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

0:00The FDA makes this decision in a vacuum to essentially ban and shut down accessibility to dozens of peptides. And not because they were harming people, but for what they called a lack of safety data.

0:12Gary Brecka:Historically, the FDA has been controlled and met with the big pharmaceutical institutes. You can't assume that they have a fundamental understanding of peptides. You don't know what they've been told by chemical and pharma industry. You're only as good as the intel you have. And if our intel's bad, we can't be shocked when we make bad decisions. Shouldn't we open lanes for people to make choices where the outcome is maybe this doesn't work but it's caused no harm? I believe that peptides, all of these things are crucial pillars to driving healthspan which indirectly drives lifespan. Some of the best modalities are the ones that harness the body's ability to do its job on its own.

0:49Gary Brecka:The thought that we could just bring that back and make it available en masse to me is really exciting. The safety profile is astronomically better than that of a drug. the risk profiles astronomically lower than that of a drug, and the efficacy is phenomenal. Can you talk a little bit about what you see in this administration for maybe the lane widening in peptides? We're talking about human lives and the human experience. And if we can't keep people healthy and firing on all cylinders, the question is...

1:28Gary Brecka:Hey guys, welcome back to the Ultimate Human Podcast. I'm your host, human biologist, Gary Brecca, where we go down the road of everything, anti-aging, biohacking, longevity, and everything in between. And today we're firing it up right from the White House. This is incredible. And I have been waiting to sit down with this man for actually more than a year, ever since you gave me a shout out on Joe Rogan, and I've been following your journey. Welcome to the podcast, Brigham Bueller. Thank you for having me. Exciting times, and what a crazy setup. Yeah, it's a crazy setup. Like, I can't believe we're in the White House.

2:00Gary Brecka:I'm like, is anybody doing background checks on us? You know, this is amazing. You and I have such similar missions. You know, the belief in the methylation pathways, hormone balance, nutrient deficiencies. You know, we've been barking up the same tree for a long time. It's an absolute honor to sit down with your brother. You know, one of the things in this, you know, make America healthy again movement. You know, we've identified that there's a pandemic of chronic disease. We've looked at some of the genesis of chronic disease. But I want to move off of that a little bit and talk about the people that are already on this journey.

2:35Gary Brecka:And what the possibility, because you and I both had, I used to have functional medicine practices. You still do. We were heavily involved in peptides. You know, amino acid sequences that are signaling molecules to the body that I am an enormous fan of because peptides are not drugs. They are analogs. They're usually sequences of amino acids. They usually cause the body to do something it would otherwise do on its own. Secrete your own natural level of growth hormone, improve your levels of testosterone, help regulate cortisol, improve circulation, all kinds of things. And my favorite mantra for this category of biologics is that the body recognizes them.

3:22Gary Brecka:They are amino acid sequences. They're metabolites. You can break them down. You can get rid of the waste. And, you know, recently we saw the FDA come in and wipe out a whole class of these. And not because they were harming people, but for what they called a lack of safety data. Well, safety data could be 20 million people have been prescribed these things without adverse events. I would say they're pretty safe. We've never done a clinical trial on parachutes, but I wouldn't jump out of an airplane without one. At least not a placebo-controlled randomized clinical trial, right? Who wants to be in group B, you know?

3:59Gary Brecka:So can you talk a little bit about what you see in this administration for maybe the lane widening in peptides? Absolutely. And thank you for having me and thank you for all you've been doing. Like, I've been a fan from afar and listened to a lot of your talk track and I believe wholeheartedly in a lot of what you've been preaching for years. and the proof's in the pudding. Like you look at what you've been able to achieve with folks like Dana and the cascade effect of how that impacts so many lives. And so for me, I always bring it back to like, we're talking about human lives and the human experience.

4:32And if we can't keep people healthy and firing on all cylinders, the question is why? And as we got into this study and what this Maha study shows, diet, lifestyle, nutrition, but a huge proponent is getting proactive, predictive and personalized. And I believe that peptides and deep dive into biomarkers, all of these things are crucial pillars to driving healthspan, which indirectly drives lifespan. Right. I think the American people voted for change. I think that people were excited to see Bobby RFK and Secretary Kennedy's push for better transparency and more trustworthy FDA. and I can say early.

5:15I mean, we're what, 100-something days in? Yeah. Right before you and I started recording, I was just sharing with you, I had reached out to Secretary Kennedy and Stephanie, his chief of staff, and just said, hey, I would love the opportunity to just bend the ear of the FDA on these topics, peptides, the GLP-1 debacle, stem cells, and these regenerative treatment modalities, and just talk to them and try and understand.

