Kyle Kingsbury Podcast - #208 Brigham Buhler

Episode Date: July 7, 2021

It’s pretty easy to see we need a paradigm shift in many areas today, one that stands out the most is the sickcare/insurance industry. My man , Brigham Buhler, is truly a warrior in that cause with his company Ways 2 Well. We dive into that as well some of his origin story, a deep nerdy dive into Peptides, which gets me going! Please please please go check out Brigham’s vision at Ways2Well! Connect with Brigham:   Website: ways2well.com  Instagram: @ways2well  Facebook: WAYS2WELL  Show Notes:   Easy Strength Amazon  “The Anabolics Series” -William Llewellyn Amazon  Sponsors:   Soul CBD Head to mysoulcbd.com  and punch in “KKP” at checkout for 15% off the best in the CBD biz. Organifi Go to organifi.com/kkp and use code “KKP” at checkout for 20% off your order! Lucy Go to lucy.co and use code “KKP” at Checkout to get 20% off the best nicotine gum in the game, or check out their lozenge. Cymbiotika Head to Cymbiotika’s site(link below) and find out for yourself the power of his incredible medicines. Also use the codeword “KYLE15” at checkout to save 15% on all orders including subscriptions. Accumulate an additional 5% off for each additional product subscribed to up to five! That’s up to 25% off your subscriptions! cymbiotika.com Connect with Kyle:   Instagram: @livingwiththekingsburys   Youtube: Kyle Kingbury Podcast  Kyles website: www.kingsbu.com    Like and subscribe to the podcast anywhere you can find podcasts. Leave a 5-star review and let me know what resonates or doesn’t.

guess who's back in the mother grabbing house with a love me some snoop dog uh we are back we are back gathering my thoughts here i just had a glorious workout i have started a 40-day easy, 40-day easy, easy. I'm still in my Snoop song. 40-day strength challenge. It's not a strength challenge, actually. It's from the book Easy Strength with Dan John and Pavel Tatsulin, two of my heroes. Absolutely love it. It's my favorite workout program of all time to be perfectly honest I think it's

one of the best suited for athletes and weekend warriors and anybody that's just trying to get out in shape that's starting off with nothing or you used to work out but you haven't done it in a while and there's a number of reasons for that this would exclude training under the tutelage of a master like Jesse Burdick or Mark Bell or Big House. Give you a shout out, Joe Ken, my strength coach over at ASU. If you have one of the best strength coaches in the world, or you live within driving distance of Westside Barbell, where there's many of them, that's a different scenario. But for most of us who don't uh the reason i love uh this this strength protocol is because it it for there's many reasons number one you're never sore so that's what it's great for athletes and they break this down which quadrant you fall under i think it's only available

on kindle there might be some some people who have printed it out and binded it for you that you could pay a hideous amount of money if you're not willing to read electronically in any regard um it's very simple you do the same workout five days a week for six weeks or eight weeks straight and um one of the key ingredients of this i talked with mark chang about this actually who's one of pavel's uh students is that you know strength is a practice. Movement is a practice. You don't work out as exercise to burn fat and burn calories and break a sweat. You work out to train movement patterns. You work out to practice strength and you do yoga or mobility to practice mobility, to practice flexibility. These are concepts that I love. One of the quotes in the

book is if it's worth doing, do it every day. And, or if it's worth being good at, do it every single day. And I absolutely love that. It resonates with me because these workouts are short, they're sweet. You leave with more energy than when you start. And anyone can access this. Everyone's got a smartphone with an app that can download this book right now and start it. So, anywho, that is a bit of rambling. I am 100% focused on the things that I can change in the world. And that starts with me. And that starts with my body as a tuning fork. And an antenna to great spirit and a deeper sense of knowing intuition,

the high self, the Damon, a thousand names for it, but ultimately one knowing. And it seems to me that practicing strength helps me hone that. It certainly makes me feel better, regardless of if I'm able to tap into some type of superpower or not. I don't know. That remains to be seen. This episode is going to be fire. On the health front, Brigham is a guy I met in Fit for Service. He does telemedicine, which many of you have heard of telemedicine. A lot of people don't know exactly how it works. I've had many conversations with Brigham, and finally, I was just like, dude, you got to come on the podcast.

I know you're getting ready to go on Joe Rogan's and potentially, and you know, he's going to blow up. He's already blown up. But I like to nap him first. Sometimes I'm usually coming right in Paul Chex wake and Rogan's wake and Aubrey's wake and anybody else I hear a great podcast guests. I'm like, Hey man, you throw me a bone. Let me get this guy on. Let me get this gal on. That's how I get a lot of my guests. But it's really cool when I get to grab someone first from the big dogs and put them on. And you guys are going to love this one, man.

I mean, Brigham has an incredible backstory. He is one of a handful of people that is trying to fix a broken system from the inside out by doing it better. And I've spoken about that concept before. The idea of, I think it was Brett Weinstein on Rogan's maybe a year ago, what do you win in a revolution? The winners inherit the rubble, right? Or instead of blowing everything up, you replace it with something better. And I'm going to have a number of guests on the second half of the year that are doing just that, whether it's in education, finance, health and wellness, food, any one of these

systems we've seen over the last year clearly needs fixing. And Brigham's got an awesome, awesome thing that he's doing. So excited for this one. There are a number of ways you can support this podcast. First and foremost, check out our sponsors. The sponsors make it possible. And we've got some great new sponsors. Also leave us a five-star rating

because that helps other people see the show, even though it takes you 30 seconds and it's kind of a pain in the ass. Come on, guys. It's not really a pain in the ass. You can do it. You can do it. And that'll be great. You can do it, and that'll

be great. We got Soul CBD, our latest and greatest brand new organic CBD company. Soul was founded by Mike Lee, a world-ranked professional boxer. Yes, that Mike Lee. And Angie Lee, a marketing expert, keynote speaker, and serial entrepreneur after experiencing their own struggles with an autoimmune disorder and anxiety. A lot of people got autoimmune issues now. I think it was Dr. Michael Ruscio on this podcast that said, if you combined all the different categories of autoimmune, it would be the number one disease in the world. So we got that. And of course here, I'm going to say some things about the CBD company that may or may not, they may need to be disclaimed at the end of this advertisement, and that's just fine. But CBD is one of my favorites.

You all know I've been talking about this for a long time. It helped me come off of ibuprofen. I was taking 800 milligrams of ibuprofen, sometimes twice a day when I was fighting, just to get through it because of pain and inflammation in my body. And going to high-dose CBD was one of the things that allowed me to go off of non-steroidal anti-inflammatories permanently. And now the only time I might take that is post-burning man. Use it as a medicine rather than a crutch. CBD is absolutely phenomenal. They are US grown, organically farmed, gluten-free, and they have incredible flavors. It's the best tasting CBD company I've ever used. All their products contain zero THC. So if you're worried about that, if you have a job working for the man, hopefully you don't because they may be requiring shots soon.

It's not too late to get out. But if you do have a job where you are tested for THC, which is a crime in its own right, all these products contain zero, 0.0%. They're all third party lab tested. You can find their COAs on the website. It's physician formulated and backed by science. Consistency is the key. Consistency is the king with anything. That's why I was talking about the Easy Strength program, the 40-day program that is absolute game changer. This is really, like I said, it's one of the most phenomenal tasting CBDs. It doesn't taste like dirt, has no earthy flavor. It's amazing.

I look forward to taking it. My son takes it with me. It reinforces the good habits and consistency because it's not something I have to choke down. They have it available in oil drops, three different strengths, 500 mg, 1,000 mg, and 1,500 mg per bottle. Peppermint, orange, lemon, lime, watermelon, mint.

Watermelon, mint is fire. They got gummies, capsules in 25 milligram. And they also have different types of capsules, which is really cool. They have an alert, a little bit of caffeine. They have dream that has some melatonin. They have relief, chill, immunity, and they have CBD cream, which is a really phenomenal one. I've been using this probably for a month. I had a chance to meet Mike. He was out here and we had a little workout and shot the shit. He'll probably come on the podcast at some point. Just a phenomenal dude. Great story. Also left fighting early because he wanted to save his brain. Got my hand raised right now, even though none of you all can see that. But yeah, I left at

32. He got out early for the same reasons. He made it a bit further in his boxing career. I think he fought for a title. I'm not sure. I got to look that up. I should know that. But anyways, phenomenal dude. Disclaimers are, it's not intended to treat or cure, you know, as a cure or a treatment. Soul's philosophy around efficacy means solving for optionality and choice. Everyone's system is different and there's no standard use that works for everyone. We recommend starting low and going slow. Dedicate time to listen to your body and access and assess how the active compounds of the plant are affecting you. Please consult with your doctor if you have any concerns or medical related questions. Head over to mysoulcbd.com. That's

M-Y-S-O-U-L-C-B-D.com. And apply code KKP at checkout for 15% off everything. Excuse me, do you mind repeating that? mysoulcbd.com, KKP at checkout, 15% off. We're also brought to you by my boys, my favorites, my guys. Organifi.com slash KKP is where you can get it. Organifi is phenomenal. Drew Canole is the founder of this.

