KHC 124 - Ways2Well: Brigham Buhler & Danese Rexroad

Join us for a conversation with Brigham Buhler, founder and CEO of Ways2Well and co-founder of ReviveRx Pharmacy & Danese Rexroad, a nurse practitioner at Ways2Well. Brigham and Danese will be covering practices done at Ways2Well such as stem cells, peptide therapy and hormone optimization. Ways2Well pairs powerful bloodwork analysis with expert care and personalized protocols to help you reach peak health. Follow along: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cameronrhanes Twitter: https://twitter.com/cameronhanes Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/camhanes/ Website: https://www.cameronhanes.com Learn more about Ways2Well: https://ways2well.com/ Follow Ways2Well: https://www.instagram.com/ways2well/ Thank you to our sponsors: Black Rifle Coffee: https://www.blackriflecoffee.com/ Use code KEEPHAMMERING for 20% your first order Grizzly Coolers: https://www.grizzlycoolers.com/ use code KEEPHAMMERING for 20% off LMNT: Visit https://drinklmnt.com/cam for a free sample pack with any purchase Hoyt: http://bit.ly/3Zdamyv use code CAM for 10% off Montana Knife Company: https://www.montanaknifecompany.com/ Use code CAM for 10% off Sig Sauer: https://www.sigsauer.com/ use code CAM10 for 10% off optics Timestamps: 00:00:00 Why Stem Cells Help Cam’s Performance 00:06:13 Where the Stem Cells Come From? 00:08:23 Ivermectin & Recovery Process After Surgery 00:10:55 Brigham and Danese Credentials: How They Started Ways2Well 00:15:12 Saving Lives: Today’s Sick & Broken Lifestyles 00:21:09 Where to Start: Choosing Healthier Foods & Habits 00:27:43 Ad Break (LMNT & Grizzly Coolers) 00:29:43 Investing in Your Health 00:32:05 Momentum Creates Momentum 00:35:40 It’s Not Genetics - It’s Just a Broken System 00:38:17 Vision to Reality of Ways2Well 00:39:57 Educating Customers: Getting Rid of the Bandaids 00:42:48 Podcasts & AI - Knowledge is Power 00:46:44 Microplastics, Dyes, & Ingredients in Foods 00:53:04 Cancer Screening Tests 00:59:22 Insurance Companies Don’t Want What’s Best for You 01:05:46 Telemedicine & Why Danese Walked Away from the Hospital 01:10:13 Healthcare From Home & Insurance 01:16:55 Peptides & Testifying in Congress 01:22:21 Putting in the Effort to Fix the Broken System 01:30:11 Outro

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:15Cameron Hanes?

  Alright, this is the Keep Hammering Collective from The Road. We're at Waste Well, the brand new facility, and I'm with the Brain Children? Brain Childs? I don't know who I'm with, but I do know without Brigham and Denise, this would be... there would be no Waste Well. So, here we are. Thank you, guys. Um, man. I'm just gonna kick this off this way, because I've heard a lot of podcasts with you. I've talked to you a lot. And, um, it's always about the broken healthcare system, this and that. And I'm sure we'll get to that and like what you guys offer, but here's what I want to know.

• 0:55Cameron Hanes?

  So, I'm 57, which I know you're probably thinking, "Wow, I thought you were older." Because I look 77. But, why? Okay, I should've looked this up. My first stem cell was probably over six months ago. Then I got another one, and then I just got it yesterday. So, maybe seven, eight months. But, why is it at 57, I feel better than I've ever felt in my entire life? As far as being healthy? As far as my body, how it can perform? How is that? Why is that happening?

• 1:30Speaker 01

  Well, it's a lot of addressing, you know, nutrient deficiencies, optimizing your health, starting with the fundamental stuff. Getting your body the things that it needs for repair. And then we use the stem cells to activate your stem cells to help your body heal more. So, we're reducing inflammation, allowing your body an opportunity to heal, so you're not starting your day in a deficit. When you train hard and you don't have appropriate... And mechanisms for recovery, you know, deeper sleep, nutrition, rest, you don't have all that. You start your day in a deficit.

• 2:01Cameron Hanes?

  Uh.

• 2:02Speaker 01

  And so training becomes harder and harder and harder. You have more to clear out. You have more taxation on your body, which increases your risk for injury. So when you address those fundamental needs, everything else improves.

• 2:14Speaker 02

  And one of the things that Denise says and Dr. Ian White, who's our chief science officer on the stem cell side, uh, is as we age, there's a precipitous decline in these goodies of life that keep us healing. So like, that's why when we fall as a little kid, our knees or shoulders or whatever heal fast. Right? We often they can take a spill and have a bruise that's gone in a day.

• 2:36Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 2:36Speaker 02

  But when you're 80 and you fall, you may be banged up.

• 2:39Cameron Hanes?

  That bruise lasts for months.

• 2:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:41Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 2:41Speaker 02

  And it's because you're lacking the raw elements for the body to heal. And you've also are beginning to lack the efficiency that your body had in its use.

• 2:49Cameron Hanes?

  Hmm.

• 2:50Speaker 02

  And so the way he explains it is if you're going to build a building, you need all the raw elements to build the building. You need the bricks, the mortar, the wood, the concrete, the steel, but you also need the blueprint. And so when we give people these, uh, you know, birth derived tissues and cellular goodies, what they're getting is a plethora of all of these goodies that we have a natural decline in. So for a temporary stage, we're returning your body to a youthful like healing process where you have an exorbitant amount of all these cellular goodies, but also the blueprint, the mRNA messenger cells and signaling cells. And that's what MSCs really mean is they're mesincere signaling cells.

• 3:31Speaker 02

  And they alert your body of injuries, inflammation, but then they also give your cells all the goodies to heal yourself, transferring their mitochondria into your older tired cells, making your cells young again for a temporary period of time.

• 3:45Cameron Hanes?

  Hmm.

• 3:46Speaker 02

  That's why so many people say they feel like they heal like Wolverine. And, and that's kind of the same with the Wolverine molecule, the VPC. Is it, it's allowing you to optimize a short chain amino acid that we're deficient in.

• 3:57Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, well, that well reminded, so you said you need all these things to build the structure. And what you reminded me of is. Without a good foundation, you said blueprint, but maybe we're talking the same thing, but without that good foundation, which is the sleep and the start, starting, you're not starting at a deficit or I wasn't, or I'm not starting at a deficit now and I was for all those years. So maybe because of that, get that foundation and then all this, these building blocks that we're adding in just have more of an impact.

• 4:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, just progressive improvement. One of the things we do different, I, you know, I didn't just give you the mesenchymal cells. I gave you all the goodies. So just like you said, all the ingredients. And that's what makes us a little different or a lot different in very, very many ways to other people that boast about how many mesenchymal cells that you're getting. And I use analogies all the time. So I talk about, I compare it to chicken noodles.

• 4:51Cameron Hanes?

  Is that, is that, so just help me out. Is that like the potency of the stem cell? Or what, what is that referring to?

• 4:58Speaker 01

  It's a particular element within the product that I gave you. So these cells donate the mitochondria. And so they're medicinal signaling cells is what they were reclassified as. And so a lot of people put emphasis as that's the only way to heal. And, but it, I make a joke, the chicken noodle soup, if I'm going to give you a chicken noodle soup, you're expecting chicken and noodles and broth and veggies. You're expecting all the things for, in a hot bowl. So if I'm explaining stem cells or that product to you and I'm not giving you everything else that you need to make that, that cell supported, then you're missing those elements. So you're not going to get, in my opinion, you're not going to get the full repair. You're not, you're only getting some of the blueprints, but you're not getting the anti-inflammatory benefits. You're not getting, getting all of the signals to heal.

• 5:42Speaker 01

  So in the products that we use, it has a mesenchymal cells, it has the exosomes, the growth factors, it has the colofo and it has a lot of, you know, we're, we're breaking it down to, you know, you're building materials, but that's actually what's needed to help grow and heal a baby. It grow and heal during pregnancy. It helps the mother fight the rigors of pregnancy. So there's a lot of exchange there. And it's, I mean, we give it in the purest form. It's not manipulated. It's, that's why, I feel like that's why it's so successful.

• 6:12Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah. And just because I just know the questions I get was about stem cell is, um, so these, your stem cells are derived from. Healthy birth and mothers who donated after a healthy, healthy birth, the placenta and the umbilical cord, is that right? Correct. And so that's where it comes from. Correct. Because there's, there's old wives tales and there's whatever, whatever rumors from the street on where the stuff comes from. Which I get it because stem cell is kind of new and it's like, what I've noticed is when I go talk to a regular doctor, they wanna kind of write off stuff like this, you know, because they're not making money off of it and they like to make money.

• 6:55Cameron Hanes?

  So they like talking about this type of treatment of like, ah, jury's still out, you know, whatever. But I think they're, I don't know if they're protecting their interest, probably some, just don't know. Some are probably, you know, just don't like this approach, maybe.

• 7:11Speaker 02

  I think some of it's dogma, like, uh, like candidly, you know, the saying, science evolves one funeral at a time is, is pretty spot on. Unfortunately, and when you, most people look at cellular treatment options, a lot of times it's because they have an orthopedic injury. And to hammer everything's a nail. And so you go into an orthopedic surgeon, it's like going into a car salesman, he's gonna sell you a car. Uh, that orthopedic surgeon's also not trained in biology in depth, like in, you know, molecular biology and the nuances of how these cellular treatments work. So in their mind, they go, I can fix you. I don't necessarily think it's as callous as, as potentially as we would think as much as if I'm trained in this craft

• 7:54Speaker 02

  and I think the way to fix you is what I'm trained in, then I'm gonna pitch you on what I'm trained in. Yeah, I'm gonna lean into what I know. And then it's easy to be skeptical because you can go, well, it's not legal in the US. And it's not that it's not legal, it's that it's not an FDA approved product in the US.

• 8:11Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 8:12Speaker 02

  A lot of what we use, even FDA approved, is used off label in medicine. Every day, Denise can probably speak higher to that, like. A huge percentage of the medications on the market are used off-label to treat in, I mean, right now, like what they're seeing with ivermectin and some of these other products.

• 8:27Speaker 01

  Surprise, surprise. Ivermectin has just exploded recently. And I think it's because of the anti-cancer aspects of it. There were some studies that came out that every time they study ivermectin with a certain type of cancer, that cancer load gets better, the tumor shrinks. There's just study after study and, you know, enough people that are like, oh, they haven't studied this, you know, it hasn't been proven in this type of cancer yet. I'm like, great, because they haven't studied that one. But, you know, cancer is still cancer. It's still a mutation of those cells. So I, I look at ivermectin as a way to help your body identify that there's a problem. And so when we identify parasites, we identify viruses, we, our immune system activates to remove that. So when you're

• 9:09Speaker 01

  talking about cancer and root causes, I think ivermectin, again, it's off-label use. It's, it's exciting to repurpose medications and give somebody another option and it's inexpensive. But back to the cell stuff, you know, a treatment of stem cells versus what you have to pay for surgery and the recovery time. There are some cases that, you know, it is a surgical need. And we'll, we'll, you know, after we examine you or looking at MRI and sometimes there is a surgical need, but I'll always tell my patients, come back, let me treat you right after surgery so I can help you heal and prolong that.

