Riley Gaines: Swimming Against the Current

Hi everyone, welcome back.

Brian Kilmeach. We're going to take a step away from politics for a second and welcome in Callie Means, co-founder of True Med Payments and co-author of the brand new book, Good Energy, the surprising connection between metabolism and limitless health. And Callie, welcome.

Thank you. First off, what prompted you to look into health and the food industry and how they're related to and how they might be in bed together? Yeah, so my co-authors, my sister and my sister at Stanford Med School.

Did not take one course on nutrition. She figured out that actually 80% of the entire course was on pharmacology. And the majority of Stanford Med School, Harvard Med School's budget comes from pharma.

I used to work for the food and pharma industry and actually saw these stems up close. And what we've put together is a very simple economic fact. It's not conspiratorial. It's a simple statement of economic fact is that the largest industry in the country, the health care industry, they make money when your kid is sick, depressed and fertile. They make money by treating those conditions and managers in those conditions. And they lose money when we learn metabolic habits, when we learn the basics and get out of that chronic disease. So instead of you're saying medicine solving those problems, they're creating those problems to solve and make money. Nine out of 10 deaths leading causes of death in America are preventable lifestyle conditions. 95% of all medical spending is on completely preventable chronic conditions. If you have an acute issue, if you have a gunshot wound, burst appendix, complicated childbirth infection, go to the doctor.

Absolutely. That's 5% of medical spending. Chronic disease is the greatest profit generating mechanism in modern history. And this amoeba of the health care system, again, our largest industry and fastest growing, is predicated on us getting more chronic diseases. That's just a simple economic fact. So you mean major food companies, the Procter and Gamble, the General Mills, they're in bed meeting with the medical associations in order to do this?

They actually literally are. So working for the food industry. The food companies as a lobbyist and the pharma industry actually brokered payments between Coke and the American Diabetes Association.

The American Diabetes Association, which sets the standard of care for diabetes management in this country, which is a scourge and really underpinning all other chronic conditions, except millions of dollars from diabetes water, from Coca Cola. They should be shouting from the rooftop about the fact that kids are ingesting 100 times more sugar than they did 100 years ago. The reason we're getting sicker, more depressed, more infertile isn't because of the pandemic. It's because of our broken food system. This is unique in America. In Japan, the childhood obesity rate is 3%. Here it's upwards of 25%. And you don't think it's because our kids are less active?

Absolutely. The sanitary lifestyle, which we incentivize, too, is a huge problem. The book is about the underpinnings of metabolic health, which is simple. It's our diet.

It's environmental toxins. It's sleep. It's exercise.

It's the basics. But working for the food companies, I also help steer money. To exercise groups to distract the issue. Michelle Obama talked about food in the first year when she was on this campaign in the White House, which was right, but she actually got paid off by the food industry to start talking about exercise. We should not be distracted. Our food system is compromised. And not only is our medical system silent on the reason we're getting sick, and they're overcomplicating the reason we're getting sick. And if you have diabetes, heart disease, depression, other comorbidities, you're going to see multiple doctors from multiple treatment plans on those.

This is what the book's about. This is the most important issue in our country, which I think does tie to politics. Because we're, we're going to lose our human capital, and we're going to go bankrupt from this. Chronic diseases are interrelated. And that simplicity is ignored by our medical system because it's profitable to keep people sick and manage the condition. And would you say also, it's easy, it's cheaper to get the food that's bad for you when you got to go out of your way and pay more for the food that's good for you?

Let's break this down. On the food side, it makes sense. It's in their interest to keep food cheap and keep it addictive. There's been a complete crony capitalist takeover of our regulatory agencies. The USDA that makes our nutrition guidelines for kids, 95% of the USDA panel was paid off for by food companies, which is just hard to even fathom.

What do you mean by paid off? The direct contributions, not research grants, but actually direct consulting payments. 95% of the USDA panel received direct consulting payments from processed food companies and or pharmaceutical companies. So wouldn't you want the USDA to be, if you're creating a food that you want mass produced, wouldn't you want the USDA to support it? So when you go out of your way to have them approve it, hey, I'm working on this.

