Dr. Casey Means

Dr. Andrew Huberman, thank you so much for having me.

Yeah, I think you're exactly right.

I think that when we hear the word metabolism, the first thing that comes to most people's minds is my weight.

Do I have a fast metabolism or do I have a slow metabolism or something like basal metabolic rate?

And I think what's really important for people to realize is that metabolism is actually the foundation of all health.

It is the core foundational pathway that drives all other health.

aspects of health.

And it's also the core foundational pathway that's truly getting crushed in the modern American world and underlying nine of the 10 leading causes of death in the United States today.

It's really quite relevant to everyone.

And the spectrum of metabolic rooted disease is vast and actually really relevant to most Americans.

The latest research from American College of Cardiology suggests that 93% of American adults are

have suboptimal metabolism, and we can go into what that means.

But fundamentally, when we're talking about metabolism, we're talking about how we convert food energy to human energy.

So we take in an astonishing 70 metric tons or so of food in our lifetime,

And that is potential energy.

It's energy from the environment that's outside of us that through our metabolic pathways gets converted to a currency of energy that can then be used to pay for essentially every chemical reaction inside our body.

And the bubbling up of all of those chemical reactions is our lives.

And so when metabolism is not working properly, it's essentially creating underpowered cells.

And like any city or factory or machine, not having adequate power will lead to dysfunction.

And the reason that the metabolic spectrum of disease is so vast is because we have over 200 cell types in the body and underpowering in different cell