Dr Chalmers Path to Pro - Dr. Casey Means
Is the U.S. medical system truly prioritizing health or just managing disease? This episode dives into the controversial nomination of Dr. Casey Means for Surgeon General and what it reveals about the state of modern medicine. With chronic illness on the rise and pharmaceutical influence stronger than ever, the conversation challenges long-standing norms in how we approach public health.
From concerns over medical education and policy-making to the importance of real-world experience in shaping national health strategies, this discussion doesn’t hold back. It also highlights the growing push for holistic, lifestyle-based care and whether leaders who support that model can break through the system.
Highlights of the Podcast
00:04 - Critique of the Medical Establishment
01:31 - Systemic Health Decline
03:06 - Lack of Clinical Experience
06:22 - Ivory Tower vs. Real-World Practice
07:56 - Pharma Influence & Vaccine Politics
09:28 - Medical Autonomy & COVID Policies
12:04 - Metabolic Health Focus
Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:00:04] All right. So, uh, it's been a little bit since, uh Dr. Means was, uh nominated for surgeon general. Uh, and who will keep asking me what I think about it. I think it's a, it's, a step in the right direction. Uh, the problem is that she's still a medical doctor, um, which means that, you know, she was educated in that philosophy. She was brought up in the, you know, the, the education system of drugs, solve everything, sell drugs, nutrition doesn't work like that type of stuff. Um, and the problem we get into is that mindset is the antithesis of where we need to go. Um, my whole thing is that, You know, we've, if you have a football Who loses as a losing season, two or three seasons in a row, you get a new coach. You fire that coach. You're like, we need new thinking. We need new, we needed new ideas. We need to go in a different direction so we can start winning. We've had 50 years of medical doctors being in charge of our long-term chronic health care and, uh, every single year it's gotten worse. So, you know, now emergency medicine and surgery is fantastic and awesome. Let's put that over here as the. You know, Hey, two out of three, you guys are knocking it out of the park. Like it's great. However, what we've gotten into is that I think we should take a step back and be like, okay, the philosophy, the underlying undergirding philosophy from the medical profession is not beneficial to, um, to long-term care.
Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:01:31] Like you look at diabetes, you'll get dementia, you look at asthma, ADD, a lot of tism. You're like rent rent through the IBS ceiling, run through all the things, chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia. All the fertility, everything you can think of, every metric you can think of from a healthcare perspective, we are worse than we were 50 years ago. Um, and so I think that this is a systemic issue and I think it goes to the core function of philosophy. And so we need to find somebody to guide us and lead us through the next 50 years, who isn't a medical doctor, um, who has not been trained in the way that the medical doctors train them in the philosophy and the whole function that they have. I think we need a whole new way of thinking about it now. Means has come out, uh, and spoken out against it, said that she learned nothing beneficial of how to build, how to help the body from Stanford, which I'm not going to argue, however, she has learned nothing beneficial that has worked on the body. Where she at my other, my big issue with her is that, um, she's not treated patients and there's a whole lot of book learning that you do and a whole other research learning that you do. And then you try to apply it to patients and you're like, Ooh, this didn't work the way I thought it was going to, or I've got to tweak this to make this functional or how come people couldn't sustain this? You know, why, why did the patient quit doing it? There's a lot of that, that you learn as you go through, um, actually treating patients. All the knowledge that you've gained. Um, and she's never done any of that.
Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:03:06] So that's concerning. Um, when you're looking for something to lead all of the doctors, you kind of want to be able to make sure that, you know, you have that basic when I was treating patients, you know, or, you know, I, at least they understand what it's like to have to go in and sit down and talk to a patient, listen to the patient, bring that information to relevance, craft a plan that the patient will be able to do and will sustain and then you know, deal with any issues that they have when they're coming out of it. Um, health, when you look, really look at health care, um, and this is one of those big things we've got to change our mindset around. Uh, what you need to find in a healthcare professional is someone who can walk you through everything. And so it's not one of these things where it's like, take this pill and just go home and do whatever. It's here are the major issues in your life that we've gotta fix, you know? Like when I do it, the first things we start with are, you know hormone function. Dietary function, sleep, stress. You know, we, we pick up those things first, um, and I'll talk to people every week, every 10 days, you know, and as we move them from where, what their lifestyle is now to where their lifestyle needs to be. Uh, and the funny thing is that most of the people I talked to, they know their lifestyle, needs to over here. They just don't know how to get there. Um, and so that's the thing. The, and also the fun part for me is trying to figure out how to get people from where they are to where they need to be In a way that doesn't impact their life to the point where they can't do it. That's taken, you know, after the 10 years of I've been doing, I've been working with patients since Oh seven.
Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:04:39] So 18 years working with patience. The last 10 years have been really kind of focused on that. And that's been one of the more difficult things that I've had to figure out. And so I think that one of the big things that she's lacking is that he's that ability to work with patients and know what's going on and know how to tweak things and understand when your patients talk to you and they say things and you go, okay, from what you said, I now understand where the problem is, even though you didn't say it, like in all, like you talked to a bunch of doctors and you always be like, you know, when you get into like, well, the hardest part is interpreting what our patients say to us because they're trying to give us the best information they can, but they're also, you they've got all these limiting beliefs and all this, all the lies they've told themselves and like, well, I can't do that. Why can't you eat that way? Well, it's too hard. Okay. What's hard about it? Well, I don't know. Okay. Well, so you haven't even done it. You've just decided it's hard before you tried it. Like those types of things where, you know, the problem that they're discussing, isn't the actual problem. And you learn that as you start working with patients over and over and over again. And so that's the, that's one of the things I'm worried about because as she starts trying to make dictate policy and start moving things through, I'm a little bit worried that she's not going have that ability to work with patients on that level or work with doctors who have been working with patients at that level and to understand really how the system works. Like, you know, this is one of those, the issue I'm having with this is this, you know where we're taking somebody from the ivory tower and being like, okay, tell us how to do the things that, you know, we're all out in the trenches doing, but you tell us to do it. Who's never been in the trenches, uh, who's never dealt with patients who'd never worked on these things.
Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:06:22] You know, you write policy for how we're supposed to do the thing that you've never done. That worries me. Uh, and so we'll have to see kind of how that goes. Um, people have made comments that, you know, she has not come out and made her vaccine stance very clear. Um. From what I know of RFK, I wouldn't, I would not worry too much about that. I don't think that he's going to pick somebody or push for somebody who is very pro vaccine. Uh. The other thing you guys have remembered is that she's still going to get confirmed. And so, you. Know if she came out and said negative things, too much negative things about pharmaceuticals or vaccines. Or stuff like that, you know, there's no way she gets confirmed. You know, the, the confirmation deal with RFK was really bloody and hard, but everybody knew that if they didn't confirm RFK, we were going to have serious issues. Um, and so he got through and since he got through there, like, you know, and, and every one of them, and it was funny cause I love the memes, I love all the stuff on the online where like Bernie Sanders would be like, You can't do this. And there'd be like 1.9 million from pharma though. You know. Somebody else would come up there, Elizabeth Warren, be like, Oh, we have to protect vaccines because they're super important. It was like 1.7 million from pharma. Like, so you saw how much each politician got paid off to specifically, you know, throw these through these doubts out, throw these things out and try to try to not get these people, you don't confirm. Because the status quo of you know, pharmaceutical companies making absurd amounts of money paying off politicians hiding, hiding research, hiding hiding facts and pushing things forward is the stand.
Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:07:56] If you think that's going to be pushed back against, good luck on that one. Um, however, she's still going to confirm. So if they can come out and they can ask her, what's her stance on vaccines. And she can say, when I was in medical school, I was taught that vaccines are perfect and they never hurt anybody ever and only do amazing. Medical doctors are taught. Um, and so she can come out and say that they can say, well, in practice, well I've never been in practice. I don't I've ever seen a child be injured by a vaccine because I've never given a vaccine. Never been in practice and never seen patients. We'll see where that goes. Uh, I think it's, I think it just step in the right direction. Having said that, I believe that we're 180 degrees from where we need to be right now. So if she is a little bit better, we're 150 degrees away from where it should be. It's better than 180. Um, my only concern is that if she does get nominated, if she doesn't get confirmed and we don't start moving in the direction, they're going to start looking at this and be like, see. You know, we gave you somebody who's super duper, you know. Uh, I am conservative or, you know, not big pushing big pharma. And we didn't get immediate results that we wanted. So, you know, it is kind of, I, I'm a little bit hesitant to be super excited and put lots of support behind her. Uh, I am I'm skeptically optimistic. If, uh, if, if I have to pick, pick somewhere to go, um, we'll see kind of where she's at. I think she's got a lot of downsides. I think he's got. A lot of upsides. Um,.
Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:09:28] I don't think, I think, she's better than the alternative that we had because the first woman that, uh, Trump, you know, nominated was really, really bad on the COVID stuff. Um, and you know what, at the end of the day, we need somebody who actually understands how the body works and understands freedom and medical, uh autonomy and medical liberty. And if you come out and you're like, you're a very pro mask, anybody who is pro mask anyone. Who was pro-mask for the COVID issue does not, should not be treating patients. If you believe that a paper mask was going to stop an aerosol virus that we had plenty of evidence was getting in through your eyes and those big gaps. So if you thought that mask was gonna help and see your militants about it, you should not Be allowed to treat people. You should not. Be allowed. To be a doctor of any kind. You shouldn't be treating people. Your opinion on how the body works is obviously so flawed. You are more dangerous than you are beneficial. If he believes that the six feet Distance thing. Was beneficial in any way. You should also not be treating patients. So if you thought that injecting a, an unproven MRNA vaccine in the people was going to be the solution with no research, no evidence, or no nothing from a group of people who, who advocated for reducing population of the planet by 15% using vaccines, I don't think that you should be able to treat people anymore, you know, if you're, if your an abandoned research, which they've done with all vaccines.
Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:10:50] That's why I get that standpoint. If you're going to abandon all research and be like, Hey, before we give this to people or to children, we should at least make sure it's safe. If you're like screw that thing, like you shouldn't be allowed to treat patients, you shouldn't be allowed to treat people. You should look through research, you should figure out that these things are safe ahead of time. But that's not the world we live in. And so we kind of have to take what we with the options we're given. So I am, like I said, I'm, I've skeptically optimistic, uh, about us moving the right direction with Dr. Means better than, than the alternative we had. Um, we'll have to see, um, there's some significant downsides to where she's at, but maybe she does great things. So we'll, we have to kind of wait and see, you know, she's got the metabolic function idea, right? Our health is in metabolic function. That's where it is. That's what it's been for the entire time. And yeah, I've been telling people for a long time that health is good chemicals in versus bad chemicals out. That set, you know, get the toxins out, get that, you know the crap from your environment out, get the nutrients that you need to get in and let the body do its thing. You know, power that made the body heals the body. The body's smarter than we are. It's more intricate than we ever believed.
Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:12:04] You know the idea that we're finally coming around to the idea that our bodies are really coherent light. And so we need to start focusing on focusing on coherent light input. Which then goes through the quality of supplementation, quality of nutrition, stuff like that. Um, I don't know if we're fully ready for that conversation because I think people, well, people still believe in calories, so we're so messed up with the body that we can't even have a real conversation yet. So, um, we'll kind of see where it ends up, but I'm neutral positive on Casey, so, we're kind of seeing where it goes. Hopefully, uh, hopefully I'm pleasantly surprised. We will all see. So that's kind of my take on Casey means I think it's way too early to. Thumbs up, thumbs down this, but as a replacement for the COVID vaccine positive and COVID crazy, uh, other choice, I'm, I'm a fan of the upgrade to where we are now, but we'll have to see kind of where it goes. So if you guys have any questions to set up questions at chalmerswellness.com or drop them in the comments. Talk to you later.
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