I'm working on that. The USDA, this is not political. This is not even getting into policy. The USDA that makes the guidelines for food that go to our kids should be following the science, should be uncorrupted. They should not be taking money from Coca-Cola. They should not be taking money from Kraft. They have taken that money.

They're directly paid off. I helped do it. And the guidelines we exist under today say that a two-year-old should have 10% of their diet as added sugar, a two-year-old. When we have a metabolic health crisis among children and 33% of young adults have pre-diabetes right now, 50% of young adults are overweight or obese. And we have the panel that is making our medical guidelines saying that a two-year-old should be eating sugar, added sugar.

It's unconscionable. So let me ask you, when did this relationship first start? The devil's bargain between food and pharma? It started actually in 1960 with the invention of the birth control pill. The birth control pill was the first drug in American history that you didn't stop taking after you were cured of the condition. And there's documentation of this, the pharmaceutical industry taking a lot of trust of science with antibiotics and some medical innovations helping to win World War II. They said, we can take that trust. And this is documented. And they said, we're gonna now invent chronic conditions.

What a goldmine. You can take a pill for your entire life. You don't get cured.

And now what do we have? We have STANS, one of the most prescribed drugs in the country. The more STANS are prescribed, the more heart disease goes up. The more metformin is prescribed, 100 million plus prescriptions of that, the more diabetes goes up. The more antidepressants are prescribed. 25% of women in the United States are on an antidepressant. The more suicide and depressions goes up. There has never been a chronic disease pharmaceutical treatment that has lower rates of the chronic disease trying to treat. And this is amazing because people just keep racking on the comorbidities and racking on the interventions.

So Kelly Means Our Guest, Good Energy, the book, the surprising connection between metabolism and limitless health. Kelly, you realize how many people would have to have this evil intention for this to come off. I mean, think about what doctor would go to sleep at night saying, okay, I just got a drug. I'm going to get a percentage of money from a drug because someone has a chronic disease, which I helped create. This is not about intentions. To understand a system, don't look at what people say.

Don't even look at what individuals think. Look at what the system does. It is a completely unemotional statement of economic fact that the health care industry growth is predicated on more kids getting sicker earlier and staying sick. The industry just fundamentally makes money for managing interventions on people that are sick.

And when you have the largest interesting country that's fundamentally incentivized for more Americans to get sick, that's what happens. The brilliance, and this is what we unpack in the book and what has really taken me a long time to understand, the genius of the institutional design of our health care system is that it takes good people. It takes my sister who got into this for the right reasons. All doctors do.

They can make money in easier ways. It saddles them with that. And now the highest suicide rate and the highest burnout rate of any profession is among doctors. They understand they are trapped in a sick system. I absolutely believe that cardiologists want to cure and snap their fingers and cure the world of heart disease, that hormone doctors want to cure the world of diabetes, that obesity doctors now want to cure the world of obesity.

But their job and their employment is predicated on more people getting sick. That is just a fact. What do you think about Ozympic? So Ozympic is a great example. And all the other drugs like that.

Yeah, yeah. Well, I think it's really important to go into specifics. Ozympic, I believe, is one of the biggest issues in the country.

And here's why. The American Academy of Pediatrics, which is a fully funded subsidiary of pharma, but sets the standard of care for pediatric care, recently said that this should be the first line defense for any obese or overweight 12 year old. That's 50 percent of 12 year olds.

I have a message to every parent listening. If your child is the median 12 year old who's overweight or obese, they are going to be pushed Ozympic, which is a lifetime drug with just demonstrably the highest side effects of any wide scale drug approved in modern American history. 50 percent of people go off because of severe vomiting or nausea, which clearly means there's other things going on.

So 50 percent of people who get on Ozymic get off because you feel so terrible. It's the worst and most pronounced side effects of a drug in modern American history that's been widely prescribed. Yes, it is causing unknown gastrointestinal issues that are leading to severe nausea and vomiting. It has a black box warning for cancer. There's an EU investigation of suicidal ideation. What does a black box warning mean? Black box warning means the most serious warning the FDA can give on thyroid cancer because of the cause of such hormone disruption. It is there's large scale investigations in the EU. It's home.

