The Joe Rogan Experience - Joe Rogan Experience #2469 - Brigham Buhler

00:00:01.000 Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out.

00:00:03.000 The Joe Rogan experience.

00:00:06.000 Train my day, Joe Rogan.

00:00:07.000 Podcast by night, all day.

00:00:13.000 Good to see you, my friend.

00:00:14.000 Thanks for having me.

00:00:15.000 My pleasure.

00:00:16.000 Always.

00:00:18.000 Lots going on, man.

00:00:20.000 There is a lot going on.

00:00:21.000 It's part of the usual. 0.99

00:00:23.000 I got fucking allergies, dude. 0.99

00:00:25.000 Oh, yeah. 1.00

00:00:25.000 You hear me? 1.00

00:00:26.000 I was going to ask.

00:00:26.000 You sound stuffed up.

00:00:27.000 That's crazy.

00:00:28.000 I was like, am I getting sick?

00:00:30.000 And then I worked out.

00:00:30.000 I'm like, no, I feel great.

00:00:32.000 Like, physically, I feel great.

00:00:35.000 I don't know what's spiking right now.

00:00:36.000 Do you know?

00:00:37.000 There's a bunch going on.

00:00:37.000 I don't know.

00:00:38.000 Yeah.

00:00:39.000 Everybody's got sore throats.

00:00:40.000 It's crazy.

00:00:41.000 They say you don't get it when you live here for like a few years and then you start getting it a lot.

00:00:45.000 And I was like, I ain't getting it.

00:00:47.000 And then about four years in, I started getting these horrible sore throats and stuffy noses.

00:00:54.000 Is there a peptide for that?

00:00:57.000 When I first moved here, the cedar killed me.

00:00:59.000 I mean, because Houston doesn't have cedar, so it was pine trees in Houston.

00:01:03.000 And moving to Austin, the cedar crushed me for the first like year and a half.

00:01:07.000 And then I got over it.

00:01:08.000 My body just got used to it, I guess.

00:01:09.000 Yeah, I think my body has to get used to it.

00:01:11.000 One thing that does help is colostrum.

00:01:13.000 I take colot in that armra.

00:01:15.000 Yeah, you can tell the difference.

00:01:17.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:01:18.000 Makes a big difference.

00:01:19.000 Yeah, if you take it a lot, take it every day.

00:01:22.000 Stay consistent.

00:01:24.000 Yeah, I think all of that stuff, there's benefits that so many people overlook.

00:01:29.000 I know.

00:01:31.000 So we were talking.

00:01:34.000 What's the latest?

00:01:36.000 Man, so I know you just had Secretary Kennedy on a few weeks ago.

00:01:40.000 Yeah.

00:01:41.000 The latest is, you know, hot off the press as of yesterday.

00:01:46.000 I know the administration is still working diligently to reclassify peptides.

00:01:51.000 I know that that kind of got unveiled on the podcast.

00:01:55.000 Man, that has been a labor of love for the last two and a half, three years, whatever it's been that we've been trying to get this done.

00:02:03.000 And I know I said this when I was on here six months ago, but I'm truly the most optimistic I've ever been and with reason.

00:02:11.000 I want to like temper expectations, but you know, the prior administration of the FDA put these things into place prior to Secretary Kennedy and this administration taking over.

00:02:22.000 It was almost like a Trojan horse.

00:02:25.000 They just planted this little bomb in the middle of everything and classified these peptides as dangerous.

00:02:34.000 And so I've, for the first time in my life over the last decade of 20 something years of being in healthcare, you know, before Secretary Kennedy and this group of folks were in a position to drive meaningful change, they made these changes with the peptides.

00:02:50.000 I submitted 17 FOIA requests, 17 to the FDA.

00:02:56.000 They have never once responded to a single FOIA request, just asking for clarity about safety and why did we make this decision.

00:03:04.000 And they're supposedly by law required to respond to this request.

00:03:08.000 So to go from that environment where you're being stonewalled and you have no accessibility and no line of sight and no answers to anything to being able to at least have a seat at the table and a voice is pretty revolutionary.

00:03:21.000 Well, it's just very helpful that he actually uses them.

00:03:25.000 That Kennedy uses them and he knows the benefits of them and he's very educated on it.

00:03:31.000 That helps a lot.

00:03:32.000 Someone who's actually fit, takes care of himself and uses peptides and understands what millions of people know.

00:03:40.000 I mean, there's millions of people right now that are taking peptides and it's radically improved their health and their vitality.

00:03:40.000 Yeah.

00:03:47.000 Every one of them.

00:03:48.000 Yeah.

00:03:48.000 And me too.

00:03:49.000 Like I, again, I was the typical American patient.

00:03:53.000 I was on the cusp of diabetes.

00:03:54.000 I was obese.

00:03:55.000 I'm a former fat kid.

00:03:57.000 You know, like everything that could be going wrong in my late 30s was going wrong because I had bought into the system and trusted the system and thought, hey, if I could get my blood work annually and I follow the doctor's rules, you know, the system's just not built that way.

00:04:14.000 And that's where I think the nuances of peptides are really difficult for a regulatory body like the FDA.

00:04:20.000 And so to like systematically try to break it down for the folks that are legacy employees at the FDA have had that opportunity thanks to this administration and Secretary Kennedy and his right-hand girl, Stephanie Speer, has been integral in setting meetings and trying to move the needle.

00:04:40.000 Marty McCary, who's the head of the FDA, I had the privilege of knowing him before he took that role.

00:04:45.000 We testified together at the Senate level.

00:04:48.000 And Marty, he really is.

00:04:50.000 I don't know if, have you ever read his book?

00:04:52.000 No.

00:04:53.000 It's called Blind Spot.

00:04:55.000 One of the things that I love is I philosophically agree with everything that Marty laid out.

00:04:59.000 I mean, what he's saying is dogma and that medicine is so worried about defending their principles and where they stand that they're essentially ignoring at times science and they're allowing dogma to rule the day rather than letting a pragmatic, like authentic, open-minded view change your perspective and lens on topics.

00:05:24.000 And so even with this peptide topic, you know, when I had the opportunity to meet with Marty on this topic, he said, look, Brigham, I didn't really use peptides in my practice.

00:05:33.000 I was a surgeon.

00:05:34.000 You know, it's not something that I'm intimately familiar with, but I'm open to understanding and trying to research and get a better grasp.

00:05:43.000 And some of the moves that this group of folks have already made at HHS, I don't know if you're following what they did with testosterone and hormone therapy. 0.98

00:05:52.000 It is literally what you and I talked about at this point, I think five years ago, where I came on and said, all the shit you're being told on testosterone and HRT and hormones, men and women, is wrong. 0.97

00:06:03.000 It's dogma. 0.98

00:06:04.000 It's been debunked.

00:06:05.000 It's not going to cause cancer.

00:06:06.000 There shouldn't be black box warnings.

00:06:08.000 The FDA has come to the consensus under this new leadership that that is the case.

00:06:13.000 And they are working to remove the black box warning on hormones.

00:06:17.000 They are working to remove the fear-mongering around women's hormones and the women's health initiative and all these things because we now know what we've been preaching for almost a decade is that these hormones are a crucial building block that allow us to drive health span.

00:06:34.000 And a lot of the decline that we see in our body is because of the hormonal decline that occurs in our 40s and 50s.

00:06:41.000 Could you please expand on the testosterone thing?

00:06:45.000 Because one of the things that keeps coming up with people when I talk to friends that are older and I say, hey, you know, you should probably get your hormone levels checked and consider getting on TRT or at the very least, getting on something like HCG that can increase your testosterone.

00:06:59.000 It'll really vitalize your health.

00:07:02.000 They get concerned with prostate cancer.

00:07:04.000 Yeah.

00:07:05.000 And this is the one that you illuminated and you've helped quite a few of my friends understand.

00:07:10.000 So please expand.

00:07:12.000 So all of the fear with prostate cancer literally comes from a study from the 1930s.

00:07:18.000 And it was a urologist in the 1930s.

00:07:20.000 The patient population of this study, when we talk about random controlled trials, there were three patients in the study.

00:07:26.000 One patient dropped out.

00:07:28.000 One patient was chemically castrated.

00:07:29.000 The other patient was normal.

00:07:31.000 So the chemically castrated patient, meaning they have no testosterone.

00:07:35.000 So if you treat a patient who has no testosterone and you take them from zero testosterone to normal testosterone, so to take them from, let's say, zero to 350, during that climb from zero to 350, you can increase Theoretically, the risk of exasperating a prostate cancer that's pre existing was the fear.

00:08:03.000 But as you push past that level to optimal levels, you begin to insulate against the risk of multiple cancers.

00:08:11.000 And all of the studies henceforth have shown there is not one single study that correlates testosterone therapy to prostate cancer.

00:08:19.000 With an abundance of caution, some urology practices for patients who have had radical prostatectomies are reluctant to prescribe testosterone.

00:08:28.000 But testosterone in no way, shape, or form is causing prostate cancer.

00:08:33.000 It's a receptor site thing.

00:08:34.000 So the best way to explain it is you can only water a plant so much, right?

00:08:38.000 So once we've saturated the prostate receptor sites with hormones, they're saturated.

00:08:44.000 And then when you push past that to an optimal threshold, you get the insulatory benefits of cancer reduction that testosterone appears to provide.

00:08:54.000 And that's why the FDA is looking to change that label and get rid of the black box warnings on an array of different things that have been dogma around men and women's hormones.

00:09:03.000 So this initial study, like why was the one person chemically castrated?

00:09:08.000 I don't know why.

00:09:09.000 This is in the 30s, but since then, here's a really real-world example.

00:09:13.000 With the boom in testosterone therapy, if there was an increased risk in prostate cancer due to hormones, you would have seen a skyrocket in the amount of prevalence of prostate cancer in all of these practices that are using hormone optimization.

00:09:29.000 You don't.

00:09:30.000 You see the same prevalence that we saw prior to hormone optimization and the boom.

00:09:34.000 And so we have now seen, I think it's one out of eight men will develop prostate cancer.

00:09:39.000 I can't remember the exact number offhand.

00:09:42.000 And that correlates exactly the same into the patient population that is on hormones.

00:09:47.000 Well, the reality is like everybody dies with some form of prostate cancer, right?

00:09:53.000 I don't know.

00:09:54.000 Yeah.

00:09:54.000 I didn't know that.

00:09:55.000 I heard Huberman talk about that.

00:09:56.000 Interesting.

00:09:57.000 Yeah, like you have a certain amount of it.

00:09:59.000 It's just like...

00:10:00.000 It really became dogma.

00:10:02.000 I mean, the study.

00:10:03.000 But I don't understand about the study.

00:10:04.000 So what was the conclusion of the study?

00:10:06.000 The conclusion of the study was if we treat men with testosterone, we'll see a rise in the precursor hormone that we were worried could correlate to increasing the risk of prostate cancer.

00:10:18.000 And was this prevalent in this one person that was chemically castrated or was it in the other guy?

00:10:24.000 The other guy who had normal testosterone levels had no increased risk.

00:10:24.000 Correct.

00:10:28.000 And you have to push through the threshold.

00:10:30.000 So think you're at zero and then you're watering the plant.

00:10:33.000 Once that plant's watered, it can't take on any more water. 0.64

00:10:36.000 So from zero, no testosterone, which is chemically castrated, you're miserable. 0.98

00:10:40.000 You have no sexual function.

00:10:41.000 You're at increased risk of all these other chronic diseases that can kill you.

00:10:47.000 But you're insulated from prostate cancer because you have zero testosterone.

00:10:51.000 As we begin to raise your testosterone level and saturate those receptor sites, theoretically, the concern was we're increasing the potential risk of exasperating a prostate cancer.

00:11:01.000 Well, so how was this whole opinion based on this one study from the 1930s and just repeated at nausea for decades?

00:11:09.000 Well, I mean, it wasn't debunked, I think, until the 90s with famous prominent urologist Dr. Morgan Tyler, where he began to do research in his practice on men with prostate cancer.

00:11:20.000 And he actually began to treat men with prostate cancer with HRT and track the results.

00:11:25.000 And what he found was there was no increased prevalence of prostate cancer and it didn't exasperate or create additional issues.

00:11:32.000 And so that it was debunked in the 90s.

00:11:34.000 And then I would even go further to say, you launched, I think Pfizer launched testosterone cream in like 1990 something.

00:11:42.000 I don't remember.

00:11:43.000 And millions of men went on testosterone creams.

00:11:45.000 If it was exasperating prostate cancer, you would have seen it then too.

00:11:49.000 And so now retrospectively, 100 years later, literally 100 years later, the FDA and our regulatory oversight bodies are now changing their lens on men and women's HRT.

00:12:04.000 It's just so crazy that doctors for doctors.

00:12:07.000 You have to be cautious about the potential prostate cancer.

00:12:09.000 Yeah.

00:12:10.000 Like, where do you get this?

00:12:12.000 And then you tell them.

00:12:13.000 And, well, there was a study.

00:12:14.000 And so this is the study you're talking about.

00:12:16.000 Three people dropped out.

00:12:18.000 One of them was chemically castrated.

00:12:21.000 And that guy didn't even get prostate cancer.

00:12:21.000 You got it.

00:12:23.000 And so none of these, moving forward, Dr. or Admiral Brian Christine is over the men's health initiatives over at the FDA.

00:12:32.000 And he's a prominent urologist who has years and years of practice of using testosterone.

00:12:37.000 Marty, I think, even covered hormone therapy in his book, Blind Spot.

00:12:42.000 Again, it's a prime example of the dogma of medicine.

00:12:46.000 Myth becomes reality, right?

00:12:48.000 And misnomer can be adopted, and then it becomes commonplace.

00:12:52.000 And now you go to lectures and symposiums where you hear some prominent guy on stage regurgitating what he was taught in medical school or she was taught in medical school.

00:13:01.000 And then that dogma just perpetuates and it becomes almost urban legend, which is crazy to think.

00:13:08.000 Yeah, that's what it sounds like.

00:13:09.000 That's what's nuts.

00:13:10.000 It does sound like urban legend.

00:13:12.000 Another quote that like resonated with me from Blind Spot was Marty's book was literally it's confusing, what was it, dogma with consensus, right?

00:13:24.000 When everyone, groupthink is dangerous when it is considered consensus, because groupthink isn't necessarily consensus.

00:13:32.000 It's peer pressure to adopt the values and belief systems of your peers and academia.

00:13:37.000 And there's an immense amount of pressure to not stray from the herd, to stay within the herd, to back your peers, to toe the line.

00:13:47.000 And we've seen that for the last, what, 20, 30 years.

00:13:51.000 If you step out of line and even back to, you know, originally what spurred this were peptides.

00:13:56.000 I think a lot of what happened with peptides are that this system is built under an entire ecosystem.

00:14:05.000 It cost $1 billion to $3 billion to bring a drug to market are the numbers that are out there, anywhere from $1 to $3 billion.

00:14:13.000 Now, they're taking into account all the drugs that don't make it to the finish line.

00:14:17.000 But if you really look at the true cost of bringing a drug to market, it's still at minimal $300 million to $1 billion to bring a drug or any sort of technology into the marketplace.

00:14:30.000 Now, that whole ecosystem and structure was built around big pharma and the pharmaceutical cartels and their attempt to control what hits the market and to protect their patents and their technologies.

00:14:44.000 And so that cost-prohibitive process limits innovation and accessibility under the name of like protection and safety.

00:14:56.000 But in reality, a huge percentage, I guess one of the things that academia will say, or some of the naysayers around peptides will say is, you know, the issue with peptides is there's not human control trials.

00:15:08.000 The issue with peptides is there's not enough safety data.

00:15:11.000 We recently provided the FDA with over 800 different studies that have been done on an array of the 19 peptides that were banned under the Biden administration.

00:15:21.000 We've also made them aware that we've submitted 17 FOIA requests to the previous administration that were never responded to, just seeking clarity and answers.

00:15:30.000 Where were you seeing safety issues?

00:15:32.000 Because in clinical practice, we just weren't.

00:15:36.000 And I can tell you at WasteWell now, we're at over 90,000 patients nationwide, and peptides were an integral part of the practice of WasteWell.

00:15:45.000 We did not see a bunch of adverse events.

00:15:49.000 The silence, I think, speaks for itself.

00:15:52.000 I think a lot of it is dogma and confusion.

00:15:56.000 And the process itself of bringing a drug to market, where I was going with that is I'm not asking the FDA or a governing body to pay for this for patients, right?

00:16:09.000 It's a nuanced difference that I think even regulators are struggling to wrap their head around.

00:16:14.000 We're not asking for Medicare Medicaid dollars.

00:16:16.000 We're not asking for TRICARE dollars.

00:16:19.000 We're not asking for the federal government to mandate that employers and employer insurance programs cover peptides.

00:16:26.000 If I'm launching a pharmaceutical drug into the market, I'm asking for everything but the kitchen sink.

00:16:31.000 I'm asking for everybody else to cover the cost of my care and this medication.

00:16:36.000 Peptides, proactive medicine, predictive medicine, preventative care, personalized medicine is all cash pay.

00:16:43.000 It is outside of the existing ecosystem and structure.

00:16:47.000 And I think that's what makes it so difficult to navigate for regulators because it's a new world to them.

00:16:54.000 If I'm coming from academia where I worked at a hospital where I build insurances for the last 20 years, and now I'm working at the FDA where everything we do is giant pharmaceutical companies that love the existing ecosystem because it builds a moat around their ability to monetize drugs and chronic disease, there's a benefit there to play within that ecosystem.

00:17:18.000 But if my goal is to bring innovative products to the market at a cost-effective price that the average person can afford with their own cash, you can't spend a billion dollars to do that, especially when a molecule is readily available in nature.

00:17:34.000 That's where this gets so tricky with things like peptides and stem cells and all of these products.

00:17:39.000 They've kind of been placed in this no man's land and they've been convicted of a crime they never committed.

00:17:46.000 And the truth of the matter is they were put in this no man's land because they just don't fit in the sandbox of what the system was used to.

