Pharma Whistleblower Reveals Who Really Runs American Healthcare w/ Brigham Buhler

Our healthcare system is broken—and it’s not by accident. On this episode of The Dr. Hyman Show, I’m joined by Brigham Buhler, a former pharmaceutical rep turned healthcare entrepreneur, to explore how misaligned incentives across pharma, insurance, and government are undermining patient care. This conversation is about more than just exposing the problem. It’s about empowering individuals. Watch our full discussion on my YouTube channel here - https://youtu.be/062lululORA We discuss: • How hidden financial incentives could be affecting the care you receive • Why even well-meaning doctors may be limited in helping you heal—and what you can do about it • What to watch out for when navigating insurance, prescriptions, and denied claims • How you can prioritize prevention, even when it’s not supported Navigating the healthcare system can be overwhelming, but your next step doesn’t have to be. With the right insight, you can take back control and advocate for the care you deserve. View Show Notes From This Episode Get Free Weekly Health Tips from Dr. Hyman https://drhyman.com/pages/picks?utm_campaign=shownotes&utm_medium=banner&utm_source=podcast Sign Up for Dr. Hyman’s Weekly Longevity Journal https://drhyman.com/pages/longevity?utm_campaign=shownotes&utm_medium=banner&utm_source=podcast Join the 10-Day Detox to Reset Your Health https://drhyman.com/pages/10-day-detox Join the Hyman Hive for Expert Support and Real Results https://drhyman.com/pages/hyman-hive This episode is brought to you by Seed, BON CHARGE, Paleovalley, PerfectAmino and Big Bold Health. Visit seed.com/hyman and use code 25HYMAN for 25% off your first month of Seed's DS-01® Daily Synbiotic. Head to boncharge.com and use code DRMARK for 15% off your order. Get nutrient-dense, whole foods. Head to paleovalley.com/hyman for 15% off your first purchase. Go to bodyhealth.com and use code HYMAN20 for 20% off your first order. Get 30% off HTB Immune Energy Chews at bigboldhealth.com and use code DRMARK30.

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

• 0:00Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Coming up on this episode of the Dr. Hyman Show.

• 0:02Speaker 01

  It's not freedom if you're going to hide and mislead the American people. If you're expecting the insurance companies or the big pharmaceutical companies to look out for you, you're in trouble.

• 0:12Speaker 02

  Pharma whistleblower.

• 0:13Speaker 03

  Brigham Buhler now exposes.

• 0:15Speaker 04

  The industry's broken incentives.

• 0:17Speaker 05

  And fights to put patients back in control.

• 0:20Dr. Mark Hyman?

  How does it look like behind the scenes in terms of what's happening in our agencies that govern our health and healthcare?

• 0:25Speaker 01

  We are really, really bad at stopping chronic disease from developing.

• 0:30Dr. Mark Hyman?

  You only really succeed when people are not well.

• 0:33Speaker 01

  And it's because there's so much money being made on chronic disease. This is, to me, it's not a political thing. This is a humanity.

• 0:40Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Is there hope? Is it just not fixable?

• 0:42Speaker 01

  I think we have.

• 0:49Dr. Mark Hyman?

  So Brigham, welcome to the podcast. We had a chance to get together at a dinner at my house with a number of state senators talking about how we fix our problem of chronic disease in America. We got to testify the next day at the Texas Health and Human Services Committee, talking about what needs to be done to address some of these issues. And background, you're not a practicing physician or practitioner, but you've been involved with insurance, with pharmacies, with delivering healthcare, and you have a really unique perspective on our healthcare system. And we all know it's broken. Like, there isn't anybody who goes, wow, healthcare in America is just rocking. It is the best healthcare system in the world. And in some ways, it is, right?

• 1:34Dr. Mark Hyman?

  The best doctors are here, for the most part. You get access to extraordinary treatments and surgeries and interventional treatments. And yet, we're suffering. And the whole country is sick. I mean, six out of 10 Americans have a chronic disease, 93% are metabolic and healthy, 75% overweight. We've got kids struggling with obesity and depression. And the whole system is just kind of not working. You've spent your life really deep in the weeds in it, understanding it, understanding the challenges of it, how it's just kind of messed up. And we're getting poor health despite spending more. More than double any other industrialized nation or 40th in life expectancy. And something's wrong. So the question we're going to talk about today is what's wrong?

• 2:18Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And not just that we have a crappy food system and all those things that I talked about forever, but in the healthcare system itself. And you talk about that FDA and NIH and many other regulatory agencies are really not impartial, but they're influenced by corporate interests. And there's this sort of this concept going around in the ether called corporate capture. You know, I've also heard of this concept of corporate kleptocracy, you know, which means, you know, our basically government has been taken over by corporations.

• 2:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's so true. I love that.

• 2:48Dr. Mark Hyman?

  For the people, by the people, of the people. It's for the corporations, of the corporations, by the corporations. You know, and I was working on nurse policy issues for a long time. And I met with someone who'd been in the Obama administration, who was working on the food program and food systems program issues. And he says, look, Mark, everybody who came to us was from industry. No one came to us talking about how we need to improve our food supply and food system or what we could do or the ideas or policies or regulations. And yet, you know, when the food industry comes or they come with stacks of and insurance industry and foreign ministry and you name it. They come with literally stacks of quote, scientific evidence to back their point. They come up with the written legislation that they want to have passed. They come up with a written regulations that they want implemented.

• 3:33Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And for the most part, with some tweaks, it gets done because they're so compelling in what they do. And they have such a clear strategy. So how does it look like behind the scenes in terms of what's happening in our, in our agencies that govern our health and healthcare?

• 3:46Speaker 01

  I think you did a great job of laying the groundwork because it's, it's a deep, deep, dark sinister hole and it being in it. So my experience is right out of college, I got hired to be a drug rep for Eli Lilly. And, you know, this was 25 years ago, not to date myself, but yeah. And I thought, oh my gosh, this is going to be amazing. I'm going to help people. I, this is like, I get a company car and expense account. Like this was a really good job right out of college. And it took, it took me probably 18 months to really start to see, oh, man. I was a little blinded because I launched Cialis, which Was the Viagra competitor. So that was a little different because everyone loved that and it was fun and all that. But as soon as after about 18 months, I did well and they moved me to antidepressants.

• 4:29Speaker 01

  I remember distinctly going to training and asking at one point when this doctor, who's a paid consultant for the company, is going over the placebo trials versus the non placebo control and versus the control. And it was literally like a fractional difference.

• 4:45Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 4:45Speaker 01

  I can't remember, it was like a four or five percent difference. I remember asking, wait, placebo was this high, this close? And you know, they had their talk track to talk you out of why that wasn't a big deal.

• 4:57Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 4:57Speaker 01

  But then now we look at that, what, 25 years later? And we see the data and the statistics, deaths of despair at an all time high, depression at an all time high, anxiety at an all time high. All of these things, what we were doing is not working. And you use the words corporate capture. That's, that's what I used in front of my Senate testimony. I quoted Eisenhower's speech where he, he talked about the military industrial complex. But the second half of the speech, he does talk about the scientific industrial complex. And what happens if we allow the capture of our institutions? We would lose the garage tinkerer, the innovator, the creator. Before we went on air, you and I were just talking about products like HCG that have been off, off, you know, patent forever.

• 5:40Speaker 01

  But they're getting charged eight, $900 a month and Big Pharma is still trying to find a way to keep a stranglehold on these life-changing treatment modalities for people who are trying to have children or have fertility issues. So my experience was going from a drug rep to then a med device rep. I worked in the operating room with some of the best and brightest surgeons in the world. You also had alluded to, we have the great, some of the greatest practitioners and I agree with that. I think we are really, really good at treating and triaging like major catastrophic events.

• 6:11Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 6:11Speaker 01

  We are really, really bad at proactive predictive preventative care. At stopping chronic disease from developing.

• 6:20Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Or even reversing it once it occurs.

• 6:22Speaker 01

  Absolutely. And it's because there's so much money being made off chronic disease.

• 6:27Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 6:28Speaker 01

  And, and people will try and argue that that's a conspiracy theory. I lived it. I saw it firsthand.

• 6:33Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Well, unpack that. Like, how, how is, how is sickness a profit-making enterprise? It doesn't seem like that's right. There's something wrong, just conceptually with the idea that companies are. Going all the way to the bank, giant bags of cash.

• 6:51Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 6:52Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And basically, the more sickness we have, the better they do. Whether you're a pharmacy company, or a pharmaceutical company, or insurance company, or a hospital, or healthcare company, you only really succeed when people are not well.

• 7:09Speaker 01

  And the problem is, everything pivoted from, you know, I talked about this on Joe's podcast. Originally, doctors knew the family. You know, they came out with their little bag, leather bag, they knew the mom, the dad.

• 7:20Dr. Mark Hyman?

  I had one of those.

