took zero nutrition courses in medical school.

I didn't learn that 82% of independently funded studies show harm from processed food, while 93% of industry-sponsored studies reflect no harm. In medical school, I didn't learn that 95% of the people who created the recent USDA Food Guidelines for America had significant conflicts of interest with the food industry. I did not learn that one billion pounds of synthetic pesticides are being sprayed on our food every single year.

99% of the farmland in the United States is sprayed with synthetic pesticides, many from China and Germany. And these invisible tasteless chemicals are strongly linked to autism, ADHD, sex hormone disruption, thyroid disease, sperm dysfunction, Alzheimer's dementia, birth defects, cancer, obesity, liver dysfunction, female infertility, and more, all by hurting our metabolic health.

I did not learn that the eight billion tons of plastic that have been produced just in the last 100 years, plastic was only introduced, invented about 100 years ago, are being broken down into micro plastics that are now filling our food, our water, and we are now even inhaling them in our air. And that very recent research from just the past couple of months tells us that now about 0.5% of our brains by weight are now plastic.

I didn't learn that there are more than 80,000 toxins that have entered our food water air and homes by industry many of which are banned in Europe and They are known to alter our gene expression alter our microbiome composition and the lining of our gut and disrupt our hormones I didn't learn that heavy metals with a look like aluminum and lead are present in our food our baby formula personal care products our soil and many of the mandated medications like vaccines and that these metals are neurotoxic and I didn't learn that the average American walks a paltry 3,500 steps per day, even though we know, based on science and top journals, that walking 7,000 steps a day slashes by 40 to 60 percent our risk of Alzheimer's, dementia, type 2 diabetes, cancer, and obesity.

I certainly did not learn that medical error and medications are the third leading cause of death in the United States. I didn't learn that just five nights of sleep deprivation can induce full-blown prediabetes, I learned nothing about sleep. And we're getting about 20% less sleep on average than we were 100 years ago.

I didn't learn that American children are getting less time outdoors now than a maximum security prisoner. And on average, adults spend 93% of their time indoors, even though we know from the science that separation from sunlight destroys our circadian biology, and circadian biology dictates our cellulobiology.

I didn't learn that professional organizations that we get our practice guideline from, like the American Diabetes Association and American Academy of Pediatrics have taken tens of millions of dollars from Coke, Cadbury, processed food companies, and vaccine manufacturers like Moderna.

I didn't learn that if we address these root causes that all lead to metabolic dysfunction and help patients change their food and lifestyle patterns with united, strong voice we could reverse the chronic disease crisis in America, save millions of lives and trillions of dollars in healthcare costs per year. Instead, doctors are learning that the body is 100 separate parts, and we learn how to drug, we learn how to cut, and we learn how to bill.

I'll close by saying that what we are dealing with here is so much more than a physical health crisis. This is a spiritual crisis. We are choosing death over light. We are choosing death over life. We are choosing darkness over light for people and the planet, which are inextricably linked. We are choosing to erroneously believe that we are separate from nature and that we can continue to poison nature and then outsmart it.

Our path out will be renewed respect for the miracle of life and a renewed respect for nature. We can restore health to Americans rapidly with smart policy and courageous leadership. We need a return to courage. We need a return to common sense and intuition. We need a return to awe for the sheer miraculousness of our lives. We need all hands on deck. Thank you."