He's been on the podcast. Please check that out if you have not. I think he's in Sedona, out of San Diego, and we're trying to get him to Austin. This is just incredible. Most of us could use more energy in our day, but caffeine can only do so much. At some point, we need to look at the root causes of our fatigue. It turns out two main factors in low energy are chronic stress and lack of nutrition. Reganify creates delicious superfood blends that address both of these problems. They use adaptogenic herbs and mushrooms to help balance cortisol levels associated with stress, and they make it easier to add more nutrients into your day. You simply mix a scoop into water or the plant-based milk of your choice and enjoy a natural boost at any time of day. If you've got a busy schedule, it can be hard

to get all your nutrients on the go. Even if you had the time to juice vegetables or eat massive salads, you might not love the taste of dark leafy greens. And you might even have an issue with that, to be perfectly honest. There might be some lectins and other things that your body just doesn't agree with. As we all know, a lack of nutrition can lead to low energy, bad moods, and all sorts of long-term issues. That's why Organifi makes it easy to fill your life with more nutrition using delicious superfood blends. Add a scoop to a glass of water to energize and nourish your day with carefully picked adaptogens, fruits, vegetables, medicinal mushrooms, and more. It's one of the easiest healthy choices you can make each day. Not all plants are created equally. We've heard fruits

and vegetables contain vitamins and minerals we need for a healthy life, but have you heard of adaptogens? These are herbs scoop and that's it. You can make it super quick. I take this with me on the road wherever I'm at. They've got stuff like ashwagandha, reishi mushroom, rhodiola, and much, much more. Check it all out. I highly recommend it over at Organifi. It's one of the best tasting products you can put in your body. It's at Organifi.com slash KKP. That is O-R-G-A-N-I-F-I.com slash KKP. Use code KKP 20% off storewide. That's right, 20% off. We're also brought to you by Lucy.

Lucy was founded by Caltech scientists who were former smokers looking for a better and cleaner nicotine alternative and researched and developed this for three years. They created a nicotine gum with four milligrams of nicotine that has three flavors, wintergreen, cinnamon, and pomegranate And they also have a lozenge and it's funny because I one of the guests that I had on listens to this podcast

I forget who it was and i'm painfully. Sorry. The episode hasn't released yet, but He run he was working out with me and he runs the lozenge because it's just easier It's a less uh less of a thing to pay attention to with the chewing motion A lot of people if you're orally to pay attention to with the chewing motion. A lot of people, if you're orally fixated or not, like the chewing motion. And biting down is actually something that can help you when you work out. Now, I can't recommend that gum's going to do the same thing, but one of the things that they found is that if you use a mouthpiece during strength training and you bite down on it, that actually equals more grip strength, which equals more strength

than any lift. It doesn't matter if it's kettlebell work where you would associate grip strength. It affects bench press. It affects back squat. That's right. Back squat is affected by grip strength, which is affected by your jaw. So if you're chewing Lucy gum, which is a nootropic, and it's going to help you in your strength training, like I've told you for the last several weeks, maybe chomp down on that guy while you're in the gym and see what happens. That's just me talking there. I don't want to have to disclaim that at the end. Certainly not the same as using a mouthpiece, but anywho, he doesn't like the chewing motion. He uses the lozenge in either regard. The central governor of your CNS is your brain. And if you can tune that in to a greater

degree of alertness and awareness, that will impact everything you do from studying, reading, regurgitating, like I'm doing right now, or having a conversation and being able to actively listen, which is something that has been lost on society today. But we're working on that right now. And if you're listening to podcasts, you are a good listener, point blank.

You are not in the TikTok category. You're in the podcast category. So pat yourself on the back. And you can even do it better. You're in the podcast category. So pat yourself on the back and you can even do it better. If you have trouble remembering a lot of the things that I'm talking about and you don't take notes, that's fine. We have show notes and we've also got Lucy gum, which is going to tune you in because of the nicotine, like nothing else. It stacks with all of your favorite nootropics. It stacks with caffeine phenomenally well. And I absolutely love this. This is a phenomenal entry point for people that are first looking to get a nicotine that

is not some of these giant wads of true. You see certain guys running Cope and stuff like that. And again, that's got some other nasties in it. This is a far superior alternative to 99% of the tobacco products made on the planet right now. And the disclaimer, of course, this product contains nicotine derived from tobacco. Nicotine is an addictive chemical.

There we go. All right, that's it. 20% off everything at the store, lucy.co. That is lucy.co. Use the promo code KKP at checkout specifically for my listeners, 20% off. Last but not least, I want to give a shout out to my dudes at Symbiotica. They have bundles now where for every extra bottle you subscribe to,

you get an extra 5% off up to five bottles, which is, do some simple math here, that's up to 25% off. If you add Kyle15 at checkout, you're going to get an extra 15% off. That's 40% off your first month and additional 25% off each month after that. The heart health bundle has been one of my longtime favorites. I put Tasha on that while she was pregnant with Wolf. It contains a methylated B12. It contains D3, K2, CoQ10, which is the best version of each. And it also contains the Omega. All of them are vegan friendly. All of them use mycel technology, which is a phenomenal way of encapsulating every single one of these micronutrients into a fat globule, allowing it

to pass through the stomach acid and actually get into the body. It's one of the most bioavailable products on the planet. Check it out, symbiotica.com, Kyle15 at checkout over there. And without further ado, welcome my brother Brigham to the podcast. We're in, Brigham. Finally, we get to sit down and have this conversation recorded, brother. Yeah, I love it. I'm excited. Let's just jump right in. We're going to discuss your life in the beginning. What was the path and the trajectory that led you to what you're doing today? Man, I've been in healthcare pretty much my whole adult life.

Right out of college, I launched Cialis in North America, which for a lot of people who don't know what that is, that's the PDE5 inhibitor Viagra. It's a 36-hour Viagra is what it was labeled as. So I launched that. I was in big pharma for five years, left that space and ended up in surgical sales for a company called Stryker. So I stood in surgery

with some of the most prominent athlete surgeons in America, the who's who of orthopedic surgery and sports medicine, and got to see behind the curtain on the flaws and the challenges of healthcare, man, and how fucked up it is, honestly. And then my own personal experiences, I was in healthcare, living a life in this healthcare space. And me as an individual started to experience the gaps, the loopholes, the flaws in my own personal life. I was 30 years old on the verge of obesity, diabetes, 24% body fat, trying to do CrossFit workouts every day, seeing a nutritionist. It was my nutritionist who fucking

finally said, hey, man, something's not right. You're 30 years old. You're working out. You're eating right. You're missing something. We need to go get your blood work done. And a primary had never asked for my blood work. None of my other doctors had ever looked at my blood work. And I'm a typical guy. I only go to the doctor when there's an injury or something bad. But you would think at some point in my healthcare journey, somebody would have looked at my blood work. And jump forward, I kind of understand now why they didn't and how the whole system works and why there's these gaps. But we ended up getting my blood work done. It took me three months to get

in with a urologist. My insurance didn't approve the coverage because they didn't think it was necessary because I didn't see a primary first. So I came out of pocket, hundreds of dollars to get in with this big name urologist in Houston. And it took me two weeks. I get a phone call from him and I'm driving. I distinctly remember he says, I don't know if you're fat because you have low testosterone or if you have low testosterone because you're fat. But what I can tell you is you are fat with low testosterone. And so it was the shittiest bedside manner ever.

And it was shitty to hear, but he gave me an answer. Yeah, mic drop. Yeah. That's brutal. So many people find themselves in, it's like the chicken or the egg argument, but if you're never really looking, you can't really see how that, that dovetails down, you know, like, and it's all interconnected. Talk about your brother. Cause I know that was a big influence in your life. Yeah. And we like seeing behind the curtain

and wanting to do what you're doing. We, being in the healthcare space, like I said, and standing in surgeries every day, and my journey is where I started to see where there were issues. So one example I can give you is my brother had passed away from opioids at 27 years old unexpectedly. None of us knew he was addicted. Opioids are the number one killer of Americans ahead of every other disease state. It's a pandemic. And you say to yourself, why would a

doctor write an opioid? And when I was in this healthcare space, I understood why. Doctors would try to write non-abusive, non-addictive pain creams, but insurances wouldn't cover it, or insurance would push back. And if you look at theive pain creams, but insurances wouldn't cover it or insurance would push back. And if you look at the formularies on what insurances cover, they call them PBMs, which is a pharmacy benefit manager. Who owns the pharmacy benefit managers?

The answer is the big fucking insurance companies. If you really begin to connect the dots and look, PBMs are a group of conglomerates that decide what actually gets reimbursed and what is covered by your insurance plan. And they sit there and they, as a group, decide what is best for you. These plans are then, these PBMs are owned by Cigna, Aetna, United, all of them. So the big insurance companies who have the most to gain by not covering your meds are who decide what meds get covered.

