← Culture Apothecary with Alex Clark
Culture Apothecary with Alex Clark
Dismantling The Health Insurance Ponzi Scheme | Brigham Buhler
01:44:40
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- [00:00]
A
Never once have you heard an insurance company brought up in all of the opioid crisis. 30% of the profits generated during the opioid crisis went to the insurance companies.
- [00:11]
B
Now why is this legal?
- [00:12]
A
It shouldn't be. That's the point. They're getting money on every drug that you're prescribed. Imagine the amount of revenue being generated by these insurance companies by screwing me and you and families on these medications.
- [00:48]
B
We've all heard the usual suspects when it comes to talking about the problems in healthcare, Big pharma, the food industry, all the chemicals we're exposed to. But there's one major player that often slips under the radar in these conversations. Health insurance. Today, we're pulling back the curtain on an industry that profits off of illness and makes sure you stay sick for as long as possible. It's time to talk about the insurance Ponzi scheme and we have the perfect guest to help us expose it all. Brigham Buehler is my friend and also a healthcare entrepreneur who is on a mission to complete, completely dismantle and rebuild America's broken healthcare system. From his beginnings as a pharma drug rep, Brigham saw firsthand the devastating effects of a system that puts profits above people. This drove him to become the founder of Ways Too well Revive Rx Pharmacy and Bioreach. You may have already heard Brigham as a two time guest on Joe Rogan where he laid out his vision for a healthier, more transparent health care system. He's also someone that I had the privilege of testifying with at the United States Senior the Senate last September alongside RFK Jr calling for urgent reform. Today we're diving deep into the issues with our current healthcare system and Brigham's going to help us understand the corruption we're up against and how we can begin to fix it. Watch this interview on the Culture Apothecary, Spotify or Real Alex Clark on YouTube. If you have ever heard something on this show that taught you something new, please leave a five star review. We'd also love if you consider becoming a financial donor of the show. You can leave a tax deductible donation with the link in the show notes to help us heal a sick culture physically, mentally and spiritually. If you wish that you had more like minded friends who are into these topics, join the Cute Servatives Facebook group. Follow me on Instagram at Real Alex Clark and the show at Culture Apothecary Please welcome the founder of Ways Too well, Brigham Buer to Culture Apothecary. Is it fair to point out that the more People seem to go to the doctor in the United States, the sicker they seem to get.
- [02:42]
A
I mean it definitely seems to be a common problem. Like if we look at what the U.S. spins in health care, you know, we're number one in, in health care costs, but I think 60th overall in our overall health, you know, I mean, it's pretty bad. And the most recent statistics are, you know, 70%, 67% of adults are overweight. I mean, which is staggering. Yeah, 13 to 19 age demographic though our children are over 30% are on the cusp of pre diabetes. Like it's, I mean we're just chronically ill as a society. The system's definitely letting individuals, families, all of us down.
- [03:22]
B
Well, and what's crazy is that we're so sick. What you're describing is like health is plummeting and yet we're on an astronomical amount of medications per person in America. What is the average amount of medications in Americans on right now?
- [03:36]
A
Yeah, the average American's on four or more medications, four or more prescription medications.
- [03:40]
B
And how does that compare to the rest of the world?
- [03:42]
A
It's way higher than the rest of the world. And we also fit the bill for most the innovation of health care, which is a problem in itself because so many people go, well, meds are expensive in America because we fund the innovation most. The innovation is funded through taxpayer dollars via the nih. A lot of people don't understand that. So we're fitting the bill to identify compounds that are promising for driving health span and, and preventing chronic disease. And all these things is where the money should be applied. But instead our money is getting applied towards treating symptomology. And so the NIH is looking at studies that are driven by who Big Pharma. And big Pharma asked the NIH look at these compounds. And when a compound gets close enough to a point where they think they can patent it and monetize it, the NIH this hands the molecule over for pennies on the dollar to big Pharma, where they then put it through a double blind placebo controlled trial if we're lucky and push it into the marketplace and patent it. And so we, the American people, are paying the bill for these innovations multiple times. We funded the original legwork to get this molecule to a point it could be patented. Then the NIH turns it over to big Pharma, Then big pharma patents it and we got to pay for it again. And then big pharma says, well, we got to charge you more because you're fitting the bill for the rest of the world's innovation, but yet we're one of the most chronically ill societies for a first world country, which is crazy.
- [05:05]
B
Now, for somebody who's, you know, I'm thinking the person listening in college or somebody who's literally never heard any of this about pharma or medicine in America before, what is the NIH and what are they supposed to be doing?
- [05:18]
A
Yeah, it's the National Institute for Health and they are a taxpayer dollar funded entity that is trying to help drive chronic disease and, and create cures. But it's really less about cures and more about creating compounds that treat symptomology. And that's because it's guided by big insurance and big pharma. And I know you and I met through our Senate testimonies and I, and the gist of it is in my main point that I try to make as coming from a background of a little bit about me is like I started out as a drug rep right out of college and so I got the experience of being a drug rep and I only did it for a few years, but I learned so much about how that system works.
- [05:57]
B
Like what?
- [05:58]
A
Well, so all the folks that trained and taught me were on the payroll for the pharmaceutical company. Right. And so when we launch a compound into a marketplace, I had every doctor in a geographic region, what they were prescribing, where I was supposed to go for the day. They tailored my schedule to focus on heavy prescribers, people who prescribed a certain demographic of medication. You fish where the big fish are.
- [06:22]
B
Like you would look at different doctors and in their patient patient database or something.
- [06:27]
A
Correct. And I would know what they prescribed the day before. And so let's just say as an example, you're selling an ADHD medication, you would prioritize your schedule to go call on the clinicians that prescribe the most Adderall and then your job is to go convert them or grow the patient population. And the conversion is one thing because that's trying to sell and, and place your product in a way and, and argue the medical necessity and benefits of that compound. But to grow a market is a whole another thing because think about it, what, where this is where it gets really gray and jaded with these pharmaceutical companies. They'll have you sign these contracts as a 20 year old kid saying I'm not going to off label, promote. I agree. I've been trained that I'm not going to talk about something that this drug isn't indicated for. Then they send you to dinners with thought leaders in your field that tell you all the areas they're using these drugs that aren't on the label. Right. Which would be off label promotion. And then you're tasked with growing a market share and immense pressures put on you to grow market share. And you're out at a dinner with one of your doctors and you go, well, man, do I bring up what that doctor told me about using this? And let me give you an example. Like there was a antipsychotic, a very niche drug, right? Antipsychotics are not meant to just be handed out like, you know, candy. They would literally train the sales reps to go in and instead of focusing on this very niche patient population, you would try to grow it to a more average patient population. So example would be, you've talked about the mother that comes in. She's stressed, she's anxious, she's having a hard time sleeping. That mom that maybe wakes up in the middle of the night and just starts cleaning the house because she can't sleep, that might be a manic patient, that might be a patient that this compound could help. But that is not a man. That's, that's this, this is what the drug companies would try to teach a clinician and get a clinician to essentially over prescribe a drug and prescribe it in patient demographics that don't make sense. We talk often about the opioid crisis. The opioid crisis was preceded by the Valium crisis, which was the same family, the Sacklers. And this is what's wild. The sacklers in the 60s, I think, and 70s began to promote volume for women who had headaches for women. And they tried to target housewives.
- [08:49]
B
And what were the side effects of, of long term volume use?
- [08:52]
A
Oh, it's, it's, it's an opioid. So it's, it's addictive, it's abusive, you become dependent on it. Mood swings.
- [08:59]
B
Now, was this ma, was that Mama, Mommy's Little Helper? Is that what Valium was? Was that a different.
- [09:04]
A
I think that was one that they called Mom. I can't remember. They, they were saying, don't just take a martini, pop a Valium.
- [09:09]
B
Yeah.
- [09:09]
A
And I think it's the one that they called Mama's Little Helper.
- [09:12]
B
Okay.
- [09:12]
A
Yeah. It was marketed towards housewives that were stressed and anxious and overwhelmed, you know, and then they marketed to husbands about, and this is the 60s and 70s. But it's like if your wife's on edge, tell her to pop a volume and they created and perpetuated a crisis where Congress had to step in and go after the Sackler family to shut down this volume crisis.
- [09:33]
B
Okay, so Congress had already gone after the Sacklers then before we even got oxycontin. I don't even know that I realized that.
- [09:40]
A
Yeah, yeah, they had created a crisis already once.
- [09:42]
B
So it's interesting because the whole OxyContin story, the whole Sackler family story is why I became enthralled in all of this subject matter in the first place during the pandemic.
- [09:53]
A
Oh, I didn't know that.
- [09:54]
B
I didn't know anything about the opio is just very privileged to have grown up where that didn't touch my family or anyone immediately close to me. And so I was just very ignorant on how bad it was and then how we even got there in the first place when. And this is silly, but, like, literally changed my life when Hulu put out that show Dopesick.
- [10:12]
A
Yep.
- [10:12]
B
That was the first time I'd really ever heard that story. And I was enthralled and horrified. I was like, this is the biggest true crime story in American history. And then I went and got the book Dopesick by Beth Macy. I'm reading that. And then going into pharma is what led me into food and what led me into all of this activism and why I'm so passionate about it. I just. I didn't know any of this.
- [10:33]
A
Yeah.
- [10:33]
B
So if it wasn't for that show, I wouldn't have known. So what was fascinating to me was, like, what they were doing to drug reps, people that had that job that you had. So you said you were right out of college doing this, and how long were you doing it for?
- [10:44]
A
So again, and I try to portray it, it's not that reps are all good or bad. Human. Human. Humanity's a duality. Right. We all have good or bad. But show me the incentives, and I'll show you the outcomes. If everything becomes about quarterly earnings, quarterly profits, commission plans, hitting your incentives, hitting your milestones, you create this ultra competitive environment. And then you hire a bunch of type A, young, hungry kids, you train them up, you put them into a marketplace, and you say, go produce results. And then all of their incentives are not based on patient outcomes. It's based on pushing more drug and product into the marketplace.
- [11:19]
B
Right.
- [11:19]
A
And so the company's based off that. The quarterly earnings are based off that. The hospital system's based off that. The medical practice is based off that. Every touch point throughout the system has been Corrupted and colluded to maximize profits and get patients in and out the door and get them on prescription drugs. And I learned that in my 20s, that was the most jarring thing that I learned. There were times I would go in and meet with doctors and they would go, no, I've got to deal with Fizer, or no, I've got to deal with so and so or no, that guy just took me on a ski trip, I'm going to use their stuff. And I was a young dumb kid and when I started I sold Cialis, so the Viagra competitor. So walking in, selling that, you're like Elvis Presley. Seriously, like as a drug rep, it was like a big deal. It was a brand new drug, it had no mega side effects, Everyone loved it. But once they started making me sell antidepressants, anti anxiety meds, all of these other niche drugs that candidly, I mean, when you really look at SSRIs, literally 30% of people get results at a level that they would say they're satisfied off of initial SSRI. 30%. That means 70% of people on an antidepressant are not getting the results they hope for.
- [12:34]
B
And how many people are on an SSRI in America right now?
- [12:38]
A
Oh, it's insane. And it's the fact, it's. For the last 20 years it's been one of the fastest growing medications prescribed. But yet our deaths of despair are at an all time high. Depression, anxiety, all time high. We are chronically mentally ill as a society in addition to physically ill. And treatments that work way better than antidepressants are blocked from the marketplace. Treatments like, you know, you and I talked about before we started the podcast, like psychedelics, Ibogaine. You know, a product like ibogaine has an 80 plus percent success rate one one time use.