• 9:44Speaker 02

  The bigger one would be like, you're like Aaron Rodgers, you know, where I know you had on the podcast. Yeah. That was a traumatic injury. He's going to have to have surgery. And that's, that's a big placement for these products that I think is overlooked. People think it's one or the other. And in reality, like the cells can help tremendously with the healing process of a surgical procedure. And that's one of the things I've tried to talk to a lot of the orthopedic surgeons that I know, because that's where we cut our teeth was like candidly, that's how Danese and I met, what, 20 something years ago?

• 10:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:13Speaker 02

  Was covering, I mean, I was an orthopedist, orthopedic rep and she was an orthopedic nurse at the time.

• 10:20Speaker 02

  Working hand in hand with these orthopedic surgeons and you know, watching the recovery process on an ACL or an MCL or any of these surgical procedures, if we can speed that up, because so often these are sports related injuries with sports related athletes, there's a lot of money in how fast can we help someone heal and get back on the field or back in the game.

• 10:41Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, got to perform, got to get back to work.

• 10:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:44Cameron Hanes?

  It's just like, you know, somebody hurts their back at the mill, got to get that back fixed so you can get back, you know, to work because you got bills to pay. It's no different for those guys. But that does remind me, I did some run testing yesterday and we were talking about, I brought up, it's like, man, it seems like everybody's a run coach these days. It's like these guys do a couple of marathons and all of a sudden you see that they're coaching runners. And I'm like, God, these guys, I thought they just started doing. It reminded me of this field a little bit in that there's a lot of people out there, probably not as qualified as you guys, giving advice on health and longevity, right? And

• 11:27Cameron Hanes?

  so I wanted to talk about your credentials, how you guys got here, and what makes you so good at what you do, like as far as, far as giving advice, giving treatment, right procedures. Tell me about where you came from to get right here.

• 11:45Speaker 01

  Well, like Brigham mentioned, we met in the hospital 20 something years ago. And there, I knew we've identified, we've already identified that the system is broken. And I don't know if he remembers this, but he kept showing up to take care of my patients. And that's, that's all I ever asked of the reps, just show up, just take good care of the patients. And he kept showing up. And I told him, I was like, we're going to be friends. I'm going to keep you, because he kept showing up to, to provide care for the patient, provide what they needed. And so fast forward all those years later, he's like, hey, I want to start, I'm going to take good care of people. And I'd kind of helped him on the side. I was kind of helping like start the process. And, but I was deep in my practice and I didn't want to.

• 12:23Cameron Hanes?

  What was, what do you mean start the process? Like this, this vision?

• 12:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, what happened from my end, like, was as I broke away from being a med device rep, and I started being an entrepreneur in the healthcare space. I saw how broken it was and I I I knew it was broken because I had lived in it. But then after like getting out of it and like seeing behind the curtain. Like if the example I'll give, the primary example is. You go out and I would educate clinicians in the state of Texas on the importance of comprehensive blood work. And they would go, yeah, this makes total sense. And the the answer is. We have a chronic disease crisis, one point seven million people are dying of chronic disease a year in America. Most chronic diseases are preventable. Through comprehensive blood work, we can identify and. Offset and prevent chronic disease.

• 13:10Speaker 02

  Why are we waiting for people to get really, really sick and then writing them a bunch of prescription drugs? That makes no sense and doctors just say that makes total sense. Yeah, we should do comprehensive blood work. And so I had a blood lab and I would educate the clinicians on the importance and then they'd start sending my blood lab. And within six months, every doctor in Texas got nasty letters from the insurance companies. Saying if you continue to pull blood work. We'll get rid of your contract and you'll lose your insurance contract. We don't want you doing these deep dives. And that's when I realized. We're gonna have to like break out of this broken system.

• 13:42Cameron Hanes?

  But was that because insurance companies want people sick because that's where the big. Their big money comes in?

• 13:48Speaker 02

  I think it's because insurance companies have an obstructionist mindset and they're viewing things on a quarterly basis. And so they're looking at it going. If I give Cam blood work this quarter and it costs me, let's just say in an insurance model, two thousand dollars. That's the other problem, the price points that are set by the insurance companies because a percentage of them don't pay.

• 14:09Speaker 02

  If I reject this, I delay this and. Less than 10% of people appeal. So most of the time people just go away. They'll just give up on their blood work and so and give up on asking to have the test done. So you hear it all the time. People go, I couldn't get this test done or my doctor told me they can't run the test. They can run the test. They just can't get the insurance to approve it. And so in a way, it's not your clinician deciding. What's best for you? It's the insurance company deciding what's best for their profits. And so. I at that point started a blood lab and I was just talking to Denise about. You know, I think we're gonna have to start our own clinic. To be able to give people accessibility to true care.

• 14:48Speaker 02

  And that's kind of how it started, but like I just remember meeting up, meeting up with you and connecting and asking you if this would be something you'd want to spearhead for me. Uh, I don't know if that went.

• 14:59Speaker 01

  That was, that was exactly what happened. I was like.

• 15:01Cameron Hanes?

  This was twenty years ago or?

• 15:02Speaker 02

  Uh, this point, no, we had known each other twenty years. This was maybe eight.

• 15:06Speaker 01

  Twenty seventeen.

• 15:06Cameron Hanes?

  Okay.

• 15:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, that was, uh, December, uh, no, November, December twenty seventeen.

• 15:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 15:11Speaker 01

  And, um.

• 15:12Cameron Hanes?

  What were you doing at that time?

• 15:13Speaker 01

  Uh, I was doing pain management, doing joint injections and, uh, I was running around fourteen facilities and seeing all the patients in the hospital. Then I was done. All these people were broken and they were getting to me as a last resort. And, you know, I, I wasn't, I didn't want to leave because I had a great schedule. I could take my kids to school, you know, like, I was like, oh, this is for my mommy life. This was great. But I, I didn't.

• 15:37Cameron Hanes?

  Maybe I'll save the world some other day.

• 15:39Speaker 01

  No, you know, I like, uh, yeah, but I just, every day I'd go to work and just be.

• 15:43Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 15:44Speaker 01

  Because I'm not actually helping these people. I couldn't, uh, they were, they were too sick, too broken. And, you know, as a provider, I make a joke all the time. I went to school for nine years. I didn't go to school for nine years to accumulate a whole bunch of debt. I went to take care of people. And so when Brynn and I stood in the hallway, I was like, right, if we do this, you just have to let me take good care of people. And he was like, that's all I want. His words were, that's my tie to the universe. I just want to take good care of people. And that's been our mission the whole time. We just want to take good care of people. So, I mean, sometimes it's blood work, sometimes it's stem cells, sometimes it's cancer. You know, cancer testing, cancer screening. Um, sometimes we're looking at micronutrients. Sometimes it's just a conversation of lifestyle. I'm with a lot of people and I'm just like, hey, you need to work on your sleep. You need to work on your diet.

• 16:25Speaker 01

  If those are not fundamentally corrected, you're not getting enough nutrients, you're not putting your body as priority. Doesn't matter what else we do.

• 16:33Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 16:34Speaker 01

  That's, you're still broken. And people just don't look to that first.

• 16:38Cameron Hanes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 16:38Speaker 01

  And they still want to eat.

• 16:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's tough.

• 16:42Speaker 01

  And stay up late and you know, the blue light, I can go down all those things.

• 16:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 16:45Speaker 01

  Disconnected from ears. We don't go outside. We don't socialize as much.

• 16:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 16:49Speaker 01

  So much that goes to, I call it whole person health.

• 16:52Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 16:53Speaker 01

  So when you ask me what makes this different, I'm not just looking at, hey, you hurt your knee. I'm gonna inject that knee. I'm gonna look at, do you have all the elements that you need to repair? So that's why I like to do the blood work. That's why I like to have a forty five minute discussion. I wanna get to know you so that, and we talked about this yesterday, you're my enemy, always. I will not compare you to anyone else because you are a different person. We're all so biochemically unique. I need to do what's best for your body.

• 17:19Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 17:20Speaker 01

  And so on, on clinician side of it, when people get these protocols and everybody, it's the same thing. Like, ah, did you ever even talk to your patient? Do you know, you know, do you know anything about them? Is this attainable for them? Sometimes it's small steps. But, you know, again, just prioritizing the patient first, getting to know your patient. Identify, meet them where they are and then help them take the steps. I call it peeling back the layer of the onion.

• 17:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 17:44Speaker 01

  You know, just a next step to optimal off. And then all of a sudden you wake up six months later and you're like, I feel great.

• 17:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 17:51Speaker 01

  Something is different. I'm sleeping. Uh, my favorite is when I have like the spouse of a person that I've been working with. And I get a phone call or a message, hey, thanks for saving his life. Thanks for bringing my wife back. You know, things like that, that, that's why, that's why I went to school. That's why I invested twenty five years. That's why.

• 18:11Speaker 02

  It is amazing when you get this, like, there's a lot of days this is tough because you're fighting a lot of powers and a lot of different dynamics, you know, trying to be cash pay and offer cost effective solutions to people and fight the establishment.

• 18:25Speaker 01

  Mm.

• 18:25Speaker 02

  Fight big pharma, fight big insurance, fight academia.

• 18:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:29Speaker 02

  A lot of that is a challenge, but then you get these wins. Like, you know, our buddy Tony from Snakado Pistols sending that message about, he said, you told me that you could help me. You lied. You didn't help me. You saved my life.

• 18:42Speaker 01

  Right.

• 18:42Speaker 02

  It's literally what he said to us. He said, I, I might, I go to bed with my guts on fire. He's like a former special forces guy. Like just all sorts of, and now he's down to, I don't even know what percentage body fat, like leanest he's ever been. He's like, it saved my marriage. It saved my sex life. It saved everything. And he's done testimonials. He's posted about it.

• 19:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:01Speaker 02

  Like, and that's, what's crazy is that's not the exception to the rule. That's the rule. And what that tells me is. It's there for everyone. Like, that's one of the things I've said before, even with these really obese patients, we have to give them wins on the board. So many people are in the pitted despair. Because they go, it's just my genetics, or my doctor told me I'm fat, and my hormones are bad. Well, why? Like, let's look, let's have a, but they, it's not that their condition's bad. It's that their hands are tied. And in that system, they can't really do a deep dive. So if I were to like break down, you had asked about other treat, like, almost everything we do at Ways to Well would not be covered by insurance.

• 19:43Speaker 02

  Anyway, and it's not because it doesn't work, it's because it's just not the insurance model. They're not built to be proactive, predictive, and preventative.

• 19:52Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 19:52Speaker 02

  They're built to be reactive and prescribe medicines. And when you asked, like, is it because the doc, it's not that the doctors are making money, they're doing more and more and making less and less. But the insurance companies and the pharmaceutical companies are making beaucoup dollars. Because now the average American's on four or more prescription drugs. Riddled with chronic disease, metabolic disease, diabetes, obesity.

• 20:17Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 20:17Speaker 02

  Uh, I know it's, I think the numbers, uh, what, what percentage is it now, Benny, that of Americans that are obese or overweight? It's staggering.

• 20:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think it's, I want to say eighty-four percent of, of what it'll need to lose at least fifteen pounds. Uh, it's a fair, it's an extraordinary high number.

• 20:36Speaker 02

  And then Tim Kennedy, I haven't checked this, so don't, don't fact, I mean, enough to fact, but Tim said seventy-something percent of, uh, active, of people can't qualify for active duty right now.

• 20:47Cameron Hanes?