5:41Gary Brecka:messaging to the FDA about that. I mean, where do you start with them? Because you can't assume that they have a fundamental understanding of peptides. They may only hear, you don't know what they've been told by chemical and pharma industry. You could tell a lot of what they've been told was just talk track from big pharma, which is tough because even lobbying at the state level in Texas, when you lobby on food, you begin to realize, oh my God, everything that they're being told is just a lobbyist. They're parroting what the lobbyist said. so with peptides their thing was candidly in the meeting one of the folks said there's no clinical need for peptides and i said you do understand insulin's a peptide the glp1s that are this blockbuster drug you know good bad or indifferent like it's a tool in the tool belt it's a peptide these are signaling molecules that allow the body like what you've talked about so much we're deficient in the raw materials and elements essential to driving our health yes and we're attempting to fix the food system, to fix and overhaul all these challenges that Bonnie and folks like you have been ringing the bell on.

6:43But another integral part of that is providing a life raft, providing that optimization and providing accessibility to these modalities that we know are safe. Like you were just saying, I mean, this is safe. This is available in nature. These are short chain amino acids. The safety profiles astronomically better than that of a drug. The risk profiles astronomically lower than that of a drug. And the efficacy is phenomenal. So candidly, the feedback was more of them learning. It seemed like a lot of learning, a lot of note-taking, a lot of listening, which I'm optimistic about. And then we know, you know, personally from having interacted with Secretary Kennedy, he is a fan.

7:24He even tweeted about we are going to the war on peptides, stem cells, I think it was hyperbaric. All of this is over. psychedelics.

7:35Gary Brecka:Yeah, there's a couple of categories and he goes, it's over. Which is great because the idea that we could open up some of these lanes, right, for an informed consumer to say, yeah, you know what, I'm not just interested in being not diseased and not having diabetes or not having an autoimmune condition. I actually want to thrive. I want to think the best, feel the best, you know, sleep deep. I want to have a strong libido. I want to have a healthy response to exercise. Like I want it all. I mean, God put us here to thrive. And so if there are mechanisms that we can access like peptides under the guise of a physician, you know, supervised, um, that have these long safety records.

8:18Gary Brecka:I mean, I think Sir Moreland, uh, you know, one of the first, um, uh, GHRPs, growth hormone, hormone releasing peptides was first approved in like 1983, 1984. And so FDA approved. And so a lot of these have been around for decades. Well, look at testosterone. Yeah. Like why are primary cares in America terrified of testosterone? It goes back to a study from the 1930s that's been debunked. The dogma carries forward and people get analysis paralysis. And I think it's easy to, historically, prior to this new world where there's podcast and free speech and all of us able to think openly in the public eye and have lively discussions and deep dive into these things.

9:03But it comes down to a lot of times it's dogma and it's improper information. And I said this earlier, I don't wanna villainize the FDA. You're only as good as the intel you have, right? And if our intel's bad and our loopback feed is bad and the information we're getting is bad, then we can't be shocked when we make bad decisions because we're getting bad inputs. Historically, the FDA has been controlled and met with the big pharmaceutical institutes because that was their model. And in this new world with RFK and this new administration, I think they're willing to sit down and meet with other folks like you and myself and other people.

9:44Gary Brecka:It is fascinating, man. I mean, the level of acceptance for my message, which, you know, when I began messaging 10 years ago, heavily called a charlatan, heavily called pseudoscience, heavily attacked for not being a physician, which I've never held myself out as a physician. You know, I'm not licensed to practice medicine. I have deep respect for the people that are. But the messaging about how nutrient deficient we've become and how amino acid and fatty acid deficient we become and the consequences of that leading to things like this pandemic of chronic disease and that it's a lot easier to fix than we think it is.

10:23Gary Brecka:It starts with some self-responsibility. But I'm really excited about the future of peptides because in our practice, you know, we use BPC-157, TB-5000, thymocin-alpha, which was also pulled. And you can get nutritional-grade versions of these, but getting a good pharmaceutical compounded, highly sourced, you know, peptide where, you know, stability, sterility, potency, and you have some belief in the efficacy because it was compounded effectively. The thought that we could just bring that back and make it available in mass to me is really exciting because we saw thousands of patients benefit from these.

11:06Gary Brecka:And I can tell you, I don't think, not I don't think, I do not recall a single adverse event where - Same. I mean, it weighs too well now. I think we have over 75 ,000 patients and we have not had any adverse events with any of the peptides. It's mind boggling. Astounding that level of safety and efficacy, man. And the beauty is like back to the FDA, I do think with bad information, you make bad decisions, but with good information, can we embolden and empower these folks to make good decisions? And part of it's giving them the full story. You know, I just saw it with the GLP-1s. I don't know where your stance is.