And so the reason I'm explaining that out is because that is why you get an opioid. When you come out of a surgical procedure or have an injury or tear an ACL, an opioid costs about $10 a month for that insurance company to cover. They would much rather pay the $10 a month than put you on a non-abusive, non-addictive ketamine pain cream that costs $100 a month. And at the time, this was a decade ago, those were like about 350 bucks a month. But again, it's efficacious medications that aren't addictive, aren't abusive. And I didn't know. I just knew my brother died of opioids. He got

addicted to opioids. Opioids are the my brother died of opioids. He got addicted to opioids. Opioids are the number one killer of man. Why are they prescribing opioids? Until I was approached by my orthopedic surgeons to open our own pharmacy. They came to me and they said, hey, why don't we start a pharmacy? We can legally start a retail pharmacy in the state of Texas. We will sign insurance contracts and it'll be beautiful because we can change healthcare and we can, instead of prescribing these addictive, abusive opioids, we can pivot and we'll write pain creams. And the beauty for us is a pain cream is more profitable from a business standpoint, but it's what's better for the patient. So take profitability

and throw that out the window. Yes, a pharmacy can make a little more money filling that product than they would an opioid, but it's better for you, the patient. And so that was our thought was, man, we'll just, we'll open these pharmacies and we'll focus on this. And what we saw is as soon as a product was covered within six months, the insurance cut the coverage. And sometimes they don't even make you aware.

As a pharmacy owner, you all of a sudden have shipped out, let's just say $200,000 in pain creams. The very next month, you're owed that $200,000 and you've already shipped the product. It's in the patient's hands. The insurance would just come back and say, yeah, we're not going to pay you for that. We decided effective on this date, like backdate it and say, we cut coverage. So that's why there's an opioid pandemic. In a way it is being fed. And they're highly, highly addictive and Purdue has lost, I think they lost billions in a lawsuit where they were found guilty of covering up the information because they knew it was. And they said, somehow all the scientists decided that that was not an addictive substance.

Yeah. Somehow that's what they gathered from all the research and the data points. So when people are like, you know, wearing fucking science stickers on their fanny pack, understand there is authentic real science. And then there's the stuff that comes from the pharmaceutical industry. There's stuff that where if you follow the paper trail, it looks a little different. And that did look a lot different. Because to say that opiates are not addictive, in particular, OxyContin,

that's absurd with what we know now. It's absurd with the actual statistics of death count and the statistics of addiction, which must be far higher. Because nobody's coming out. If you have an opiate addiction and you're going to multiple doctors, like at least they've cracked down on that, but there was people going to multiple doctors to fill their prescriptions.

So you're going through 3X what you normally would of Oxycontin or Percocet or Vicodin or any of these other things. That's a real issue to come back. And none of those guys are- Even how they fixed it was an issue because they all of a sudden overnight the government

essentially and big pharma created an opioid pandemic and got people addicted to these opioids then their plan to cease and stop that opioid addiction was make it really cumbersome and painful for the doctor and their practice to write it increase the liability for the provider to write it.

They moved to what was called triplicate. So the doctor had to write a triplicate in order to prescribe an opioid, which became an obstruction to writing opioids. And then they wanted you to do toxicology screenings, but then the insurance didn't wanna cover the toxicology screenings to make sure that that patient wasn't diverting the meds.

So I could build you a whole chart that would blow your mind, but we got into owning toxicology labs because we realized, hey, some doctors, no matter how much we tell them, are still going to write these opioids. So if you're going to write an opioid or if it's cost prohibitive for that patient to go on to something non-abusive, non-addictive, then shouldn't we at least make sure they're compliant? Shouldn't we at least make sure they're not diverting those medications? And for about two years, insurance covered those toxicology screenings. And then what happened is insurance came in and said, we think you don't need the toxicology screening this much. We think you should only be doing the tox screening maybe once a quarter. And it just backs it down, backs it down.

So your compliance drops. There's no way to really check. Another thing about you mentioned how addictive they are. We can judge, we can gauge. We know the biomarkers that tell us if you're addicted, have a predisposition to become addicted to an opioid. It literally, it's a cytochrome P450 test. So it's a cheek swab.

And this is what we did too. So I'm covering a lot of ground, but we started with pharmacies. Then we got into the lab space. So we had the non-addictive, non-abusive pain creams in the event that the insurance would cover it. If not, you step them down to an opioid, then it's, hey, let's implement some sort of protocol to make sure they're not abusing and let's utilize toxicology screenings. And furthermore, we had a genetic test that was a cheek swab that would tell us, can this patient even utilize the opioid? Because a percentage of patients don't absorb hydrocodone. Like Polynesian, people of Polynesian descent are poor metabolizers of hydrocodone and that's known, but a lot of doctors are still going to write it to them. So they still get the addictive, abusive and the psychoactive effects,

but they don't get the pain relief. And so through this cheek swab, we could tell you, is the patient truly not getting the pain relief and that's why they're upping their dosage and they're asking for more? Or is the patient an abuser? And we could tell you how you're going to metabolize

every medicine on the market, including I'm hugely against antidepressants as much as possible. But those antidepressants, we could use that same genetic test to tell you if Prozac was going to work versus Cymbalta versus whatever the antidepressant may be and give you the statistical likelihood that that medication would work. It's a no-brainer. It's literally a blueprint to you as an individual genetically that tells your provider how to treat you. Insurance quit covering it. So, I mean, it's like any of this stuff that runs up the cost of care in insurance's mind, they're a for-profit held to, they're trying to make their investors happy. And how do they do that?

It's through cutting the cost or increasing your cost, cutting their expenditures and increasing their profitability. That's the only way to make it work. Yeah, and that isn't changing at all, not anytime soon. No. Obviously, there's a whole host of things we can get into in terms of what's failing in medicine. One of the reasons I wanted to have you on is because, obviously, as we've discussed over the last year, we've seen a number of things that have had cracks in the system from

education to finance to healthcare to our food, they're really being exposed right now. And I see your model of healthcare being something as a way of the future. Genetic testing is phenomenal. I mean, and there's guys I want to have Len May on to discuss just the genetics behind cannabis and cannabinoid receptors within the body and like really fineuning that. So

it's not like, oh man, I had a bad experience with pot. It's like, no, no, no. This strain will do this for you. This strain will do that for you. This CBD, by this means of administration won't work, but by this means it will, all that stuff. It would totally make sense though too, what you're saying, because especially with an an edible it's going to be absorbed through this uh through the cytochrome p450 uh pathway so because it's it's consumed through the digestive tract so it's the same as a pill it's a medicine marijuana is a medicine that's being proven and you know medicine can be efficacious and it can blow up in in your face if it's not utilized properly. Yeah. So I see this from all things, whether it's plant medicine or standard medicine.

And then of course, the future of medicine, which a lot of what you guys are doing between peptides, hormones, and all these different things that actually can shift your state of wellbeing very rapidly. I want to dive into that, but I'm looking at that genetics piece. your state of wellbeing very rapidly. I want to dive into that, but I'm looking at that genetics piece. That's such a cool piece and really dive it in. Talk about some of the differences. You guys started off in the pharmacy game. What led you to want to have a practice and start to work in the telemedicine space? So one of the things that led us to opening a practice was seeing the amount of pressure that was being put on providers.

So I'm a serial entrepreneur. I went from opening a pharmacy that was part of the insurance game where we worked with United, Cigna, Aetna and begged for them to pay for your meds and negotiated contracts and went back and forth and took beatings and all of those things. We also owned a lab that did genetics and toxicology. And then lastly, we got into blood

work. So we would go educate providers on the importance of a comprehensive blood panel. I would tell them my personal story. I didn't realize till I was 30 years old that I didn't have to be obese. I didn't have to be pre-diabetic. I didn't have to be all these things. It went undiagnosed. And you say, well, why? The reason why is the average primary care has eight minutes with a patient in America, eight minutes, because they are billing the insurance. And in order for them to stay alive and viable as a practice, they can't spend more than eight minutes with you. So they are turning and burning patients. If by luck during that eight minutes, we could talk them into pulling your blood and taking a comprehensive blood panel, which most of them won't do because they don't have the time. Even if we can get their ear and bend their ear

and get them to do it, which we did when I owned the blood lab, what we saw is the insurance companies over time, let's say I go and educate a big orthopedic surgeon on what the importance is of proper blood work and knowing that patient from a biological level and how that can help with the healing and recovery and regenerative medicine and all of those things. So the doctor buys in and he does it. He or she will start getting a letter from the insurance carriers. And this is what we saw. So any provider that started pulling comprehensive blood within six months gets a nasty letter saying, hey, you're basically on United's naughty list. You, Dr. So-and-so are increasing our cost of care. If you continue to run these comprehensive panels, we will have to reconsider your contract. And as a primary care in the state

of Texas, if you lose Blue Cross Blue Shield, you're out of business. That's 40% of your payer mix. If you lose United, you're out of business. So they're terrified. And so it's such a complicated thing to explain. What forced us essentially to launch into this model was I realized there's no working with the system.