  Oh, yeah.

• 20:47Speaker 02

  Which is crazy.

• 20:49Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 20:49Speaker 02

  So now it's like a, a national security issue. If we have this sick of a population, but we're spending more than anywhere.

• 20:56Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 20:56Speaker 02

  Anywhere. And we have one of the sickest populations in the world. And that's where you gotta go, what's going on here? And it, what's really going on is the system's just not built to help people. It's built to monetize chronic disease.

• 21:09Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, and it's, you know, I don't wanna say people are victims, but when all the food you buy is basically poisoning yourself with the seed oils and things like that. I know you've worked with RFK and you're involved in the Maha and everything else, uh, Make America Healthy Again, which is incredible. But part of it is the foods we buy aren't helping us. They're, they're hurting us. They're killing us. And so I get that people feel like they're stuck and they're in a hole and they can't get out because everything they go and buy is sabotaging them, you know? So it, just this knowledge about the seed oils and this discussion to me is exciting because it's finally okay. Now we're, we're actually talking about they can help people.

• 21:53Cameron Hanes?

  That's just like this. And um, so I wanted to kind of pivot to that part, like, so the knowledge on what to, what to eat, um, how to fuel yourself, quality of food. So that's, there's money involved in that. Um, generally, the cheapest, shittiest food is easy to get or, or cheaper also. Um, so quality food costs a little more. Quality care like this costs money. How do, how do, I mean, why is the investment here better? Because people will tell you what you wanna hear. Maybe they're not as qualified as you guys. Why is waste too well, even though it's expensive?

• 22:37Cameron Hanes?

  What, what do you tell people, customers, when they're really looking at their health and looking at to make an investment, whether it's diet or, or here? Um, how do you, how do you see that?

• 22:48Speaker 01

  Oh yes, again, go back, start with the basics. Start where you are. And what kind of symptoms do you have? What are your goals? You know, I work with all walks of life, uh, young people all the way to the, and older population, athletes to people who, you know, have been exercising in quite some time.

• 23:03Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 23:04Speaker 01

  So I, I try to start where they are and we set small goals. So sometimes it's just making better choices. Let's, if you can't afford organic, I will teach you how to clean your food.

• 23:13Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 23:14Speaker 01

  Um, I talk about shopping the perimeter of the grocery store and aiming for foods that they were around a hundred years ago, it's safe to eat. So if you're aiming for your meats, fruits and veggies, you're gonna get more vitamins, minerals. You know, prepare your own food. That's huge. A lot of people have the boxed meals and you know, it's quick, like meal prep, spend a Sunday afternoon, prep your meals for the day. You're cooking your own food, you're you are controlling your ingredients. And I'm not saying don't go out to eat. I'm just, you know, you can take control over that. I know that it's a little more expensive, but if you're thinking about going out to eat, you know, making a few chicken breasts for the for lunch, you know, I talk about in a different meals throughout the day

• 23:55Speaker 01

  versus grabbing a cheeseburger, it's eleven dollars for cheeseburger, french fries and a soda, you can make a much better meal for half of that. So, and you know, you might not be able to get organic and and that's what we're working on is trying to improve that food quality. And that's the Maha movement on that side. And but what we can do at home is start with the simple choices. Get off the sofa, turn the blue light off, and get outside. And I I talk about this too. Sometimes social media is, and there's a difference between diet and nutrition. So your diet is everything that you consume, the negativity, the, you know, again, the social media side of it, when your circle of friends. And so you can

• 24:36Speaker 01

  make small changes to just, you know, eliminate some of those things that are pulling you back. And and you're if you're making those small changes, the next step gets a little bit easier. Right. The next step gets a little bit easier. So even if we're not doing blood work, and even if we're not starting there, we can start with small changes, even just vitamins and minerals, we have, you know, excellent supplements. And, you know, our food is not as nutrient dense as it once was. So we do have to supplement. Unfortunately, we do have to supplement very often. I have gone through, I have millions of biomarkers in my programs, and the most common deficiencies we have magnesium, vitamin D, your B vitamins. It's crazy. And so, you know, we we tried to make affordable supplements that had the

• 25:18Speaker 01

  highest quality ingredients, just to pepper in those things while we're also You know, if I tell you, hey, go eat some pumpkin seeds, you're like, why I'm gonna eat pumpkin seeds? It has a lot of magnesium in it. You're gonna get that. So, you know, those are things that you can choose over potato chips. It's crunchy, it's salty. Um, but again, making those suggestions of people just don't know because I make a joke all the time. I went to school for nine years. I had two classes in nutrition. One was an undergrad um elective. We don't, we don't focus on that.

• 25:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 25:45Speaker 01

  But man, I sure knew how to write some prescriptions.

• 25:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's the challenge. Like what you're saying, what Denise is touching on is like from the food that you touched on to the system itself and your ability to access true preventative care. You know, being healthy is way more cost effective than being sick. You know, the saying of a s- a sick person, a healthy man has a million wants, a sick person has but one. Hmm. You know, we spend our whole lives chasing money and then all of our money chasing health. And it costs astronomically more to be sick than it does to be well. And so we've tried to make ways to well extremely cost effective. Hmm.

• 26:24Speaker 02

  You know, if we compare it to an insurance model, you know, to do a, a forty five minute deep dive and comprehensive blood work, looking at an array of biomarkers is, you know, five, six hundred dollars, you know, which is, I don't want to trivialize that, but how much do you spend on a car payment? Hmm. How much do you spend on a mattress? How much do you spend on your house? Those are things you're in a few hours a day. You're in this body for eternity until, until your life's over. Yeah. You got one shot at it. Are we gonna let, you know, these big insurance companies, big pharmaceutical companies capitalize and profiteer off of sickness? Like you can't, if I, I say all the time, if you, if you eat the average American diet and you go to the average American doctor, don't be surprised when you get diagnosed with the average American chronic disease. Right.

• 27:08Speaker 02

  Like we can prevent all of these things, but it starts with taking a look under the hood. And the problem is nobody's looking under the hood in that model. They're just waiting for people to get sick.

• 27:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:17Speaker 02

  And we can prevent most of these things. Hmm. And it is way cheaper and more cost effective to be healthy. The number one reason for bankruptcy in the nation. Is healthcare.

• 27:29Cameron Hanes?

  Really?

• 27:29Speaker 02

  Medical bills.

• 27:30Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 27:30Speaker 02

  The, the number one budgetary constraint for the state is healthcare. The number one budgetary constraint for the federal government is healthcare. We lose more people in one year of chronic disease than we've lost in every world war combined from an American standpoint.

• 27:45Cameron Hanes?

  Hmm. And also, uh, with that in mind, I mean, so the investment in your health, i- it's an investment. It's like you spend money on different things. You're investing for whatever reason in that thing. So if five or $600 is an investment in your health that could have a, you know, decades lasting effect, well then it's a bargain, really. It's a bargain. And yeah, then we can get into the treatments, the stem cells and things like that, which, you know, whatever, that's another decision down the road. But the first process is figuring out where you're at, getting that baseline essentially, and then seeing where you end up. But, uh, yeah, that's what, that's, it's, to me, it's an exciting time when I look at everything that's out there. So now doing the blood test is, is more, people are getting

• 28:30Cameron Hanes?

  that. They're like, okay, that makes sense. But we have all this ability to track our macros on our phone, to track our activity on our phone. There's so many tools available to like, take control of your health, you know? And that's one thing. And what I've realized is once people get that momentum going in the right way, even if it's just a little bit, man, that's just all they need. Just, just get going, get that momentum going the right way. Right now, a lot of people, it's going the wrong way. It's to have a, you know, I, I was in this position. I didn't like my job. What, do you want to come home? Get a buzz, not think about work, not think about the people that drove me crazy, get

• 29:12Cameron Hanes?

  up the next day and go do it again. And on the weekend, hopefully party and just like, forget about my life. And so that's, I know people are in that position, but once you make the decision, like, I'm sick of that. I'm sick of that life. I'm sick of that mindset. And you switch, then all of a sudden, a whole different world opens up. And now you're just like, you see that scale, you see those numbers going down, you see, you just know how you feel every day and you're like.

• 29:43Cameron Hanes?

  I'm doing this. I'm going all in. What else can I find out? And then that's the people who reach out to me and say they're so interested and like they see all this stuff, all these treatments and they they'll listen to this podcast and they'll be like, I'm ready for that. And to me, that's exciting. So we have all this stuff. We we're in control. We have people willing to help us. Isn't that amazing?

• 30:08Speaker 02

  And to me, it was it was one. I I was a fat kid. Like, I literally was at twenty five percent body fat. I was on the cusp of obesity.

• 30:16Cameron Hanes?

  Some people would not think that's fat, by the way.

• 30:20Cameron Hanes?

  You know, if our friend Jelly Roll, if you think about what he's come, you know, where what he's done, and to me, it's just like, that is like, he's a poster boy for this type of thing, because he probably felt like he had no, no hope, really, just like, just he was gonna feel like shit forever. And now look at him.

• 30:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 30:40Cameron Hanes?

  Exercising, doing five Ks. And I know you guys help him too, right?

• 30:43Speaker 02

  Yeah. What you're saying, spot on. I truly say momentum breeds momentum. And so many people, like myself included, I was in the pit of despair, is what I call it, where I go, I guess it's just my genetics. I guess, I guess I'm screwed, you know? And I even had, this was before waist well, but I had a urologist, I've told this story, he's like, I don't know if you're fat because you have low T, or if you have low T because you're fat, but you're definitely fat with low T. And I'm like, oh, great.

• 31:11Cameron Hanes?

  Shitty genetics.

• 31:12Speaker 02

  When we fixed it, it changed my life. When we like dialed it in, it changed my life. And it was a way, like, the weight fell off and it was like momentum created momentum.

• 31:23Cameron Hanes?

  Yep.

• 31:23Speaker 02

  And that was, what, at this point, fifteen years ago, you know? And I'm like, there's answers for people. And a lot of times, those answers are just that nobody's looking. And I I don't love the victimhood mentality either. And but there is a truth to a lot of times, people aren't given the opportunity to make the change, because nobody's giving them the counsel. They're just telling him harsh things like, oh, you have high cholesterol. Here's your cholesterol.

• 31:50Cameron Hanes?

  Pick this pill.

• 31:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 31:51Speaker 01

  Those are all red flags. I tell people, if you're going the wrong way down a one-way street, you're gonna see some times, probably, you know, if it's, that everything's gonna be backwards. You're gonna have some signs.

• 32:01Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 32:02Speaker 01

  If you're going the wrong way with your health, you're gonna have some signs. I don't feel good. My joints ache. I'm not sleeping. I don't wanna have sex. All the things that, there's, those are all clues. Those are all signs. If you're looking at the signs and you know you're going the wrong way. And the, you know, the faster we correct, the less distance you have to travel back to optimal. So I'm not gonna wait till you crash and go, okay, here you go. Here's, yeah, the top three diseases. Here's your top three meds. Here we go. No, I wanna jump out in front of you. Whoa, whoa, whoa, let's course correct. Here's how we're gonna get back. Here's how we're gonna turn around. And I, I'm, I'm speaking on behalf of the medical profession. That's what we want. We want, I don't think any of us went to school just to

• 32:39Speaker 01

  do the same thing every day and not make a difference. We did best that much. We want to heal people. We want to make a difference. We want to be a part of that movement. And, and just the quality of life and, you know, high five people out the door. That's, again, I, I have so much joy when I get those sweet messages or, hey, look what I can do again, or, you know, just the family of the people that we get to to change their life. That's, that's so special. That carries. So, you know, if, if I, if we reset someone's health and they're a better dad and a better husband, that's changing the course for their entire family.