11:42I personally feel like the GLP-1s are a great tool in the tool belt. I do too. I'm not anti-GLP-1.

11:47Gary Brecka:I mean, as long as, you know, patients understand, clients understand that we make GLP-1 in our gut. I mean, this is a hormone that we make, and we make it in response to satiation, which is largely responsive to nutrient density. And so it should be a multifactorial approach, not continue to bathe your cellular biology in a toxic soup and take this injection, but maybe stop bathing your cellular biology in this toxic soup. So let's get you on a whole food diet, nutrient-dense diet. Let's get movement and exercise, weight-bearing exercise as a part of your daily habits and use the GLP-1s as a way to either accelerate that or to pull you back from the brink of disaster.

12:28You know, I'm smiling because literally I say all the time prescribing a GLP one without talking about diet, lifestyle, nutrition is literally like brushing your teeth while eating Oreos. Yeah, it's pretty counterintuitive. But as a tool in the tool belt for these obese and chronically metabolically disease riddled people, putting a win on the board and creating momentum is crucial. And one of the things that happened right before Secretary Kennedy took took power was the FDA redacted the exemption for compounding pharmacies. literally weeks before he was sworn in. They removed the compounding pharmacy's exemptions that allowed patients accessibility to cost-effective GLP-1s.

13:07So the average compounded price, I think, in the US is$150. And the average retail price through Big Pharma is$1 ,250. So how many people are going to be left high and dry? And I say all that because it goes back to what we saw with peptides. What is happening is they're getting half stories, half truths. right so big pharma when they met with the fda told them we fixed the backlog and so when i met with the fda said well where did did they give you data did they give you because we called 30 000 pharmacies a month for 12 months and less than six percent of prescriptions were available for filled so wow it's not the backlog is still very much real and what's happening because of media platforms like yourself and bobby escalating our secretary kennedy escalating these things is that voice is now resonating with the American people and they have line of sight into the truth.

13:58Gary Brecka:Yes. And it makes it really hard for decisions to be made in a back room where nobody knows why or how. Right. Because there's enough data out there now we can do the digging. And so, you know, through these opportunities, I was able to provide the FDA with just information highlighting for them. Here are the court testimonies of these pharmaceutical companies themselves. We're in court. You actually pulled court testimonies in the state of texas under oath they said we've never actually met the volumes that we told the fda we've never done it in their own documents and so i've provided all that over and again it's it's all it is is through line of sight we can give the fda the ability to at least have line of sight into the truth right whereas historically because of the closed door you know method of how they decide things i don't think that was there yeah and it Should we open lanes for people to make choices where the outcome is maybe this doesn't work, but it's caused no harm?

14:58Gary Brecka:Because a lot of times the choices that they make are chemical, synthetic, or pharmaceutical, and the outcome may be permanent harm, permanent dependency, tachyphylaxis, building a desensitization response. something is materially going to change you know the the trajectory of their life and and and yet they still had the downside that they didn't get what they were what they were after i i agree like that's spot on because even with stem cells that's one of the things stem the whole stem cell market in the united states was hampered by the fear of the unknown of what it could do a potential theoretical framework that was never shown in actual utilization and practice so like one of the big fears is historically, this is 20-year-old information, but the FDA was worried that stem cells would become something.

15:46And if they become something, then they could become a cancer cell. And if we treat people with these, are they going to exasperate cancer? And all of a sudden, we have cancer popping up. And the truth of the matter is now with research and time and practice, we realize these MSCs are signaling cells, just like peptides. They actually cannot differentiate. The MSCs utilized from umbilical cord-derived tissues don't differentiate. They don't become a tendon. They heal, again, to steal from you, through providing your body with the raw elements and the raw materials to be able to heal and rebuild itself.

16:20Signaling to your body and then giving it, your body, cytokines, exosomes, extracellular vesicles. Then they transfer their mitochondria, refueling your older, tired, weary cells. And then they're gone. Right. But the dogma that still lasts, just like the dogma from testosterone, is, oh my God, it's going to cause cancer.

