Joe Rogan Experience #2079 - Brigham Buhler

1. 0:00 – 15:00

   (drumbeats) Joe Rogan podcast,…

   1. BBBrigham Buhler0:00

      (drumbeats) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out. The Joe Rogan Experience.

   2. JRJoe Rogan0:06

      Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night. All day. (instrumental music plays)

   3. BBBrigham Buhler0:12

      Hello, Joe. What's up, man?

   4. JRJoe Rogan0:14

      (laughs)

   5. BBBrigham Buhler0:15

      We're back.

   6. JRJoe Rogan0:15

      We're back. What's crackin'?

   7. BBBrigham Buhler0:18

      Same stuff, new day.

   8. JRJoe Rogan0:19

      Yeah, sort of. Um, the war on peptides is going on right now.

   9. BBBrigham Buhler0:24

      It is.

   10. JRJoe Rogan0:24

       It's interesting.

   11. BBBrigham Buhler0:26

       It's, uh, to, to explain it is, is gonna take a little bit of time, but I'd love to dig into it because I-

   12. JRJoe Rogan0:31

       Yeah. Let's explain it, because there is no reason why they would be banning these things, other than for their own profit.

   13. BBBrigham Buhler0:42

       You got it. You got the gist of it. That's-

   14. JRJoe Rogan0:43

       That's the only reason.

   15. BBBrigham Buhler0:44

       So-

   16. JRJoe Rogan0:44

       There is no danger that these things are causing, there's no public health concern, there's no people dropping dead. But meanwhile, people are dropping dead from the ones that they have sanctioned.

   17. BBBrigham Buhler0:58

       Yeah, and so I- I like to tell people, "What you're seeing is a symptom of a disease," and the same thing we do in healthcare. We don't talk about the symptoms. We don't treat the s- we- we- we unfortunately do treat the symptom and not the root cause or the disease. And so, to diagnose what the real issue is, we've gotta dig a little deeper into the history and what's going on there. And, uh, it's a pretty insidious disease, and it's spread throughout all of the government. Uh, and that disease is private industry and its influence, uh, on the federal government and the decisions they make. Um, and we're gonna talk a little bit about large language models later in- in the future of what I think healthcare is. But one of the critiques of large language models is, it's only as good as the data you put in. And I would argue that humanity is no different. It is only as good as the data that you put in. And so, if the federal government and the FDA is going to allow an open door policy with big pharma, w- they're going to come to the conclusions, and decisions, and policies that benefit big pharma. And so, if we take a little walk through history, you'll see (laughs) time and time again how this has happened. So, I'm gonna jump way back first.

   18. JRJoe Rogan2:09

       Okay.

   19. BBBrigham Buhler2:09

       If you're good with this.

   20. JRJoe Rogan2:10

       Yes.

   21. BBBrigham Buhler2:11

       So, you go way back. Um, there was a small little company that reached out to the Third Reich and said, "Hey, we need 150 participants for our clinical trial." The Nazi regime shipped 150 healthy Jewish women to this, uh, this pharmaceutical company to test its products. Literally within six months, there's letters back to the Third Reich from this pharmaceutical company saying, "Thank you so much for your (laughs) cooperation. The women arrived in great health and working order. Unfortunately, none of them- none of them made it through the initial phases of our trial." They killed 150 women. "We kindly request that you send us another 150 women." That little company became Bayer, which is now a mega pharmaceutical company.

   22. JRJoe Rogan3:03

       Holy shit.

   23. BBBrigham Buhler3:03

       And I say that because, right, that was the '50s. It would've changed by now. That was forever ago, right? The world's a different place (laughs) . We would never allow that today. Jump forward post-World War II. I talked about this on RFK's podcast. Eisenhower had that-

   24. JRJoe Rogan3:21

       Can I pause- pause you there?

   25. BBBrigham Buhler3:21

       Yeah.

   26. JRJoe Rogan3:21

       You said it was the '50s. It couldn't have been the 50s.

   27. BBBrigham Buhler3:23

       Well, the '40s, sorry.

   28. JRJoe Rogan3:24

       Or the 40s, okay.

   29. BBBrigham Buhler3:24

       And so, Eisen... Jump forward to... Is there a way to turn the volume down on this?

   30. JRJoe Rogan3:27

       Yeah, there's a button, or- or a knob right there.
2. 15:00 – 30:00

   And what does it…

   1. BBBrigham Buhler15:00

      act in accordance with the information they're given. And it's the same thing with the FDA. The FDA is acting in accordance with big ... Merck is looking at over 200 peptides for patent, okay? They're actively investigating over 200 pe- ibutamoren, which is on the banned list, just popped up, phase two FDA trials with another pharmaceutical company. It's on the banned list, but it's in FDA trials now, so they can patent it and monetize it and have a monopoly on it.

   2. JRJoe Rogan15:28

      And what does it do?

   3. BBBrigham Buhler15:29

      Ibutamoren is the one that helps stimulate growth hormone. People use it for weight loss and, uh, growth hormone production. It's a precursor. Uh, and it's ... Again, it's a safe drug, and it ... But it's not even a drug (laughs) again, it's a peptide. And so peptides are short-chain amino acids, and, and the only reason I go down the path of the DOJ stuff is to just give the public the awareness of, it's beyond the FDA. It's in all branches of the government, and bad info in equals bad decisions out. Um, and so I think that this is ... You know, if, if you look at it from a different lens, I go, okay, when I try to sit in the seat of an FDA, uh, decision-maker, I look at it and say, "To play devil's advocate, you know, it's one of two things. Do you think the peptide's dangerous? Do you think these short-chain amino acids are dangerous? Um, because if so, you're allowing Big Pharma to use them, um, and th- there's no data that shows that any of these peptides that are on the banned list are dangerous." Like, BPC-157, and when I say banned list, let me step back on that. They didn't ban the peptides. They reclassified the peptides under a category of dangerous, and through that, they indirectly have killed the market on those peptides, because most doctors in America are not gonna write a drug that's on an FDA dangerous list, because it opens them up to litigation and risk.

