Brigham Buhler
speaker
1,533 appearances
6 recordings
5 series
first heard Oct 2024
last heard 27 Feb
Brigham Buhler’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Feb 2026 with 1.
Appearances
And through just what were you eating then? By then I was using the nutritionist, but then it was a question of, did I dig too big of a hole? And then the question is, are you overtraining and you're crashing what little hormones you have left and your body's trying to get ramped up? So we ended up treating at the time with HCG and clomiphene.
What did the nutritionist tell you to do? Oh, we prioritize protein, one gram of protein per pound of lean muscle mass. We cleaned up my diet. If you make protein the basis of your diet because you need a gram of protein per pound of lean muscle mass to maintain. If you're trying to gain lean muscle mass, you have to up that protein intake. And then based off diet or lifestyle and activity level.
And so we would prioritize my carbs through certain times of the day. We would keep me at a caloric deficit and we'd prioritize protein in that caloric deficit. And what you'll find is mind blowing. You aren't as hungry if I don't eat a diet.
muffin and a starbucks coffee loaded with sugar i don't have that insulin response that causes the hunger cravings a few hours later where i'm back to eating another unhealthy meal choice right if you eat protein first eggs hearty heavy foods dense nutrient packed foods your appetite is suppressed it's a natural appetite you can't overeat it's really hard to overeat meat it is
And so we prioritize proteins, healthy proteins like chickens, fish, all of those sources, and then healthy carbs. Get away from sugars, whites, starches. Prioritize healthy carbohydrate sources that are slower burning, that allow you to metabolize the protein that you're absorbing. Fruits and vegetables. So how much weight did you lose that way?
I literally went, well, starting on diet, I probably lost about half of the weight that I was trying to get off. Um, so I know body fat percentage, he got me from 25 down to about 15. And then when we added hormone optimization, um, not testosterone at the time, it was HCG and clomiphene, which boost your natural testosterone levels being monitored by a clinician within physiological norms, right?
To try and make sure that we're optimizing my health, not trying to get jacked and tan. Yeah. Literally helped me go from 15 to, at the time, I think I dropped down to around 7%. And I did not change anything. I was working out the same way, eating the same way. 7% is very lean. Yeah. And now I walk around 12 to 15. That's sustainable. And I think in my 40s, that's a level that makes sense to me.
But... I think the way to do that is you don't wait for people to get chronically ill. I should have never been at 25% body fat. If we were getting proactive and predictive and we were truly doing deep dives into individuals and taking the time for our clinicians in this country to sit down and assess you at the biological level. then we can prevent these chronic diseases.
And I'm not talking about through pharmaceutical intervention. We can prevent these through diet, lifestyle, nutrition, and helping teach the patient that there's a better way. And if we need to involve pharmaceutical intervention, it's there. There's options out there that can help patients kickstart their health and wellness, especially people in their 40s.
It took about a year. And that's where it gets crazy with the insurance model. So a lot of people don't know this. Most insurance carriers in the U.S. don't practice preventative. So testosterone would be considered a lifestyle drug.
The challenge with an issue like the DEA, if they really do over-regulate testosterone and shut telemedicine companies down from prescribing it, it's going to limit accessibility for these patients because primary carers don't want to prescribe it, right? And so they're going to punt them off to a urologist.
Typically, for an insurance company to cover it, you've got to have two or more fasted blood tests of a testosterone below 250 nanograms per deciliter. So that's a chronically ill man. I mean, that's... To come back twice, I mean, that's going to take you six months to get in with that urology. That's in the dream world. So just to get the insurance coverage, you're talking six months to a year.
And by then, that patient has been chronically ill, headed towards metabolic disease, diabetes. We know that testosterone is important to insulating us from certain types of cancer. It's important to our metabolic health, our bone mineral density, our lean muscle mass. All of these tie into... health and longevity and healthspan in preventing chronic disease.
I think somewhat, yes. But I also think the insurance model is an obstructionist model. And so I can give you a different example with the opioid crisis. There were non-addictive, non-abusive pain creams. If somebody is going to be put on – they have an ACL surgery. They're in pain. I'm not here to say there's no need to ever have a pain pill. But in those instances, there were alternatives.
That are non-abusive, non-addictive. What are the alternatives? There were ketamine-based pain creams that were topicals that could not be diverted or you couldn't extrapolate the ketamine out of it and abuse it. So nobody ever got high or stimulated from it because it's a cream that you can't extrapolate the ketamine out of. So you could not abuse it. You couldn't divert it if you wanted to.
So it just works locally? Insurance within 12 months quit covering it because those creams cost hundreds of dollars, whereas an opioid is like I think $10 a month, right? And then the other thing you'll find is the pharmacy benefit managers who the insurance companies own have reimbursement deals on certain drugs.
So when you get a drug, it's not because it's the best drug or the most efficacious drug. It's because the PBM, pharmacy benefit manager, has negotiated a rebate and decided to place that drug on tier one or tier two based off their financial incentive in that drug. Testosterone has been on the market so long. It's compounded a million places.
There is no rebate for the big pharmaceutical companies or the big insurance companies on testosterone. Right. And so it's just an additional cost. And so the more they can obstruct things that cost money but don't pay dividends back to them, they'll put obstructions in the way.
So another example is not only did they shut down alternatives to opioids during an opioid crisis, they also cut lab reimbursements on toxicology screenings at the same time that we're on an opioid bender as a nation.
They got rid of the last safety net, which was if you come into a pain clinic asking for opioids, they're going to make you do a toxicology screen to make sure that you're not abusing other drugs, that you're not diverting the drug, that this medication is actually in your system. All of those reimbursements used to be covered by insurance companies, but they got rid of that.
Showing 1261–1280 of 1,533 · page 64 of 77
← Previous
Next →