• 7:22Speaker 01

  That's awesome. And that was healthcare. You took pride and had ownership and accountability of your patient population. And as we pivoted to an insurance model and HMOs, clinicians' ability to make decisions and autonomous choices alongside their patients and those families were severed. And clinicians are now in a system where they have six minutes on average with a patient. And so, everything is so siloed, and even the way we've become so specific and niche in the way we practice medicine, Casey Means talks about this, and does an eloquent job of laying it out, but we don't look at a person holistically anymore. You know, a primary care has six minutes, and they're just looking at what prescription drugs you're on, and they reach for the tool in the tool belt.

• 8:06Speaker 01

  And so, I'm not trying to make it as sinister as they're implicitly conspiring.

• 8:11Dr. Mark Hyman?

  They want to do the right thing. I mean, I remember being, coming out of medical school and thinking that, you know, I knew everything that there was to know about medicine, that anything that wasn't included in medical school wasn't actually real medicine, it was fringe, or quackery, or whatever. And, you know, we kind of gave lip service to diet and exercise, but it was more like eat well and exercise less, and that was about the only thing, or have a balanced diet, whatever that means. And I remember just realizing, you know, I was just handing out prescriptions, and I was really good at matching diagnosing, and then matching the drug to the disease. I never once did I go, is this the right treatment for this particular problem? Is this dealing with the root cause, or am I just putting a Band-Aid on it?

• 8:55Speaker 01

  Bingo. And that's the challenge with. Primary care because the way the model's built now. A primary care has a hard time getting to the root cause of chronic disease. And I think I've heard you say this. I've heard a bunch of clinicians say if you really want to treat the root cause. You first, or if you really want to treat and prevent chronic disease, you first have to uncover the root cause. You don't treat the symptomology. But we've built an ecosystem that incentivizes profiteers. And makes an exorbitant amount of money off of treating symptomology. How does that work? And I can give you real world examples, like if we look at the opioid crisis. How I pivoted to becoming an entrepreneur in healthcare and broke away from being a med device rep was I lost my brother during the opioid crisis. And it was, it was crazy.

• 9:40Speaker 01

  Because I had already spun up a pharmacy and was working on my first project where I was going out and educating clinicians on how catastrophic opioids were. And there were so many options that could have prevented these catastrophic deaths. If we look at the failure of our three-letter alphabet organizations like the FDA. People have gone through this a million times, so I'll make it fast. But the FDA allowed Purdue Pharma to ramrod a dangerous drug into the market. Not only ramrod it, but gave them the goose that laid the golden egg. Met with Purdue Pharma in a private hotel room. And the head of the FDA signed off saying this is a less likely to be addictive opioid.

• 10:20Speaker 01

  Which was a fallacy because oxy was eight times more addictive than hydrocodone. And we moved them to oxy. Why did that happen? Because the shell game of Big Pharma, people say Big Pharma innovates and they create all these drugs and that's why we pay so much. America innovates for the world. We do, but it's through taxpayer dollars.

• 10:40Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And they pay, they spend more for marketing than they do for R and D.

• 10:44Speaker 01

  Bingo.

• 10:44Dr. Mark Hyman?

  So when you look at the dollars spent by Pharma. There's a disproportionate amount spent on marketing, both on television ads, on marketing to doctors and continuing quote medical education conferences, which I would call continuing pharmaceutical education conferences that are basically funded by, by, I remember I was on a chairlift and skiing once and I, and I was sitting next to someone, a random person, so what do you do? And we started chatting, I'm a, you know, I, I put on continuing medical education conferences. I'm like, oh, really? We work for, I was like, oh, I work for, you know, Pfizer.

• 11:20Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Wait, wait a minute. These are medical conferences and you basically set them up, run them, pick the doctors, give them the slides. I little, literally remember like going to a conference and seeing these slides. And I'm like, wow, how did you, and I went up to the presenter, like these slides are amazing. How did you create these incredible PowerPoints and these slides? Oh, the pharma companies give them to us. I'm like, what?

• 11:41Speaker 01

  And then they, they, when they say they innovate, what they'll do, and I've saw this a lot, you, when a, when a patent's about to expire, pharma finagles ways to extend the patent. And you can do that a couple of ways. You can find a new indication on the drug. So now all of a sudden it's gonna be good for anxiety versus depression. And you apply, apply for that new indication, like, you know, a year before to make sure you get it to extend the patent, to protect the revenue stream. The other thing you do is you slightly shift the compound. And so like with Oxy and Purdue Pharma, they were gonna lose their, their goose that laid the golden egg, hydrocodone. They push Oxy into the market, knowing it's eight times more addictive. The head of the FDA at a time gives them that golden goose label.

• 12:25Speaker 01

  18 months later, the head of the FDA went to go work for Purdue Pharma. So that was step one. The system failed. Step two, what are the checks and balances? We would go out and educate clinicians. At the time, Obama's team had guidelines for opioids. And those guidelines said, you should pharmacogenetic test. You should do a test to identify, is this patient a slow, fast or moderate metabolizer? Are they at an increased risk of addiction? Which cytochrome P450 pathway is this molecule going to take in this unique individual? Insurance quit covering that. So that safety net was removed. You were also supposed to toxicology screen. Meaning, let's make sure this patient is not diverting, or transferring the medication somewhere else, or abusing the medication.

• 13:09Speaker 01

  Let's make sure we're not prescribing an opioid to a cocaine addict. Insurance quit covering that. That was gone. So now you're left with one more lifeline. The final lifeline. Non-abusive, non-addictive, topical, for any orthopedic-related injury, which is a lot of where opioids start. If somebody gets an ACL tear, or hurts their back, and they're waiting to get in with the doctor, and they go on a pain pill. Well, a topical was a solution to subvert, or avoid that. Insurance quit covering that.

• 13:38Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Topical is like what?

• 13:39Speaker 01

  Yeah. Like a ketamine-based pain cream that could help with an orthopedic knee injury, or anything like that. So, all those safety nets were gone. The three-letter organization that was supposed to protect us colluded with industry. Now let's go to the final piece of the puzzle that nobody is talking about. The insurance companies themselves. This isn't me telling you this. This article came out, I think, in December, when Trump was talking about the PBMs and the pharmacy benefit managers. One of these articles released showed that almost 30% of the profitability of the opioid crisis ended up in the hands of the insurance companies pharmacy benefit managers. Because they negotiate rebate deals with the pharmaceutical supply company.

• 14:23Speaker 01

  And so that's, that's the thing I've been ringing the bell on for years, because somehow they-

• 14:27Dr. Mark Hyman?

  So in other words, this is a backup so people understand what you're talking about. PBMs are pharmacy benefit managers going to decide on what the formulary of drugs that you're allowed to prescribe are, whatever your insurance company is.

• 14:38Speaker 01

  You got it.

• 14:38Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And then they'll, they'll push the ones that they want to push, and then they'll get rebates from the drug companies when they prescribe those drugs.

• 14:46Speaker 01

  Bingo. The challenge with that is, it's tier placement, right?

• 14:49Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And they're a middleman. They're kind of-

• 14:50Speaker 01

  They were supposed to negotiate on behalf of you and me. The average American, who is trying to make our prescription medications affordable for our grandmas and grandpas, and at some point, they got corporately captured, the buzzword you used earlier, by who? The five big insurance companies. People don't understand. United, Cigna, Aetna, Blue Cross Blue Shield, CVS Caremark. They control 90% of the prescription drug care in our country. You're going through one of those big five insurance companies to get any prescription.

• 15:22Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Well, you're saying as insurance companies own the pharmacy benefit manager.

• 15:25Speaker 01

  You got it. And they went from negotiating down the cost of drugs to negotiating up the cost of drugs, which sounds insane, but you'd go, why? Because they wanted rebates. So they go to, let's just say, a big pharmaceutical supplier and they say, hey, rather than charging me the $130 for a vial of insulin, charge me $300 for a vial of insulin and give me a $150 rebate and we'll hold it at our pharmacy benefit manager company. Does that make sense?

• 15:55Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 15:55Speaker 01

  And so now what we've done is we've aligned the incentives of the insurance companies to profiteer and monetize prescription drug care and chronic disease. So if I'm an executive at an insurance company and a big chunk of my revenue is you being on prescription drugs and I look at a, you know, a pain cream that's compounded that I don't get a rebate on versus an opioid that I do get a rebate on, or we can go down dozens of drugs, peptides, you know, like any of these different things, GLP-1s, why is there this GLP-1 boom? Why would insurance companies want us to support GLP-1s too? Right? There's a massive amount of revenue. And so the last puzzle piece, just so people understand the flow of the

• 16:40Speaker 01

  money, because a lot of people listening will go, wait a second, the insurance company still paid for it because even if they paid the markup, that's the final fallacy. Most Americans are employed and their insurance coverage comes from their employer. I employ almost 300 people. At the end of each year, I have to sit down with the insurance companies and renegotiate our contracts for all of our employees. And they say, well, Joe Bob was on a GLP-1 all year. It cost us $12,000 a month.

• 17:10Dr. Mark Hyman?