00:17:54.000 Okay, so we should also clarify that when we're talking about peptides and peptides being dangerous, GLP-1s are peptides.

00:18:02.000 This is a gigantic market right now.

00:18:06.000 I mean, you're seeing all these ladies that look like they're cutting weight to make the UFC flyweight division. 1.00

00:18:12.000 You know, you're seeing everybody that's on these peptides is losing weight.

00:18:16.000 Like, I don't know if Oprah's on them, but she lost a ton of weight. 0.99

00:18:19.000 I know there's, you know, there's a bunch of celebrities that you see that get Ozempic face.

00:18:24.000 Yeah.

00:18:25.000 Well, so many, so many influencers too on the academia side go online and go, I just, I would never prescribe peptides because I'm a board-certified clinician and I only prescribe things that have science and data that back them.

00:18:39.000 And a lot of times I'd say, man, you might just be uneducated on this topic and the nuances of this topic.

00:18:47.000 In reality, most clinicians are prescribing drugs off-label, right?

00:18:51.000 So a huge percentage of medical practices use products off-label.

00:18:55.000 It's indicated for one thing or one patient population or a dosage or a chronic disease state.

00:19:01.000 But clinicians have the autonomy and the authority to use that drug in a manner that it's not indicated for.

00:19:07.000 And they do that every day.

00:19:09.000 It's almost time for spring break.

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00:20:16.000 Well, this is the big challenge during COVID, right?

00:20:18.000 With hydroxychloroquine and with ibermectin.

00:20:21.000 That was the big challenge.

00:20:21.000 Yep.

00:20:22.000 And the real problem is that it interferes with the potential profits of pharmaceutical drugs that are approved.

00:20:29.000 So if you give someone the option to take something that's off-label, that's less expensive, and then it finds out, they find out it's effective, you'll get less, and then it gets public, you find out there's less people that are taking whatever pharmaceutically approved drug.

00:20:43.000 Correct.

00:20:44.000 And so what created this backlash or momentum against peptides, candidly, were the GLP-1 weight loss drugs.

00:20:53.000 So I do want to put them in two different buckets because there's the 19 peptides that got moved to the dangerous list with no clear answer from the previous administration as to why or how.

00:21:05.000 But what I have seen from being able to get behind the scenes and meet with lobbyists and legislators at the state and federal level is the lobbying power of Big Pharma is real.

00:21:14.000 It's real and it's intense.

00:21:16.000 And it is not going away.

00:21:19.000 And so to put myself in the shoes of somebody, you know, like I've gotten to know Chris Klump really well at the FDA and Chris negotiated the most favored nation pricing on the pharmaceutical drugs with Lilly and Novo and all these big conglomerates.

00:21:33.000 And those companies definitively, you know, publicly and privately are banging on the table of legislators and politicians and saying, look, we spent billions of dollars to innovate these drugs.

00:21:44.000 We played within the rules of the system.

00:21:47.000 And now these drugs hit the market and you're allowing compounders and small independent pharmacies to rip off our patents, right?

00:21:56.000 And that's their stance.

00:21:57.000 And they plant that stake way over here.

00:22:00.000 If that regulator only hears that part of the story, it's a compelling story.

00:22:05.000 You look at it and go, God, man, poor big pharma, they spent all this money.

00:22:08.000 But if you zoom out and you know the lay of the land a little bit more, which is hard if you don't come from this industry, the truth is always in the middle.

00:22:17.000 So devil's advocate, of course you want to protect the patent rights of a company that spent billions of dollars to bring a drug to market.

00:22:25.000 We've covered this before, though.

00:22:27.000 The dirty secret is a large majority of the drugs that come to market come from the NIH.

00:22:32.000 And phase one trials are done at the NIH.

00:22:35.000 The NIH is funded by taxpayer dollars.

00:22:38.000 You and I are paying to innovate and create molecules that then get licensed off to big pharmaceutical companies so they can bring them through the FDA approval process.

00:22:48.000 How is that legal?

00:22:50.000 It's nuts.

00:22:51.000 That is wild.

00:22:53.000 Yeah, it's nuts.

00:22:54.000 And so I was trying to explain to the existing team at HHS, Zoom out.

00:23:03.000 The system, as much as you are being told, failed and let big pharma down and allowed people to come in and infringe upon these patents.

00:23:12.000 The truth of the matter is the FDA sent out the bat signal and said, we can't meet the need of the American people.

00:23:19.000 There is a backlog on these drugs.

00:23:21.000 It's on the backlogs list.

00:23:23.000 Can compounders make these drugs?

00:23:25.000 This has been a regulatory pathway that's been in existence for 30, 40 years.

00:23:31.000 It happens all the time.

00:23:32.000 So compounders respond to the bat signal, begin to make these medications to the benefit of the American people during the shortage list. 0.87

00:23:41.000 And then you have these big pharmaceutical companies going, look, they're making our drugs.

00:23:45.000 They're violating our patent.

00:23:48.000 If your concern is that these companies didn't get the juice worth the squeeze from the patent, Eli Lilly 7x'd the value of their company.

00:23:56.000 They're worth $800 billion.

00:24:00.000 They literally are worth more than most developed nations.

00:24:03.000 This was the biggest blockbuster molecule in the history of the world.

00:24:09.000 In the history of humanity, there has never been a drug that is this big of a blockbuster.

00:24:14.000 The money was made 50,000 times over.

00:24:19.000 Nobody was harmed.

00:24:21.000 But when I'm a legislator and I've got somebody telling me these guys hurt us to the tune of $7 billion, and I know that's what they're telling these legislators because I've met with the legislators at the state and federal level.

00:24:32.000 And then I have to go, well, hold on.

00:24:34.000 The entire compounding sector only does $7 billion.

00:24:38.000 GLP-1s were $2.5 billion.

00:24:41.000 I know that's a big number, but that was when you were asking us to make these compounds.

00:24:46.000 That number is not nearly as large today.

00:24:48.000 And you also shut down 503Bs, which is half of the compounding industry's ability to make these compounds.

00:24:54.000 The truth of the matter is, it's about $1.5 to $2 billion total that this industry was able to compound during the backlog in order to meet the needs of the American people.

00:25:07.000 They're going to do $35 to $40 million in just GLP-1 drugs this year in revenue.

00:25:14.000 So you're talking an accounting error for big pharma.

00:25:18.000 And the reason I want to lay all that out is I'm not here to argue about the GLP-1s.

00:25:22.000 It sets a dangerous precedent.

00:25:24.000 If pharma lobbies hard enough and they're able to get this done, like what they want to do, reclassifying all these as biologics.

00:25:31.000 It allows them to extend the patent for 10 to 12 years.

00:25:35.000 It's this whole shell game, but it sets precedent like we covered before.

00:25:39.000 And that precedent is dangerous.

00:25:40.000 It's a slippery slope.

00:25:42.000 Because if you do totally shut out compounders from their ability to make this for the American people, how long before they move to the next thing?

00:25:49.000 And in one breath, you've got big pharmaceutical companies saying, I'll use Lilly again as an example because they're the main culprit.

00:25:57.000 Lilly is saying peptides are dangerous.

00:26:00.000 They're getting the API from China.

00:26:02.000 We shouldn't allow these compounders to make peptides.

00:26:05.000 Meanwhile, Eli Lilly just signed a $7 billion deal to acquire a peptide company out of China.

00:26:15.000 Lilly's buying a peptide company from China while lobbying government officials and saying it's dangerous to use products from China and these compounders are dangerous and nobody's regulating it.

00:26:28.000 And there's just all this misnomer and dogma and it's confusing if you don't come from healthcare.

00:26:34.000 Well, it seems like it would be very confusing for a regulator.

00:26:37.000 Very confusing for someone who's not educated on this to get up to speed.

00:26:42.000 100%.

00:26:43.000 And they have so many initiatives and so many things they're tackling.

00:26:46.000 And then the challenge historically is when you're big pharma, and I think it was like $31 million that that industry used in lobbying power last year as an industry.

00:26:57.000 Dollars equal accessibility.

00:27:00.000 Accessibility equals impressionability.

00:27:02.000 And impressionability equals outcomes.

00:27:04.000 It's like trying to win a debate where I get one minute and the opposition gets nine minutes.

00:27:10.000 And in the one minute, I've got to debunk all the lies that the opposition told.

00:27:14.000 And I don't even want to use the word lies.

00:27:15.000 You can use facts, but like we've said before, facts can be skewed when delivered inappropriately.

00:27:22.000 If you say they cost us $7 billion and we spent $3 billion to bring this drug to market and they're importing products from China and there's no safety nets and nobody's inspecting them and this is what we're worried about.

00:27:34.000 This is dangerous and this is a liability to the American public.

00:27:37.000 Politicians' ears are going to perk up, especially when you're lobbying them and funding campaigns and trying to influence those folks.

00:27:45.000 But the truth is, yeah, if you take into account all the drugs that didn't make it and you want to cook the books, you can make it look like you spent a billion to three billion.

00:27:55.000 You can also take credit for all the drugs that were launched out of the NIH that you bought the rights to and monetized for decades.

00:28:03.000 And then you can talk about safety, but in reality, there were recalls from both Lilly and Novo Nordisk.

00:28:09.000 There are all sorts of array of issues and label changes.

00:28:12.000 And historically, even the FDA itself, this is one of the things with peptides that when I met, when I had the privilege of meeting with Marty McCary about, I said, Marty, if we're being honest, this is y'all's numbers.

00:28:25.000 60 to 80% of the drugs that make it through the drug approval process will have a major label change or recall.

00:28:33.000 60 to 80 percent of the medications that come through this process end up having a major label change or recall.

00:28:42.000 So what is a major label change?

00:28:46.000 So they uncover, like an example with antidepressant depressants, they realize the suicidal ideation in teenagers, right?

00:28:53.000 And they had to change that label and say, hey, not only is this only a fraction better than a placebo, right?

00:29:00.000 Barely differentiates from placebo retrospectively.

00:29:03.000 And not even close to exercise.

00:29:04.000 I know.

00:29:05.000 It's literally exercise is six to seven fold more efficacious than an antidepressant.

00:29:10.000 How wild is that?

00:29:11.000 Yeah.

00:29:11.000 And then you go back to the science.

00:29:13.000 The science was all cooked books.

00:29:15.000 It was all said that it was SRI serotonin related, and there was never a single study that correlated depression to serotonin.

00:29:23.000 It was all dogma created by industry.

00:29:25.000 And so, again, Marty talks about this in his book.

00:29:28.000 So I know he's aligned with a lot of these viewpoints.

00:29:31.000 When it comes down to peptides, though, it gets a little confusing because you're talking proactive, predictive, preventative care.

00:29:39.000 If somebody's taking a peptide to optimize their healing, it's not a chronic disease-related issue.

00:29:45.000 The system is built to monetize and profiteer off of treating the symptoms of chronic disease.

00:29:51.000 It's become a prescription management system, not a healthcare system.

00:29:56.000 And that's the big challenge.

00:29:57.000 This is an entire paradigm shift that I don't know if all regulators truly understand.

00:30:05.000 I think they're trying to wrap their head around it.

00:30:07.000 I think Secretary Kennedy understands it.

00:30:09.000 I think a lot of this movement in the American people post-COVID had fundamentally changed.

00:30:16.000 Like the view on them from that I've seen is people do now question authority.

00:30:20.000 People do now question just because something came through the FDA doesn't mean it's safe.

00:30:25.000 And just because something hasn't gone through the FDA approval process doesn't mean that it's dangerous or doesn't work.

00:30:30.000 A lot of times there's a reason why, like BPC 157, there's a patent out of Croatia, I believe, on that molecule.

00:30:39.000 And that patent is, I think, last three more years.

00:30:42.000 Why would you go spend a billion to three billion dollars to try and bring a drug to market that already has a patent?

00:30:48.000 The other issue with it is a short-chain amino acid peptide found readily in nature.

00:30:53.000 And patent law makes it very difficult to patent what is naturally found in nature.

00:30:59.000 And that is why the big pharmaceutical companies are struggling with their patents on the GLP1s.

00:31:05.000 They have patented dosaging and delivery mechanisms.

00:31:08.000 They're not arguing against the patent.

00:31:11.000 If you look at the lawsuits that they filed nationwide, they're arguing against people advertising.

00:31:16.000 They're arguing against some of the things people shouldn't be doing, rightfully so.

00:31:21.000 But they're not arguing against the patent.

00:31:23.000 Let me ask you this.

00:31:24.000 So just imagine, and I don't think this is a good idea, but imagine if only pharmaceutical drug companies were allowed to make peptides, would they just become legal?

00:31:34.000 Yeah.

00:31:36.000 I mean, well, what would happen?

00:31:37.000 But it would be a giant business.

00:31:39.000 It would be a giant business.

00:31:40.000 And it is going to be.

00:31:41.000 The price would raise a little bit.

00:31:42.000 Yeah, 100%.

00:31:43.000 And also, the availability would skyrocket, and you would start seeing commercials on CNN.

00:31:49.000 BPC 157 helps soft tissue injuries, helps this, helps that.

00:31:54.000 You throw fit people at the beach jogging.

00:31:56.000 Yeah.

00:31:57.000 Yeah.

00:31:57.000 And I agree with you, but the fear, and this is what I'm trying, I'm viewing it as there's three options.

00:32:04.000 And these are the three things that I've seen.

00:32:06.000 There's the traditional system, the sick care system.

00:32:09.000 That system is controlled by insurance, big pharmaceutical companies, and regulators.

00:32:14.000 Whether intentional or unintentional, this system was cooked.

00:32:17.000 It's been cooked and baked for a long time.

00:32:20.000 And it is the system that it is.

00:32:22.000 And we know where that system got us.

00:32:24.000 That system got us to 1.7 to 1.9 million Americans dying every year of chronic disease, more than every world war we've ever fought.

00:32:31.000 It's got us to be the most obese and disease-riddled society in the history of humanity.

00:32:37.000 And we spend more on health care than any other nation.

00:32:40.000 So that's one option.

00:32:42.000 And then we go.

00:32:43.000 Just those facts are so crazy.

00:32:45.000 It's nuts.

00:32:46.000 And to think that to ask questions or to challenge that system is wrong.

00:32:50.000 And that's where I am.

00:32:51.000 So, again, I'm not sitting here.

00:32:54.000 I'm not trying to make this political because I really am not.

00:32:58.000 I don't care conservative, Democrat, Republican.

00:33:01.000 Chronic disease doesn't care about your political leanings.

00:33:04.000 It doesn't care.

00:33:06.000 Like disease and death comes for all of us.

00:33:09.000 And my goal is how do we prevent it?

00:33:11.000 How do we delay it?

00:33:12.000 How do we drive health span?

00:33:13.000 You don't do it playing whack-a-mole in treating the symptoms of a chronic disease.

00:33:18.000 You get proactive, predictive, and preventative.

00:33:21.000 And how do you do that?

00:33:22.000 Well, you've got to be able to run diagnostic tests and tools.

00:33:25.000 Well, the insurance companies shut that down and make that really hard to do.

00:33:29.000 And so in the healthcare system that exists today, in the insurance model, prescription management is the main goal of those models.

00:33:40.000 And I've said this time and time again.

00:33:42.000 You've got to view health insurance in America like car insurance.

00:33:46.000 It's there if you wreck the car.

00:33:48.000 We are great at triaging and treating a catastrophic event, heart attack, stroke, hospitals.

00:33:55.000 You're in there, something catastrophic happens.

00:33:57.000 We can triage that disaster and we can get you in and out of the hospital.

00:34:01.000 We are absolutely an abysmal failure at preventing chronic disease and driving health span.

00:34:10.000 And the only way to do that is to get proactive and predictive and personalized.

00:34:15.000 And this entire ecosystem is just not built to do that.

00:34:19.000 And so my message and what I'm trying to work for is so much bigger than peptides.

00:34:24.000 I don't want to die on the peptide hill fighting for this because it is a small sliver of what could be our healthcare establishment, right?

00:34:33.000 When we look at biologics, when we look at gene activation, all of these different modalities that are on the table, large language models, artificial intelligence, tracking data in real time, we have the ability to truly drive health span now.

00:34:49.000 If I have your genetic sequencing and your blood work and your biomarkers and your DEXA and your VO2 Max, and I put all that into the AI algorithm and we begin to track you in real time in your 30s, we are going to know years before chronic disease ever shows up on your doorstep.

00:35:07.000 The cancer that you get in your 40s started in your 30s.

00:35:11.000 You know, the diabetes you get in your 30s started in your 20s.

00:35:14.000 All of this is preventable.

00:35:15.000 All of this is preventable through diet, lifestyle, and nutrition.

00:35:19.000 We're not under-prescribed.

00:35:21.000 I think that's pretty abundantly clear.

00:35:22.000 The average American's on four or more prescription drugs.

00:35:25.000 Like we can't prescribe our way out of this.

00:35:28.000 Is that a real number?

00:35:29.000 Yes.

00:35:30.000 The average American is on four or more prescription drugs.

00:35:33.000 Which is insane.

00:35:35.000 And it is because we're a prescription-first society, right?

00:35:39.000 And we've covered this before, so I hate to beat a dead horse, but like when a primary care has six minutes on average with a patient and they're limited in what tests they can do and what diagnostic tools they can run, and a woman comes in and says, hey, I'm 40 pounds overweight, I'm depressed, I'm anxious, I'm sad, I'm all these things.

00:35:58.000 Their first move is to go, okay, well, we got to get your cholesterol under control.

00:36:02.000 We got to get your insulin under control.

00:36:04.000 I'm going to put you on a weight loss drug. 1.00

00:36:05.000 Let's put you on a GLP-1.

00:36:06.000 And they push them out the door.

00:36:08.000 And they probably put them on an antidepressant because those are the tools in their tool belt.

00:36:12.000 But if you were to come into a longevity-based clinic, we're going to run you through a battery of diagnostics.

00:36:17.000 So many men come in depressed.

00:36:19.000 You're not really, it's not to trivialize your depression.

00:36:23.000 It isn't that you're depressed.