• 33:16Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 33:17Speaker 01

  And their entire circle. Cause now you've seen, and I watched a Brigham go through his change. I, I remember, I hadn't seen him in a while and he came back and I was like, whoa, what's different? And he's like, I feel good now. And I was like, this, this is great. Keep doing what you're doing. This is exciting to see my friend change. And, and but, on the flip side, I wish you had never had to go down that journey. You know, I wish somebody would have caught it before. So I'm on the side jumping out in front of people. Yes, turn around.

• 33:43Speaker 02

  And I told the Texas Senate this when we testified about two weeks ago. So many people are told the lie that chronic disease runs in your family. Diet, lifestyle, and behaviors run in your family.

• 33:56Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 33:57Speaker 02

  Those are the gun, like, right? And epigenetics, or those are the bullets. Epigenetics are the gun. If you don't put the bullets in the gun and pull the trigger, you don't have to live that lifestyle. And if we get proactive and predictive, we can prevent over eighty percent of chronic diseases. Most of what is killing us is preventable. And if we even look at who lives to be a centenarian, who lives to be a hundred, the only difference fundamentally between those folks and people who die at the average life expectancy is the onset of chronic disease. So the question becomes, can we stave off chronic disease and keep you healthy? Well, to do that, you gotta get proactive and predictive. And like, I know you've been training for your marathon, and I'm assuming like you're

• 34:40Speaker 02

  doing the run where you know in your head, I've gotta be at this time and this pace, and I've gotta be by this date at this moment.

• 34:47Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 34:48Speaker 02

  It's the same with longevity. If we set a mark, and we know that your bone mineral density is gonna deteriorate by X amount after the age of sixty, and we know that once a woman reaches post-menopause, she has this precipitous decline in hormones, or once a male reaches his decline, he has this decline in testosterone annually, and we start to assess you, we can prevent the decline. And therefore, by preventing the decline and preventing the cascade effect of decline that leads to metabolic disease, that leads to all these illnesses, like, I've heard Denise say this, the diabetes you get in your thirties started in your twenties.

• 35:26Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 35:27Speaker 02

  The cancer you get in your forties probably started in your thirties. If we were looking proactively, at least once a year, we could stave off all of this.

• 35:36Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 35:36Speaker 02

  And that's, that's our pitch. That's like what I'm trying to tell people. Whether ways dwell or somewhere else, please, like, take yourself out of this broken system, splurge a little bit, find a cash pay clinic, do comprehensive blood work, and you would be amazed at what you're gonna uncover. And it's not rocket science, it really isn't. It's just, nobody's doing it in the traditional model.

• 35:58Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, I mean, Denise said she's not, she wishes you wouldn't have been fat, but I'm glad you're fat. Now you're jacked and now you're helping people, so.

• 36:09Speaker 02

  I'll take it.

• 36:10Cameron Hanes?

  I'm not hap- yeah, I'm happy you're with that.

• 36:15Speaker 02

  Oh, that's funny.

• 36:15Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, it's, uh, I think it's exciting, or, uh, what I want to ask is, what does it feel like for you guys to have that vision eight years ago and known each other for so long? And now to have this turn into what, what WasteWell has become, which now, you know, you mentioned almost any celebrity and they know of you guys or they come in here or how, what, what's that been like? I mean, does this seem surreal or?

• 36:41Speaker 02

  We say it all the time. We look at each other all the time and like, I remember the first time, I don't even remember like, it just the first time there was a quasi-celebrity. We were so nervous and we're like, oh man, we gotta make it. But now it's, it's literally every day. It's every day and they're so amazing and their feedback's amazing and it's, it's, it is surreal. It's definitely surreal, but it's also that like, person on the mountaintop mentality, like it's, you never feel like you've made it or you're there. It's just every day is a battle of grind. We're fighting, we're candidly fighting Big Pharma, the FDA, FDA choices, like trying to help fix the broken establishment and, and push for better.

• 37:23Speaker 02

  Uh, and you know, yeah, and then drive down cost and make it affordable. That's like our biggest initiative is how do we bring this to everybody?

• 37:31Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 37:32Speaker 02

  And when we started this, I told Denise, I will never, I promise you, we will always make this about patient care. I will not sell out. I will not let this become about money because the day this becomes about money, we're no different than Big Pharma. We will be no different than the broken insurance companies. Our secret sauce is making it about people and that's why I, she's my Jiminy Cricket. I rely on her to like, be my counterbalance on anything and, and that's why it's been a good synergy, I think.

• 37:59Speaker 01

  We focus on educating our patients. I love when my patients are. Like they come to me like, oh, I read this study. I heard about this. Can I do this? What about this? Am I supposed to get eight hours of sleep? And they're they're educating. We're putting some information out there and taking it. They're learning. Then they feel empowered to make a decision. And so I've had, this happens to me all the time. Hey, I went to my PCP. They said I need to be on a statin. So I went ahead and did your blood work. Do you think I need to be on a statin? And well, I mean, a statin is a Band-Aid. It makes the numbers look pretty. Um, but let's get to the root cause. Let's focus on this. Three or four months later. Hey, we don't need a statin anymore. They take the same labs that I've run after we've corrected everything. Go back to the PCP and oh, I don't need a statin anymore.

• 38:42Speaker 01

  And we made very simple changes, but instead of just here's your Band-Aid, here's your Band-Aid, here's your Band-Aid. We've educated, we've empowered the patients to help take charge of their health. I I call that our pillars, education, empowerment and empathy. You know, the empathy side of it is I we, I want to be healthy too. I want, I don't want you to ever experience the diseases of aging. I want, I want you to have a, and then there's a big difference between health span and lifespan. I want you to have a very fruitful lifespan.

• 39:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 39:10Speaker 01

  Not just laying in a nursing home, shriveled up in pain and waiting to die.

• 39:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 39:15Speaker 01

  That's where I came from and I was just, it was so heartbreaking.

• 39:19Speaker 02

  I bet.

• 39:19Speaker 01

  And to be on this side of it and just think every day, okay, I kept you from this would have been your face.

• 39:25Speaker 02

  Outcome, yeah.

• 39:25Speaker 01

  I I get to pluck them up. I talk about starfish all the time. And there's the parable of the little boy. There are thousands of starfish washed up on the beach. And there was a little boy throwing one starfish back at a time. And this gentleman comes up and he says, look at all these starfish. You're never going to make a difference. And the the boy picked up a starfish. He said, maybe not to everyone else, but to this one I will. And he tossed it back. I might not get to everybody.

• 39:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 39:47Speaker 01

  Oh, because that's not possible, but can I at least get the message out there?

• 39:51Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 39:51Speaker 01

  Hey, there's a problem. We can, we can work together to fix it and let's keep throwing the starfish back.

• 39:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 39:58Speaker 01

  That's, I, it gives me.

• 39:59Speaker 02

  What's crazy though is with large language models and Alan and AI, I think you could get to everyone. I really think the future is is bright. Like as much as we talk about how broken it is, people are talking about things. And if you want to fix, like we say in medicine to, you don't. Treat the symptoms, you treat the root cause, but you gotta identify the root cause.

• 40:19Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 40:19Speaker 02

  And to do that, you gotta look. And so like, if we can treat the root cause of the broken system, which I do think they're, they're working on, it's, it's gonna be a process and I'm optimistic that we're headed the right way, but there are a lot of forces fighting that change too. Like it's, when you were talking about food earlier, I mean, it's crazy, man.

• 40:38Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 40:38Speaker 02

  It's, it's like from every angle, there's as much as there's people waking up and getting more and more knowledgeable. There's also people trying to pull the wool back over the eyes and put people back in the box.

• 40:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:49Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, it's, I think podcasts have definitely changed things because where else have you heard this discussion? If it wasn't for podcasts.

• 40:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 40:57Cameron Hanes?

  You know, you're not gonna hear it at a doctor generally, but uh, so podcasts, you know, Rogan, you being on Rogan has changed everything essentially as far as just that awareness part that, and just knowing what questions to ask. Part of it is, I know that it's, I don't know if it's frustrating, but I get, like I see some of the comments and they're like, just even on what I did yesterday, oh, it's, that's a rich man's thing, or must be nice to have money type thing. And it's like, um, I, I get that and I, I know what it's like to be the guy who only has time to go to work. And barely, if you have a doctor's appointment, the guys at your work are just like going to,

• 41:40Cameron Hanes?

  going to another appointment, you know, you, we expect you to be here at work. So it is hard just getting, making a doctor's appointment just to get your blood test. I mean, that is for some people, that's hard.

• 41:51Speaker 02

  Well, that's what we're trying to fix too. That's why we have mobile phlebotomy. We send somebody to your house, to your office. It's never perfect. You know, and, and I hope in the future, there's a technology, I say this, we say this all the time. There's gotta be a technology coming where you take a pill and we monitor you 24/7. Because with, with Alan and the AI, you know, algorithms in, in the phone that we have with the WasteWell app, we're tracking, we can tie into wearables, your REM sleep, your deep sleep, your heart rate variability.

• 42:17Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, I'll just, Alan was your alien little thing. People might have saw the picture from when Joe was here yesterday. James got a good picture of Alan, but that's the AI interactive type thing, which as, as you guys talk about, that could be where Alan has this connection to, to all your labs.

• 42:35Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 42:36Cameron Hanes?

  To your wearables and. It is basically giving you feedback and advice based on your body chemistry essentially. And so that's exciting. And that's on the ways to well.

• 42:49Speaker 02

  Yeah. And the goal is to make it in real time because of what you're saying. People are busy. Like moms are busy. They're running kids around. They're so hectic. Everyone, life's busy.

• 42:58Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 42:59Speaker 02

  It's hard to manage your health and then we're being poisoned with our food and like, yeah, all the stuff I've learned over the last year has terrified me because just aligning with that Maha movement, I had no idea. I, I, there was things I didn't know, like 5% of the human brain's microplastics now. That's crazy from our lifestyle and nutrition and our depression's at an all time high. People are overworked, underpaid. They're trying to make it. They're trying to figure out how to be healthy. But one thing that Callie Means says that really resonated with me is we didn't all of a sudden become fatter and lazier than all of Italians.

• 43:34Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 43:34Speaker 02

  Like in Italy is outperforming us in every health metric and they're eating carbs and drinking wine.

• 43:38Cameron Hanes?

  Mm hmm.

• 43:39Speaker 02

  It is something wrong with our environment and our system that is setting people up for failure. And there's a way for us to dig out of this hole and it starts with, with having the conversation, which is what I love about podcasts and all the things we're doing now is it gives people knowledge and knowledge is power.

• 43:56Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah. Yeah. I use that line just with my shoe testing yesterday. Knowledge is power. We don't, I was testing shoe efficiency, basically. And it's just like, people are like, oh, so you're leaving Speedland. And I'm like, no, I'm just trying to figure out what's best. I'm not doing it. But that reminded me too of if I had time and I haven't even done this and supposedly I would have time to do this, but go to my primary care, do the blood test, see what he said, have you guys do the same blood tests and then see the difference between the two. Who has time for that? But um, it's an, it is an exciting time in that

• 44:34Cameron Hanes?

  there is this, this option for people who have it that can reach out, that can do different things, that can maybe like me, feel the best they've ever felt at 57. That's exciting. And it's like this knowledge, like now anytime somebody hands me a water bottle and plastic, I'm, I'm thinking about that.

