182. Brigham Buhler: The Peptide Safety Data Reveals 75,000+ Patients With Zero Adverse Events

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
Episode 182: Brigham Bueller - The Peptide Safety Data Reveals 75,000+ Patients With Zero Adverse Events
Release Date: July 10, 2025

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Introduction

In Episode 182 of "The Ultimate Human," host Gary Brecka welcomes Brigham Bueller, a prominent figure in the field of peptides and regenerative medicine. The discussion centers around the safety, efficacy, and regulatory challenges of peptide therapies, highlighting the impressive safety record reported by Bueller's practice.

Peptides and Their Role in Healthspan

Gary Brecka introduces the topic by emphasizing the importance of peptides as signaling molecules that enhance the body's innate ability to function optimally. He describes peptides as non-drug analogs that stimulate the body to produce its own growth hormones, regulate cortisol, improve testosterone levels, and enhance circulation.

• Gary Brecka [01:23]: "We use BPC157, TB5000, thymosin alpha, which was also pulled, and you can get nutritional grade versions of these. But getting a good pharmaceutical compounded, highly sourced, you know, peptide where you know stability, sterility, potency and you have some belief in the efficacy because it was compounded effectively."

Brigham Bueller supports this view, stating that peptides are crucial for driving healthspan, which indirectly extends lifespan. He underscores that peptides and other regenerative treatments can significantly impact human health by optimizing bodily functions.

• Brigham Bueller [00:36]: "I believe that peptides, all of these things, are crucial pillars to driving healthspan, which indirectly drives lifespan."

Regulatory Challenges and FDA Stance

The conversation delves into the recent actions taken by the FDA to restrict access to various peptides, citing a lack of safety data despite widespread use without adverse events.

• Brigham Bueller [00:00]: "The FDA makes this decision in a vacuum to essentially ban and shut down accessibility to dozens of peptides, and not because they were harming people, but for what they called a lack of safety data."

• Gary Brecka [03:58]: "I've been using peptides and we've never done a clinical trial on parachutes, but I wouldn't jump out of an airplane without one, at least not a placebo-controlled, randomized clinical trial. Who wants to be in group B?"

Bueller criticizes the FDA's alignment with big pharmaceutical companies, suggesting that this relationship hinders the agency's understanding and openness towards peptide therapies.

• Brigham Bueller [05:00]: "It seemed like a lot of learning, a lot of note-taking, a lot of listening, which I'm optimistic about."

Safety and Efficacy of Peptides

A significant portion of the discussion focuses on the outstanding safety record of peptide therapies in Bueller's practice, where over 75,000 patients have been treated without any adverse events.

• Brigham Bueller [11:14]: "Now I think we have over 75,000 patients. We have not had any adverse events with any of the peptides."

• Gary Brecka [11:22]: "It's mind-boggling, astounding that level of safety and efficacy."

Impact of Big Pharma and Market Dynamics

The duo examines how big pharmaceutical companies are attempting to patent peptides that have been safely used for years, aiming to monopolize the market and limit patient access.

• Brigham Bueller [18:09]: "Big Pharma is attempting to capture that. And so the truth always rises to the top and we find it when we look a little deeper."

They also discuss the financial implications for patients when the FDA restricted compounded pharmacies, significantly increasing the cost of medications like GLP1s.

• Gary Brecka [13:07]: "The average compounded price I think in the US is $150 and the average retail price through Big Pharma is $1250."

Future Outlook and Technological Integration

Gary and Brigham express optimism about the future of regenerative and preventative care, emphasizing the integration of big data, artificial intelligence (AI), and early detection technologies in enhancing health outcomes.

• Gary Brecka [19:04]: "If you're alive over the next five years, it's going to be your choice whether or not you want to live to age 120 or 140."

• Brigham Bueller [20:38]: "Large language models... can assess and begin to predict all-cause mortality."

They highlight breakthroughs such as AI-driven clinical trials and advanced cancer screening techniques that promise to revolutionize healthcare by enabling earlier detection and personalized treatment plans.

Advocacy for Transparency and Consumer Choice

Both speakers advocate for greater transparency within the FDA and the healthcare system, arguing that informed consumers should have access to safe and effective therapies without undue restrictions.