00:36:24.000 It's that you have a hormonal imbalance and your hormones are so wrecked that you're obese.

00:36:28.000 Are you obese because your hormones are wrecked or are your hormones wrecked because you're obese?

00:36:33.000 You know, sometimes that's going to take a nuanced approach and time to uncover, but we do know we can fix that, you know, and we know that through fixing those things, there's going to be a cascade of benefits that lead into other areas of your life.

00:36:46.000 Like Jellyroll is a prime example.

00:36:48.000 If he were to go to a primary care, they would have immediately put him on a GLP-1.

00:36:51.000 He's 500 pounds, you know, and they would have put him on a battery of drugs.

00:36:57.000 When Jelly Roll came to us, it was like, we're going to make this simple.

00:37:01.000 We got to fix your insulin.

00:37:03.000 We got to fix your hormones. 0.88

00:37:04.000 That's it.

00:37:05.000 We're going to get your estrogen under control.

00:37:07.000 We're going to get your insulin under control.

00:37:08.000 We're going to get your inflammation under control.

00:37:11.000 We're going to put wins on the board and we're going to methodically walk you through this.

00:37:15.000 Because people think that this is the other challenge, even where I was going earlier.

00:37:20.000 Even in the longevity space, the preventative care space, it's already becoming what big pharma was.

00:37:27.000 And this is one of my really big heartburns.

00:37:30.000 You've got two pathways.

00:37:31.000 See, the first, the three pathways.

00:37:33.000 The first is the traditional system.

00:37:35.000 The second is the cash pay model.

00:37:37.000 Okay, well, that's kind of merging into two different arenas.

00:37:40.000 You've got the Peter Atias, $100-something thousand dollars to be my client that only the richest Americans can afford.

00:37:48.000 And you're going to get top-tier care and I'm going to provide concierge medicine.

00:37:52.000 Well, 99.99% of America can't afford that. 0.53

00:37:56.000 And then you've got the hems of the world that are going the route of a pill mill. 0.64

00:38:00.000 Like candidly, it isn't about quality of care.

00:38:04.000 It isn't about helping patients solve a problem.

00:38:06.000 It's about monetizing a medication and putting a weight loss drug or a peptide as fast as possible in that patient's hands so you can monetize the patient.

00:38:16.000 To me, that's no bigger different than big pharma.

00:38:19.000 And so my vision for the future is how do we combine the best of both worlds?

00:38:25.000 How do we take that nuanced concierge care, make it affordable, make it scalable, and make it truly drive health span?

00:38:34.000 I don't think the issue is the arrow.

00:38:36.000 The issue is the archer.

00:38:37.000 It's the people controlling these systems and always trying to make it about money and quarterly earnings and an exit and a strategy.

00:38:44.000 But if you pivot and you make it about people and you make it about how do we help this person, the journey of a thousand miles starts with the first step.

00:38:54.000 And Jelly is a perfect example.

00:38:56.000 If you were in a traditional model, he would come in and you would sell him a weight loss drug and that's the end of your journey with him.

00:39:03.000 You get him on a weight loss drug and you hope for the best and you push him out the door.

00:39:08.000 In our model, we're there to be a passenger alongside you using large language models, wearables, and all the things we're bringing into the business to track, diagnose, and optimize where you're at in real time.

00:39:21.000 So in real time, we're able to capture how are you trending.

00:39:25.000 We even added a scale that ties into the app that'll allow you to manage your, not just your BMI, but literally almost like a DEXA with like a 1% to 2% variability rate.

00:39:36.000 We can tell you how much lean fat, how much visceral fat, how much subcutaneous fat.

00:39:40.000 And anyone who's a member gets that scale, scans it into the app.

00:39:44.000 That combined with your VO2 Max, if you come into the clinic, we can cross-reference it with a DEXA.

00:39:49.000 The app will do its own algorithms to see how different it is.

00:39:52.000 And now in real time, from your home, you can track all these modalities and you can track how you're trending on more than just blood work.

00:40:02.000 Like to me, everyone, again, when I came on here, whatever, I think it was five years ago by now, Joe, nobody was doing cash-paid blood work.

00:40:11.000 Now everybody's doing cash-paid blood work.

00:40:13.000 And I think it's great, but it isn't the holy grail.

00:40:17.000 That's just one marker in a sea of markers, one diagnostic measuring stick and a sea of diagnostic measuring sticks.

00:40:25.000 So the future for me is how do we make it affordable and how do we make this where everyone can afford it?

00:40:30.000 One of the things we're going to do is put our money where our mouth is.

00:40:33.000 You're going to be able to load your blood work from anywhere.

00:40:36.000 I don't care if you got it at your doctor, your primary care, if you got it from HIMS, if you got it from function health.

00:40:42.000 Doesn't matter.

00:40:42.000 If you want a nuanced approach and help on your healthcare journey, not the first step.

00:40:47.000 You took the first step.

00:40:48.000 You did the blood work.

00:40:50.000 Now, what do you do with that data?

00:40:51.000 What do you do with that information?

00:40:54.000 Even in the longevity space, where I was going with that, is so many companies are trying to, let me monetize this blood work, let me monetize this test, let me monetize this peptide.

00:41:04.000 But what we should be asking is, how do I help this patient?

00:41:07.000 How do I help this person? 0.99

00:41:09.000 Because if you help that person, they tell the fucking world. 0.96

00:41:13.000 I think the problem is like you're an actual good dude. 0.99

00:41:17.000 You're an actual good person.

00:41:20.000 And I'm trying.

00:41:21.000 There's a lot of days I don't know.

00:41:23.000 I know.

00:41:23.000 But you are.

00:41:24.000 I've known you for a long time now.

00:41:26.000 And you really are doing what you're saying.

00:41:30.000 I know you could be making a whole lot more money than you're making.

00:41:33.000 And I know you're not money driven, but that's not the business of healthcare.

00:41:37.000 That's not the business of all these different companies.

00:41:40.000 When they exist, especially if they're public, if these are public companies, they have an obligation to their shareholders.

00:41:46.000 They have to maximize their profits. 0.99

00:41:48.000 And, you know, it's so fucking hippie to say this. 1.00

00:41:52.000 The root of all evil. 0.99

00:41:53.000 It's real.

00:41:54.000 Yeah.

00:41:54.000 I mean, that is a real thing.

00:41:55.000 Like, there's nothing wrong with money, but there is wrong with the motivation that comes with money, that you put money above everything else.

00:42:03.000 I mean, I know Waste to Well is doing great, and I know you're making plenty of money, but most companies are only trying to do that.

00:42:11.000 Whereas you are trying, legitimately trying to make people.

00:42:16.000 I know, I see the look on your face when people get better.

00:42:20.000 I don't see that.

00:42:21.000 I know you do.

00:42:22.000 I already know you.

00:42:23.000 Denise and I said from day one, I've known Denise, I mean, 20-something years, man.

00:42:28.000 And when we started this, she's my Jiminy cricket because even if I ever wanted to make it about money, she's never making it.

00:42:36.000 She's such a patient care advocate.

00:42:38.000 And I said, and she said, if we always make this about people, there's going to be days we lose, there's going to be days we win.

00:42:46.000 But if we always make it about people, if we make people our northern star, that is our secret sauce.

00:42:51.000 And it doesn't mean we're perfect.

00:42:53.000 Like, look, every time I come on here, we get blasted because we grow so fast.

00:42:57.000 And it's a blessing.

00:42:58.000 And I can't thank you enough.

00:42:59.000 But, you know, you can't onboard 20,000 people overnight. 0.99

00:43:03.000 And then people are like, oh, you guys suck. 0.99

00:43:05.000 Y'all are like everybody. 0.98

00:43:06.000 And it's like, no, man, we just, even as we're growing, I'm this is again back to that dogma of like, how are companies like HIMS scaling nationwide?

00:43:16.000 They're PE-backed.

00:43:17.000 BlackRock is one of their biggest investors.

00:43:20.000 HIMS is a multi-billion dollar conglomerate marketing firm.

00:43:24.000 They're not a compounding facility.

00:43:26.000 They're not a medical practice with brick and mortar clinics that are trying to truly innovate and that are into things like biologics and plasmaphoresis and all the things that we're trying to do.

00:43:38.000 I can't compete with the scalability of that, but what I can compete with and I can destroy is the quality.

00:43:45.000 Because if we provide quality care and we make sure that we scale at a level that is true and holds integrity to the patient relationship, that's one of the biggest things I saw.

00:43:56.000 I even came on here and there's things that I've gotten wrong.

00:43:59.000 I thought the fastest way to scale and to meet the needs of the American people is AI.

00:44:04.000 And I still believe that.

00:44:05.000 But where I got it wrong and where I think the nuance is important is I've had this epiphany.

00:44:12.000 AI is a tool, but like all the other tools, at the end of the day, everything always starts with people.

00:44:20.000 Everything.

00:44:20.000 The entire human experience doesn't exist without people.

00:44:24.000 So like there is never going to be anything more meaningful to a person than another human supporting them, caring for them, and being in their corner.

00:44:35.000 And that is the importance of a clinician relationship and having clinicians that are employees of an institution, not hourly people who are paid to hop on a call and on a Monday they're pulling babies and on a Tuesday they're a testosterone expert.

00:44:50.000 That is what a lot of these telemedicine companies are now.

00:44:53.000 And it may provide accessibility, but is that optimal care?

00:44:57.000 Is that preventative care?

00:44:58.000 Or are we back to that same conundrum of how do we make a quick buck?

00:45:03.000 How do we get this guy on a bunch of peptides or girl on a bunch of peptides and we push him out the door?

00:45:07.000 And that is one of the challenges of even this emerging market is people are compromising pretty quickly.

00:45:14.000 And even this market, I see the flaws.

00:45:17.000 And those flaws are going to bring out the naysayers.

00:45:19.000 And those naysayers are going to use the bad actors and the bad examples to crucify the industry.

00:45:25.000 And I'm banging the drum a lot against HIMS right now, but I tried explaining this to Secretary Kennedy and administration.

00:45:32.000 HIMS did a Super Bowl ad where they made claims and they used the literally the GLP1 brand name of Novo Nordisk's drug and violated the law.

00:45:43.000 And I told the administration, there is no way that a multi-billion dollar conglomerate would make this mistake.

00:45:52.000 This is the equivalent to somebody coming into your living room and taking a dump on your dining room table and you assuming that it was an accident.

00:45:59.000 How did they violate the law?

00:46:00.000 What'd they do?

00:46:01.000 You're not allowed to.

00:46:03.000 So when you're compounding a medication, you have to use the compounded name, the generic name, not the molecule's name, not the brand name.

00:46:10.000 So it'd be like saying, we have Kleenex for cheaper than Kleenex, right?

00:46:15.000 And we have the exact same compound.

00:46:18.000 It's technically, is it the same molecule in theory?

00:46:22.000 Yes.

00:46:22.000 But in marketing, one, you're not supposed to market if you're compounding.

00:46:28.000 You're not supposed to market direct to consumers like Big Pharma does.

00:46:31.000 So there's a lot of like guidelines.

00:46:32.000 They spent the money, they got the patent, all of this.

00:46:35.000 The reason that's important is that Trojan horse was set.

00:46:39.000 It created an extreme backlash from regulators, both senators, congressmen, congresswomen, politicians from all different walks of life came out saying, this is unacceptable.

00:46:51.000 All of these people making black market peptides and GLP1s and marketing direct to our consumers and violating patent laws and infringing upon these pharmaceutical companies.

00:47:02.000 All of that shakes out.

00:47:04.000 Statements made by all these varying politicians.

00:47:07.000 And then what happens within a week?

00:47:09.000 HIMS inks a deal with Novo Nordisk to bring the pharmaceutical drug to their practice and have a sole source agreement.

00:47:18.000 So they set a landmine in the middle of all compounders. 0.99

00:47:21.000 And I'm trying to explain to the administration, you got to understand, they're not a compound.

00:47:25.000 They're a multi-billion dollar marketing firm.

00:47:28.000 There's no way this was an oversight or a mistake.

00:47:30.000 This was by design.

00:47:32.000 And then what happened is the largest run probably in the last decade of any stock price, HIMS is shot through the roof because they inked the deal with Novo and said, now we're going to provide you with the brand name of the drug after they had set this landmine off in the middle of all of these compounders.

00:47:52.000 And so the reason that's important, Joe, is there are bad actors doing things that I think are doing them by design to damage the industry and to create a battle cry and a resistance against the folks who are trying to follow the rules and navigate a very narrow pathway forward where these peptides and these treatment modalities are available to the public.

00:48:15.000 All the while while they have an agreement with this pharmaceutical drug company.

00:48:20.000 The deal was done within two weeks.

00:48:20.000 You got it.

00:48:22.000 So the backlash came, a huge uproar against, and this is, the reason this is so important is I was literally doing calls with the administration to go, hey, I get why Big Pharma would be upset and they should be.

00:48:34.000 And I get why you, the administration, would be upset and you should be.

00:48:38.000 But please do not punish an entire industry sector for one bad actor.

00:48:44.000 And at the time, I was scratching my head going, this just doesn't make sense.

00:48:47.000 Why would they do this?

00:48:49.000 They're going to get hammered.

00:48:50.000 They will not win this in the court of law.

00:48:52.000 This is a terrible idea.

00:48:54.000 None of it's adding up.

00:48:56.000 And then a week later, they make this announcement and the stock roars.

00:49:00.000 And, you know, everyone goes, oh, congrats, HIMS.

00:49:04.000 And it's like, no, this was, I, I, and we'll find out because there is a, there's a huge class action lawsuit now, an antitrust lawsuit that's going on.

00:49:13.000 I think Lee Rosebush and his firm brought it forward.

00:49:15.000 He's a guy who's academically trained.

00:49:20.000 I think ran the clinic at the Mayo clinic, ran the lab.

00:49:23.000 He's a pharmacist.

00:49:24.000 He's a law degree, all these things.

00:49:27.000 And he's in this industry and in this sector.

00:49:29.000 And he's asking a lot of questions.

00:49:31.000 And I think his firm filed a lawsuit against HIMS to try and uncover what really happened there.

00:49:36.000 But even if it does get uncovered, what's going to change?

00:49:39.000 No one's going to pay attention.

00:49:42.000 It'll be a blurb in the news.

00:49:43.000 It won't even be in the news.

00:49:45.000 You know, it'll be online somewhere.

00:49:45.000 Yeah.

00:49:47.000 Well, the main reason I want to give that tidbit of information is regulators and politicians are looking and going, God, man, yeah, these guys did bad things.

00:49:55.000 No, the guys that were doing the bad things already inked their backroom deal and rode off into the sunset.

00:50:00.000 So now what is left for the rest of the industry and where does this go?

00:50:03.000 And that's a slippery slope.

00:50:05.000 And again, separate from peptides, separate from compounds, you get into the whole world of biologics and the future of biologics and stem cells and creating a regulatory pathway.

00:50:16.000 And again, Secretary Kennedy, he tweeted this, I think, before or right when he took over, save your records and pack your bags.

00:50:22.000 Your war on stem cells and peptides are over.

00:50:25.000 And I can tell you from my meetings now further down the rhine with the FDA, I have just a more, I mean, I hate to concede, but I have a more nuanced lens on they're trying to navigate an absolute nightmare of regulatory landscape, of, you know, the lobbying power, the impression, the half-baked truths.

00:50:50.000 Where does the truth lie?

00:50:51.000 Well, this is how this entire system's built.

00:50:53.000 Well, this is what we know.

00:50:54.000 Well, we don't really know cash pay.

00:50:56.000 Well, we don't really, right?

00:50:58.000 The whole model is get a drug approved.

00:51:00.000 It costs billions of dollars.

00:51:02.000 Now we've got to lock in that patent.

00:51:03.000 Now we've got to let these companies make a bunch of money on it because they innovated it.

00:51:08.000 And we've got to get it on insurance formularies, Medicare, Medicaid, and TRICARE.

00:51:12.000 That's a whole fundamental difference when you're talking about even like, let's shelf peptides for a second, say stem cell therapy.

00:51:19.000 My whole mission statement on all of this is to build a life raft, right?

00:51:24.000 Henry Ford said, if we would have asked, if he would have asked clients what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse, right?

00:51:30.000 I'm not going to the FDA going, guys, how do we solve this problem?

00:51:33.000 I think the FDA has enough of their own problems just trying to manage the system the way it is.

00:51:39.000 My vision is you build a life raft.

00:51:41.000 You build a life raft parallel to the existing, much like Uber did with taxis.

00:51:45.000 And you let this go this way and you dry, drag race it against this way, and let's see who can prevent chronic disease.

00:51:52.000 Well, the problem is it killed taxis.

00:51:54.000 Yeah.

00:51:55.000 That was a bad example.

00:51:56.000 Well, I think, well, and the question is, which model is going to be better for humanity and which model is going to take cost out of this system.

00:52:04.000 And so I would tell a regulator, a congressman, a congresswoman, anybody who will listen, guys, my model costs you nothing.

00:52:11.000 I'm not asking for taxpayer dollars.

00:52:14.000 I'm not asking for any sort of indication where I can bill insurance companies or I can build Medicare, Medicaid, or TRICARE.

00:52:20.000 What I'm asking the federal government to do is to trust the sacred relationship of a clinician and a patient and to allow a patient to have sovereignty and autonomy over their health.

00:52:31.000 If I'm Brett Favre and I'm diagnosed with an advanced stage of Parkinson's disease and it's a kiss of death, why would I want to wait 10 years for something to make it through the FDA approval process that could change or save my life today?

00:52:47.000 And if I have the means to pay for those things and the accessibility in a clinician who thinks that they have an answer to slow or help potentially improve the progression of a chronic disease or an ailment, I just don't think the government should stand in the way of that.

00:53:05.000 And the reality is that the momentum of the current healthcare system is so strong that the vast majority of Americans are going to use that anyway.

00:53:13.000 It's not like it's going to completely disrupt the system.

00:53:17.000 Like most people, like, I mean, how many people are listening to this?

00:53:22.000 You know, I mean, it's still a small percentage of just America.