It's home area. This is a company from Denmark on suicidal ideation, which makes sense, Brian. Our medical system doesn't realize the interconnectivity. But 95 percent of our serotonin, which regulates our contentment and mood is produced in the gut, not the brain. And Ozympic is gut dysfunction. That's what it causes. That's the that's the effect of drugs. There's serious side effects. This is being rushed because it's a lifetime drug and it's being pushed now on 12 year olds. The key question with Ozympic is if we have an obesity crisis where 80 percent of American adults and 50 percent of young adults are overweight or obese, is this because of an Ozympic deficiency or is this because we're uniquely poisoning our population in America?

This should not be the standard of care. So Callie Means was helping us out there. Casey is the doctor and the sister of Callie. Such an impressive book. So many questions need to be answered.

He's so bold and smart. And they both, by the way, look extremely healthy. When we come back, let's talk about with Callie about the side effects and dangers of Ozympic. Listen up, everybody. You'll need to hear it. You'll listen to the Brainkill Meet show. Out of the gates and ready to go. Hey, it's Hutton and Withrow. Hot Mike is here on the Outkick Network.

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Like, subscribe and share. Welcome back, everybody. It's time for part two of a book you need to hear about that you probably heard some buzz about.

And the name of the book is Good Energy. Callie Means is my guest. And I spoke to Callie late last week because they were in town about him and his sister, how this whole book came to be. And I was just going through medical school, realized there was something seriously wrong about the medical profession. So she tried to change it. They've created a brand new company. But here we talk about the rage in this country.

And that's Ozempic. It's the end of obesity, they claim. But is there a downside? They say absolutely.

Here is more of my interview with Callie Means on the Brain Kill Me show. You also write that muscle depletion is real. And the only way to avoid the muscle depletion is have a high protein diet, low fat.

Which, by the way, if you have that, you're going to lose weight anyway. This is a game. You know, and I know you had some other guests on her writing books. We don't need a book on this. We don't need a long diatribe on this to make money from the Ozempic craze. We need to speak in very plain facts.

Any doctor, actually, if they're pushed, will tell you. And they actually say this and they guide this. You are going to have severe muscle loss issues if you don't work out five times a week with strength training and shift your diet to a low ultra processed food, high protein diet. My point, what we're doing with this book, which is resonating, is now the number one book on Amazon, which we're really excited about. And this message of empowerment really is resonating. What I do with my company, TruMed, which actually incentivizes with medical dollars, food and exercise. Doctors could be writing a letter of medical necessity, actually guiding the patients to keto diets, to exercise. We can actually be shifting the 4.5 trillion dollars when somebody is prediabetic or obese to those things. The American people don't want to be fat, sick, depressed, infertile, which is also happening to an astounding degree.

They don't want this. My mom didn't want to get cancer and die and not meet her grandkids. Is she not eating well? My mom was on the standard American food pyramid diet.

She was the standard American patient for 40 years. There were warning signs, slightly high cholesterol. That's normal. Take the statin.

Prediabetes, like 60 percent of people her age? Oh, that's normal. Take the metformin. Slightly high blood pressure. Oh, that's normal.

Take the ACE inhibitor. She had these checks that the average American goes on throughout their life where it's, oh, no, it's no problem. That's normal. That's average for people your age.

Take the pill. If once her doctor sat her down and explained that pancreatic cancer, which she eventually got, is as highly tied to prediabetes and blood sugar circulation as smoking is to lung cancer, cancer is not a random occurrence. It's highly tied to her diet.

It's highly tied to metabolic health. If she was explained and incentivized and educated on really reversing these conditions with basic metabolic habits, she'd still be here. But she, just months before cancer diagnosis, was told by her primary care provider that she was healthy for her age. On five medications, she was actually on less amount of medications than the average 70-year-old.

