Dr. Gary Donovitz 0:04

Now we've figured out a way to keep people alive and if we're going to keep them alive even longer and extend again, longevity, the most important thing you can do is extend vitality simultaneously.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 0:18

Welcome to the longevity blueprint podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Stephanie gray. My number one goal with the show is to help you discover your personalized plan to build your dream health and live a longer, happier, truly healthier life.

You're about to hear from Dr. Gary Donovan is the founder and CEO of biotech medical, which is a hormone pellet company. If you follow me or read chapter six of my book your longevity blueprint, you know, I'm a believer in hormone optimization through various means, including hormone pellets. hormones are one key to longevity and living a longer, healthier life. Today, you get to hear the very important and unique role testosterone plays in longevity and how estrogen and testosterone intermingle on the path to increasing longevity. Let's dive in and hear why hormones specifically hormone pellets are so amazing.

Thanks for joining me for another episode of The your longevity blueprint podcast. Today I have a very special guest Dr. Gary Donovan, who is the founder and chairman of biotech medical. He's a Board Certified obstetrician gynecologist and he has sought to provide each patient with compassionate high quality care for the past 30 years. After witnessing how bioidentical hormone replacement therapy or bhrt, which we'll talk about today, help one of his patients. Dr. Donovan dedicated himself to pioneering bhrt through his work with biotech medical. He's an international teacher of bhrt and his company viotti Medical is a leading innovator in subcutaneous hormone pellet therapy. Dr. Donovan's himself has performed more than 60,000 pellet insertions and shared the viotti method with 1000s of practitioners nationwide. He's a current Fellow of the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology as well as as a Fellow of the Royal Society of medicine.

Dr. Donovan's has spent his life making wellness available for those that traditional medicine has often ignored and his company biomedical is changing the face of healthcare for us all. Welcome to the show, Dr. Donna bits. Thanks for having me. I want to open this podcast by reminding listeners that chapter six of my book, Your longevity blueprint is all about hormone optimization. I discuss hormone replacement therapy and dive into hormone pellets. But today we're gonna dive even deeper than I did in my book, we're gonna talk about what Dr. Donna Fitz discusses in his newest book, testosterone matters more, the secret to healthy aging and women. I also want to share with my listeners how I heard about hormone pellets. So after graduate school, I started my own clinic here in Iowa, and I completed some advanced training in anti aging regenerative and functional medicine through the American Academy of anti aging medicine, and my mind was blown.

So I immediately applied what I had learned to my patients, and they were getting better faster, but I wasn't using hormone pellets yet. So I was trained on using topical sublinguals and oral hormones, which helped. But again, this was like eight to 10 years ago, and I just didn't know much about pellets. So some of my parents very close friends, both were getting pelleted out of state and they called me up one day and they said, you know you you have this clinic here in town locally, and we're driving to Nebraska to get hormone pellets. Why don't you go get training. And in the first couple calls, I thought, well, I don't know if I really need to get training, my patients are already getting better. I don't know if I need to learn more. But at their heavy encouragement, I flew down to Texas, I went through Pio t training, and I learned the biotique method of using hormone pellets. And upon arrival home, of course, they were thrilled because they were some of my first pellet patients, and they no longer had to drive out of state for this life changing therapy. So my clinic, the integrative health and hormone clinic was the first viotti certified clinic in Iowa. And I started offering pellets to more of my patients, and they got better, faster. And so I was thrilled that they had forced me really encouraged me to go get this training.

So what I found was that many of my patients who had been on other forms, yes, they had been helped, but some of them whose symptoms were being alleviated. Over time, no longer symptoms stayed alleviated. So a lot of the patients who were using topicals, they just basically quit working. And we won't get into the reasoning behind that today. But pellets were so much more convenient for my patients. They didn't have to apply creams or inject themselves, whatnot, pellets were very convenient. And I was very pleased to find out they were safe for patients with blood clotting disorders, say for breast cancer patients.

So my array of patients that I could serve was broadened. And I was very excited about that. And I saw even things like bone density and memory improve in my patients. So obviously, I'm convinced that belts are very helpful strategy for for many of my patients. But we have an expert today who's going to dive into the details, you're going to get all your questions answered. So I want to welcome Dr. Don evitts again, and I want to hear his story. So you heard how I became interested in using hormone pellets for my patients. But let's go to the source. So let's ask that animates, how he became interested in natural hormone therapy methods.