00:53:25.000 Yeah.

00:53:26.000 The vast majority of people are just going to trust their doctor and they're going to do what they've always done.

00:53:31.000 They're not going to be aware and it's going to be business as usual.

00:53:34.000 And those companies are still going to grow.

00:53:37.000 It's just they're so greedy.

00:53:38.000 They want all of it.

00:53:40.000 Like by saying they're losing $7 billion.

00:53:42.000 How much did you make?

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00:54:51.000 You know what I mean?

00:54:51.000 Well, that was my point.

00:54:53.000 Right.

00:54:53.000 They're not losing.

00:54:54.000 If you give those bad facts to a politician or a regulator, they go, oh my God, they cost you $7 billion.

00:55:01.000 You made $800 billion.

00:55:04.000 Your market cap is eight.

00:55:05.000 You 7xed your company.

00:55:07.000 Novo Nordisk three or four X'd their company in literally a three-year timeframe.

00:55:12.000 These are some of the most rich and powerful companies in the world.

00:55:16.000 Your patent worked.

00:55:18.000 It worked.

00:55:19.000 It upheld.

00:55:20.000 You prevented the regulatory landscape from coming in and people taking a piece of your pie.

00:55:25.000 In fact, I would argue it worked too well, you know, in a way.

00:55:30.000 Like, so to over-regulate based off, and that's that's the argument with the GLP1s in one bucket.

00:55:36.000 My argument, you know, for allowing compounders to continue to make these patient-specific are you need to allow patients to be able to titrate up and titrate down and avoid catastrophic muscle wasting.

00:55:48.000 What about patients who have allergies?

00:55:50.000 What about the next time these things go on a backlog?

00:55:53.000 What about a patient who maybe can't handle the delivery mechanism?

00:56:01.000 I mean, there's dozens of different reasons why you would want to provide an alternative life raft.

00:56:07.000 Can you explain the titrate up and titrate down thing?

00:56:10.000 Yeah, so historically, the GLP1s came in preset dosages.

00:56:15.000 And so patients did not have a way to titrate up or down.

00:56:20.000 And so a lot of clinicians who wanted to micro-dose would use a compounding pharmacy to prescribe those medications and allow patients more flexibility on how they dose their GLP-1.

00:56:31.000 Because some of the catastrophic side effects come from a large dose.

00:56:34.000 Correct.

00:56:36.000 Now, as this thing evolves, the question becomes: where do we go with this, right?

00:56:42.000 Because essentially, most compounding has shut down GLP-1s, 503Bs, which B stands for bulk, like big mass production.

00:56:51.000 I can sell big bulk items to hospitals or to clinics.

00:56:54.000 The government's come in and said they're not allowed to make the weight loss drugs anymore.

00:56:58.000 So it's now limited down to just 503As, which are patient-specific, which is like what I do.

00:57:04.000 Like we make medications unique to the patient, personalized medicine.

00:57:09.000 And so that's a much more niche percentage of the market.

00:57:13.000 And again, even that, you're talking in the heyday, maybe $2 billion for the whole industry, right?

00:57:21.000 On a company that's, you know, worth $800 billion in seven extra revenue.

00:57:27.000 Everything's going to be okay.

00:57:29.000 Like everyone's going to be okay.

00:57:30.000 Patients had accessibility and affordability.

00:57:33.000 And I think the battle cry from the big pharmaceutical companies is a little misleading if you don't know the nuances of all of this.

00:57:43.000 So what do you think is the best way forward if you were in charge of regulating?

00:57:54.000 There is an issue with accessibility and there's an issue with black market.

00:57:59.000 Right.

00:57:59.000 Correct.

00:58:00.000 There's an issue with people buying peptides online that are not even what they say they are.

00:58:05.000 Like there's certain peptides that have a physiological response when you take them, like CJC ipomorily.

00:58:10.000 You could feel it if you take it.

00:58:12.000 I know people that have bought stuff online.

00:58:14.000 They say, I don't think this stuff is legit because it's not doing anything once I take it.

00:58:18.000 I don't feel that, you know, that weird flushing response.

00:58:21.000 They don't feel it at all.

00:58:23.000 And they've asked me for advice.

00:58:24.000 And I'm no, I love that you asked because I actually had the privilege of giving this message to Marty McCary at the FDA and also Chris Klump, who have been receptive to at least hearing the other side of the equation.

00:58:39.000 And to be clear, when it comes to peptides, Chris, Marty, Stephanie, Spear, Bobby, all of them are aligned.

00:58:49.000 Like peptides, I'm being told, are done.

00:58:51.000 It's just a matter of when.

00:58:53.000 I don't have that timeline, but it's a huge win because it goes so much bigger.

00:58:59.000 I cannot stress, Joe, how close preventative longevity-based medicine was to being done.

00:59:07.000 Because if you shut down all compounders throughout the country and they've already gone after the black and gray market, the FBI has shown up at these people's doors. 0.99

00:59:16.000 If Kennedy wasn't the secretary and if the Maha movement hadn't started, it's over.

00:59:21.000 It's over.

00:59:22.000 So if Kamala Harris wins, it's totally. 0.60

00:59:22.000 It's over. 0.60

00:59:26.000 Yeah.

00:59:27.000 And on that note, even here in Texas, this is where this is crazy.

00:59:32.000 I've gotten to know several of the congressmen, congresswomen, Lacey Holes, a congresswoman here in Texas.

00:59:38.000 Senator Colehurst, I believe she's over the healthcare committee for the Senate.

00:59:42.000 Senator Colehurst was looking at forming her own FDA for Texas.

00:59:46.000 That's how serious that was getting because they knew that of everything that's happened, where this would continue to head, and states were looking to potentially hedge their bet to protect their state citizens from the federal guidelines that could be restrictive or preventative for care, which is crazy to think.

01:00:07.000 So when I laid this out for Marty, one of the things I explained where here's what the naysayers will say.

01:00:17.000 We don't want it to be the Wild West.

01:00:19.000 You're going to grandfather in peptides and give people accessibility to peptides, and that would be the Wild West.

01:00:25.000 And my answer to that is, we are living in the Wild West.

01:00:28.000 Today is the most dangerous time it has ever been in the history of peptides.

01:00:33.000 Peptides have grown legs.

01:00:35.000 The cat's out of the bag.

01:00:37.000 Everyone knows what they were.

01:00:39.000 They got a taste of the efficacy and the benefits.

01:00:41.000 And patients aren't going to stop using them.

01:00:44.000 So right now, four out of five peptides being filled are being filled through gray or black market solutions.

01:00:50.000 When Eli Lilly and Novo throw out a $7 billion number where they're cooking the books is they're not telling legislators that a lot of that is gray and black market, four out of five, meaning there is no clinician in the chain of custody.

01:01:05.000 The majority.

01:01:06.000 The majority.

01:01:07.000 The majority of this cookbook, $7 billion is black market.

01:01:11.000 Correct.

01:01:12.000 And again, even in the black market.

01:01:16.000 And I want to be clear.

01:01:16.000 And yes.

01:01:17.000 I'm not, even in the black market, I know, and I've validation tested and done independent validation testing of a lot of these companies.

01:01:26.000 And some of them are efficacious.

01:01:28.000 Some of them are real.

01:01:29.000 And some of them are not.

01:01:31.000 What's the percentage?

01:01:32.000 Roughly.

01:01:33.000 A large percentage is off, like, and sometimes dosed higher, you know?

01:01:38.000 So think about if you were to get like a GLP1 and you're injecting a dosage that's 2x what it should be, right?

01:01:45.000 You could have muscle wasting or all sorts of catastrophic events.

01:01:49.000 And this is just because of a lack of regulation.

01:01:50.000 Correct.

01:01:51.000 There's no regulation.

01:01:52.000 There's no oversight.

01:01:52.000 There's no regulation.

01:01:54.000 And these companies attempt to operate through a loophole.

01:01:57.000 And that loophole is they claim it's for non-human use.

01:02:00.000 I actually had a call with a really prominent peptide company and their CEO, who's an Ivy League guy.

01:02:07.000 And I get on the phone with this guy and he's wanting to huff and puff and tell me how I don't know what I'm talking about and that he's safe and that he has written legal opinions and that he knows what he's allowed to do and not allowed to do.

01:02:18.000 And I said, well, I can tell you from history, what I've seen, you are using influencers to advertise for human use.

01:02:27.000 You say on your label, non-human use, but the second somebody has an adverse event and has something catastrophic happen, ODs or dies, the DOJ is going to show up on your door.

01:02:39.000 And when they do, they're going to subpoena you.

01:02:42.000 And when they do, they're going to uncover that you were paying influencers to advertise these products for human use while putting on the label they're for non-human use.

01:02:52.000 So you were knowingly and willingly circumventing the safety and the laws of the land to push a illegal compound into a marketplace.

01:03:02.000 I'm just telling you how this is going to play out.

01:03:04.000 I'm not hoping this for anybody.

01:03:06.000 And this was about eight months ago, and now it's happened.

01:03:09.000 Now the FBI has shown up at multiple gray and black market peptide facilities.

01:03:14.000 If we're being honest, it's 100% because of Redatrutide, the next blockbuster GLP1 that is in the works.

01:03:22.000 Can you explain that?

01:03:23.000 Yeah.

01:03:24.000 So Redatrutide is a triple agonist being developed by Eli Lilly.

01:03:28.000 And so it hits three different receptor sites.

01:03:30.000 It has less muscle wasting, much better safety profile, lower side effect profile, but people drop substantial amounts of body fat.

01:03:40.000 And that drug is not on the market.

01:03:42.000 It has not made it through phase three trials.

01:03:44.000 It's not commercially available.

01:03:47.000 So we got a letter as a compounding pharmacy under the FDA guidelines telling us it is illegal if you make this and we will come after you.

01:03:56.000 So we've never made it because we're a compounding pharmacy that has to follow the laws of the land because the state and the federal government inspect us.

01:04:04.000 Right before we came on, I was telling you the FDA has been in our building five times in four years.

01:04:11.000 The states have been in my building every year and I'm in 47 states.

01:04:15.000 So almost every state come we're literally in an inspection all the time.

01:04:20.000 There are plenty of safety nets.

01:04:22.000 We independently third-party verify every dosage.

01:04:25.000 We buy API from what's called the green list.

01:04:27.000 The green list is a list established by the FDA that tells us you can buy these pharmaceutical ingredients from these ingredient manufacturers.

01:04:36.000 What does API stand for?

01:04:37.000 It's pharmaceutical ingredients.

01:04:39.000 It's just the base product used to compound a medication.

01:04:44.000 None of those checks and balances happen in the gray and black market. 0.99

01:04:47.000 Again, it's not saying that all those guys are bad or that their product's bad, but regardless, whether 100%.

01:04:55.000 There's no regulation.

01:04:56.000 There's no checks and balances.

01:04:58.000 So at the very least, it leaves the door open.

01:05:00.000 It leaves the door open.

01:05:00.000 Correct.

01:05:02.000 And if I am a patient who wants to get on a weight loss drug and I can just buy it online and not have to go to a doctor and not have to go to a clinic and get blood work, and I can just buy it, there's no doctor, there's no pharmacist, it's drop shipped to my house.

01:05:16.000 What's even scarier, though, is there's no dosing instructions.

01:05:20.000 There's no way to reconstitute it.

01:05:22.000 There's no explanation of how to reconstitute.

01:05:25.000 Because once they're teaching you how to reconstitute and mix it, they're taking part in medical administration.

01:05:31.000 And so these companies have avoided all of that.

01:05:33.000 And people were using things like ChatGPT, but now ChatGPT and all the large language models have shut that down.

01:05:40.000 So now what you have is American people buying random product online with no guidance, no oversight, no clinician in the chain of custody, no checks and balances, no state or federal regulators.

01:05:53.000 We are living in the Wild West.

01:05:54.000 So my message to Marty and if you want to fix this, how you fix it is you bring back where we were prior to the mistake of the Biden administration, where they pulled these peptides from the market with no safety data that can support their actions.

01:06:12.000 And you put it back in the hands of trained clinicians.

01:06:15.000 You require people to go through the process where they have a clinician and a pharmacist and a compounding pharmacy under the right guidelines regulating the space because we know peptides are safe.

01:06:29.000 Like they are safe.

01:06:31.000 200 peptides are found naturally occurring in the human body.

01:06:34.000 These are raw elements that are readily available in nature.

01:06:38.000 The question is sterility, efficacy, and safety.

01:06:43.000 And through the proper checks and balances, we can minimize most of those side effect profiles and optimize positive outcomes.

01:06:51.000 But it requires restoring law and order to the land and implementing things the way they were before the mistake happened.

01:06:59.000 And that's all I've been trying to argue.

01:07:01.000 There's a way to fix this.

01:07:02.000 And if you do that overnight, as much as I hate to say this, you make these big pharmaceutical companies ecstatic because you just got rid of four out of five weight loss drugs that were being filled with no clinician.

01:07:16.000 And you do push it in a way back to the traditional system with the checks and balances that these regulatory bodies are so worried about.

01:07:26.000 And the only argument against that is, well, peptides don't have enough robust human clinical trials with safety data.

01:07:35.000 And then you go down that topic and I'm like, guys, you do realize, like we said, like 60 to 80% of drugs have a major label change.

01:07:42.000 These are the drugs that make it through.

01:07:44.000 Separate from that, every product that's in the operating room, I've covered this every time I've been on here.

01:07:49.000 Every single 90% of the products in the operating room never had a human safety study.

01:07:54.000 They were all brought in through the 510K approval process.

01:07:57.000 Doctors are using things every day in practice that are either off label or not validation tested or have no human safety studies.

01:08:07.000 It is commonplace in medicine every day.

01:08:10.000 So to make it this big to-do that all of a sudden it's dangerous, the most dangerous time we're living in is right now with no checks and balances.

01:08:19.000 If we get this done, you've now built a regulatory pathway that provides affordability, accessibility, personalized medicine, predictive care.

01:08:29.000 It is such a big win beyond a peptide because it candidly saves the industry.

01:08:34.000 I can tell you, owning clinic, owning a telemedicine company, owning all of these things, none of that machine works if we can't create products that help people.

01:08:45.000 Right?

01:08:46.000 And so quality products that are available without quality are even worse than quality products that aren't available.

01:08:55.000 You know, and those were our two options right now.

01:08:57.000 It's like they can't get a quality product and then we can't sell the quality product.

01:09:02.000 But this change will allow us to sell safe and quality products with the proper checks and balances.

01:09:11.000 And it also builds a regulatory pathway that I think sets us up for long-term success with things like stem cells.

01:09:17.000 Well, it seems like such a reasonable concession.

01:09:19.000 You cut out the black market.

01:09:21.000 You regulate stem cells and you regulate peptides.

01:09:25.000 You regulate everything that's being done through compound pharmacies.

01:09:28.000 Everybody wins.

01:09:29.000 I agree.

01:09:30.000 That's the message that I went.

01:09:32.000 I don't agree.

01:09:32.000 And I think that's the problem.

01:09:33.000 The pharmaceutical drug companies want everybody to win.

01:09:35.000 Correct.

01:09:36.000 They want only them to win.

01:09:37.000 Correct.

01:09:38.000 So any profit that you make or any compounding pharmacy makes in their mind is stolen from them.

01:09:45.000 Correct.

01:09:46.000 Which is wild.

01:09:47.000 Yeah.

01:09:48.000 And that is the big challenge is the future of this regulatory pathway.

01:09:52.000 And that's where I wanted to get into the state.

01:09:54.000 And this is something that what we saw with the food lobby, when we testified at the state level for the food program, for the SNAP program, for the school lunch program, trying to align the state with the new goal of the food pyramid and the new food guidelines and get back to eating real food, healthy food, instead of feeding kids crap all day in school.

01:10:18.000 The states picked up the torch and ran with it faster than the federal government did.

01:10:22.000 And the reason that's important is we've now learned the offense.

01:10:26.000 Texas passed the bills, three different bills around food and food initiatives and label changes and protecting children.

01:10:34.000 Arizona followed suit.

01:10:36.000 I think Florida followed, multiple states followed suit, which creates a trade win that allows the federal government to pick up what state legislators have done and mirror those bills.

01:10:46.000 So I say that because I am already working at the state level to do the same thing here in Texas.

01:10:52.000 So my hope is that the federal government and the FDA get this done with peptides.

01:10:58.000 And then the next step would be, can we do the same thing with biologics and stem cells, which are amazing tools in the tool belt to drive health span and help prevent chronic disease?

01:11:07.000 The state of Texas is already raring to go.

01:11:09.000 So the state of Texas passed the Compassionate Use Act, which says if you have a chronic disease or any sort of chronic health issue, you have the right to try.

01:11:22.000 So there isn't where it's almost like marijuana law, without getting too nuanced.

01:11:26.000 The states, if you have a clinic within the state and you manufacture the product within the state or compound within the state, in theory, you can administer within the state.

01:11:35.000 And even if the FDA has a different stance on it, the state can have its guidelines and you can fall within the rules and regulations of the state and still honor and respect the rules of the land.

01:11:48.000 Does that make sense?

01:11:49.000 Yes.

01:11:50.000 So Texas did this. 0.96

01:11:50.000 Okay. 0.96

01:11:52.000 Utah did this.

01:11:53.000 Florida did this.

01:11:56.000 And I just testified in Arizona two weeks ago on the stem cell bill in Arizona.

01:12:01.000 Senator Janae Champ called me and said, can you come out and help testify?

01:12:05.000 And can we do what you guys have done in Florida and some of these other states?

01:12:09.000 And right now it passed through the House and it's on to the Senate and the Senate will most likely pass this bill.

01:12:16.000 And so I say all that to go, the states right now are able to move faster and more nimble than the federal government.

01:12:24.000 And the states are building safety nets and checks and balances that will still allow patient accessibility at the state level.

01:12:32.000 The problem then becomes if we can get the federal government to follow these same guidelines.

01:12:37.000 And we've also submitted, we submitted a citizen's petition to the FDA around stem cells that basically mirrors the Florida law.