• Brigham Bueller [16:10]: "They heal to again to steal from you through providing your body with the raw elements and the raw materials to be able to heal and rebuild itself."

• Gary Brecka [14:49]: "Because there's enough data out there now, we can do the digging."

Conclusion and Shared Vision

The episode closes with both Gary and Brigham expressing a shared commitment to advancing human health through peptides and regenerative medicine. They emphasize the importance of community and collaboration in driving systemic change and improving healthspan for all.

• Brigham Bueller [22:08]: "We're all in it together and I know we can drive change."

• Gary Brecka [22:30]: "Until next time, guys, that's just science."

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Key Takeaways:

1. Peptides as Safe and Effective Therapies: With over 75,000 patients treated without adverse events, peptides demonstrate a strong safety and efficacy profile.
2. Regulatory Hurdles: The FDA's restrictive stance on peptides, influenced by big pharma, limits patient access despite substantial real-world safety data.
3. Economic Impact: Restrictions on compounded medications lead to significantly higher costs for patients.
4. Future of Healthcare: Integration of AI and big data promises advancements in early disease detection and personalized medicine.
5. Advocacy for Transparency: Greater transparency and informed consumer choice are essential for advancing regenerative and preventative healthcare.

For more insights and detailed discussions, listeners are encouraged to tune into the full episode of "The Ultimate Human" with Gary Brecka.

Transcript

[Brigham Bueller]

The FDA makes this decision in a vacuum to essentially ban and shut down accessibility to dozens of peptides, and not.

[Gary Brea]

Because they were harming people, but for what they called a lack of safety data.

[Brigham Bueller]

Historically, the FDA has been controlled and met with the big pharmaceutical institutes.

[Gary Brea]

You can't assume that they have a fundamental understanding of peptides. You don't know what they've been told by chemical and pharma industry.

[Brigham Bueller]

You're only as good as the intel you have. And if our intel's bad, we can't be shocked when we make bad decisions.

[Gary Brea]

Should we open lanes for people to make choices where the outcome is? Maybe this doesn't work, but it's caused no harm.

[Brigham Bueller]

I believe that peptides, all of these things, are crucial pillars to driving healthspan, which indirectly drives lifespan.

[Gary Brea]

Some of the best modalities are the ones that harness the body's ability to do its job on its own. The thought that we could just bring that back and make it available in mass to me, is really exciting.

[Brigham Bueller]

The safety profile is astronomically better than that of a drug. The risk profile is astronomically lower than that of a drug, and the efficacy is phenomenal.

[Gary Brea]

Can you talk a little bit about what you see in this administration for maybe the lane widening and peptides?

[Brigham Bueller]

We're talking about human lives and the human experience. And if we can't keep people healthy and firing on all cylinders, the question is.

[Gary Brea]

Ultimate human. Hey, guys, welcome back to the Ultimate Human podcast. I'm your host, human biologist Gary Brea, where we go down the road of everything, anti aging, biohacking, longevity, and everything in between. And today, we're firing it up right from the White House. This is incredible. And I have been waiting to sit down with this man for actually more than a year, ever since I. You gave me a shout out on Joe Rogan, and I've been following your journey. Welcome to the podcast, Brigham Bueller.

[Brigham Bueller]

Thank you for having me. Exciting times and what a crazy setup.

[Gary Brea]

Yeah, it's a crazy set. Like, I can't believe, like, we're in the White House. I'm like, is anybody doing background checks on us? You know, this is amazing. You and I have such similar missions. You know, the belief in the methylation pathways, hormone balance, nutrient deficiencies. You know, we've been barking up the same tree for a long time. It's an absolute honor to sit down with you, brother. You know, one of the things in this, you know, make America healthy again movement, you know, we've identified that there's a pandemic of chronic Disease. We've looked at some of the genesis of chronic disease. But I want to move off of that a little bit and talk about the people that are already on this journey and what the possibility, because you and I both had. Oh, I used to have functional medicine practices. You still do. We were heavily involved in peptides, you know, amino acid sequences that are signaling molecules to the body that I am an enormous fan of, because peptides are not drugs. They are analogs. They're usually sequences of amino acids. They usually cause the body to do something it would otherwise do on its own. Secrete your own natural level of growth hormone, improve your levels of testosterone, help regulate cortisol, improve circulation, all kinds of things. And my favorite mantra for this category of biologics is that the body recognizes them. They are amino acid sequences, they're metabolites. You can break them down, you can get rid of the waste. And recently we saw the FDA come in and wipe out a whole class of these, and not because they were harming people, but for what they called a lack of safety data. Well, safety data could be. 20 million people have been prescribed these things without adverse events. I would say they're pretty safe. We've never done a clinical trial on parachutes, but I wouldn't jump out of an airplane without one, at least not a placebo. Controlled, randomized clinical trial. Right. Who wants to be in group B? You know, so can you talk a little bit about what you see in this administration for maybe the lane widening and peptides and.