The system is so fucked. There is no fixing it. And it's like the only way to fix it is to take yourself out of their game, to go to a cash pay model, to reduce the cost of care, to manufacture the products. Think Amazon meets Uber meets healthcare.

Bring it all in, but with regenerative, preventative medicine, most regenerative and preventative stuff's not covered by the insurance. Most testosterone therapies, growth hormone therapies, any of the peptides, almost all of that's considered investigatory by the insurance company. Stem cells aren't covered by the insurance companies. Amniotic tissues, placental derived tissues aren't covered. We can go down the list. It's a lot easier to say what is covered than what isn't. Yeah, that's bananas.

I mean, it doesn't, it's bananas. It's not like, I mean, I think understanding this from the inside out, it's not hard to see why, you know, like profit-driven model. Okay, I get it. But at the same time, it's really unfortunate because we've never been fatter as a society. Childhood obesity is on the rise. Allergies is on the, you name it. There isn't a single thing that we look at that hasn't risen over the last 30, 40,

50, 60 years, a hundred years, right? Everything has jumped. And testosterone. Yeah. All poor health models and sperm for that matter, but anything you would gauge for poor health is through the roof. And so clearly that model is broken. And one of the things that I loved, I mean, the first time I went through this with you guys with Ways to Well, I had a 45-minute conversation with somebody who knew just as much as any healthcare practitioner or functional medicine doctor I'd ever worked with. And that just blew me away. I was like, oh, I thought I'd have to educate. And this is the reason I don't want to do this or that.

And this is the reason I'm not worried about LDL versus HDL, you know, things like that. Like, Hey, all right, I've got a whole host of books I could send you. And it was like, no, no, no, we're all on the same page here. And that was really special to see that. Also really, really special to see like the, the total cost out of pocket, I think for, for me was, was around a couple hundred bucks a month for a quarter, It was like, holy shit, that's phenomenal. Obviously that's going to be wide ranging for different people depending on what their needs are, but I was like, this is completely affordable. Absolutely. And that's the goal is to make it affordable. One of the things you said that it triggered

this thought before I forget and lose my train of thought is preventative medicine and the pandemic of diabetes in the United States. So for an insurance carrier, they have the analytics. It's an eightfold increase in the cost of care to keep someone alive once they've transitioned from pre-diabetes to diabetes. So you'd say, why in the hell would they not treat pre-diabetes with metformin, with testosterone therapy, with any of these things that can help that patient drop that weight and really look at them at a biological level and practice preventative care

because they could save in the long run. And the answer is, as you peel back the layers to the onion, the average person gets their health insurance from their employer. The average person switches employment every three to four years. So if I'm UnitedHealthcare

and I'm covering your testosterone therapy and your peptides and all these preventative, investigatory and quotation meds, I'm basically setting you up to save Cigna or Aetna money in three to four years when you switch jobs, right? They kick the can down the road.

We'll let that become Cigna's problem or we'll let that be Blue Cross's problem. But we're not gonna risk our profits today for Wall Street today for the theory of tomorrow that we're gonna save eight times our cost on this patient. And so that's one of the flaws with that whole insurance-based system. With us, we can take the time to talk to a patient for 45 minutes because we're not at the will of the insurance companies. We can sit there and I say

it's the three Cs. We have to be cost-effective, which is one of the things you brought up. We're trying to make this affordable to the single mom, affordable to the dad who's working the night shift. I want to bring boutique concierge care to the masses. I want to bring it where it's not just you and the Joe Rogans and the Aubrey's of the world that can afford it, where it's the average Joe, the average Jill that can afford this. It has to be convenient. That's another thing that we're doing at Ways to Well. We've pivoted away from a brick and mortar setup. All of your meds are mailed to your doorstep. Your consults are virtual and digital. You can do them from the comfort of your own home. You can do them on your lunch break, whatever makes sense for you,

and we can make that work. And as we progress, we're going to move more to an app based system where my hope is you can just text us. And if you text us and have a question, instantaneously, you get a video tutorial that explains in layman's terms, the answer to your question, or the system automatically refills your prescriptions as long as all of your data is in line and we have it just to make it simplistic. And then the last is it needs to be comprehensive. And that's where the current system's failing people as well. It's not comprehensive. You come in saying, I have no sex drive. Your doctor puts you on Viagra, right?

He's got to get you in and out of there. Okay, well here, take Viagra. Well, that doesn't increase your sex drive. That just helps your ability to get an erection. Like let's look at the root cause. And you can't do that without pulling a comprehensive blood panel. And you can't pull a comprehensive blood panel because the insurance companies are going to hammer you. It's what came first, the chicken or the egg. So the only way to fix that was to step out of that market space with Ways to Well, and that's what we're trying to do. It's cash pay. It's convenient.

It's mailed to your doorstep. And we'll spend as much time as needed, on average, 30 to 45 minutes with a patient. Yeah, it's phenomenal. I mean, I learned every time I have a call, I learned more about myself. And it's cool. I'll dive a bit into the personal here because I've had two blood draws now. I think we've been working together for about six months, give or take, but we knew each other before that, obviously in Fit for Service. Totally forget that sometimes. You remember in Fit for Service, that's how we got to meet each other. So that was dope. Heading on to Off for that. Which Fit for Service was awesome. I would highly recommend that. And yeah, at the time, I've mentioned this loosely, but as Cech mentions, all stress leads to stress in the body if it's chronic,

right? Period. It doesn't matter if it's your wife, doesn't matter if it's squats. If you're doing anything over, then it moves from acute into chronic stress. And those stress piles create physiological responses, which can lower testosterone, increase cortisol, you name it. When quarantine hit, I hadn't been working out a whole lot. I had a lot of things happen and it was like, fuck the weight of the world, right? I remember throwing my back out, just bending over to grab something off the floor. I was fucking 38 years old. I'm like, what is happening right now? And I couldn't lift heavy. I couldn't do a lot of things. I could barely even do yoga. And we did that initial blood work and we

saw a lot of things were off. There was quite a few. And I was like, well, yeah, that's kind of indicative of where I'm at. But for example, liver enzymes were through the roof. A lot of things that I'd never seen before, even when I was at ASU and partying and treating my body like an asshole, didn't have liver enzymes that high, you know, and through the four months of working with the different peptides, TRT and stem cells included, you know, just on the acute, you know, knee level and neck level from having a broken neck, all of those things with rehab and actually doing the work, working out, getting to bed on time, eating properly, there wasn't a single marker that came back when we

looked at this most recent blood work that hadn't improved significantly. Everything jumps through the roof. Everything improved. And to put that into plain quality of life context, I'm now able to work out two or three days a week again. I'm doing rehab every week. I'm playing games like pickleball, which I couldn't have played for a long time just because I couldn't twist effectively. And I certainly couldn't do it fast. You know, so pretty much every marker

that I would say that matters and on the blood panel to back that up, but also just on the, how I express each day, you know, like what's it like getting out of bed in the morning? How much energy do I have? Am I effective in the gym or am I just trying to ease my body into it? Like I'm fucking crushing shit. I'm dead lifting heavy. I'm benching heavy. I'm doing a lot of things that I couldn't do before. Everything feels better from top to bottom, from how my brain works to how my body feels

to how I recover. I'm, I think, sub 8% body fat for the first time since I was fighting. Hell yeah. That's a fucking good feeling. Yeah, that's awesome. That's a really good feeling to have. There's no doubt about it, brother.

And you're an elite level athlete. You see even bigger improvement in markers of the average Joes. I mean, a lot of these guys, they, they, and girls, they just don't know. They have, they have no idea. And I can't tell you how many times I've heard, well, I mean, I'm tired. We'll ask the questions and we'll fill out the questionnaire and they'll say, I'm a little tired. Oh, my sex drive's okay. You know, blah, blah, blah. And then when you start talking to them and dialoguing, the patient opens up and they say, well, yeah, I'm tired. After three o'clock,

I'm just faded and I'm so exhausted and I don't make it to the gym. And, you know, they'd start spilling the beans. And the truth is you're living a subpar life. Like you just have gotten used to the shittiness. And it's like, we can, you don't have to live that life. That doesn't have to be the case. That doesn't have to be the case. You should be able to have energy in your 40s. You should definitely be able to have energy in your mid 30s and all the way through the rest of your life. There's no reason why you can't recover, heal, be energized, have an active sex life, feel like you did in your 20s. That's the goal. At Wasteful, that's one of the things we do a little bit different

is we took the average biomarkers of a healthy 22-year-old male, 22-year-old female, what were we at in our prime? And we try to get you there. We try to get you on all these biomarkers back to where you would have been in your essentially early to mid 20s.