16:39Gary Brecka:If it can become a tendon or ligament or a bone or tissue, then what else could it become? I totally agree with you. In signaling molecules, you know, some of the best modalities, which is why I'm such a huge fan of peptides, are the ones that harness the body's ability to do its job on its own. So, you know, platelet-rich plasma, you know, PRP is one of those, you know, widely acceptable treatments for knees, hip, shoulder, rotator cuff, you know, repetitive use injuries. and you're essentially just capturing the patient's platelets, concentrating them in the site of injury, and sort of focus, not sort of, but directly focusing the healing power of the human body in a small area to accelerate healing.

17:18Well, you can do the same thing,

17:20Gary Brecka:very similar mechanism through things like BPC-157. You know, this body protection compound actually enhances the body's awareness that there's an injury and it calls the platelets and other healing factors to that site. And you heal yourself by accelerating your body's own innate ability to heal. That's what I love about all this. That's what I love about it too. It's nature. It makes so much sense. And yet it's met with so much resistance. I mean, I'm much easier convinced that I can enhance my body's ability to heal itself at an accelerated rate than that I can take something that my body doesn't recognize that you can't find in nature that is not found anywhere on the surface of the earth, somehow stick it in, and magically it's going to cause us to heal.

18:09And this is how you know that what you're saying is spot on. While in one breath, the FDA makes this decision in a vacuum to essentially ban and shut down accessibility to dozens of peptides, at the same time, Merck and several of the big pharmaceutical companies are attempting to patent over 200 different peptides. The very peptides that have been in the marketplace for 15 years that have been helping your patients, our patients, at WasteWell people throughout the nation with amazing efficacy and minimal side effects, if any. And now Big Pharma is attempting to capture that. And so the truth always rises to the top and we find it when we look a little deeper.

18:53but I'm just a huge proponent. I'm very optimistic that the future's bright and we're going to be in a golden age. I think you even said it on Joe, like a golden age of regenerative and preventative care. I agree, man. If you're alive over the next five years,

19:07Gary Brecka:it's going to be your choice whether or not you want to live to age 120 or 140. I truly believe that. And the merger of big data, artificial intelligence and early detection now is giving people a chance to really get a hold of things at such an early stage. We're starting to detect cancers at stage zero. Yes. Right? I mean, how amazing is that? We run that cancer screening. It's 200 types of cancer at stage zero with, you know, you can't say 100 % survival rate, but when you catch it stage zero. Is that the VOC? Which one is that that you're... I can't remember the genetics lab that we're using, but it's the same one that everyone's...

19:43Yeah, we'll link it in the show notes if we figure it out. But it's amazing. And like the other thing we talked about with the DOD and a lot of these VA hospitals, You know, our special forces operators and our military personnel are at a disproportionate likelihood of developing cancer in their lifetime. Same thing with our firefighters and first responders from all the chemicals and fire pits and all the things they've been around. Why would we not get proactive, predictive, and pre-screen these people and make sure that we stop chronic disease in its tracks? And the same thing with blood work.

20:16Like, I've heard you talk about the importance of blood work. We're using large language models now to assess the blood work, to tie into your wearables, to monitor your REM sleep, your deep sleep, your heart rate variability. If you capture a DEXA and a VO2 max and you begin to combine all those things into these large language models in the AI, it can assess and begin to predict out and model out all cause mortality.

20:38Gary Brecka:Yeah. It's so fascinating that artificial intelligence can take 700 trillion independent variables and create an actionable result. I actually saw a model the other day of clinical trial being run in vitro through nothing other than artificial intelligence. And what it was able to do was assemble so much information from tens of thousands of other clinical trials, from meta-analyses and from a microbiological data and say, if you expose this cell to this compound in this media, this is going to be the result. and it predicted it with absolute precision accuracy. And so there's the possibility that we could actually run fully randomized clinical trials in AI, in an artificial intelligence lab, without spending the 10 years to grow, because it can take so many independent variables and say, I can weigh every single one of these potential outcomes and tell you exactly where this result.

21:41Gary Brecka:And then you run a side-by-side experiment, and you realize, oh my God, it reached the exact same outcome as the AI predicted. You know, it just took us three years to get here. So it's a really exciting time. Brother, I'm so excited to be on this journey with you and other leaders like yourself that are outspoken, that are driving a stake in the ground for humanity and putting their reputations out there and really giving your time selflessly to this Maha movement. It's a pleasure. Thank you, man. Thank you for all you're doing. We're all in it together. and I know we can drive change. I truly, truly am more optimistic than I've ever been.

22:16After 25 plus years in healthcare, this is the first time I truly believe there is an opportunity to really reform and improve and drive health span. And we're all here hammering for it. I agree with that. Thank you for coming on the Ultimate Podcast, brother.

22:34Gary Brecka:And until next time, guys, that's just science.