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February 25, 2026<\/p>\n
3 min read<\/p>\n
Add Us On Google<\/span>Add SciAm<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n \u2018Wellness influencer\u2019 Casey Means heads to confirmation hearing<\/p>\n The U.S. Senate is holding a confirmation hearing today for wellness influencer Casey Means, the Trump administration\u2019s pick for surgeon general<\/p>\n By Dan Vergano edited by Tanya Lewis<\/span><\/p>\n Snow falls on the U.S. Capitol on February 23, 2026 in Washington, D.C.<\/p>\n Heather Diehl\/Getty Images<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n Last May President Donald Trump nominated Means for the job of the \u201cNation\u2019s Doctor,\u201d 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.<\/p>\n \u201c[Means\u2019s] academic achievements, together with her life\u2019s work, are absolutely outstanding,\u201d Trump said in a social media post announcing her nomination.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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\u2019s, originate from poor diet, sleeplessness and a lack of exercise\u2014all of which, she has said, ultimately affect cellular function under a \u201cmitochondrial dysfunction\u201d theory of disease.<\/p>\n She is expected to face questions about financial conflicts of interest over ties to companies that sell nutritional supplements and her role in the \u201cfunctional medicine\u201d 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 \u201charmful and dangerous.\u201d 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.<\/p>\n 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\u2019s vaccine skepticism in recent statements.<\/p>\n 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\u2019s 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\u2019s \u201cMake America Healthy Again\u201d movement.<\/p>\n Bloomberg reported last October that in Casey Means\u2019s testimony at the hearing, she plans to say, \u201cMy professional history has prepared me to be an innovative, unifying and practical leader focused on reversing chronic disease.\u201d<\/p>\n Former Trump administration surgeon general Jerome Adams and American Public Health Association executive director Georges Benjamin have criticized Means because she doesn\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n \u201cCasey Means is more influencer than medical practitioner,\u201d says Michigan State University\u2019s Mariah Wellman, who studies influencer credibility in the wellness industry. Means is a \u201cprime example\u201d of an online entrepreneur using a medical degree to establish credibility while speaking outside the boundaries of their training, she adds.<\/p>\n \u201cI 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\u2014the exact thing she often states she is fighting against,\u201d Wellman says.<\/p>\n The confirmation hearing will begin at 10 A.M. EST.<\/p>\n If you enjoyed this article, I\u2019d like to ask for your support. Scientific American<\/span> 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.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve been a Scientific American<\/span> subscriber since I was 12 years old, and it helped shape the way I look at the world. SciAm <\/span>always educates and delights me, and inspires a sense of awe for our vast, beautiful universe. I hope it does that for you, too.<\/p>\n If you subscribe to Scientific American<\/span>, 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n There has never been a more important time for us to stand up and show why science matters. I hope you\u2019ll support us in that mission.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" February 25, 2026 3 min read Add Us On GoogleAdd SciAm \u2018Wellness influencer\u2019 Casey Means heads to confirmation hearing The U.S. Senate is holding a confirmation hearing today for wellness influencer Casey Means, the Trump administration\u2019s pick for surgeon general By Dan Vergano edited by Tanya Lewis Snow falls on the U.S. Capitol on February<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":45300,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[58],"tags":[22953,2395,4692,452,17643,1186,1314,9857,811],"class_list":{"0":"post-45299","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-confirmation","9":"tag-faces","10":"tag-general","11":"tag-hearing","12":"tag-influencer","13":"tag-online","14":"tag-senate","15":"tag-surgeon","16":"tag-u-s"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45299","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=45299"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45299\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/45300"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=45299"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=45299"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=45299"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}On supporting science journalism<\/h2>\n
It\u2019s Time to Stand Up for Science<\/h2>\n