  They just raised a premium.

• 17:11Speaker 01

  We're going to raise your premiums, your copays, your deductibles, your out-of-pocket expenses. We can't afford this. But they paid a fraction of what they're showing you on the balance sheet.

• 17:21Dr. Mark Hyman?

  So they're basically lying.

• 17:22Speaker 01

  And anywhere else, we call it a kickback. And any, if a clinician gets remuneration directly or indirectly, yes, overtly or covertly.

• 17:31Dr. Mark Hyman?

  It's called the Stark Law.

• 17:32Speaker 01

  You go to prison.

• 17:33Dr. Mark Hyman?

  If you have a lab and you recommend someone to go to that lab or a imaging center, you recommend someone to go there, then that's called a violation of the Stark Law and it's illegal.

• 17:42Speaker 01

  But they're doing this every day.

• 17:46Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Time and time again.

• 17:47Speaker 01

  And now the average American's on four or more prescription drugs, right? Chronically riddled with disease and sickness, depressed, anxiety ridden. And you look through the system and it's like from our food that you've done such a good job of educating people on to regulatory organizations, to the clinicians. Unfortunately, the clinicians are hogtied. It's they they want to help, even covering orthopedic surgery. Those are they're good guys. Like I worked with some of the best guys in in the country for orthopedic surgery and they would say, what am I supposed to do? You know, I'm I I come out of med school and then I go to residency and then I go to fellowship and now I'm in my mid 30s, finally getting a paycheck. And I'm working at an institution where I'm an employee and I gotta do surgeries.

• 18:32Speaker 01

  That's how I make my living and I gotta justify my role at this, you know, hospital system. And so I'm not saying they're doing surgeries they shouldn't, but I'm saying people will absolutely. Show me the incentives, I'll show you the outcomes.

• 18:45Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 18:45Speaker 01

  To a hammer, everything's inhaled.

• 18:47Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Gastroenterology, we call it scoping for dollars, you know. You need another colonoscopy, you need another exam. It's like, you know, doctors are humans too, and if incentives are misaligned, they're not going to act always. You know, they they might think they are, but they might not always act in the best thing for the patient because

• 19:03Speaker 01

  Right.

• 19:04Dr. Mark Hyman?

  You know, it's like they'll get a little extra.

• 19:06Speaker 01

  And and it also puts, almost builds an obstructionist mindset, the age old additive that science evolves one funeral at a time. I really did see that if something new came out that was innovative, let's say a new orthopedic group opened up across town and they're doing something unique that's cash pay.

• 19:24Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 19:24Speaker 01

  The rest of the community would candidly shit on them. And they'd go, oh, that's pseudo-science or, oh, those guys are a bunch of whack jobs. It because what they're doing was innovative and didn't fit into the insurance model. And it challenged your status quo. Because you are making decisions off what insurance will cover. Right? And so in so many parts of healthcare, we're doing not what's best for the patient, but what we can get the insurance company to approve. And the problem with that is the insurance company doesn't give a crap about the they care about that quarterly earning, that quarterly profit hitting that number for Wall Street.

• 20:01Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And they're getting it coming and going, right? So you're saying they're getting it through these kind of backroom deals with kickbacks from pharma. They inflate their profits and they're also saying, oh, we can't afford the, the, to take care of your cohort of population because you, you're, they're sick and they're using all these drugs. So then they get basically have to raise the premiums, which is pure profit.

• 20:23Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 20:24Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And so, you know, they, they, it's like the more healthcare costs, the better they do, because they make a percentage as a fixed percentage that they can get as their profit.

• 20:32Speaker 01

  Got it. And there's no money in diet, lifestyle, nutrition, sunshine, grounding, being outdoors, taking care of yourself, spending time with your family, the basic bread and butters that, and, and my thing is knowledge is power. And that's one of the things I appreciate about what you're doing at Function Health. And, you know, what we do at our company is we try to look at you and say, hey, let's give you the knowledge and the tools to drive your own health.

• 20:55Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 20:56Speaker 01

  Take you out of this broken system, take you out of this insurance model.

• 20:59Dr. Mark Hyman?

  It's such a screwed up system. I mean, I, you know, I had United Healthcare, now Medicare, but I had surgery last fall and, you know, I, I, I just was sort of stunned at, at the, the way in which they handle it. First of all, like I, I need, I needed rehab after, I really needed a rehab and physical therapy and I couldn't walk. And it was, it was quite a serious back surgery. You know, they paid for the surgery and they paid for the hospitalization, but they wouldn't pay for me to go to a rehab center to do rehab for three hours a day for a week or two to kind of get back on my feet. And I was like, wow, you really, you're going to make me pay $7,000 a day to go to a place where I'm doing physical therapy three hours a day and staying in a hospital bed and eating crappy food. And I'm like, this didn't make

• 21:43Dr. Mark Hyman?

  any sense. Thankfully I could afford to stay in a hotel and hire a private physical therapist to come to me, which was far cheaper.

• 21:51Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 21:51Dr. Mark Hyman?

  To stay in that place. So it worked out in some ways for me, but, you know, I, I just also got a bill for my surgery and I was looking at it and it didn't make any sense to me. And I think, you know, this is where healthcare is so screwed up. And I got a bill for $140,000 for my surgery and my procedure, you know, $61,000 for the surgery, $11,000 for pharmacy. I don't know what the hell they gave me, what kind of drugs they gave me, but in like two days, that's a lot of drugs, but they didn't get that many drugs, trust me. Then they, the insurance. Discount was like $129,000 and the final bill was 11,000 down from 140. And then I had to pay a thousand whatever copay, but it just was like this, this whole system is so messed up.

• 22:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:31Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And then, you know, what you get in one place is different than another place. I previous surgery where I wanted to do hyperbaric oxygen after the surgery to heal my wound and to repair faster and recover. And I found a hyperbaric center and they said, well, yeah, we can come in. I said, how much is it? He says, $5,000 a session. I'm like, $5,000 a session? That's insane.

• 22:49Speaker 01

  That's crazy.

• 22:50Dr. Mark Hyman?

  He's like, can I, can I talk to the medical director? And he says, yeah, yeah, that's, that's what we charge Medicare, but you're paying cash. It's $175. So imagine $175 cash versus 5,000 that they bill insurance of which they'll pay 30%.

• 23:03Speaker 01

  You got it.

• 23:03Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Right? And so the whole incentive system, the whole payment system, it's so opaque. It's not transparent, even though I've been in healthcare for 40 years, it's still like fuzzy. And most doctors have no clue how things work.

• 23:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:17Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And you've gotten on the inside and, and see the inside ball of what happens when you have misaligned incentives across pharma, across insurance companies, across hospital systems, insurers. It's like, it's like really a problem. So how do we start to think about dealing with this? Because, you know, there's really no accountability. There's no checks and balances that, I mean, the price of healthcare keeps going up and up. And it's true, we spend more than twice as much as any other nation, sometimes three or four, five times as much. And we get far worse outcomes. You know, Cuba, I think is better life expectancy than we do. Albania does, you know, like it's what?

• 23:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, Cali talks about Italy, you know, where you drink a lot of wine and eat a lot of carbs. And, you know, he's like, are the Italians healthier than us? Or is there something wrong in our system? I think one of the things you do is you get proactive, predictive and personalized. You've got to take sovereignty and accountability over your health and realize that nobody's going to do it but you. If you're expecting the insurance companies or the big pharmaceutical companies to look out for you, you're in trouble. I've said this on a bunch of different podcasts, but if you live the average American lifestyle, you eat the average American diet, you go to the average American doctor, don't be surprised when you get diagnosed with the average American. Chronic disease.

• 24:29Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Right.

• 24:29Speaker 01

  And if we really want to drive health span, it starts with taking a look under the hood and doing the deep dive and understanding what's going on with you. So you can make those lifestyle changes. But unfortunately, the system's not built to do that. And so if we could get rid of a lot of the things that you and I have fought for with with the Maha movement. You know, I know Bobby's talking about, you know, pushing back on the PBMs. Like, we should not allow the insurance companies to profiteer off of prescription drug care.

• 24:59Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Why does why does there have to be PBMs? Why can't you just get a prescription from your doctor and go to the pharmacy and get it and not have to go through a middleman?

• 25:07Speaker 01

  I agree. I mean, it's insanity. And I understand, you know, the saying the highway to hell was paved with the best of intentions. I do think when they started this, the thought was, hey, these middlemen will help us negotiate down the price. But where that gets even more sinister, just like when we look at when does mega chronic disease happen? Like, when do the big ticket items happen? It's as we age, right? And so after the age of 65, when you're the taxpayer's problem.

• 25:33Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 25:33Speaker 01

  And so again, we go back to the insurance companies.

• 25:35Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Push it off to the taxpayer.