   4. JRJoe Rogan16:55

      And what, what is the pr- like, how do they classify something as dangerous? Don't they have to have some kind of evidence?

   5. BBBrigham Buhler17:02

      In this instance, there's no evidence. There's literally ... And, and even if you look at adverse events that have been reported across the United States, almost all those adverse events are black market. Any adverse event regarding BPC-157 is literally a black market, uh, product that somebody bought from China or Canada, that's filled with potential particulates or, uh, uh, i- issues of, of, of contamination or, uh, lack of efficacy or too much efficacy. And so, where I was going with this is, if, if you ... We know for sure that the peptide itself isn't dangerous, so then you go and say, "Okay, do you not think that FDA-regulated compounding pharmacies are capable of compounding these peptides?" The highest paid person in my building is my quality and compliance guy. Uh, i- i- he literally worked for Abbott Laboratories for 15 years, working hand-in-hand with the FDA to make sure they follow all of their protocols and procedures. So, just so the public knows-... any product that comes into our pharmacy at Revive, um, our compounding pharmacy, we make sure it's an FDA approved ingredient with an independent third-party verification of the ingredient itself. Right? Showing that it is 100% the ingredients they tell us it is. Then we compound it in an ISO 5 environment. The law says we need to do ISO 7. We go above and beyond and use an ISO 5 sterile facility. Uh, we have the two highest paid employees in our building are our regulatory compliance guys that are over quality controls. Okay. So then from there, whenever we compound a product, we send every single batch off to be independently third-party verified by a independent lab unaffiliated with us, and we file those records away. Everything is documented. Every aspect, from the chain of custody of the ingredient, to the chain of custody of the drug, to the delivery to the patient. All of that is documented. So, it's either, one, you're saying the peptide's dangerous, or two, you're saying compounding pharmacies are incapable of compounding drugs that aren't dangerous. And if that's the case, then why are you asking us to compound hundreds of drugs that are on FDA back order lists? Because your buddies at Big Pharma aren't gonna compound them, because they don't make enough money, they don't generate enough revenue. So, half the stuff that's on a crash cart used in the hospital system is made by mom and pop compounding pharmacies. I- it's like ... (laughs) . S- so the safety is there, the efficacy is there, the sterility is there, and the peptide itself is safe. So, yeah, I just go back to I have to believe that you're acting upon bad information. And I wanna give them the benefit of the doubt. And, you know, my message is we've got to go meet with the FDA, and we've got to start having conversations, and we've got to represent small compounding pharmacies and the average American. Because right now, they're only hearing half the story. And that half of the story is Big Pharma banging on the desk and saying, "Hey, we want to patent these peptides. We're gonna go through clinical trials. We're gonna do it the right way, you know, and we're gonna do all these checks and balances." But it's like, we don't need you involved in supplements. Like, if you really look at it, it's, it's essentially ... I mean, again, I've said it, it's a short chain amino acid. You know? It's not a drug.

   6. JRJoe Rogan20:43

      It's just bananas that it's that corrupt.

   7. BBBrigham Buhler20:46

      Yeah.

   8. JRJoe Rogan20:47

      It really is.

   9. BBBrigham Buhler20:48

      It is.

   10. JRJoe Rogan20:48

       And, uh, you going and having a conversation with the FDA, in my mind, that's not gonna fix jack shit.

   11. BBBrigham Buhler20:54

       (laughs)

   12. JRJoe Rogan20:54

       They're gonna listen to you and they go, "Okay, yeah, yeah."

   13. BBBrigham Buhler20:56

       Well, the other end is what, what's gonna happen if they really truly continue to regulate these things out of the marketplace is you're not gonna regulate it, you're just gonna shut down the people that follow the rules. You're gonna shut down the compounding pharmacies that do things right. And then h- here's an example, like let's talk about the peptides that didn't get banned, the GLP-1s, which is, uh, what a lot of people know as Wegovy, Ozempic. Um, the generic names are tirzepatide, Ozem- uh, tirzepatide, and uh, semaglutide, um, weight loss drugs, GLP-1 agonists. Those are not on the ban list because FDA has, uh, or Big Pharma has patents on those. Um, but they can't patent the molecule, right? They can only patent the dosage and the brand name. So, compounding pharmacies throughout the country are compounding those products for pennies on the dollar at a different dosage. And then what happens is, and, and that's because these products are on an FDA back order list. Okay? This is the whole cycle of the lu- ludicrousness of this situation. They're, the FDA is saying, "Hey, there's not enough of this product to meet the demand of the, uh, of the American people." And if we really look at what those drugs are, they're not a weight loss drug, they're a diabetes medication. And we know that diabetes indirectly impact, or, or directly impacts poverty stricken and minority communities disproportionately. And so, when we compound these medications to meet the needs of the people who can't get those medications or maybe can't afford those medications because they're on a FDA back order list and they're asking us to compound them, Big Pharma then turns around and sues compounding pharmacies throughout the country, then uses their long reach of PR firms to put it in the news, make it sound like you don't know what you're doing, like these compounding pharmacies are dangerous, they're not regulated, it's the Wild West out there in compounding pharmacies, there's no oversight, these aren't FDA approved products. Bullshit. Absolute bullshit. Do you know how many times the FDA has been in my pharmacy in 18 months? Twice. They've s- we've interacted with them four times in 18 months. Do you know that there are 2,500 manufacturing facilities owned by Big Pharma that have not been inspected in five or more years? Five or more years. Furthermore, they've outsourced their manufacturing to third world countries and rural areas. And those products, when they come into the United States, do not go under FDA inspection. There is no validity testing like we do. There's no sterility testing. There's none of that. And so why are GLP-1s on back order? You wanna know why?

