METABOLIC HEALTH, WITH DR. CASEY MEANS

In this episode, Dr. Casey means joins Clayton Farris and Laura Schein on What the Func?! to talk about the intersection of metabolic health and functional medicine. She explains why you want your “healthspan” to match your lifespan, her personal definition for biohacking, and why our current medical system is set up to fail when it comes to preventative treatment.

The difference between lifespan and healthspan

Every person’s goal should be to maximize their healthspan, or the length of time that they are thriving and healthy overall.

There’s a couple interesting things there. So one is really the difference between lifespan and health span. And really the one that I think I care a lot more about is health span, which is how many years of your life are you living where you’re really thriving and healthy? That’s what we want to maximize. Unfortunately, for the average American, health span is just getting shorter and shorter. We’re starting to get chronically ill very early as Americans these days, where we’re seeing teenagers getting diseases related to diet and lifestyle, like Type II diabetes that used to be called adult onset diabetes. And now it’s being seen in children. And so this is really the health span being truncated. And so what we want to do is we want to extend those healthy years that people are living and thriving.

Keeping wisdom alive

The longer individuals can remain healthy, the more time they will have to let their accumulated wisdom benefit society as a whole.

Unfortunately, in American life, that’s when people start getting really sick and going downhill. And it just is this sad mismatch between really peak of emotional intellectual synthesis and then this rapid decline towards a slow and painful death, which is what a lot of Americans are dealing with. So what if at that time, when people, those later years, when people just are filled to the brim with all this inspiration and knowledge from their years of living, what if people were healthy then for another few more decades. Imagine what that would do for just our world and our culture and teaching younger people, the next generation. And unfortunately, that’s just not the way things pan out here. And so to be able to give people healthier years in their later life, I think that could have just profound implications for sharing that generational wisdom with others.

Dr. Means’ definition of biohacking

Anything that can allow the body to function properly is worth committing to.

I consider myself someone who is pretty obsessed with cellular biology and how to optimize that. And so I guess biohacking is a term that is like how do we optimize and tweak and hack? And I don’t love the word hack in general because it makes it sound like it’s some sort of slapped on thing, that will fix something, but really it doesn’t capture the fact that to be healthy and to thrive and to optimize cellular biology and the conditions in the body that allow for our cells to function properly, it’s day in and day out, consistent, simple practices that create the conditions in the body that lead to function. And so there’s something about that commitment and that behavior and the simplicity of a lot of this that I think it’s lost in the word biohacking. Honestly just eating, every single day at every single meal, eating to fuel your body properly. Is that biohacking? Maybe, but that’s what we need to be doing.

Every cell requires metabolism

Metabolism may not get much press, but it truly is the foundation for health. Controlling your blood sugar can literally help turn your life around.

To have a healthy body, you have to be fueling your body properly and with food and that if you have glucose dysregulation problems, it’s the easiest ticket towards not having longevity and not having health span and not feeling your best and not basically achieving your health goals. If blood sugar is out of control, because glucose is the fundamental unit of metabolism in the body, and every single cell requires a well-functioning metabolism to essentially work properly. Because it’s so fundamental and it’s so easy to get out of control with the standard American diet. The goal with Levels is to basically just take this massive piece of low-hanging fruit, which is controlling your blood sugar, which if it’s not controlled, very quick ticket towards not being healthy and not having longevity. If it’s well controlled and healthy, really setting yourself up for success in terms of far reaching health benefits.

The missing link in the “wearable” movement

The wearable movement has enabled us to track activity, sleep, and stress. Levels is looking to close the loop by providing insight into the fourth pillar of health: nutrition.

The wearable movement has been going on for a while now. And so far we’ve been able to really well track I would say three of the four pillars of health. So we’ve been able to track activity and exercise through step trackers, accelerometers fitness trackers. We’ve been able to track our sleep, of course, through our wearable devices. And then we’ve actually able to track stress at this point because of HRV monitors, heart rate variability monitors, which can tell us about an objective measure of physiologic stress in the body. So we’ve had those, but we have never had a wearable that’s told us about nutrition or closed the loop on nutrition, which is wild to think about. We eat over a metric ton of food per year and we really are doing that all on blind faith. Just like, this looks good. This is marketed as healthy. They say these Skittles are low fat, so they’re probably good for me. It’s literally just marketing claims and personal opinion and how we feel and what our weight is, but it’s really like a black box with no closed loop biofeedback.

The downside of healthcare financing

The modern American health system is one where every service has a fee. Preventative health isn’t incentivized under the current system.

These devices, continuous glucose monitors, were originally created to help people manage disease, but you’ve got to step back and think about the medical system in general, in the United States. And it actually really gets back to healthcare financing. What do we pay for in the United States in terms of healthcare? What we pay for is, we wait until people develop disease. And then we basically get paid for seeing those patients and prescribing a treatment plan. We get paid a lot less for taking a healthy patient and helping them avoid chronic disease. We’re in a fee for service system, so service is the name of the game. And deep dives into an otherwise healthy person, helping them to avoid chronic disease, that’s not a service that really gets paid for.

Minimize the collateral damage of food

When you drink something like a smoothie, it can cause a glucose spike. But when handled properly, you can minimize the detrimental effects.

One other interesting thing you mentioned was about the smoothie. And that’s one of these things where people would be like, “Well, isn’t it okay to have a spike because there’s all this good stuff in there.” And I think with a smoothie, there may have been vegetables in it and other things that you added that are really healthful, and ultimately the chemical composition of that smoothie probably has a lot of really good stuff for your health, but then there’s this other side sort of okay, well, there’s a lot of sugar and that caused a spike. And ultimately when I think about food, I’m thinking about how can I just maximize all the good stuff with as little of the collateral damage as possible.

Metabolism & alcohol

While the exact correlations are still unclear, having one drink per day seems to lower the rate of metabolic disease.

Large research studies have showed that people who consume approximately one drink of alcohol per day, so very small to moderate amount, not a chronic heavy alcohol use situation, those people tend to have the lowest rates of metabolic disease. So it’s this funny J-shaped curve where people who drink nothing have a little bit higher risk of diabetes. People who drank zero to one per day have a little bit lower risk. And then it goes very sharply up after one. And so, yeah, it’s just interesting data. It’s not a reason to drink certainly, but the physiology is very, very interesting.

The life of a surgeon

Surgeons have incredible insights, but are sometimes unable to share them becuase of the daily demands of a typical workday. That’s why Dr. Means made a career change.

I was pissed when I was a medical student that we sit for 10 hours a day, eight to 10 hours a day as medical students. And we’re learning that sedentary behavior is a risk factor for heart disease. And yet we’re sitting all day in the classroom. So I tried to get the Stanford Medical School administration to put standing desks in all the classrooms and cause a whole ruckus. I’ll always try to like do stuff like that. Long story short, I became really interested in surgery and went in that direction, always imagined I’d merge these different passions, surgery and holistic health and nutrition and all this stuff. But the reality is when you get into the surgical world, you’re working 80 to 100 hours a week, you’re seeing 40 patients a day. You’re in the operating room all day. Your pager is going off nonstop. Literally the last thing that you were thinking about is talking to your patient about whether dairy is involved in their sinusitis. And as much as you might want to, and one, it’s not in the guidelines.