Yeah, you're not comparing to the, well, it's normal in an obese society. Yeah. The challenge in a urology practice today is the number they use for low testosterone is based off a huge age demographic. I don't know the exact, it's like 20 to 70 something. It's a huge, so we all know after 40, your testosterone plummets. And so when they say, oh, well, you're 350, you're fine. You're not low. We know factually, we were walking around at plus 1500 just 20 years ago.

Now the average male, I don't know what they're at, but it's plummeted. 30 million men a year are diagnosed with low T. It's a pandemic too. Is it our diet? Is it the environment? Is it our lifestyle? Work schedule, sleep. I mean, it's probably some combination of everything. Sunlight versus this light we've got here indoors. Quite likely. I mean, through the 200 plus episodes I've done, especially with the focus on health and fitness, you know, there,

there's, there can be no doubt that there's truth into everyone I've had on from the, the Paul checks who's figured, you know, just about every damn thing out to somebody like Matt Maruca, who specializes in understanding how light impacts the body. You know, all of those things are there. What's our workaround,around you know like i can put on blue blockers indoors and not take in a ton of extra blue light at night and things like that that's not the same as as you know working in a garden outside and going and hunting for my food it's just not the fucking same yeah and i'm not going to bridge that gap because of the responsibilities of the modern world so i think about this and this isn't like for people

that are first tuning into this, like, yes, I take TRT and I fucking love it. I started with testosterone when I was very young in order to play college football and to increase my chances of making it to the NFL, which is my lifelong goal. Coming off of that, which I have at times, there's not a whole lot of wiggle room there for me. My body doesn't produce a lot. So I'm not, this isn't a wholesale prescription for everybody needs to get on test right now. You're going to love it, brother. Yeah. That's not it. I've had a number of people that I've put through to you guys who are still younger and they came back with a ton of low testosterone, not a ton of low. They came back with a low T count. They didn't want to go on testosterone replacement therapy. And you guys have workarounds for that. That's still increased sperm count and still get

them, still leave them with the ability to have more children and all those question marks that people have. So it's not, there's no one size fits all with any of this stuff. And I think what's beautiful about what you guys are doing is because you're not using an insurance model, you have the kitchen sink of what's available today. You have the best of right now medicine. You have the best of the future of medicine. And I want to dive into peptides and things like that, but I just want to set the table,

let people know like this isn't a, hey, take the stack that I'm on. We try to tell people all the time, we're not a low T-center. What the low T-centers are doing is dangerous, and it's not healthcare. It's sick care. It's the same thing. They're charging $30 a testosterone shot.

They're giving everyone the exact same thing. They're not managing your hematocrit. They're not managing your estrogen levels. They're not really truly looking at you at a biological level and optimizing you. It's pretty much a one trick pony. And we use an array. I mean, because, so we also, in order to get the cost where I needed to get it,

I had to build a million dollar plus facility. I mean, we have a 503A sterile pharmacy, 26 pharmacists and pharmacy techs on staff, a huge team of people. We compound everything in our sterile room in-house. So we can make anything under the sun, including proprietary blends of testosterone, of peptide therapy, of IGF-1, of a lot of these different molecules that people are now utilizing for anti-aging. I was just listening to David Sinclair

and there was a lot of controversy. I'm sure you heard on like metformin and athletic performance and does it help? Does it hurt? What does it do for longevity? Because the longevity studies on like a product like metformin. So we have several products that include metformin.

We have a product that has metformin, resveratrol, an array of the anti-aging molecules, but it's all pharmaceutical grade products that we have to independently verify and prove that it's what we say it is. And what we're seeing, like the numbers with metformin that David Sinclair went over

is a diabetic patient numbers with metformin that David Sinclair went over is a diabetic patient put on metformin has a longer life expectancy than a person who was never diabetic. It's staggering what they're seeing with metformin. And this is a product that's been on the market 25 years. It's utilized to treat diabetes and prediabetes. Um, but it helps with cellular turnover. There's an array of different things that it's doing in the body. And the only knock that it has against it today was a study that was released maybe two years ago that they talked about on Joe Rogan that was basically saying metformin hinders athletic performance. Right. And so, and then that, that, that, again, just to context is super important, right? So there is the conversation of what is best for an athlete. And then there's a conversation of what is best for the general population. Right. And those are two different conversations. There's some overlay there, right? Like we look to some of the best in sport to learn, like, what is the best available therapy like if i start using um you know

compression or vibration percussion instruments to help recover faster or ice baths for example like a fucking cold bath since wim hof came off i'm like yeah this is of all the things i've ever tried one of the most important investments i've ever made in my life is to have my own cold bath um what do you get at temperature wise? I'm just curious. Well, I use the cold plunge. It's lowest temperatures, 39, but the water moves. So I found that to be even colder than 33 in a chest freezer because it's moving. You don't really adjust to it at any point, right? But it's at 39 around the clock. So, you know, the point is like, we can look to the best athletes in the world, see what they're doing. And then we can track that back to general population. And I'm somewhere in

between that. I'm probably closer to pro athlete, but I'm not nowhere near. I was when I was a pro athlete and due to injury and a whole host of other shit and a lot of mileage on this vehicle, I do share quite a few, you know, things, especially at the beginning of last year, where I'm looking at like, hey man, I'm actually feeling like most people on this planet right now. And so I just want to be clear on that context of that. You guys are doing stuff for everybody. It's not just the pro athletes. It's not just me and Tim Kennedy and these other guys. It is a lot of general population people and you've got the route for each of them. No, for sure.

And I would say the lion's share of who we treat are the average Joes. There's so many weekend warriors, triathletes, jujitsu guys. I mean, everyone wants to be an athlete, whether they're an athlete or not. And we're so much more active. I feel like there's, especially in Austin, there's a huge population. And so for ways to well, we're in the entire state of Texas.

My pharmacy revive is in 43 States. So we can ship meds in 43 States throughout the U S. And a lot of who we treat are the weekend warriors are the average Joes. We do work with high end athletes. We have been very fortunate to meet people like you and Tim. And just through word of mouth, we've gotten to work with some really cool people. But we work with people from all walks of life. The interesting thing about the metformin was even in athletes, the study, what it really showed was it's about a 5% decrease. And the decrease had no biological measurement to explain why. And when they interviewed the athletes, it was that they had less energy. And so they felt like they couldn't perform as much. And so what David

Sinclair talks about is take the metformin later in the day. Don't take it before your workout. And you won't experience that decrease in performance or learn to power through the lack of energy knowing that you're increasing your longevity. But 5% in an athlete population, I get it. Like that's the difference between you making, you know, winning or losing, you know. Yeah, winning or not getting a medal. People are battling for 1% difference.

Yeah. Yeah. And I, you know, I ran, I've done one round of metformin and was aware of that, that conversation. I know Peter Atiyah has talked about, you know, both sides of that coin in the past. And, um, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm fascinated by it. And I was like, let me just, let me just run it here. And it's funny because I was just starting out with the heavier and harder training again. And so it was really hard to gauge, you know, I was out of shape by my standards, not out of shape by standard standards. And, and, you know, I just didn't feel any type of hindrance from it, you know, especially because I'm out of the game. I'm not like I'm competing anymore. And when it comes to that, I mean, that was just like, there was no question that that had an impact on me positively.

There's no question that that influenced my carbohydrate uptake, my metabolic rate. Like all of those things were improved because I still trained while I was doing it. And yeah, Sinclair's a funny guy, you know, because here he is on the forefront of studying longevity and at the same time taking statins and kind of getting in the weeds a little bit when it comes to standard Western medicine that I'm not about. But I appreciate his work and I appreciate the fact that he's a really good spokesman for the stuff that he's studying and working on. The beauty of it is people are at least discussing longevity, right? The fact that he's a really good spokesman for the stuff that he's studying and working on.

The beauty of it is people are at least discussing longevity. Linear age, I think because of people like him, people are realizing linear age and biological age aren't the same thing. How many revolutions we've had around the sun doesn't dictate our biological age. Some people are at much lower biological ages because they take care of themselves. They stay active.

They've increased their life expectancy. They choose to treat. They choose to get ahead of it and keep their hormones optimal, keep their lifestyle optimal, keep their diet optimal. They intermittent fast. They ice bath.

They do all these things. All those stressors and treatments are, it's proven that it takes years off your average biological age and increases years to your life expectancy. Yeah, and quality of life. That's really it. It's funny, you get into the transhumanists and all that. I'm not going to David Icke on this podcast today,

but there is a strong push for, oh, by this date, we'll live to 150. And by this date, and it's like, everybody who's in that camp, it's kind of a funny topic because as these predictions are coming out, we see that, I think, not long ago, we saw the first generation of kids that were expected to live not as long as their parents. That was what was not predicted, but what we were facing. Like this is the reality of where we're at, right? And so I think about things like that.