• 25:37Speaker 01

  They just wait. And so if I knew that, you know, again, Joe Bob is prediabetic. It's going to be a seven to eightfold increase in the cost of care if we let him transition to diabetes. Why would we not pay for him to see a nutritionist? Why would we not encourage him and treat him with even something as simple as metformin that's been on the market forever? And prevent him from transitioning from prediabetes to diabetes? Because I know in 24 months, when he reaches diabetes, he's going to switch employers and be somebody else's problem. And then when he has that catastrophic heart attack or the cascade effect that follows, he's going to be the taxpayer's problem. And I'm just worried about hitting my quarterly earnings.

• 26:26Dr. Mark Hyman?

  This is really a key problem you're hitting on, which is that there's a lack of transferability of risk. In other words, there's not a collective risk sharing. And when you have an insurance company, like you said, you negotiate with your insurance company. They're not doing the right things for patients because they're incentivized not to. Because if I take, if I pay for a health program where I reverse a disease, or I improve people's health, or whatever, I mean, I got the benefit because next year you might switch insurance companies.

• 26:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:59Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Right? And then, so we need, we need a system where, and I don't, I don't know if anybody's really solved this. I've heard some different theories and ideas, but you know, if we could somehow have a shared risk pool where it didn't matter if you're United, or Cigna, or Aetna, or any of the other big insurance companies, that you would actually kind of collectively share the risk and, and the reward of getting people healthy. Because right now, you're right, there's no incentive for doing anything proactive or preventive. And I was just, you know, kind of talking this morning through a benefits manager for employers who helps advise them on which programs to use and which things

• 27:42Dr. Mark Hyman?

  to do. And, and they were like, yeah, you know, they, they're following the American Affordable, I mean, the Affordable Care Act guidelines, which is almost no screening and almost no prevention, and, and really reducing, like reducing what you're allowed to do. And, and they're frustrated because the employers want to have more productive employees. They don't want to pay high premiums, but they're also stuck in this vicious cycle. So is there any way out of that?

• 28:12Speaker 01

  I think there is. One of the things that, in my talks with Callie is, how do you, with his company, TruMed, how do you increase HSA amounts, right? If we could give the power back to the patient, where the patient, or even the insurance company, there's got to be a way to incentivize being healthy.

• 28:30Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 28:30Speaker 01

  Rather than incentivize In chronic disease, can we give tax incentives or quality care incentives that allow patients accessibility to being predictive, proactive, and preventative? And what I mean, like if, if we had a, let's just say a $15,000 a year HSA, right? Or whatever the number is that you get a tax benefit on. How much chronic disease could we prevent if it gave somebody accessibility to quarterly blood work, to a nutritionist, to the ability to go to a gym? And then you have all the other items like red light and all these other things. Would it, would choose your own adventure to each their own? We do know definitively that diet, lifestyle, and exercise are the biggest leading opportunities for us to fix.

• 29:14Speaker 01

  And we've got to give that sovereignty on autonomy back to the patient. And so many times I've heard clinicians go, well, my patients don't give a shit. They just want to, they just want a med.

• 29:24Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Not true.

• 29:25Speaker 01

  And I, that infuriated me. It's because they just want help.

• 29:31Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 29:32Speaker 01

  They want help and they view you as the thought leader and they're asking you for help. You hear, they're asking me for medication. They're asking you for a cure.

• 29:42Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 29:42Speaker 01

  And if you took the time to talk to this patient and have empathy, if the insurance company would allow you to do this, and that's where HSA.

• 29:49Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, health savings accounts.

• 29:51Speaker 01

  Yes, if somebody could have $300 to sit with their clinician for an hour and really talk.

• 29:57Dr. Mark Hyman?

  I think we have this, this incredible moment to think about this all again and to, to change what's happening and to educate the American public about some of the challenges with these systems that are filled with perverse incentives and to realign those economic incentives so people do the right thing. You know, the, the old, you know, Chinese doctors used to get paid when their patients were well, but when they were sick, they wouldn't get paid. We might want to think about something like that.

• 30:22Speaker 01

  And then there's got to be some sort of insurance reform that would allow. Patience to drive their choice because right now patients are driven by the insurance company's selection, right? So you can't get that MRI if the insurance company doesn't approve it.

• 30:37Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 30:37Speaker 01

  The insurance company's not going to approve it. Somebody made a joke. It's like, it's like doing a rain dance, jump on one leg, shake a stick in the air and hope that it rains. That's what it's like trying to get anything approved through an insurance company.

• 30:48Dr. Mark Hyman?

  I had to take a medication where it was super expensive and it had totally legitimate reasons for taking it. And I had to work with, you know, my doctor and with writing up long, you know, scientific reports on why I need this and why the indications were there and what my genetics were and why. It was like a whole thing and it was recommended in the letter was written by the, by the physician and, and I still got denied. And I even met their criteria, which they say I needed to meet in order to actually get paid for this drug. I was like, they said I'd have to do these things. I did these things and they still said no.

• 31:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:23Dr. Mark Hyman?

  So the denial of claims is a huge business.

• 31:26Speaker 01

  Oh, and what happened is now those denials have climbed and climbed and the reason the insurance companies do it is they have all these algorithms. They know, they know if they deny a claim that less than 10% of people will dispute it. So now their, their, like game plan is deny, delay, depose, like what, what that kid Luigi wrote, like terrible message, terrible delivery. What he did was horrible, but it was an example of the frustration of these patients in this country saying, I can't get the care I'm paying for. I can't, like, why?

• 32:03Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah. And while I needed rehab after my surgery with United Healthcare, they made $22 billion in profit and I couldn't get paid for a week of rehab after my surgery, which

• 32:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:13Dr. Mark Hyman?

  just didn't, didn't make any sense to me.

• 32:15Speaker 01

  It's sad. It's sad. And that's, that is literally, it's not the exception, it's the rule, which is sad to say, but you're spot on. Like that's, that's just the ecosystem we live in and there's got to be a way to improve it. And that's where I hope that, you know, with everything that you're fighting for and all these folks are fighting for, that there will be that change coming.

• 32:34Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Uh, yeah, we hope that change is coming. We hope that train's coming down the station. You know, but the, the forces arrayed against it are pretty big. You're talking about, you know, a, you know, humongous industry with so much at stake and so much to lose unless the incentives get aligned and they're get. They make more money when they do the right thing. I mean, that's what has to happen. When you do the right thing, you should get paid more. And there are systems like that, like Geisinger, Kaiser, which are essentially HMOs or accountable care organizations where they're internally kind of covering their own patients, both the payer and the provider. But their incentives are aligned. But that's not most of healthcare.

• 33:17Dr. Mark Hyman?

  That's where we were moving towards in terms of Obamacare. Value-based healthcare, which is getting paid on results, not getting paid on doing more stuff. Right now, doctors and everybody gets paid hospitals. The more surgeries you do, the more procedures you do, the more business you have, the more things you do, the more you get paid. As opposed to incentives that are changing that where you get, let's say you get, you're a hospital system like Cleveland Clinic, you get $20 million, you're going to take your diabetic patients. If it costs you 30, you lose money. If it costs you 10, you make money.

• 33:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:47Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And so what are you going to do in that situation? You're going to make sure your diabetic patients are extremely well cared for, that their diets are great, their exercise is great, that their medications are properly monitored and tracked, that they're involved in good primary care. I mean, it's not hard to solve these problems. We know how to solve them.

• 34:03Speaker 01

  And you can see it in every aspect of health. Like another example I can give you is my years as an orthopedic rep. Why do joints have the life cycle they have? You're telling me over fricking 35 years, we haven't evolved a joint that's going to last more than seven, eight years? It's because it's a race to the bottom. Every year, the insurance companies pay the hospitals less and less for joint surgery. So every year, the hospitals do more and more joint surgeries to keep up with their overhead and their expenses because they're going to make less off the joint surgery. And then if you were to ask an executive at a hospital, why wouldn't you buy a joint that's, if we were to innovate a joint that lasts longer, would you use it?

• 34:45Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, of course.

• 34:46Speaker 01

  There's.

• 34:47Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Not, but that's not what, that's not what healthcare.

• 34:49Speaker 01

  In their model, there's no incentive now because they'll go, well, I'll get a new joint in eight years and that's another revenue stream for us. And if the insurance isn't going to reimburse me more for a better joint, and every year they're going to cut my reimbursements by 8%,

• 35:02Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 35:02Speaker 01

  I'm going to go back to the manufacturer and say, you need to cut my joint price by 8%. And then the manufacturer is going to say, why am I going to innovate a joint that nobody will buy?

• 35:11Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 35:12Speaker 01

  And so we go back to that Eisenhower speech. If we allow the corporate capture of our healthcare and scientific institutions, it's essentially a race to the bottom.

• 35:22Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And we, and we know that things work that aren't paid for, like medically treated meals for chronic illness. You know, 5% of the Medicare population accounts for 50% of the costs. And if you take those people with heart failure and diabetes and kidney issues and all the chronic things that they pay for, and you provided them meals that were designed to treat or reverse or optimize their health, that you would save thousands of dollars. And one study in Cleveland Clinic, they saved $12,000 just in a small cohort that was given free food. And, and people see that's a cost over costs. It's a cost to give you, how much is it to give them the medication?

