Welcome to another installment of the Rethinking Wellness link roundup! Here I’m offering a small collection of links from around the internet that are relevant to the conversations we have here, along with some quick takes and occasional deeper dives for paid subscribers.
This time the take/dive is about functional-medicine doctor and RFK Jr. advisor Casey Means (with audio), based on a piece I was interviewed for.
Links
Here are some pieces that got me thinking in the past few weeks. I generally enjoyed all of these, but links are not endorsements of every single detail in the piece or everything the writer ever wrote.
Why so many actresses are selling menopause supplements (
for Air Mail)What Are RFK Jr.’s Plans as HHS Secretary for Trump? (Intelligencer)
Good Public Health Is Invisible (
))How to Get People to Hear You Out and Maybe Even Change Their Mind (
)In Case You Missed It
Is It Safe to Get Pregnant Now?
Do Artificial Food Additives Cause ADHD?
How Do You Find Good Evidence for Wellness Claims?
Overcoming Orthorexia, Conspiracy Theories, and Toxic Wellness Culture with Katherine Metzelaar
Who Is Casey Means, and How Science-Based Are Her Views?
In a recent piece for Business Insider, journalist Gabby Landsverk discusses Casey Means, the functional-medicine doctor, diet-book author, and wellness entrepreneur who’s become a key advisor to conspiracy theorist and potential HHS secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
I was happy when Gabby asked to interview me for the article, which you can read here. She asked thoughtful questions about seed oils, intermittent fasting, and other wellness practices Means swears by. Since our full Q&A didn’t make it into the final piece, I thought I’d share the rest of my answers with you here. The first answer is for everyone, and paid subscribers can read the whole thing.
How familiar are you with Dr. Means and her work? What about it do you think has resonated so much with people like Joe Rogan and RFK Jr.?
She rose to prominence fairly recently, alongside her brother, Calley, an entrepreneur whose company enables tax-free HSA/FSA spending on many unproven supplements and devices, and who has consulted for right-wing organizations like the Heritage Foundation. Casey originally trained as a head and neck surgeon before dropping out of residency to specialize in functional medicine—a specialty that promotes many dubious diets and supplements that aren’t supported by scientific evidence (such as an “anti-candida food plan”, “detox food plan,” and others). The Meanses have become fixtures in wellness spaces, promoting restrictive diets, questionable health-tracking devices, and other practices from the biohacking and alternative-medicine world. The siblings also often discuss health-related conspiracy theories in video and podcast interviews, like their appearance on Tucker Carlson’s show about “how Big Pharma co-opted government agencies and the food industry to poison America and keep us sick.” In many ways, Dr. Means’s views about health fit right in with the anti-establishment and often anti-science views of Joe Rogan, RFK Jr., and others in their orbit.
