Book Summary: Good Energy: The Surprising Connection Between Metabolism and Limitless Health By Casey Means

Good Energy: The Surprising Connection Between Metabolism and Limitless Health By Casey Means

Good Energy: The Surprising Connection Between Metabolism and Limitless Health by Dr. Casey Means explores the crucial role of metabolic health in overall well-being.

It highlights how cellular energy production affects everything from mental clarity to chronic disease prevention. Through personal stories and scientific insights, the book shows how optimizing metabolism can transform health, prevent common ailments, and promote longevity, offering a new perspective on achieving lasting vitality.

Good Energy: The Surprising Connection Between Metabolism and Limitless Health By Casey Means Quotes

  1. The most blatant and deadly example of the intervention-based incentives of our medical system is that medical leaders are absolutely silent on the things that are actually making us sick: food and lifestyle.

  2. It’s not: you can simply step off and reset into the present moment, and this is like waking up from a dream and stepping into a blissful spiritual space. The voices

  3. My favorite meditation apps are Calm and Waking Up, and there are many guided meditations on YouTube. Even a ten-minute meditation can transform a day.

  4. Lavender oil is well studied and especially potent in minimizing stress and helping with sleep, as outlined in the peer-reviewed paper “Lavender and the Nervous System.” Rub a few drops of lavender essential oil between your hands, cup your face, and inhale deeply a few times.

Good Energy: The Surprising Connection Between Metabolism and Limitless Health By Casey Means Table Of Contents

Introduction:
Everything Is Connected

PART 1: THE TRUTH ABOUT ENERGY

Chapter 1:
Siloed Health vs. Energy-Centric Health
Chapter 2:
Bad Energy Is the Root of Disease
Chapter 3:
Trust Yourself, Not Your Doctor

PART 2: CREATING GOOD ENERGY

Chapter 4:
Your Body Has the Answers: How to Read Your Blood Tests and Get Actionable Insights from Wearables
Chapter 5:
The Six Principles of Good Energy Eating
Chapter 6:
Creating a Good Energy Meal
Chapter 7:
Respecting Your Biological Clock: Light, Sleep, and Meal Timing
Chapter 8:
Replenishing What Modernity Took Away: Movement, Temperature, and Nontoxic Living
Chapter 9:
Fearlessness: The Highest Level of Good Energy

PART 3: THE GOOD ENERGY PLAN

PART 4: GOOD ENERGY RECIPES

Acknowledgments
Index

Good Energy: The Surprising Connection Between Metabolism and Limitless Health By Casey Means Book Summary

I want to share a vision of health that is big and bold. It predicates health and longevity on something simple, powerful, and fundamental: a single physiological phenomenon that can change almost everything about how you feel and function today and in the future.

It’s called Good Energy, and the reason it has such a life-changing impact is that it governs the very essence of what (quite literally) makes you tick: whether your cells have the energy to do their jobs of keeping you nourished, clear-minded, hormonally balanced, immune-protected, heart-healthy, structurally sound—and so much more.

Having Good Energy is the core underlying physiological function that, more than any other process in your body, determines your predilection to great mental and physical health or poor health and disease.

Good Energy is also known as metabolic health. Metabolism refers to the set of cellular mechanisms that transform food into energy that can power every single cell in the body. You might not have thought much about whether you have Good Energy or not. When cellular energy production is working well, you don’t have to “think” about it or be conscious of it.

It just is. Your body has an exquisite set of mechanisms that make Good Energy happen every second of every day; these cellular mechanisms create sustained and balanced energy, distribute it to every cell in your body, and clean up the residues from the process that would otherwise clog up the system.

When you hold the keys to this one critical bodily process, you can be an outlier—a truly positive kind of outlier. You can feel vital and enlivened and function with clarity of mind. You can enjoy a balanced weight, a pain-free body, healthy skin, and a stable mood.

If you’re of childbearing age and hoping to have kids, you can enjoy the natural state of fertility that is your birthright. If you’re getting older, you can live relieved of the nagging anxiety that a precipitous physical or mental decline awaits you or that you’ll develop a disease that “runs in the family.”

When you lose the keys to Good Energy, however, so much starts to go wrong. Organs, tissues, and glands are, after all, mere collections of cells. Lose the capacity for properly and safely powering those cells and—no real surprise—the organs made up of them start to struggle and fail. This means that just about any disease can arise as a result—and today, given the pressures that Good Energy is under, that’s exactly what is occurring.

