Harsh Thakkar (00:01.23)
All right, welcome to another episode of Life Sciences 360. So, a few weeks ago, somebody reached out to me and said, hey, you know, June is National Men's Health Education and Awareness Month, and we have this person that we really think you should bring on your podcast, Dr. Greg Brannon. He is the medical director and founder of OptimalBio, and they are doing a lot of great work in the...

hormone replacement therapy space and specifically bioidentical hormone replacement therapy. And Dr. Greg also has written a book called Restore. So they would make for an awesome guest. Do you wanna go ahead and schedule the episode? That was maybe three or four weeks ago and here we are today. So let's dive in and chat with Dr. Greg. Welcome to the show.

Greg Brannon (00:52.752)
Thank you, Harsh, I really appreciate it.

Harsh Thakkar (00:55.342)
So I wanna start off by asking you congratulations on the book. It launched in March of this year, correct?

Greg Brannon (01:02.416)
Yes.

Harsh Thakkar (01:03.502)
Yes. So can you walk us through what was the main idea behind launching the book? What was the driver for putting the book out there?

Greg Brannon (01:13.648)
Yeah, I wrote a book called the hormone handbook in 2020, which is the basis behind our company OptimalBio, bioidentical hormone therapy, testosterone, estrogen pellets, progesterone, thyroid disorders. And we've placed probably 20 ,000 patients over the last 10, 11 years and restore is more of a detailed.

narrative of the journey of a human body, a young man to an adult male through aging, as well as a woman the same way. And then I walked through the neuroendocrinology of the body and I have about 400 references medically showing how hormones work and what they do when they're not there. We're very fortunate. We're a gold medallion Amazon bestseller. It's the first book that we know of a hardback copy book written on biodynamic replacement therapy via pellets.

So what I really big on OptomeBio is we want to educate because knowledge is power and I really want people to be informed. I believe that king and queen is the mirror. This body is amazing if done with the right substrates, we can have very good health.

Harsh Thakkar (02:19.822)
Yes.

Harsh Thakkar (02:28.398)
Yeah, how long did it take you from idea to getting the book published? I'm just curious.

Greg Brannon (02:35.088)
Well, I read about three, four hours a day. So I have hundreds of thousands of articles. And so it took about six months of working at it, writing at it. I had a wonderful over at Forbes. Had a very great team at Advantage and Forbes that helped me out. But  , enough about him. He took my thoughts and ideas and got a nice story out of it. So it was a great team effort. I...

Harsh Thakkar (02:40.462)
Yeah.

Harsh Thakkar (02:53.774)
Hmm.

Greg Brannon (03:04.528)
I just can't stress harsh how I am such into, you need to form consent, inform things to make decisions. And the wise tales we hear about hormones is actually debilitating to both men and women as we age.

Harsh Thakkar (03:19.726)
Yeah, yeah. No, and I agree with you around the idea of knowledge sharing or knowledge is power. And as I grow in my career, I'm also doing the same thing. I work mostly in quality compliance and technology consulting with small to mid -sized biotech companies and startups. And I feel like working at big enterprise companies or Fortune 500 pharma companies,

I have accumulated a lot of knowledge that I feel as a consultant, I can pass on to the smaller startups and mid -sized companies. And it's really exciting to have that. So I'm glad we need more people like you that are able to spread out or share their expertise in forms of books, blogs. This podcast is one more avenue of sharing knowledge. So thank you for that.

Greg Brannon (03:56.656)
Mm -hmm.

Greg Brannon (04:13.712)
Yeah, thank you. OptumBio, we have the books, we have a YouTube channel, we have podcasts as well. The key thing is, it's just, we gotta get out there in the environment of ideas and discuss questions because we're not aging, we're having more chronic diseases. Diseases are starting earlier. First time in American history, last three years, our life expectancy is decreasing. So these are big questions we have to ask why. And people don't understand, but...

I'm talking doctors don't understand the most abundant active hormone in the human body is testosterone. Testosterone is 50 times higher in men than, I mean in women than their estrogen is. It's crucial we understand that this hormone is not optional and having optimal levels are key and the book goes in the reason why we have suboptimal levels and when they get beneficial what disease processes are halted or at least curtailed.

Harsh Thakkar (05:08.878)
How did you end up in starting OptimalBio? How did you find yourself in that situation to start the company? Can you walk us through that?

Greg Brannon (05:21.936)
Yeah, I was an OB -GYN for years. I finished my residency in 92 and I loved OB -GYN. I loved delivering babies. I loved watching women through their stages of life. I enjoyed surgery. I enjoyed the medicine side of it as well. And when women start changing into their perimenopausal, menopausal age and their PMS symptoms, things like this, what really bothered me was,

Harsh Thakkar (05:24.878)
Mm.