- [13:13]
B
And what is it?
- [13:14]
A
It's a psychedelic that's been used for over 8,000 years by indigenous cultures. It started on the plains of Africa and now Stanford University is researching it heavily for antidepressant, ptsd, anxiety, sleep, all of that one time use, one time, one weekend of treatment. Right now? Yeah, right now it's at a clinic in, in Mexico or outside of the United States because it's not legalized yet in the US But I'm actually working with several different branches of the government and several different thought leaders. Governor Rick Perry is pushing for it. Former governor of Texas.
- [13:50]
B
Didn't we, didn't they just deny, didn't we just get denied on something with.
- [13:54]
A
Okay, yeah, MDMA and that and that's where veterans, right. Even this gets shady because what happens is a bunch of freaking billionaires have gone out and gobbled up these molecules. And so it's an arms race again, even though I'm a big proponent of psychedelics, if we really look at what's going on with the fda, you got a bunch of billionaires in pissing matches, sabotaging each other's clinical trials and trying to be first to market. They want to be the first to bring MDMA or the first to bring psilocybin or whatever it is, because you're talking about a multi billion dollar industry. And so if you're first to market, you're going to print cash. And so it's sad because even really promising compounds are falling victim to the same old rhetoric of let's capture it, let's corporate capture, let's monetize it, let's limit accessibility so we can maximize our profits and control the flow.
- [14:45]
B
When you were a drug rep, you were doing that for how long?
- [14:48]
A
I did it for about three years, right out of college.
- [14:50]
B
Okay, so in that, I mean, can we just be candid? Like, what were the perks you were getting? Were you making a ton of money?
- [14:56]
A
I was a 21 year old kid. I had a company car. I got paid 100,000 a year plus bonuses and commissions. I got president's council trips where they flew me to like, well, I'm here in Arizona with you. They, I literally stated resort. Yeah, yeah. And like this is like 20 years ago though. So it was like the bomb back then. We stayed there and Britney Spears was at the pool. Like, it was wild. And it was always these crazy, extravagant trips. If you were a top producer, but candidly, like, you don't see the dark side until you see the dark. Does that make sense?
- [15:30]
B
Right? So how did you do that?
- [15:31]
A
So I came out and I was, I was selling Cialis and I'm like, this is amazing. All these guys love it. My doctors love me, they're my friends. This is. And I was a top rep in the country going on all these trips selling a drug that I believed in, a product that people candidly loved. And I was getting minimal negative feedback on. And I did so well that they relocated me to Houston, Texas, where they put me in the Texas Medical center, and they moved me to antipsychotics and antidepressants. And I only did that for about eight months. And the day I started, I'm like, I can't do this.
- [16:04]
B
Why?
- [16:04]
A
Because it's products I don't believe in. It's them trying to grow a niche and expand the use of antidepressants and SSRIs. And I'm just looking at the efficacy rate and I'm like, it's trash. Like diet and exercise has way more efficacy for treating depression than any of the SSRIs.
- [16:23]
B
I was just talking to somebody a couple weeks ago on the show and. And that was. The whole episode was on SSRIs. And she and I both discussed how this talking point of like, let's de. Stigmatize mental health and all of that, that. That was actually just a pharma message put out there to kind of change culture into being more accepting of people being on antidepressants. Would you agree with that?
- [16:49]
A
100. Yeah. No. 100%. And, and I know people are looking for an answer, but that's where you've covered this a lot, is the food system. I mean, front to back. Like, my main message in front of the Senate, and I stand behind this, is we talk about Eisenhower's speech and the corporate capture of our institutions. And the main thing that people focus on is his speech on the military industrial complex. But the second half of that speech, he warned if we allow the capture of our scientific industrial complex, and that has happened. What he described and portrayed at that time is what we're living.
- [17:27]
B
What did he say would happen if we captured our science, our science.
- [17:30]
A
The day we allow private interest and special interest groups to control our science in innovation, the garage tinkers, the innovators, the solutions will all disappear and it'll be controlled by corporate capture. And so from our food to our medical establishments, to our checks and balances, the nih, the fda, every check and balance we have has been eliminated. And I can show you that step by step through the opioid crisis. Since you said that's one of the things that brought. It's what brought me into this too.
- [18:02]
B
Oh, really?
- [18:02]
A
You know, as. Yeah, I was a. I was a medical device rep at the time, and I was looking at building a pharmacy to provide non abusive, non addictive pain creams to get away from opioids because this opioid crisis was wrecking America. And during all of that, my brother died of opioid abuse. He had gotten addicted in high school, and none of us knew how bad it was. And he was one of, you know, millions and millions of victims that fell prey to what big pharma pumped into the marketplace.
- [18:34]
B
Was it just for fun, like at a party someone suggested or. Because he was injured.
- [18:38]
A
He was injured. Started out with an acl. You know, what a lot of people don't understand is before oxy, they had hydrocodone. Before hydrocodone, they had Valium. And so the Sackler family was running out of their patent on hydrocodone. And they had a patent on the delivery mechanism, the cotton system, which is a time release. And so their pitch was, we can just plug in a different opioid and we can grandfather in a lot of what we already went through with hydrocodone. We're just going to trade out the opioid and reapply for the patent. But the problem is the, the opioid they chose was oxy. And oxy is 8 to 10 times more addictive than hydrocodone. And they knew it, and they knew it, and they put it into the marketplace. And, you know, if you're a kid in high school and you blow your acl, guess what? Your doctor's gonna put you on this highly addictive compound coming out the other end of surgery. And it wreaked habit. It's wreaking havoc to this day. To this day, the equivalent to a 747 jet worth of Americans die every day of opioid related abuse. It's still happening.
- [19:42]
B
And so was this with your brother in the early 2000s?
- [19:44]
A
This happened? No, this was, man, was it 10 years ago. So more recently. And that spurred my, my idea of, like, we've got to bring alternatives.
- [19:56]
B
So he had struggled with it since high school?
- [19:58]
A
Oh, yeah, off and on. And we didn't know. None of us knew really, that he had gotten addicted.
- [20:03]
B
None of us knew all these years.
- [20:04]
A
And addicts are good at hiding it. You'll never, like, that's what's terrifying. And it wasn't that he OD'd. It was that when they cut off the ability and accessibility of opioids, everybody turned to black market. And the problem with black market is a lot of that stuff's coming from China. There's a whole another play there that we could get into, But China's intentionally shipping fentol into Mexico to get it into the United States to disrupt the youth of America. Like, our government knows this. So most. The fentol coming in from Mexico is indirectly coming from China. And it's an effort to create a crisis for the youth of America. And it worked. You know, these individuals are now still seeking opioids that they can't get from the traditional medical system anymore. And they've turned to black market. And the problem with black market is there's no checks and balances. And if you are off by literally a pin size head of fentanyl, it kills you.
- [21:01]
B
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- [23:49]
A
I can tell you what the solution's not. It's not letting the Sacklers sell. They literally are selling the solution.
- [23:55]
B
You're kidding.
- [23:55]
A
I don't know if you know that. Like, yeah, their new treatment is the leading market leader right now in America. So the Sacklers are printing money off of treating the crisis they created. And the problem with that treatment is it's also addictive. You're just trading an addiction, you're trading an opioid addiction for a less addictive alternative.
- [24:16]
B
What's the new thing?
- [24:17]
A
I don't even remember the name of it, but I'll tell you this. What's crazy is ibogaine in these treatments that they're doing in Mexico and that Stanford University is doing has such a higher success rate. And again, it's one weekend and you're done. And that's why the Department of Defense, the US government, all of these governing bodies are looking at it. And there's a big movement with the FDA and hopefully, you know, we'll see what happens with RFK and the, the Maha movement. But a leadership change at the FDA could open up the world to life changing, life saving treatment modalities that are non addictive, non abusive. And that's what I was trying to do when I started my first healthcare startup, MediSmart. We would go out and educate. This is where insurance and pharma and all of it, Alex is so mind bending. So I would go out and educate clinicians and I would say, first off, try not to write opioids. They're addictive, they're abusive, they wreck the endocrine system. If you're doing an orthopedic procedure, I understand that patient's going to come out in pain. We have a non addictive, non abusive pain cream that insurance will cover. You can use this pain cream and never put this person on an opioid. If you want to put them on an opioid, we have checks and balances. I didn't create these checks and balances. It was actually the head of opioid abuse for The Obama administration, Dr. Bill Massey, and I rolled these protocols out to clinics throughout the state of Texas. And the reason I'm telling you all this is when I say corporate capture, we would say, if you're first off, don't prescribe an opioid if you have to. An insurance will not cover a pain cream. You should toxicology screen this patient. This will tell you, does this patient abuse drugs? Is there any other sort of abusive behavior in this patient's medical history? Is this patient potentially diverting or selling the medicine? All of that can be identified if we toxicology screen. It's a basic urine sample or blood sample. Secondly, we could pharmacogenetic test. The wild part about a pharmacogenetic test is a simple cheek swab. Through that cheek swab, Alex, I could tell you, are you a slow, fast or moderate metabolizer of an opioid? Are you at risk of becoming addicted to the opioid? If you're a slow or moderate metabolizer, I can adjust your dosage to prevent an overdose. It will also tell me if you're diverting the medicine. Because if you're calling me saying it's not working, 20% of people are outliers and opioids don't work at all. Like for Hawaiian and Polynesian descent, opioids are ineffective. But yet we pumped opioids into those communities. They still had the risk of getting addicted. They just didn't get any pain relief. So those are the three checks and balances. An alternative toxicology screen, pharmacogenetic test. Okay. Within a year, the big five insurance company said you we're not covering any alternative to opioids. They can go back on an opioid. So there goes that safety net. Corporate capture, safety net number two. Now I have to put you on an opioid. I'm a pain practice. I need to talk screen you. The federal government's telling me I should talk screen you. Within a year, Insurance said we're not going to cover their toxicology screen. So now you took away my Safety net to verify this patient's taking the medicine I'm prescribing, verify that this patient's not abusing the medicine. Then last but not least, you took away my only compass and map my ability to pharmacogenetic test and make sure that I keep this patient in a safe place. Gone. Insurance said we're not going to cover it.
- [27:37]
B
Why?
- [27:38]
A
It's where the plot thickens. What a lot of people don't realize because we focus so much on big pharma, the senate house did a internal investigation into pharmacy benefit managers. Okay. And I don't want to get too deep in the weeds with your listenership, but PBMs were established in the 80s to be advocates for us, the American people to help negotiate and drive down the cost of prescription drug care for me and you, for families so we can afford these medications.
- [28:10]
B
And so they work for who?
- [28:12]
A
Well, they did work for us, but they got acquired in the 80s by the big five insurance companies. So United Cigna Aetna own these middlemen that Trump and Bobby keep talking about. They aren't middlemen at all. They're shell companies owned by the big insurance companies. Here's why that is important. Never once have you heard an insurance company brought up in all of the opioid crisis.
- [28:37]
B
Never.
- [28:38]
A
30% of the profits generated during the opioid crisis went to the insurance companies. They had kickbacks negotiated at their pharmacy benefit manager holding companies. So when I'm out there trying to get, let's say you have a child, they tear their ACL like my brother. I'm educating your doctor on. We should do these tests to make sure this kid doesn't abuse anything. And we should write them a non abusive drug. This is a 17 year old kid. Don't put them on an opioid. Insurance says no, we're not covering that. Why? Because they're getting a kickback on your kid being on an opioid.