I weighed eleven pounds, nine ounces at birth. My mom’s doctors congratulated her for producing one of the largest babies in the hospital’s history. My mom had trouble losing the baby weight and continued to battle her weight for years after. Her primary care doctor told her this was normal. She just had a baby and was getting older, after all. They told her to “eat healthier.”

In her forties, her cardiologist diagnosed her with elevated blood pressure. The doctor said this was very common for women her age and prescribed an angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitor to help relax her arteries.

In her fifties, her internal medicine doctor informed her she had high cholesterol (more technically, high triglycerides, low HDL, and high LDL cholesterol). She was prescribed a statin and told this was almost a rite of passage for a person her age: statins are one of the most prescribed drugs in U.S. history, with over 221 million prescriptions issued annually.

In her sixties, her endocrinologist said she had developed prediabetes. The doctor stressed that this, too, was very common and not of much concern. It’s a “pre-disease,” after all, right—and one that 50 percent of American adults qualify for. She left the office with her prescription for metformin, a drug prescribed over 90 million times per year in the United States.

In January 2021, when my mom was seventy-one years old, she was taking her daily hike with my dad near their home in Northern California. Suddenly, she felt a deep pain in her belly and experienced uncharacteristic fatigue. Concerned, she visited her primary care doctor, who conducted a CT scan and ran lab work.

One day later, she received a text message with her results: stage 4 pancreatic cancer.

Thirteen days later, she was dead.

Her oncologists at Stanford Hospital called her pancreatic cancer “unlucky.” My mom—who at the time of her cancer diagnosis was seeing five separate specialists prescribing five separate medications—was frequently complimented by her doctors in the decade running up to her diagnosis for being “healthy” compared to most women her age.

And, statistically, she was: the average American over sixty-five sees twenty-eight doctors in their lifetime. Fourteen prescriptions are written per American per year.

Something isn’t right when it comes to the health trends of our children, our parents, and ourselves.

Among teens, 18 percent have fatty liver disease, close to 30 percent are prediabetic, and more than 40 percent are overweight or obese. Fifty years ago, pediatricians might go an entire career without seeing these conditions among their patients. Today, young adults exist in a culture where conditions such as obesity, acne, fatigue, depression, infertility, high cholesterol, or prediabetes are common.

Six out of ten adults are living with a chronic illness. About 50 percent of Americans will deal with mental illness sometime in life. Seventy-four percent of adults are overweight or have obesity. Rates of cancer, heart disease, kidney disease, upper respiratory infections, and autoimmune conditions are all going up at the exact time we are spending more and more to treat them.

In the face of these trends, American life expectancy has been declining for the most sustained period since 1860.

We are convinced these increasing rates of conditions—both mental and physical—are part of being human. And we are told we can treat the increasing rates of chronic conditions with “innovations” from modern medicine.

In the decades leading up to my mom’s cancer diagnosis, she was informed her rising cholesterol, waistline, fasting glucose, and blood pressure levels were conditions that she could “manage” for life with a pill.

But instead of isolated conditions, all of the symptoms my mom experienced leading to her death were warning signs of the same thing: dysregulation in how her cells were producing and using energy.

Even my enormous size at birth—which medically fit the criteria for fetal macrosomia (literally “big-bodied baby”)—was a robust indicator of energy dysfunction in her cells and almost certainly a sign of undiagnosed gestational diabetes.

But through decades of symptoms, my mom—and most other adults in the modern world—are simply prescribed pills and not set on a path of curiosity about how these conditions are connected and how the root cause can be reversed.

There is a better way, and it starts with understanding that the root cause of why we’re getting sicker, heavier, more depressed, and more infertile is not complicated.

This sounds radical until you realize that virtually no animals in the wild suffer from widespread chronic disease. There aren’t rampant obesity, heart disease, or type 2 diabetes rates among lions or giraffes. However preventable lifestyle conditions are responsible for 80 percent of modern human deaths.

Depression, anxiety, acne, infertility, insomnia, heart disease, erectile dysfunction, type 2 diabetes, Alzheimer’s disease, cancer, and most other conditions that torture and shorten our lives are rooted in the same thing. And the ability to prevent and reverse these conditions—and feel incredible today—is under your control and simpler than you think.