   14. JRJoe Rogan23:47

       Sure.

   15. BBBrigham Buhler23:48

       Because the, E- Eli Lilly specifically, with its product, got one of their facilities shut down because they failed FDA inspection with egregious actions. We saw just a few weeks ago, uh, eye drops that are from FDA approved sources got recalled. And when a whistleblower blew the whistle, they go in and there's people in their ISO sterile rooms barefoot.Like, the- the level of egregiousness and manipulation is insane. But when you control the media, and you have the ear of the government, and you can move chess pieces, it makes it hard to, you know, be able to navigate that, compete with that, and educate people. And so, if you didn't give me a platform, nobody would know this stuff. If it wasn't for people like you and- and Robert Kennedy, and people who question things and challenge the system, um, I can't SEO optimize, I can't Google Search engine optimize. I can't get these messages out. I called a PR firm to say, "Hey, how do we combat this and what can we do?" And they were like, "The best bet you have is long-form media like podcasts. That's really the only way you're gonna get it out there."

   16. JRJoe Rogan24:57

       (laughs)

   17. BBBrigham Buhler24:57

       "It's not gonna be something picked up by the media outlets."

   18. JRJoe Rogan25:00

       'Cause they're dirty too.

   19. BBBrigham Buhler25:01

       (laughs) Well, a lot of their- a lot of their advertising and funding comes from Big Pharma, and so-

   20. JRJoe Rogan25:06

       Yeah.

   21. BBBrigham Buhler25:06

       ... it makes it tough.

   22. JRJoe Rogan25:08

       Well, we found that out during the pandemic. But what's fascinating is, it's had a terrible effect on their bottom line, because people watch them shill for these pharmaceutical drug companies and not report adverse events, and not report the dangers of shutting down schools and all the harm that it's doing to children, all the harm that it's doing to business. 'Cause they didn't report on that, people lost faith in them.

   23. BBBrigham Buhler25:33

       Yep.

   24. JRJoe Rogan25:33

       Like radically. CNN showed, uh, recently its lowest ratings since 1991.

   25. BBBrigham Buhler25:41

       Well, look at what they did with you with the vaccines. And I don't know if you saw now, two- two different articles in the last 60 se- 60 days probably. One is that people who have been vaccinated multiple times over, uh, I think the age of 60 are at an increased risk of being hospitalized with COVID, was one of the articles.

   26. JRJoe Rogan25:59

       Yeah.

   27. BBBrigham Buhler25:59

       And then the other article was that two of the heads of the FDA that approved the vaccines now went to go work for Moderna.

   28. JRJoe Rogan26:09

       (sighs)

   29. BBBrigham Buhler26:09

       In the last 40 years, okay, the last 40 years of the FDA, two heads of the FDA have not gone to work for industry. Two.

   30. JRJoe Rogan26:18

       Only two.
3. 30:00 – 45:00

   And most people have…

   1. BBBrigham Buhler30:00

      op- bonafide investment opportunity and 100 clinicians buy into a hospital, and then they operate at that hospital, the law says they're allowed to own into that hospital, and own up to 40% of that hospital. And so-Again, and two, I always like to give both sides of the story, and I said this on the last podcast. There are bad people doing bad things throughout every aspect of this. It's not insurance companies are all bad, and clinicians are all good, and lab owners are all good. There is egregious stuff happening at all levels, and there are indictments that the Department of Justice bring forth that are 100% justified. No arguments there. But oftentimes, the baby gets thrown out with the bath water, and oftentimes, the insurance companies are able to skew facts in a way that put innocent people in bad positions. And that's all I'm trying to say. And so, it- it- it's so deep and goes, runs so deep, it'd take us seven podcasts to cover all this stuff. But, I mean, it's- it's real. It's- it's not foofoo stuff. It's real. It's happening every day.

   2. JRJoe Rogan31:12

      And most people have zero idea this is happening, and most people just look at the recommendations, whatever it is, whether it's been discussed in the media or whether their doctor tells them, and they don't have any idea what the influence behind that is.

   3. BBBrigham Buhler31:24

      Correct. Correct.

   4. JRJoe Rogan31:25

      Yeah.

   5. BBBrigham Buhler31:27

      It's tough. I mean, uh, it's tough. It's nuts. But there, the side effect profiles safe, um, on the peptides. Like, there's the efficacy, like, time and time again, I cannot tell you how many people, how many patients and clinicians who buy BPC for their patients throughout the United States have had phenomenal results with the healing factors, and I attached some links, um, on the Ways to Well website about BPC and studies done with healing spine injuries, with healing joint injuries. Um, and- and- and there's even a study on safety, and it wasn't in humans but the safety study was in mammals, dogs and mice, and yeah. There's, it literally talks about how there was zero side effects seen, re- irregardless of dosage.

   6. JRJoe Rogan32:13

      So this, this study is, uh, gastric pept- uh-

   7. BBBrigham Buhler32:16

      That's just BPC, that's the-

   8. JRJoe Rogan32:17

      Yes.

   9. BBBrigham Buhler32:18

      Yeah, the full name of BPC.