01:12:46.000 And the whole message is exactly what you and I have just covered.

01:12:49.000 Guys, these things are safe.

01:12:51.000 The risk of an adverse event is minimal.

01:12:54.000 If it is an adverse event, it's flu-like symptoms and it impacts basically 10 to 15% of people.

01:13:01.000 All of the major adverse events you've been told about stem cells come from improper chain of command, improper chain of custody, and improper checks and balances.

01:13:10.000 How do you fix that?

01:13:11.000 You fix that through creating a regulatory pathway with proper checks and balances, proper chain of custody, and a clinician involved in the chain of command.

01:13:22.000 If we do those things, you are going to be able to provide patients with affordable, accessible care of products that work, that are safe, while the federal government can work through, do we make this a billable product down the road?

01:13:36.000 Do we build this into the insurance model?

01:13:39.000 For me to go fight to build this into the insurance model is a monumental task that I don't have the bandwidth to take on.

01:13:46.000 And I also think it's the wrong move.

01:13:48.000 I really do.

01:13:49.000 I don't want to be part of that model.

01:13:50.000 I want to build a life raft that allows patients to make decisions.

01:13:54.000 And the second you put this in an insurance model or a government payer model, everybody is castrated.

01:14:00.000 The decisions are made at the insurance level and at the government level, and it just becomes this nuanced, challenging thing.

01:14:09.000 Like an example is stem cells historically, one of the uses for purified amnion was burn victims, right, or wound management and diabetics.

01:14:18.000 So what happened?

01:14:19.000 Orthopedic surgeons started billing wound injuries in order to get paid from the insurance companies on an ACL.

01:14:26.000 Well, that only takes a year, six months before the insurance companies ring the bell and go, wait a second, dude, this person billed us a million dollars on wound management and they're an orthopedic surgeon.

01:14:36.000 What is going on, right?

01:14:38.000 You just committed insurance fraud.

01:14:39.000 And now you've created this counterculture movement against stem cells and purified amnion and all of these products.

01:14:45.000 And that's what happened in real time. 0.98

01:14:48.000 So a lot of what we're living is the continual dogma of this broken ass system. 0.96

01:14:54.000 And it creates this trade wind that doesn't die. 0.97

01:14:58.000 I mean, this was a decade ago.

01:15:00.000 And now none of this stuff's covered from insurance.

01:15:02.000 None of it has an FDA indication.

01:15:05.000 And all of it's kind of put in this gray no man's land, even though it's used in practices every day throughout the country.

01:15:12.000 And now you can legally use these treatments in states like Texas, Florida, Arizona, soon to be Arizona and Utah.

01:15:20.000 And so there is hope because at the state level, it's moving.

01:15:23.000 I do believe Secretary Kennedy and Chris Klump and Marty are very open-minded and receptive to this.

01:15:28.000 They are very progressive, and they do see the challenges of this system.

01:15:33.000 Marty covers it in his book, like I said.

01:15:35.000 So I'm more optimistic than ever that we are going to get, if we get peptides done, the next step is to begin to work the citizens' petition to see if we can do the same thing for these biologics and make these things affordable and accessible for everybody.

01:15:51.000 And the thing that's helping the momentum, I think, is that so many people know people that have had stem cell treatment and have had amazing results, like with injuries that they just couldn't recover from.

01:16:05.000 And unfortunately, some of them had to go to Panama and had to go to Tijuana and Columbia and all these different places where it's legal.

01:16:12.000 And that's, yeah, I can't tell you how many people that I've talked to that have an injury and say, hey, I'm thinking about going to Tijuana.

01:16:20.000 What do you think?

01:16:21.000 And I say, it'll help you.

01:16:22.000 100%.

01:16:24.000 I've talked to my dad.

01:16:25.000 I talked to my uncle.

01:16:25.000 He went.

01:16:26.000 My grandma went.

01:16:27.000 This person went.

01:16:28.000 That person went.

01:16:29.000 They had results that they never achieved doing any other things.

01:16:32.000 Why is this not available here?

01:16:34.000 I'm like, oh, man, it's a long story.

01:16:36.000 I can't even start this conversation.

01:16:39.000 I have to go.

01:16:40.000 Well, and what's amazing, though, is I'm telling you, having got to know Senator Colehurst and Lacey Hull, the representative here, we'll get it done in Texas.

01:16:51.000 Like it's coming.

01:16:52.000 The new bill that we're going to submit in January, I feel confident that we will expand upon the existing legislation around patient right to choose.

01:17:04.000 Because I think it's important to begin to hedge against the power of big pharma and to try to build out a model with peptides and other things that we include in this bill at the state level, just in case, you know, just in case, not even this administration.

01:17:18.000 I feel very confident this administration is going to get a lot of these things done.

01:17:22.000 But then what happens as soon as there's a change in power down the road?

01:17:26.000 And how many years can you fight this lobby, right?

01:17:29.000 It's still alive and well.

01:17:30.000 It's not going anywhere.

01:17:32.000 But I think it's crucial that we fight for sovereignty and autonomy over our health and continue to push.

01:17:40.000 I can tell you at the state level, I'm very, very bullish that it will happen.

01:17:45.000 And what Florida saw is a $300 million infusion of cash into the state of Florida built all around this because it's now a medical tourism destination.

01:17:55.000 And that's my message to these senators and congressmen and congresswomen in Texas is we have a legitimate opportunity to do what you did with the food bill and the Maha movement around these initiatives to drive home these same initiatives on longevity and preventative based care in the state of Texas.

01:18:14.000 We have an opportunity to turn Texas into a medical tourism destination.

01:18:19.000 Can you imagine how many people would visit Austin if we truly do build a proper regulatory pathway with all the checks and balances where people can confidently fly down here and know that they can get these treatments?

01:18:32.000 And not have to have a passport.

01:18:33.000 Yeah.

01:18:34.000 I mean, because this is what's going on.

01:18:35.000 This is why people are going to Panama and all these other places. 0.58

01:18:38.000 Yeah.

01:18:39.000 I mean, they're desperate, and so they're willing to leave the country.

01:18:42.000 Yeah.

01:18:43.000 100%.

01:18:44.000 It would be way easier to just hop on a Southwest flight, come to Austin, pretty easy.

01:18:50.000 Yeah.

01:18:50.000 A lot easier.

01:18:51.000 And it should be available.

01:18:52.000 And what's really amazing to me with the Maha movement is watching people scramble to find some sort of narrative as to what they're doing is dangerous or what they're doing is bad or what they're doing is somehow or another not the way we should be going, ignoring those facts that you laid out.

01:19:13.000 We are the wealthiest country in the world.

01:19:15.000 We are the sickest country in the world.

01:19:17.000 We've never had more money. 0.95

01:19:18.000 We've never been more sick.

01:19:19.000 Yeah.

01:19:20.000 We've never spent more on health care. 1.00

01:19:22.000 We've never been more fucked up. 1.00

01:19:23.000 Yeah. 1.00

01:19:24.000 At one point in time, does someone say, hey, this system sucks. 0.93

01:19:28.000 Yeah. 0.90

01:19:29.000 But they don't want to.

01:19:30.000 They don't want, they resist this radical change and this appeal to authority.

01:19:35.000 These people that are in control of all these various organizations, they know what they're doing.

01:19:40.000 They are the experts.

01:19:42.000 We should trust them. 0.98

01:19:43.000 They've fucked this whole thing up. 0.86

01:19:45.000 How are you trusting them still?

01:19:48.000 You just said 60 to 80% of them have either major label changes or have the products removed.

01:19:54.000 You think about all the different adverse side effects that are very, very well known from various pharmaceutical drugs, all these different things.

01:20:01.000 How many times does this have to happen before you just want to rip that band-aid off and do something different?

01:20:09.000 It's tough because, and people misunderstand.

01:20:11.000 I think they misunderstand even what you and I are saying because I hear so often people going, okay, it's a conspiracy theory.

01:20:17.000 They want to keep you fat and sick and monetize chronic disease and there's malicious intent.

01:20:22.000 I'm like, no, what I'm telling you is this system was born in captivity.

01:20:26.000 It's broken.

01:20:27.000 There's special interests that are able to influence accessibility and affordability of care.

01:20:33.000 Those decisions have cataclysmic effects on our health as a nation, on our national security.

01:20:42.000 How many men can even qualify for military service right now?

01:20:45.000 71% of young kids can't qualify for military service.

01:20:49.000 It's nuts.

01:20:50.000 And then you look at how many can't even do, I think, I don't remember what the number.

01:20:53.000 It was something staggering, like the average American can't do two pull-ups or something like that.

01:20:57.000 And then you see Secretary Kennedy rattling off 20-something pull-ups at the end of the day.

01:21:02.000 Which is nuts.

01:21:04.000 But it's not that I'm not saying that.

01:21:07.000 It's not any conspiracy.

01:21:08.000 It's just they are extracting enormous amounts of money.

01:21:13.000 They don't want to stop extracting enormous amounts of money.

01:21:17.000 They want the system to remain as in place as is because it's very profitable for them.

01:21:23.000 But it's just not good for us.

01:21:25.000 And it doesn't mean it can't be profitable still.

01:21:25.000 Correct.

01:21:28.000 It's just you have to have a workable functional model that benefits the American people and benefits health.

01:21:35.000 I agree.

01:21:36.000 And that's where I'm like, guys, we don't have to.

01:21:38.000 I'm not saying if you want to run this system the way you're running it and reform it where you can, I get that.

01:21:44.000 But I also think there's an immense value in building a life raft, just in case.

01:21:49.000 Just in case.

01:21:50.000 Why is there any pushback to building a cash pay model with a pathway that allows patients to access medications with their own hard-earned cash?

01:22:01.000 Preventative health care instead of sick care.

01:22:03.000 You got it.

01:22:04.000 Sick care that is perpetual and never ending and ultimately leads to a catastrophic series of side effects.

01:22:11.000 You got it.

01:22:12.000 And I tell people the difference is with a peptide or something preventative, you're coming in and we're optimizing you, right?

01:22:20.000 So, you know, I've taken things like Dihexa, you know, for me personally, I'm not advertising this for other people, but it's like it 100% improved my neurocognitive function.

01:22:30.000 It 100% improved my data recall and retention.

01:22:33.000 It moved the needle.

01:22:35.000 And I'm paying with my cash to use something that is doctor prescribed.

01:22:40.000 And why do I need anyone else's approval for that?

01:22:44.000 I understand the need to protect the American public with safety.

01:22:47.000 And that's where I think improving safety is important.

01:22:50.000 But the second part of the equation with the FDA is approving efficacy.

01:22:54.000 And approving efficacy, unfortunately, with the model is a multi-billion dollar process.

01:23:00.000 Those checks and balances are crucial when you do a set it and forget it healthcare system.

01:23:06.000 What do I mean by that?

01:23:07.000 You put somebody on Lipitor and the doctor doesn't see them for another year and that patient is blindly trusting that clinician.

01:23:14.000 That is the insurance model.

01:23:16.000 The cash pay model is an educated patient.

01:23:20.000 patient who's taking their health into their own hands. 0.99

01:23:23.000 And you better believe me when I say, if you don't put a win on the board, they're going to fire your ass because it's their money. 0.97

01:23:30.000 Nobody's going to take a peptide month after month after month if they don't think it's doing anything. 0.98

01:23:35.000 Right.

01:23:36.000 Because they're using their money, not taxpayers' money, not an employer's money, right?

01:23:41.000 The checks and balances are there through the consumer market because it has more integrity than the traditional model because this is the only model where if you don't produce for the patient, you're fired.

01:23:54.000 You can't fire your clinician in the insurance model because the insurance model tells you where to go.

01:24:00.000 And this is important.

01:24:01.000 Sorry, I'm ADHD, but I'm thinking about this.

01:24:03.000 One of the things that a regulator mentioned to me was, again, I hate to keep bringing up these big pharmaceutical companies, but they were lobbying saying there's a problem.

01:24:11.000 Guys like Brigham, they'll own the pharmacy, but then they also own clinics and that's vertical integration and blah, And that's not fair to a patient.

01:24:21.000 Hold on.

01:24:21.000 If you understand the law of the land, the patient has the right to take their prescription wherever they want.

01:24:28.000 Even if they come two ways too well, we may prescribe it and we send it to me, to my pharmacy, because we compete on price.

01:24:36.000 And I'm going to make this as cost effective and as beneficial to the patient as possible.

01:24:41.000 If I can't compete in an open market and make this affordable and approachable for you, take your prescription somewhere else.

01:24:48.000 But I'm going to provide quality, efficacy, and cost.

01:24:52.000 And I'm going to beat you.

01:24:53.000 But you're not going to force people to totally get that much.

01:24:55.000 And what people don't understand is in the insurance model, a patient is told, you're not allowed to go to this doctor.

01:25:01.000 You got to go to this doctor because they're within your plan.

01:25:04.000 And then they go to that doctor and that doctor goes, what pharmacy do you want it filled at?

01:25:08.000 Well, it doesn't matter if it's CVS or Walgreens or wherever.

01:25:11.000 The patient's going to have the same price because that price is controlled by the PBM, which is the insurance company.

01:25:17.000 And then that PBM is monetizing that drug through rebate programs.

01:25:21.000 It is a totally different system that captures a patient, controls a patient, and monetizes chronic disease.

01:25:29.000 My goal is to help you drive health span and monetize your health, to help you want to be a willing participant because you feel so good in your mental, cognitive, physical function, your skin, your complexion.

01:25:43.000 What we see is somebody starts and it's not, they start thinking they want to lose weight.

01:25:49.000 Guess what?

01:25:50.000 As soon as a guy like Jelly loses that weight, now the guy, I was on the phone with him this morning.

01:25:54.000 He's running five miles talking to me on the phone.

01:25:57.000 This was a guy who was 500 pounds, man.

01:25:59.000 This guy couldn't walk up his driveway.

01:26:01.000 And now he has life again.

01:26:02.000 He's bow hunting.

01:26:03.000 He's like getting into these hobbies and these things.

01:26:06.000 When he goes and spends money on a peptide, it's not because it's pseudoscience or it doesn't work.

01:26:11.000 It's because he's a living example of the impact it's made on his life.

01:26:15.000 And he is knowingly and willingly opting in to continue to see how far he can push this healthcare journey and how much more optimal he can get. 0.98

01:26:25.000 And in real time, unlike traditional medicine, we are tracking all of this shit. 0.99

01:26:31.000 We're tracking you via DEXA. 0.99

01:26:33.000 We're tracking you via the O2 Max.

01:26:35.000 We're tracking you via wearables, all of that vertically integrated in real time.

01:26:40.000 And then we're culminating that data across the patient population.

01:26:43.000 So imagine when I get to a point in a dream world, what I want is 10, 15 million patients nationwide.

01:26:51.000 We're tracking all these data analytics.

01:26:53.000 We know that every man with a gene marker of P452 who went on testosterone saw a market improvement in REM sleep, right?

01:27:02.000 This is all the type of data we can extrapolate.

01:27:05.000 But to do that, you've got to have the tools.

01:27:08.000 You've got to have the peptides.

01:27:10.000 You've got to have the biologics.

01:27:12.000 You've got to have the diagnostic tools like comprehensive blood work.

01:27:16.000 Another huge missed thing in healthcare, I believe, is gene sequencing.

01:27:21.000 Less than one in 1,000 people have ever had their genome sequenced.

01:27:25.000 We've only sequenced, I think, one in a thousand animals.

01:27:29.000 Genetics is in the infancy of what it's going to be.

01:27:35.000 And a real world example is that is somebody like Gordon, who we've been trying to help.

01:27:39.000 And sorry, I know I'm dumping a lot.

01:27:41.000 I want to be clear.

01:27:42.000 I'm not a doctor, right?

01:27:44.000 I'm just a guy who's trying to solve problems.

01:27:47.000 And everything that I talk about today is not me being a bro science or me trying to be an influencer or the things that people try to say.

01:27:56.000 Everything I discuss comes from my mentors.

01:28:00.000 And my mentor is my chief science officer, Ian White, 22 years stem cell research, Harvard and Sari Stem Cell Institute.

01:28:08.000 Mari Dazawa, who discovered Muse cells from Japan and is one of the pioneers in stem cell research.

01:28:16.000 Mari is an absolute badass. 1.00

01:28:19.000 Dr. Deutscher, Stanford graduate, stem cell research, longevity specialist, Ryan Rossner, PhD, worked for DARPA.

01:28:28.000 I'm talking to brilliant people.

01:28:30.000 And I'm doing my best to learn and distill down what I'm gathering from these folks in a manner that's digestible for Neanderthals like myself.

01:28:39.000 That's all I'm trying to do.

01:28:40.000 You guys at Ways2Well are also incorporating a bunch of other therapies.

01:28:44.000 And I want you to talk about those too.

01:28:47.000 Yeah, I would love to.

01:28:48.000 Before I lose the real quick on the genetics, because I'm super excited about this.

01:28:52.000 So one of the things we're building into the app.

01:28:54.000 So the next iteration of the app, which will come out in a few weeks, we're just trying to improve on the simplicity of use, the ability to get refills, vertically integrating into a pharmacy.

01:29:05.000 Because so often patients will fill a prescription, go to a pharmacy they don't know, then they come back and they go, well, where am I on the refill?

01:29:12.000 And where is it out in the process?

01:29:14.000 And when does it get to my house?

01:29:15.000 And what about this?

01:29:16.000 And I can't remember what the doctor said on the phone.

01:29:16.000 And what about that?

01:29:18.000 That was the whole point of Alan, the chatbot that I showed you years ago.

01:29:22.000 Allen is a resource in your pocket.

01:29:25.000 And Alan is there to pull from your medical records, to pull from your chart in real time to answer any question about what happened on that phone consult with that clinician, because all of that's annotated and put into the system and documented.

01:29:38.000 And so Alan is there to help answer and fill in the gaps.

01:29:41.000 And where I was going with this earlier is through large language models and AI, we're going to be able to scale concierge medicine.

01:29:49.000 We're going to be able to scale it in a way like never before that allows patients to get that high touch, high quality care, but for pennies on the dollar.