[Brigham Bueller]

Absolutely. And thank you for having me and thank you for all you've been doing. Like, I've been a fan from afar and listened to a lot of your, your, your talk track. And I believe wholeheartedly in a lot of what you've been preaching for years and the proofs in the pudding, like you look at what you've been able to achieve with folks like Dana and the cascade effect of how that impacts so many lives.

[Gary Brea]

Yeah.

[Brigham Bueller]

And so for me, I always bring it back to like, we're talking about human lives in the human experience. And if we can't keep people healthy and firing on all cylinders, the question is why? And as we got into this study and what this MAHA study shows, diet, lifestyle, nutrition, but a huge proponent is getting proactive, predictive and personalized. And I believe that peptides and deep dive into biomarkers, all of these things are crucial pillars to driving healthspan, which indirectly drives lifespan.

[Gary Brea]

Right.

[Brigham Bueller]

I think the American people voted for change. I think that people were excited to see Bobby at RFK and Secretary. Secretary Kennedy's push for better transparency and a more trustworthy fda. And I can say early, I mean, we're what, a hundred something days in. Yeah, right before you and I started recording, I was just sharing with you. I had reached out to Secretary Kennedy and Stephanie, his chief of staff, and just said, hey, I would love the opportunity to just bend the ear of the FDA on these, these topics. Peptides, the GLP1 debacle, stem cells and these regenerative treatment modalities and, and just talk to them and try and understand.

[Gary Brea]

Messaging to the FDA about that. I mean, where, where do you start with them? Because you can't assume that they have a fundamental understanding of peptides. They may only hear. You don't know what they've been told by chemical farmers.

[Brigham Bueller]

You could tell a lot of what they've been told was just talk track from big pharma, which is tough because even lobbying at the state level in Texas, when you lobby on food, you begin to realize, oh my God, everything that they're being told is just a lobbyist. They're parroting what the lobbyist said. So with peptides, their thing was, candidly in the meeting, one of the folks said, there's no clinical need for peptides. And I said, you do understand, insulin's a peptide. The GLP1s that are this blockbuster drug, you know, good, bad or indifferent, like it's a tool in the tool belt. It's a peptide. These are signaling molecules that allow the body like what you've talked about so much. We're deficient in the raw materials and elements essential to driving our health.

[Gary Brea]

Yes.

[Brigham Bueller]

And we're attempting to fix the food system, to fix and overhaul all these challenges that Bonnie and folks like you have been ringing the bell on. But another integral part of that is providing a life raft, providing that optimization and providing accessibility to these modalities that we know are safe. Yeah, like you were just saying. I mean, this is safe. This is available in nature. These are short chain amino acids. The safety profiles astronomically better than that of a drug. The risk profiles astronaut astronomically lower than that of a drug. And the efficacy is phenomenal.

[Gary Brea]

Yes.

[Brigham Bueller]

So candidly, the feedback was more of them learning. It seemed like a lot of learning, a lot of note taking, a lot of listening, which I'm optimistic about.

[Gary Brea]

Yeah.

[Brigham Bueller]

And then we know, know personally from having interacted with Secretary Kennedy. He's, he is a fan. He even tweeted, yeah, we are going to the war on peptides stem cells. Hype I think it was hyperbaric. All of this is over.