Clayton Farris: What the Func?! Is brought to you by the Functional Medicine Coaching Academy. The information we provide is for educational purposes only and not intended to diagnose or treat any medical condition. What works for one person might not work for you. So please talk to your doctor before you make any changes. And heads up, this is a pretty funky podcast. Some episodes contain conversations and language that might be better suited for adult ears. And now here’s What the Func?!

Laura Schein: Hi, I’m Laura. I’m a Certified Functional Medicine Health Coach and long time health nut.

Clayton Farris: And I’m Clayton. I’m just your average garbage human that woke up after a series of unexplained health problems and realized I have to do something about this.

Laura Schein: So using my skills as a health coach.

Clayton Farris: And my desperate need to get healthy.

Laura Schein: We embarked on a journey of healing and accountability that brought us here today.

Clayton Farris: So join us as we talk to each other and some leading health experts breaking down the truths about Functional Medicine.

Dr. Casey Means: (singing)

Clayton Farris: Hello everybody. And welcome back to What the Func?! I am your handsome host, Clayton Farris.

Laura Schein: And I’m your healthy host, Laura Schein.

Clayton Farris: And we are here to talk about all things Functional Medicine and beyond. Right?

Laura Schein: That is right. That’s what we do.

Clayton Farris: That’s what we do.

Laura Schein: Every day.

Clayton Farris: Every day, all day.

Laura Schein: Right.

Clayton Farris: So much so that people… You know what’s funny to me, sometimes there’s Functional Medicine fails, not really Functional Medicine fails, but today you were trying to make-

Laura Schein: My waffle.

Clayton Farris: You were trying to make this waffle.

Laura Schein: With Dr. Jeff Bland’s tartary buckwheat flour.

Clayton Farris: Right, we’re not here to dog the buckwheat.

Laura Schein: No, the buckwheat flour is great. I just used it in an incorrect way trying to make a waffle.

Clayton Farris: Trying to make a waffle, put it in a waffle maker.

Laura Schein: Yeah.

Clayton Farris: There was no egg in this thing.

Laura Schein: It was a chia egg.

Clayton Farris: And it just was-

Laura Schein: Disaster.

Clayton Farris: A disaster.

Laura Schein: It was a func med fail. We all have them.

Clayton Farris: But it tasted good.

Laura Schein: Yeah.

Clayton Farris: It just was not visibly pleasing to the eye.

Laura Schein: Right. And that’s okay.

Clayton Farris: Look, when you’re trying to eat some of your old time favorites in a new healthy way, they can blow up in your face.

Laura Schein: Backfire.

Clayton Farris: Backfire.

Laura Schein: Yeah. Sometimes experiments go wrong.

Clayton Farris: And that’s okay.

Laura Schein: That’s okay. But we’re here to keep trying. So before we get to our episode today, we want to talk to you about the Functional Medicine Coaching Academy, which is where I got my health coach training. And you can, too. It’s a one-year online program. It’s a really amazing school. And they have students all over the world. It’s a fully online.

Clayton Farris: Amazing. Here’s the thing, doctors, Functional Medicine doctors are busy people. So a lot of the offices have health coaches. So they’re looking for people to fill these roles. Health coaches help them out. And one of the best places to get your certification for something like that is the Functional Medicine Coaching Academy.

Laura Schein: Right, they’re the only place that’s certified through the Institute for Functional Medicine. So it’s super legit and they are giving our listeners $500 off standard tuition with the code FUNC, all caps, F U N C. So apply today.

Clayton Farris: I like how you said that, Func.

Laura Schein: Func. That’s my all caps voice.

Clayton Farris: We got that. If it’s capital F and regular case, you’re just like Func.

Laura Schein: Func.

Clayton Farris: But if you’re like, FUNC.

Laura Schein: FUNC.

Clayton Farris: Then it’s all caps.

Laura Schein: But anyway, also isn’t there a Gen Z saying now, no cap. That means, I was looking up Gen Z sayings for a song I’m writing. But anyway, people say no cap. It means it’s going to be amazing. It’s like an exclamation point now.

Clayton Farris: Great.

Laura Schein: Anyway.

Clayton Farris: Thank you for sharing.

Laura Schein: You’re welcome. Also, so go to FunctionalMedicinecoaching.org for all the information.

Clayton Farris: Func.

Laura Schein: Func.

Clayton Farris: Okay. If we’re going to be talking about what the cool kids are doing, they’re all doing this thing besides saying no cap. They’re wearing wearables. Right?

Laura Schein: It’s all about wearables.

Clayton Farris: Wearables are the new craze. What are wearables?

Laura Schein: Wearables are devices that help you understand what’s going on in your body. And it’s data driven. So you get all this information, but glucose monitoring in specific is what we’re talking about today.

Clayton Farris: They’re like biohacking wet dreams. Can I say that?

Laura Schein: You just did. Yeah, I know, it is.

Clayton Farris: Because it’s you wear them to track all the data. So you can level up on your health and really know what’s going on. And we had the privilege of trying out these glucose monitors from a company called Levels.

Laura Schein: Yeah. We leveled up with Levels.

Clayton Farris: We leveled up with Levels and we talked to Dr. Casey Means about glucose monitoring, glucose in general. Because we’re used to people that have diabetes tracking their glucose, but apparently it turns out it’s good for everybody to know what’s going on with glucose levels.

Laura Schein: Yeah. And you can just get this instant feedback on how your body is reacting to things you’re eating and how you’re sleeping and drinking and whatever you’re doing, it’s affecting your glucose.

Clayton Farris: Right. We both wore them and found it really interesting. Certain things we would eat, it would spike. Certain things you would eat that you would expect it to spike, it didn’t spike.

Laura Schein: How does sex affect it? All very interesting.

Clayton Farris: Very interesting stuff.

Laura Schein: We wore them for a few weeks. We stabbed each other in the arms. Didn’t hurt at all.

Clayton Farris: Didn’t hurt.

Laura Schein: Nope.

Clayton Farris: Big fear was you stabbed this device onto your arm. There’s a needle in it that goes into your arm. We thought it was going to hurt. We panicked before we did it. And then we-

Laura Schein: We put it off for months.

Clayton Farris: And then literally didn’t feel it.

Laura Schein: Didn’t feel it at all. Yeah.

Clayton Farris: So tell us more about Casey Means.