• 44:53Cameron Hanes?

  This is going straight to my brain. Plastics are leaching in this water, but we didn't know anything about that.

• 44:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, I didn't either. I would heat up my healthy meals. I would order healthy pre-made meals. The what? The factor meals that you told me about years ago and they're healthy, but they're in plastics. And when you heat them up, those plat- those microplastics go into the food. So now I open it and I pour it in a bowl and I heat it up in a glass bowl. And like, you just try to make little bit better choices. Does it help? Who knows? Like it's, we're so surrounded by challenges.

• 45:23Cameron Hanes?

  I still get in trouble for standing in front of the microwave.

• 45:29Cameron Hanes?

  From my wife, but whatever. Maybe that, maybe that little change will go with the plastics.

• 45:34Speaker 01

  Well, now people are looking at food labels too.

• 45:36Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 45:36Speaker 01

  You know, I see people in the grocery store.

• 45:38Speaker 02

  Red dye for me.

• 45:39Speaker 01

  Red dye and I'm like, oh no, I'll put this one back and they'll switch. And I know my kids do the same thing. My kids are looking at it. And, you know, I, as a mom, I'm setting an example for a healthy life for my kids. They see me making choices. They see what I do. And so if I, you know, fundamentally, if I start right now, I can keep them from ever having to deal with chronic disease, pain, chronic problems. That, I mean, that's, that's my responsibility. Those are my babies. I, I can imagine every mom would feel that way. Just where do I start? What do I do? How do I make those changes? We're just not, I mean, people are talking about it now, but we haven't been talking about it.

• 46:17Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 46:18Speaker 01

  We haven't been empowered. We haven't been educated. There's, you know.

• 46:22Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, there's all sorts of reasons why that would be from government, working with lobbyists, getting kicked back from Big Pharma. Were they really concerned with fixing a broken system?

• 46:35Speaker 02

  I can tell you right now, it's just testifying last week in front of the Senate here in Texas. All we're asking for, all that these senators, the bill that they're putting forth asked for is for you to disclose in a label if there are ingredients that are banned in other nations. Because here in the U.S., in the eighties, we had basically 400 ingredients in our food. Now we have over 12,000 and Europe still has.

• 47:00Cameron Hanes?

  Cheaper food. Is that why? For the filler.

• 47:03Speaker 02

  Absolutely more addictive, more caloric dense, you know, dopamine response foods that are more addictive and get you where you're hungry again shorter periods of time. They're not nutrient dense. Um, and that, yeah, because in the, the dark side of this, and this is all factual, is big tobacco. When they began to get the pressure from the federal government, they went out and acquired big food. A lot of people don't know that the big tobacco conglomerates acquired a lot of the big food establishments and began to test food to make it more addictive and more processed and more profitable.

• 47:37Cameron Hanes?

  And so Because they weren't going to make the money off tobacco because of the regulations. So they needed a pivot.

• 47:42Speaker 02

  I think, I think that's part of it, like the ball is show me the incentives and I'll show you the outcomes.

• 47:47Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 47:47Speaker 02

  But what's wild is as a Texan, I love Buc-E's, man. I don't know if you got to Buc-E's while you're here.

• 47:53Cameron Hanes?

  Who doesn't love?

• 47:54Speaker 02

  It's, it's cool, but Buc-E's is lobbying behind the scenes to shut down the food label thing and so is HEB.

• 48:03Cameron Hanes?

  They would have no food in there.

• 48:04Speaker 02

  And yeah, and so, but all we're saying is disclose it, just disclose it, tell the truth of what's not legal in other nations. So the consumer can make the choice. In Texas, they're not even saying you can't put it in the food. They're just saying disclose.

• 48:19Cameron Hanes?

  Tell us, yeah.

• 48:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 48:20Cameron Hanes?

  Well, that, you know, making more addictive food reminds me, remember that old commercial ruffles with ridges? You can't have just one.

• 48:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 48:30Cameron Hanes?

  I mean, they were just saying what they were doing right there. You can't, you could try to eat one, but you can't because we made this shit so addictive. You need this whole bag.

• 48:37Speaker 02

  Or even Pringles. Once you pop, you can't stop.

• 48:39Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah. So they're, they're like, they've had their, their blueprint out there and, uh, but that's why you can sit there and eat a whole bag of Doritos.

• 48:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 48:48Cameron Hanes?

  And then be hungry.

• 48:50Speaker 02

  Well, and it creates a problem because it's, it is in, in Lane Norton talks about this part of it a lot, and I agree with him. Is it the food diet? Is it? He's like, I'm more concerned about eating healthy calories and lifting weights and taking care of your body. And that there's truth to that, obviously. That's a hundred percent true. But if we give people incentivize people to eat colorful, flavorful food, starting at a young age, like our Fruit Loops, and they eat these foods, I'm not saying the red, let's just table the red dye for now and say, it's an unhealthy meal. Like, why are we gonna make food so much fun that kids want to eat the unhealthy one instead of the healthy option? And it is, it does, it is a cascade effect. And I think it has to start with like, better choices. But if we allow our food systems to be corporately captured and corrupted, it's

• 49:35Speaker 02

  an uphill battle.

• 49:36Cameron Hanes?

  I mean, who didn't eat a whole box of Fruity Pebbles at one time? Did you ever eat Fruity Pebbles?

• 49:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, when I was a kid, I would, I loved Cocoa Puffs.

• 49:45Speaker 01

  The Fruit Loops.

• 49:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 49:47Cameron Hanes?

  I know that. Or Captain Crunch, tear up your mouth, but so good. But yeah, it's a, I think, like, even just one basic thing, I think, that I do, you sit down to eat, eat your protein first. Because what people do is they eat a bunch of potatoes, or chips of salsa, or biscuits, or whatever. And then what's left is they don't eat all their, all their protein. What they need, everybody needs more protein probably than what they're getting. So if you just start with the protein, and then maybe you don't finish your mojos, or whatever.

• 50:22Speaker 02

  That's why I would say that's, that's literally the small step that when I started to lose the weight, all those years ago, the nutritionist told me. When I saw a nutritionist, and he said, we're gonna prior prioritize protein. And if you're eating the right amount of protein, it's hard to overeat. Cause it's nutrient dense, it takes time to burn it off, it burns calories to absorb, right? And then versus you give a kid a bowl of Fruit Loops, they'll eat the whole box. And then the next thing they know, they're hungry again in a few hours.

• 50:51Cameron Hanes?

  It goes so fast, it just burns up so fast. But that protein, it sticks around for sure. That, that's an eat, I mean. It's pretty easy. Just focus on protein.

• 51:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 51:03Cameron Hanes?

  I mean, just that one big thing, but uh, I don't know, there's a lot of uh, what is, what are you guys offering now that excites you most? I know we talked about the, the, how it works or whatever, but I know I've tried different things, new things, kind of. What, what excites you the most right now?

• 51:19Speaker 01

  Well, one of the things I did on you yesterday was their cancer screen test.

• 51:22Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 51:23Speaker 01

  Um, I'm excited about that because it has the capacity to detect cancer at stage zero. So before a tumor has truly declared itself, when, whenever cancer starts and the cells start to be, you release what's called circulating tumor cells. And those cells are clues that you're already starting to change. So the earlier we find out that you're making those changes, or you're releasing those circulating tumor cells, the earlier we can optimize your immune system. I don't tell people I'm treating cancer. What I tell people is I'm giving you the answer that this is already a problem.

• 51:58Cameron Hanes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 51:59Speaker 01

  Um, that, you know, we refer out or whatever with our team. I also, you know, when I, I do get a positive test, I talk to my patients about optimizing their immune system. And how does that start? The right nutrition, sleep. Um, we talk about vitamins and mineral supplements, things that help your body. Body's very intuitive. We don't want cancer.

• 52:17Speaker 02

  And if you catch it at stage zero, what's the survival rate again?

• 52:20Speaker 01

  They have to say 99% because there's always an anomaly.

• 52:24Cameron Hanes?

  Yep.

• 52:24Speaker 01

  Um, but.

• 52:25Speaker 02

  That's the difference between life or death.

• 52:26Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 52:27Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah. Oh, man.

• 52:28Speaker 01

  And my, I, I mean, my personal story with that is I, you know, this just happened. I, I had an emotional weekend over it because I had a family member, when we started this test, I, I made a family member take it. And um, it came back positive and I suspected that that was a potential just because of the family history and all the things. And um, we just optimized immune system. We cut out alcohol, exercise, just made lifestyle changes.

• 52:52Speaker 01

  And tested again, no detection. It went from a high level of detection, so there were a lot of circulating tumor cells to zero. I'm not saying I cured cancer, I'm not saying anything, I'm saying I optimized the body to let it do what it's supposed to do. Our body mitigates cancer, mitigates disease all the time. We have to give it a chance to, we have to give it the ingredients that it needs and that comes from, again, your baseline stuff. Deep sleep, good nutrition, movement, if you're not addressing those things first, everything else you do. We have a lot of fun things that we do, you did the red light therapy, you know, we have the hyperbaric chamber, those are all fun.

• 53:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 53:30Speaker 01

  They're all great additions to.

• 53:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, optimizing.

• 53:34Speaker 01

  Exactly, they're, they just take you to that next level, but that's not going to replace a good diet.

• 53:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 53:40Speaker 01

  Exercise, the fundamentals, it's not meant to replace that. We're still encouraging you to make good choices, but the cancer test is, I'm super excited.

• 53:48Speaker 02

  That one's fascinating because it does, it's another leading indicator that can give us line of sight into if you have a a risk profile or you are headed towards cancer prior to you truly having like a terminal form of cancer or more dangerous for, we would know and we can have that line of sight. And it gets so crazy because, you know, first responders have a huge increased risk profile of cancer compared to the general population and, you know.

• 54:20Cameron Hanes?

  Smoke inhalation.

• 54:20Speaker 01

  The firefighters.

• 54:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, the fire, and then separate from those folks, uh, another Tim Kennedy one, he told me a sevenfold increase in special forces diagnosis of cancer, sevenfold the general public. And so for me, like talking to Tulsi, talking to the DOD, like this is what makes sense, like why wouldn't you want to screen these people or giving their lives for our country and help protect them from the potential of headed towards something that destroys their life and sets them back financially and harms their family, like we're putting these people in enough harms way, let's give them the tools in the tool belt to protect them.

• 55:00Cameron Hanes?

  And we don't pay them that much, he's volunteer army and they even, I remember when my son was in, I was always like irritated with how little, you know, they don't, they don't join for the money, but I'm like, it is a sacrifice, at least pay these guys some decent money.

• 55:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 55:16Cameron Hanes?

  And then beyond that, take care of them.

• 55:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 55:19Cameron Hanes?

  Look out for their health.

• 55:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 55:21Cameron Hanes?

  Is that, is that test new?

• 55:23Speaker 01

  It's new for us. They released it on the market last year, but we started, we started in August with doing this test. I was, there was another test that's on the market and, and people are very familiar with, and it's, it's flawed because it only tests for proteins, doesn't have a pathologist that's reviewing. And so it's a presence or absence of these particular proteins. And, and they can, it had a lot of false negatives, a lot of false positives. And with the circulating tumor cells, they're either present or they're not.