Dr. Gary Donovitz 5:04

Well, it was in the 90s that I knew bioidentical hormones were better than synthetic hormones. Because the patients were doing terrible and synthetic hormones. They did somewhat better than bioidenticals. But it was not great. And it really wasn't until about 14 years ago, when very similar to your story, I had a patient that actually moved out of state. And I had tried her on so many hormones, she was actually my best friend's wife. And I've done a hysterectomy for fibroid tumors on her, we could not get her hormones optimized. She was on antidepressants, he's about to get divorced. And it was terrible. So she got pelleted, from a physician in another state, and was like, these things are amazing. They're telling to change my life, and I'm off my antidepressants. And I'm like, maybe I should take a deeper look at that, which I did, and had more patients than on pellets after her who had the same story.

And so at that time, I got trained by my mentor and pellets. And I learned really that the dosing wasn't very accurate at the time, which it hadn't been since the 40s. And I learned too, that not everybody was doing teletherapy not everybody was on board and teletherapy. And where do people go for all these answers? So that's where it all started back in 2004 2005. And so I had to say, well, maybe we need to learn more, maybe we need to grow this, this group of practitioners so that we all form this family of people doing the same thing, since we're going to sit and stare to care, maybe we got to get together. And then that's really how tea formed to get started, and it was all about that one patient.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 6:44

So tell me what is biomedical all about?

Dr. Gary Donovitz 6:47

So bio t medical is a company that as a training and marketing company, we we train practitioners, nurse practitioners, and doctors across the country, Puerto Rico, Mexico, soon to be Dominican Republic, and how to do hormone optimization, which is different than doing hormone replacement therapy. So we're very focused on not just hormone optimization, but we also have a nutraceutical line that's geared to really help those hormones work better. And we've expanded that nutraceutical line into peptides and now cosmeceuticals also, so we have a lot of things going on at bio T, but we do help people that are in the business of taking care of women and men who want to have those people's lives better so that we are extending vitality throughout their life no matter what their age. How do we do that? What's the optimal way to do that? And how do you individualize that therapy? So we're very big into precision medicine, very big into this individual preventative health care. And that's really what biotech is all about.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 7:51

Awesome. So what does bio t stand for?

Dr. Gary Donovitz 7:54

so it stands for bioidentical hormones, and then testosterone and estradiol, because those are the primary hormones, although not the only hormones that we use.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 8:01

So let's break that down a little bit more. Let's talk about testosterone and estrogen. So the main sex hormone that we replace in men is primarily testosterone. And the main hormone. Well, there are several hormones replacing women. But the gist of our conversation today is going to be on testosterone for women as well. But let's go back to men for a moment. So why is testosterone important to men's health?

Dr. Gary Donovitz 8:23

Well, testosterone is the main hormone for that men produce in their mid 30s, they begin losing testosterone. So as they begin losing testosterone, they feel tired, they don't sleep well, they have weight gain, brain fog, mood swings, more anxiety. So those are the symptoms that low testosterone or hypogonadism. You know, Ed, is what most men think about. But that's not the most common symptom. In fact, it's a very late symptom, if you will. But having low testosterone long term is going to adversely affect their brain in their heart, their prostate, or bones. So we talked about that also. But the early symptoms could be corrected so that they sleep better, they eat better, their brain functions better. They don't have that weight gain across the midsection. But we've got to get there early and get their hormones optimized. Most people wait until people are in their 50s or 60s. And that's really late to the party.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 9:18

So let's transition to talking about women here for a minute. So let's I want to talk a little bit about estrogen, and then we'll get to testosterone. So for women, what are the main benefits of estrogen replacement therapy? I know that was a standard of care in the 1990s. And then the Women's Health Initiative study scared providers and away from using it. So let's talk about the benefits and then we'll get into some of the myths, myths dangers, per se. So benefits let's start with benefits.

Dr. Gary Donovitz 9:40

Right? So actually, it's kind of nice to go back in time before we start talking about the benefits on estrogen because really, testosterone was there before estrogen. We can pick that back up. But Premarin came out in the late 40s, early 50s, and just out marketed pellet therapy and by identical hormones, which were already in place, taking care of postman puzzle women. The thing about Premarin or synthetic estrogen was it really made no sense that we replaced horse estrogen into women than ever made horse estrogen. So that was a bit of a stretch. And the fact that there was all these side effects with bleeding and build up of the lining of the uterus, then progesterone had to be added. And then that had side effects and there was synthetic progesterone.