[Gary Brea]

Even I think he put psychedelics. Yeah, yeah, there's a couple of categories. And he goes, it's over. Which is great because the idea that we could open up some of these lanes, right, for an informed consumer to say, yeah, you know what? I'm not just interested in being not diseased and not having diabetes or not having an autoimmune condition. I actually want to thrive. I want to think the best, feel the best, you know, sleep, you know, sleep deep. I want to have a strong libido. I want to have a healthy response to exercise. Like I want it all. I mean, God put us here to thrive. And so if there are mechanisms that we can access, like peptides under the guise of a physician, you know, supervised that have these long safety records. I mean, I think Sir Morland, you know, one, one of the first GHRP's, growth hormone hormone releasing peptides was first approved in like 1983. Yeah, 1984. And so FDA approved. And so a lot of these have been around for decades.

[Brigham Bueller]

Well, look at testosterone.

[Gary Brea]

Yeah.

[Brigham Bueller]

Like, why are primary cares in America terrified of testosterone? It goes back to a study from the 1930s that's been debunked. The dogma carries forward and people get analysis paralysis. And I think it's easy to, historically, prior to this new world where there's podcast and free speech and all of us able to think openly in the public eye and have lively discussions and deep dive into these things, but it comes down a lot of times it's dogma and it's improper information. And I said this earlier, I don't want to. I don't want to, you know, villainize the fda. You're only as good as the intel you have. Right. And if our intel's bad and our loopback feed is bad and the information we're getting is bad, then we can't be shocked when we make bad decisions because we're getting bad inputs. Historically, the FDA has been controlled and met with the big pharmaceutical institutes because that was their model. In this new world with, with RFK and this new administration, I think they're willing to sit down and meet with other folks like you and myself and other people.

[Gary Brea]

It is fascinating, man. I mean, the level of acceptance for my message, which, you know, when I began messaging 10 years ago, heavily called a charlatan, heavily called pseudoscience, heavily attacked for not being a physician, which I've never held myself out as a physician, you know, I'm not Licensed to practice medicine. I have deep respect for the people that are, but the messaging about how nutrient deficient we've become and how amino acid and fatty acid deficient we've become and the consequences of that leading to things like this pandemic of chronic disease and that it's a lot easier to fix than we think it is and starts with some self responsibility. But I'm really excited about the future of peptides because in our practice, you know, we use BPC157TB5000 thymosin alpha which was also pulled and you can get nutritional grade versions of these. But getting a good pharmaceutical compounded, highly sourced, you know, peptide where you know stability, sterility, potency and you have some belief in the efficacy because it was compounded effectively. The thought that we could just bring that back and make it available in mass to me is really exciting because we saw thousands of patients benefit from these. And I can tell you, I don't think, I don't think, I do not recall a single adverse event where same.

[Brigham Bueller]

I mean it wasted. Well now I think we have over 75,000 patients. We have not had any, any adverse events with any of the peptides.

[Gary Brea]

It's, it's mind boggling, astounding that level of safety and efficacy. Man, it really.

[Brigham Bueller]

And the beauty is like back to the fda. I do think with bad information you make bad decisions. But with good information can we embolden and empower these folks to make good decisions. And part of it's giving them the full story. You know, I just saw it with the GLP1s. I don't know where your stance is. I, I personally feel like the GLP1s are great tool in the tool belt.

[Gary Brea]

I do too. I'm not anti GLP1. I mean as long as you know, patients understand, clients understand that we make GLP1 in our gut. I mean this is a hormone that we make and we make it in response to satiation, which is largely responsive to nutrient density. And so it should be a multifactorial approach. Not continue to bathe your cellular biology in a toxic soup and take this injection, but maybe stop bathing your cellular biology in this toxic soup. So let's get you on a whole food diet, nutrient dense diet. Let's, let's get movement and exercise, weight bearing exercises a part of your daily habits and use the GLP1s as a way to either accelerate that or to pull you back from the brink of disaster.

[Brigham Bueller]

You know, I'm smiling because literally I say all the time, prescribing a GLP1 without talking about diet, lifestyle, nutrition is literally like brushing your teeth while eating Oreos. Yeah, it's pretty counterintuitive. But as a tool in the tool belt for these obese and chronically, metabolically disease riddled people, putting a win on the board and creating momentum is crucial. And one of the things that happened right before Secretary Kennedy took, took power was the FDA redacted the exemption for compounding pharmacies literally weeks before he was sworn in. They removed the compounding pharmacies exemptions that allowed patients accessibility to cost effective GLP1s.