   10. JRJoe Rogan32:18

       How do you say it? Pentadeca peptide.

   11. BBBrigham Buhler32:23

       Pentadeca peptide.

   12. JRJoe Rogan32:23

       Pentadeca peptide body protection compound BPC 157 and its role in accelerating muscul- musculoskeletal soft tissue healing. Yeah. It works, man. It really does work.

   13. BBBrigham Buhler32:34

       It's insane how well it works.

   14. JRJoe Rogan32:35

       Yeah, it works.

   15. BBBrigham Buhler32:36

       And so what's sad is, and- and- and here, and then so as we talk about... There's just so much to cover. Sorry, I did this last time too.

   16. JRJoe Rogan32:43

       No, no, don't apologize.

   17. BBBrigham Buhler32:43

       But as we look at it, um-

   18. JRJoe Rogan32:45

       Go wild.

   19. BBBrigham Buhler32:47

       A- as we look at it and we say, "Okay, uh, what's gonna happen?" So one of two things. Either the FDA will hopefully meet with compounding pharmacies and have the discussion, and we can dive a little deeper and hopefully bring them to the light and bring awareness to this, or they ban these things, and what's gonna happen is exactly what happened with the opioid pandemic, uh, epidemic. People are going to turn to black market, right? We had more opiod-rela- opioid-related deaths last year than ever in the history of the United States. More people have now died of opioids than the Vietnam War. It is killing young Americans left and right. It's because you allowed Purdue Pharma to push a product into the market that never had safety s- trials, right, as far as addiction goes. They piggybacked onto a previous indication of their cotton system, get it into the marketplace. All these people get addicted. Boom. Let's over-regulate. Let's make it really hard to get opioids. Now everyone turns to black market. And that's exactly what's gonna happen with peptides. People are already buying it off the internet. They're buying it from China. They're buying it from black market sources. They're buying it from non-human use sources, and that means that there is no oversight. They do not go through all the protocols and procedures that we go through at our pharmacy. Like, all of the safety nets, all of the checks and balances, all the things that I just went through about how we do it are gone. And so now, yeah, you do risk adverse events. You do risk issues, because who knows what contaminant's in that?

   20. JRJoe Rogan34:21

       Right, especially if you're getting it from some country and they're cutting corners and they're just selling you whatever they can.

   21. BBBrigham Buhler34:27

       And so the fallacy though, the biggest fallacy is that if it comes from a big pharmaceutical company and it's in the American market, that it's safe. Because time and time again, they've misrepresented the safety. They've misrepresented the efficacy, right? And then you go beyond that, they've also misrepresented their compliance and regulatory, and their quality controls, right? The- I was, where I was going earlier is they have outsourced 30% of their manufacturing to third, to outside of the United States to third world countries where it's cheaper to manufacture. In fact, a lot of them are manufacturing in rural areas of India, um, where sometimes there's no running water at the hotels. There's no... So if I'm an FDA inspector, and I can choose to go down the street and inspect a compounding pharmacy in Austin, Texas or I've gotta get on a plane and fly to a rural part of India, and now I have to give you three months heads up before I come, right? When the FDA shows up at my building, they show up and they say, "We're coming in, and you're gonna let us look at everything you're doing, and we're gonna follow your employees around for the next three weeks, and we're gonna see if anything they've done is incorrect." That's the level of scrutiny we face. The level of scrutiny big pharma faces is, "We moved our facilities overseas. You gotta give us a three months notice to go into those facilities, and then when you get into those facilities," uh, yeah, there's a book called Bottle of Lies. It's an investigative journalist, I mean, and it's, it'll blow your mind. Like, when the FDA showed up, they were burning records. That's with three months notice. They were burning records. They made up their efficacy data. The data was all falsified. Over and over and over again, these things have happened. And, uh-

   22. JRJoe Rogan36:16

       (laughs)

   23. BBBrigham Buhler36:16

       ... I don't remember the author's name, but the book is called Bottle of Lies, and she dives deep into that. She was an investigative journalist.

   24. JRJoe Rogan36:22

       Jesus Christ.

   25. BBBrigham Buhler36:24

       Joe Rogan Yeah.

   26. JRJoe Rogan36:24

       ... so, when they're putting these things on the dangerous list, things like BPC-157, is the idea that they're gonna come up with their own version of BPC-157, or something similar to it, and patent it because they know the demand is there?

   27. BBBrigham Buhler36:42

       That is my assumption, is that that's what Big Pharma's attempting to do. Because I don't understand otherwise why the FDA all of the sudden would've made this choi- It blindsided everyone, compounding pharmacies, clinicians. Nobody saw this coming 'cause there weren't a bunch of adverse events. Literally, the only adverse events I've seen with anything on that ban list, and we've treated I don't even know how many hi- ... 'Cause Ways to Well has 30,000 patients in our patient population. My pharmacy, the last I saw was over 500,000 people have filled prescriptions. We're nationwide. We're working with some of the biggest telemedicine companies in, in the country, clinicians throughout the country. Um, we're, we're one of the bigger pharmacies providing these solutions for these practices. And the only adverse events we've seen is, like, an injection site inflammation response, an inflammatory response at the injection site. Sometimes it'll itch. Um, the worst is somebody's gotten cold sweats for a few minutes, and that's rare. Those are rare, rare reportings. Like, most ... This is, again, because you look at it, it occurs naturally in nature. It's a peptide. It's an amino acid. It is a building block of life that your body becomes deficient in as you age, right? Our body becomes less and less efficient, and so these peptides are a way to supplement. Um, my buddy, Ryan Humeston, did a video on it. He's like a big YouTuber, and it, he called it, uh, Flintstone Vitamins for grownups.