• 36:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:02Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And, and I think people just don't even realize that. I mean, I have one patient who co-pay was $20,000 a year. I don't know what her actual, you know, pharmacy bill was, but that if you gave her $20,000 of food a year to reverse her diabetes and heart failure, well, guess what? That, that would be a net savings, right?

• 36:19Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 36:20Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And so we, we, we know what to do and there, there are initiatives out there that work, but you know, um, they're, they're not being paid for. I mean, we, we found out that group shared medical visits worked three times as well for the same disease, treated by the same doctor at far less cost. And we actually had to use a physician in the process, even though I think it would be equally effective if it was delivered by a health coach who wasn't paid a fraction of what a doctor repaid. Well, we had to do it because we had to game the system in order to get reimbursed from Medicare, from insurance, we had to bill for a shared medical visit, which wasn't even necessary. And, and we could have achieved the same outcome. So we know that there, these models are out there. Most of the, the healthcare system is not incentivized to use these or doesn't leverage

• 37:03Dr. Mark Hyman?

  them because it's sort of against their own interest. And it, it makes sense. Why would you act against your own interests if you were a pharmacy company or pharmaceutical company?

• 37:13Speaker 01

  And if you're an executive at one of those companies and you try, I think you said this at the dinner, I want to say you brought this up at the dinner, one of your buddies at a food company attempted to drive meaningful change. And good luck keeping your job.

• 37:24Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 37:25Speaker 01

  Because if meaningful change doesn't, you're on such a short timeline and leash to produce for the organization. That if profits take a dip at all, chances of you getting to the finish line are slim to none.

• 37:40Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, right. There's no long-term thinking, right?

• 37:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:42Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And no 10-year plan or five-year plan. It's like, next quarter, what are our earnings? Are we going to make our shareholders happy?

• 37:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:50Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Who cares if people are sicker and dying? It's like, it's a whole fucked up system. How do we, uh, hold these corporations accountable? How do we hold policymakers accountable to not perpetuate the cycle of sickness and the cycle of perverse incentives?

• 38:04Speaker 01

  You and I just did that, uh, testimony, I guess, what, two weeks ago? And I thought the whole time, one of the things that resonated with me, because I've never been political, is Tulsi Gabbard told me at one point, uh, people think that politicians drive change. People drive change.

• 38:23Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 38:24Speaker 01

  And it starts with people having a voice. You have to use your voice because if the people will speak up, the policymakers will act. But it takes people fighting for what they think is right. And you look at what's happened with the health movement and the food movement. These are things you've been preaching for how long? How long? I mean, it's been a while. And there is meaningful momentum right now.

• 38:48Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, there is.

• 38:49Speaker 01

  And politicians may get the credit and they are the tip of the spear that are driving this forward, but it's people. People like you, podcasts, people having discussions and open forums and being honest and having integrity and calling people out and asking, why are we not doing these things better? And that's how we start change. It starts with a little spark that becomes a fire that becomes a movement that's unstoppable. And so I am optimistic that we can drive change.

• 39:22Speaker 01

  But like we said with medicine, you gotta find the root cause. And you gotta start treating the root cause and not the symptoms. Because otherwise, we're just playing whack-a-mole.

• 39:30Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Well, that speaks to the whole food industry and also how they're profiting from millions. In fact, what really struck me was when I learned that insurance companies invest in fast food and junk food companies.

• 39:40Speaker 01

  I didn't know that.

• 39:41Dr. Mark Hyman?

  As a hedge against their profits. Because if people get sicker, maybe they think they won't make as much money, but they'll make more money if people are eating more junk food. The whole thing is crazy, right? So, so, you know, back in the, in the seventies, there was the big, big tobacco companies were starting to buy the food companies. Like Philip Morris Craft, you know, and Altria or, or RGR Nabisco, which was another one. And they basically designed these food products to become biologically addictive. And the, there are these, these significant tactics they use to infuse, to obfuscate, to muddy the waters, to put out fake science, to deny and deflect.

• 40:26Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And I mean, it's pretty amazing and, and it makes the lawmakers confused because they're hearing all this quote. I would say pseudoscience about how these products are not harmful, how there's no evidence, how we need to provide safe, affordable food that's convenient for people. Who are discriminating and racist and being bad people if we don't offer all this crap to everybody. And it's, I mean, I think today or tomorrow, there's a testimony in Arizona on bills that are going to get rid of soda and SNAP and junk food and SNAP. Which I, I think is going to be hard to do on a state level, but it's coming from the periphery. Now, I think there's, you know, 30 or more states that have bills that are directionally toward fixing these problems.

• 41:10Dr. Mark Hyman?

  I'm curious to hear what your thinking is about this because I think, you know, will, will the states be able to kind of leverage this momentum? Will that drive the change in Washington? Even though you've got someone like, you know, RFK Junior, whether you like him or not. You know, he's, he's beginning to address these issues, you know, the problems with the FDA, the problems with NIH, the problems with Medicare, Medicaid, the problems with our food companies, the problem with, you know, these, these regulating compounds in food that shouldn't even be there. We have 10,000 chemicals in the US, there's 400 in, in Europe. And you could say, well, you know, some of those 10,000 are lumped together and maybe it's not 10,000, maybe it's 5,000, but still 5,000 or 4,000, or whatever it is. It's a lot. And so, um, how, how do we sort of, um, kind of move forward?

• 41:54Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Because I feel like we're at this critical time, but it's really fraught with danger, but it's full of possibility.

• 41:59Speaker 01

  It's jarring. Like, I, I, I knew there would be a counterpunch. I didn't know it would be that big of a counterpunch. Like even when you and I testified in front of the Texas State Senate, you know, they're telling us that big conglomerates like Buc-E's and, uh, HEB, which are legends here in Texas. I grew up in Texas. This is my home state. I love Buc-E's. I love HEB. It's very disheartening and disappointing to know that they're working behind the scenes to block something as simple as labeled disclosure. Just labeled disclosure. And then who testified with us? Grace, brilliant young girl. And I don't know if you remember Grace, but she posted about how the American, I think it was the American Heart Association. I don't want to, I don't want to quote the wrong.

• 42:40Speaker 01

  One of these organizations is supposed to be supportive of, you know, health and wellness is, is testifying against these bills? Like, what part of that makes any sense?

• 42:51Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Well, it makes sense because they're funded by the companies, right? I mean, American Heart Association gets $192 million, uh, from food and pharma companies, right? A year.

• 43:01Speaker 01

  Yeah. And then I go back to, show me the incentives and I'll show you the outcomes. And so it almost goes back to, we have to realign and cut the head of the snake off. And that's going to be policymakers changing the rules. Like, I'm all for a free market. This is America. We should have a free market and free choice. What we have today, though, is the illusion of a free market.

• 43:24Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Explain what you mean by that.

• 43:25Speaker 01

  These companies are ramrodding your choices down your throat and pretending to tell you that you have the choice. In reality, You know, you don't, if you don't have the knowledge and the accessibility to know what they're feeding you, then how can you make an educated choice? That's not freedom. Freedom would be, tell me what you're putting in my food. Tell me, give me like the real story here so I can make the better choice for my family. To me, it's not freedom if you're gonna hide and mislead the American people on what you're feeding them and their children.

• 44:00Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 44:00Speaker 01

  That's not freedom.

• 44:01Dr. Mark Hyman?

  No, it's true. I mean, there's such a lack of transparency and, you know, many other countries have front of package labeling and my nonprofit Food Fix, it's one of our key efforts is to try to get transparent, honest, clear labeling on the front of your food. You can tell what the heck it is you're eating. Is it good for you? Is it bad for you? Is it okay to eat? Is it gonna promote health? Is it gonna promote disease? It shouldn't have to be a PhD in nutrition and science to figure this out.

• 44:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:29Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And the way in which the food industry regulates these things is concerning to me. And I heard, you know, secondhand, but from someone who talked to Robert Califf, who was the former FDA commissioner under Biden, who said, you know, we're working on these front of package labeling guidelines, but don't, don't get your hopes up. You know, it's not gonna be what it really should be, even though he was an advocate for real change.

• 44:52Speaker 01

  I mean, look at what he did. You mentioned that they acquired, that big tobacco went up and bought big food. Look at how impactful it was to put a warning label on the front of a pack of cigarettes. It changed that industry. People looked at that and you, you don't see people smoking everywhere like when I was a kid in the eighties. The eighties, people smoked on planes. Like there was everywhere you went, people were chain smoking cigarettes.

• 45:16Dr. Mark Hyman?

  There's a smoking section. That didn't make sense to me. You got like a little curtain, the smoking section and non-smoking section on the plane.

• 45:21Speaker 01

  And now that's a thing of the past because most, I don't know what percentage of Americans smoke, but it's way less than it was in the eighties. I promise you that.

• 45:28Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And now there's nowhere to put your gum because in the, you don't have the ashtray in the airplanes anymore.