Laura Schein: So Casey Means, MD is a Stanford trained physician, Chief Medical Officer and co-founder of metabolic health company Levels and Associate Editor of the International Journal of Disease Reversal and Prevention. Her mission is to maximize human potential and reverse the epidemic of preventable chronic disease by empowering individuals with tech-enabled tools that can inform smart, personalized, and sustainable dietary and lifestyle choices. Dr. Means’ perspective has recently been featured in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, Men’s Health, Forbes, Business Insider, Tech Crunch, Entrepreneur magazine, more and more and more. It goes on and on.

Clayton Farris: Endocrine Today, my favorite magazine.

Laura Schein: She’s amazing. She’s held past research positions at Stanford School of Medicine, NYU and beyond. And we’re very lucky that we got to talk to her.

Clayton Farris: Yeah. So enjoy the conversation.

Clayton Farris: Okay. So we are joined today by Casey Means who is one of the co-founders of Levels Health. How are you, Casey?

Dr. Casey Means: I’m great. How are you?

Clayton Farris: Good. Thanks for being here.

Dr. Casey Means: Thanks for having me.

Clayton Farris: Yeah. So I want to start off with just something kind of fun. You were the president of your class at Stanford.

Dr. Casey Means: You’ve been doing some LinkedIn digging, haven’t you?

Laura Schein: Some deep dives.

Dr. Casey Means: I was, yes.

Clayton Farris: That’s impressive.

Laura Schein: Very impressive.

Dr. Casey Means: It was a lot of fun. I was sophomore class president and yeah, I was on a team called the Golden Ticket and we were a Charlie and the Chocolate Factory themed slate. It was so-

Clayton Farris: Amazing.

Dr. Casey Means: Lots of embarrassing stories from that time, but no, it was wonderful. And it was really great to be able to build school spirit and get to know so many of my classmates through.

Clayton Farris: Totally. And it seems like one of the classes and some of your focus was in this idea of longevity that we’re hearing a lot about recently. And I’m always curious, why did we want to live longer?

Dr. Casey Means: Yeah. There’s a couple interesting things there. So one is really the difference between lifespan and health span. And really the one that I think I care a lot more about is health span, which is how many years of your life are you living where you’re really thriving and healthy? That’s what we want to maximize. Unfortunately, for the average American, health span is just getting shorter and shorter. We’re starting to get chronically ill very early as Americans these days, where we’re seeing teenagers getting diseases related to diet and lifestyle, like Type II diabetes that used to be called adult onset diabetes. And now it’s being seen in children. And so this is really the health span being truncated. And so what we want to do is we want to extend those healthy years that people are living and thriving.

Dr. Casey Means: And I think a really interesting thing about the question of living longer. Why do you want to live longer? I think if you’re living longer and you’re really healthy during that time, that’s definitely, that’s what we want, that’s the goal. But we spend decades and decades of our lives building skills and gaining perspective and reading and iterating and really, I think, I’m in my 30s. And so I’m still acquiring so much knowledge and perspective and whatnot, but I really do feel that each year that I get older, it gets easier and more beautiful to be alive because you are gaining this wisdom. And so then you think about okay, someone in their 60s or 70s has been doing this for decades and they have all this knowledge that they’ve acquired and that higher level wisdom.

Dr. Casey Means: And then, unfortunately, in American life, that’s when people start getting really sick and going downhill. And it just is this sad mismatch between really peak of emotional intellectual synthesis and then this rapid decline towards a slow and painful death, which is what a lot of Americans are dealing with. So what if at that time, when people, those later years, or “later years”, when people just are filled to the brim with all this inspiration and knowledge from their years of living, what if people were healthy then for another few more decades. Imagine what that would do for just our world and our culture and teaching younger people, the next generation. And unfortunately, that’s just not the way things pan out here. And so to be able to give people healthier years in their later life, I think that could have just profound implications for sharing that generational wisdom with others.

Laura Schein: Yeah. And as a society, I feel like have accepted that when you reach 70s, 80s, that you get sick, that’s what happens and you decline and it’s old age. But that the fact that that doesn’t have to be the case. I salute you for being one of the people who’s trying to fight that that doesn’t have to be everyone’s fate. So do you consider yourself a biohacker?

Dr. Casey Means: I would say I consider myself someone who is pretty obsessed with cellular biology and how to optimize that. And so I guess biohacking is a term that is like how do we optimize and tweak and hack? And I don’t love the word hack in general because it makes it sound like it’s some sort of slapped on thing, that will fix something, but really it doesn’t capture the fact that to be healthy and to thrive and to optimize cellular biology and the conditions in the body that allow for our cells to function properly, it’s day in and day out, consistent, simple practices that create the conditions in the body that lead to function. And so there’s something about that commitment and that behavior and the simplicity of a lot of this that I think it’s lost in the word biohacking. Honestly just eating, every single day at every single meal, eating to fuel your body properly. Is that biohacking? Maybe, but that’s what we need to be doing.

Dr. Casey Means: And so, oops, sorry my headphones fell out of my microphone. Sorry about that.

Clayton Farris: No worries.

Dr. Casey Means: So that’s really what I’m passionate about is what behaviors do we have to do each day that basically create the conditions in the body for highest functioning? Because when our cells are happy, our tissues are happy when our tissues are happy, our organs are happy. And when our organs are happy, we don’t have symptoms essentially. And so it all starts at that basic level. And what we put in our mouths every day, how we sleep, how we stress, how we move, these are the things that actually connect the external world to the internal world, and create the conditions in the body that make all the difference. And so that’s what I’m really passionate about.

Clayton Farris: Amazing. Yeah. I guess it’s true, something like Levels and eating every day what you should be eating, that’s true biohacking. As opposed to whatever it is, taking pills.

Laura Schein: Crazy technology.

Clayton Farris: Crazy technology. The true biohacking is just-

Laura Schein: Living healthfully.

Clayton Farris: Living healthy.

Dr. Casey Means: Right. Doing the work.

Laura Schein: Yeah, exactly.

Dr. Casey Means: And what we’re trying to do is make that work just a lot easier and more personalized and more fun. You can’t get around the fact that to have a healthy body, you have to be fueling your body properly and with food and that if you have glucose dysregulation problems, it’s the easiest ticket towards not having longevity and not having health span and not feeling your best and not basically achieving your health goals. If blood sugar is out of control, because glucose is the fundamental unit of metabolism in the body, and every single cell requires a well-functioning metabolism to essentially work properly. Because it’s so fundamental and it’s so easy to get out of control with the standard American diet. The goal with Levels is to basically just take this massive piece of low-hanging fruit, which is controlling your blood sugar, which if it’s not controlled, very quick ticket towards not being healthy and not having longevity. If it’s well controlled and healthy, really setting yourself up for success in terms of far reaching health benefits.