   28. JRJoe Rogan38:07

       (laughs)

   29. BBBrigham Buhler38:07

       And it's like, it is. This is y- ... The reason, like, eh, the reason that supplements aren't regulated by the FDA is 'cause Ronald Reagan said, "I don't want the FDA telling me what vitamins I can and can't take," right? But because this is an injectable and it's sterile for the most part, and there are pill forms too, but the FDA says, "Well, if it's an injectable, it's sterile, and it's made at a compounding pharmacy, then we have oversight."

   30. JRJoe Rogan38:32

       (laughs)
4. 45:00 – 1:00:00

   What? …

   1. BBBrigham Buhler45:00

      green tape wrapped around it, okay? And I thought, "Oh, that's interesting. It had green tape." Jump forward two months later, I'm in a human surgery, and I see a shaver handpiece with green tape. And I thought, "Man, that's wild. It can't be." So I check the serial number, same damn serial number that was in that tiger surgery.

   2. JRJoe Rogan45:20

      What?

   3. BBBrigham Buhler45:21

      Same serial number. At the time, what was happening is if a loaner went out, it would go out to an animal surgery, veterinary clinic. There's no way to differentiate, right? So a, a count number is an account number, right? And so they ship out a loaner and they would use that, and then they'd ship it back. But... Okay, but they're going to process it, clean it, sterilize it. Y- Y- You never should be doing that in the first place. But I've already told you now how the packaging inserts don't explain properly how to clean out these instruments. And it's not one company, it's not one product, it's thousands of products. And so...

   4. JRJoe Rogan45:55

      So, a human patient could be potentially contaminated with bacteria from a tiger.

   5. BBBrigham Buhler46:01

      100%. 100%. Y- you never, you never... Like... And so I s- I say... (laughs) I just say this because when they're throwing stones or people are like, "Peptides are dangerous or stem cells are dan-" It's like, this is nature, and the rules, and the regs, and the restrictions, and the safety nets, and the protocols, and the chain of custody, and the hoops that we jump through. Like, let's go to the cellular options. Whether we get a biologic, whether cellular or acellular, okay? When it ships out, they say what time it's shipped. It ships on dry ice, stored at frigid temperatures. We... When it arrives, we have to sign for it, and then we immediately unbox it and load it into a cryofreezer and document each lot number, what time we put it in the freezer, and within 30 days, if we don't use that product, we discard it. Even though there's no- nothing that says it's not viable, uh, or it's not going to be as good, that's the protocol, because we're gonna go above and beyond and follow the most rigid safety protocols. And that does not happen in traditional medicine. The average American is assuming that if they go into surgery, that's safe. "But these stem cells, man. Ooh, who knows about that? That could be dangerous."

   6. JRJoe Rogan47:17

      (laughs)

   7. BBBrigham Buhler47:17

      And the truth is, everything's risk-reward. It's all risk-reward.

   8. JRJoe Rogan47:23

      Jesus Christ.

   9. BBBrigham Buhler47:26

      (laughs)

   10. JRJoe Rogan47:26

       It's just so gunked up. It's just so corrupt that it feels helpless when you're discussing this, because there's this feeling that the more you dive into this and the more you describe things and the deeper you expose the corruption, the more it's so confusing because it doesn't seem like there's a way out.

   11. BBBrigham Buhler47:44

       Well, and you asked me last time, you were trying to ask me to articulate how I started Ways to Dwell, how I started Revive, and we spent three fucking hours (laughs) going through all this.

   12. JRJoe Rogan47:53

       Yeah.

   13. BBBrigham Buhler47:54

       The truth of the matter is, I saw a problem, I tried to come up with a solution. And that's all I've been doing over and over again. Problem: There's an opioid epidemic. It killed my brother. Solution: Non-addictive, non-abusive treatment modalities to heal and help with pain. That... Uh, so I start a pharmacy. Insurance says, "Nah, we're not gonna cover it." Right? "We'll just put him on an opioid." Okay.... problem. Now I have to figure out how to make these products cost-effective enough to be able to sell them to the average American, the average Joe, you know, not the affluent. It's the everybody needs to be able to afford these treatments. So I built a 503A sterile pharmacy and we began to make products that were in the gaps. Anything I saw that insurance didn't cover, wouldn't cover, was egregiously price-gouging patients on, is what we would make at our compounding pharmacy. Um, and so, eh, then we start Ways to Well and-

   14. JRJoe Rogan48:53

       Can you give me examples of those products? Like what, what products are those?

   15. BBBrigham Buhler48:56

       Yeah. So I mean, uh, any ... Well, peptides fall into that chain. Um, you know, big pharmas wasn't making peptides. But now that the market took off on peptides, big pharma is trying to cannibalize peptides and get into that space more and more. Like I said, Merck's looking at over 200 peptides right now. Um, testosterone therapy, right? When a lot of times when people say, "Hey, you know, if it worked, everyone would use it in traditional medicine." No. It, it took 75 years of dogma and confusion for testosterone to pull itself out of the doldrums of the dungeons to be utilized daily as a go-to resource for aging men. And the only reason testosterone made it out was because one guy had the balls to test it. No pun intended. (laughs)

   16. JRJoe Rogan49:40

       (laughs)

   17. BBBrigham Buhler49:40

       But it was, uh, Dr. Morgentaler, a urologist, famous urologist said he ... They were... This was prior to Viagra. He said, "I've gotta do something for these guys who have erectile dysfunction. I don't have an option." And he began using testosterone. And then his colleagues said, "Well, hold on a second, that's gonna cause prostate cancer." And then he began to analyze his patient population and see that it wasn't increasing prostate cancer in his pa- patient population. So then he went back and did a retrospective study all the way back to the 1930s, where we found out that the original study that created that dogma, that maintained its status for over 75 fucking years, was total bullshit. It was a patient population of three. Two guys dropped out of the study. One guy had, uh, levels that went up and down on his prostate levels, and it was ... It, it was all debunked. And now it's proven time and time again if testosterone was increasing prostate cancer, we would have seen a huge spike in prostate cancer. What we're seeing is about 14% of men develop prostate cancer. And so as we walked through-

   18. JRJoe Rogan50:41

       What, what do they think the reason for that is?