• 45:34Speaker 01

  And it's, but that's, that to me, nobody's telling Americans what to do and not to do. And I think that's where they start to misunderstand and that's where these lobbyists and these big. Food industries try to trick the American people. What we're trying to say is let's make you aware of your choices. So that you have true accountability and sovereignty over yours and your family's health. And you know, when you're being bamboozled.

• 45:59Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, and I think, I think front of package labeling is a huge opportunity because it's really not about saying, don't eat this, don't eat that. Saying if you eat this, these are the known harms. And you choose for yourself whether you want to do it or not. I know ice cream gives me runny nose and I miss my stomach and I sometimes get pimples. But will I eat it occasionally? Yeah, because I like it. And I know what's going to have an adverse impact on my biology, but I'll do it and I won't do it all the time. If you don't know that something's causing a disease and I, and I, I think, you know, for most of the American public, this is true. I, you know, I'm, I'm shocked at how even educated people, highly educated people, don't understand what's in their food. Don't know how to make the right food choices, feed themselves and their kids crap and think it's fine.

• 46:41Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Uh, because you know, it's part of our food supply and the government regulated if it wasn't healthy. And, and other countries, they don't do that. They have warning labels. If you go to South America, you know, it's like big stop signs on the front of food packages. You know, when I, I've talked a lot about this in my book, Food Fix and other places, but you look, for example, at a Coke, right? Or any soda, it's filled with high fructose corn syrup. It's cheap and you can buy a two liter bottle for a buck or two, you know, it's like insane how cheap it can be in some places. When you look at the true cost of that, what is the true cost of that? The Rockefeller Foundation did a report called the True Cost of Food, which says that for every dollar we spend on food, there's three dollars are spent in collateral damage. So just take soda, for example.

• 47:24Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 47:24Dr. Mark Hyman?

  You grow the corn, the government pays for that through crop subsidies and basically crop insurance and different schemes. That growing of the corn in that way with the use of pesticides, herbicides and fertilizer, causing environmental damage.

• 47:41Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Kill the pollinators, lower biodiversity, destroy the soil organic matter, cause that to release the atmosphere, increasing atmosphere carbon, the nitric oxide, it gets released from the nitrogen fertilizer, also causes climate effects as well as running off into the rivers and streams, causing eutrophication, which is the overgrowth of algae because of too much fertilizer. It sucks all the oxygen out of the water and kills all the fish. And we have dead zones the size of New Jersey and the Gulf of Mexico or Gulf of America, whatever you want to call it now. And, and, and there's 400 dead zones like that around the world. And it's like, that's just one piece, right? So who's paying

• 48:21Dr. Mark Hyman?

  for all of that environmental damage? That's, the society pays for that. We pay for that. Then, then you have those cheap calories that are artificially cheap, getting put into processed food by the big food companies into fast food foods. And then the government is paying for that again through the SNAP program. So they're paying $125 billion a year for food stamp or food assistance programs. Most of that is for junk food. 10% soda and 75% is junk food. And then we pay for it again, when those people who are eating those foods on Medicaid or Medicare get sick and they get chronic illnesses because

• 49:03Dr. Mark Hyman?

  they're eating that food, we pay again. So the taxpayer is paying four or five times for the same food product. And if we actually put a price on the coke, it probably would be a hundred dollars when you accounted all for all of those things.

• 49:15Speaker 01

  It's so wild that you're saying that because you're literally describing the same offense that I try to articulate to people with prescription drugs. It's the same thing where most of the drugs innovated and molecules are innovated at the human health services NIH. And so those come from taxpayer dollars.

• 49:37Speaker 01

  And once a molecule reaches a certain point that has a lot of promise, it's then licensed off and commercialized for pennies

• 49:44Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 49:45Speaker 01

  to a big pharmaceutical company like the GLP-1s, you know?

• 49:48Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Who make billions.

• 49:49Speaker 01

  And then they mark it up, then they've got to give their cut to the insurance company. Then we, the people who funded the molecule in the first place, who already paid for it once, now have to pay for it not only at the pharmaceutical level, but the insurance level. So we're marked up twice. Now we finally have accessibility to these medications. And it's like, but we're paying for it three times over. And then the rest of the world just gets to have accessibility to those compounds for pennies on the dollar.

• 50:16Dr. Mark Hyman?

  It's quite crazy. And the FDA is problematic in my view because, you know, some of their funding comes from pharma. And the rationale behind that is that, you know, in order to hire the best talent and to expedite the approval processes for devices and pharmaceuticals, we need high quality talent, we need a lot of it to be able to deal with the volume. And so they're offsetting that cost by providing that money, pharma is, to the FDA.

• 50:44Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 50:44Dr. Mark Hyman?

  You can say, well, that's pretty conflicted and it is. And but you could also say that the scientists within the FDA hopefully be independent. They're personally not getting the money, but they're reviewing the science. But it's a little, it's a little muddy.

• 50:57Speaker 01

  It's definitely hard because 10 out of the last 11 heads of the FDA went to go work for industry.

• 51:01Dr. Mark Hyman?

  That's right.

• 51:02Speaker 01

  And that's a problem.

• 51:03Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Right.

• 51:03Speaker 01

  Revolving door syndrome and the

• 51:05Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yes, Scott Gottlieb went to work for Pfizer, who was the commissioner of the FDA, who was under, under Trump. So then, then you have other problems where things that should be approved, that have profound benefit, that don't cost a lot, that can solve problems that nothing else can solve, that have gone through phase three trials and shown better outcomes by orders of magnitude greater than existing treatments. And I'm talking here specifically about MDMA assisted therapy.

• 51:35Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 51:36Dr. Mark Hyman?

  So you're basically taking a compound that's off patent MDMA, you're pairing it with therapies, you're not just prescribing the drug, but you're actually making sure you have a licensed, trained therapist to guide people through the experience and dealing. It's dramatically more effective for depression, for PTSD, for anxiety than any existing medication.

• 52:06Speaker 01

  And the stats on Ibogaine and the future of all this stuff, it's like.

• 52:10Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Pretty impressive, but the point I'm making here is that the FDA denied the approval of MDMA assisted therapy, and it didn't make any sense to me because the data was so strong. I mean, imagine, imagine if you have Lipitor that reduces the risk of heart attack by 20 to 30%, and then you have another therapy that reduces the risk by 500% or 1,000%. And it's safe. And there's no side effects. And it works better than anything else ever discovered, and yet you're not going to approve it. That, that to me is just the ultimate in corporate capture.

• 52:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:53Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Do you think that's why?

• 52:53Speaker 01

  Oh, 100%.

• 52:54Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And the people on the commission were, didn't really understand this drug. They also were very much had been involved with pharma and were conflicted.

• 53:01Speaker 01

  Oh, and you see all of that time and time and time again, like with psilocybin, all these different, it, it shouldn't be this difficult to bring a life-changing molecule that's available in nature to the marketplace. You know, it's, it's pretty asinine to think like, or even what I mentioned, when I started with Ibogaine, it was around 8,000 years ago, used on the plains of Africa. You know, these are, these are available by, we call it God, nature, whatever it is. There's not a pharmaceutical drug on the market that's been researched for 8,000 years. And when you look at the compelling data that, that Dr. Nolan's seen at Stanford University

• 53:43Speaker 01

  and to do your credit, MDMA trials and all of it, it's, if we build a system where everybody's incentivized to shut down and prevent accessibility to alternative treatments that are honestly more efficacious than what big pharma is ramrodding down our throats, it's the same thing with peptides. You know, people go, well, what happened with these peptides? Why did they get put on a dangerous list? Were there a bunch of side, there were not a bunch of side effects. What happened is Merk has applied for a patent on 200 different peptides. Peptides are the future of big pharma. They are attempting to capture and monetize peptides. And they are using their ability to influence and impress upon the FDA to shut down pathways where patients were already utilizing these compounds.

• 54:28Speaker 01

  We were making BPC for the last five years. To my knowledge, we, not even to my, we never had a single side of it, other than injection site agitation. Like, there's not a big catastrophic, this isn't an opioid crisis. What are you talking about?

• 54:43Dr. Mark Hyman?

  It is a bit strange, you know, it seemed, it also strange that it seemed to coincide with the, that one of the biggest success stories in pharmaceutical, which was a peptide.

• 54:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, GLP-1.

• 54:54Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Ozempic, right?

• 54:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:56Dr. Mark Hyman?

  That's a peptide.

• 54:57Speaker 01

  And they go, oh my god, there's a lot of money here.

• 55:00Dr. Mark Hyman?

  That's right.

• 55:00Speaker 01

  We gotta block it off.

• 55:02Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah. Do you think it was that pernicious? Do you think that, that, that's my, you know, kind of conspiracy theory in my head? But that, that all of a sudden, there was a realization that there's thousands of peptides that could be turned into drugs. And the reason Ozempic is so expensive, or these, these injectables are so expensive, is because of the delivery mechanism, because they have a preloaded auto syringe. But if you actually just look at the peptide itself, it's pennies, right? It's literally pennies.

