Dr. Teddy Bross is a family medicine physician at Highpoint Direct Care in Golden, Colorado, where his practice focuses on athletes and active adults. He is also a three-time Western States finisher and the 2025 Ouray 100 champion.

In this conversation, Teddy explains direct primary care, and why it means an hour with your doctor instead of eight minutes. He covers why a runner's bloodwork can alarm a provider who doesn't know what creatine or a morning run does to your labs, and why your mid-race nausea is probably pacing, not the gel. Brendan asks whether ultrarunning is actually good for you and whether endurance athletes over 40 should get a coronary calcium scan. Zoë asks when health screening stops being useful, and Teddy weighs in on how thin the evidence for BPC-157 really is. Also covered: the appendix as your gut's junk drawer, and the treadmill in his exam room.

We just launched a new show on the UltraSignup network, and this is your first listen.

The Claims Department puts fitness, health, and wellness science under the microscope. Zoë Rom co-hosts with Dr. Nick Tiller, an exercise physiologist, researcher, and author of The Skeptic's Guide to Sports Science. Every episode, they pick apart something you've probably seen on your feed: a supplement, a gadget, a training trend, or a confident claim from a famous podcaster. They look at what the research actually says, and they show you how to work it out yourself next time.

In this first episode, Zoë and Nick dig into peptides. That covers BPC-157 and TB-500, the so-called "Wolverine Stack," and why so many athletes are injecting compounds that were never approved for human use. They also get into the fine print behind a wearable company's health claims.

Like what you hear? Follow The Claims Department on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes drop every other Thursday.
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0WBiQDtu4QXau4faFBr0qx

Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-claims-department/id6822333314

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLT0ovVd1qK7A

Herman Pontzer is a professor of evolutionary anthropology and global health at Duke University, a leading researcher on human energy metabolism, and the author of Burn and Adaptable.

In this conversation, Zoe and Brendan ask Herman whether anyone should genetically test a four-year-old for sprint potential (no, just take him outside and see if he likes running). They also get into why the Hadza hunter-gatherers of Tanzania burn about as many calories a day as sedentary adults in industrialized countries, and what happened to the metabolisms of runners who ran a marathon a day from Los Angeles to Washington, DC. Herman explains the ceiling on human endurance and why pregnancy sits right up against it, why exercise is great for nearly everything except boosting your metabolism, and why the longevity influencer starter pack of testosterone, growth hormone, and protein might be exactly backwards. Plus: the high-altitude gene Himalayan populations inherited from a Paleolithic fling with Denisovans.