And it's like, I don't care to live to 150 or 200. I want to live a hundred really quality years. I want to die when I'm supposed to die and not worry about that and say yes to the next place and inherit a new body and not, in my own humble opinion, not worry about everything I've done in this body, but trade in at that point and be cool with that. But the last years of my life, I want to enjoy. I don't want to be stuck on a walker or in a scooter or any of that shit. Like I want to fucking live fully and make sure that even though I've put a lot of miles on this vehicle early on, that I'm doing everything I can right now. So that 60, 70, 80, 90 looks really good. And I

moved pain three throughout the world. You're triggering a thought, like one of the things that made me really focus on this space when we were talking about my family history is my dad's diabetic. My brother who passed away was diabetic. My sister's diabetic. My grandparents were diabetic. They also all struggled with obesity. They also, and my dad would make these comments when I was younger

and he was overweight was, well, I'm going to die fat and happy. Well, I'm going to die fat and happy. And now seeing him transition to his sixties, that's young. I have friends in their sixties that run marathons that are shredded, that look like professional athletes. Mark Sisson's in his sixties, but dude's playing an ultimate Frisbee and surfing and stand up paddleboarding. And he's shredded. Yeah, it's amazing. And I see the choices that he has made has put him in a, he's not very mobile.

He's got bad knees. It's a tragedy. It's sad. It's sad to see. And he doesn't have to be that way. And now for him, he wants to fix it. But now you've dug such a deep hole, right? It's easier to prevent these diseases. It's easier to get ahead of it when you're in your 30s and 40s and 50s than it is to wait for the ship to start sinking before you decide to patch the holes.

Like let's fix the ship now so it doesn't sink. Like when we're in the middle of the ocean, like there's a better way to do this. And it's not really even people's fault because they, a lot of people don't know where to find the resources, where to get the education, where to understand. And that's one of the things I want to do with Ways to Wealth too, is include the patient in the journey. Because for my dad, for instance, he's a stubborn old man now. And he's like, well, that doctor was an asshole in his white coat telling me what to do. And it's very authoritarian.

And I don't think in the world we live in today, patients respond well to that. And so for me, I wanna make this, this is a team. We're here to help. We're just, all we are is a resource. You decide what's best for your body. We're gonna give you we are is a resource. You decide what's best for your body. We're going to give you the tools and the educational material and have a lively conversation to educate you,

but we aren't ever going to dictate to a patient what to do, what not to do. That's not what we do at WasteWell. At WasteWell, what we do is work hand in hand with the patient and allow the patient to drive their own journey because that's the only way you get real buy-in. If you've got somebody who's on the verge of morbid obesity, a pill's not going to fix that. It's going to take a lot more than that. And it's going to take their buy-in to get there. But with their buy-in and with them feeling like they're driving their journey, it's crazy the results we've seen. Yeah, I can imagine. Let's talk about some of the peptide therapies that are out and things of that nature. I mean, I've had a couple of doctors on previously that went down the rabbit hole maybe a year, two years ago. So it's been a while since

we've talked peptides. Talk about some of the important peptides that you guys work with and what's on the cutting edge when it comes to this stuff, because these seem to be of, of all the injectables for that matter, some of the most profoundly beneficial and least side effect medicines on the planet. Yeah. I know. Yeah. So when we, for, we've been in the pharmacy business cash pay model for over five years. So in the early days, a lot of people were using, they were using GHRP2 and 6 and samoraline and a lot of the more old peptides, I would call them now. Some people could not handle those hunger pains. I mean, it definitely increases your hunger level.

The new ones, it's not really new anymore, but CJC, epimoralin, and we're also utilizing BPC-157. We've had really, really, really good results with BPC-157. So BPC-157 is going to work on tendon, ligament, joint tissue. I think one of the first, I know I've spoken about it before, but a quick refresher. I think one of the ugly science experiments they did was they severed the Achilles of rats and then they either gave them BPC-157 or they didn't for the control group. And the rats that had the BPC-157 healed like six times faster. Their Achilles healed.

Yeah, it's great. I can give you a human example of that. And again, this is a anecdotal example. I'm not a clinician. I own Ways to Well. I have clinicians on staff. I am not a medical provider. So this is not medical advice. But Tim Kennedy, who did a testimonial for us,

and so I'm sharing something that he's already shared and that you could resource on our Instagram or website. But Tim came to us with a torn ACL and torn MCL. And his ACL was fully torn, his MCL was partially torn. And I told Tim, hey, it's medicine, not magic. We could hit you with stem cells and BPC, but it's not going to reattach a ligament, but your partial tear, it could definitely help. And I didn't want to over-promise. We treated him with BPC. We gave him a one round of stem cells prior to surgery. And we got him in with a great orthopedic surgeon in San Antonio who took TRICARE, which is Tim's military background. When they went in for the surgery, the doctor said, dude, what the fuck are you doing?

Like, I don't know, I've never seen this. Your MCL is fully healed, fully healed. And Tim was a big time skeptic. When he first came in, he was kind of aloof and like, I don't know, are you guys legit? And you know, all of that. Now he's like, whatever I can do to help y'all. Like he did a testimonial for us talking about BPC

and how he, you know, they call it the Wolverine molecule for a reason. It helps with healing. It helps reduce inflammation. So was it the BPC? Was it the placental derived tissues that what people are calling stem cells? I don't know, cause we hit him with both,

but he had tremendous results. And then when he came back in for his follow-up with us for his round two, he said, I know this sounds crazy, but my fucking shoulders stopped hurting and my elbow stopped hurting. He's like, dude, these are injuries I've had for like eight years. What's going on? And we were, we were explaining to him like, this is, they will, these treatment modalities will find their way to the site of inflammation and injury. That's, that's the only, the only, the only way to explain it. We've seen tremendous things. A lot of things we can't make claims on because we are a healthcare provider,

but I have tons and tons of individual patient testimonials of huge improvements. And BBC, patient testimonials of huge improvements through these pesticides. And BPC-157 is the same amino acid structure as gastric juice. It's a compound that your body recognizes. It's not some weird foreign substance. It's something that is inherently in nature, and you're just using it differently within the body to mitigate healing, upregulate collagen synthesis, and all the other ways that we start to rebuild the connective tissue.

It's phenomenal stuff. And there are, to my opinion, in my experience, zero side effects from it. Absolutely phenomenal. A lot of the other ones you mentioned as older, like the GHRPs and things like that, compared to the newer, like the CJCs and the ipamirelin, those are all going to stimulate growth hormone response. Is that correct? Correct. Correct. And that's, so the benefit of, I mean, well, people are pretty educated, I think,

for the most part now on growth hormone and what it does in the body, but it's essentially the fountain of youth. It's one of the most important things that we can keep healthy. And it stimulates your natural, which is a benefit versus taking outside growth hormone, which at some point your body shuts off your natural growth hormone production. So even for the guys who may be taking growth hormone, they can take the CJC

in conjunction with it and keep their natural growth levels high. Kind of like what we use HCG for in guys who are on testosterone. A lot of guys say, oh man, I don't want to go on testosterone because I don't want to mess up my natural testosterone level. And so I can't tell you how many times I get that. I have to explain to people, you're low. You're already low. Your natural testosterone level is messed up. If we treat, it's not messed up. You're already screwed. You're already at a deficit. It's not going to crash it. You're already not producing. We're going to improve your overall testosterone and your overall bioavailable testosterone. If you come off, the worst thing that happens is you go back eventually to where you were. We're not going to, we'll re-kickstart your natural testosterone

levels, but you're never going to get to where so many people say, well, through diet and this and that, you could increase by maybe 20, 30%. Okay. Well, if you're at 300, you're at now 390, you're still low. You're still like on the low end of the spectrum versus if we treat with testosterone, we could get you to 1,000 to 1,200 to the levels you were in your 20s. Yeah, and that's something that I frequently explain

to people is that testosterone isn't necessarily, and this is just on one particular thing of a whole host of things that you guys understand very well, right? But on testosterone specifically, it's not, you know, I want to get jacked and enter into, you know, the International Bodybuilding Federation and get on stage. Like it has nothing to do with that. I mean, certainly that's some people's goals, but really, you know, the, the side effect of that is increased energy and mental energy, you know, like the, to feel young again, isn't just so I can move and lift weights and run and do all that stuff. Like I actually

feel younger mentally from testosterone. And that's, that's a pretty cool thing, you know, that doesn't get a whole lot of play when people think about it, they're thinking about sex drive or recovering from workouts, or maybe even just the ability to start working out. If you don't have enough energy to work out, that's a pretty big hindrance. It's life-changing. For me, it was truly life-changing and that's partially what spurred the evolution of what we do. When I finally got treatment, I went from 25% to 7%. I mean, I was eating clean. I was seeing a nutritionist. I was doing a lot more than I'm doing today when I'm busy running these companies, but I dropped to 7%. And all we did was optimize my hormones. And it was a difficult conversation. The urologist at the time, I remember him telling me exactly