• 55:54Cameron Hanes?

  I see.

• 55:54Speaker 01

  And so there's no room for expecting a protein to break down.

• 55:57Cameron Hanes?

  So there's a specific cancer cell, like, uh, how do you disword them?

• 56:03Speaker 01

  All solid tumors.

• 56:04Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 56:04Speaker 01

  Will release circulating tumors.

• 56:06Cameron Hanes?

  Right, so, okay. So that's always there.

• 56:09Speaker 01

  I, every time, every solid tumor will release.

• 56:11Speaker 02

  And the reason a lot of people haven't heard of this stuff again is not because it doesn't work or it's not backed by science. It's because if you go into a primary care, they're going to use the tools that they have available. And the tools they have available are dictated by the insurance companies. And the insurance companies have no incentive and all of a sudden plunging on a test to see seven years in advance if you're going to develop cancer. That's not their model. That's not the business model. And it's, okay, I'm not trying to make it doom and gloom and like that it's some sort of egregious, it's just, the system is built for failure. It is, it is built to monetize chronic disease and kick the can down the road.

• 56:53Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 56:53Speaker 02

  And so if I'm an executive at a big insurance company, I look at it and go, Cam wants to do a cancer screening? That's going to cost us money. In 24 months, Cam will be somebody else's problem. Because the average American switches jobs every two years. And then by the time real chronic disease develops, you're the taxpayer's problem. And so for them, the incentive is delay, delay, delay. Deny, deny, deny.

• 57:18Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 57:18Speaker 02

  Kick the can down the road. It is just business. It's unfortunate because it does involve human lives.

• 57:25Cameron Hanes?

  It's no different than, uh, you know, when I broke my foot, I went in and, uh, doctor was like, well. Um, yeah, gonna need surgery. And then once you put a plate in, then you gotta have another surgery to take it out. He's like, we could try a bone stimulator machine, but uh, insurance probably won't, won't approve it. I said, well, could try it. I said, how much is it? And he told me how much it was, not cheap, but not like a surgery. And I said, so that bone stimulator could help heal my foot. And it's a fraction of what a surgery, let alone two surgeries would cost. And they won't approve that, but they'll approve cutting on me, you know?

• 58:07Cameron Hanes?

  And there's no guarantee the surgery would be perfect because your foot, whatever. And this, but anyway, that was just an example. So I did put it into insurance. They did deny it.

• 58:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 58:17Cameron Hanes?

  They want that surgery.

• 58:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 58:19Cameron Hanes?

  They're not really worried about what's best for you.

• 58:22Speaker 02

  Well, and the reason oftentimes they push you back to surgery is because a lot of times with insurance, you have a big out of pocket copay deductible. And so it's this dirty little shell game. And I, I was breaking this down before. So imagine I'm a 25 year old kid and I tear my ACL. Okay, a partial tear, right? If, if they, they're going to say, if they approve something, they're gonna make you jump through a bunch of hoops. Go get an MRI. Now you got a big out of pocket deductible for the MRI. You gotta pay for that. Then you go and say, okay, well, what's the surgery gonna cost? Your out of pocket expense, maybe $10,000. Well, if I'm a 20 something year old kid, I can't afford $10,000. So I just don't get the surgery.

• 59:03Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 59:04Speaker 02

  Right? And then

• 59:05Cameron Hanes?

  You're dealing with that your whole life.

• 59:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 59:06Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 59:07Speaker 02

  And then they get rebates off of the prescription medicines. So that's the other challenge is when I say they're monetizing chronic disease, they have middlemen called pharmacy benefit managers and a big chunk of the revenue generated from the insurance companies and their profits are generated by you being on prescription drugs. So now there's an incentive for you to be on a prescription drug. And it's, it's just this loop. People get caught in the feedback loop where they're trapped in this cycle. They go, well, I can't afford the surgery, but they'll cover my medicine. I guess I'll just take this pill. They said it'll help.

• 59:41Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 59:41Speaker 02

  It's this terrible system.

• 59:44Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, I mean, it's, I don't know. I remember I went to a primary care doctor, one of like, it was during COVID and um, COVID was a horror. But uh, anyway, this guy was like, he goes, oh yeah, he goes, I know you and your buddy Rogan. You're all, you know, anti vax type thing. And I'm just like, I go, I said, I just don't, I said, I don't even take a flu shot. I said, I'm not taking this COVID shot. He's just like, why? Cause you're Buddy Rogan? And I'm just like, and I said, no, I said, I go, you make money off, off writing prescriptions, right? Of vaccines, off of this or that. He's like, yeah, but that's not,

• 1:00:23Cameron Hanes?

  that's not why I, that's not why I recommend things. And I said, I go, I don't know, I, I saw a couple, couple of salesmen out in your waiting room. I go, what are they here for? I said, I said, do they care about me? Or do they care about right, selling you stuff? I said, cause they don't know me. And he's like, well, yeah, they, they make recommendations and all, and I'll buy it. I said, so, I was trying to make money. You make money by writing prescriptions, doing this, this thing. And I said, but you're turning it into, if you question that at all, or if you're like, well, I, I don't, I'm not so sure about that, then you don't know what you're talking about. It's like, I'm just looking at it objectively going, I saw these salesmen out there, these pharmaceutical salesmen, they don't, they don't care about me.

• 1:01:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:01:08Cameron Hanes?

  They want to make money. And so it's always like, I don't know, we were, we were kind of scolded for, at that time, questioning,

• 1:01:18Cameron Hanes?

  just questioning the system. You know, you're supposed to just take the vaccine and not question anything. And uh, they really tried to hammer that home. And you know, the wit, the winter of sickness and death. I mean,

• 1:01:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:01:28Cameron Hanes?

  It was crazy time. But now here we are on the other side of it. And maybe all that hopefully was for the good. And, and here we are. And I don't know, like, when we talk about, I don't, I, we haven't even talked about this. I haven't even thought about this since right now, but. Obamacare and this or that, it seemed like it changed. It changed the type of treatment or care you could get. And I don't know what happened, but years ago, it seemed like you could get better care or maybe we just didn't know enough. But now it seems like they are more taxed. I don't know. They have less time to spend with each pa- patient. I don't know what happened.

• 1:02:07Cameron Hanes?

  I want to blame Obama, but um, but uh, it, to your point, it just seemed, they're always late. You know, you're sitting in there forever. They come in, they gotta go in a second. You're not getting into like this in-depth like, well, what about me? What about me? You know, and that's, I don't know when that changed, but I feel like maybe we took it a step backwards and it was, it was bad for a while. And now maybe it'll be better. I don't know.

• 1:02:34Speaker 02

  I think we intention, we did, we unintentionally created a monster because we forced people to be required to have insurance. And it created an, a essentially almost a monopoly where everybody has to have insurance plans. But those insurance plans aren't necessarily in the best interest of the patient. And the individual, I can't remember the woman's name who's over HHS at the time. But a lot of people talk about Big Pharma and how ten out of the last eleven heads of the FDA have gone to work for Big Pharma, the industry they were regulating. But one thing they miss is an exorbitant amount of the heads of HHS, Human Health Services, have left that to go work for the insurance companies. And so the head of HHS at the time that helped ramrod Obamacare,

• 1:03:19Speaker 02

  went to go work for the big pharmacy benefit manager lobby group. And so there's all of this cross-pollination where people one year work for the federal government and regulate, and then a year later, take a job with industry. And that collusion and cross-pollination, I think, creates conflicts that lead to all these outcomes, that lead to all these.

• 1:03:40Cameron Hanes?

  Shitty outcomes that we're dealing with and it's like this is the type of stuff that has to get fixed or we're always going to be caught in a loop back or like loop cycle. I, I think.

• 1:03:50Speaker 01

  Well, one of the ways that we tried to fix that is through telemedicine. You know, we were, we were telemedicine before COVID.

• 1:03:55Cameron Hanes?

  Okay.

• 1:03:55Speaker 01

  So, you know, well, we were doing that to just meet people where they are. So if I, I need, I need forty five minutes of your time to go through everything. I know that's, that's, it has, it has to have a good balance for both of us. I can't expect somebody to take more time out of their day, but I also can't expect you to drive thirty, forty five minutes to see me, to sit an hour in my lobby, to see me for six minutes, and then you gotta drive thirty, forty five minutes back home, go to the pharmacy.

• 1:04:19Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:20Speaker 01

  Pick up your stuff. I mean, that's a lot of time. I would rather use all of that time. And so when I have a, I have an appointment and we're gonna meet at nine o'clock, I log in at nine o'clock.

• 1:04:29Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:29Speaker 01

  And, or, you know.

• 1:04:30Cameron Hanes?

  Uh, you did, to your point, you did talk to me like through air, a long conversation on the phone about my blood panels and about everything you thought and about the detail of it. So you do what you say.

• 1:04:41Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:04:41Cameron Hanes?

  I mean, yeah.

• 1:04:42Speaker 01

  I, that's, I, that's, I love that. I love educating my patients. So if I'm, if I'm looking at biomarkers, I'm looking at everything at one time. So I'm gonna tell you how they're all connected. What irritates me when the people will tell me, oh, I got a CBC from my PCP. It's a three dollar test. I'm like, great. What else did they test? No, that's all they got.

• 1:05:00Cameron Hanes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:05:00Speaker 01

  Well, where's your vitamin D? Where's your B vitamins? Where's your magnesium? Well, how are your hormones? Did they check your thyroid? Are you sleeping? So I've got all these questions. And they're like, well, but insurance paid for this three dollar blood test that, yes, it's gonna give me some information, but it's not everything at once. So I hate this. They, my patients will have to go and get this blood test and then they have to go back into another visit to get another test. So by the time they've collected all this from their insurance covering it, they're a year invested, several visits, several co-pays.

• 1:05:30Cameron Hanes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:05:30Speaker 01

  How much time did that take? And I'm still like, well, trying to look back at where the C B says was in the beginning. So I, I like doing everything at once. I get to know what, what's happening, how it's all connected. And, you know, yeah, it's, it's, it's expensive, but it's an investment in your health. We, and I, if I identify all these things now and I set that course, well, now your investment has just, that accumulative, that accumulation, accumulatory function of improved health is lifetime.

• 1:06:01Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:01Speaker 01

  Now you know, now you're empowered. And. You know, when I was doing pain management, the, the mind breaking point and the day I called, the day I called Brigham and I was like, all right, let's do this. Um, the, I was a Medicare provider and I was the only one around that could do rib blocks and you put numbing medicine in the patient's rib. He had fallen off of the ladders in the ER, about to go to ICU. He's, uh, late sixties, early seventies and they were gonna have to intubate him because he wasn't breathing. He was too painful to breathe. But if I came in, my ultrasound machine, I'd put some numbing medicine in, he would breathe and not be on the ventilator. Great. I was an on call. It was a Saturday night. I'm like, I don't want this guy to be on the ventilator. I left my family,

• 1:06:44Speaker 01

  went to this block for this guy, billed insurance because you have to bill for their services. I got paid a dollar sixty seven. Medicare sent me a bill for a dollar sixty seven. So if he had gone, if, if they had intubated him, he had gone to ICU, he probably would have been there for several days if he had been able to get off the vent at all. Cause statistically speaking, when you put some on a ventilator, there's Yeah, it was virus infection, like all these things. And I just, not that I ever needed the money side of it, but the value that Medicare placed on his life, the monetary value of that, I was like,

• 1:07:19Cameron Hanes?