   19. BBBrigham Buhler50:43

       For what?

   20. JRJoe Rogan50:44

       Why do 14% of men develop prostate cancer?

   21. BBBrigham Buhler50:46

       Well, 14% of men in general patient population develop prostate cancer.

   22. JRJoe Rogan50:50

       General, general-

   23. BBBrigham Buhler50:50

       Yeah. Thank you for clarifying that. Yeah.

   24. JRJoe Rogan50:53

       Right.

   25. BBBrigham Buhler50:53

       Not ... So w-

   26. JRJoe Rogan50:53

       Not population.

   27. BBBrigham Buhler50:54

       Correct. And so the thought was if we increase, um, certain levels, that we would increase the risk of prostate cancer. And so the challenge becomes, if you really go back and you look at the study, the guy who stayed in the study was chemically castrated. He had a testosterone level of 50 nanograms per deciliter, which is considered chemically castrated, so nonexistent. What Morgentaler discovered was when we take you from 50, chemically castrated, to low, 250, we increase your risk of prostate cancer. Because your prostate cancer risk at zero testosterone is basically zero, right? But once we push past 250, the low number, we now reduce your risk of prostate cancer. In fact, we insulate you from various forms of cancer beyond prostate cancer. So there's a therapeutic benefit if we get you into optimal ranges, and it's called the saturation model. So think of it like this. You can only water a plant so much, right? Once that plant has water, it's not gonna absorb any more water. The prostate can only ... The testosterone can only bind to a certain amount of receptors. Once those receptors are binded, then there's n- no continual upside risk, and then you get to get the benefits of testosterone that begin to reduce those risks of cancer. But today, in primary care, you will still have doctors who quote a study that's been debunked 100 times.

   28. JRJoe Rogan52:26

       Oh.

   29. BBBrigham Buhler52:26

       And there, there's this dogma that exists over and over again in healthcare where it's like the data's there, the research is there, the info's there, but the system itself isn't allowing for it. Um, and so when we look at that ... I talked about this on the last. When we talk about insurance companies and pharmacy benefit managers, every drug on the market that is covered by insurance is controlled by a pharmacy benefit manager. And those pharmacy benefit managers prioritize drugs in their classifications not based off efficacy, based off profits. Right? And so they are monetizing those drugs, um, through rebates with the big insurance companies. So i- insulin's a prime example. It, their in- current, uh ... The Senate House Committee did a study on insulin where they found, like, the price of insulin was $284 a vial. Do you know how much made it back to the company that ... to the pharmaceutical company that was making that insulin? Less than $40. Where the hell did all that extra money go? It went to the pharmacy benefit managers and the insurance companies through rebates. And so this is the whole other area of healthcare that people aren't understanding, and I tried to explain it, uh, on, on the last podcast. I know we dove deep into it, but it is a crucial component for people to get their head around what's happening. So insurance companies, so many people say, "Well, I have health insurance." Right? "That drug isn't covered by my health insurance, so it must be bullshit." Or, "That test isn't covered by my health insurance, so it must be bullshit." No. You don't have health insurance. What you have is managed care plan. They've renamed these plans. It isn't health insurance, it's a managed care plan. And what do I mean by that? They're managing your medications, your treatment options, and they're monetizing your disease state.They make money on every step of the way. And in- since the last time we spoke, a new, a new one came out, uh, Ohio, the state of Ohio, uh, they realized that over 200 pharmacies had gone out of business. The pharmacies were saying, "We're getting paid less and less," but yet the government was paying more and more. Why? How? Where was that money coming from? Where was it going? When they w- they used, I think- I can't remember, 30-something auditors at the state level, and what they found was $240 million in pharmacy benefit manager fraud, $240 million in money that they extrapolated from the American people, from the people of the state of Ohio, 'cause taxpayer dollars are who's paying for this stuff. And these pharmacy benefit managers are making their money on the spread. So, there's layer upon layer upon layer of how insurance companies can move dollars to maximize profits.

   30. JRJoe Rogan55:29

       Jesus Christ.
5. 1:00:00 – 1:15:00

   And how many of…

   1. BBBrigham Buhler1:00:00

      and they don't have the time, and they're stressed and they're overworked and they're tired and they're just trying to make it, and they're beat down. These people are beat down.

   2. JRJoe Rogan1:00:10

      And how many of these doctors even know about these tests?

