For Dummies

by Bruce O’Hara

january 29, 2025

Dr. Casey Means is a brilliant woman, but, I suspect, somewhat of an obsessive perfectionist. I’m not sure she’s the best person to write a self-help guide for ordinary mortals.

I get that all that biochemistry is important to understanding all the manifold ways our metabolism can get screwed up, but I often found myself glazing over. That said, Casey has managed to collect a prodigious amount of useful information, and many interesting facts. On balance, I’d say it’s worth struggling through the too-much-information for the various gems you’ll find scattered throughout her book.

Here’s an example. Did you know that your muscle cells don’t need insulin to take in glucose? Unlike other cells, muscle cells can open channels through the fats in the outside wall of the cell to allow glucose in directly. However, if the fats in your muscle cell walls have too much omega six fats and not enough omega three fats, the muscle cells can’t open these channels properly, inhibiting your muscles’ ability to take in glucose. Which is a key reason why is important to try to keep Omega 6 and Omega 3 intake in your diet in balance.

This is a useful but sometimes challenging book. I’ve written this dumbed down summary of some of the important ideas in Good Energy to get you started.

Dr. Means basic thesis is pretty straightforward. Mitochondria are the little energy engines inside every cell in our bodies. When the mitochondria are working well, they power our cells and thence our entire body with energy and vitality.

Our modern diet, and to a lesser extent our modern lifestyles, malnourish our mitochondria, and sometimes even poison them, so that they no longer are able to produce energy properly for our cells. This causes the cells to be distressed, resulting in inflammation, and from there, often an immune system over-reaction cascade is triggered. Individual organs can then become stressed and eventually break down.

The longer our mitochondria are malnourished or stressed, the further the cascade of bad effects will spread, resulting in a steadily increasing series of chronic diseases and health problems as we get older.

Obesity, diabetes, chronic fatigue, dementia, stroke, heart and respiratory disease, cancer, arthritis and a whole slew inflammatory conditions affecting mind and body can be the long term results. And, of course, a lack of energy, and a lack of vitality.

Casey argues that the explosion in obesity that has happened in the past forty years is at root caused by distressed mitochondria. She would further argue that most of the chronic health conditions that have skyrocketed in recent decades, are also rooted in the same cause. As is the declining average life expectancy of Americans.

Though she fingers ultra-processed foods as the primary culprit, she argues that our modern lifestyles and our increasingly toxic environment are contributing factors. We sit too much, sleep too little, exercise too little, are too much indoors, and our entire environment is now chock-a-block with toxins. (Micro-plastics are now accumulating in pretty much every part of the human body! ) I sincerely hope her everything paranoia is overblown; I fear it is not.

Casey figures roughly 93% of Americans are showing at least some degree of metabolic distress. She would also maintain that even those whose mitochondria are operating only modestly below optimum should probably pay attention, because mitochondrial distress has a tendency to worsen over time.


Self-Check

Dr. Means says a quick-and-dirty way to determine whether your mitochondria are functioning optimally is to check your most recent lab results for five fairly standard bio-markers:

  1. Triglycerides: Optimal is <80 mg/dL.
  2. HDL: Optimal range is 50 to 90mg/dL.
  3. Fasting glucose: Optimal range is 70 to 85mg/dL.
  4. Blood pressure: Optimal is <120 systolic and <80 distolic mmHg.
  5. Waist Circumference: 31.5 inches for women, 35-37 inches for men depending on ethnic origin.

If you then divide your Triglycerides reading above by your HDL reading, this ratio is typically a reasonable estimate of your insulin resistance. Optimum ratio is 1.5 or less. Anything over 3.0 is concerning.


Meta-strategies

In the middle section of Good Energy, Dr Means outlines four starting strategies:

  1. Eliminate all ultra-refined foods. If it has ingredients you wouldn’t find in a well-stocked kitchen, don’t eat it.
  2. Where possible buy organic, better yet buy from small-scale farms. (Organic foods don’t just lack pesticide residues, they tend to have more nutrients than food produced by industrial farming.) Some toxins like mercury and PFOAs tend to bio-accumulate; i.e., once they enter the body they never leave. If you live to a ripe old age you will eat something on the order of 150,000 pounds of food over the course of your lifetime. If even a tiny fraction of one percent of your food is one or other bio-accumulating toxin, that can add up to a lot of toxic crap that has taken up permanent residence in your body by the time you are a senior.
  3. She recommends filtering your water, and, if possible, your air. “If you don’t use a filter, you are the filter.”
  4. She also recommends using a smart watch to track sleep and exercise. And further recommends keeping a detailed food diary of everything you eat. (Our self-measurements on these three items are notoriously inaccurate.) Keeping a weekly tracking log for the various goals listed below is also recommended. As is having a support buddy for any changes you make.

    25 Strategies Toward Metabolic Health

In the penultimate section of Good Energy, Dr. Means outlines 25 strategies for optimizing your mitochondria. I find some of them surprising. (She likes meat as long as it’s organic, but doesn’t recommend eating ANY grains.) I will present what she recommends without editorializing.

Though she draws up a four-week master plan, she allows that it’s not a bad approach to pick one of the 25 strategies each week and move part way from where you are now towards the ideal in the recommendation. The list is exhaustive, and exhausting:

1) Eliminate all foods, drinks and condiments with refined or liquid sugars.

2) Eliminate all foods with refined flour or grain. (She basically doesn’t like anything with grains, not even oatmeal or brown rice. And certainly not whole-wheat bread!)

3) Eliminate all foods, drinks or condiments with industrially-processed seed oils including soybean, corn, sunflower, safflower, peanut and canola oil.

4) Eat over 50 grams of fibre a day to nurture your microbiome.

5) Eat three or more servings of probiotic foods per day. (Yogurt, sauerkraut, kefir, miso, tempeh, apple cider vinegar)

6) Eat at least 2 grams of Omega-3 fats each day. (Sardines, salmon, walnuts, chia seeds, flax seeds)

7) Eat at least thirty different fruits and vegetables each week to maximize your intake of micro-nutrients.

8) Eat at least 30 grams of protein with each meal.

9) Engage in moderate-intensity exercise 150 minutes per week.

10) Do weights or resistance training three times per week.

11) Walk 10,000 steps per day confirmed by your smart watch.

12) Move regularly in short bursts throughout the day to break up your time seated. (Extended time sitting is not good for you.) Bits of exercise after eating are good.

13) Get seven to eight hours sleep each night, confirmed by your smart watch.

14) Get consistent sleep with regular bedtimes.

15) Meditate daily.

16) Examine any unhealthy emotional patterns.

17) Adhere to a defined eating window, preferably limiting your food intake to the same ten-hour window each day.

18) Practice mindful eating. Slowly. At the table. With gratitude.

19) Maximize sunlight exposure during the day, especially early in the day.

20) Minimize blue light in the evening. (using special glasses)

21) Get heat exposure one hour per week. (sauna or steam room)

22) Get cold exposure one hour per week (cold showers or cold swim)

23) Drink enough water each day. (Filtered!)

24) Use non-toxic personal care products. (soap, shampoo, shave cream, etc.)

25) Get out in nature at least four hours per week.

You’ll need to read the book to get details on how to achieve various of the goals listed above, as well as info why they are important. There are some recipes a the end of the book, and there is now also a separate Good Energy cookbook. Oh, and try to not get overwhelmed, anxious, or depressed, ‘cause that’s also not good for your mitochondria…

News Non Grata is free today. But if you enjoyed this post, you can tell News Non Grata that their writing is valuable by pledging a future subscription. You won’t be charged unless they enable payments.

Pledge your support

SHARE

LEAVE A REPLY