Dr. Casey Means: And we have a tool that measures that substrate and can give you instant feedback on how the choices you’re making are affecting that. From where we stand, it’s a no-brainer of yeah, we have this data. Why wouldn’t people be using this, when we know that eight of the 10 leading causes of death in the United States are related to poorly managed blood sugar. So this is really low hanging fruit. But the thing is, just having data and having data alone is a huge step forward. But being able to actually transform that data into something interesting and actionable, that is something that really helps engender the behavior change and the inspiration and the community around it. So that’s where Levels lives is that intersection of this incredible raw data stream that you generate through a wearable that gives you your glucose values 24 hours a day, lets you know how it’s changing in response to choices you’re making around food, exercise, sleep and stress, and then transforming that into an experience that actually makes it quite fun and simple to figure out how to keep your glucose more stable and in a healthy range, which is the foundation of metabolic health, which is the foundation of all health.

Clayton Farris: Yeah. It’s like social media for health nuts. So this is my question though. So we always think about glucose when it comes to diabetes and the hypoglycemia, all the negative connotations of it and the diseases that it cause, but it just feels like it’s so recent that we’re really hearing more about how we can monitor our own glucose to like maximum health, like you’re saying. So why is it a new thing that’s in the ether right now?

Dr. Casey Means: Yeah. The wearable movement has been going on for a while now. And so far we’ve been able to really well track I would say three of the four pillars of health. So we’ve been able to track activity and exercise through step trackers, accelerometers fitness trackers. We’ve been able to track our sleep, of course, through our wearable devices. And then we’ve actually able to track stress at this point because of HRV monitors, heart rate variability monitors, which can tell us about an objective measure of physiologic stress in the body. So we’ve had those, but we have never had a wearable that’s told us about nutrition or closed the loop on nutrition, which is wild to think about. We eat over a metric ton of food per year and we really are doing that all on blind faith. Just like, this looks good. This is marketed as healthy. They say these Skittles are low fat, so they’re probably good for me. It’s literally just marketing claims and personal opinion and how we feel and what our weight is, but it’s really like a black box with no closed loop biofeedback.

Dr. Casey Means: And that is leading to a lot of problems. We have 74% of American adults are overweight or obese, and 128 million Americans have prediabetes or Type II diabetes. So something in this just winging it on food is not working. And people might say, “Oh well, we’ve been around for many tens of thousands of years. Why do we need a tracker now to figure out how to eat?” And the answer to that question is that we are dealing with a whole new complex ecosystem around food over the last hundred years that we have never faced before, the industrialized diet, bringing food out of the ground and into a factory to transform its molecular structure into something that human bodies were never intended to see, totally changing the way that food hits our digestive system and gets into our bloodstream, putting massive chemicals in it of all types. It’s a totally different landscape.

Dr. Casey Means: And that has only been for about 50 to 100 years or so. And so that new threat, that new ecosystem of food is not working for the human body at all. And that is showing up in the way our bodies are just at scale breaking down. I mean, it’s like the most unbelievable experiment that you could possibly watch in human history of oh, we’re going to, we’re going to take food, the thing that both makes up people’s bodies and also is instructions for the body of how to function, and we’re going to take that, that we’ve co-evolved with for tens of thousands of years and just completely transform it in one generation into something that’s unrecognizable, not actually food. It’s just completely molecularly different from what we originally comes out of the earth and we’re going to see what happens.

Dr. Casey Means: Well, what happens is that 88% of American adults get metabolic dysfunction. Their bodies essentially can’t produce energy properly. Six in 10 Americans have a chronic illness, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. We know all the stats, they’re bad. And we are going to have $4 trillion of healthcare cost, but not actually address the food system that’s causing it. So when people say, “Well, I just don’t understand, why would we need a tracker to help us just eat?” Well, yeah, if people were eating real food from good soil, then yeah, I don’t necessarily know if we’d need a tracker, but we’re facing a very, very challenging uphill battle right now. And I think having tools to help us be able to hold a mirror up to it and also hold it accountable for what it is and what it’s doing to our bodies can be really helpful right now, when so many of us are struggling to understand what to eat.

Clayton Farris: Totally.

Laura Schein: So Clayton and I did try the Levels, loved it. So I was wearing mine and I was posting about it on my social media and sharing some stories. And all these friends started messaging me saying, “Do you have diabetes? Oh my God, you have diabetes?” And I was like, “Well, I actually have, I don’t have diabetes, but I’ve always been interested in tracking my blood sugar because I know that in some testing I’ve been told that I have some blood sugar issues.” But I think that’s this misconception that you can only track these things and look at these things if you already have a diagnosed disease or issue, and that’s not the case. Right? Anyone can be wearing these things and learning how to optimize their diet and nutrition to live their best life. You don’t have to have diabetes in order to look at these things.

Dr. Casey Means: Yeah, exactly. Right. I think that when people, it’s easy to think that, and that’s because these devices, continuous glucose monitors, were originally created to help people manage disease, but you’ve got to step back and think about the medical system in general, in the United States. And it actually really gets back to healthcare financing. What do we pay for in the United States in terms of healthcare? What we pay for is, we wait until people develop disease. And then we basically get paid for seeing those patients and prescribing a treatment plan. We get paid a lot less for taking a healthy patient and helping them avoid chronic disease. We’re in a fee for service system, so service is the name of the game. And deep dives into an otherwise healthy person, helping them to avoid chronic disease, that’s not a service that really gets paid for.

Dr. Casey Means: We are really… Brainwash is a strong word, but we are in this culture, in the system in which we live, which is a reactionary sick care system, where we wait until people get sick till we pay attention to them. Makes total sense that yeah, we would think, oh, well, we’ll only give devices to help people understand their body once they’ve gotten sick. To me that just makes no sense. And the question I would ask is how do you think diabetes develops? And wouldn’t you want to maybe, I don’t know, be able to see that happening as it’s happening until one day you walk into the doctor’s office and they prick your finger and say, “Oh, you’re there.” That would have probably been able to be picked up 15 years earlier had we had better tools for what I would call biologic observability.

Dr. Casey Means: So we are a black box. We only know what we test and can sense and pick up from the outside signals, whether that’s something we’re feeling or perceiving through body awareness, whether it’s a symptom, whether it’s a lab test. And it’s not that these problems aren’t existing before that diagnosis of diabetes happens, it’s that we’re not looking. And so that’s a hole that needs to be filled that unfortunately is not financially incentivized by the conventional standard healthcare system. And this is why you’re seeing so many amazing companies arise to try and essentially plug those holes and fill that gap. Really any of these companies that are helping increase this biologic observability, this seeing into the black box, whether that’s WHOOP or smart mattresses or Levels or interesting companies helping you test your vitamin levels at home, like Vessel or whatever, it’s people fired up around the fact that why are we waiting until we’re flagrantly ill? And the tests that the system has chosen as the one that we’re going to use to look at this, which may be a very delayed test, can’t we do better? Can’t we see a window into this earlier, so we could actually do something about it earlier? That’s where Levels lives.

Dr. Casey Means: Ultimately, we’re not at this point saying to anyone oh, we’re a diabetes prevention tool, or we’re an obesity prevention tool. What we are is a metabolic awareness tool, letting people understand, for the first time have awareness into how foods and choices are affecting their body so they can make better decisions.

