February 25, 2026
3 min read
Add Us On GoogleAdd SciAm
‘Wellness influencer’ Casey Means heads to confirmation hearing
The U.S. Senate is holding a confirmation hearing today for wellness influencer Casey Means, the Trump administration’s pick for surgeon general
Snow falls on the U.S. Capitol on February 23, 2026 in Washington, D.C.
Heather Diehl/Getty Images
Wellness influencer Casey Means, who left a medical residency to pursue alternative medicine, will appear today at a U.S. Senate confirmation hearing on her nomination for U.S. surgeon general. Her original hearing, scheduled for October 30, 2025, was delayed by the delivery of her first child.
Last May President Donald Trump nominated Means for the job of the “Nation’s Doctor,” a role best known for high-profile health advisories. The surgeon general is also head of a uniformed public health corps whose members serve in agencies such as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Means, age 38, was nominated after the Trump administration withdrew its initial nomination of Fox News contributor Janette Nesheiwat for the job following reports that she had made misleading claims about her medical training and military service.
“[Means’s] academic achievements, together with her life’s work, are absolutely outstanding,” Trump said in a social media post announcing her nomination.
On supporting science journalism
If you’re enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.
Means is a popular wellness influencer allied with Department of Health and Human Services chief Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. She has argued that many diseases, such as diabetes, cancer and Alzheimer’s, originate from poor diet, sleeplessness and a lack of exercise—all of which, she has said, ultimately affect cellular function under a “mitochondrial dysfunction” theory of disease.
She is expected to face questions about financial conflicts of interest over ties to companies that sell nutritional supplements and her role in the “functional medicine” company she co-founded, Levels, which markets glucose monitors to healthy people. (The American Academy of Family Physicians temporarily stopped awarding continuing medical education credits in functional medicine in 2014 after finding some of its treatments to be “harmful and dangerous.” Courses that teach clinicians how to perform specific techniques are still barred.) Means said in a government filing last September that she will resign from her advisory position at Levels if she is confirmed as surgeon general.
The Senate is also expected to question Means about her views on vaccines. Republican senator and physician Bill Cassidy of Louisiana has increasingly voiced concerns about moves by the HHS to undercut childhood vaccine recommendations. Means has meanwhile echoed Kennedy’s vaccine skepticism in recent statements.
Educated as a physician at the Stanford University School of Medicine, Means resigned from her medical residency training as an ear, nose and throat surgeon in 2018 to co-found Levels. Means’s brother Calley Means, with whom she co-authored the best-selling nutrition advice book Good Energy: The Surprising Connection between Metabolism and Limitless Health, recently stepped down as a White House adviser to Kennedy. His tenure was marked by conflict-of-interest concerns. Casey Means has criticized the food and pharmaceutical industries for underplaying the role of healthy eating in preventing disease, a standard argument of the Trump administration’s “Make America Healthy Again” movement.
Bloomberg reported last October that in Casey Means’s testimony at the hearing, she plans to say, “My professional history has prepared me to be an innovative, unifying and practical leader focused on reversing chronic disease.”
Former Trump administration surgeon general Jerome Adams and American Public Health Association executive director Georges Benjamin have criticized Means because she doesn’t have an active medical license or board certification, and they have argued that she oversells wellness as a cure for disease. Her endorsement of unpasteurized raw milk despite its proven health harms and her focus on mitochondrial illnesses echo similar rhetoric from Kennedy.
“Casey Means is more influencer than medical practitioner,” says Michigan State University’s Mariah Wellman, who studies influencer credibility in the wellness industry. Means is a “prime example” of an online entrepreneur using a medical degree to establish credibility while speaking outside the boundaries of their training, she adds.
“I am concerned that Means will not work to make Americans healthy and instead further her own goals of becoming more popular online and making more money—the exact thing she often states she is fighting against,” Wellman says.
The confirmation hearing will begin at 10 A.M. EST.
It’s Time to Stand Up for Science
If you enjoyed this article, I’d like to ask for your support. Scientific American has served as an advocate for science and industry for 180 years, and right now may be the most critical moment in that two-century history.
I’ve been a Scientific American subscriber since I was 12 years old, and it helped shape the way I look at the world. SciAm always educates and delights me, and inspires a sense of awe for our vast, beautiful universe. I hope it does that for you, too.
If you subscribe to Scientific American, you help ensure that our coverage is centered on meaningful research and discovery; that we have the resources to report on the decisions that threaten labs across the U.S.; and that we support both budding and working scientists at a time when the value of science itself too often goes unrecognized.
In return, you get essential news, captivating podcasts, brilliant infographics, can’t-miss newsletters, must-watch videos, challenging games, and the science world’s best writing and reporting. You can even gift someone a subscription.
There has never been a more important time for us to stand up and show why science matters. I hope you’ll support us in that mission.