- [29:16]
B
Now why is this legal?
- [29:18]
A
It shouldn't be. That's the point. It's insane. And they structured a deal where there was a gag clause where the U. S. Government doesn't even have line of sight into how much money the insurance companies are making off of these PBMs. And so like why that's important. The insurance industry last year cleared a trillion dollars. Over a trillion dollars.
- [29:40]
B
That's how much they made.
- [29:41]
A
Yes, in revenue. UnitedHealthcare alone, let's break that down. 373 billion was generated in revenue by UnitedHealthcare. 60% of that came from Kickbacks at their pharmacy benefit manager. They're getting money on every drug that you're prescribed.
- [29:58]
B
Why is this always left out of the conversation on pharma?
- [30:01]
A
It's, it's, that's what I'm trying to ring the bell on.
- [30:04]
B
Because it just seems like there's a collusion happening between the pharmaceutical companies and then the big insurance companies.
- [30:09]
A
You're correct. So what happened is these insurance companies that were supposed to drive down the cost of prescription drug care went to big pharma and sat at the table and instead of driving down our costs, said, we have an idea, why don't you mark up the cost? And big pharma is like, mark up the cost? Yeah, charge us 30% more, will pass that bill on to the consumer, the employer and the taxpayer, and then we will hold that money at our PBM as a profit center. And so the reason Ozempic and these weight loss drugs are so expensive is roughly again, this isn't me saying it. This is a Senate House Finance committee. They uncovered about 30% of the profitability of most drugs is being held by the pharmacy benefit managers.
- [30:54]
B
Why does pharma agree to do that? To help insurance.
- [30:56]
A
Because the insurance company controls what drugs go on formulary. So we, we, and like, even with children's medications, moms really fill the drugs that the insurance will cover. So. And the insurance company doesn't cover the best drug, the most efficacious drug, the least side effect.
- [31:13]
B
That's what I was wondering.
- [31:14]
A
They cover the tier drug, tier 1, 2, 3 or 4. How do they decide which drug gets tier 1? Preferential TRA treatment? Based off the rebate, not based off what's best for you. So if I'm an opioid manufacturer, aka the Sacklers, and I agree to give 30% of the money to your holding company, you're going to put me on a tier one. And what does that mean? It means overnight I get Medicare, Medicaid, governmental contracts. Overnight, any mother, father, anybody who comes into a pharmacy to fill a drug is going to get steered towards my drug and so I can make money. It's a pay to play system. But we're the ones fitting the bill. We fit the bill. The insurance company never pays that. And that's where it gets even more convoluted. People go, well, if I'm an insurance company, why would I Want to pay 30% more? Because you don't. So let's just use simple math. Let's, let's use a GLP1. Let's say the weight loss drugs, a thousand dollars a month, right, Is on average what they're charging in the United States. Okay, we compound that drug for a couple hundred dollars mailed to your doorstep with a consult with a nutritionist and a doctor. And that's how we'll do it if we prescribe it. Because prescribing a weight loss drug without talking about diet, lifestyle nutrition, is like brushing your teeth while eating Oreos. It makes zero sense. And so we'll do all of that and mail it to your doorstep. Why are they charging a thousand dollars? Well, if you base that 30 number from the Senate Finance Committee, that's about $300 a month. Potentially could be held at a PBM as a profit. But they never paid the thousand, right? They paid 700. Then at the end of the year, most people are insured by their employer. So, like me, I insure. I insure over 300 people at the end of the year, United comes to me and they go, hey, Brigham, you know Joe Bob cost us $1,000 a month. He's on Ozempic. That's $12,000. We've got to raise your rate by 20%. You know, you've got to pay us $15,000 to insure Joe Bob next year. But they never paid the 15. They paid a fraction of that. And then they do that on every drug. And then how many drugs is the average American on? 4 or more. So imagine the amount of revenue being generated by these insurance companies by screwing me and you and families on these medications. They're literally printing money off of our chronic disease and illness. Every incentive they have is to keep us sick and ill. And on the merry go round, what Cali and Casey are ringing the bell on is 100 true. And I just know the insurance model enough to expose where the money and where the bodies are buried.
- [33:46]
B
How do you know this stuff about the insurance bottle?
- [33:48]
A
The reason I know is because I owned labs, pharmacies, blood labs, all of it. And so I was in the model attempting to work within the insurance framework. And even when I talk about obstruction of care, when I left being a drug rep, I was a medical device rep. And then when I left being a medical device rep, I became essentially a health care entrepreneur. And I own genetic labs, and I owned blood labs and I owned compounding pharmacies. And I attempted to work within the insurance framework. And I would go out and educate clinicians, meet with primary cares OBs. Like most women in America, their OB is their primary. You know, that's who they go to. For everything. And so I would go meet with these observations and explain the importance of running comprehensive blood work on women. Like, you don't just run a lipid panel. A lipid panel tells me nothing. I mean, it is very minute. And what the.
- [34:39]
B
What should they be doing instead?
- [34:40]
A
A full comprehensive panel on over 70 biomarkers allows me to deep dive into you at the biological level. Like I say, if you want to prevent the five chronic diseases that are killing humanity, why not just not let them start in the first place? And you can do that through getting proactive and predictive.
- [34:57]
B
I think that's what's interesting is that I think Americans today, they think that it's fate that, like, oh, once I'm in my 40s, once I'm in my 50s, like, I like, you just start getting sick, things start falling apart. But something that one of my friends, Hilda labrada Gore, says, which I think is so spectacularly put, is that in America right now, we're not living longer. Like we think. Oh, we're living longer because we're on all these medications. And she's like, no, you're dying longer. The dying process is actually starting so much earlier, and you're just, like, drawing it out instead of, you know, finally getting sick in those very, very end years of life. That's how it is supposed to be. Like, that's more normal than starting to get sick. You know, like my dad, who just passed away at 56. I mean, that's just outrageous. Yeah, so, but that's kind of what we're doing now. And we think because it's common, it's just.
- [35:45]
A
That's.
- [35:45]
B
Oh, that's normal.
- [35:46]
A
No, you're spot on. Like, the difference between somebody who lives to be a centenarian 100 years old and somebody who dies at the average American life expectancy, which I think is 72. It's moved backwards, unfortunately, over the two years. We're digressing in longevity and health span. The difference is the onset of chronic disease. And so it's not a silver bullet. It's noing secret. How do we help you live a longer, healthier life? We stop the progression of chronic disease. The, the diabetes you develop in your 40s started in your 30s. The depression you have in your 50s started in your 40s. Like, all of these things are cascade effects we can prevent by getting proactive and predictive. Like I said earlier, it's crazy that the age demographic of 13 to 19 right now in America, over 30% of kids are pre diabetes. We can prevent that.
- [36:39]
B
And I think people hear that and they're like, well, it's pre. It's not. It's not diabetes yet. I'm like, that is a massive warning sign.
- [36:46]
A
The time to treat cancer is before you get cancer.
- [36:48]
B
Yeah.
- [36:49]
A
If we can catch cancer at stage one, you have a 99 success rate. If we can stop you from progressing from pre diabetes to diabetes, we drive down the risk of all chronic disease, all cause mortality, metabolic disease, cancer, every major killer of man.
- [37:07]
B
And the end result isn't only just diabetes, because then that. That morphs into other things, you know, Alzheimer's and all.
- [37:13]
A
It's a cascade effect.
- [37:15]
B
So that's why it's important.
- [37:16]
A
And that's where I say it is crucial to get proactive and predictive. And I would go out and educate clinicians and OBs and primary cares on the importance of comprehensive blood work. The reason I want to tell you this is then all my doctors in Texas said, I believe you. I think you're right. I think we need to pull comprehensive blood panels. So many people go, well, I have a doctor. They pull a blood panel. They don't. They are pulling a minimal lipid panel. Why? Because as soon as my clinicians started pulling comprehensive panels, guess who got letters. The insurance companies literally will send threatening letters to your clinician, your ob, your primary care, and they will tell them, I don't like that you're pulling comprehensive blood work on Alex. We don't think you should be doing this. We don't think you have medical necessity. If you continue to pull comprehensive blood work, we will consider revoking your contract. This happened to thousands of doctors in Texas. They had to call me and go, hey, Brigham, I believe in what we're doing, but I'm not going to do this. I can't risk my license in losing an insurance contract like UnitedHealthcare. It'll put me out of business.
- [38:22]
B
Why would insurance companies not want doctors to pull full blood panels on patients?
- [38:27]
A
Well, and that's where we go to deny and delay. Like the kid, Luigi, you know, he made the comment delay, deny, depose. And I explained this on Jillian. Like, what do you mean by delay? Insurance companies are incentivized to delay and obstruct your ability to care. Now they're profiteering off of prescription medicines. So they're okay with you going on a prescription drug because they're getting kickbacks on prescription drugs. But a surgical procedure costs them money. It something preventative is getting proactive and predictive to them. That's a budgetary issue. If I'm a executive at United Healthcare and I know that Alex is going to uncover that she has cancer, but I also know that Alex is going to be a different person's problem in 36 months. Because the average American switches jobs every two to three years. I am incentivized as an executive at an insurance company to not look under the hood. I want you to be out of my system before something chronic develops that requires surgery or some big out of pocket expense. I'm okay covering your prescription drugs because I'm getting rebates and kickbacks on all those things. So if you're on four or more drugs, you're a cash cow for me. But if you go and have a big surgical procedure, you just cost me money. And so I put obstructions.
- [39:44]
B
They want you to be sick long.
- [39:45]
A
Well, they want to keep you. They don't want to spend money, and they want to make money where they can and minimize expenses where they can. And there's money in you being chronically ill. There's money in selling you band aids rather than healing wounds. What happened to Luigi again, What he did. Crazy. Zero justification for it. I'm not supporting or condoning it in any way. It's tragic and it's terrible anytime somebody the loss of human life.
- [40:09]
B
But is it far fetched to say, kind of understand where he's coming from right now?
- [40:16]
A
More Americans are dying every year of chronic disease than every war America's fought combined. In every war America's ever fought, we've lost around 1.2 million lives. We lose 1.7 million Americans a year to chronic disease. It's at an all time high. We're, like we said earlier, chronically ill, chronically depressed, chronically obese. Everyone is being profiteered off of their death and destruction and, and diseases. And all the while, UnitedHealthcare doubled their stock price, $373 billion in revenue last year. Printing money off the backs of Americans. And even Luigi's an example. Let's look at that. A spine injury. This spine injury is debilitating. The exact injury had can cause like shooting pain into the extremities. It feels like your hands are on fire in men. It can shoot into the genitals and cause sexual dysfunction where you literally feel like your genitals are on fire. On average, it takes three months to get in with the primary care. And so if I walk you through a typical patient with that injury, I'm begging the insurance. I'm trying to get into a primary. Well, I Have to go to the primary that's approved by my insurance and that's on the plan. Now I get in with the primary, the primary says, oh, sorry, I don't. Do you know orthopedics? I'm going to have to refer you to a specialist. Takes you another three months to get in with a specialist. Now you get in with a specialist, they go, I can't really do anything without the insurance's approval and I don't really know what to do without an mri. So now you battle to get an mri. Typically you're going to have a huge out of pocket expense on that, probably.