Clayton Farris: That was the fascinating thing about wearing the Levels is because it would just automatically make you consider certain things for me, because I was like, I don’t want to eat this because I know it’s going to spike my blood sugar. And I’ve never thought about that before.

Laura Schein: And things like green smoothies or whatever that I consider oh, that’s very healthy, those were consistently things, because it had all this fruit in it, that was spiking my blood sugar. And then also I was really interesting to learn about how exercise and physical activity factors into it. So if I ate something and just sat on the couch afterwards, my blood sugar would go much higher versus if I took a little walk afterwards.

Clayton Farris: Or testing blood sugar after sex. That was fun.

Laura Schein: That was fun.

Dr. Casey Means: What’d you learn?

Clayton Farris: It was like a workout. But also we found that meditating would, because Laura and I both meditate regularly. We would learn that that would calm, bring it way down.

Laura Schein: Bring it way down. Also drinking a little bit brought it way down, but then it would spike later. Oh, it was interesting to see doing an infrared sauna, sweating a lot, really raised my blood sugar. That was interesting.

Dr. Casey Means: Yeah. These are all fascinating observations.

Clayton Farris: There’s so many, sorry.

Dr. Casey Means: Yeah, no. Some of them are really getting at a couple of things. Just some observations from hearing about these. One is that several of those are around the stress nexus, which is that when the body is stressed, even if it’s a good stress like sauna, or maybe sex, the body releases these stress hormones of okay, I need to mobilize for whatever event is happening. And that can cause the liver to release glucose to basically be mobilized for energy in the body. So high-intensity interval training workout, sauna, psychological stressor of any type, like a difficult meeting or something, these things can all cause glucose to rise in the bloodstream because the body is trying to mobilize energy for you to basically help with that. So even a cold plunge, sometimes people see that spike because the body is stressed.

Dr. Casey Means: And so the sauna one is interesting because it could be a heat, your body’s a little bit stressed and it’s releasing that those hormones and that glucose. It could also be the error on this end. It could be error from the sensor in the heat, since they’re only able to work at certain temperature levels. So hard to tell about that one. But another.

Clayton Farris: I was in a fire pit and it spiked. Weird.

Dr. Casey Means: Oh, that’s funny. That’s probably, that’s probably heat on the sensor, I would guess. But if I’m sprinting, even for five minutes, just running all out, my glucose will spike because my body has released those stress hormones to essentially tell my body to mobilize more energy for my muscles. And that’s not necessarily a bad spike. It’s very different than spiking after a meal where it’s from food, because the physiology is quite different. If your muscles are super active and are taking up glucose rapidly, that’s a glucose sync. You’re basically transferring stored glucose from your liver into your muscles to actually be used and metabolized. That’s a good process, very different. And muscles can take up glucose just through muscle contraction. They don’t actually need the hormone insulin to help them take up the glucose into the muscles.

Dr. Casey Means: In contrast, if you’re eating, if you drink a huge soda and you have a flood of glucose into the blood stream and are sitting on the couch, you don’t have that glucose sync with the muscles to actually use and metabolize that glucose, you’re not actually clearing out your stored glucose. It’s exogenous glucose from what you ate and you’re releasing all this insulin to have it taken up to be stored or used. So it’s a totally different physiology. And that’s why in our app, we actually allow people to toggle something that says strenuous exercise, so that spike can be taken out of their overall score since it’s not “a bad glucose spike.”

Clayton Farris: Right.

Dr. Casey Means: But then one other interesting thing you mentioned was about the smoothie. And that’s one of these things where people would be like, “Well, isn’t it okay to have a spike because there’s all this good stuff in there.” And I think with a smoothie, there may have been vegetables in it and other things that you added that are really healthful, and ultimately the chemical composition of that smoothie probably has a lot of really good stuff for your health, but then there’s this other side sort of okay, well, there’s a lot of sugar and that caused a spike. And ultimately when I think about food, I’m thinking about how can I just maximize all the good stuff with as little of the collateral damage as possible. So that might mean all the micronutrients from the vegetables, but eating organic so I don’t get the pesticides or all the good micronutrients from the vegetables and fruits, but somehow tweaking the glucose so that I’m not getting the glucose spike, because you want ultimately the best possible combination with the most nutrients with the least damage essentially.

Dr. Casey Means: And so for me, and what we hope the app helps guide people towards is how do you modulate that smoothie? Don’t get rid of the smoothie, but how do you modify it to make it have the most benefit with the least collateral? So that might be adding more fiber to it, adding more fat to it, maybe switching to a lower glycemic fruit in there, or just reducing the fruit content, adding more protein. Protein, fat, and fiber all blunt a glucose spike, and for many people, there’s fruits that spike them and there’s fruits that don’t spike them. So just learning what those are and incorporating those. And so really moving away from this idea of oh my gosh, I can’t have this thing because it spikes me, but how can I work with it to make it something where I’m going to get the molecular benefits of the meal without the spike.

Dr. Casey Means: So I don’t know if that’s the process that you went through with hacking the smoothie, but that’s really some of the most fun I have with Levels is figuring out how to keep what I love and keep the good things, but then just make it even even better.

Laura Schein: Yeah. And I think I really learned that for me, stress is the biggest spiker of it all. What I found really interesting was when I got my weekly reports, my top zones, the things that were in nines and tens, are not necessarily the things that you would think are the healthy things. It’s chocolate, red wine, tequila. It’s all these things that… And I was like, oh, sweet potato soup, chicken curry. I was like, oh, okay, I was on vacation. Oh, that was my best day. And it wasn’t necessarily because I was thinking about eating the healthiest things, but maybe it’s because I was actually relaxed. And our relationship was in a good place that day. So, rare. Maybe that’s something I learned from me. But then I look at my worst day, my worst day was a day when I was home and I was eating normal, coconut water, smoothie, going on a hike, eating nuts. So I don’t know.

Dr. Casey Means: Yeah. Interesting. The alcohol piece is an interesting one. Alcohol has this very fascinating metabolic effect on the body where it actually… So the liver’s a big metabolic, as people are probably realizing from me talking about a lot already on this podcast, is that the liver actually makes glucose in two different ways. So the body, it’s really trying to not have hypoglycemia. The body wants to keep the glucose in a range that is healthy and not go too low. So as a backup mechanism from just eating, the liver can make glucose in case we can’t have access to food and there’s not exogenous glucose going in. So the liver makes it by creating it from basic building blocks in the body, acids, it can make glucose, or it can break down stored glucose and release those two into the bloodstream.