She was actually a healthy patient. Life expected right now, Brian, is declining for the most sustained period since 1860. This year in 2024, we have the highest rates of cancer, highest rates of diabetes, highest rates of heart disease, highest rates of autism, autoimmune conditions, go down the list, of any condition ever in American history. Every single chronic condition is at an all-time high this year. Something is going very wrong.

And the problem with those, again, this is very simple. Are we going to look at this devastation happening, particularly to kids? And are we going to drug kids for life with this poison, literal poison, that you have to stay on forever? Or are we going to finally ask, as America, and it's uniquely in America, they're not prescribing those because of the standard of care in their home country, in Denmark. If you have prediabetes, you actually get a government-subsidized medical keto diet. They actually pay you to exercise. These are just rational policies that any one crew would create to actually attack the root cause.

But again, I cannot stress this enough. Every lever of the healthcare system is geared to making people sick. The other thing we talked about in the book, you just look at the money. Pharma pays five times more in political donations than the oil industry. Pharma is, you know, funds a lot of the media. Pharma funds a lot of these interest groups, like the NAACP, actually, that's calling anyone that criticizes those ZYMPIC racists right now. The NAACP is a registered lobbyist for the maker of ZYMPIC to say it's a civil rights issue that we have to have government sponsors. Why, is there a sense that obesity is large in the black community? Yeah, well, this is just the playbook.

This is what I did. I helped Coke pay the NAACP 10 years ago to say that taking soda off of food stamps, it's the number one item on food stamps, that it was racist to deny choice to lower income people. This is the playbook, as we all know, and there's nobody better than the food and pharma industries.

You call people racist, you call people sexist, and these groups like the NAACP, unfortunately. Have you felt backlash as you wrote your book? And now that it's out and doing well, good energy? When my mom, literally, as we buried her the 12 days, 13 days before her diagnosis and her death, was transformational, my sister and I, we really saw, and a lot of these pieces came together from our two careers. And we really feel like we're carrying on her memory and trying to prevent, again, the many, many people listening here who are probably on that chronic disease pharmaceutical treadmill. We can get off that path. There is a better way.

Where do you go? Do you provide that better way? What are some tips we can leave some people with to start getting control of their diet? If you have an acute issue, if you have an infection or something that's going to kill you right away, listen to the medical system. If you have a chronic condition or your kid has a chronic condition, they're trying to put your kid on a statin, metformin, any of these drugs that are doubling rates of the prescriptions among teens in the past five years, do not trust your doctor.

It's just that simple. The doctor, any doctor, good doctor, should be writing an intervention for basic things. For exercise interventions, for sleep, which is down 25% in the past 100 years, and for food. And where do you shop?

What's up? Where should you shop? You should be avoiding three ingredients, highly processed grains, sugar, and seed oils. You should be scouring your labels for that. In Japan and some European countries, the ultra-processed food consumption, things in a box, is 20 to 30% here at 70%. If you can just simply cut those ingredients, which by definition cuts ultra-processed food, you are on a great path. Food in a box. Avoid it.

100%. Cereal. I am engaged in a legal action against Kellogg. They actually reformulate their cereal with different ingredients for Americans because our regulations are so bought off. They contain artificial dyes, which they don't contain in any other country, which are one of the most known links to ADHD. These dyes that they include in their cereal, absolutely avoid that. The grains in the United States are highly problematic. These ultra-processed, frankenfoods that are sprayed with glyphosate and other chemicals that are banned in almost every other country. It's, A, just weaponized fundamentally to make us want to eat more, and I'm really concerned about the chemicals on these foods, which are disrupting our gut bacteria and just causing this host of issues.

But all this stuff is in Good Energy, your brand new book. We outline the problem, and through my sister's genius, who's a leading metabolic health doctor, we have an actual plan. We've got to have a bottoms-up revolution. Brian, I'm also engaged with a lot of great people and companies to lobby. We're working with across the aisle, frankly. You see President Trump talking about this, RFK talking about this.

This issue of kids getting sick and then being drugged is, I think, becoming one of the defining issues in our country. All right, the name of the book is Good Energy, the surprising connection between metabolism and limitless health. Callie Meads, congratulations on doing it, and to your sister. Thank you, sir.