- [41:50]
B
Longer and waiting even longer to get into that.
- [41:53]
A
Correct. And so it's six to nine months on average before you ever get an answer if you're even going to be able to get into the surgery. And now you go into the surgery and you're finally going to get your day of relief. And the insurance company goes, nuh, you're not allowed to go to that surgeon. They're not on our plan. We want you to go to this surgeon. And so then they tell you what surgeon to go to and then you're left with another huge out of pocket expense of a mega co payer deductible, oftentimes north of $10,000 that you, the patient are left on the hook with. And then you don't even get to choose your clinician. And then if that surgeon botches the surgery, which is apparently what happened in his instance, it can cause lifelong erectile dysfunction, it can cause lifelong phantom pain into the limbs, a cascade of issues. So you're miserable, you're angry, you're suffering, and you've been jacked around by the insurance company for a year. And that's unfortunately the story of so many Americans that people are frustrated and they're angry and rightfully so. Again, all time profits for big insurance, but at the same time, all time fatalities in the United States of chronic disease. You know, people dying of, of chronic disease. 1.7 trillion Americans.
- [43:04]
B
Is there a better model? Is there something else we can do that I mean, doesn't involve socialism? Like, is there something else?
- [43:10]
A
Well, what I tell people is you have to change, you have to paradigm shift. And I hate to say this, but you've got to look at the insurance company like you look at your car insurance. It's there if you wreck the car, okay, it's there in, in the event of something catastrophic. But if you're expecting your car insurance to rotate your tires, change the oil, look under the Hood and maintain the vehicle. You're going to be sorely disappointed when you blow the motor out. And this system is not built to prevent chronic disease and to drive health span and longevity.
- [43:44]
B
Well, I actually, I like that analogy because that is true. When we pay, and I mean, for women, like, I think this is really helpful to understand because, yeah, we're paying for our car insurance for those catastrophic incidents, but we are ourselves out of pocket. We need to pay for the oil change and all those different things, and we're willing to do that. But when it comes to our health and maintaining our health, we absolutely refuse if it's not covered by injuries. Well, then I can't go there. I can't go to that doctor. I can't go get this test. And, like, I guess I'm just not doing it.
- [44:12]
A
And the challenge with that is you're putting. I try to. I try to say this as politely as possible. If you put yourself in the hands of the average insurance company and you go to the average primary care, don't be surprised when you die of the average chronic American disease, because the system is built to fail you. And you can wish in one hand and the other and see what fills up first. But I promise you, you're gonna get screwed. The system is not built to prevent chronic disease to drive health span. But the beauty is it doesn't cost that much. It really doesn't. In the grand scheme of life, if you could even get a comprehensive blood test like you did once a year, you know, ideally quarterly, in a dream world. But everyone's budget's different. How much do you spend on a car? How much do you spend on a mattress? How much do you spend on your house? You are only in those things a few hours a day. This is it. You get one body your whole life. This is our one chance to live our dreams, you know, retire healthy, go on adventures like let's protect this.
- [45:17]
B
Yeah. And you shouldn't have to be spending gobs of money at, you know, these different doctors and getting all this testing done. Unless, you know, you're already sick and then you're going to have to work your way back. But as far as preventing this is why we focus, especially on my show, so much on the food.
- [45:31]
A
Yep.
- [45:31]
B
Because that right there, if you can get that right, then hopefully you don't have to be, you know, trying to repair a bunch of issues that's so preventative right there.
- [45:41]
A
And I'm sure you've had. You've had clinicians on your show that'll talk about, you know, we have genetics and we have epigenetics.
- [45:47]
B
Yes.
- [45:48]
A
Epigenetics are the gun. Your diet, lifestyle, and choices are the bullets. You don't have to put the bullets in the gun. And if we run a workup on you and look at your. Your biomarkers, we can guide you to avoid putting the bullets in the gun, because we know your epigenetics, we know your family history, we know your genetics, we know your biomarkers and your trends. We know where you're headed, and we can get truly proactive and predictive. Like, I'm an example. Brother's diabetic, sisters diabetic, dad's diabetic, mom's diabetic. Everyone in my family is chronically ill and obese and.
- [46:22]
B
Okay, interesting. So do they just reject all the stuff that you.
- [46:27]
A
Yeah, they just.
- [46:27]
B
That's how my dad was.
- [46:28]
A
They. My dad just says I'm gonna die fat and happy.
- [46:32]
B
Yes.
- [46:32]
A
And I hate to say it like, I'm like my dad now. He's, what, 67? And he's not fat and happy. He's fat and miserable. He's in and out of the hospital. Kidney failure, chronic disease. You know, you always think it's not going to happen to you, but it is. It's coming. Death is coming for all of us. But if we stay healthy and we stay active, we can prevent it. We can live to be healthy, happy centenarians. We really can, with AI algorithms and large language models. Like, the vision of the future for me is we're monitoring you 24 7, like, at ways to. Well, we tie into wearables, we monitor your REM sleep, your deep sleep. If I have your VO2 max and a DEXA combined with your blood work, I can literally algorithm out the risk of all major chronic diseases and where you fall on that scale. And we can get strategic. Think of it like a report card. I need to assess your overall health because I know where you're going to trend. Alex. I know after the age of 60, as a petite woman, you're going to have a bone mineral density decline. That's just common fact. But I can slow that BMD decline. Why is that important? One of the biggest risk factors for petite women over the age of 65 is a bone fracture. If you get a bone fracture, like a hip or a vertebrae, it limits your ability to work out, stay active, and stay healthy. Step by step, we can methodically eliminate each of these risk factors, indirectly driving health span and then buying time as we innovate. And create, you know, in 20 years, imagine how different health care will be in my mind. You will never go to a doctor again. Everything will be from the comfort of your own home.
- [48:10]
B
Why do you. I'm just surprised with everything, you know, like why are you. Why do you offer insurance for your employees at all?
- [48:15]
A
I. Exactly what I said. I tell them, view it as car insurance. It's there if something catastrophic happens. Like you need insurance if you get. If you have a heart attack, if you like. There's big expenditures that come up where you need that catastrophic care. But I personally don't use insurance at all for preventative. So they don't do preventive.
- [48:33]
B
So you advise people to choose a plan how?
- [48:36]
A
I would tell people, choose a plan that's there for catastrophic care but budget allowing. You should at least try to take yourself out of the matrix once a year, like at minimal. Go somewhere where you can pay a cash pay clinic. And it should be under 500, you know, for a comprehensive blood panel. An hour on the phone with a clinician. Deep diving into everything at the biological level. It'll blow your mind how much more data and information you will get when you're not at a regular primary because. And it's not your primary care's fault. They are in a system that restricts their ability to do anything. On average, a primary care in America has six minutes with you. Six minutes.
- [49:18]
B
Yeah.
- [49:18]
A
They can't do anything.
- [49:19]
B
That's why they're saying, just take birth control.
- [49:21]
A
Yes.
- [49:21]
B
You know, just.
- [49:22]
A
They just. They prescribe you a drug and they push you out the door because that's what they were taught to do.
- [49:29]
B
Okay, confession time. I used to love those fancy toothpaste powders because I thought, oh, look at me being all pinched thirsty with my teeth routine. But girl, who has time for dipping a wet toothbrush into a jar of powder every morning? It's like a messy science experiment. And I'm just trying to get to work on time without looking like I have toothpaste all over my face. And my team would say, she just still doesn't get to work on time. But I digress. You should try Zebra's toothpaste tablets. These little wonders are a total life hack. You could even just chew them up and boom. Foamy, fresh goodness. No mess, no fuss, just a quick and easy way to get your teeth sparkling. You could do it on the go. Plus they don't have any weird ingredients like hydroxy appetite or fluoride. For those of you who are a little bit picky about that stuff, Zebra is all about keeping it clean with simple, effective ingredients. You know, like the kind that actually get the job done without any drama. And the best part, even your kids are going to love those toothpaste tablets from Zebra. My friend's kid actually asked me to brush his teeth. Now when I come over, it's all special. He's like, I have your zebra stuff. You want to brush my teeth? It's like, okay, I'm just over here brushing somebody else's teeth. If you're ready to upgrade your toothpaste routine, go to yay zebra.com use code Alex for 10% off. That's yay zebra.com code Alex for 10% off. You know how health insurance can sometimes feel like a scam? Like you think you're covered and then suddenly you're hit with all these crazy fees and exclusions. Well, I'm here to tell you, health insurance isn't the only industry full of frauds. The beauty industry is just as bad. Seriously, I was shocked when I started digging into some of the clean beauty products out there that claim they're natural but still pack in toxic chemicals. Just because a product says organ, organic or natural, it doesn't mean it is. And don't even get me started on the ingredients that they don't tell you about. But then I found Adele Natural Cosmetics, and let me tell you, this is the real deal when it comes to clean makeup. They're a family owned business. They're passionate about clean, non toxic beauty. They've been crafting skincare and makeup products with simple natural ingredients since 2014. We're talking jojoba oil, raw coconut oil and cocoa butter. Not weird chemicals that you can't pronounce. Even their packaging is non toxic. Their moisturizing foundation is so beautiful, I always get compliments. They're combining makeup and skin care in one with that foundation. It's hydrating, it's buildable, and it gives you that perfect natural glow that you want. And it pairs really well with their cream blush, which is like a double duty beauty stick because you can use that on cheeks and eyelids with a nourishing formula that actually moisturizes your skin. No bs, no toxic ingredients, just pure, simple beauty with Adele Cosmetics. Plus they even offer free foundation color matching to make sure you get your perfect shade. Ready to ditch the beauty frauds and go clean, head to Adele natural cosmetics.com use code Alex for 25% off your first order. That's Adele natural cosmetics.com code Alex for 25 off your first order. So if you were going to choose an insurance company, who, I mean who do you like? If you're like if I have to choose like these are who.
- [52:21]
A
Well, what's tough is they're all not good.
- [52:23]
B
Right?
- [52:24]
A
Because they're all for profit.
- [52:25]
B
Yeah, I know.
- [52:25]
A
We're beating the lesser of unfortunately like a necessity because of something catastrophic. Tropic, right. The average person can't afford a million dollar spine surgery. Like there's an event that could happen where you need these insurance companies and that's where they obstruct and try and prevent your accessibility to care. I don't know what the future holds for that. It's pretty terrifying. You know, I, if you look at how much money is being made off the federal government like Medicare, Medicaid, Tricare. What a lot of people don't understand is those aren't governmental payer programs anymore. The government outsourced those to who? The big five insurance companies. So even the governmental institutions are getting price gouged and how they negotiate those rates and show the government they're saving them money is they just. So they set the, the drug price of every drug in America. People don't understand that. UnitedHealthcare, Cigna, Aetna set the drug price. So when people go why in the hell are these weight loss drugs so expensive? Your insurance company set the price. Wow. They negotiated the average wholesale price. Then they show the federal government, hey, federal government. This drug's costing the average employer a thousand a month. But because you're the federal government, we'll sell it to you for 900amonth.
- [53:37]
B
So do you like these, these people like Christian healthcare ministries where it's like shared and all that.
- [53:42]
A
I do think those are better approaches and I do think that it's nuanced and you know, the devil's in the details. And that's where I'm not trying to dodge your question, but like even Blue Cross literally has thousands of plans. So I could tell you Blue Cross is got a good plan, but you got to look at, it's unique to you, your family, how old are your kids, how old are you? What chronic diseases are in your family? What kind of catastrophic events could be in your future, you know, and then does that plan have big out, like If I'm a 20 year old kid, I may be a lot more comfortable with a big out of pocket expense because I'm not planning on a surgery.