Greg Brannon (05:49.776)
the standard of care treatment are antidepressants. And the key thing is this, I'm not anti antidepressants, but not 85, 90 % of women should be on those. And when you have a loss of a hormone that runs multiple factors in the body, and then you tell a woman it's in your head, that bothered me. So I started looking for other reasons on why these symptoms are occurring. I want to get to the root cause. So I was exposed to pellets around 15, 16 years ago.

I spent about two years studying it and went to a conference by Dr. Turo, who was one of the world experts at the time on pellet therapy and started applying it to my patient based in my female practice. And within a month I had men say, whatever you're doing for my wife, I like that in my practice. So I started, I didn't want to see men in my OB practice. So I started, I rented a space next door and now we have nine offices in five states where the leading producers.

Harsh Thakkar (06:39.598)
Hmm.

Greg Brannon (06:45.904)
of hormone therapy, bio -identical, and via pellets. And that's important. The chemical structure, you being what you do for a living, is crucial, right? The atom for atom, the molecule, the three -dimensional sizes, you change one molecule, it changes everything. And the route in which it applies, injection, oral creams versus the pellet, they have different benefits and negatives. The pellet is the only one that secretes like the ovary and testicle, it's a constant steady state release.

and it's been using since 1935. It's just pure compressed hormone. So I studied the route and the chemical, and I just found that to be very beneficial. And I saw patients say their lives have come back, but 80 % of our patients are anti -depressants are off in three to four months. So it was a process of that. And then during my process, I went and got board certified in functional medicine at A4M and two fellowships. Cause I want to study, I think being allopathically trained, MD trained is wonderful, but -

tying it together, holistic medicine. We know nothing about nutrition, nutrition, supplementation. These things are optimized. So I'm looking at overall global picture.

Harsh Thakkar (07:54.094)
Yeah, yeah. And when you, so for people like, I don't know much about the, how is bioidentical hormone replacement therapy different from other forms? Can you double click on that?

Greg Brannon (08:06.224)
love that question. The Mayo Clinic considers bioidentical definition as body recognized as sane. And as you know, being the pharmaceutical industry, and I'm not anti big pharma, we need them, but I want competition. But a pharmacy company cannot own organic molecule. If it's in nature, it can't be owned. So to me, the onus is on the pharmacy company to say that their structure that's not in the body is superior to the one that the body makes, okay?

Harsh Thakkar (08:13.902)
Hmm.

Greg Brannon (08:35.472)
That's my premise because again, when you got a molecule that the body makes and recognizes it, it knows how to utilize it, it knows how to metabolize it, and how it knows how to eliminate it. When you change, when you add a Co group or you add a ester group on it, that changes how your body recognizes it. So I'm not being that smart. I want to go back to what the body makes. But here's the whole crux of it. Since testosterone is the most abundant active hormone in the human body,

Harsh Thakkar (08:35.502)
Hmm.

Greg Brannon (09:03.92)
What has the range has been consistent in the last 80, 90 years? And that's what's interesting. In both men and women, from the embryo, from the inside the mother's womb, till we pass away, testosterone's made, converts to estradiol, enzyme called aromatase, and then it's eliminated. So in both men and women, we have that same process. Estrogen is what controls the amount of testosterone in our body with a negative feedback loop. And why I bring all this up is,

There's not a number that's what healthy, it's a range. I'm 63. When I was in school, the range for a woman was roughly 70 to 250. A range for a man was roughly 900 to 1400. That same range today in a woman, it depends what lab you use, is roughly five to 50 for a woman, and a man is roughly 200 to 900. So the question you have to ask yourself is, why has the range changed?

and what is healthier, a lower number or a higher number? And when you look at the data, the higher the number is, chronic diseases go down. And the reason why the number, the ranges in shifting left and going downward is because the system, our body has been exposed to Xeno or fake estrogens, these neuroendocrine disruptors that trick the body that were hyperestrogenetic, so therefore it tricks by not to make testosterone. So these normal ranges,

are actually a sick number range because we're a sick population. It's like the example I use in Restore. If you're looking for an optimal blood sugar level and you got a million people in your study, but everybody's diabetic, the number is irrelevant. You want a placebo group that's healthy. We don't have a healthy group. So what I do at OptoBios, I go back to the 1940 studies. I call it the pre -plastic era, the pre -organic phosphates, the pre -pesticide errors that...

Harsh Thakkar (10:44.654)
Hmm.

Greg Brannon (10:59.408)
we're not as prevalent as they are today to get those ranges.

Harsh Thakkar (11:03.15)
Yeah, yeah, it does sound like if like, you know, it's interesting that the range was 900 to 1400 and now it's 200 to 900. So then, you know, like you said, the question is, if you are between that range, are you OK or or you are only OK because the range change and you're actually not OK?