01:29:59.000 Like my goal is to make this as cheap as possible so everybody can afford it.

01:30:03.000 And that's the goal with stem cells too.

01:30:05.000 But it starts with regulatory pathways and destigmatizing these treatments and building a pathway that everyone can afford.

01:30:14.000 And so one of the things we're looking to add to the app is gene sequencing.

01:30:19.000 There are 20,000 genes.

01:30:21.000 Most people don't have any clue what genes they have.

01:30:25.000 And the reason that's important and what my buddy Ryan Rossner will tell you is he's a geneticist is your genes are the software that are telling the computer how to run.

01:30:35.000 Is this the guy that I met at?

01:30:36.000 Yeah.

01:30:37.000 Yeah, okay.

01:30:37.000 Yeah, yeah.

01:30:38.000 And he worked brilliant, worked for DARPA, tons of experience at the bench and in the lab doing genetic research.

01:30:47.000 The stuff he did for DARPA was crazy.

01:30:49.000 I mean, when he starts telling you, you know, one of the things he said is we're in an era where we can build real life X-Men.

01:30:55.000 Like, we can build X-Men.

01:30:57.000 There's a gene, a gene-editing injection that can make your bone mineral density eight times stronger.

01:31:04.000 Yeah, I mean, there's, there's, you could do that.

01:31:04.000 What?

01:31:07.000 It's, it's.

01:31:08.000 You can't legally do it in the U.S. right now, but these are things that they're doing.

01:31:11.000 Are they making Russian super soldiers right now?

01:31:14.000 China and Russia are pushing the envelope with all these things.

01:31:14.000 This is the challenge.

01:31:18.000 Does that change your body mass?

01:31:19.000 It'd be interesting.

01:31:21.000 I didn't dig in with him on that, but they would.

01:31:23.000 You have to, right?

01:31:24.000 You would 100% think it's going to change your BMI because your bone mineral is going to be much thicker and more dense.

01:31:29.000 You'd probably be a lot heavier.

01:31:31.000 So it's going to change your DEXA scan and your readings.

01:31:34.000 Whoa.

01:31:34.000 Yeah.

01:31:35.000 But the future to me is, I'm telling you, the future is a random Google on that.

01:31:40.000 It's a Reddit post.

01:31:42.000 It says there's a mutation that causes bones to become eight times denser than normal.

01:31:45.000 Well, the trade-off is not being able to swim.

01:31:48.000 Well, I can barely swim right now as it is, man.

01:31:51.000 So here's what's going on. 0.99

01:31:52.000 I sink like a fucking stone as it is. 1.00

01:31:54.000 It's a real problem. 0.99

01:31:55.000 Where one of the things that he's enlightened me on, because I'm not a geneticist.

01:31:59.000 I don't know anything about that world.

01:32:01.000 He's like, dude, if you do a gene sequencing test on a guy like Gordon Ryan, maybe there's a gene that's causing him to have these stomach issues.

01:32:09.000 So we run the full gene sequencing on Gordon at Ways to Well, and it comes back.

01:32:14.000 And, you know, offhand, I remember there's a couple of really interesting stuff.

01:32:18.000 Gordon has a gene that is like one in 10 million that makes your tendons more dense and more resilient.

01:32:28.000 So stronger, more rigid tendons that are able to are more resilient to damage.

01:32:34.000 Boy, does that make sense?

01:32:36.000 Yeah, he has that gene.

01:32:37.000 He also has a gene that makes his propensity to have bone mineral density higher.

01:32:42.000 That's why his bone mineral density is higher.

01:32:43.000 That's why his bones don't break as easy.

01:32:45.000 Those are some of the positives that are in his firmware, his software that's running the biology that is Gordon Ryan.

01:32:52.000 Now, some of the downside, and this is a really cool one because we've been trying to help Gordon with this gut health issue for years.

01:32:58.000 And it's this constant battle of, you know, he's getting staph, now he's on antibiotics, now his gut health's wrecked again.

01:33:04.000 A lot of that comes down to he has a gene marker that puts him at a predisposition to get staph.

01:33:10.000 He has a weakened immune system.

01:33:12.000 So now he's in an environment where he's being exposed to a chronic issue and he has a predisposition to not be resilient to that issue.

01:33:22.000 And then he also has a gene marker that makes his gut health more acidic.

01:33:28.000 And so these are like rare genes and he happens to have these anomalies.

01:33:32.000 So it's like in one hand, he has this perfect won the statistical lottery genetic traits that put him in a position to potentially be an amazing grappler and athlete.

01:33:43.000 But then he has this Achilles heel of his predisposition to infections and his body's gut health and gut biome issues are all in that gene.

01:33:53.000 They're all in the software.

01:33:54.000 And so the premise that Ryan and what we're trying to evolve and build out is 20,000 genes.

01:34:02.000 Most people don't have any clue what any of their genes are.

01:34:06.000 We're taking all of the knowledge that Ryan and these geneticists have and we're trying to automate it using the large language models and AI and build that into the Waze to Well app.

01:34:15.000 So alongside with, you know, the VO2 Max, the DEXA, go get those anywhere.

01:34:21.000 I'm not trying to sell you these things.

01:34:23.000 I just want the information so I can help you. 0.98

01:34:26.000 I don't give a shit. 0.99

01:34:27.000 Go get your blood work from whoever. 1.00

01:34:29.000 If you can get insurance to cover it, do it.

01:34:31.000 If you can get insurance to help you with a VO2 Max or a DEXA, do it.

01:34:35.000 They're not going to, but shop it.

01:34:37.000 Find the best place for you.

01:34:39.000 And then if you have that data, when we launch the new app, we can load all that into the large language models.

01:34:45.000 We can load in your gene sequencing.

01:34:47.000 We can begin to look at you at a much broader level to try and figure out where are you headed and why?

01:34:56.000 What gene dispositions do you have?

01:34:58.000 And how do we help you navigate that?

01:35:01.000 That's predictive medicine.

01:35:03.000 That's personalized medicine.

01:35:06.000 And nobody's doing anything with genes right now.

01:35:09.000 It's crazy.

01:35:10.000 Everyone, we just got people sold on being able to do blood work.

01:35:13.000 And people are acting like that's the holy grail.

01:35:16.000 And like, I'm a believer in blood work, but it's a snapshot of you in time, right?

01:35:20.000 That's a moment of you in time.

01:35:21.000 What did you eat that day?

01:35:23.000 How did you sleep the day before?

01:35:24.000 When did you take your testosterone?

01:35:26.000 Like, there's a million variables that can throw off your blood work.

01:35:29.000 You can't lie on a DEXA.

01:35:31.000 I mean, that's a real analysis of your visceral fat, your subcutaneous fat, how much fat's packed in around your organs.

01:35:38.000 We're going to know all that.

01:35:39.000 How much atrophy is on your left bicep versus your right bicep?

01:35:43.000 All of those things.

01:35:44.000 Like Liam Harrison was just in.

01:35:47.000 I know you and Liam are buddies.

01:35:49.000 He was shocked because he has that one bum knee from all those years of moaytoning and fighters just started picking off his knee.

01:35:56.000 What's crazy is he thought he would have less muscle on that knee than that leg than the other leg because he's overcompensated and trained it so much.

01:36:04.000 He had more muscle mass on the bum leg than on the what he thought was his strong leg.

01:36:09.000 And so he was like shocked by that.

01:36:11.000 But it's fascinating because it's just data, right?

01:36:14.000 And that data gives you the ability to navigate and it gives us a blueprint because now with that data, I know things like we know how much bone mineral density you're going to lose year after year once you reach a certain age.

01:36:28.000 We can begin to quantify that and model out your vertebral risk fracture risk, you know, your hip fracture risk.

01:36:35.000 How do we preserve bone mineral density?

01:36:38.000 Like it allows us to quantify, are the hormones and these things helping preserve lean muscle mass, keep the body fat off, and optimize bone health.

01:36:47.000 All of these things.

01:36:48.000 And with what this FDA is doing with men's health and women's health and fertility and the direction it's headed, I really think we have the potential if we pull this off to enter a golden era of healthcare.

01:37:01.000 I really believe that.

01:37:02.000 But it is going to require thinking unorthodox.

01:37:05.000 It is going to require a cash pay model.

01:37:08.000 I don't think we can overhaul a system and build in all these different modalities.

01:37:14.000 I don't think we could get it done in a decade.

01:37:16.000 You know, I really don't.

01:37:17.000 And then how many lives are lost in that time?

01:37:19.000 That's where I'm pleading for, let's build a cash pay model that is a life raft that's an alternative.

01:37:25.000 And let's build a pathway that makes sense, that maybe is a more nuanced approach to driving health span.

01:37:32.000 Because I know for a fact, Secretary Kennedy has said his goal is to leave a legacy that transitioned our broken sick care system into a healthcare system, into one that prevents chronic disease rather than monetizing chronic disease. 0.96

01:37:47.000 That has literally been the mission statement since the day we opened our fucking doors. 0.94

01:37:52.000 I'm like, that's all we're trying to do. 1.00

01:37:54.000 And I love it because then you get into the fun shit. 0.98

01:37:56.000 Like, where do we go with all this gene activation? 0.99

01:38:00.000 And where do we go with like the ability to optimize humans, right?

01:38:04.000 Rather than just trying to keep you from being sick, we should strive to make you superhuman.

01:38:11.000 I mean, that's really my belief.

01:38:12.000 Like, why do you want to have normal hormones when you can have optimal hormones?

01:38:16.000 Right.

01:38:17.000 Normal bone mineral density when you can have optimal bone mineral density.

01:38:20.000 That's what I'm talking about.

01:38:22.000 Let me ask you this about the gene stuff.

01:38:24.000 What do they do?

01:38:26.000 So if they find out that you have an issue, you have some sort of a genetic issue that prevents you from doing X, Y, or Z, what can they do with your genes?

01:38:36.000 So it varies by gene, but it gives us the reason to try and understand, oh, okay, this is why this has been a repetitive issue.

01:38:46.000 And it begins to give you answers to the test.

01:38:49.000 So you're not taking a shot in the dark.

01:38:51.000 And those answers will allow us to hopefully tailor and develop nuanced treatments.

01:38:56.000 Now, the future is they're able to turn off and on genes like a light switch.

01:39:02.000 I don't know if you saw, like, they just, there was a whole article about they discovered that whales have a protein unique to whales and they live over 200 years.

01:39:10.000 And they think this protein could be one of the keys to driving human health span and longevity.

01:39:15.000 And it's basically the premise is, can we synthesize and utilize this gene to turn on the gene in humans and have us secrete and produce a higher level of this protein or this amino acid?

01:39:28.000 And would it drive our health span and reduce our risk of cancers?

01:39:31.000 All of those things.

01:39:32.000 So the question becomes, as we evolve, what genes can we turn on and turn off?

01:39:39.000 You know, what does the regulatory landscape of the future look like in America?

01:39:42.000 China and Russia are already doing these things, right?

01:39:45.000 And so even if we attempt to fight the evolution of science, I think we're going to look back in a decade and go, I cannot believe we put people on petrol chemicals to solve problems because we're going to be able to go in and turn off or on a gene and fix that problem, right?

01:40:03.000 At the cellular level, at the biological level, you're going to be able to fix and remediate so many of these issues.

01:40:10.000 That's all they're doing with the bone mineral density is they're turning on a gene that tells you to increase your bone mineral density.

01:40:15.000 Or when you look at the fallostatin, you know, that they're using in cattle, that's just a gene signal that tells your gene, hey, turn on and you're going to put on muscle.

01:40:25.000 And for a six to, I think it's a six to 12 month timeframe, that statin, that fallostatin gene will be turned on and you'll put on muscle.

01:40:34.000 And then at the end of that, it gets turned back off.

01:40:37.000 So it's like temporary turning on a white light switch and then that light switch will eventually revert back.

01:40:43.000 So this, this, Jamie, bring back up that thing with the bone mineral density.

01:40:48.000 Does it prevent you from being able to swim just because you're heavier?

01:40:53.000 Is that the idea?

01:40:54.000 That's what that's saying because you're adding so much weight and mass to the body.

01:40:57.000 Like think about French bulldogs and bulldogs can't swim because they're so dense. 0.72

01:41:02.000 But pit bulls can swim.

01:41:03.000 Yeah, pit bulls can, but French bulldogs and English bulldogs will drown. 0.98

01:41:08.000 Really?

01:41:08.000 Yeah, they don't have enough arm strength and muscle mass.

01:41:11.000 They're so dense and heavy.

01:41:13.000 Is that what it is or is it their legs are so short?

01:41:15.000 They don't have the ability to move enough momentum of that denseness of their body composition.

01:41:15.000 It's both.

01:41:21.000 Because little Carl's jacked.

01:41:22.000 You ever see Carl?

01:41:23.000 Yeah.

01:41:24.000 Carl is a little water though.

01:41:27.000 He's a jack.

01:41:28.000 He's smart.

01:41:28.000 Well, Marshall's like soft.

01:41:30.000 Marshall's very soft.

01:41:32.000 He swims like a fish.

01:41:33.000 He loves swimming.

01:41:34.000 That dog just, he could swim for hours.

01:41:37.000 That's so funny.

01:41:38.000 Yeah, my Frenchie loves water, but he can't swim.

01:41:38.000 He doesn't have to.

01:41:41.000 So he'll go in the shallow end, but he's smart enough to not get off the step.

01:41:45.000 Like he knows.

01:41:46.000 Oh, that's interesting.

01:41:47.000 Yeah.

01:41:48.000 So I would imagine also there would be.

01:41:52.000 So what's this?

01:41:53.000 I'm just looking at the comment.

01:41:54.000 This didn't have a link or anything.

01:41:55.000 It was literally just a picture of an x-ray.

01:41:57.000 So like not a lot of information to pull off of that.

01:41:59.000 Unable to swim is weird.

01:42:01.000 But I don't even know.

01:42:02.000 But is it because it's more difficult to swim?

01:42:05.000 Because you're heavier?

01:42:06.000 Because like my kids can swim.

01:42:09.000 You know, because, you know, I mean, my daughter, my 15-year-old, might weigh 120 pounds or something like that, 150.

01:42:16.000 I weigh like 204.

01:42:18.000 I go in the water.

01:42:19.000 I just sink.

01:42:21.000 I can't float.

01:42:22.000 Yeah, well, you don't have any body fat either.

01:42:24.000 It's dense.

01:42:24.000 It's all muscle and bone.

01:42:25.000 It's a struggle for me to swim.

01:42:27.000 Yeah.

01:42:28.000 You know, but I wonder, like, if, is it so?

01:42:33.000 If your bones are have more or they're more hollow, does that help you swim because they're more hollow like?

01:42:40.000 Does that aid?

01:42:42.000 What's what's so fascinating to all this to me is so then you've got.

01:42:45.000 So getting to meet all these different scientists right, you got Ryan, who was working for Darpa, and then I know Ian, who's been 20 years of stem cell research, and Ian, in his book, talks about that.

01:42:56.000 We share a common ancestor and i've covered this before, but Ian hypothesizes within our genetics.

01:43:03.000 We share an ancestor with the eternal jellyfish.

01:43:06.000 We share an ancestor with the Galapagos tortoise, with the Greenland shark.

01:43:10.000 Greenland sharks don't develop cancer.

01:43:12.000 They live 500 to 600 years.

01:43:14.000 The jellyfish lives eternally.

01:43:16.000 All of those black boxes are within us.

01:43:19.000 If we can find those through gene sequencing and we can identify which gene is doing that in the animal kingdom and cross-reference that to our own genetics.

01:43:28.000 The question then becomes, can you either insert that gene into humans or is that gene available and can you turn it on um and what's the side effect correct?

01:43:38.000 So individuals with uh unexplained hbm had an excess of sinking when swimming.

01:43:44.000 What is that number 7.1136?

01:43:47.000 What does that mean?

01:43:48.000 Adjusted odds ratio with 95 confidence mandible?

01:43:52.000 So it says excess of sinking when swimming, so it just seems like it's more difficult.

01:43:57.000 Yeah, it just makes sense.

01:43:58.000 Because you're heavier yeah, you're more dense, it's more difficult for me to swim, associated with dysplasia, skeletal dysplasia.

01:44:05.000 That's not good, right many.

01:44:08.000 What is this?

01:44:09.000 I'm thinking of hepatitis, harder harbor, an underlying genetic disorder affecting bone mass.

01:44:14.000 This was just a study based off of a high bone density.

01:44:16.000 This wasn't specific to that, you know, and this is just sink more.

01:44:21.000 This is stuff that's like in its infancy, but I just think it's fascinating, right?

01:44:24.000 Um well, that Brian Shaw dude, that guy can't swim.

01:44:27.000 There's no fucking way that guy must sink like a rock because didn't he have like the most insane bone mineral density tested? 0.96

01:44:34.000 They said his bone mineral density is one of 500 million. 0.99

01:44:40.000 So there might be, like what, eight people, ten people on earth that have that?

01:44:45.000 Yeah, that's so crazy and that I mean.

01:44:48.000 But that's probably genetics and also training right, he's obviously a strong man, so he's been living.

01:44:54.000 Yeah there's, and there's crazy.

01:44:56.000 So they've done um, what is it?

01:44:58.000 Devin Laurette, do you know that?

01:44:59.000 Sure okay so yeah, Devin came into the clinic, he's done his gene sequencing um, and it's crazy like the guy has so many genes that are just statistically impossible.

01:45:13.000 It's like, was this guy built in a lab like our wrestle?

01:45:17.000 It's crazy, like he has that same tendon gene.

01:45:20.000 He has the bone mineral density gene.

01:45:22.000 He has some very, very unique genes and so part of this is just like the, the knowledge and the excitement of what can we do in the future.

01:45:30.000 I don't know, but today I think you know, knowing your software that you're running on, it's crazy to think that everyone knows which version of the Iphone software they've got.

01:45:39.000 You got 7.

01:45:40.000 whatever but we don't know what code our body's running on but here's the question these Genes are inherent to you from birth, or is anything a result of training?