- [54:16]
B
Right.
- [54:17]
A
But If I'm a 55 year old woman, you know, with osteoporosis, you know Osteopenia in the early phases. I may want to have better surgical protection because I'm probably headed towards that, unfortunately. But my main thing is don't trust any of these guys. Like, you know, how you know where you're at health wise is you pay cash with a clinician that is not tied to an insurance company that can guide you and have honesty and integrity with no conflicts, that can take the time to sit down and dive deep into your unique genetic makeup, epigenetics, blood work, all of these variables and truly develop a game plan to get predictive and proactive.
- [54:58]
B
So where do you tell people to go? Because I get this question after every single time I do an interview sort of like this on the subject matter, it's okay, well, how do I find one of those doctors?
- [55:06]
A
Yeah, the main thing is, well, we're in Arizona, so for your listener base here, there's a lot of great clinics throughout Arizona. This is one of the states that does practice a lot of preventative medicine. So does California, so does Colorado. Ways to. Well, our practice is I think in 37 states. We're working diligently to go nationwide. But any cash pay clinic. I hate to say functional medicine, but like if you, if you go to get work done on your house or your car, like I'll interview three or four people before I decide. It's wild to me that with healthcare we just sign up with the first person we find.
- [55:42]
B
Why do you say you hate to say functional medicine?
- [55:44]
A
Well, it's become a, like a catchphrase and it's, you know, some of them are.
- [55:48]
B
And some of them.
- [55:49]
A
Yeah. And then it's almost become like a four letter word in academia. They go, oh, these functional medicine doctors. But the truth is, you know, academia is captured if somebody works at a teaching institute and they're part of an insurance program. It's all dictated by the insurance company. What they can or can't do. They're not going to do a full workup.
- [56:07]
B
Tell me, just because you mentioned them off the top, your head, who do you like in Arizona and California?
- [56:13]
A
Well, we're here too, so mainly like us. But for men's health, there's like mer health, there's Tony Robbins, I think life, it's not life force. Tony Robbins has a facility here. But some of those are more expensive. And it's all about budget timing. What can you afford? But in a dream world, if you had a clinic that said, I'm recommending you do comprehensive biomarkers at least twice a year, if you Had a clinic that somebody's going to sit down and spend at least 30 minutes with you to deep dive and explain to you what those biomarkers mean so you can understand it. Like, the goal is to educate and empower patients. I don't believe that a clinician should operate from a position of authority dictating down to a patient. Like the ways to, well, model is we are here to embolden, empower and educate you to take sovereignty and accountability over your health. Because if, if we just prescribe you a weight loss pill and push you out the door, that's no different than what the broken healthcare system's doing.
- [57:10]
B
Are you guys doing peptides?
- [57:12]
A
We do, yeah.
- [57:13]
B
What do you think about that?
- [57:14]
A
I think that they're phenomenal. A great tool in the tool belt. I think they're probably over prescribed, like everything. I think they're probably over utilized, like everything. And I think there's no substitute for diet, lifestyle and nutrition. And that's why we hammer home diet, lifestyle, nutrition, like be make better choices. But that being said, even when you try, I'm sure you've seen like everything has. I mean, even though I know it's not healthy, but even what came out about Girl Scout cookies yesterday.
- [57:39]
B
What?
- [57:39]
A
I don't know if you. Oh my God.
- [57:41]
B
I don't know.
- [57:41]
A
This all have metal content. Literally 100 of Girl Scout cookies tested had metal particulates, including lead.
- [57:49]
B
Oh my God.
- [57:50]
A
At a poisonous, toxic level. It had every. Everything you can. Every little negative thing that we've talked about is in it.
- [57:59]
B
That organization is cooked. They were already cooking crap. And now this, like that, they're toast.
- [58:05]
A
But even Thin Mints, and I love Thin Mints and I don't eat them all the time, but it's like that was like nostalgia for me. My sister was a Girl Scout. I remember like every year, once a year you get your Girl Scout cookies, which isn't healthy. But now it's not only not healthy, it's apparently like poisonous.
- [58:19]
B
That's.
- [58:20]
A
It's really bad.
- [58:21]
B
I did not know that.
- [58:22]
A
Yeah, lead poisoning, the level of what you call. It's higher than in, in the highest levels allowed in water. I mean like there's like 10 different things in there. I can't remember all of them. But it's all bad news. All really bad news.
- [58:34]
B
How often do you hear from doctors who are just quitting medicine altogether because of how evil insurance companies are?
- [58:40]
A
It's rapidly happening. There's actually a precipitous decline in the amount of primary cares in America, which is a problem because we have an aging population that needs primary cares, and primary cares are the first line of defense. But Harvard did an interview study where they interviewed primaries across America, and they're projecting a 30% decline in the amount of people in clinicians who practice primary care, which is going to be catastrophic. And in the life raft is going to be large. Language models, AI, proactive, predictive. Like where I was going, like at waste. Well, our clinic, like I was saying, if we get a DEXA and a VO2 max. So a DEXA scan scans your body. Have you ever heard of this?
- [59:19]
B
This? No. But I am getting a pre nouveau scan this week.
- [59:22]
A
Oh yeah, that's awesome.
- [59:23]
B
Is that like kind of the same?
- [59:24]
A
It's different. That does a full body mri, which is phenomenal.
- [59:27]
B
Okay.
- [59:28]
A
But you're on the right path. It is scary. It's intimidating.
- [59:30]
B
Like, I don't know what they're gonna say, you know?
- [59:32]
A
But you'll know.
- [59:33]
B
Yeah.
- [59:33]
A
Right. And now if you know, you're ahead of the curve. And so again, like we were saying, with cancer, if we catch it at stage one, you have a huge success rate versus stage three or four. We should be getting proactive and predictive on all chronic diseases. We can prevent most these chronic diseases, not treat the symptoms, but prevent the escalation and the evolution of these diseases in our body by getting proactive.
- [59:57]
B
I'm not saying that this is like a. Just a drop in the bucket by any means, but when I was looking into doing one of these full body scans between you and I, I mean, I was anticipating. I'm like, oh, this is like going to be a 20, 25 thousand dollar thing. Like, that's what I assumed. Yeah, it's like 2100. Yeah, that and I'm just for knowing decades in advance you are on the path to some kind of brain aneurysm or cancer or whatever, I'm like, I was. I just thought for what you're getting, that was an unbelievable.
- [60:25]
A
Well, this is. So when we talk about insurance, you're spot on because insurance won't cover that.
- [60:30]
B
Yeah.
- [60:30]
A
And so I try and explain this when people are like, why don't you take insurance? Okay, well, let me methodically walk you through. You come into the practice and let's just say you said, budget's no problem. I want the full workup. I want to know everything. We would do a AI guided brain scan. I would be able to assess how your neurons are firing from the posterior to the prefrontal cortex. It's Going to tell me if you have anxiety, depression or stress, is it neuron related? Because as our neurons misfire, they create beta waves. Those beta waves create a cascade effect which create anxiety, depression, all of these different things. Sleep issues. Why would I ever prescribe you an antidepressant without first doing a full brain workup? Right, so we would do that brain workup. We would do a dexa. A DEXA is going to tell me your bone mineral density, your lean muscle mass, how much lean muscle you have on your right quad versus your left quad, your scapula, your back, your shoulders, everything.
- [61:24]
B
How do you test for that?
- [61:25]
A
It's just a full body scan and it tells me everything. But the beauty of that is now that I have that I know exactly how many grams of protein your body needs to maintain, I know exactly what your bone mineral density is, and I can forecast out a plan to help slow the reduction of BMD and get proactive and predictive to prevent you from reaching a fracture in your older age. Then your biomarkers tell me all of your blood work and where you're headed. Now I combine that with your heart rate variability, your deep sleep, your rim sleep, your sleep patterns, your wearables, and I can begin to calculate out and prevent chronic disease. Any practice could do this. None of that is covered by insurance.
- [62:04]
B
Right. The full works with ways to.
- [62:05]
A
Well, yeah.
- [62:06]
B
How much is that?
- [62:07]
A
I mean it varies. So like the blood work is like 500, but that's a 45 minute with a clon consult with a clinician and a deep dive into your blood work. A DEXA is literally like 70 bucks. You know, it's just a scan of your body that tells, that tells just your lean muscle. Then a VO2 max is, you know, same thing, like 70 something dollars. The most expensive thing we do is the cancer screening. And it's because it's a genetic screening and it is expensive. And I want to say that's like 2000, okay, something dollars. And it is the most expensive thing we do at waste. Well, but again it's, it'll tell us at stage zero. But that's like we can identify cancer at stage zero. Yeah, identify over 200 types of cancer up to a decade before they manifest.
- [62:49]
B
And then if, and then you compare that to like okay, starting to go to doctors because you just found out you are diagnosed with, I mean we're talking tens of thousands of dollars, you know, maybe even six digits, so. Or six figures. So it's like to me it seems like a no brainer, but I don't know. People are just really caught up in this.
- [63:08]
A
Well, I mean, budget's tough for people, and a lot of people are living month to month. And that's where I'm like, that's why. If you think being healthy is expensive, try being sick. Like, the number one reason for bankruptcy in America is health care costs. It's the number one reason because people get saddled with these bills from these big insurance companies and it screws them and it destroys their. You know, so many people have to declare bankruptcy because of catastrophic health expenses. And if we get proactive and predictive, we can prevent that.
- [63:36]
B
Who owns the majority of the insurance companies?
- [63:39]
A
The big five insurance companies are juggernauts, but regardless of which one you look at, most of them are owned by BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street. So I'm all of them.
- [63:48]
B
Now, why would they. Why would BlackRock care about owning American insurance companies?
- [63:52]
A
There's a lot of money in it. And then guess who owns a lot of the hospital systems? And then guess who owns a lot of the big pharmaceutical companies. And then guess who owns a lot of our food industry. Right. All of it comes back to these same juggernauts. And, and I'm not going as far to say they're intentionally creating chronic disease through our food, and then they're intentionally obstructing care through the insurance, and then they're intentionally profiteering off the drugs. But it's a lot of bad facts that fall in line. And if we can control the food system, and maybe that food system creates a funnel of business that then leads to other funnels of business that then leads to other funnels of business. It's a conflict at minimal, and it's a conflict that should be exposed, and it's a conflict that should be fought and protected by, By. For the American people, by our federal government. But then who lobbies the most with our federal government? It's big pharma, it's big insurance. And at the end of the day, is BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street. And so the question is, will our congressmen and congresswomen, you know, will our senators fight for this? You know, thankfully we had people like Senator Johnson who are willing to take a stand. But it'll be interesting to see how the next four years plays out. Hopefully. Hopefully we start heading the right direction.
- [65:08]
B
Why are co pays before a surgery so expensive?