   3. BBBrigham Buhler1:00:14

      A lot of them don't, because again, a lot of it's not covered by insurance. And so, if it's not in their wheelhouse, and so when you went back to, "Wait, doctors have investments," when I owned a blood lab, one of the things I learned is that clinician's so busy, if there's not a carrot at the end of the stick to have the conversation, to do the deep dive, to explain to them the methodology and the clinical protocols and the why-... they're not gonna mess with it, because they're just, again, trying to make it through the day. And so, those were pathways to be able to educate a clinician and give them some insight into why they should be doing these tests, clinically. Um, but yeah. Even- even today, like with, if you talk about cellular therapies, if you talk about peptides, most primary care clinicians in this country have no idea about peptides. Uh, or they'll say it's bullshit, or they say they don't work. And they'll say the same thing with cellular therapy. Um, "You can't get stem cells in the United States. You can't get that..." Y- you know, it- it's just this dogma that has created a misconception. Infrared. That's another example. You and I were talking about infrared beds and red light therapy. It is viewed by a lot of the doctors in this healthcare system, and I say healthcare loosely, it's sick care, as pseudoscience, um, bullshit, uh, chiropractic stuff. But if you look, infrared and these technologies, photolight therapy has been used since 1903, 1905. The guy won a Nobel Prize. Uh, Huberman does a two-hour breakdown on this stuff. It ... Infrared is not bullshit. There are over 60 studies that show infrared works. There was a study done in Europe that showed infrared improved vision in people over the age of 40, like using three minutes of infrared three days a week returned vision and eyesight. There's nothing that has done that. And so infrared has done that, and has helped people with, uh, degenerative eye disease, like as your eyes begin to degenerate. And how does it do it? We even know the science behind it. Y- y- like, it literally ... When you're taking NAD drips and you're doing all this stuff, you're doing it to try and get your cells to produce more ATP. 'Cause as we age, our production of ATP decline. And ATP is the energy source of a cell, and our eyes have a limited amount of ATP, but they require a massive amount of energy. And so as we age and our ATP dedu- r- declines, our cells are i- incapable of having the amount of energy required to maintain great eyesight. And so through infrared, through, uh, NAD treatments, through N- NMN, through all of these various modalities that are not being utilized in traditional medicine, you can make a difference.

   4. JRJoe Rogan1:03:05

      Aren't they trying to ban NMN as well?

   5. BBBrigham Buhler1:03:06

      Yeah. Yeah. (laughs) Which is crazy.

   6. JRJoe Rogan1:03:09

      Again, same thing.

   7. BBBrigham Buhler1:03:09

      Yeah.

   8. JRJoe Rogan1:03:10

      Where's the, where's the negative side effects? Where (overlapping) ... What's the reason?

   9. BBBrigham Buhler1:03:12

      And all NMN is, is a precursor to NAD.

   10. JRJoe Rogan1:03:16

       Right.

   11. BBBrigham Buhler1:03:16

       And, uh, and even NAD, when I sent you that study a year ago, my- my mind's changed. I'm constantly evolving. I'm constantly learning, right? I- I've listened to some people in academia that told me they thought NAD was bullshit, and I- I can tell you, I have a friend who was diagnosed with MS, um, who's one of my best friends in the world, and he is on a treatment that costs $14,000 a month from the insurance companies and wasn't getting good results. And we started doing weekly NAD and BPC-157, and he swears ... And again, this is anecdotal. I'm not saying that this is gonna cure him (laughs) as, that's not at all what I ... He has gotten better results and has felt better over the last eight months than he ever felt on that $14,000-a-month medication.

   12. JRJoe Rogan1:04:02

       Wow.

   13. BBBrigham Buhler1:04:03

       So it's ... I- i- i- for them to understand it, we've got, we would ha- a- and that's why it's like ... So to move ... To be able to use these treatment modalities, you almost have to go cash pay. And then what- what I'm trying to figure out is how do we bring this to the masses? How do we bring longevity-based, predictive, proactive, personalized medicine to the masses? How do we bring this precision approach to everybody? And that's where I think large language models are gonna change the game. They're gonna change the world. I sent you, uh, Alan the other day.

   14. JRJoe Rogan1:04:35

       Yeah.

   15. BBBrigham Buhler1:04:36

       The little alien. That's just-

   16. JRJoe Rogan1:04:37

       I don't like his voice.

   17. BBBrigham Buhler1:04:38

       Yeah. (laughs) Well, he's a, he's a beta, so we're working on getting him all worked out.

   18. JRJoe Rogan1:04:42

       He looks like a beta.

   19. BBBrigham Buhler1:04:42

       Yeah. (laughs) So but that's-

   20. JRJoe Rogan1:04:44

       (laughs)

   21. BBBrigham Buhler1:04:45

       That's ... See, that feedback's amazing, because when I talk about personalized-

   22. JRJoe Rogan1:04:48

       I'm just kidding. It's not real feedback.

   23. BBBrigham Buhler1:04:50

       But- but-

   24. JRJoe Rogan1:04:50

       I don't really have a problem with his voice.

   25. BBBrigham Buhler1:04:51

       ... for me, this is my thought on it.

   26. JRJoe Rogan1:04:52

       Yeah.

   27. BBBrigham Buhler1:04:53

       Part of being personalized goes above and beyond personalizing treatments with peptides and all these different things, to personalizing the patient experience. Some people wanna call their clinician at 2:00 AM. I can't tell you how many days I wake up, and somebody who went through the program messages me asking a clinical question, and I've gotta bug the clinician, and I've got 30 of those, right? Or the clinician gets an inbox filled with questions. The future of medicine is large language models will manage all of that.

   28. JRJoe Rogan1:05:19

       Mm-hmm.

   29. BBBrigham Buhler1:05:20

       That large lang- that ... Alan will be able to assess your medical record. He'll be able to read your MRI. He'll be able to read your DEXA. He'll be able to read your VO2 max. He'll be able to assess your all-cause mortality risk. He'll be able to tie into your wearables, tie into your REM sleep, monitor your heart rate variability. That's proactive, predictive medicine. We're gonna know what date you started testosterone, what date you started a peptide, what date we began to see improvement on all of your biomarkers. Or if we don't see improvement, we're gonna know in advance that this isn't a good medicine for you, this isn't a good treatment for you. And so traditional medicine is not going to do these things. It's never gonna happen.