• 55:32Speaker 01

  And, and, you know, we compound GLP-1s for pennies on the dollar. You know, and that's a pathway that rapidly big pharma is trying to shut off. Actually, today, I think, is the day, the D-Day, that if the FDA doesn't make a statement, you will be forced to buy GLP-1s from big pharmaceutical institutions, which are thousands of dollars a month. Compounding pharmacies were compounding these for 200.

• 55:54Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Or less.

• 55:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, dirt cheap. Uh, like a whole vial for $250, which allowed you to titrate up and titrate down. It allowed you to customize your treatment plan. It wasn't a one-size-fits-all approach. It was an ability to take the pros of the drug and minimize the cons of the drug. And it allowed patients to have accessibility because in reality, those compounds were meant for sick diabetic people.

• 56:20Dr. Mark Hyman?

  That's right.

• 56:21Speaker 01

  That's what they're meant for. And they got captured because Big Pharma does what it does and they go out and they grow the brand. How do you grow the brand? You grow the patient population. And how do you do that? You start having every mom in Malibu take it for spring break, you know? And that's not what that compound was meant for.

• 56:38Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And there are thousands, these peptides and the dosage that are used in the pharmaceutical versions are far, far higher. And potentially with much more side effects than the ones that are used just for therapeutic prevention or for optimization or for other things. And I've used them. I mean, I've had various injuries and it's amazing. BP 157, which you're talking about is a peptide that's been around for a long time and is part of what your body makes to regulate your normal functions. I mean, GLP-1 is something your body makes.

• 57:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:11Dr. Mark Hyman?

  But because of the food we eat and because of how we live, it's decreasing. Many of us, our appetites are not properly regulated. So a lot of these things, you're just enhancing your body's own system, right? It's like, think about if you're, if you're going through menopause, you might need a little hormones. If you're an older guy, you might need a little testosterone to optimize your level. It's kind of like that. And I think they're incredibly powerful compounds. And you think under this new administration that they're going to come back and be able to be deregulated like they were?

• 57:41Speaker 01

  I hope. I'm actually very optimistic on that because I, and we know that, you know, Marty's, Dr. Macari's taken over the, as the head of the FDA. Well, if you get, if he procures the nomination, I guess, of the right nomenclature. And then you've got Bobby, who's RFK, who's a big proponent of peptides. He's posted about it. I don't know if you saw his tweet. This was when he was running. He said, FDA, your war on peptides, stem cells.

• 58:06Dr. Mark Hyman?

  I saw that.

• 58:07Speaker 01

  Red light is over.

• 58:09Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Right.

• 58:09Speaker 01

  And I have a message for you. Save your records and pack your bags. Which was, that's a bold statement. And so I think the expectation is that we're going to free up and give the power back to the people to have those sovereignty and accountability over their health again. Why should a clinician not be able to talk to a patient, discuss the risk reward? Again, these are short chain amino acids. They've been around since the dawn of time. That's why Big Pharma is so interested. They're realizing, there was a whole article about how Big Pharma is attempting to capture the peptide market because the risk profile versus the reward profile is way more beneficial than pharmaceutical compounds.

• 58:54Speaker 01

  Because you just have a much safer pathway.

• 58:58Dr. Mark Hyman?

  That's right. I mean, insulin is the original peptide, right? It's a mini protein. Peptides are just less than 20 amino acids.

• 59:04Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 59:04Dr. Mark Hyman?

  That's just how we define them. And if it's bigger than 20 amino acids, it's a protein versus a peptide. It's just a mini protein. And they, they, they regulate, they're like the super highway communication system of your body. It regulates so many of your biological functions, from your sex hormones to your growth hormone to sex drive, to immune function, to tissue repair. So the nerve function, I mean, there's just so many that do so many things. And, and they're, we never learned about them in medical school. I've been going about insulin, but we kind of learned it was a peptide, but it was like, it was a drug, right?

• 59:36Speaker 01

  And if you go back to the system, like what we were saying earlier, this is at ways too well, we use a ton of BPC. And we also compound. It was phenomenal. Like it really, it is phenomenal. It's a phenomenal compound for an orthopedic injury, a knee, shoulder, elbow, you know, something that's been bothering you for years. It does a phenomenal job. And what I saw is even my orthopedic buddies, they were all like, oh, it's pseudoscience. It's not real. Okay, the hammer, everything's a nail, right? You're, this is a threat to your revenue stream. You're pressured to do these surgeries. You need to be doing these knee, shoulder, elbow surgeries. Anything that comes into the marketplace that's a disruptor is immediately met with hostility.

• 1:00:20Speaker 01

  And you have to ask yourself, is it because it impacts my practice adversely? Or is it because I really believe what I'm telling these patients? Because. The data's there. People say there's no studies, there's no this, there's all sorts of study. Where BPC regrew spine, damaged spines in mice. You know, I mean, I, I provided a dozen plus articles on Rogan when we went through it. We did a deep dive into BPC because I was such, and this is like four years ago.

• 1:00:50Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:00:50Speaker 01

  But I was like, this is a really powerful compound with really compelling data. And China's done a lot of studies in humans. There's fascinating data there and what we saw anecdotally at, you know, through our clinicians and our clinician network was phenomenal feedback with no minimal to no side effect profile. So it's disappointing when the FDA makes choices and you gotta scratch your head and go, are those choices? I hate to be conspiratorial, but I just go, there's no way this choice wasn't made for anything other than the pressure the pharmaceutical companies are putting on you and the data that they're providing that skewed to twist your arm to go this way because

• 1:01:32Speaker 01

  at the same time, they're attempting to patent all these things and monetize them themselves.

• 1:01:36Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, it's interesting. Even, even N-acetylcysteine was considered to be something that should be regulated, which is a supplement that otherwise known as NAC, but it helps to boost glutathione, the body's main detoxifying compound. And yet it's something we use all the time in the emergency room for people who had overdoses. You give them, you know, overdose of Tylenol, the treatment to save them from their liver basically dying and them dying was giving them something called mucamis, which I thought was a drug. You know, I didn't know when I was street training, but it's a natural compound. It's biological compound made of three amino acids and it's incredibly important for the body's biological functioning. And I'm like, why are they putting this on the kind of not approved list for the FDA?

• 1:02:20Dr. Mark Hyman?

  It doesn't make any sense to me. So I think there's some weird forces at work and we, we can't always see what they are. Some of them, you know, the incentives that are misaligned are obvious, like insurance companies or PBMs or sometimes the FDA, but it's. You know, it it's like this Gordian nut has to get unraveled because if we don't realign incentives to to make it profitable, to be healthy, then the system's never going to work, right?

• 1:02:44Speaker 01

  No, you're spot on.

• 1:02:45Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, and so that that's going to be the challenge. How do we incentivize health versus disease? And there was an attempt through the Affordable Care Act to do that with value-based care, but it really didn't catch on and and it really didn't kind of like like work that well because of how it was implemented and because honestly, because even if you're a traditional healthcare system, all you know how to do is traditional drugs and surgery. And so it's hard to create real value, really truly to reverse disease and to not just manage it with a bunch of drugs or surgery, but truly reverse diabetes and heart disease, the big cost drivers. I mean, Cleveland Clinic, there was a woman who was a nephrologist who was running a programs on reversing kidney failure using lifestyle approaches, which was amazing because that's something, again, we ever learned we could do, and she was seeing it all the time.

• 1:03:30Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And yet that wasn't reimbursed. You know, she had to do research, she had to get funding, she had to try to get, you know, donors and it was just, it was just a hard slog. And yet that's what we should be paying for. So until somehow those incentives get changed through the government actually funding the kind of research that needs to get funded to show these are not only more effective, but cost effective, that I don't think things are going to shift or until we put up guardrails where there's, you know, insulation from conflicts of interest on the dietary guidelines and the FDA and on insurance, you know, regulators. I mean, the the revolving door in government is so big and so wide and it's used sort of

• 1:04:12Dr. Mark Hyman?

  like a, you know, just a superhighway for people to go back and forth between government and industry. That that's problematic, you know? I mean, you got the Dairy Council, which basically has recommended us to have three glasses of milk a day and that also to us kids. There's no scientific data to support that at all. And and when scientists, friends of mine from Harvard challenged the Dietary Guidelines Committee on this because they were friends with some of the committee members, they said, you know, you're right. And politically, we have to do this, politically, not from a medical perspective. And and the two two time Secretary of Agriculture under Obama and under Biden, Bill Sack, Tom Bill Sack, worked for the Dairy Council in between his agriculture jobs.

• 1:04:56Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And the Dairy Council was the one that put out those ads, Got Milk, with the government. There's this program called the Chekov Program.

• 1:05:02Speaker 01

  I didn't know it was with the government.