  I Dollar or something.

• 1:07:20Speaker 01

  Dollar sixty seven. I still have the check and I'm like, this is not okay. This, I, you know, I would do it, I would do it again tomorrow. I would do it every day to get that man off of ventilator. But that's why people get discouraged because I couldn't pay my bills if that's all I, you know, an hour and a half of my time, but I couldn't, I couldn't provide for my family. And so that's where providers are, they have to get so many, so many, so many visits. Go as quick as you can. Bill as much as you can. Put as many codes in there so that you can get that reimbursement. And then after you submit, someone has to bill behind you because they deny it every time. So you've got the manpower, somebody billing behind you again. And I still never got to do what I wanted to do with my patient. I didn't get to get the whole lab.

• 1:08:05Speaker 01

  And I didn't get to get everything that I wanted to see at once. And so, you know, to your point about it being expensive, by the time you pay the co-pays over and over and over and over and all the visits all the time. It's actually.

• 1:08:17Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, it's just.

• 1:08:18Speaker 02

  As well, because you can do it from the comfort of your own home.

• 1:08:20Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:20Speaker 02

  It it's, I always tell people, it, again, like small wins. If your budget says, I can only spend that once a year. That's so much better than not at all.

• 1:08:29Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:30Speaker 02

  Like, once a year to do that deep dive in a dream world, if you can afford it, I I tell people, try every quarter, just so it's a snapshot of you in time. And the more snapshots we have, the better we can track your trajectory. And where you're headed with potential chronic diseases and, you know, your overall health and wellness. But those are where DEXA, the O two max, Allen, you know, wearables, all these are going to give us more snapshots. And the more data we can capture, the more we can help people for free. Like, that's just going to be built in. And that's where I think the future is really bright. We're going to have an amazing amount of information at our fingertips. Twenty four seven, including education.

• 1:09:12Speaker 02

  It's like having Allen in your pocket is like having Denise in your pocket, you know, you ask him and he'll answer. Any question about your unique uh blood work and your DEXA, V two max, anything you do at Ways to Walk.

• 1:09:23Cameron Hanes?

  Is uh, is the blood test covered by insurance? Likely, well, they don't do that.

• 1:09:28Speaker 01

  They don't cover it.

• 1:09:29Cameron Hanes?

  It's, does that seem weird?

• 1:09:31Speaker 01

  So if I submit, this is, I'll probably TMI on this part of it, but if I submit that to your insurance, they, for all the blood panels that I do, they bill your insurance about thirty six hundred dollars. To do all the blood work that I do. And you have about twenty percent copay. So you're already, you're just your copay alone is more than.

• 1:09:50Cameron Hanes?

  Than the blood.

• 1:09:51Speaker 01

  Than the blood test.

• 1:09:51Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:09:52Speaker 01

  And then you get six minutes with your provider, you don't get a report. So when I do your blood test, I get to order everything that I want. I want a complete panel. And and then I could spend forty five minutes.

• 1:10:02Speaker 02

  When I told that story about my urology experience and them uncovering and helping me lose the weight. Literally, I I waited almost a year. I had to go to a primary, I had to get a referral, I had to get referred into the urologist, then the urologist, I sat in that clinic for probably, I don't know, hours. And then he finally pulls my blood work and I get a bill in the mail like a month later for like nine hundred dollars or something. Well, none of it was covered like they the insurance will just deny it or short pay it and then by law. The clinic or blood lab is required to go after you for the difference. And so that's where people are so scared and they go, I wish I knew what. Like it's hard because you can't eat your cake and have it too. People go, I wish that I knew what everything's gonna cost.

• 1:10:45Speaker 02

  And then we go, well, in a cash model, you do know what everything's gonna cost. In the insurance model, it's not your doctor's fault. It's the insurance company playing the shell game where they want you to be worried about it. So you say, you know, I don't want that test. I don't worry. Last time I got a bill.

• 1:10:58Cameron Hanes?

  It's weird when you say like the blood test for you guys is what five or six hundred, but the insurance is charging thirty six hundred.

• 1:11:06Speaker 01

  That's a cash pay difference. So that's the markup.

• 1:11:08Cameron Hanes?

  That but okay, so then I was also. Was it my insurance package like when I had my, you know, I had a regular job forever, but. I just would pay the co-pay and then I guess my insurance coverage would pick up the difference.

• 1:11:22Speaker 01

  Or they do a write-off or an agreement.

• 1:11:24Cameron Hanes?

  Okay, cuz I know I didn't pay for blood tests at my primary care when I had a a job. I would just pay the twenty bucks.

• 1:11:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, do you know how comprehensive of a blood test and how often now? Cause a lot of times they're not looking. That's what Denise is saying. They're pulling a very small panel typically.

• 1:11:40Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:40Speaker 02

  They're scared to pull a full panel.

• 1:11:42Cameron Hanes?

  Right. Um, it wasn't like what you did for sure. It was a more abbreviated one, but it was. I don't probably halfway, you know, maybe not.

• 1:11:52Speaker 02

  That's better than, I mean, and it is different by insurance and there's literally thousands of insurances.

• 1:11:56Cameron Hanes?

  No, and it's like. Yeah, I mean, I would probably where I worked was a good place. This is, you know, municipality, back home, water, power. So we had a pretty good package. But it's like, uh, I just didn't know how that worked and the difference.

• 1:12:09Speaker 02

  It's it's a racket cuz I also owned pharmacies that build insurance and that's how I learned all this. You could come in and you know, me ma could come in with her prescription drugs and again, the average American is on four more prescription drugs. Elderly populations on a lot more and she comes in and I swipe her card. And it it let's just say it's blue cross blue shield. It tells me what to charge you for a co-pay. There were a lot of times I could sell you the drug cheaper than your co-pay. But at the time, I was not allowed to tell you.

• 1:12:41Cameron Hanes?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:12:42Speaker 02

  It was it was a gag clause that didn't allow me to tell you at the time. Now, I heard certain states have gotten rid of that, but there are still. You know, when you're seeing that many people and you have hundreds of people in line and you know, that pharmacy tech's just swiping the card. A lot of times they're not gonna go, hey ma'am, excuse me, it'd be cheaper if you pay cash, less than your co-pay. So they just, people just accept the co-pay and they don't realize that oftentimes they're getting price gouged.

• 1:13:07Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, yeah, that's what I've been noticing a lot like when I look at these examples and I think back and when now we're talking about this, but. So just just to back up, like when I talked to you, so we did the, we did the blood panel, we talked on the phone all about it.

• 1:13:24Cameron Hanes?

  Then uh, got the prescriptions from at home, delivered at home, so it was, it wasn't the driving back and forth, it was exactly like you described. So if you look at the overall time allotment, yeah, I mean, it was way better on how we did it here and I got, felt like I got good care.

• 1:13:43Cameron Hanes?

  It's just a change from, from what people are used to, but that's okay, that's why we're talking about this and it's a good change. When I talked about that I'm feeling better than I ever have, like a lot of people will point right to testosterone. And it's just like, I haven't even, I haven't even taken testosterone, I don't know what I was at, like maybe 500, I think with, from you guys. And on the blood, blood panel, but I haven't even got to that, I think. Um, you sent me some like rub, rub on stuff, I haven't even, even done it yet, but uh. So it's like, it's not just that testosterone helps a lot of people.

• 1:14:22Cameron Hanes?

  Um, I, mine wasn't crazy low, I, that I don't, I don't remember, but anyway, it's like so much other stuff, the BPC, the uh.

• 1:14:32Cameron Hanes?

  What's that stuff I take at night?

• 1:14:34Speaker 01

  Magnesium.

• 1:14:35Cameron Hanes?

  Well, yeah, uh, the, uh, the injection stuff.

• 1:14:38Speaker 01

  Um.

• 1:14:39Cameron Hanes?

  The pinealium?

• 1:14:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, the pine one.

• 1:14:41Cameron Hanes?

  Or pine, huh, yeah, so it's like so many different things. And then I'll get the testosterone, but there's a lot out there that can help people that. I know BPCs, they've tried to control that because I don't know why, but that's a huge one, that peptide.

• 1:14:56Speaker 02

  Um. Hopefully that's gonna change. They are, they are working diligently, like, I know, I mean Bobby Kennedy said, he's, he, he's, you know, been to waste well, he's worked with us, he's a proponent of peptides. I mean, look at how he looks at his age and look at what great shape he's in. And his, he tweeted before he, uh, procured the nomination that it was like, uh, your war on peptides, stem cells, FDA, your war on peptide stem cells, all this are over. And so there's a lot of hope out there that we're gonna go back to doing what's right for people, rather than what's right for the big pharmaceutical industry. And I, I, I'm, I'm really confident that there's a lot of positive change coming.

• 1:15:38Speaker 02

  It's going to allow more cost effective, safe and compliant, uh, accessibility back to all the peptides.

• 1:15:45Cameron Hanes?

  How did, like, how did you get to a place where you're testifying in front of Congress? I mean, how did that happen? Like.

• 1:15:52Speaker 02

  You know, it's.

• 1:15:53Cameron Hanes?

  We talk about where you guys have started to. I see that. I see you guys working with RFK and doing these amazing things and Tulsi is like, just that part, just the fact that Trump reached across the aisle and got these, like lifelong Democrats basically to work with him for.

• 1:16:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:16:10Cameron Hanes?

  For what I, the way I look at it is what's best for the American people. That's, that's what we wanted. These people could not, Republicans, Democrats could never work together. Well, now they are. Now it's like the people who we've mentioned, that can make a difference are in positions to make a difference. And that's how amazing is that. But how did that happen to where you've had this opportunity?

• 1:16:31Speaker 02

  It may honestly, it all started with that Rogan podcast years ago. And I, when I did that, I think at this point it's been four years ago, or so it's at least three and a half years ago, something like that.

• 1:16:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:16:42Speaker 02

  It, it really resonated. People like, what? What are PBMs? What are middlemen? What are, it was crazy, the, the effect it had. But one of RFK's campaign people had heard it. And asked if I could come and meet with Bobby in Dallas. So I drove to Dallas and I sat down, he rolled up his sleeves and sat down with me for 30 minutes. And truly wanted to understand, what do you think is wrong with the system? Tell me what's going on with peptides? Wait, they're banning peptides? Why? What's happening here? We had this in-depth talk. And then Tulsi, you know, she had heard the podcast and asked Joe about it. And Joe's like, they're great.

• 1:17:14Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:15Speaker 02

  And then one day I see a group text and it's Tulsi.

• 1:17:17Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:18Speaker 02

  And then.

• 1:17:19Cameron Hanes?

  She's a stud.

• 1:17:19Speaker 02

  How it all started, really though, even going back to Joe was like, I would sit there when Joe would come in for treatments. And Dan East would talk to him about his health and all that. And I would just talk to him about the crazy shit I saw. It was a drug rap and a med device rap.

• 1:17:31Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:32Speaker 02

  And one day he's like, come on the podcast. And I'm like, what? I've never done a podcast. He's like, shut up. These two guys talking.

• 1:17:39Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:39Speaker 02

  Come on the podcast. And that led to that, which then led to Tulsi. And one day talking to Tulsi, I was telling her the crazy stories. Joe's like, tell her some of the stuff you were telling me about. Insurance and med device and all this. And Tulsi one day is like.