Greg Brannon (11:24.752)
Right, I'll give you one kick number. Study done at the VA, San Diego, 70 ,000 men over the age of 50, men over 540 versus men under 350. The men under 350 had an 88 % higher heart attack risk in four and a half years with a 41 % higher mortality rate. Kaiser in California did a study giving testosterone to men, showed men with optimized testosterone over 600.

Harsh Thakkar (11:32.494)
Hmm.

Greg Brannon (11:53.488)
had two fold less overall mortality. So this is not a game of, people think testosterone, they think libido and muscle. That's like down the line. It would, is brain development, neuroplasticity, immune structure, inflammation, bone formation. Every single cell in the body has a testosterone receptor. What's interesting, Dr. Mark Rickard, he was a White House physician at Obama. He wrote a book called, Nobody Wants You Healthy. He says, this is the pre -COVID numbers show that,

In America, we spend roughly $2 trillion on healthcare a year, and 90 % of that's chronic healthcare. He estimates with men and women with optimized testosterone, we could decrease the chronic healthcare cost by 50%, because optimizing health will decrease dollars. And that's what's crucially important. Testosterone can decrease diabetes by up to 2 .5 fold.

Harsh Thakkar (12:37.582)
Mm.

Greg Brannon (12:48.496)
optimal testosterone decreases hemoglobin A and C by 17 .6 % in six months. Now I can do this number after number after number. In my book, Restore, I've got a total of four references. The data is there. It's very important. Dr. Glazier shows that testosterone decreases breast cancer up to 60 % in women because it actually decreases myotic division. So there's so many things out there that at higher numbers, we have less disease processes that we do now.

Harsh Thakkar (12:55.47)
Yeah.

Harsh Thakkar (13:16.334)
Yeah, yeah. And when you say, you know, you said to look at the bigger picture and that's one of the reasons you mentioned starting optimal bio. So for our audience who are maybe not in life sciences, who are not in a science or biotechnology field, what do you have to say to them about the role of hormones in their life, particularly men? Like why, yeah.

Greg Brannon (13:42.864)
I love that harsh. Thank you for that analogy Here's I tell everybody we're all Ferraris. We're old. We're all Bugatti's We're all great for these great automobiles. We all our bodies are amazingly made But that Ferrari is not going to run with two things. It's two things not talking EV just talking combustion engine There's two things that body needs that that car needs to run. It means a fuel source. That's the testosterone and a carburetor

Harsh Thakkar (13:52.654)
Hmm.

Greg Brannon (14:11.12)
That's the oxygen being combusted. That is our thyroid. So that's why I focus on those two energy sources, OptoBio. Again, you have a car, you can wash it, you can paint it, you can put air in the tires, all great things, but you can't run it without fuel and a carburetor. And what OptoBio does is we optimize our fuel, we optimize the carburetor, and then you go run the car, get it washed, put air in the tires, paint the job. But the most important foundational principle,

Harsh Thakkar (14:29.262)
Hmm.

Greg Brannon (14:40.176)
to any longevity or health medicine is the optimizing of your thyroid and your testosterone, estrogen and progesterone levels.

Harsh Thakkar (14:47.63)
Yeah, that's a great analogy and it's kind of a segue into my next question is what happens when that car, like you explained, doesn't get the right fuel or the right energy source at the right time? So in terms of, for hormones in men, what happens when there's a big imbalance in the hormone in that male's life?

Greg Brannon (15:14.928)
Great question, Harsh. Just picture you're driving down the street in your Ferrari and the red lights on the dashboard go off. Your option is to put duct tape over the red light and ignore it. Or you try to find out the root cause of it. And that's what's happening. What's happening is the red light on our dashboard are common symptoms we call aging. Tired of being tired, brain fog, anxiety, mood changes.

Harsh Thakkar (15:23.47)
Hmm.

Greg Brannon (15:44.656)
decreased libido, decreased muscle mass. We just call that aging. So if we attack aging as a disease, we want to go to the root cause. Why wait for osteoporosis? What makes bone in our body? Testosterone and progesterone in women. In women, it's progesterone and testosterone. In men, it's testosterone. And then estrogen causes reabsorption.

Harsh Thakkar (17:26.222)
Yeah, yeah. And you, you touched on a lot of the effects of low testosterone. Some that I knew, some I was, I was kind of surprised to know that they were linked. But when you think about the, the patients or the people that you, you see at OptimalBio, the question I have for you is how often should they be checking for, for these levels? Do you recommend like, Hey, yeah. What's the frequency that they should? Yeah.

Harsh Thakkar (18:01.966)
Hmm.

Harsh Thakkar (19:05.23)
Hmm.

Harsh Thakkar (19:53.55)
Hmm.