Dr. Casey Means: Alcohol blocks the liver from that first thing of actually making new glucose from other substrates. So it blocks a process called gluconeogenesis, neo new, glucose glucose, so gluconeogenesis. So it’s basically turning off, if you think of the faucets of glucose in the body of what you’re eating, what the liver is making, and what the liver is breaking down, it’s turning off one of those. And so glucose can look lower. So it’s not actually blunting a glucose spike from something you’ve eaten, but it’s diminishing the amount you’re making. So like an apparent free pass, but not necessarily changing the way you’re breaking down glucose and getting into the bloodstream. So it’s interesting. And large research studies have showed that people who consume approximately one drink of alcohol per day, so very small to moderate amount, not a chronic heavy alcohol use situation, those people tend to have the lowest rates of metabolic disease. So it’s this funny J-shaped curve where people who drink nothing have a little bit higher risk of diabetes. People who drank zero to one per day have a little bit lower risk. And then it goes very sharply up after one. And so, yeah, it’s just interesting data. It’s not a reason to drink certainly, but the physiology is very, very interesting.

Clayton Farris: So I’m curious about people that might be listening, because for me, I’m not the sharpest tool in the shed. I’m the handsomest, but no, that was a horrible joke.

Laura Schein: Oh God.

Clayton Farris: I’m so sorry. Editor, cut that out. No, but what I’m saying is I’m dumb and sometimes this is hard for me to, it’s hard for me to really understand all of what’s going on. So the interesting thing about when it comes to glucose and fully noted,… It’s like learning a whole new-

Laura Schein: Language.

Clayton Farris: Language. Is Levels meant for people that are already experts or what’s the entry-level here for this? Does that make sense?

Laura Schein: It does. Yeah. So the entry level ultimately, and ideally will be anyone. Even with very little background knowledge about metabolic health. And I think we’re in that stage right now where a lot of our early adopters have been people who do know a lot about metabolic health and come to this with the savvy understanding. And then the next step is really bringing people into the fold who this is new to them, and they really need more of that guidance about what to do next and what works and what doesn’t. So a lot of exciting product features coming out that are going to really help people in that regard. Some that I’m very excited about are our social features. So we’ve got right now the largest dataset of glucose values paired with food of non-diabetics in the world. And so there’s a lot of learnings in there that of people who have tried things and had responses and to be able to really aggregate that learning and then share that back to people so that they can have new ideas about what to eat and what to try and how to modify. I think that’s going to be a really exciting avenue to give people the direction of basically, okay, I spiked, but what do I do next time?

Clayton Farris: Is there a social component to it? I mean, can you connect-

Laura Schein: Our social component was we would always compare and be like, “Who’s higher, who’s lower?”

Clayton Farris: Right. But are you going to be able to chat with other people or interact with the community at some point?

Dr. Casey Means: Yeah. So we already have a lot of these features that we’re testing internally, which is one is what’s called the Community Glucose View, which is essentially where, in our case, it’s the Levels team, you can opt in and see everyone’s data if you want to and share your data. And so everyone’s glucose is on a large graph together, and then you can see what everyone’s zones scores were for each of their meals and comment on those and ask questions and save options that other people… Let’s say someone had a great pasta dish and they scored a 10, which for people listening, that’s the score that was the lowest glucose response. So a really good glucose response. Then you could potentially save that or ask questions about it or find what the recipe is through that, and be able to learn from their learnings. And of course, if you’re doing an experiment with someone else, it’s like, oh, we’re both going to eat the exact same thing, you can compare those just within the app, which I think makes it a really fun and dynamic experience.

Clayton Farris: And then it becomes such a great, just a community thing. A missing part of like health to me right now is this thing… Well, in Functional Medicine, we see it a lot where a lot of times you learn about your health and some things that traditional medicine aren’t telling you from the community, from other people, from internet forums. And I like this idea of the community aspect of it. It’s really great.

Laura Schein: So just going back in time a little bit, so you’re an MD. How did you co-found Levels? How did the idea come about and what was that journey?

Dr. Casey Means: Yeah, so I trained as a head and neck surgeon, ear, nose, and throat doctor, which was a lot of fun, but I had always really had a passion from a very early age for nutrition and food and prevention and really healthy, and a lot of what I studied and researched when I was an undergrad at Stanford was nutrogenomix, which is how compounds in food, we always come back to food as what is food? Food is just a molecular entity. It’s just a chemical structure. Food has all these in it and those are going into the body and creating effects essentially. And nutrogenomix is looking at how the chemical composition of food and the molecular composition of food is changing gene expression. So that was a really interesting thing to get into at a young age, because a lot of us, I think, are under this impression that genes are our destiny and we have this blueprint and that’s just what it is. But actually genes interacting with the environment, that is our destiny. And we have so much control over that environmental piece. What’s going in? What are the molecules that are changing gene expression? You have complete control over that based on what you put on your fork.

Dr. Casey Means: And so that was very empowering, an empowered view of health and genetics and deterministic ideas of health. And that sort of always lived within me and as I went on through medical school, I was always trying to get more nutrition and lifestyle stuff built-in and was disappointed because we don’t learn a lot about nutrition in medical school, or lifestyle. We don’t become really good coaches. We become really good at labeling diseases and then figuring out what treatment procedure or pill goes along with that collection of signs and symptoms.

Dr. Casey Means: And to me, that’s much more reactive and less empowering. I was always trying to shake things up. I was pissed when I was a medical student that we sit for 10 hours a day, eight to 10 hours a day as medical students. And we’re learning that sedentary behavior is a risk factor for heart disease. And yet we’re sitting all day in the classroom. So I tried to get the Stanford Medical School administration to put standing desks in all the classrooms and cause a whole ruckus. I’ll always try to like do stuff like that. But anyway-

Clayton Farris: Disruptor.

Dr. Casey Means: Long story short, I became really interested in surgery and went in that direction, always imagined I’d merge these different passions, surgery and holistic health and nutrition and all this stuff. But the reality is when you get into the surgical world, you’re working 80 to 100 hours a week, you’re seeing 40 patients a day. You’re in the operating room all day. Your pager is going off nonstop. Literally the last thing that you were thinking about is talking to your patient about whether dairy is involved in their sinusitis. And as much as you might want to, and one, it’s not in the guidelines. We follow standard guidelines for treating most of these conditions, whether it’s cancer of the head and neck or sinusitis or laryngitis or thyroiditis or ear infections or whatever it is. There are guidelines that you follow. It’s very algorithmic. And in those guidelines, there is not counsel your patient about the triggers of what their illnesses are. And so it doesn’t get baked in and you don’t get reimbursed for having those conversations. And we’re not surfacing that research. We’re surfacing very much the treatment-based research.

Dr. Casey Means: So it’s just this whole ecosystem that pushes you towards this mindset of they come in with a disease, I diagnose it, I treat it. And this ended up crescendoing into really, I think, a bit of an existential awakening for me of this is not how I want to be interacting with patients. I don’t want to just be waiting until they go down the road of sickness and then I’m here at the very end of the line with my scalpel, “Hey, let me help.” That’s not where I want to be.