• 1:05:03Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Oh, yeah, the government, the government, the government has these programs to support at the USDA, support industry and agricultural products. So the other white meat or right, that that was a joint program between the government, paid for by taxpayers, and by the pork industry or the the white mustache ads, which claimed all these health benefits for dairy that weren't scientifically validated, was a complete scam and got everybody to drink milk.

• 1:05:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:05:32Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Where there was no evidence and it was the government colluding with industry and the Dairy Council to come up with these things and promote them, even the former Secretary of Health and Human Services, down to Shalala, under Clinton, she actually also had one of these mustaches on and those athletes, they were getting paid a lot of money to do these ads, but there was no evidence. And finally, the FTC said, no, this is not truth in advertising. You can't do this. This is illegal. You have to take these ads down. And now you don't, you don't see the Got Milk ads anymore.

• 1:06:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:06:01Dr. Mark Hyman?

  It's not, it's not because they didn't work.

• 1:06:03Speaker 01

  I didn't know either.

• 1:06:04Dr. Mark Hyman?

  It's because it was illegal.

• 1:06:05Speaker 01

  I just saw they went away.

• 1:06:06Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, no, no. It's so bad. And so and and and the idea wasn't for the government to support, then to get money from industry and to use its own money to actually promote things that aren't scientifically true, even though that's what they did, like pork, the other white meat, really? Yeah. So I think, I think, how do you see us going forward as this new administration sort of gets its foot on the ground? Is there hope? Are we still going to be stuck in this perverse incentive system? Is it so intractable and difficult that it's just not fixable?

• 1:06:37Speaker 01

  I mean, I always think, I always have hope. And I think there's the fact we're having the conversation, the fact all these podcasts are talking about, all the things that you've discussed historically. You know, we're moving the right direction. We're uncovering the root cause. Now we've got to treat the root cause so we can stop. The symptoms and that's going to take consistent, persistent action and us as the people talking and acting with our pocketbooks. You know, we, we can drive change with policymakers and, and I think we are, and I think RFK is going to try. Uh, and he's going to fight, but it's going to require the American people standing behind and fighting for it as well. And we can also fight with our pocketbooks. Look at what happened to Kellogg's after the Senate testimony.

• 1:07:20Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Stock went down pretty bad.

• 1:07:21Speaker 01

  Yeah. And that, those eventually, if we, the people drive change through our pocketbooks. It resonates with these big industries and at some point they're going to change their behaviors. But part of that is giving the knowledge to the people. And that's where I think platforms like yours and podcasts are so important. Because if we can educate the public, they can fight for themselves. They can protect themselves. They can defend their families. While hopefully putting pressure on policymakers to drive policy change.

• 1:07:52Dr. Mark Hyman?

  It reminds me of the quote from Margaret Mead, which is, don't believe this small group of highly committed people. Can't change the world. In fact, it's the only thing that ever has, right?

• 1:08:02Speaker 01

  I love that.

• 1:08:02Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And, and I think you see this with Kellogg's. I mean, 400,000 signatures marching on their headquarters in Battle Creek, Michigan. Demanding change in the Fruit Loops and other cereals they make to match. The same type of cereal they produce in Europe without all the toxic chemicals. It worked because it, it hit them where it hurts in their pocketbook.

• 1:08:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:08:26Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And they're going to have to change. Now they're not going to want to change. It's going to take a little time. And, and we see this starting to happen where, you know, around the country there, bills being introduced to get these additives out of food and chemicals out of food. And I think that's going to be helpful. It still could be ultra-processed food. So if there's not any focus on the starch and sugar content. I think it's going to fall short.

• 1:08:46Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:08:46Dr. Mark Hyman?

  But, but at least there's some shifts happening where, where these, these lawmakers are starting to stand up and go, wait a minute. You know, we, one third of our state budget is Medicaid. You know, governors know this.

• 1:09:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:09:01Dr. Mark Hyman?

  This isn't hurting our, our state. We could be doing so many other things with this money if we didn't have to pay all this healthcare bills. And, and so there's this, there's this moment where I think there's some shift happening and I see it around the country and that needs to get accelerated. The fans need to get flamed. People need to call their congressmen, call their senators, call their state lawmakers, advocate for these ideas, ask them to solve them, tell your stories. It matters. I mean, you know, when, whenever I, you know, talked to lawmakers about what actually moves the needle on what they're going to do, they're going to say, calls to my office.

• 1:09:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:09:39Dr. Mark Hyman?

  You know, that's how RFK got confirmed.

• 1:09:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, I remember.

• 1:09:42Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Two hundred thousand.

• 1:09:43Speaker 01

  Flood of calls.

• 1:09:44Dr. Mark Hyman?

  There were 200,000 phone calls to Cassidy's office to, to confirm him for the, the HHS secretary. Whether you, you know, want him to be secretary or not, whether you agree with him or not, what I'm, I'm, I'm making a point here is that your voice matters.

• 1:09:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:09:59Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And that you're, if you, your, our collective voice is very powerful and that things change through these powerful grassroots efforts that then move to the center. And I always say, change doesn't happen in Washington. You know, it, it doesn't start in Washington, it ends in Washington. You know, when you look at whether it's abolition or civil rights or women's rights or the women's vote or, you know, gay rights, whatever, whatever it is that, that were massive cataclysmic changes in society that we all accepted as the norm, right? They changed because people were like, enough already, you know?

• 1:10:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:10:32Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And I, I think Cory Booker once said to me, it feels like 1959 in the civil rights movement in terms of what was happening in healthcare and food systems. And I hope that's true. And I hope we're going to see in the next four or five years, some big shifts. Cause I, I think they, they, they have to happen. We can't keep doing the same thing. People understand the emperor has no clothes, that we're in this really cataclysmic situation with our health and the economic impact of it. But, you know, it's a $5 trillion industry and it's not going to go down lightly.

• 1:10:59Speaker 01

  No, no. And that's where it's got to be a unified effort. It's got to be a unified effort. People have to realize chronic disease doesn't care if you're a Republican or a Democrat. It's killing all of us. Like we have to work together and extend the olive branch and not let big industry divide us. They'd love nothing more than for us to be divided as people and fighting each other.

• 1:11:19Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:19Speaker 01

  This is, to me, it's not a political thing. This is a humanity thing.

• 1:11:22Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yep.

• 1:11:23Speaker 01

  And so, everything you said resonates with me and hopefully we can keep driving change.

• 1:11:28Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Let's go, let's go. Well, Brigham, thank you for your work. Thank you for being such a clear voice for some of the challenges and problems in the dark alleys of our healthcare system that you're bringing light to, like pharmacy benefit managers, how insurance companies work, the problems with the, you know, the, the food industry, the cost of our broken healthcare system, the things that you really have sort of highlighted. It's so important to get these ideas out there, get people to hear about them, to get them incensed and do something about it. So, thanks so much for your work and being who you are.

• 1:11:59Speaker 01

  Thank you for having me and for giving me a voice. I appreciate it.

• 1:12:02Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Anytime. When it comes to supplements, you only want the best for your body, the kind with the highest quality, cleanest and most potent ingredients you can get. That's exactly what you'll find at my supplement store, where I've hand-selected each and every product to meet the most rigorous standards for safety, purity and effectiveness. These are the only supplements I recommend to my patients and they're also what I use myself. Whether you want to optimize longevity or reduce your disease risk, or you're looking to improve your sleep, blood sugar, metabolism, gut health, you name it, drhyman.com has the world's best selection of top-quality, premium supplements, all backed by science and expertly vetted by me, Dr. Mark Hyman. So, check out drhyman.com because when it comes to your health, nothing less than the very best will do. That's drhyman.com, D-R-H-Y-M-A-N.com.

• 1:12:46Dr. Mark Hyman?

  If you love this podcast, please share it with someone else you think would also enjoy it. You can find me on all social media channels at Dr. Mark Hyman. Please reach out. I'd love to hear your comments and questions. Don't forget to rate, review and subscribe to the Dr. Hyman Show wherever you get your podcasts. And don't forget to check out my YouTube channel at Dr. Mark Hyman for video versions of this podcast and more. Thank you so much again for tuning in. We'll see you next time on the Dr. Hyman Show. This podcast is separate from my clinical practice at the Ultra Wellness Center, my work at Cleveland Clinic and Function Health where I am Chief Medical Officer. This podcast represents my opinions and my guests' opinions. Neither myself nor the podcast endorses the views or statements of my guests. This podcast is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional care by a doctor or other qualified medical

• 1:13:30Dr. Mark Hyman?

  professional. This podcast is provided with the understanding That it does not constitute medical or other professional advice or services. If you're looking for help in your journey, please seek out a qualified medical practitioner. And if you're looking for a functional medicine practitioner, visit my clinic, the Ultra Wellness Center at UltraWellnessCenter.com and request to become a patient. It's important to have someone in your corner who is a trained, licensed healthcare practitioner and can help you make changes, especially when it comes to your health. This podcast is free as part of my mission to bring practical ways of improving health to the public. So I'd like to express gratitude to sponsors that made today's podcast possible. Thanks so much again for listening.