[Gary Brea]

Right.

[Brigham Bueller]

So the average compounded price I think in the US is $150 and the average retail price through Big Pharma is $1250. So how many people are going to be left high and dry? And I say all that because it goes back to what we saw with peptides. What is happening is they're getting half stories, half truths. So big Pharma, when they met with the fda, told them we fixed the backlog. And so when I met with the fda, I said, well, where did, did they give you data? Did they give you. Because we called 30,000 pharmacies a month for 12 months and less than 6% of prescriptions were available for filled.

[Gary Brea]

So wow.

[Brigham Bueller]

It's not. The backlog is still very much real. And what's happening because of media platforms like yourself and, and Bobby escalating, our Secretary Kennedy escalating these things is that voice is now resonating with the American people and they have line of sight into the truth.

[Gary Brea]

Yes.

[Brigham Bueller]

And it makes it really hard for decisions to be made in a back room where nobody knows why or how.

[Gary Brea]

Right.

[Brigham Bueller]

Because there's enough data out there now, we can do the digging. And so, you know, through these opportunities, I was able to provide the FDA with just information highlighting for them. Here are the court testimonies of these pharmaceutical companies themselves. Where in court.

[Gary Brea]

You actually pulled court testimonies in court.

[Brigham Bueller]

State of Texas, under oath. They said, we've never actually met the volumes that we told the fda. We've never done it in their own documents. And so I've provided all that over and again. It's, it's all it is, is through line of sight we can give the FDA the ability to at least have line of sight into the truth. Right. Whereas historically, because of the closed door method of how they decide things, I don't think that was there.

[Gary Brea]

Yeah. And should we open lanes for people to make choices where the outcome Is maybe this doesn't work, but it's caused no harm because a lot of times the choices that they make are chemical, synthetic or pharmaceutical and the outcome may be permanent harm, permanent dependency, tachyphylaxis, building a desensitization response, something is materially going to change, you know, the trajectory of their life. And, and, and yet they still had the downside that they didn't get what they were, what they were after.

[Brigham Bueller]

I get that's spot on because even with stem cells, that's one of the things stem. The whole stem cell market in the United States was hampered by the fear of the unknown of what it could do. A potential theoretical framework that was never shown in actual utilization in practice. So like one of the big fears is historically this is 20 year old information. But the FDA was worried that stem cells would become something and if they become something, then they could become a cancer cell. And if we treat people with these, are they going to exasperate cancer and all of a sudden we have cancer popping up. And the truth of the matter is now with research and time and practice, we realize these MSCs are signaling cells. Just like peptides. They're signaling cells, they actually cannot differentiate. Like the, the MSCs utilized from umbilical cord derived tissues don't differentiate, they don't become a tendon.

[Gary Brea]

Right.

[Brigham Bueller]

They heal to again to steal from you through providing your body with the raw elements and the raw materials to be able to heal and rebuild itself. Yeah, signaling to your body and then giving it your body cytokines, exosomes, extracellular vesicles, then they transfer their mitochondria, refueling your older, tired, weary cells and then they're gone.

[Gary Brea]

Right.

[Brigham Bueller]

But the dogma that still lasts, just like the dogma from testosterone is, oh my God, it's going to cause if.

[Gary Brea]

It can become a tendon or a ligament or a bone or tissue, then what else could it become? I totally agree with you. In signaling molecules, you know, some of the best modalities, which is why I'm such a huge fan of peptides, are the ones that harness the body's ability to do its job on its own. So you know, platelet rich plasma PRP is one of those you widely acceptable treatments for knees, hip, shoulder, rotator cuff, you know, repetitive use injuries and you're essentially just capturing the patient's platelets, concentrating them in the site of injury and sort of focus, not sort of, but directly focusing the healing power of the human body in, in a small area to accelerate healing. Well, you can do the Same thing, very similar mechanism through things like BPC157. You know, this body protection compound actually enhances the body's awareness that there's an injury, and it calls the platelets and other healing factors to that site. And you heal yourself by accelerating your body's own innate ability to heal.