what I said, what everybody says to us, well, I don't want to mess up my natural testosterone. And he's just blatantly, brutally honest. He's like, your natural testosterone's fucked. It's already fucked. We're not going to screw it up any more than it already is. He said, let me explain to you what happens if you don't treat. Don't treat. Don't do anything. You're going to continue to be fat. You're going to continue to put on body weight. You're going to continue to struggle with sex drive, with motivation, with energy levels. You're going to increase your risk of heart attack, stroke, diabetes, all of the major killers of man. Or we treat. We get you to an optimal level. We drop the body fat. We lean you down. We help you live a healthier, happier lifestyle. We reduce the risk of diabetes, heart attack, and stroke,

and the major killer is a man. What do you want to do? What makes sense to you? And so many people have it in their head that HRT, hormone replacement therapy, is a PED, it's performance enhancing drugs. And it's kind of an unfair thing. Unless you're competing at a professional level

with other athletes the you need to be you you want to be healthy you want to be at your best and and i would even argue with athletes like i look at the ufc and i go man how is it safe and i'm you can tell me your opinion on this i'm like how is it safe to put like you look at vitor Belfort as he got older versus Pride and these other guys who could take testosterone while they're competing. Shel Sonnen, for instance, was like one of the last guys I remember being able to take testosterone. And once they told him they couldn't,

it seems to me like this guy in his 40s is at a major deficit against this 22-year-old kid. He's walking around at 1,200. There's a million arguments there. So I don't understand why they don't just put a cap. Don't come in under over 1200. That's a whole rabbit hole. Cause there's, there's, there's, you know, there's the argument for why should the 40 year old still be fighting or all this stuff. And I remember there was an article that Fox put out right when the UFC went on Fox and they were saying of all the major sports, why is it that six former champions guys would won the title or on TRT, you know, and have it a testosterone use exemption. And that was a

funny article because it explained, you know, it kind of showed it from all angles, but that's its own, that's its own discussion, right? We're not, I mean, it's its own discussion in sport use, but outside of that, you know, as we talk to former pro athletes and look, man, I mean, getting hit in the head takes its toll too. You know, a lot of people coming out of fighting and they're like, oh, you know, I never took anything when I was fighting and I don't want to now. And it's like, well, depending on how many concussions you have, you might not be producing anything. Yeah. What I'm trying to say is we have to do a better job of destigmatizing TRT and HRT. And a lot of people call it hormone replacement therapy.

I don't like to call it that. I like to call it hormone optimization therapy. We're not replacing. We're trying to optimize you. We're trying to get you where you need to be. And maybe we can do that without testosterone. We may be able to do that with Clomid or HCG or some of these compounds that boost your natural testosterone levels. But so many patients are worried that they're

taking a steroid or they're taking a PED. And it's a tragedy because what they fail to realize is if you had depression or you had something you would treat, right? You go to a psychiatrist or psychologist. This is a disease. It puts you at a disadvantage and there's way more risk factor to not treating than there is to treating. Yeah, I agree wholeheartedly. Let's talk thymus and beta and some of these other ones that I'd only learned about in working with you guys because I'd never even heard of that before. Thymus and beta four, is that it? Tell me about that. We'll say, again, I'm not a clinician,

but same thing, we're using that to help patients with the healing process, especially patients with acute injuries. But we've seen phenomenal results in daily use. Most of these are injectables. We also make a BPC, before I forget, that is an oral for people who have GI issues, gut inflammation. Mickey gut syndrome, yeah.

And so we're utilizing that on some big name athletes who have GI issues and we're seeing good results. Thymacin is utilized in conjunction with BPC a lot of times with us because we see some synergies there utilizing those two products together. But we could go on for days about all these peptides and what they can do and how they can help.

I don't know, are you on? I don't know your- Yeah, yeah, Thymus and Beta. And have you seen any- BPC-157 and then IGF-1 I just started. And that's a funny one because in the longevity space, there's been arguments from Rhonda Patrick's camp versus Peter Atiyah's camp on like, increased IGF-1 led to cancer in mice or chronically low IGF-1. And Peter talked about

that bell curve of if you're way low, that's going to lead to disease. If you're way high, that's going to lead to disease. But you're way high, that's going to lead to disease. But there are times in our life where we secrete very high amounts of IGF-1. When we're kids and adolescents, if we break a bone, our body's going to secrete more. So we're used to shorter bursts at high levels being completely fine. And the way I understood this, and this is reading for people who really want to dive into endocrinology and things like that. The anabolics series from Dr. William Llewellyn, we'll link to it in the show notes, Jose. Thank you, brother. Was a fantastic entry point for me to understand. And I never really knew how valuable those books were. But when I went on Peter Atiyah's podcast,

The Drive, and I asked him that, because we were discussing all this, he's like, oh yeah, William Llewellyn's the guy. Like he totally vouched for him. And I's podcast, The Drive, and I asked him that because we were discussing all this. He's like, oh yeah, William Llewellyn's the guy. He totally vouched for him. I was like, all right, Peter Atiyah says that, then cool. William Llewellyn's a dude. But it's a fantastic way to learn about a lot of these different things. And he covers a lot on peptides as a doctor, and we'll dive into that to really bridge the gap on information. But what I understood about insulin-like growth factor, LR3, is growth hormone would not have been named growth hormone. Growth hormone would have had a different name. Growth hormone would have been IGF-1's name, had they understood that first. And what happens is growth hormone, as we have it named, meets with insulin in the liver to create IGF-1. And the LR3 is just a longer acting, stays in the system longer.

So they add that onto it to keep it available in the body. But IGF-1 is really what's going to help burn fat, increase protein synthesis, and as well recovery, as well as connective tissue. And I fucking love this stuff. It is absolutely phenomenal. Yeah, and again, I'm not a clinician, but I do know meeting with our... So when we treat a patient, we put everyone in a room and we do chart reviews. And we've got a urologist who provides oversight.

We've got a team of nurse practitioners. We have a pharmacist, everyone in one room talking about the pros and cons of treatments, what we're seeing, what the benefits are. And one of the things, I'm bro science, right? So I don't know. I'm not a clinician. And I said, well, why aren't we doing growth hormone? Why aren't we doing it? And one, growth hormone is thoroughly regulated and hard to get, which is a whole nother topic in itself. But the other thing is, if you take outside growth hormone, you're crashing your natural growth hormone potentially. And through the peptides, you're crashing your natural growth hormone potentially. And through the peptides, we can boost your natural growth through CJC, boost your natural GH levels, but then also boost what you're trying to get to anyway through IGF-1 and R3.

And so you don't get the suppression of the natural GH levels. And that's one of the reasons that we decided to utilize the IGF-1 and R3 is in theory, we treat you with the CJC, we boost your natural GH. It ends up down the line becoming IGF-1. But in the meantime, we're also treating you with IGF-1 and R3 to optimize what you're looking to achieve. I love it. I love it. We certainly rabbit hole some peptides. You guys also being your own compounding pharmacy can still make standard medicine that most people might be coming from. So if they have regular prescriptions,

stuff that's kind of out of my wheelhouse, that could still be made available to them if they switch over to your model. And another point that I wanted to bring up was like, you talk about how hard it is to get blood work done from a general practitioner and have it covered. Follow-ups would be that much harder, right? So like, I mean, every three months I'm getting a blood draw. For the first time, I mean, it's weird to say it. The only other time I did that was in the UFC because I had fights and you had blood worker fights.

But even still, that wasn't to the degree of what we're looking at now. Like what we're looking at now every three months is really comprehensive. We're checking on zinc and magnesium levels and all sorts of stuff. And you guys also provide pharmaceutical grade supplements in addition to the prescription medication. That's top tier. It's top of the line. And like I said, there wasn't a single marker

that didn't improve. Every single marker from looking at something as simple as zinc to magnesium to vitamin D3, and then looking at big time, big ticket items, like what my liver looks like. All of those things improved significantly in a matter of three and a half months. Yeah, and we've seen that across the board. I'll butcher this because I'm not on the clinical side, like I've said, but our pharmacist brought us this algorithm.

It was like Yale or Harvard, one of the major universities of looking, basically you have to have a comprehensive blood panel and you put it into their algorithm and it tells you your biological age. And so we did it with the patients we were treating at Wastewell. And we were just curious,

what kind of improvement do they have in their biomarkers? And in six months, our average patient based off this algorithm from this university was a six-year reduction in their biological age, meaning that they were six years younger, which is fucking crazy. And so we're trying to get deeper into that. I want to have that done with my blood results. We can do it and see what you're... Literally all we do is plug your existing blood results into this algorithm. And I don't want to misquote

who it was. It was either Yale or Harvard. It's one of the anti-aging institutes that came up with this algorithm saying, hey, if you want to know your biological age, you got to have a comprehensive blood panel. And then you enter in these data points and it weighs them and calculates it out and says, biologically, you're at the level of this age. So we had a lot of people, we had one woman who came in and she's a CrossFit. She competed at nationals. She was a beast. And her, even though she was only 35 years old, her biological age was 42. Yeah. When I first got to on it, when I first got to on it, the, we had done tele years, which, which measures telomere length. And that's one indicator.