- [65:12]
A
So when we talk about obstruction, right, there's money being made off the prescription drugs. So the insurance companies are okay with you being on prescription drugs? They intentionally Put obstacles between you and surgery because they don't make money off surgery. There is no back room arrangement, there's no kickback, there's no money being paid to them. So that's an out of pocket expense. So insurance companies have structured their plans in a way to intimidate, bully and stress people out of getting surgery. So like I said, if you're a 20 something year old kid, and let's just say you said I'm going to go with the highest out of pocket co pay or deductible because I'm never going to need surgery, and then you get in a motorcycle wreck and you injure your spine, well now you're on the hook most likely for north of $10,000 worth of your co pay or deductible to have that surgery. Where this gets even shadier is the insurance contract with a MRI center, a lab, a hospital, whatever it may be, screws those entities and leaves you holding almost what's I would call a subprime mortgage. You don't have a financial record on this person. You are required to accept them as a patient. Then you're required to make them pay you the ten thousand dollar co payer deductible. Your contract with United says I have to go after Alex for 10,000 bucks of her spine surgery. I have to chase you down. I have to make a reasonable effort to collect. That's what the contract says. So at the end of a year if I haven't got the money from you, oftentimes I'll settle for a couple thousand bucks, whatever I can get from you, the patient, just so I can put it in a folder so United can't sue me. And it ends up being a lie agreed upon on because that's why hospitals and all these companies are so terrified of the insurance companies. Because let's say I did that a thousand times. Now United says Brigham, we don't think you collected your co pays and deductibles. Well I did, I did the best I could. The contract says a reasonable effort. They could argue that because I only collected 20% of the money, they don't owe me anything. And they may win in a court of law and never have to pay me. And that would bankrupt me as a hospital or bankrupt me as a surgery center. And so hospitals, surgery centers, doctors, they're terrified of these insurance companies. They do not want to fight the insurance companies because the insurance companies have them bent over a barrel. They control the flow of patients, they control the reimbursement rates. It takes 60 to 90 days to get paid on a surgery. So you're arguing with United for literally three months after I've already done the surgery on you to try and get paid. And then if the dispute gets big enough, they go, show me where you collected Alex's copay or we'll sue you. And it's like, well, it says a reasonable effort. And you and I both know Alex didn't have the $10,000 to pay. I'm chasing her down. Like, it's just not good. Does that make sense?
- [68:10]
B
Right. So, so my question is, we need, like we talked about, we families need to be able to have health insurance for those catastrophic events. But then it's like, all of this mess, everything's going like, how do we fix that? How do we make insurance companies less corrupt?
- [68:24]
A
Well, I think we have to take away some of the incentives. And one of those would be break up the PBMs, get rid of the middlemen, do not allow them to profiteer off chronic disease and prescription medications.
- [68:35]
B
And is that something that can be done with an executive order from President Trump?
- [68:37]
A
100.
- [68:38]
B
Okay.
- [68:38]
A
And they're saying they're going to a. They're saying they're going to go after the pharmacy benefit managers.
- [68:42]
B
Oh, we love it.
- [68:43]
A
Like, yeah. And I've had multiple congressmen and congresswomen and senators reach out that want to understand the insurance companies better. And if they were to just remove those incentives, then they're not at least making these billions of dollars in profit off of our prescription drugs.
- [68:58]
B
So you're on the Hill talking to people.
- [69:00]
A
Yes, yes. And I think that there's, There is a. It is known now, like, the, the roof has been blown off this thing. It's not a, a little secret anymore. They know that these PBMs are profiteering big time off of chronic disease, and they say they're going to take it on. It's going to be an uphill battle, and it'll be a bear.
- [69:18]
B
Is it something that will be, like, decades? Like, it'll be a long time?
- [69:21]
A
I hope not. I hope not. There's, you know, part of politics is horse trading. Right. And if they're going to implement things that hurt Big Pharma, which, you know, is what supposedly is being said, like some of these safety nets and protocols and vaccine protocols and, you know, taking off some of these protective covenants, these are all things that would be bad for Big Pharma's pocketbook, candidly. But if we were to dissolve PBMs and shut down middlemen, Big Pharma wouldn't have to negotiate rebates and inflate their price. And so in a way, they could keep more profits. And so it is. It would benefit big pharma, it would hurt the insurance companies, but it would most likely benefit humanity because now they're not making money off of selling us prescription drugs, which is a huge conflict for the insurance companies.
- [70:08]
B
If every aspect of our health as Americans is rigged and monetized, how do we escape that matrix?
- [70:15]
A
I think you escape it through being educated, through the consumer voice. I think it may have been you at the Senate that said, like, we have the ability to fight back through our choices in our pocketbooks. You know, we know that mothers control most of a family's health care. Most the time, it's the moms making the decision on what doctor they go to, what pediatrician you go to. You know, the best thing you could do for you and your family is to find a cash pay clinic and try and go at least once a year, get a second opinion. That's where I was going earlier. How quick do we. You take time. If you're going to remodel your house, you interview contractors, you look at their work, you understand them in their character. Why would you not do that with somebody who's controlling your health? Like, this is your one time, your one shot at living a healthy life is right now. The bodies we have, we never get another one. So take the time to find a great clinician that cares, that's passionate, that wants to help you, that will do the deep dive, that will have the conversation. And if a clinician doesn't like that, you're googling and researching things yourself. To me, that's a red flag. Like, there's clinicians out there that get offended if a patient's Googled and. But you should. You have to be your own advocate. There is no other advocate out there but you. So be an advocate for you and your family. Question everything. Trust no one. I hate to say that, but in trust is earned, not given. And clinicians in America have let down people, and so we can't blindly trust them anymore. They have to earn the trust of you and your family before you just give it to him.
- [71:48]
B
So I think it's interesting ways to. Well, which is your company that does all this testing and stuff for people. You guys worked publicly. That's why we can say this with Joe Rogan, right?
- [71:58]
A
Yeah.
- [71:58]
B
And Aaron Rodgers.
- [71:59]
A
Yeah.
- [71:59]
B
And you guys were in this new documentary about Aaron's life and his injuries and all that. That's very cool. So, I mean, those are like the manliest men right out there. But also you guys do a lot of stuff for women that people don't know.
- [72:13]
A
Yeah. And what's wild is when we started ways to, well, we were the majority female clients. We were like 60 women, 40% men. But after going on Rogan and Tucker and some of these more, I guess, male focused podcasts, it's pivoted where we're like 70 men now.
- [72:31]
B
Now you're gonna get all these cute servatives.
- [72:33]
A
I would say all the time though it's totally unfair to women because you can throw a rock and hit a testosterone clinic for men. I mean, it's crazy how many men centric health practices have sprung up that are cash pay. And women for the most part are still depending on their OB as their primary line of defense. And obs are phenomenal. But the problem is if they're in the insurance system. Yeah, they're still kind of hand tied. It's not that. And you could even probably, if you have an OB or a primary that you love, I would ask them, hey, what tests do you think I should run? Like, I'm interested in my health span and my longevity. I'm willing to pay cash. You know, I don't want to rely on the insurance because they'll tell me what I can and can't do. Like, and I'll give you me as an example. Even When I was 37, I was training CrossFit. Every day. I was waking up at 4am as a surgical rep. I would go to CrossFit at 5am I would be in the operating room all day, day. And I was 25. Body fat on the cusp of.
- [73:37]
B
You were obesity, you were fat.
- [73:39]
A
Yes. And I was chronically ill, sick all the time, immune system run down. I was seeing a nutritionist. I was working out with a personal trainer. I was in what I call the pit of despair. Like, I literally was just like, I guess this is who I am. I guess it's just genetics. I guess. I'm candidly, I, I literally was depressed and just like, I don't. I guess this is it. It. And finally I had a nutritionist go, hey, do you get your blood work done by a primary care? This is before I knew all this. This is how I learned everything I'm doing. I found out my primary care was just running a basic lipid panel. Never had looked at any real deep dive. You know, again, this was a decade ago almost. I go to a specialist, I pay Cash to go to a urologist. Urologist does a full workup on me, comes back, tells me 10 different things that are wrong. We make adjustments. And I'll be candid. It wasn't like, you know how you say you're scared of getting the MRI and it's nerve wracking. God, it's a relief to get answers and go, I knew something wasn't right.
- [74:39]
B
So what were they telling you was wrong?
- [74:41]
A
We dialed in my hormones. I had. I literally, my testosterone, for whatever reason, was 110, which is supposed to be. Oh, well, this is a whole nother diatribe. In my prime, it was probably 1200. Right. And men today have testosterone that's 50% of what it was in the 80s. And we tell men anything below 350 is clinically low, but 350 is low.
- [75:04]
B
And what is a woman's testosterone?
- [75:06]
A
Oh, women. Women's testosterone is more than their estrogen, which a lot of women don't realize, but you're on a different measuring. It's nanograms per deciliter. Okay, but you want women's testosterone to be high too, because if it's not, you'll lose sex drive. You have a hard time maintaining bone mineral density. You have a hard time maintaining your lean muscle mass. All of these are cr, like, crucial as we age to preventing the onset of metabolic disease, diabetes, weight gain, all of it.
- [75:32]
B
You're like catastrophically low testosterone. What symptoms was that showing you?
- [75:37]
A
I had restlessness, irritability, low energy. I would be tired all the time. I would have a hard time keeping lean muscle mass. I had a hard time losing body fat. You know, I thought I was okay because, you know, as a guy, you still have sex drive. But what's crazy is the urologist broke down. He's like, think about it from a nature standpoint. The very last thing to go for a man is typically sex drive.
- [76:02]
B
Oh, my God.
- [76:03]
A
And so, so many men that are obese or overweight or struggling, they don't think they have low T because they have a sex drive. But in nature, if you can procreate and keep the species alive, that's like the last, last, last thing to go.
- [76:17]
B
With, with testosterone levels figured out. Then how has your life changed?
- [76:21]
A
Totally, literally in a six month time frame, I went from 25 to 6% body fat. At the time, I had like a six pack, got shredded up, energy through the roof, put on lean muscle mass. My drive, my motivation was back. And then it leads to a cascade effect. Now I'm getting Results from my workout. So now I work out every day.
- [76:41]
B
I wonder how many women are like, I don't know, I'm like struggling with attraction to my husband and like their, their husband's testosterone is like tragically low. And if they got that dial in, I. Because that would affect, you know, all of those things. Changing in a man, I think would make women even more attracted to them and everything.
- [76:58]
A
Yeah. You know, well, I can 100 because when, even though I thought my sex drive was normal, when your testosterone is optimized, you're like chasing your significant other around the house, which to her is flattering and like fun for her again, you know, because she got to be pursued all the time. And I'm like in that stage all the time because my levels are normal again. And it's like being a 20 year old guy again.
- [77:21]
B
Well, one of my, it's so life changing old episodes I did was with Dr. Patrick Flynn. And it's funny that you say that because the title of that episode was if your man isn't chasing you down for sex, he's sick.
- [77:33]
A
Yeah, that's probably true though.
- [77:34]
B
And it was one of my most popular episodes. But what you're saying is, is that.
- [77:38]
A
And women too like women. And this is where obs are tough. They're not comfortable with hormones. And so women think, oh my God, I'm a girl, I shouldn't be on testosterone. Look, if you're a woman over the age of 40, there is a high likelihood or you've had multiple kids, your hormones are probably, if nobody's looking at them, are probably out of whack. Like, I mean, a lot of women are struggling with hormonal issues and they think, well, I'll just get on trezepatide and, or you know, oh, ozempic and I'll lose weight, but it's like, it'll work. And I'm not telling you not to, but there are other things that are going to be healthier for you. And then if we take a look under the hood, I promise you we can dial in.
- [78:17]
B
You're not anti GLP1s, like in a micro dosing way, are you?