PART 1: THE TRUTH ABOUT ENERGY

Chapter 1: Siloed Health vs. Energy-Centric Health

This chapter highlights the distinction between an energy-centric approach and a compartmentalized understanding of health. While the energy-centric health model emphasizes how each system in the body is impacted by the energy generation of cells, the siloed model views symptoms and diseases as distinct entities. Overall well-being is built on a foundation of good energy, or metabolic health.

Chapter 2: Bad Energy Is the Root of Disease
This chapter emphasizes how the majority of contemporary illnesses have inadequate energy generation as their common denominator. An inefficient cell’s ability to create energy causes organs and systems to malfunction, which exacerbates diseases including obesity, diabetes, and heart disease.

Chapter 3: Trust Yourself, Not Your Doctor
Here, the book makes the case for accepting accountability for one’s health. It poses a challenge to the current medical system, which frequently concentrates on using drugs to treat symptoms rather than the underlying cause of problems, which is inadequate cellular energy generation.

PART 2: CREATING GOOD ENERGY

Chapter 4: Your Body Has the Answers: How to Read Your Blood Tests and Get Actionable Insights from Wearables
This chapter gives you a better understanding of how your body produces energy by showing you how to read blood tests and utilize health wearables. By comprehending the parameters underlying their metabolic health, it empowers readers to take charge of their health.

Chapter 5: The Six Principles of Good Energy Eating
The book lists six fundamental nutritional concepts that support healthy energy in this chapter. The kinds of meals, minerals, and dietary practices that support the best possible cellular energy generation and general health are covered.

Chapter 6: Creating a Good Energy Meal
This chapter provides practical tips for designing meals that support metabolic health. It includes guidelines for balancing macronutrients, choosing energy-boosting foods, and avoiding those that deplete energy.

Chapter 7: Respecting Your Biological Clock: Light, Sleep, and Meal Timing
Here, the book explores the importance of circadian rhythms in maintaining good energy. It covers the roles of light exposure, sleep quality, and the timing of meals in regulating the body’s natural energy cycles.

Chapter 8: Replenishing What Modernity Took Away: Movement, Temperature, and Nontoxic Living
This chapter addresses the lifestyle factors that impact energy, such as physical activity, exposure to natural temperatures, and avoiding environmental toxins. It suggests ways to reintroduce these energy-supporting elements into modern life.

Chapter 9: Fearlessness: The Highest Level of Good Energy
In the final chapter of this section, the book discusses the mental and emotional aspects of energy. It encourages cultivating fearlessness and resilience as essential for sustaining good energy and overall well-being.

PART 3: THE GOOD ENERGY PLAN

This section offers a comprehensive action plan to restore and maintain good energy. It brings together the principles from the previous chapters and presents a step-by-step guide to optimizing metabolism, including lifestyle changes, dietary adjustments, and personal tracking of health metrics.

PART 4: GOOD ENERGY RECIPES

This final part provides practical meal recipes designed to support metabolic health and promote good energy. The recipes are created to be nutrient-dense and aligned with the principles of good energy eating, making it easier for readers to integrate these ideas into daily life.

About the Author Casey Means

Good Energy: The Surprising Connection Between Metabolism and Limitless Health By Casey Means
Image Source: spicewell.com

Casey Means is the Chief Medical Officer and co-founder of Levels, a health technology company dedicated to addressing the global metabolic health crisis. She has served as faculty at Stanford University, where she lectured on metabolic health and health technology.

Casey earned her undergraduate degree with honors from Stanford, where she also served as President of her class. She went on to graduate from Stanford Medical School and completed her training in Head & Neck Surgery at Oregon Health and Science University. Afterward, she transitioned away from traditional medicine to focus on the root causes of chronic illness in the U.S.

Calley Means, her brother, is the co-founder of TrueMed and a prominent advocate for policy reform to improve health incentives. He is a graduate of both Stanford and Harvard Business School.

Good Energy: The Surprising Connection Between Metabolism and Limitless Health By Casey Means Book Details

Publisher Avery (May 14, 2024)
Language English
Hardcover 400 pages
ISBN-10 0593712641
ISBN-13 978-0593712641
Item Weight 1.4 pounds
Dimensions 6.22 x 1.38 x 9.27 inches

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References :

  • Amazon’s book page
  • Goodreaders’s book page
  • Author’s image source: spicewell.com
  • Book Cover: Amazon.com

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