01:45:51.000 The genes are inherent to you at birth.

01:45:54.000 So, and then you do have epigenetics, and epigenetics are impacted by your body by activity, right?

01:46:00.000 So, you may have a predisposition to developing cancer cells, right?

01:46:06.000 That's unfortunate, but you may have that.

01:46:08.000 But that doesn't mean definitively you're going to develop cancer.

01:46:11.000 It just means you can now make lifestyle and behavioral changes to minimize.

01:46:15.000 So, if you have a predisposition to that, you probably shouldn't smoke cigarettes all day, right?

01:46:20.000 We should probably try to, if you have a predisposition to weak bone mineral density, right?

01:46:25.000 We should probably make sure that we never let your hormones drop in your 40s where you begin that initial decline and the cascade effect.

01:46:33.000 This gene mutation seems to also have a other side effect of vision loss.

01:46:39.000 Yeah, because it causes some eye vascular issues.

01:46:42.000 Interesting.

01:46:43.000 Yeah, and this is one, this is one example of genes that they were looking at, I think, at DARPA and some of these other projects.

01:46:50.000 These aren't things being utilized in medicine today, but this is the direction of the future.

01:46:55.000 I really do believe that they're going to solve a lot of these genetic traits and be able to figure out how to turn off and on these traits.

01:47:03.000 Certain variants in LRP5 gene interfere with eye blood vessel development, causing familial exudative can lead to vision loss.

01:47:03.000 Right.

01:47:15.000 Vitro retinopathy, which can lead to vision loss.

01:47:20.000 Mutations can cause varying clinical presentations ranging from asymptomatic high bone density to severe skeletal fragility or blindness.

01:47:29.000 Calling out a fever is pretty tough.

01:47:29.000 Whoa.

01:47:31.000 Yeah.

01:47:35.000 One of the man.

01:47:36.000 So one of the other things, you said treatments that we're doing.

01:47:39.000 One of the things that I think is the most exciting thing that I have come across, and I know, I think you know where I'm going with this in my entire time in healthcare is the muse stem cells.

01:47:50.000 Yeah.

01:47:52.000 So I don't know if you want me to talk a little bit about that.

01:47:56.000 So for the listeners, because of you, candidly, I get approached all the time from scientists, from doctors, from people going, hey, I've got this thing that's going to change the world.

01:48:06.000 And I'm like, oh, yeah, sure, you do.

01:48:07.000 And you just never know.

01:48:09.000 So I had a company reach out and they're like, hey, we would love to meet with you.

01:48:13.000 We have a sub-phenotype of stem cell that we think is going to change the world.

01:48:18.000 And so I called Dr. White, you know, who's my chief science officer, and I have him vet these folks.

01:48:25.000 And he's like, man, I don't know.

01:48:27.000 It sounds too good to be true.

01:48:28.000 They're like, we would love for you guys to fly to Japan, meet with Mari Dozwana, and hear her lectures and tour the lab and kind of see what she's been doing since 2010.

01:48:41.000 We reviewed all the research, all the data, all the literature, and it was mind-boggling.

01:48:47.000 So Ian and I hopped on a plane and went to Japan back in September and sat down with Mari and she was gracious enough to break down all of her research, answer Ian's questions. 0.99

01:48:59.000 And I'm going to be clear, like we went there to debunk this shit. 0.94

01:49:03.000 We thought there's no way that this is what she's presenting. 0.99

01:49:06.000 It's just, it just seems too good to be true.

01:49:11.000 And after sitting through those lectures and Mari enlightening us on all of her research and what she's seen, I left there with Ian and he looked at me and was like, if this is real, this is going to change everything in the regenerative space.

01:49:27.000 And Ian, I think, won Regenitive Scientist of the Year last year in North America.

01:49:31.000 He won a big award for this space.

01:49:35.000 And Ian is a stem cell scientist.

01:49:38.000 But these muse stem cells are such a rare subset phenotype of stem cell.

01:49:44.000 And so the best way to explain it is to try and break it down in like layman's terms is Muse stands for multilineage and the SE of Muse stands for stress enduring.

01:49:58.000 So what does that mean in like real world talk?

01:50:02.000 Mari in her book where she writes about these cells and how she discovered them, she was in the lab.

01:50:08.000 She kept coming across this small outlier subset of stem cells that appeared to have a lot of unique qualities, but they were less than 2% of stem cells.

01:50:17.000 So stem cells that are already a very minute amount of the cells in our body have a subset phenotype called muse.

01:50:24.000 She had to rush out to a dinner where in Japan where she ended up eating sushi and having sake and forgot to put the cells back, take them off the Petri dish and put them back in cryopreserve.

01:50:35.000 She thought she'd go in the next day and everything would be dead when she went in because the cells don't last overnight.

01:50:41.000 She goes in the next day and to her surprise, all of those subset phenotype of cells were still alive.

01:50:45.000 A large majority of them were still alive.

01:50:48.000 And she thought that can't be possible.

01:50:50.000 And that was in 2010.

01:50:51.000 And that's what began her research into what are muse. 0.99

01:50:55.000 And so without getting too in the weeds, I'd love to like break down what it is, what makes it unique and why it's so promising if you're game.

01:51:04.000 Because it's super cool.

01:51:07.000 First and foremost in medicine, they say do no harm, right?

01:51:11.000 And so when we're lobbying and trying to educate these politicians and these regulators on the safety profile of traditional MSCs, traditional stem cells are extremely safe.

01:51:22.000 And I've said this on your podcast before.

01:51:25.000 Dr. Kaplan, who discovered traditional MSCs in an open letter to the scientific community, apologized and said, I should have never called them stem cells.

01:51:33.000 Because the problem with these cells is they don't differentiate.

01:51:36.000 They don't become anything.

01:51:38.000 That only happens in a Petri dish.

01:51:40.000 But in the body, they just signal to damage and then they transfer their mitochondria and they temporarily give your body an environment to heal faster and to recover.

01:51:50.000 So they aren't truly regenerative in that they don't become a tendon.

01:51:54.000 They don't become a neuron.

01:51:57.000 And there's pros and cons to that.

01:51:59.000 The pros are they don't become a cancer cell.

01:52:01.000 And that's the concern with pluripotency.

01:52:04.000 And so the holy grail of what people have always looked for with stem cells where could we, for lack of a better term, fuck with these cells enough in a Petri dish to create pluripotency where they can become something, but prevent tumorgenic behavior where they don't become a tumor or don't become a cancer.

01:52:22.000 Lo and behold, in 2010, what Mari discovered was this ultra-resilient subset of stem cell that holds those exact traits.

01:52:32.000 It was in us all along.

01:52:34.000 It's always been in us.

01:52:35.000 This wasn't created in a Petri dish.

01:52:38.000 This is biology.

01:52:40.000 This is the stem cell answer that has eluded scientists for decades.

01:52:46.000 And it is so exciting because the multilineage, what does that mean?

01:52:51.000 Multilineage just means these are pluripotent cells.

01:52:54.000 Pluripotent, multilineage is a bunch of fancy science talk for they can become anything.

01:53:01.000 So the way I explain that is you and I talked about this years ago.

01:53:04.000 Orthopedic surgeons would go, you know, I use bone marrow stem cells and I don't really get good results.

01:53:10.000 And I think that you can't get real stem cells because those cells have an identity.

01:53:15.000 And when you take bone marrow, the cells have already become a bone marrow cell and they're not going to differentiate and become something.

01:53:21.000 So heretofore they can't heal.

01:53:24.000 There's some truth to that.

01:53:25.000 They couldn't.

01:53:26.000 They could just help regenerate or help, I guess, optimize your body's healing through bringing down inflammation and potentially transferring mitochondria into your old tired weary cells.

01:53:37.000 Where these cells are fundamentally different is think of it like a kindergartner.

01:53:42.000 A kindergartner can be anything.

01:53:45.000 The world is that child's oyster.

01:53:47.000 If they want to grow up and be a doctor, they can be a doctor.

01:53:50.000 If they want to grow up and be an astronaut, they can be an astronaut.

01:53:53.000 The traditional cells that doctors and clinicians have been using in America, they're already grown up.

01:53:59.000 They've already chose their identity.

01:54:00.000 They already went to med school and they decided they're a doctor.

01:54:03.000 You can't put those in the body and have them become something because they've already developed their identity, their phenotype.

01:54:09.000 These cells will literally go into the body and take on the phenotype of any damaged cell.

01:54:18.000 What is so amazing and crucial about that to understand is if they come across a torn tendon cell, they become that tendon cell.

01:54:26.000 If it's a bone marrow cell, they become a bone marrow.

01:54:29.000 If it's a neuron, they can become a neuron.

01:54:32.000 And the process that they do it through is also pretty fascinating.

01:54:36.000 It's a commonly known process, but phagocytosis, don't say it three times fast, it can get canceled.

01:54:41.000 But like phagocytosis, essentially, even in that laminous term, is like, think of it like a Pac-Man. 0.98

01:54:48.000 This is how Mari described it to me, because she knows I'm an idiot. 0.86

01:54:51.000 And she's like trying to break it down in a way I can digest. 0.98

01:54:54.000 She's like, I want you to think of a Pac-Man.

01:54:56.000 Think of a damaged cell like a neuron.

01:54:58.000 This Pac-Man is going to go up, gobble up that neuron through the process of phagocytosis and take on all of the characteristics and code of that cell, meaning it will become a young, healthy version of the damaged cell.

01:55:14.000 So, one, these cells are extremely safe in that they're non-tumorigenic.

01:55:21.000 In studies, these cells had no, never became tumors in any of the studies that are ever done.

01:55:30.000 Furthermore, they treated mice that had pre-existing cancer.

01:55:33.000 They did not only not exasperate the tumors, in many of the studies, the tumors shrunk.

01:55:39.000 And I'm not here to say like it's going to cure cancer or anything like that.

01:55:43.000 The message is traditional MSCs are already extremely safe.

01:55:48.000 And these MSCs appear to be even as safe, if not more safe.

01:55:54.000 And the only knock on traditional MSCs in real-world application, when utilized appropriately, is they have an immunomodular modulatory immunoimmunity response, essentially, where 10 to 15% of people will get flu-like symptoms.

01:56:12.000 And that's with traditional MSCs, which is a very low safety profile.

01:56:16.000 What you saw, like effective safety profile, what you saw with the muse cells in trials is 0%.

01:56:24.000 Literally right now, nobody's even getting flu-like symptoms.

01:56:27.000 And it's because these muse cells go above and beyond immuno, like the ability to navigate your immune system and go into immunomodulating your immune system.

01:56:39.000 So what do I mean by that?

01:56:41.000 Mari did a study where she took mice, sutured in human livers, into the mice's liver. 0.97

01:56:46.000 The mice should reject that and die.

01:56:49.000 They implant muse cells in, and the liver will accept the human liver for a period of time.

01:56:54.000 They eventually rejected the liver, but it's able to immunomodulate.

01:56:58.000 So think about this for a simple way to explain it is the whole process I broke down before.

01:57:03.000 Like when a mother's pregnant, that baby is technically a foreign body in the mother. 0.87

01:57:08.000 So what in science stops that mother's body from rejecting and killing the baby and her immune system attacking the baby?

01:57:15.000 The answer is MSCs.

01:57:17.000 The answer is the juices of life that allow that mother's system to immunomodulate and not turn on the baby. 0.95

01:57:26.000 So not only does it build up the mom's immune system and helps the mom reduce inflammation, reduce like her risk of chronic disease and all mortality cause is at an all-time low while pregnant. 0.77

01:57:40.000 The risk of cancers at an all-time low while pregnant.

01:57:42.000 All of this goes back to MSCs and now we believe potentially muse cells.

01:57:48.000 And so they're safe, they're non-tumorigenic, they immunomodulate, meaning your body's not going to reject these cells.

01:57:55.000 You're not going to have a huge risk.

01:57:56.000 What's crazy is they're already using it in plastic surgery.

01:58:00.000 They would take historically instead of filling women were using fillers. 1.00

01:58:00.000 This is what I saw. 1.00

01:58:05.000 And the reason they use fillers instead of fat is fat lacks angiogenesis and those fat cells die.

01:58:10.000 And a lot of times the success rate's not as high.

01:58:13.000 So what they're doing in Dubai and these other nations is they're using muse when they do a reconstructive surgery to reduce the risk that you have an immune response that rejects the fat tissue.

01:58:24.000 So it encourages the body to accept that tissue and then helps those cells build themselves back into your system and immunoregulate.

01:58:34.000 So think about it for the future of like organ transplants, what this could mean if the science holds in practice of what they're seeing.

01:58:42.000 But for the sake of conversation today, the point of saying all that is extremely safe, no risk of tumors, non-tumorigenic, immunomodulating, meaning your body's not going to turn on it.

01:58:55.000 It's not going to cause any sort of inflammatory response or flu-like symptoms.

01:58:59.000 So one of the safest versions of stem cells we've ever seen.

01:59:02.000 And the traditional cells are extremely safe themselves.

01:59:06.000 And then you get into the pluripotency.

01:59:08.000 I mean, this is the first cell other than the cells that have been altered that can truly become something.

01:59:17.000 And then the fourth and final thing that's really amazing about these cells is their honing abilities.

01:59:23.000 So traditional MSCs, what we've been using at Waste Well for the last five years, even with the great success we've had, they literally have a 3 to 5% engraftment rate, meaning 3 to 5% of those cells make it to the site of damage and begin the healing process in the site of damage.

01:59:44.000 And think about the results we've gotten.

01:59:46.000 Now, look at muse.

01:59:48.000 Mews have a 15 to 30% engraftment rate. 1.00

01:59:53.000 Mews are literally half the size of traditional MSCs, and they have the ability when administered intravenously to pass the lungs and make it to the site of inflammation and damage.

02:00:05.000 They hone in at a much stronger rate than traditional MSCs.

02:00:11.000 So the way to think of it is like you're taking a heat-seeking missile that's able to find exactly where the SS1P, SP1 inflammation damage cell is, it's the signal that a cell sends out, hey, I'm damaged.

02:00:24.000 These muse cells will navigate straight to those damaged cells through phagocytosis, absorb that cell, take on its phenotype, and be a young, healthy, vibrant version of that cell.

02:00:36.000 And all of this occurs within three days.

02:00:39.000 So that's why you're seeing such crazy results in Dubai and overseas.

02:00:45.000 And these are the treatments that are coming into the U.S. that are going to be manufactured here on U.S. soil and utilized in states right now like Florida, Texas, Arizona, and the states that have built pathways that make this approachable for people.

02:00:59.000 The hope is that we can build a regulatory pathway at the federal level that will allow accessibility too.

02:01:05.000 Because what is definitively clear is these treatments, even the old MSCs and purified amnion and Wharton's jelly and all those things, there's no arguing that they're extremely safe.

02:01:17.000 I mean, there's 30, 40 years of data on these products.

02:01:20.000 They are safe.

02:01:21.000 They are available in nature.

02:01:23.000 They occur naturally.

02:01:24.000 The question is, how efficacious are they?

02:01:27.000 What disease states can they help with?

02:01:29.000 And how much can they move the needle?

02:01:31.000 And that's where this gets tricky because the FDA doesn't want people out there making claims.

02:01:35.000 And I understand that because there's so many people who are snake oil salesmen.

02:01:38.000 And my thing is, I'm not here to make a claim.

02:01:41.000 I'm just here to say accessibility is important because for the people who don't have any more lifeline left, who knows what this could do for them.

02:01:51.000 For the patients, you know, battling some sort of neurocognitive issue, you know, these cells are able to pierce into the midbrain.

02:01:59.000 I mean, and I have all these, Jamie, a bunch of these studies I have listed on Ways to Wells website, just so I'm not throwing random stuff out there.

02:02:07.000 I think I listed seven or eight of Mari Dazawa's studies that back everything that I'm saying.

02:02:16.000 But the premise is, you know, the future is bright.

02:02:19.000 And I think that muse will be an integral part of what we see here in the United States and the future of biologics.

02:02:26.000 When we're talking about genes, these obviously are in the body, these cells.

02:02:32.000 Is there a potential future where they could just turn these things on and not have to add exogenous stem cells?

02:02:41.000 So here's the problem is you have a precipitous decline as you age, right?

02:02:45.000 And so just like what we're seeing with peptides, you have a certain amount of these.

02:02:48.000 And as you age, they appear to decline.

02:02:51.000 The other thing that this is crazy.

02:02:53.000 So you've got this scientist, Dr. Dominic Deutscher out of Germany, brilliant guy, Stanford trained, went to Stanford, did research at Stanford, went to Harvard, University of Munich, crazy background, 14 years of stem cell research.

02:03:11.000 He catches wind of what Mari's doing, and he had been working on a study going, there appears to be this weird subset of stem cells that I can't figure out what they're doing, but they're not there in diabetic patients.

02:03:25.000 When I look at patients that are diabetic, they don't have this subset.

02:03:30.000 So what is this subset and what is it doing?

02:03:32.000 But he couldn't figure it out.

02:03:34.000 He was on the cusp of figuring it out. 0.96

02:03:37.000 And then he meets Mari and goes, oh my God, you literally figured out what the fuck I've been trying to solve for the last 14 years. 0.83

02:03:45.000 The reason is these patients are diabetic and their system is so chronically riddled with inflammation and all these issues. 0.55

02:03:55.000 The environment or whatever it is, their lifestyle caused the decline and basically the end of these cells.

02:04:03.000 All their ability to heal was used up.

02:04:05.000 Is that part of the reason other than just blood flow and the other challenges of diabetics?

02:04:11.000 It could be one of the under causing attributes that are causing these diabetic patients to heal poorly, to be chronically inflamed.

02:04:21.000 So it could be part of that equation.

02:04:24.000 But what's fascinating is it also declines as we age.

02:04:27.000 So you're going to see way more of these at birth, way less of these in your 30s, probably non-existent by the time you're in your 40s and 50s.

02:04:35.000 And so if we can take these cells, these goodies of life, and we can administer them proactively and preventatively, they even did mitochondrial testing.