- [78:20]
A
No, no. And I've argued with, with Jillian and, and Joe and they're my friends, but I'm like, look, a GLP1 is a tool in the tool belt. And a tool in the right hands can do amazing things for somebody. And a tool in the wrong hands can be catastrophic.
- [78:35]
B
What do you think about this new. All this new information about people saying, I'm Getting cancer diagnoses, you know, a year later, osteoporosis and all this.
- [78:42]
A
So a lot of it is, there's a lot of chatter, but there's a lot of studies showing that it reduces your risk of cancer because you, you know, when you look at your risk factors for cancer, okay, the number one risk factor is smoking. If, if you don't smoke. The second biggest risk factor is obesity. If we can get the weight off of these people and we can prevent metabolic disease, which leads to diabetes, which leads to cancer, which leads to Alzheimer's, which leads to all of these chronic diseases that are killing people. GLP1s are a valuable tool in the tool belt. They're over prescribed, they're overpriced, and oftentimes they're misguided. And I don't think clinicians are taking the time to educate the patient on the when, what, where and how, and the pros and cons. But when utilized appropriately, it is a life changing compound. I mean, I can't tell you how many people, like my friend's mom called me the other day and was like, literally in the cusp of like, tears saying, you have no idea, Brigham. I've struggled with weight for 20 years to have something where I can go to these office functions and everyone's eating cake and I don't have to eat the cake or I don't have to eat the cookie, or if I eat it, I just take a bite and I don't eat the whole thing. It's life changing for me. So many people judge and say, well, they're being lazy or they can show discipline. You have to get wins on the board. When somebody's in the pit of despair and they've battled obesity their whole life to sit there and judge that person. Just because you have discipline or grew up in a different environment, it doesn't mean everyone has that same level of fortitude. And a lot of times these people think it's hopeless. But I've seen it. If you get somebody on a micro dose of GLP and you begin to change the behavior and they get wins on the board and they start losing weight and they start fitting in that dress that they hadn't worn in 10 years, the amount of confidence and joy and in life changing momentum, that can create for people. I'm a believer. I'm an absolute believer because I've seen the magic and what it can do, but I've also seen the devastation and what it can do when people use it inappropriately and over prescribe it and don't truly take the patient into account. Like we've got to have the conversation. We got to help people help themselves.
- [80:56]
B
I've been doing a lot of episodes on hormone health and just how many things we as women experience that we've been told are normal but debilitating period cramps are not normal. A little discomfort, sure, but doubling over in pain every month, that's a huge red flag. You might want to look at what you're using down there. Have you ever thought about switching to 100 organic cotton period products? I did and I've been using Garnu ever since. It's been years. I've been loyal to them. I'm telling you, once I swapped out those chemical laden pads and tampons that I've been using since middle school, my cramps went from to manageable garnus. Organic cotton tampons and pads are the cleanest on the market. They're made with 100 organic cotton. No forever chemicals, no dyes, no chlorine bleach, just pure cotton goodness. They even have a compact applicator made from sugar cane. And guess what? Garden is working with women and girls in Nepal and Brazil, empowering them with feminine health education and entrepreneurship opportunities for girls especially that have been ravaged by human trafficking. That's what I call supporting the girls. If you're ready to join the girls Only Club, head to Garnet.com use code ALEX for 15 off your one time subscription or purchase. That's G A r and u u.com with code Alex for 15% off. Go clean, go organic and feel the difference. Just for comparison's sake, because I think people really like takeaways of like, okay, I can do this and not this or I can start this. What did your diet look like in your overweight era compared to what it looks like now?
- [82:23]
A
The main thing I learned is it's not about being perfect, it's about being better. Right? Every opportunity is a choice to make a better choice. And as a momentum breeds momentum, like we were saying with the GLP1s, if you can help someone get wins on the board and they can make slight adjustments through diet, lifestyle, exercise, pharmaceutical intervention if needed and they start seeing results, you're so much more likely to commit. And so for me, it candidly started small. It's the same counsel we would give any patient. So let's go back to like if we were to do a DEXA at the time I did a DEXA on myself, so I knew I weighed, you know, at the time I think 198 pounds. And I knew how much of my body was muscle. If I know how much of my body's muscle, which is a very simple DEXA scan, I now know exactly how many grams of protein I need to maintain lean muscle. And so, as wild as it sounds is, you can prioritize your diet to feed the muscle and starve the fat if the more protein. You eat 1 gram of protein per pound of lean muscle mass to maintain lean muscle. So if I'm 150 pounds of lean muscle, not to get too technical, I need 150 grams of protein just to maintain muscle. So if you eat enough protein but are at a caloric deficit, in theory, you will minimize your loss of muscle and maximize your loss of fat.
- [83:48]
B
Wow.
- [83:48]
A
And so we took a very methodical approach, but it doesn't have to be that discipline. I started out like, I'm gonna try and eat more protein, and I'm gonna try not to eat junk food, and I'm gonna cut out soft drinks, and I'm gonna cut out alcohol. And just doing those things and dialing in my hormones changed my life. Then as I started getting to, like, 10 body fat, I'm like, oh, man. Man, can I get down to, like, can I get shredded? I'm gonna, like, get really strict. And so then I got really strict at the time and began to really prioritize protein and get really methodical. But, you know, to me, I tell people, just make better choices. Like, there's always an opportunity for a better choice. And just because you make a mistake and, you know, when you eat that burger for lunch or whatever, have a milkshake, it doesn't mean you have to throw out the whole week. That's the other mistake people make. Once they've made a mistake, they go, well, I already messed up. I'll just eat. I'll eat fajitas and a margarita tonight. You know, like, just choose your battles and win and where. But just those small tweaks and dialing in your hormones. So many people do not understand. Like, you can be eating perfect, and if your hormones are totally out of whack, you're literally hiking up a mountain carrying a backpack full of bricks.
- [84:57]
B
What are the top minerals that Americans need to be, you know, supplementing with?
- [85:02]
A
Everyone. Almost every single person that we do blood work on is deficient on vitamin.
- [85:07]
B
D. I knew you're gonna say that.
- [85:08]
A
Yeah, almost everyone. Almost everybody has deficient on magnesium.
- [85:12]
B
Yep.
- [85:13]
A
Almost everybody's deficient on zinc. And then creatine is phenomenal for brain health, for lean muscle mass, for longevity.
- [85:21]
B
Let's talk about creatine because this is popping up a lot recently. I'm getting a lot of questions about it. You just like add it into your smoothie or something?
- [85:28]
A
Yeah, any you want to just find a, a solid source that's, that's lab, independently third party lab verified CU supplements. Momentum is who I use and I don't have any relationship with them other than I know they third party verify their stuff. I know it's what they say it is. The supplement world's a racket. So even earlier when you were asking me about peptides, as an owner of a compounding pharmacy, every single treatment, modality or medication we compound. All the ingredients are FDA approved from FDA sourced suppliers. Every batch is independently third party verified to be what we say it is by a lab unaffiliated with us that we then turn into the FDA. So we know if we tell you you're getting BPC157 peptide, that you're getting the dosage, the efficacy, the quality and no contaminants because we are required by law to verify all of that.
- [86:23]
B
Okay.
- [86:23]
A
The challenge I have with supplements, it's the wild west.
- [86:26]
B
Yeah.
- [86:27]
A
There is no regulatory or oversight. So oftentimes it's not what people present it to be and it's not as efficacious or the dosage they say it is. Momentum and several of these other companies do a great job. Just find one that's third party verified.
- [86:40]
B
What is it? What is creatine supposed to do?
- [86:42]
A
Creatine helps your body maintain lean muscle mass. There's all sorts of studies on its benefit for brain health, cognition, memory reduction in Alzheimer risk. But it's just something that is found in meat sources and most of us don't eat enough protein. Most of it, even if we do eat protein, it's stripped of all the nutrients because it's not grass fed and all the things it used to be. And so it's just a supplement that is a tool in your tool belt that I think can help. And there's no studies that are negative. Almost every study is positive. So it's become one of those supplements that is pretty much universally accepted as there's no downside to taking this consistently. And there's a lot of upside. Same thing with vitamin D, same thing with zinc, same thing with magnesium. So many people who are struggling with sleep and anxiety and all of these things, it's because they're deficient in zinc and magnesium.
- [87:32]
B
But isn't There like you shouldn't take zinc every day for a certain amount of time. Like it starts to do something not good if you take.
- [87:37]
A
Well that's where it's good to know your blood work.
- [87:39]
B
Right.
- [87:39]
A
Because if we're monitoring you now we're using science and now we know how are you metabolizing it. And yes, you don't want everybody excessive levels of any of this. Cuz all of these things can create different issues. Like some of them create trimmers. Zinc and magnesium. If you're ODing on it or taking too much, you'll get trimmers, you'll get shaky.
- [87:56]
B
What's your favorite everyday? Magnesium. Because there's like you know, 100 different kinds.
- [88:00]
A
I same thing. I just use momentum on almost all the stuff. Just cuz I know it's verified but there's a lot of great supplement companies out there. I just, I'm, I'm easy and I know I can get it from Amazon and I know it's third party verified. But we're launching all of our own supplements that'll be third party verified. So because I don't trust any of these people and I'm over it. We're literally going to post on our website, here's third. We're going to do what we do in pharmaceuticals but for supplements.
- [88:26]
B
Love that.
- [88:26]
A
And so I'm going to say this was third party verified by an independent lab. Here's our results. Here are the three biggest competitors and here are their results.
- [88:33]
B
And you know, also I just want to say Brigham's company is not a sponsor of the show. I have no affiliation but I do enjoy talking to people who are creating solutions to such catastrophic problems when it comes to health. And you know, I like hearing about all these different companies that are, that are doing these things. So it's not like I'm getting something having him on to talk about this or whatever. I'm just like genuinely curious and I like hearing about it. I like having options, you know what I mean? And I think that's important to give the audience options. Like you know, know every guest I talk to or whatever. They're not all sponsors of the show. I think that's important. Then you can, you know, make decisions. I have not talked really at all about stem cell stuff and I don't, it's because I don't understand it. Yeah, so tell me like, like I'm a fifth grader. What, what is.
- [89:22]
A
Why geek out on this? Because it's, it's literally so mind boggling the lowest risk of all chronic diseases for a woman is when she's pregnant. And a lot of people don't understand the methodology or the mechanism of action of why as much as the mom is keeping the fetus alive, the fetus is keeping the mom alive. The fetus is sending signaling cells that tell the mother's heart to increase by 30% in the third trimester, that create that pregnancy glow where your skin looks great and everything's glowing and exuberant. It's literally because your body is getting all of these goodies of life that are in the placenta, in the umbilical cord, in the, in that embryo, coming back up into the mother as well. And there's a synergistic effect of pregnancy. And so the medical term is heterochronic parabiosis. And all it means is if we take an old mouse and we take a young mouse and we suture their organs together, which they did at Harvard, the young mouse gets older and the old mouse gets younger, which is wild to think. And so once the mother delivers that baby in America, we can take the leftover afterbirth. So many people think stem cells are illegal or you can't do them. No, you can't clone a human. We cannot abort a fetus and take that and turn it into stem cells. You can take a healthy mother, healthy birth, pre planned C section, and take all of that afterbirth, these cellular goodies that kept the baby and the mom alive and delivered all this sustenance and extrapolate out all of the goodies that God, nature, whatever you want to call it, gives us.
- [91:02]
B
But you can only get it through a C section. You.