   30. JRJoe Rogan1:05:58

       Can you explain, when you're saying large language models, you're talking about artificial intelligence?
6. 1:15:00 – 1:24:11

   Wow. …

   1. BBBrigham Buhler1:15:00

      right? And I'm reaching out to thought leaders in their field and in academia throughout the country and saying, "Hey, do you wanna help me do something cool? Do you wanna come change the game? We're here. Let's do it. Let's, let's get proactive and predictive, and let's help people drive their health journey. Let's give them this resource." And so my... This, this tool wouldn't be to talk about politics or to crack jokes with your friend. Our tool would be used to assess large amounts of data, which is what this thing is phenomenal at. It's going to, like I said before, tie into your electronic medical records, review your last consult, be able to read your blood report, because it's all analytics-driven. Everything is algorithm-driven. And so almost all the reports and all of the decision trees that primary care clinicians and even a Ways to Well clinician makes are essentially algorithms. And the more data we can give the large language model, the better decisions it can make. And so I'm envisioning there's a day where large language models potentially, (laughs) you know, take over a lot of the heavy lifting that primary cares and internal medicine doctors do today.

   2. JRJoe Rogan1:16:16

      Wow.

   3. BBBrigham Buhler1:16:18

      But think about this-

   4. JRJoe Rogan1:16:18

      That's very promising. That, that gives me hope.

   5. BBBrigham Buhler1:16:22

      Well, that's why I think there's an optimistic side to this.

   6. JRJoe Rogan1:16:24

      As long as the FDA doesn't lock you up.

   7. BBBrigham Buhler1:16:24

      (laughs) Well, that's true, but they-

   8. JRJoe Rogan1:16:27

      Are you worried about that?

   9. BBBrigham Buhler1:16:28

      About the FDA?

   10. JRJoe Rogan1:16:29

       About someone.

   11. BBBrigham Buhler1:16:31

       Yeah, no, I am. I'm, I've, I was very nervous on the last call. I'm, I don't wanna pick a fight with the federal government. That's just not a fight, you know, that I'm willing to take on. And that's partially why I got out of the insurance model. I, I literally... I described it this way. Joe, it was one of the worst years of my life, man. I lost my brother, I, I built this company, I had 156 employees. We were days away from selling this thing, the previous company, for over $30 million, and I was the sole owner. And literally days before insurance cut all of it out from under us, quit reimbursing everything, got rid of all the genetics testing, all of the... Any, any compounded medication, any of it, gone overnight. I had to look 150 fucking people in the eye and say, "I came up short," right at Christmastime. Lay off all these people. I paid them all out three-month severance. And that, this was four or five years ago, um, and prior to Ways to Well, and I just thought, "I'm not ever doing this again." I can't put... I can't build a model that is in an ecosystem that is controlled by greed and corruption. And so my hope was to build a life raft (laughs) with Ways to Well and Revive. And I build it, and we get all this momentum, patients are ecstatic. You know, the average Ways to Well person refers me one and a half patients. I mean, it's a cash model. These are people spending their hard-earned money. The way you know this works is if it didn't work, I'd be fucking fired. They're not gonna spend (laughs) their paycheck for something that doesn't work. But look at all the people you've referred me. Everyone, for the most part, is ecstatic.

   12. JRJoe Rogan1:18:06

       Well, I could talk about it personally.

   13. BBBrigham Buhler1:18:08

       It's-

   14. JRJoe Rogan1:18:08

       I mean, your, your, your treatments have helped me tremendously. There's been... Like, that MCL tear that I had on my left knee that just kept fucking with me, that doesn't exis- I just did rounds in the back, dude.

   15. BBBrigham Buhler1:18:18

       Yeah.

   16. JRJoe Rogan1:18:19

       It doesn't affect me at all anymore.... I mean, it, stem cells, whether it's mesenchymal stem cells, BPC-157 peptides, all these different modalities, all these different tools that you use, they fucking work.

   17. BBBrigham Buhler1:18:31

       Yeah.

   18. JRJoe Rogan1:18:31

       They 100% work. I'm 56 years old. I mean, I'm supposed to be, like, a, an aging, falling apart person. Most people that hit my age, I mean, I'm not even middle-aged, I'm past the border. You know?

   19. BBBrigham Buhler1:18:44

       Yeah.

   20. JRJoe Rogan1:18:44

       Like, middle age, like, what, am I gonna live to 112?

   21. BBBrigham Buhler1:18:47

       (laughs)

   22. JRJoe Rogan1:18:47

       I mean, some people, I guess, have done it, but it's pretty rare. Right? But-

   23. BBBrigham Buhler1:18:51

       But, and, and that's, that's if, if you start talking about driving longevity-

   24. JRJoe Rogan1:18:55

       Yeah.

   25. BBBrigham Buhler1:18:55

       ... and driving human lifespan, you start by driving healthspan.

   26. JRJoe Rogan1:18:59

       Yes.

   27. BBBrigham Buhler1:19:00

       And in order to drive healthspan, we've gotta take a look under the hood. And so this is where I was going earlier with the insurance stuff. You've got to start thinking of your insurance, your health insurance, as managed care.

   28. JRJoe Rogan1:19:12

       Hmm.

   29. BBBrigham Buhler1:19:12

       They are there to manage chronic disease, maximize profits.

   30. JRJoe Rogan1:19:16

       Right.

Episode duration: 2:14:34