Harsh Thakkar (20:05.07)
Yeah, yeah, that's what I was going with my next question I had for you is, so you said that you have this algorithm and you sort of monitor the frequency to check how much of it is used over a span of X number of months, and let's, three to four months, yeah. So for somebody, for a male that wants to maximize the entirety of that four month span, what are some of the day -to -day habits they need to incorporate?

to not have to come back to you sooner for the replacement.

Harsh Thakkar (20:52.014)
Hmm.

Harsh Thakkar (21:09.358)
Hmm.

Harsh Thakkar (21:23.502)
Yeah.

Harsh Thakkar (21:41.326)
Hmm.

Harsh Thakkar (22:22.926)
Mm -hmm. Yeah.

Harsh Thakkar (22:59.118)
Yeah, and a lot of it is also becoming more and more hard. Like the things that you mentioned, the five points, a lot of them are fundamentally easy. They don't require any extra skill, like sleeping seven hours, eight hours a day, or doing 30 minutes of walk. You don't need any fancy equipment or any skill to do that. But then there's also on the flip side, certain things like reducing blue light, right?

If I think 30 years ago, there weren't that many devices to spend time on blue light or scroll or watch Netflix, but today this generation has a different lifestyle. There is more devices, more screens all around you. So, yeah.

Harsh Thakkar (23:50.958)
Yeah.

Harsh Thakkar (24:02.158)
Mm -hmm.

Harsh Thakkar (24:25.646)
Yeah.

Harsh Thakkar (25:34.638)
Hmm.

Harsh Thakkar (26:19.086)
Hmm.

Harsh Thakkar (26:41.198)
Yeah, and the ones that you mentioned, the anabolic ones, those are the ones that a lot of like, you know, weightlifters or some athletes take and they end up when they have a test and it's discovered, they are going for the short -term performance or gain. Yeah, okay.

Harsh Thakkar (27:34.798)
Yeah.

Harsh Thakkar (28:24.526)
Hmm.

Harsh Thakkar (28:58.574)
Hmm.

Harsh Thakkar (29:28.878)
Yes, yes. And I know we're coming up on time and I've loved this discussion, everything you've said so far. For anybody that's coming to one of your facilities for the BHRT therapy, what is the age group that you most frequently see? Or how often should men consider going and doing some detection or?

Harsh Thakkar (30:04.366)
Mm.

Harsh Thakkar (30:09.358)
I see, okay.

Harsh Thakkar (30:16.622)
Hmm.

Harsh Thakkar (31:11.662)
and yet

Yeah, that totally makes sense. And I know you started OptimalBio in 2012. You have an office in Raleigh, North Carolina. You have eight other offices.

Harsh Thakkar (31:33.326)
Okay, okay, great. So.

Harsh Thakkar (31:43.118)
Yep.

Harsh Thakkar (31:50.19)
Great, great. Yeah, I was trying to figure out like what's next? Like are you opening more locations? So you said Florida is another one.

Harsh Thakkar (32:02.638)
Yeah.

Harsh Thakkar (32:12.366)
Yeah.

Harsh Thakkar (32:27.438)
Yeah, that's great. Do you have any, I know this is a very tough question, but since 2012, if you just take a moment and think of all the patients you've either you've seen or somebody from your team has seen, is there a success story without sharing the name of the patient that you're like, hey, this is what the person came to us before and after they left as, is there any,

Harsh Thakkar (32:58.67)
Hmm.

Harsh Thakkar (33:09.422)
Hmm.

Harsh Thakkar (33:29.006)
Mmm.

Harsh Thakkar (34:10.862)
It's phenomenal, yeah.

Harsh Thakkar (35:02.382)
Hmm. Yeah, it's definitely nothing to be neglected about basically after from what I'm hearing from this episode is just the importance and the role of hormones and a lot of the signals that we see in our life, like you mentioned the different ones like anxiety, brain fog, all of them trying to get to that root cause instead of, yeah.

Harsh Thakkar (35:34.094)
Yeah.

Harsh Thakkar (35:46.702)
Hmm.

Harsh Thakkar (36:10.986)
Yeah, I know a few people in my family who are at that stage, obviously. And yeah, so I know what you're saying and I've heard the same thing from my family members and medical providers. So where can, thank you so much. We will definitely link the book in the show notes of the episode so that people can check it out. We'll put the link in Amazon if you want to go ahead and again, this is not an affiliate or any link of that sort.

purely, you know, just go check it out. But where can people learn more about you? Do you want to share your social media or website?

Harsh Thakkar (37:21.518)
Yeah, that sounds great. And thank you, Dr. Greg, for coming onto the show. Special episode with the National Men's Health Awareness Month. So thank you for your time and wish you tons of success to you and all your patients at Optimal Bio.

Harsh Thakkar (37:40.494)
Yep. Thank you.