• 1:17:54Speaker 02

  People think that politicians drive change, Brigham. People drive change.

• 1:17:58Cameron Hanes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:17:59Speaker 02

  People like you, like you've got to speak up and you've got to talk. You've got to make the public aware of what these people are doing. So that they can lean on politicians to drive change.

• 1:18:09Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 1:18:09Speaker 02

  And it was wild that she had that conversation because then literally a few months later is when I met Bobby Kennedy. And then the rest is kind of history at that point because of Bobby, I met Callie Means. And then it led to me getting a message saying, hey, we're putting together a group. To take a new approach to healthcare to testify in front of the US Senate about what we saw. And so my testimony was focused on the broken system.

• 1:18:33Cameron Hanes?

  Hmm.

• 1:18:34Speaker 02

  And so I, I, I'll, I'll make a long story short, but I basically just said, everything that we are going to talk about is broken down by two words, corporate capture. And everyone talks about Eisenhower's speech and the him warning us about the military industrial complex, but the second half of that speech, he did warn the American people about the scientific industrial complex and that if we allow academia, our three-letter organizations, and our scientific processes to be captured by private interests, we will lose the garage tinker, the innovator, the creator, and we will be basically living the world we're living. And it's just crazy to see that that guy had that kind of foresight on so many

• 1:19:15Speaker 02

  different things. Um, and that was it. And that's why I'm so optimistic because that was a bipartisan effort to bring forth, you know, awareness and change. And it's crazy to see what's happened since that, you know, on the healthcare front with with Bobby and and even Tulsi. I know Tulsi's passionate about helping our military personnel, bringing about uh better modalities and ability to protect our personnel and help them live long, healthy, happy lives. Um, so I'm I'm excited. I'm optimistic, but it is all that's when we said surreal, that's probably the most surreal thing that that other than going on Joe, the most surreal thing was that day testifying in front of the Senate.

• 1:19:55Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, it was pretty sick. I remember seeing that. But I mean, shout out to Eisenhower too, because the generals that serve our military a lot of times get jobs in the military industrial complex afterwards, you know, working for these contractors and for so yeah, he was spot on both things. Yeah, it's like

• 1:20:16Speaker 02

  He saw all of it.

• 1:20:17Cameron Hanes?

  He saw, which is crazy. But uh, yeah, now we're talking about it and hopefully we can correct it. But it's uh, yeah, it's it's an exciting time for sure.

• 1:20:26Speaker 01

  I think what validates Brigham and what helped his momentum, you know, he he has his story of he saw the broken system, but then he set out to fix it. And when you when you see someone, when people complain, hey, this is broken, this is broken, this is broken, but they don't put the effort into trying to fix it, they get brushed aside. They're just screaming about nothing. What's your solution? What's your solution?

• 1:20:49Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, sky is falling.

• 1:20:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. And so now he's like, okay, we have a solution. Let's Let's tell people, let's encourage people, let's empower people, let's educate people. It's not just about ways to well, it's about health optimization. It's about taking control of your health across the board. And he said it several times in his podcast, he's like, hey, there's a lot of companies that do what we do. You can just take control of your health. That's the message.

• 1:21:11Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:12Speaker 01

  You know, and so he, he didn't just, hey, there's a problem. There's a problem, let's work to a solution. We can start to guide people in the right direction. We can start to turn those cars around, go back in the right direction.

• 1:21:22Cameron Hanes?

  I feel bad for the people that hear that message and try to do it and then get to the people who don't have the same approach you guys have. Who are just more of the snake oil type people, who are just still trying to make money. So it's, it's not big pharma and it's not the whatever, it's this other person trying to make money. So I just hope, I want people to have the experience like what I've had here about where can people actually care? And that's what, that's why I have, I'm so passionate about ways to well, and like, you know, telling people about this because I know you're legit and I know you care. Not everybody out there does. I just don't want people to have a bad experience and then, you know, we can't control that, but I can do.

• 1:22:05Speaker 02

  I tell people to, when you go to do work on your house, I mean, my girlfriend would interview ten contractors. She remodels your kitchen.

• 1:22:12Cameron Hanes?

  I know.

• 1:22:12Speaker 02

  But with healthcare, we just blindly go to the first person and I'm like, take the time to do a little research. Find out like, one of the things that happened, I won't say the company's name, but people heard a company on a bunch of podcasts and they went out and they paid money for blood work, but what they didn't find out is it didn't include a consult. You just got your blood work in a report and you were expected to like, essentially read it yourself and make decisions.

• 1:22:36Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:36Speaker 02

  And like, it's a tool and, and, and I get, I'm not throwing stones at that, but we need to make people aware. Like you do, most likely, at least in the early stages, until you're advanced and really understand everything, which is really tough. You know, you, you want counsel, you need somebody who's gonna come from a place of compassion, like then he said earlier, and empathy. And help walk you through it.

• 1:22:59Cameron Hanes?

  Care.

• 1:22:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:23:00Cameron Hanes?

  You guys truly care. That's the biggest thing. It's like, it's not just a job.

• 1:23:03Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:23:04Cameron Hanes?

  You know, you, you can tell when you go to talk to somebody about something you're passionate about and if they care or if they're just. Doing their job.

• 1:23:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:23:13Cameron Hanes?

  You know, and it's, uh, I don't know. It's, I just keep thinking about like, what if Joe wouldn't have moved here?

• 1:23:22Cameron Hanes?

  What like, because he came to Austin and met you guys and you were on the podcast and it turned into this crazy thing. And then he swings by yesterday, he looks fucking jacked. First of all, and we are the same age. So it's like, pretty exciting, but, uh, it's just pretty, it's amazing what's happening.

• 1:23:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:23:41Cameron Hanes?

  And that this like, we're in this position here to impact so many people.

• 1:23:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:23:47Cameron Hanes?

  That's exciting.

• 1:23:48Speaker 02

  It's exciting. It is surreal. Like that's, I remember we looked at each other at the Jelly Roll concert when he invited us and we're like,

• 1:23:55Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:56Speaker 02

  We're here. Like this is so wild. The real, the biggest are like the people. I mean, there's so many crazy success stories and, and the famous people are, are cool and it's fun and it is neat to meet those people that have been heroes like Aaron Rodgers and stuff. But to see people who have truly been battling their weight their whole life, to see people with, with the cellular treatments, who are battling certain challenges and to have those success stories. I mean, we, we literally trade texts every day because there are so many great successes, but it is also a grind and it is a beat down fighting the establishment. So when she sends me the, hey, we got a, uh, somebody who sent this email.

• 1:24:37Cameron Hanes?

  Got a win.

• 1:24:38Speaker 02

  It literally makes my day. It makes my frigging day. And I know for Denise, that's what she lives for is that positive feedback. So you saying it means a lot. Cause I know, I know you truly care. That's why I've always loved working with you and like, that's why I begged you to come here when I was starting this. I'm like, help me do this.

• 1:24:56Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah. So it's, it's exciting. I think the next level too, like, Like for me, we talked about it yesterday is, you know, we talk about, I know your husband was a fighter. Um, but like the big change, even in the, in fighting, because I mentioned the, the UFC PI, you know, they're, they're getting so dialed in on specific people. Like it used to be this one size fits all, like, oh, you should do this, you should eat this, you should train like this. Now it's like, because everybody is different, as we talked about yesterday, you drove me to that, to the university. But, um, it's like looking at you specifically, and it's not just this. Okay, this works for most people, try it. And I think that's a big change right now.

• 1:25:40Cameron Hanes?

  You know, I talked about fighters doing that, but this regular people too, if, uh, with this option is, it's incredible.

• 1:25:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:25:48Cameron Hanes?

  I don't know, I, I, it's exciting for me. Uh, yeah, it's just a fun time.

• 1:25:53Speaker 02

  I'm pumped. It's fun. To me, it's so fun and it's rewarding and, and it's cool to see new stuff. And that, my favorite part of the job, other than meeting people and like getting to hear the success stories, is meeting people who are innovators and like unique in their field, working on new things and getting to kind of get line of sight into like what the future could be. That's pretty, that part's pretty fun.

• 1:26:16Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:17Speaker 01

  I love when I get through free time, they're like, hey, I'm, I'm developing this test. Um, you know, or we're going to be doing this. I want to, I want to talk to you and I want to be part of this because I, I, I want to take this to the next level. That's fantastic. You know, we can do mitochondrial testing now, like cancer testing. You know, just all these, the genetics and things like that, just, just another layer. And I, I make a joke, I'm the soundboard guy at a concert and then a tweak and adjust and make it just right. But it can't, it has to be very specific to you. I have to meet you where you are. So I have patients that are just, I don't know where to start. I'm a hundred pounds overweight.

• 1:26:49Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:49Speaker 01

  I don't exercise. Great. Let's start with this. It, there is no difference in care. There's no difference. The treatment plan's different. We're going to step, small steps. We're going to make small changes. Sometimes I use medications for that, but again, just to get wins on the board. You lose 60 pounds and now your hips, you can move a little bit. Now you're more engaged with your family. It adds up. My favorite story though, this, I, this is several years ago. Um, I was meeting with a follow-up patient. She's a perimenopausal patient. She had been complaining about all of her symptoms. And she was like, I'm just not myself. So I corrected her hormones. We're doing our follow-up visit. And she's just crying the whole visit. She's like, I can't even tell you my whole life is different. You've saved my life, my marriage. And she's just like, I'm a different person. I'm back to myself.

• 1:27:34Speaker 01

  She's like, I don't even want to look at the blood work. I just want to say thank you. And so I'm, I'm just kind of taken back by this. And so we, we do our blood work and then she's like, hold on, I want to introduce you to someone. And then I just see out of the corner of the screen, this little teenager, her son's head popped in. He goes, is this her mom? And he's looking in the screen and, and she's patting his back. She's like, yeah, this is her. He goes, I just want to thank you for giving me my mom back. And I was like, oh, and that story, every, every time I have a bad day or when, you know, things get a little, I feel a little beat down or bring them out, we're fighting something. I'm like, oh, I remember her. I remember that moment and his response to saving his mom and making that much of a difference. And that just supercharges me. Let's go again. Let's, here we go. Where's my next starfish?

• 1:28:14Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, I love it. That's incredible. Yeah, it's a, well, I'm pumped, I'm pumped for the success you guys have had. And I'm pumped to be involved in it. And, uh, I just want to say, I want to say thank you. It's like, I'm not like that person where I'm just trying, I want to optimize and be like one or 2% better. So that's, that's my, that's why I'm here. And it's just, and then also just to share, share the story of Ways 12 and what you guys offer. It's a, but selfishly, I'm like, I want to, you know, got to fight off my kids. They're coming to, to take the title. So I got to keep them at bay a little bit, but, uh,

• 1:28:48Speaker 02

  Good luck.

• 1:28:50Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, it's a, but just in general, it's just an exciting time and I'm just very thankful to be here to know you guys. And thankful of course to Joe, just like we all are here for, you know, the part he's played in our success. But man, it's just what a crazy time and we're blessed. And I just want to say thank you guys for your friendship and for your help and for taking time out to do this podcast. Thank you.

• 1:29:13Speaker 02

  Thank you for having us and thank you for trusting us, Ben.

• 1:29:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, thank you.

• 1:29:17Cameron Hanes?

  Keep em'rin.