I think one of the big five when it comes to longevity that they look at. And I was, I think, 36 or 37, but was 43 biologically. And I remember Ben Greenfield, who's the holy grail of biohacking. He had a higher biological age than his actual age, simply due to the amount of iron man triathlons that he was doing right so like you can burn the candle at both ends and obviously he's improved significantly i never did a follow-up to tell yours but um the thing that i appreciate about the algorithm with which look this is this are the science

leading scientists best guess at what is going to be longevity and what a true biological age is. But what I like about comprehensive blood work as opposed to just looking at telomeres is you're looking at a whole host of factors that can likely lead to disease or health, right? Including your metabolic flexibility, what is your fasting insulin, fasting glucose, all of those things are going to play a pivotal role

in disease state versus health state. And I think if those are all factors in that algorithm, that's a pretty cool thing that might lead to a better judge or better gauge than just looking at telomere length. Yeah. Blood work, when people, a lot of people say, how often should I get blood work? The question is, I mean, I guess the answer is how often can you afford it? Like in reality, it's a snapshot of you in time. And the better, more comprehensive analysis is more snapshots. The goal for us long-term

and the technology's not there yet, would be able to do low volume blood. If we could do a simple fingerprint, mail it into us, we analyze all those data points and we get you true, accurate data. In a dream world world i'd love to be analyzing people's blood and biomarkers weekly you know make it part of a program but it's unrealistic with a big needle stick um in a blood draw um so usually at least quarterly um you're

gonna have complete cellular turnover i don't even remember what is it every 90 days or something like 90 120 days you have total cellular turnover, you're a new human. So it's like, why would you not want to know where your markers are at and how you've changed and measure your progression? And I think historically, a lot of people, like my dad, for instance, would say, well, I don't want to know.

Well, I don't want to know because then I'll have to fix it. And it's like- It doesn't go away. Yeah. You're not looking at it. It's better to know and to get ahead of it than to just delay, delay, delay. Preventative is the way to go. It's just not how we've traditionally practiced medicine in the United States, but it's definitely a more cost-effective, more beneficial way to live your life.

If you can stop yourself from gaining in any of these potential disease states. Yeah. And what is the cost of treating full-blown diabetes? What is the cost associated with treating cancer? What are the costs and the toll on your quality of life when you survive a stroke? That's what you're fucking up against. And the whole thing is, and I tell people this all the time, whether it's in Fit for Service or on this podcast, that your genetics do not determine outcome. They don't, plain and simple. It's not a death stamp. Both my wife and I and Aubrey, looking at all of our genetic results, have a predisposition for diabetes and a predisposition for obesity. All three of us will never sniff a diabetic state

or an obese state. It's just not going to fucking happen. Well, how is that possible? If that's what my genetics say are going to happen, that's not going to happen because of epigenetics, because of environmental, because of lifestyle choices, and because of the work that we do where we get to check along the way,

how am I right now? Oh, it looks like i'm starting to lose some of that metabolic flexibility i've probably been eating like shit for the last couple of months oh yeah and i've probably been lifting less weights for the last couple of months oh yeah so like those start you start to be able to track that and see in real time am is what i'm doing benefiting me? Am I overdoing it? Am I underdoing it? It allows us to fine tune and from there experience a better quality of life all along the way. I agree a hundred percent. And a lot of it is giving people hope. Like what we talked about earlier, when you wake up one day and maybe you have let yourself go, it's a big hole to dig out of. And it's really hard. Not physically let himself go,

but Justin Wren, he talked about this. He said one of the things that resonated with him was he told our provider, I just want to feel normal. And she's like, no, fuck that. You don't want to feel normal. You want to feel optimal. We want you to feel phenomenal. We want you to feel how you felt in your 20s. And it's going to be an uphill battle. You've had malaria. You've had all these things. It's going to be an uphill battle, but we're going to know if we're getting there. We're going to know in a very short timeframe. And so for him, when we started his treatment, we literally pulled his blood again, six weeks later, just so he could see biologically how he was improving and stay motivated. And Ren's another guy who's done testimonials.

So you're not just throwing out the fucking HIPAA laws or any of that stuff. Yeah, Ren, he's done testimonials for us. He's been a huge advocate for us. And he believes in the program because he's experienced the benefits. And so for the people, even like the average Joes, a lot of it is I tell them,

it's not about being perfect, it's about being better. It's about making better choices. I saw this when I was seeing a nutritionist. The nutritionist was, to me at the time, my last-ditch effort at being healthy. I'm like, well, this is it. If this doesn't work, I'm fucked. And the guy, it motivated me. I knew I see the nutritionist in two weeks.

He's going to do a pinch test. He's going to know my body fat, and he's going to ask me how I'm eating. And so it was an accountability coach for me. I would eat clean because I'm like, well, I'm seeing him in a week. Now I got five days. Now I got three days. And maybe right after you get out of there, you decide, and you had good results. You slack off a little bit for a few days, but I knew in my head, there's this date, they're going to look at me again. And that's what we do with the blood work. Like we have so many people and we, we know from your blood work, what you're doing. We can tell like

our providers will break down and say, Hey, you know, I noticed increase in liver enzymes. Your, your blood sugar glucose levels are off. Have you been drinking more? You know? And people are like, how did you know that? It's like, we can tell. Your biological markers are almost precursors to what's to come. That's the telltale sign of where you're headed is where are you at biologically at the cellular level. And that's why it's important to know. You're going to know in advance what's coming. Absolutely. Talk about, I mean, we've got a few more minutes here, but talk about what it would be like when somebody signs up at ways2well.com,

like walk people through that process of first getting in and getting everything going. So depending on what your goals are and what you're trying to achieve, if you're wanting to just do comprehensive blood work and essentially view it as as your annual visit. That's as simple as just logging online, filling out a basic questionnaire, or you can call and we can have one of our patient care advocates onboard you. But it's simple online questionnaires that just allow us to onboard you as a patient and order your blood work. Because we are still a medical practice. Everything we do is doctor prescribed, doctor monitored. And so we would request your blood work,

send you off to a quest. There's one on every corner. We usually have your results back in three to four days and we get you back on the schedule and we do a follow-up visit, which is all digital. You know, it depends. We change the model to give you, you can choose to have a 30 minute

or a 45 minute consult, depending on your budget. And then we will spend that time on the call, answering any questions, deep diving into you at a biological level and going over all your areas of where you, not only where you're normal, but where you're optimal. And where in the normal range of like a primary care practice, they may say, hey, Kyle, your cholesterol is high. Well, we know enough

data points to say, well, it's really not high. You're a guy with higher testosterone level, you're utilizing that cholesterol, you need that cholesterol. So a little bit of a more comprehensive approach to treating patients, but it's simple. Blood work, you log online, fill out your questionnaire. We order your blood work. You do your digital consult. Any medications or treatment options are reviewed with you. And once you've decided what you want to do,

we mail it to your doorstep. So never have to leave your house other than to get your blood work. It's fucking phenomenal, brother. Where can people find you guys? On the Graham website, waystowell.com, waystowell on Instagram. At waystowell is our Instagram,

waystowell.com is our website. And as we refine the website, the hope is if you're just looking for peptides, we could even do an online questionnaire. Certain medications and treatments, we need comprehensive blood work. But if you're just looking for peptides, we could even do an online questionnaire. Certain medications and treatments, we need comprehensive blood work. But if you're somebody who feels like you have recent blood work or you're very educated on what you're looking for, we need an online questionnaire to onboard you as a patient.

But comprehensive blood work isn't necessarily required for everybody. It's recommended. In my humble opinion, yeah, it's highly recommended. And that's something that you want to keep tabs on because then you get to verify, right? It's not just, oh, this is, I feel a lot better. And a lot of patients ask, well, what's the cost? Is it because we're not in this insurance game?

We've tried to make this ultra cost effective. Like I said earlier, for the average Joes, our average patient's spending under $150 a month. And that's treatments, blood work, consults, everything. And it varies. We have plans starting as cheap as $60 a month. And so it just depends on your goals, your budget, and how often you get your blood work done and what you're trying to achieve. I'm spending 500 a month on supplements and I get a lot of free supplements. I'm still throwing out that kind of cheese on supplements. So yeah, it's nice to know that the costs of medicine are so much less.

I really appreciate what you guys are doing in the world. It is so necessary. I don't know if cryptocurrency solves the financial issues of fiat currency. I don't know. Time will tell, right? But the reason why I think that's cool is because instead of just saying this system's fucked and we need to tear it down, it's like, let's bring something in

that's a better way to do it. And that's what you've done with medicine and healthcare. And I'm fucking thrilled, man. No, I appreciate it. And I appreciate you having us on the podcast, giving us a platform to try and get our name out there and make people aware that there are options. Beautiful, brother. We're here to help. Thank you, I appreciate it. And I appreciate you having us on the podcast, giving us a platform to try and get our name out there and, and make people aware that there are options. Beautiful brother. We're here to help. Thank you, Brigham. So, all right. Thank you.