- [91:04]
A
And again, pre. You can get it other ways, but in America it's typically done through a pre planned C section where we take the afterbirth, the, the umbilical cord, all the cord tissue, the amnion, the placenta, and we take it to a lab where they extrapolate out all of the good stuff.
- [91:21]
B
So then there's benefits of that. You pre, pre plan the C section, be able to get all of that. But then you're. Aren't you giving up the, all the microbiome stuff that's going on, having a vaginal birth and all that kind of stuff. So like, is there a little bit of a give and take there?
- [91:36]
A
So where there's two different things? Yeah, the answer is yes, but they're doing pre planned C sections. So from my seat, it's like if we can buy the discarded afterbirth to create these cells to give people accessibility to these life changing compounds. Absolutely.
- [91:52]
B
Okay, so you say it doesn't have to be from your.
- [91:54]
A
The future should. No it doesn't. But the future and this is what I, I'm talking to the Department of Defense about is all of our soldiers and military personnel, they have, you know, they're having children and the US government is spending buku dollars on trying to prevent injuries and heal wounded soldiers and burns and wounds and cuts and injuries and phantom pain and all these things. Stem cells can help with all of that. And if we got strategic and worked within the confines of what we should be doing rather than the insurance, we would be having these mothers set aside these umbilical cords in these birth tissues for themselves, for their own families.
- [92:35]
B
And this is.
- [92:35]
A
And we could help these soldiers. It's. It's in joint shots intravenous. It's a mixture. It just depends on the injury and what's going on. But so at waste well we use it a lot to treat orthopedic injuries. Knees, shoulders, elbows, spine injuries, back injuries, neck injuries. But we're also using it for aesthetics. Like when applied topically on your face with a skin pen. People talk about vampire facials. It I've done it on me, I'm 44. It literally took like 10 years off my.
- [93:05]
B
He looks like a newborn baby.
- [93:06]
A
Guys crazy how different and I'm. I can show you before pictures. It's literally just stem cells. It is so mind boggling. But it's there. It's nature. It's so when people go well what is it? And I don't know, it's like this is literally the goodies that mothers have that God or nature gave us and when utilized for healing. This is what we healed Aaron Rodgers with. This is what we okay so Joe Rogan with stem cells. Yeah, we did. We helped him heal his Achilles through using these birth derived treatments. And it is crazy how well it works. Like over 80 something percent success rate. It's mind boggling. I try to never overhype it but you can see it in aesthetics. If you look at is not like a Botox or whatever is a chemical that's just freezing muscle. When we use these cellular treatments, we are literally rejuvenating your cells. We are making your skin young again. It's not this fake band aid. So how does it work? Like if you're going to build a building you need the blueprint, you need all the instructions of how to build it, but you need the building blocks. You need the brick, the mortar, the Concrete, a mother's afterbirth has all of that. You are getting MRNA messenger cells that are telling your cells and signaling to your cells. Like for me, I'm 44. As I've aged, there's a precipitous drop off in the amount of live MSCs in my body. It's literally like 10% of what it was when I was a kid. By putting these cells back in my body temporarily, they signal and they go to the site of injury or damage. And when my older weary cells show up, up, they literally transfer their mitochondria, making my cells young again for four to six weeks. And then we give you all the goodies, the cytokines, the exosomes, the extracellular vesicles, the scaffolding, all that's just medical jargon for like a bunch of really good stuff for your cells that you had in, in a plethora as in your youth, that you lose as we age and we're giving you the instructions and the ingredients to heal yourself.
- [95:15]
B
What do you think the right age is to start doing stem cell stuff?
- [95:18]
A
I mean, I, I don't think there's really, I think in the future we're going to use it more and more and I think that you won't have surgeries in your twenties. I think that they would treat most of these injuries orthopedic wise with cellular treatments. And I think that we're going to see more and more cellular treatments come up because it reduces the need for surgery and it reduces the read need for prescription medicines and it reduces the need for all the things that I'm telling you these, these entities are profiteering off of. So they have no incentive in allowing these things into the marketplace because it disrupts revenue.
- [95:49]
B
What do you think about medical marijuana?
- [95:51]
A
I'm bigger passionate about psychedelics. I'm not against medical marijuana. But marijuana in certain patient populations, like people who have anxiety or schizophrenia or these different mental health issues, it can exasperate. There are outliers, but I mean, I think there's a lot of benefit too. You know, I, I honestly my view is a lot like what Rogan says it all the time, like if somebody's a piece of, they're gonna look for excuse as to why. Right. I've had friends that blame marijuana for being potheads and lazy. But you were lazy before you ever smoked marijuana. I don't think it's going to derail someone's life. But there are outliers in every scent. There's no such thing as a free Lunch. So even with psychedelics, I'm a proponent of decriminalizing and allowing psychedelics to help treat some of these mental health issues because honestly the efficacy is better than anything in the market ways. But it's still a medicine and there's still going to be outliers and we still need to tread lightly. And there is no such thing as a silver bullet that has no risk factor. And so what are the risk factors and who's involved? The bigger fear I have is, and I think we were talking off air before this is how captured psychedelics already are and how it's become a billionaires arms race to see who's going to bring something to market first and profiteer off it it. Which just kind of sucks because baby steps like let's get the general public's buy in and let's bring this to the masses and let's help our wounded soldiers and military personnel that are suffering from anxiety and depression and need these treatments more than anything. And then on the back end, you billionaires can worry about how you're going to profiteer off it.
- [97:25]
B
Radicalize this on ketamine.
- [97:26]
A
Yeah, ketamine's a sword that cuts both ways too. I think that kettle well so the way we were using it is as a topical. When applied topically, there is no physiological high. And so as a topical to treat orthopedic pain, it's phenomenal. It has a really, really high success rate. It has no chance of abuse or diversion. You can't get addicted to it because it's topical. You're not getting a high now. It's being used for anxiety and depression now more and more. And the challenge with that is we perpetuate this problem. Anywhere there's money, they'll be bad players. And so candidly, like ketamine has kind of swung towards almost the wild west right now where you've got clinics everywhere administering ketamine. Some of them may not be good, you know, and it, there's so much money in it that they're flying in the gray. And so I do worry about that. It's the issue isn't the arrow, it's the archer. I do believe that ketamine is a valuable tool and the tool belt to help people. But there are a lot of clinics abusing it and probably over utilizing it and using it just to generate revenue, which is unfortunate. But this is the same problem we see time and time again with anything. It's what we see with the GLP1s. It's what we see with antidepressants, it's what we see with anything that can generate a lot of revenue. It becomes over prescribed, over utilized and abused.
- [98:46]
B
Give us like a little T behind the scenes Maha that you've heard lately.
- [98:51]
A
I think the biggest is that they are going to go after the PBMs. Supposedly Bobby is digging into the pharmacy benefit managers and Trump and you know, a lot of the conservatives and and the left are on board to go after the PBMs. I think it's something they universally agree in agree on is to fix that. There is a movement at the Department of Defense separate from the FDA to try to work to implement psychedelics and potentially stem cells, which are more investigatory medicine right now by the fda. They're not FDA approved. But there is an opportunity to do something big with the Department of Defense that would be the biggest if the DoD got behind psychedelics and stem cells. It changes the landscape of health care for Americans because they're so big they can fight back at the fda. And then we've both gotten to know Marty, who's now Marty McCari is going to be over the FDA, which I'm pumped about.
- [99:48]
B
What do you think the FDA hopefully will look like with, with Marty and Dr. Marty in charge?
- [99:54]
A
I hope that they get rid of some of the collusion and the corruption. I really do. I know it's going to be a long process. There's just so many bad things happening at the fda. We could talk for another two hours. So there's a lot of cleanup to do. But just getting rid of the incentives and the conflicts would be game changer.
- [100:13]
B
Give us one thing that people do not realize about the FDA that would like melt their face off.
- [100:17]
A
Well, at this point I think a lot of people probably know that out of the last 40 years, only two heads of the FDA did not go to work for industry. So even the individual who approved opioids into the marketplace spent two weeks with the Sackler family in a hold up in a private hotel room, pushed that medicine into the market, OxyContin into the market and guess who they went to work for 18 months later? The Sackler family making $800,000 a year or something like that, like literally 18 months later and there's so much spit being swapped and so much collusion. You can't make decisions that are for the betterment of humanity and the American people when you're conflicted by your own income, future career choices, it's just too dangerous. We've got to stop the ability of these individuals to Go work one day as the head of the FDA and then the next day be working for the people you were regulating.
- [101:13]
B
That's right.
- [101:13]
A
That's crazy to me.
- [101:14]
B
If you could offer one remedy to heal a sick culture, physically, mentally or spiritually, what would it be?
- [101:20]
A
The hard part is, is simple as it sounds. It's like everything starts with metabolic disease. If we can make metabolic disease the focus and prevent metabolic disease, we indirectly fix the five chronic diseases that are killing humanity. If I could wave a wand and we could give people, you know, preventative care as part of a governmental program where you had $5,000 a year in tax incentives to use however you want, whether through massages, workout routines, trainers, nutritionists, testing, testing, lab work, work. I think that would change the landscape of America and America's health and I think it would, I think it would take a lot of cost out of the system. I really think we're spending all this money treating and putting band aids on things that we could be preventing. We just don't do it.
- [102:09]
B
You're a healthcare entrepreneur, you have created some of the most innovative companies in the space. Remind people what they are and then what they do.
- [102:16]
A
Yeah. Ways to well, is our patient forward entity. We're essentially a preventative care practice focused on driving health span and preventing chronic disease. And we do that through comprehensive lab testing, diagnostic workups and just doing a deep dive with you, the patient to assess your overall health and wellness and where you're headed. And then separate from that, the, the sister company is Revive. Revive is a compounding pharmacy that can compound unique compounds to you. Typically we compound treatments that we try to make more cost effective for the public. So it started out with non abusive, non addictive pain creams and then it's evolved into essentially anything and everything insurance doesn't cover or is price gouging the American people on. So like a GLP1 weight loss drug, they're charging a thousand something between a thousand to sixteen hundred dollars. We're charging a couple hundred dollars with a consult mailed to your doorstep and true healthcare and that's called what that's Revive is our pharmacy. But we do a lot of different treatment modalities from hormones to peptides to again anything insurance companies aren't covering or they're price gouging you on. We are trying to provide a life raft mailed to your doorstep. So think like medication meets Amazon, like mail it to your doorstep, pennies on the dollar and try and take the cost out of your care.
- [103:38]
B
Okay, and then what is your Instagram for people to follow you.
- [103:41]
A
Mine is now Brigham Bueller.
- [103:43]
B
Oh yeah.
- [103:45]
A
I was getting all this feedback that nobody could ever find me and then our company's weighs the number two. Well, weighs too well.
- [103:52]
B
Okay, perfect. Thank you so much for coming.
- [103:54]
A
Thank you for having me.
- [103:59]
B
Without a doubt, one of my favorite episodes so far on this season of Culture Apothecary. Next week is another one you are about to get spoiled. Please leave a five star review. Tell others why they should listen to Culture Apothecary and what episode blew your mind? We're on a mission to heal a sick culture physically, mentally and spiritually. Mondays and Thursdays at 9pm Eastern, 6pm Pacific. Subscribe to Real Alex Clark on YouTube and follow me on Instagram at Real Alex Clark in the show at Culture Apothecary. Don't forget there's merch for sale tpusamerch.com and code Alex Clark there gets you 10 off. I'm Alex Clark and this is Culture Apothecary.