Dr. Casey Means: I want to be many miles before that station, where I’m like, “How do we actually keep you out of the operating room?” So that led me on a journey towards… I was really lucky to come across a lot of the Functional Medicine doctors, Sara Gottfried and Terry Wahls and Mark Hyman, and a lot of the nutrition-focused physicians like Michael Greger and Neal Barnard and basically just started reading their books. And so I’m walking to the hospital on a call, listening to all these audio books about really more Functional Medicine and thinking about more root causes approach to health. And I’m like, this is night and day, so different from what I’m doing in my day to day. And it seems so much more logical and rational and functional. And why aren’t we practicing this way?

Dr. Casey Means: And these were not hippy-dippy physicians. They’re academic physicians who have written these books, MIT trained surgeon. So I’m like, this is not crazy. And so what I ended up doing was actually taking some time and doing Functional Medicine training at the Institute of Functional Medicine, which was a huge wake-up call of, wow, there’s another way to approach patients, and became very, very passionate about really engaging in that way of treating patients through a more root cause approach. Started my own private practice where I was integrating those principles into my work. And it was amazing. Patients were getting better so quickly. One of my first patients came in with 48 different symptoms, which is not uncommon. And you can imagine. Something like, “Oh, well, yeah, I have a little diarrhea and oh, I have pain in my knee. And sometimes my toe gets inflamed. And my hair is thinning.”

Dr. Casey Means: So 48 of those, and I spent two hours with her. We dug into her diet, her lifestyle, triggers of her symptoms, what the barriers were to health behaviors, really figured it out. Two hours, wrote up an eight page report for her, was in touch with her very frequently. And in three months she came back with two symptoms. And I’m just like, okay, so this works when we spend the time and the energy and really work with people to figure this out. But we can’t do this in our system right now.

Dr. Casey Means: And so this is great. I’m thrilled that people are getting better, but I’m spending hours per week on each patient. This is not scalable. It’s great, but it’s not something that will actually be able to be scaled to 325 million people or whatever the population of the United States is at this point. And so I started thinking very deeply about what are the things that are most effective in this practice that I’m doing, and how would I scale them? How would I make it something that people could do maybe without a human involved? And one of the biggest pieces was dietary bios, feedback. I’m giving her constant feedback on her diet and what she’s eating. And all my patients were keeping food journals that I could view and all this stuff. And how do we simplify that piece? And what are the tools that could help us do that?

Dr. Casey Means: And I was giving a lot of my patients continuous glucose monitors to help with that feedback as well, so we could get some objective data and it became really obvious to me that there’s something here that’s scalable and that takes a big part of what I’m doing in a high touch way and makes it a lot more efficient. And around that time, so my co-founders, particularly the President of Levels, Josh Clemente, he was really often… We didn’t know each other at this point, but he was deeply going down this path. And my brother actually, who’s also an entrepreneur, he had come across two of my other co-founders, Sam and David, at a party, a startup event thing and was hearing them talk and knew what I was interested in and was like, “You guys need to meet my sister. You guys are all talking about the same thing. This is amazing.” And ended up connecting with them. It was a match made in habit. And now we’re over two years later and Levels, we have 130,000 people on our wait list. And 13,000 people have gone through our program and we’ve raised money and have 30 employees, and it’s pretty exciting to see how things have played out. So, yeah, so that’s my journey from surgery to here.

Laura Schein: Wow.

Clayton Farris: Love it.

Laura Schein: Thank you for sharing. That’s so inspiring. And I love hearing stories about you learned firsthand where there was a need, and then you learned how to fill it. And that’s really cool and Levels is truly amazing. I loved being a part of the beta program. So thanks for sharing that with us/.

Dr. Casey Means: For sure.

Laura Schein: So if people want to get on that wait list and make sure that they have a spot in line, they just go to the levels.com website?

Dr. Casey Means: Yeah, levelshealth.com. And then it’ll say, I think request access, and you can sign up for the wait list and get newsletter, and we’re producing some really high quality content. Every day about metabolic health and so you’ll get that sent to you through a newsletter. Can also check out our blog, levelshealth.com/blog, which has just really amazing actionable content. So even if you don’t have a continuous glucose monitor yet or aren’t using levels, there’s still just so much that you can do just by learning some of the principals to get on top of blood sugar. So yeah, I highly recommend the blog.

Clayton Farris: Yeah. It’s a really great blog. We didn’t even really talk about how you get your score from Levels. Is it every day or weekly? But just that I love getting good marks.

Laura Schein: Good grades.

Clayton Farris: And it’s such an incentive to get your glucose in order is just to get that A+.

Dr. Casey Means: All of us A types, loving the good scores. Yeah.

Laura Schein: Exactly. The good validation. And it’s super cool looking, too, when you put the… Also, you got to make sure you put the sticker on. Clayton learned the hard way. You include these really cool stickers. So you put them on top, so it doesn’t fall off. And I actually was, I was out to brunch and someone’s sitting at the table next to me, some random stranger was like, “Oh, Levels. Oh my God, how did you get on that? I wanted to get on that. Oh my God. How did you get it?” So, there’s buzz on the streets of LA about Levels.

Dr. Casey Means: Happy to hear that. I love that.

Clayton Farris: Yeah. And just the last thing I’ll say is as Laura and I are both scared of pricks and needles, and literally it’s zero.

Laura Schein: Yeah, didn’t hurt at all.

Clayton Farris: Doesn’t hurt, doesn’t feel like anything. So that was an impressive feat as well.

Dr. Casey Means: Oh yeah. My first sensor I put on, it took me through three hours to gear up the nerve to do it and I was blasting Kanye West song Stronger in my Bose headphones, trying to amp myself, before a freaking high school basketball game. And finally I did it and then I was just cracking up because you literally cannot feel it.

Laura Schein: You don’t feel anything. I know we have the same. That’s why we had to keep pushing back the interview because we were too scared. But we finally did it.

Dr. Casey Means: That’s so funny. Yeah.

Clayton Farris: Well, thank you so much for taking the time to chat with us and enlightening us with all of what’s going on with you. And we look forward to the future of Levels and wearables and good health.

Dr. Casey Means: Yes. My pleasure. Thanks so much for having me, you guys, and being a part of the beta program.

Clayton Farris: Thank you.

Laura Schein: Thank you so much.

Clayton Farris: Talk soon.

Dr. Casey Means: Bye.

Laura Schein: Bye.

Clayton Farris: What a mensch.

Laura Schein: I love her.

Clayton Farris: Did you enjoy wearing the wearable?

Laura Schein: Yeah, I did. I actually still have the second one left.

Clayton Farris: Round.

Laura Schein: The second round. I’ve been putting it off just because honestly, I’ve been shooting some acting things and it is noticeable.

Clayton Farris: It’s noticeable. But a lot of people will wear it as a badge of honor.

Laura Schein: A badge of honor. Well, I was out to lunch and someone stopped me at lunch and they went, “Oh my God, how did you get a Levels? That’s incredible. I’ve been hearing about it.” So definitely felt like one of the cool kids.

Clayton Farris: So I don’t think Levels is available now, but I think there’s other ones that are available. So if you want to get into-

Laura Schein: It’s still in beta.