02:04:46.000 I don't know if that study is released yet.

02:04:48.000 If it is, I'll add it to the website.

02:04:50.000 I'll find out from Mari.

02:04:52.000 But they did a mitochondrial function test.

02:04:54.000 One IV bag administration took one and a half years off the mitochondrial age.

02:04:58.000 Whoa.

02:04:59.000 And so I'm not saying that it reverses aging, but in these studies, it appears to have extreme mitochondrial benefits, which would logic to reason as to why we're seeing such phenomenal results with these treatments and where even, and I'm still a huge proponent of all of the traditional stuff we've been using.

02:05:18.000 We've seen miraculous results with all of these different modalities.

02:05:23.000 But I look at Muse and go, this is the holy grail of what we've been trying to find.

02:05:28.000 And Mari did it.

02:05:29.000 Like she found it.

02:05:31.000 She discovered it in 2010.

02:05:33.000 They started using it in human patients in 2019.

02:05:37.000 These products are being used every day in Dubai and overseas.

02:05:41.000 People are flying over there and paying buku dollars to these clinics to get treatments with muse cells.

02:05:48.000 In fact, one of the sheiks of United Arab Emirates or one of those, his son got in a car wreck. 1.00

02:05:54.000 He literally was in the hospital.

02:05:56.000 This is a true story.

02:05:58.000 They said, he's done.

02:05:59.000 Pull the plug, harvest his organs.

02:06:03.000 Dominic was able to get a hold of the hospital, the German scientist, and say, hold on, can you guys do a call with Mari?

02:06:09.000 I may have a solution.

02:06:11.000 They treated a kid who had been comatose, non-responsive.

02:06:17.000 Take his organs.

02:06:18.000 Like, he's done.

02:06:19.000 The neurologists are like, he's done.

02:06:21.000 There is no brain here anymore.

02:06:24.000 They treat this kid with intravenous muse cells and his brain function has come back.

02:06:29.000 He's not talking, but he's responding to his mother.

02:06:32.000 He's moving his hands.

02:06:33.000 They're no longer looking to harvest his organs.

02:06:36.000 And this is a catastrophic example.

02:06:38.000 But in a more real world, relevant example is in Japan.

02:06:43.000 They used it with children who were born with encephalitis.

02:06:48.000 And what they saw is these children who are left untreated will definitively have neurocognitive issues and defects, mental retardation. 0.99

02:07:01.000 The children treated with muse within eight days of birth, all of those children had normal brain function.

02:07:08.000 Wow.

02:07:08.000 All of them.

02:07:09.000 And so the studies beyond that, and then you get into what they saw in hearts, what they saw in myocardial infarctions.

02:07:17.000 Like you just go down the list and there's so much promising data.

02:07:22.000 And there's a decade worth of it.

02:07:25.000 It just hasn't made it into the U.S. yet.

02:07:28.000 And these are technologies and science and modalities that are going to be adopted in the near future at minimal at the state level and then hopefully at the federal level because they're already looking.

02:07:42.000 We know, like I said, Secretary Kenney is looking to open the regulatory pathway for stem cells.

02:07:48.000 And Muse are just a subset of that same class, but an even safer, more efficacious version from what we're seeing in all of the trials.

02:07:57.000 And what's so exciting is that as more research develops, more of these things are going to emerge.

02:08:03.000 They're going to keep the gene therapies, muse cells, it's going to continue to compound.

02:08:03.000 Yep.

02:08:08.000 Well, and then you've got guys like Ryan who go, if you could take a muse cell and a cell that could be anything, right?

02:08:16.000 And it already has, it's ready to learn.

02:08:19.000 What if you can take a muse cell and you can teach it to be exactly what you want it to be?

02:08:23.000 And then you administer that cell into the body, but you've already given it its commands.

02:08:27.000 You've already taught it that it wants to be a doctor, right?

02:08:30.000 It wants to be whatever it is.

02:08:31.000 Maybe you make sure that it's a neuron.

02:08:35.000 Again, I'm way over my skis on this part because I'm a business guy.

02:08:38.000 I'm just breaking down what these scientists are saying.

02:08:42.000 And all of it is exciting and promising to me because, again, we've had such phenomenal results with traditional MSCs, you know, with traditional MSC.

02:08:52.000 And all muse are, are this subset phenotype of super soldier cell.

02:08:57.000 They're more resilient.

02:08:59.000 And so the second part of muse is stress enduring.

02:09:02.000 So the whole point is Mari has a chapter in her book called Sake in Science because through drinking sake, she realized that there was an element of the science behind this that she would have never uncovered had she not gone to that dinner.

02:09:16.000 She would have never realized that these cells appear to be ultra resilient.

02:09:22.000 They can ship these cells at room temperature and they're viable for weeks.

02:09:26.000 Whereas traditional cells, we've got to keep cryopreserved and ship on dry ice. 0.94

02:09:32.000 So from an administration standpoint, from a logistical standpoint, from an efficacy standpoint, from a safety standpoint, all of this could be so game changer.

02:09:42.000 So then the next question just becomes, how do we build a regulatory pathway in this country that allows accessibility so that Americans aren't having to go to other nations?

02:09:53.000 And the states, some of the states are doing it, but ideally, it would be optimal to work with the federal government to build those same pathways at the federal level now that the states have already jumped on board.

02:10:05.000 God, that's so fascinating.

02:10:07.000 Such a cool time.

02:10:08.000 Dude, it's awesome.

02:10:10.000 I'm telling you, the stuff, it's hard because, again, I'm not a clinician.

02:10:14.000 I don't ever, I'm not, I don't want to make claims.

02:10:16.000 I don't want it to be, I am very excited about this, but I want to temper my excitement because I have to be cautious to say, I don't want to give people false hope.

02:10:26.000 You know, we don't know.

02:10:27.000 The science is very early, but it is very promising on a lot of different things.

02:10:32.000 And we've already had immense success on orthopedic injuries, knees, shoulders, elbows, using traditional MSCs that can't differentiate, right?

02:10:40.000 They're just transferring mitochondria and temporarily putting your body in a position to heal.

02:10:45.000 These muse cells differentiate.

02:10:48.000 So they literally are regenerative cells that become the broken cell that allow your body to heal.

02:10:55.000 I mean, and what we do with that and what the future holds with that, the sky's the limit.

02:11:01.000 Wow.

02:11:03.000 That's amazing.

02:11:04.000 And that's where I just think eventually we're going to get to a point where it's like, do we really prescribe everyone petrochemical drugs to fix problems?

02:11:12.000 Because the genetic side of the world and the stem cell side of the world and the biologic side of the world and all of these things.

02:11:18.000 And then you break in the large language model side and wearables and the ability to track in real time.

02:11:24.000 But also, this is where you're going to find the resistance because there's so much money in the petrochemical drugs.

02:11:29.000 Yeah.

02:11:30.000 When this is what's challenging with the stem cell stuff even, like if they don't work, people are not going to spend their hard-earned paycheck.

02:11:40.000 Right.

02:11:40.000 And that's the challenge.

02:11:41.000 Like I understand the FDA stance on safety.

02:11:44.000 And again, the historic FDA stance on not even this new administration.

02:11:48.000 This new administration has made it clear their plan is to open up the regulatory pathways on peptides and stem cells and cash pay products and to figure out a pathway that makes sense for the American people while still honoring the safety and integrity of what they're trying to implement on a grander scale.

02:12:08.000 But do we need to go through the level of rigorous, you know, multi-billion dollar process on something that can't really be patented?

02:12:19.000 Or if it's safe and the safety profile is proven and it's readily available in nature, does it make sense to grandfather these treatments in and to allow patients compassionate use?

02:12:29.000 Right.

02:12:29.000 If you're battling a chronic disease and you're going to die, what is the harm in seeing if this can help?

02:12:36.000 If you're battling dementia or Alzheimer's, you know, that's another huge one.

02:12:41.000 Like traditional MSCs are too big to pass the blood-brain barrier.

02:12:46.000 Muse MSCs can be internasally administered and immediately go into the blood-brain barrier.

02:12:52.000 And in trials, they were able to see the Muse cells 18 months later lit up like a Christmas tree in the midbrain.

02:13:01.000 The reason that's important is midbrain is where Parkinson's and so many of these neurocognitive disease states reside and where most of the dysfunction is occurring.

02:13:13.000 And so, yeah, there's a lot of promise.

02:13:16.000 I'm excited about it.

02:13:17.000 I think Muse are going to be a big opportunity here in America to drive meaningful change.

02:13:22.000 It's just a matter of, you know, when and how they're available and to what capacity.

02:13:28.000 You're going to see these things springing up at the state level.

02:13:31.000 They're already happening all over outside the United States.

02:13:36.000 It's just a little bit different market here with the regulatory landscape.

02:13:39.000 Well, that's what's so frustrating is that they are being utilized effectively overseas.

02:13:44.000 And you think about how many people do have people that are in the hospital, do have chronic illness, do have these problems that could be fixed here.

02:13:44.000 Yeah.

02:13:52.000 Yeah.

02:13:53.000 And like, let's get it going, guys.

02:13:55.000 Yeah.

02:13:56.000 I'm telling you, man.

02:13:57.000 Like, it's such an exciting.

02:14:00.000 It's super exciting.

02:14:00.000 Yeah.

02:14:01.000 And hopefully it's not too boring for the listeners.

02:14:03.000 It's just, it's complicated stuff.

02:14:04.000 So I want to try to break it.

02:14:06.000 It's not boring at all, man.

02:14:07.000 Don't apologize.

02:14:08.000 Is there anything else you want to cover?

02:14:10.000 No, the other is just, you said some of the treatments.

02:14:13.000 You know, one of the ones that I heard Dana White talk about, and he had said, well, you got to go to Mexico is plasmaphoresis.

02:14:20.000 Like we have plasmapheresis here in Austin, Texas.

02:14:23.000 We use it.

02:14:24.000 We added it to the clinic, I guess, three months ago.

02:14:28.000 Plasmapheresis is also known as therapeutic plasma exchange.

02:14:32.000 Essentially, we run your blood through a dialysis machine. 0.64

02:14:36.000 It's been used for over 50 years.

02:14:38.000 It's used at the Mayo Clinic.

02:14:39.000 It's used at all of these various academic institutions.

02:14:43.000 It just hasn't been used for longevity, right?

02:14:46.000 And in an insurance model where you're trying to get a reimbursement rate, you've got to have an indication.

02:14:52.000 But in a cash pay model, and this is where the world is your oyster, in a cash pay model, a clinician and you, the patient, can make a decision that you want to get proactive and predictive and you want to run your body, your blood through a plasma phoresis machine and basically isolate out within the plasma itself, the liquid, are all the inflammatory markers, all the leftover bad stuff that you don't want in your blood.

02:15:18.000 So for me as a 45-year-old male, I've got 45 years of all the attrition and stuff that's in my system.

02:15:25.000 You get 70% of that out through one therapeutic plasma exchange utilizing the plasmapheresis machine.

02:15:32.000 And so what we'll do is we'll extrapolate out systematically your plasma and replace it with young, healthy protein called albumin.

02:15:41.000 And then where we go an additional step at Waste Well is we're developing a protocol where we also add in the MSCs and peptides and all of the things that are missing from albumin, right?

02:15:56.000 So there's two different train of thoughts.

02:15:59.000 And I have these listed too, Jamie, on the website.

02:16:02.000 There's a bunch of different studies.

02:16:03.000 Plasmapheresis has been studied for over 50 years.

02:16:06.000 It's just not been utilized for like longevity and preventative care.

02:16:11.000 It's used more for systematic inflammatory issues.

02:16:16.000 There's even a bunch of fascinating studies around Alzheimer's because Alzheimer's and dementia is so inflammatory related.

02:16:23.000 So there's a bunch of fascinating stuff on that.

02:16:26.000 But the premise of plasmapheresis is think of it like an oil change for your body.

02:16:30.000 We're going to take out 70% of all the bad stuff that's floating around in your blood.

02:16:35.000 We're going to replace that blood with young, healthy albumin.

02:16:39.000 And then, you know, what we're attempting to do is stack it with our own protocol where we add in MSCs, extracellular vesicles, all of these cellular goodies that are readily available at birth that have a precipitous decline as we age.

02:16:53.000 Can serial therapy, lower right corner, plasma exchange remove synthetic chemicals from humans?

02:16:53.000 What is this?

02:16:59.000 So is this like BPCs and that kind of shit? 0.95

02:17:02.000 What it's, yeah, what it's doing is the goal is to remove all the extra stuff that's in your system that you don't need. 0.93

02:17:09.000 And this study is pretty interesting because it breaks down what they saw.

02:17:12.000 Here's a real world example.

02:17:14.000 Our mutual friend, Philip Franklin Lee, and I and I asked him if I can talk about this.

02:17:19.000 Look at this.

02:17:20.000 Compounds such as bisphenol, plasticizers, and phthalates.

02:17:25.000 Yep.

02:17:25.000 Endocrine disruptors are associated with the intake of ultra-processed foods due to, at least in part, to their packaging material.

02:17:31.000 So, this is the stuff that Dr. Shanna Swans talked about.

02:17:34.000 They're endocrine disruptors, endocrine disruptors.

02:17:37.000 So, crazy.

02:17:38.000 Philip, and he's talked about this on his podcast.

02:17:42.000 Philip came in chronically tired, super low testosterone.

02:17:47.000 I can't remember the exact number.

02:17:48.000 He talked about it on his podcast, but he was shocked at how low his testosterone.

02:17:52.000 It was like 80 or 90.

02:17:53.000 It was really, really low.

02:17:55.000 We did a microplastics test, and he had the most freaking microplastics that we've ever seen.

02:18:01.000 Well, he eats all that sushi, and so he's wrapped in plastic.

02:18:04.000 I know.

02:18:05.000 So, we ran that test, and then it was through the roof, and it scared him.

02:18:10.000 And Philip stopped drinking out of plastic bottles, took a very like measured approach to trying to be aware of how much plastic he could inadvertently be consuming.

02:18:20.000 And then we ran him through ways to well protocols.

02:18:23.000 Not only can we quantify it through his testing, which I think he posted on his Instagram, we quantified how much we reduced the level of microplastics.

02:18:32.000 Phillip's testosterone, without being on any testosterone, is at 1200.

02:18:39.000 Whoa. 0.92

02:18:40.000 All of that inflammation and shit that was in his system was causing chronic inflammation, chronic fatigue, running down his immune system, and causing all of these cascade effects that led to him essentially having a low testosterone. 0.99

02:18:54.000 How many people out there are having shitload? 0.97

02:18:57.000 That's what's like so many people come in and go, What do you have that can help me?

02:19:01.000 And this is what's challenging too.

02:19:03.000 This is another thing I want to point out about the challenge of like not making claims or understanding the nuance.

02:19:10.000 We saw this with the psychedelic attempt to get psychedelics through the FDA.

02:19:14.000 One of the things that they wanted to do in the psychedelic trials was provide psychiatric integration.

02:19:21.000 So, you come out the other end of a mushroom journey and you talk to a therapist and you walk through what you experience to process your thoughts and emotions.

02:19:31.000 The system's not built to do that because now you're taking two different things and attempting to build a bill master code and get an indication.

02:19:40.000 Well, if I'm united, I'm going to go, Well, how do I know it wasn't just the therapy?

02:19:45.000 Right.

02:19:46.000 Or maybe it was just the mushrooms.

02:19:47.000 Why am I paying the therapist?

02:19:48.000 Right.

02:19:49.000 And so that's one of the challenges when people go, What do you have for microplastics?

02:19:54.000 What's tough is a lot of people come in and they go, Hey, man, I'm going to do the Hawket and I'm going to do the plasmapheresis and I want to do MSCs and I want you to bring down my inflammation.

02:20:04.000 And so, so many people are doing multiple modalities.

02:20:09.000 What I'm saying is it's working, but which one is the needle mover, or is it an attrition of all of them? 0.60

02:20:17.000 You know, that's where this gets tough.

02:20:18.000 And that's where I want to track and do a better job of like tracking and quantifying individuals who just do one test or one treatment or one aspect of what we're doing at Ways to Well, which one's moving the needle the most?

02:20:30.000 Because so many people want to try everything, right?

02:20:32.000 They're already here.

02:20:33.000 They already flew in.

02:20:34.000 So they're like, Yeah, let me do this today, this tomorrow, this.

02:20:37.000 And then they all report back.

02:20:38.000 I go, I'm feeling phenomenal.

02:20:40.000 I feel the best I've felt, but they did five things.

02:20:42.000 So I know which one was the one.

02:20:45.000 Does it matter?

02:20:46.000 As long as it's providing a benefit.

02:20:46.000 Yeah.

02:20:48.000 So it's good to know.

02:20:49.000 But listen, man, thank you so much for everything.

02:20:53.000 I'm so happy you're out there.

02:20:54.000 And this is so exciting.

02:20:56.000 All this stuff is so exciting. 0.98

02:20:58.000 And I'm glad we have another opportunity to talk to people about this shit because it's really impactful. 0.99

02:21:03.000 Dude, you're the man. 0.99

02:21:04.000 And if you wouldn't have had me on here to talk about this, I wouldn't have got to meet Secretary Kennedy and we wouldn't be in a position.

02:21:10.000 And I will tell you, not being hyperbolic, if you weren't here and fighting for peptides and accessibility and you hadn't given me a platform, I don't know if anybody would be helping this administration navigate all this.

02:21:26.000 I really don't.

02:21:27.000 There's so many people on the opposite side of the aisle that it's a tough thing to navigate.

02:21:33.000 And it takes somebody who knows and has been in the industry enough to explain it, hopefully in a way that resonates, where we can get things done.

02:21:40.000 But we'll see.

02:21:42.000 Well, it's exciting.

02:21:43.000 Yeah.

02:21:43.000 Thank you, man.

02:21:44.000 Thanks, brother.

02:21:45.000 Appreciate you.

02:21:46.000 All right.

02:21:46.000 Firefight.

The Joe Rogan Experience - March 18, 2026

Joe Rogan Experience #2469 - Brigham Buhler

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