Casey Means: A MAHA leader, and the next surgeon general?
Post Reports
The Washington Post
4.4 • 5.1K Ratings
🗓️ 29 October 2025
⏱️ 32 minutes
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Summary
Casey Means faces lawmakers on Thursday, as they vet her nomination for the nation’s top medical post: the U.S. surgeon general. Means has been a prominent critic of the medical establishment. She could soon be put in a position to change it.
Means, 38, resigned from her final year of medical residency to become a health products entrepreneur, a popular online personality with a best-selling book about “Good Energy,” and a leading figure in the “Make America Healthy Again” movement. Critics say she has a history of saying things in potentially misleading and scientifically inaccurate ways. In a statement, the Department of Health and Human Services called Means a “world-class physician and scientist whose nomination as Surgeon General reflects her deep understanding of modern metabolic health and her fierce commitment to evidence-based care.”
Today, host Elahe Izadi speaks with Lauren Weber, The Post’s health and science accountability reporter, about her and her colleague Rachel Roubein’s exclusive reporting on the rise of Casey Means, her financial interests, and how her collision course with the medical establishment could shake up American medicine.
Today’s show was produced by Elana Gordon. It was edited by Reena Flores and mixed by Sam Bair. Thanks to Rachel Roubein, Lynh Bui, Juliet Eilperin and Alisa Shodiyev Kaff.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | If you eat too many ultra-processed foods, you could be starving your gut microbes, and they'll get |
| 0:06.8 | hungry. That's one of many things I learned after working on a new audio course about the gut microbiome. |
| 0:13.2 | You can learn how to keep your gut happy by listening to Try This from the Washington Post. |
| 0:18.1 | I'm Christina Quinn. I host Try This. Dig in with me on practical advice for life's common challenges. |
| 0:24.1 | Follow, Try This Right Now, wherever you're listening. |
| 0:26.8 | Seriously, try it. |
| 0:31.4 | The Surgeon General is one of the nation's most recognizable and trusted medical positions. |
| 0:39.3 | Now, a new type of leader has been tapped for the role, Casey Means. American health is just getting destroyed. It's getting |
| 0:46.5 | destroyed. Means is a health products entrepreneur and popular online personality. She's also been |
| 0:54.0 | very critical of the medical establishment. |
| 0:56.8 | Like, here she is on the Megan Kelly show last year. |
| 1:00.2 | When our cells make good energy, i.e. have good metabolic health. |
| 1:05.0 | So many of the conditions that are plaguing us can improve. |
| 1:08.3 | And so that needs to be the central focus of our American health care system. |
| 1:11.0 | And right now it is the intentional blind spot of the American health care system. |
| 1:16.4 | Means promotes this idea that some diseases can be prevented and even reversed by, quote, |
| 1:23.0 | good energy. To her, that means improving metabolic health with a healthy lifestyle. |
| 1:30.9 | Tomorrow, lawmakers will vet means as the next Surgeon General of the United States. She's set |
| 1:36.7 | to testify before Congress for her confirmation hearing. And she'll be attending virtually |
| 1:41.2 | because she's pregnant and do at any moment. |
| 1:49.5 | Well, Casey Means really epitomizes the Make America Healthy Again movement. |
| 1:50.7 | She helps shape it. |
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