Clayton Farris: It’s in beta, but if you want to get into this, Google glucose monitoring.

Laura Schein: And you can get, I think, on the wait list, if you go to levels.com, for sure. But yeah I enjoyed it.

Clayton Farris: I love lines.

Laura Schein: You do. Every time we pass a restaurant with a line and you’re like, “I want to go to there.”

Clayton Farris: I have to go there.

Laura Schein: Yeah. I enjoyed wearing it. And it was kind of fun when we were doing it together. We’d be like, “Where are you at?” We’d check it obsessively. We’d be at dinner with friends, checking it.

Clayton Farris: Yeah. And I actually thought that yours would not spike and bottom out as much because you’re generally healthier than I am. But mine was actually more in range.

Laura Schein: It was. I think it’s my stress.

Clayton Farris: Your stress.

Laura Schein: Yeah. The biggest helper. I know. I do.

Clayton Farris: Stress will get you.

Laura Schein: Really. Bit you in the butt.

Clayton Farris: Might hit the button, make you spike. Okay. You know what time it is?

Laura Schein: What the Health is that?

Clayton Farris: It is What the Health time. And today on What the Health, I’m just going to go back to a basic, something really simple, because you had your waffle fail today.

Laura Schein: Don’t remind me.

Clayton Farris: When you made this flaxseed egg, which is not an egg, it’s just flaxseed and water basically, but you left it to the side and it congealed into an egg. So anyways, I was like, “What the beep is flaxseed?” Because I don’t even really know. I had never really thought oh, it’s a seed. It’s literally a seed from a plant. What plant? Flax?

Laura Schein: Flax.

Clayton Farris: I don’t know. Do you know?

Laura Schein: It’s funny. We talk about flaxen hair. Flax, it’s a grain.

Clayton Farris: Yeah. So basically I did some research and flaxseed is an ancient grain that was cultivated in Babylon as early as 3000 BC. King Charlemagne believed strongly in the health benefits. He was obsessed with flaxseed. So what is it? Now it can be found in tons of different health foods. People put it in smoothies. So it’s flax or linseed, which is a flowering plant, in the wheat category.

Laura Schein: Don’t say wheat.

Clayton Farris: Don’t say wheat, I might break into hives.

Laura Schein: It’s a curse word here. It was actually a chia seed egg, not a flaxseed egg.

Clayton Farris: Oh, earlier it was a chia seed egg? Okay. So see, this is a horrible What the Health. But flaxseed is a thing.

Laura Schein: I actually was going to make a flaxseed egg, but I didn’t have flaxseed. So I made a chia seed egg.

Clayton Farris: And I actually should be talking about chia seed, but I’ll do that next time. So basically flax seed comes from the flax plant, which looks just like a F like… It’s just a little flowering plant that, you don’t see it all the time, but it’s healthy for you. It’s got omega-3 essential fatty acids that are good fats-

Laura Schein: Good for your brain.

Clayton Farris: Good for your brain. Good for your heart. Lignans, which both have plant estrogen, antioxidant qualities in them, flax seeds contain 75 to 800 times more lignans than other plant foods and fiber.

Laura Schein: Yeah. A lot of fiber in flax.

Clayton Farris: A lot of fiber.

Laura Schein: Right.

Clayton Farris: And I’ve noticed if you grind up flax, it’s oily.

Laura Schein: Yeah. Yeah. Well, you can get flax oil, you can buy flax oil.

Clayton Farris: You can get flax oil, and then you also have flax milk.

Laura Schein: Yeah. I bought flax milk this week.

Clayton Farris: So that’s why I was thinking about this. I got it confused with the chia seed.

Laura Schein: No, I did buy flax milk. You’re right, because I’ve been buying oat milk and then I was like, I just want to switch it up.

Clayton Farris: Yeah.

Laura Schein: Yeah. And I like it. I like flax milk.

Clayton Farris: Yeah. So it’s something that you can add to smoothies. It’s something that you can add to oatmeal, breakfast. You can add it to anything really.

Laura Schein: Anything really.

Clayton Farris: And now of course, it’s in a milk. Anyways, I just wanted to touch base on flaxseed.

Laura Schein: I’m really glad you did. I’m really glad you did because it’s unexplored. We know that it’s a healthy food but we don’t really attempt to-

Clayton Farris: And I’m okay saying I have no idea what it is, and now the listeners are like, “I still have no idea what it is.” But look, it’s good for you. It’s got nutrients in it.

Laura Schein: Lot of nutrients.

Clayton Farris: And there’s some debate on whether you’re supposed to ground it or have it whole.

Laura Schein: I actually did hear one time that you should not eat whole flaxseeds because they are not digestible.

Clayton Farris: Well, that’s how-

Laura Schein: And they can get stuck in your.

Clayton Farris: It’s sold, and the entire history of every store sells it whole.

Laura Schein: You buy them, but then you grind them.

Clayton Farris: Not everyone has a mortal and pestle lying around.

Laura Schein: No, you put in a coffee grinder or something. Because they stay fresher longer that way. If you buy it ground, it doesn’t stay fresh as long. The same with coffee beans. If you buy whole beans and grind them yourself, they’re going to stay fresher than buying ground coffee. Right?

Clayton Farris: That’s true.

Laura Schein: It’s the same thing.

Clayton Farris: The bottom line, when it comes to nutritional goodness, flax seeds are full of it.

Laura Schein: Thank you for that tagline.

Clayton Farris: They can help you with digestive health, lower your blood pressure or blood cholesterol, reduce risk of cancer, help you benefit those people who have diabetes. So look.

Laura Schein: Bring on the flax. I wonder if it lowers your glucose levels, speaking of.

Clayton Farris: Maybe. Moral of the story is a lot of the things that we think about in the health world, I never like really think twice about what they are. And then I was like, oh, what are… I’m going to start being more like=.

Laura Schein: Being a sleuth.

Clayton Farris: Being a sleuth. What is flaxseed? Right? What are chia seeds?

Laura Schein: Right, exactly.

Clayton Farris: What is nutmeg?

Laura Schein: Right. Now I feel like we’re on Jeopardy. What is nutmeg?

Clayton Farris: It is nutmeg. Anyways. I’m horrible at hosting this podcast, but I have fun.

Laura Schein: Don’t be so hard on yourself.

Clayton Farris: Can’t help it.

Laura Schein: I know.

Clayton Farris: Well, thanks for tuning in.

Laura Schein: And we’ll be here next week.

Clayton Farris: All right, bye.

Laura Schein: Bye.

Clayton Farris: What the Func?! is recorded at the Lab Studio in Los Angeles.

Laura Schein: Today’s episode is brought to you by the Functional Medicine Coaching Academy. Want to get involved in the movement that’s transforming healthcare? Check out FunctionalMedicinecoaching.org to find Functional Medicine stuff for patients, doctors, coaches, everybody.