Newsletter #60: 🐦🔥 Re-birth
It’s been 385 days since I last sent you a newsletter. (Hi, again! 👋)
In that time, I was nominated to be Surgeon General of the United States, was required to disappear from public life, testified in the Senate, grew my baby and birthed him at home, and became a mother.
In my last newsletter, sent on April 29, 2025, I wrote about being moved by the movie Moana and reflected on how it highlighted “A forgotten blueprint for how we lead, heal, and regenerate… Guided not simply by conquest, but by connection… That knows we are not separate from nature, but expressions of it… That honors the truth that creation does not happen at a constant, extractive pace… That honors the unseen… For our health, our families, and the planet.”
That newsletter turned out to be unbelievably prescient, because one week later, on May 7th, 2025, the call to lead knocked on my door: I was nominated to be Surgeon General of the United States.
A lot happened in the ensuing year, and ultimately my nomination was withdrawn. I’ll share much more about that experience over time. It taught me a huge amount about politics, media, cultural movements, and people, and I am so grateful for that experience and perspective.
The moment my nomination was announced, White House protocol required me to stop all public communications completely: no newsletter, no podcasts, no social media posts, no news interviews… Total silence. Prior to the nomination, I had been sending this newsletter to 200,000 people each week, and it was one of my most fulfilling professional experiences. Soon after my nomination, I also felt an impulse to completely cease my personal use of social media, knowing that the often inflammatory nature of its content was not serving me in pregnancy. (I used an app called ScreenZen to help cut the social media cord - it worked incredibly well.)
So, despite being more visible in the public sphere than ever, it ended up being a somewhat quiet period of gestation where I got to focus on the sweetness of reality: creation of life in my body, birthing in my living room in serenity and peace, harvesting food in our garden, cooking hundreds of nourishing meals, nurturing community after dislocation from the LA fires, and feeding my baby with milk from my body around the clock. This was punctuated by several trips to DC to meet individually with around 20 senators and meeting with the White House about healthcare policy, including encouraging a stronger and faster plan to off-ramp from toxic synthetic pesticides.
All this is to say: I am both the same person who wrote you last, and also a new person. I’ve been reborn as a mother, and I’m re-entering the writing and health advocacy space after a year of silence. I’m finding my own footing again in this new world, just like my baby crawling on the floor next to me.
Over the past year, I’ve thought a lot about what kinds of conversations actually feel useful in this complex moment in history—and what kinds leave us more fearful, numbed, and disconnected from ourselves and one another.
Huge industries and digital engines are able to manipulate our minds and bodies on a vast scale and speed through our “food,” our “healthcare,” our media, and our sources of “truth” and information. We are routinely being addicted to new forms of pleasure, addiction, outrage, and information, straining our humanity and not supporting our well-being, happiness, or satisfaction with our lives. We seem unprepared. And I don’t think the robots, the government, AI, nor healthcare “innovation” are going to “fix” it.
This newsletter will be a space for exploring how we orient toward health, meaning, connection, harmony, and joy in a world that is changing rapidly.
Like many of you, I feel grief contemplating many aspects of modern life: ecological destruction, chronic illness touching all ages (including children), damaging incentives across many of our major industries, technological dominance over our lives, institutional corruption, cultural polarization, addiction and mental illness, and the fragmentation of community and meaning.
And yet I’ve never felt more hopeful.
It is quite a thing to hold both realities at once: the overwhelming dis-ease of modernity, and also the joy of a baby smiling at you, watching a tree you planted grow, taking in a sunset, sitting in circle with grounded women, having a prayer answered, reading something that lands as absolute truth, or talking to mission-driven innovators trying to build a better future. What does it all mean? Are things “good” or “bad”? How do we make sense of how to live?
I think we are being faced with many challenges all at once:
Embodying equanimity, dignity, and presence in a culture that profits off fear, division, and distraction
Having the courage to work toward positive societal change when systems issues feel crushingly vast
Channeling our highest form of expression in a world that accepts synthetic and cheap
Choosing to actually embody the values we want to see in the world rather than being angry
Honoring the mystery of life in a culture unwilling to value that which cannot be quantified
Prioritizing connection and health when modern systems and norms structurally erode both
Investing in the tireless work of nurturing life in the midst of environmental devastation, live-streamed wars, and cultural polarization
This newsletter intends to explore these challenges as opportunities: Opportunities for personal and spiritual development. Opportunities to support internal resilience in a time of great shifts. Opportunities for humanity to rise to the occasion. I am optimistic. We must be.
I come back to Walt Whitman’s Song of Myself to remind myself how people have been grappling with these contradictions and complexities of life forever — a hopeful message in my mind:
The past and present wilt—I have fill’d them, emptied them.
And proceed to fill my next fold of the future.Listener up there! what have you to confide to me?
Look in my face while I snuff the sidle of evening,(Talk honestly, no one else hears you, and I stay only a minute longer.)
Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)I concentrate toward them that are nigh, I wait on the door-slab.
Who has done his day’s work? who will soonest be through with his supper?
Who wishes to walk with me?
Will you speak before I am gone? will you prove already too late?- Walt Whitman
It’s certainly not too late. We’re here and alive, and that is a truly unfathomable blessing.
Each week, you can expect reflective essays on culture, health, motherhood, and the environment; conversations with scientists, healers, clinicians, farmers, entrepreneurs, and thinkers pushing us toward a healthier and more harmonious reality; practical deep dives on food, sleep, fitness, and wellbeing; reflections on our modern birth culture and positive ideas around raising children in the modern world; stories from my experience as the Surgeon General nominee; and recommendations of resources I love to help live a happy and healthy life.
If these themes interest you as well, stay tuned.
With good energy,
Casey Means
Since it’s been over a year since I last sent you a newsletter, I wanted to reintroduce myself through some of my work:
A #1 New York Times bestselling book, with over 1 million copies sold, Good Energy presents a unifying framework for understanding what is causing chronic symptoms and diseases. Good Energy presents recommendations for systems change in healthcare and food, and a practical plan to improve our health.
Get your copy here.
My episode on the Huberman Lab Podcast: Transform Your Health by Improving Metabolism, Hormone & Blood Sugar Regulation
We discuss how to leverage nutrition, exercise and environmental factors to enhance your metabolic health by improving mitochondrial function, hormone and blood sugar regulation. We also explore how fasting, deliberate cold exposure and spending time in nature can impact metabolic health, how to control food cravings and how to assess your metabolic health using blood testing, continuous glucose monitors and other tools.
Listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts, or watch on YouTube.
My episode on the On Purpose Podcast with Jay Shetty: The Nutrition Expert: 93% of Adults Have Metabolic Issues (What Your Body Is Trying to Tell You)
I share how to take control of your health and trust your body. From the importance of expressing ourselves authentically to the benefits of walking and eating much more slowly, this conversation is packed with actionable advice to help you live a healthier, happier life.
Listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts, or watch on YouTube.
Other resources:
My YouTube channel, where you’ll find podcasts I’ve appeared in or hosted, and other videos where I speak about metabolic health and nutrition
My newsletter archive, where you can read all 50+ of my past newsletters
My About page, where you can learn more about me and my past work
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