[Brigham Bueller]

That's what I love about all this. That's what I love about it too. It's like it's nature.

[Gary Brea]

It makes so much sense, and yet it's met with so much resistance. I mean, I'm much easier convinced that I can enhance my body's ability to heal itself at an accelerated rate then that I can take something that my body doesn't recognize, that you can't find in nature, that is not found anywhere on the surface of the earth, somehow stick it in, and magically it's going to cause us to heal.

[Brigham Bueller]

And if you. This is how you know that what you're saying is spot on. While in one breath, the FDA makes this decision in a vacuum to essentially ban and shut down accessibility to dozens of peptides. At the same time, Merck and several of the big pharmaceutical companies are attempting to patent over 200 different peptides, the very peptides that have been in the marketplace for 15 years, that have been helping your patients, our patients at Wastewell, people throughout the nation with amazing efficacy and minimal side effects, if any. And now Big Pharma is attempting to capture that. And so the truth always rises to the top and we find it when we look a little deeper. But I'm just a huge proponent. I'm very optimistic that the future's bright and we're going to be in a golden age. I think you even said it on Joe, like a golden age of regenerative and preventative care.

[Gary Brea]

I agree, man. If you're alive over the next five years, it's going to be your choice whether or not you want to live to age 120 or 140. I truly believe that. And you know, the, the, the merger of big data, artificial intelligence and early detection now is giving people a chance to really get a hold of things at such an early stage. We're starting to detect cancers at stage zero.

[Brigham Bueller]

Yes, right. I mean, how, how we run that cancer screening. It's 200 types of cancer at stage zero with, you know, you can't say 100 survival rate, but when you catch.

[Gary Brea]

It, is that the voc, which, which one is that? That you're.

[Brigham Bueller]

I can't remember the genetics lab that we're using, but it's the same one that everyone's.

[Gary Brea]

Yeah, we'll link it in the show notes if we.

[Brigham Bueller]

But it's amazing. And like the other thing we talked about with the DOD and a lot of these VA hospitals, you know, our special forces operators and our military personnel are at a disproportionate likelihood of developing cancer in their lifetime. Same thing with our firefighters and first responders from all the chemicals and fire pits and all the things they've been around. Why would we not get proactive, predictive and prescreen these people and make sure that we stop chronic disease in its tracks? Yeah, and the same thing with blood work. Like I, I've heard you talk about the importance of blood work. We're using large language models now to assess the blood work, to tie into your wearables, to monitor your REM sleep, your deep sleep, your heart rate variability. If you capture a dexa and a VO2 max and you begin to combine all those things into these large language models and the AI, it can assess and begin to predict out and model out all cause mortality.

[Gary Brea]

Yeah, it's so fascinating that artificial intelligence can take 700 trillion independent variables and create an actionable result. I actually saw a model the other day of clinical trial being run in vitro through nothing other than artificial intelligence. And what it was able to do was assemble so much information from tens of thousands of other clinical trials, from meta analysis and from a microbiological data and say if you expose this cell to this compound in this media, this is going to be the result. And it predicted it with absolute precision, accuracy. And so there's the possibility that we could actually run fully randomized clinical trials in AI instantly in an artificial intelligence lab without spending the 10 years to grow. Because it can take so many independent variables and say I can weigh every single one of these potential outcomes and tell you exactly where this result and then you run a side by side experiment and you realize, oh my God, it reached the exact same outcome as the AI predicted. It just took us three years to get here. So it's a really exciting time. Brother, I'm so excited to be on this journey with you and other leaders like yourself that, that are outspoken, that are driving a stake in the ground for humanity and putting their reputations out there and really giving your time selflessly to this MAHA movement. It's a pleasure.

[Brigham Bueller]

Thank you man, thank you for all you're doing. We're all in it together and I know we can drive change. I truly, truly am more optimistic than I've ever been after 25 plus years in healthcare. This is the first time I truly believe there is an opportunity to really reform and improve and drive Health Span. And we're all, we're all here hammering for it.

[Gary Brea]

I agree with that. Thank you for coming on the old appreciated podcast, brother. And until next time, guys, that's just science.