<\/p>\n
Attendees swarm Tony Robbins at the Fountain Life Houston grand opening and ribbon-cutting in Park House.<\/p>\n
JACOB PARISH POWER\/for Fountain Life Houston<\/p>\n
A Ways2Well lunch and learn at Hotel Granduca.<\/p>\n
Jonathan Emmanuel\/for Ways2Well<\/p>\n
Devorah Rose, right, hosted a Ways2Well lunch and learn at Hotel Granduca pictured here with Chief Clinical Officer Danese Rexroad and Chief Strategy Officer Amanda Fedro.<\/p>\n
Jonathan Emmanuel\/for Ways2Well<\/p>\n
An imagine machine at Fountain Life Houston<\/p>\n
Courtesy of \/Fountain Life Houston<\/p>\n
A treatment room at Fountain Life Houston<\/p>\n
Courtesy of \/Fountain Life Houston<\/p>\n
Brigham Buhler has become somewhat synonymous with celebrity weight loss. He\u2019s been credited with helping Jason Bradley DeFord<\/a>, the rapper-singer-songwriter better known as Jelly Roll, drop more than 200 pounds. And the actor Russell Crowe shed 30 pounds. And is a regular on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast.<\/a><\/p>\n Ways2Well, the longevity-focused care clinic that Buhler founded out of his Garden Oaks home in 2018, was created with a more ambitious mission than just helping famous folks and the ultra-wealthy\u00a0shed weight. Or even live longer. He wants the average, hard-working American to have more accessible and affordable options\u00a0for comprehensive healthcare\u00a0than he feels are available\u00a0under the current, conventional primary care model.<\/p>\n Today, the main facility is in Austin. A new clinic soft-opened in the Heights earlier this year.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n \u201cMost of our clients are everyday people trying to find answers to their questions and live their best life,\u201d Buhler told the Chronicle. \u201cClinicians are fighting tooth and nail for their patients. They\u2019re doing the best they can. It\u2019s a broken system.\u201d<\/p>\n A boom of longevity and optimization centers has recently opened in Houston. They offer a private healthcare model centered on prevention and health optimization to extend each client’s healthspan, or years spent in good health. There is some scrutiny<\/a> from the scientific community regarding the evidence supporting the effectiveness claims of certain treatments and interventions.<\/p>\n The trend has sparked discussion about which local healthcare needs may remain unmet, despite proximity to the Texas Medical Center, the world\u2019s largest medical complex. Changes to health insurance costs <\/a>have intensified the debate.<\/p>\n With a platform of more than 303,000 followers on Instagram and virtual care offered nationwide, Ways2Well may be one of the better-known of its kind.\u00a0<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Dr. William Kapp, Tony Robbins, Peter Diamandis, and Dr. Robert Hairi at the Fountain Life Houston grand opening and ribbon-cutting.<\/p>\n JACOB PARISH POWER\/for Fountain Life Houston<\/p>\n Fountain Life is perhaps the most splashy. The longevity brand, powered by artificial intelligence, opened its fifth U.S. location on the first floor of Park House Houston in April. A packed house attended the River Oaks launch; the crowd swarmed co-founders Tony Robbins, a best-selling author of self-help books, motivational speaker and life coach, who attended alongside his business partners and co-founders Peter Diamandis, Dr. William Kapp and Dr. Robert Hariri.<\/p>\n Memberships start at $10,500 per year for the Core plan and $23,500 per year for Apex. Clients on an advanced longevity journey who were previously enrolled in the top-tier Epic plan for $85,000 are now priced on a case-by-case\u00a0\u00e0 la carte basis. Under the Apex family membership, adult children aged 18-30 can also access a la carte testing and Zori, an AI agent that analyzes medical data and answers health-related questions, for $12,500, or approximately $1,000.<\/p>\n HOUSTONCHRONICLE.COM: New spa-like longevity center opening in River Oaks will offer memberships up to $85K<\/a><\/p>\n Fountain Life\u2019s medical team credentials require that longevity physicians are board-certified and also include licensed physician assistants and nurse practitioners.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n At a minimum, Ways2Well providers are nurse practitioners. Some are family nurse practitioners; others are adult-gerontology nurse practitioners. All have been formally trained on injection techniques and ultrasound guidance, according to a company representative.<\/p>\n Outside the 610 Loop, there\u2019s Advanced Longevity in Bellaire, Memorial Longevity and resTOR Longevity Clinic in the Memorial Villages.<\/p>\n Where Ways2Well and Fountain Life overlap is at the zeitgeist intersection of celebrity culture and the questioning of costs associated with conventional medical care systems and insurance companies’ premiums.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen Fountain Life was founded 5 1\/2\u00a0years ago, what we wanted to do was start to change healthcare diagnostics so that we could detect systemic diseases sooner, to reverse those diseases and extend the human life span,\u201d Kapp said. \u201cEighty percent of what we treat today is chronic disease; that doesn\u2019t become symptomatic until it\u2019s late stage. We have the technology to detect (disease) really early, which is much less expensive and the first step to longevity.\u201d<\/p>\n ‘CEO of your health’<\/p>\n Born in Dallas and raised in Houston, Buhler spent 10 years covering the Texas Medical Center as a pharmaceutical sales representative.\u00a0<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n \u201cWhat spurred Ways2Well was working with some of the best and brightest for a decade. Clinicians are working as hard as they can, but they are limited by insurance companies and the big pharmaceutical companies. They have a lot of influence over what diagnostics and tests (doctors) can run,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n He and Chief Clinical Officer Danese Rexroad want to uncover root causes. They believe the best way to prevent chronic disease is to never allow it to develop in the first place. And that an affordable option for exhaustive health optimization should exist in the market.<\/p>\n Ways2Well offers a cash-pay service. A baseline bloodwork package costs $599, which includes two comprehensive panels and two expert reports.<\/p>\n A client checks into Ways2Well’s newest location in the Heights.<\/p>\n Daniel Ortiz \/for Ways2Well<\/p>\n \u201cOur average patient spends less than $100 a month,\u201d Buhler said. “For $599, we can manage to a person\u2019s budget, and you\u2019re getting a 45-minute deep dive with a clinician. Most of the time, the feedback is ‘I\u2019ve never had a doctor spend that much time with me.’\u201d<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n People go to Rexroad for stem cells, peptides and general health optimization. She says she has treated various orthopedic injuries with regenerative stem cell therapy and without surgery.<\/p>\n Stanford Medicine Children\u2019s Health<\/a> defines stem cells as human cells, either embryonic cells donated for research or adult stem cells from fully developed tissue, with the ability to develop into different cell types, including muscle and brain cells.<\/p>\n \u201cI compare what\u2019s normal versus what\u2019s optimal to predict potential outcomes,\u201d she explained. \u201cA normal range for insulin is two to 15. And optimal range is two to five, which allows for some actions to prevent the higher end of that range from developing into diabetes.\u201d<\/p>\n To make those recommendations, Rexroad examines 64 biomarkers to provide a full picture of each client\u2019s health. A typical primary care provider may order three or four tests when the client requests a comprehensive panel,\u00a0according to Rexroad.<\/p>\n From there, Rexroad builds a foundational approach to address concerns with sleep, nutrition or anxiety in the most natural way possible, she said. Sometimes that means prescribing peptides, which she likens to naturally occurring, short-chain communication that already exists in the body with clear, expedited language.<\/p>\n \u201cI think of them like text messages,\u201d she says. \u201cIf I send a three-word text message to my husband saying ‘We need milk,’ he understands the inferences: drive in his car, bring his wallet, etc.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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