And then as you said, the Women's Health Initiative came out, which was the largest study, at that time ever performed, we spent a billion dollars of your taxpayer money to look at only two drugs, both made by the same company, both using synthetic hormones. And the results were disastrous, with more heart attacks and breast cancers and blood clots, and strokes. But the problem was we were using synthetic hormones taken orally, which was a problem. And we started very late, the mean age for the Women's Health Initiative was 63. And the problem with that is after the Women's Health Initiative was reported in 2002, about 80% of patients stopped taking their hormones. And we know from looking at retrospective data, or from looking at studies of how did women do off their hormones, there was 10s of 1000s of deaths because people didn't have their estrogen. And estrogen is important not just for hot flashes and for vaginal dryness, but for long term longevity. It was an important hormone, they just didn't know that testosterone was more important and covered more of the symptoms, because at that time, there was no commercially available testosterone product.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 11:34

So you mentioned some of the benefits, the hot flashes, vaginal dryness can also help with night sweats. Although we know testosterone can help with night sweats, memory fog, bone density and heart health. This podcast will launch in February, which is heart disease Awareness Month. So but speak to that for a moment here. So talk a little bit about estrogens role and and testosterone, you can talk about both role in preventing and actually treating heart disease.

Dr. Gary Donovitz 11:58

Right. So estrogen is a vasodilator. I don't think people realize it dilates your blood vessels. So I mean, primary function of most of your heart drugs is to get more blood flow to your heart. And estrogen will do that it's testosterone is better at that. So it does have a heart benefits. In fact, we know that women who don't have estrogen are at an increased risk for heart disease. We also know that women after the menopause when they lose estrogen, one in three will die from cardiovascular disease. So as we enter Heart Month in February, it's always a good idea to take stock of where are we at with our heart risk, and where are we at with our hormones, and then perhaps optimize those hormones and try to reduce our risk. So there is that for sure, now, testosterone has even more benefits, not only does it dilate the blood vessels, it gets rid of inflammation, it gets rid of plaques, even if you already have plaques.

And again, it dilates the blood vessels. So there's more blood flow to your heart, what's even more important, or at least as important as it increases the contractility or the strength of the contractions of your heart muscles. So in people who have congestive heart failure, or susceptible to that we're able to improve the amount of blood that leaves the heart so more of your organs get more blood flow, more oxygenation. So there's a lot of benefits to testosterone as well as estrogen. And it's just the fact of the matter is, because testosterone starts falling earlier and in women that could be in their 20s. We don't want to have those blood vessels damaged for some 20 or 25 years until they get to menopause, when we could be preventing heart disease much earlier. Then when they lose estrogen and menopause. Ideally, we'd want to replace both hormones, as well as thyroid along the way.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 13:52

Yes, agreed. Totally agree. You may have heard me mentioned the nutrient dim on several episodes and I want to take a moment to describe exactly what that is. When I was in graduate school, my doctorate focused on estrogen metabolism. Now, you're probably wondering what that even means and why it matters to your health. Well, research has shown that our risks for fibroids cysts and breast ovarian, uterine, prostate and colon cancer can all be linked back to estrogen, but it's not the levels of estrogens that can increase our risk. Instead, it's the way our bodies handle that estrogen that matters. We can run individual lab tests for this which I often recommend to my patients. That's called estrogen metabolism testing, which has to be done in the urine. Even without the test however, it is safe to take a supplement an extract of cruciferous vegetables to improve your estrogen metabolism. That's basically like taking in six pounds of those veggies per day in a capsule form without the gaps. That supplement is called dim the aim. You can also use methylated B vitamins as well as specific targeted antioxidants like resveratrol to help improve your estrogen metabolism and help protect you from that cancer risk.

Of course, also make sure you have Your practitioner run a comprehensive genetic analysis to see from another perspective, if you are at increased risk and help you learn what you can do to lower that. If you're interested in learning more about dim, read chapter six of my book your longevity blueprint, and check out our product info sheet at your longevity blueprint.com Ford slash product forward slash dim to get 10% off dim alone, use code dim or to get 15% off our estrogen detox bundle with dim methylated Bs and antioxidant support. Just use the code estrogen detox when checking out at your longevity blueprint calm. Now let's get back to the show. We've talked about how important estrogen and testosterone are. But let's stay on estrogen for a moment here. I want to define a couple myths because every time you talk about you bring up estrogen essentially with conventional medicine, patients and providers get scared and they still think estrogen causes cancer. So I believe that is a myth that estrogen does not cause cancer. But let me ask you that question. How do you respond to that?

Dr. Gary Donovitz 16:01

Right? So first of all, estrogen is kind of a it's a broad term, It comprises a lot of different substances or compounds. Ester dial which is the primary estrogen that women make does not cause breast cancer, more than 80% of the world literature would say that it's what I believe it's what's what's proven in scientific studies. Now, other estrogens like s stone, which is one that people who are obese make a lot of a stone. It's also the primary estrogen in Paramor and then prempro can increase the risk of breast cancer because it causes the breast tissue to proliferate, to just continue to have those cells divide, when they wouldn't have done that, or it not for the stroma. And so that substance can estriol, which is a third type of estrogen is a very weak estrogen and probably has no play at all in breast cancer. So depends on what kind of estrogen the kind of estrogen that we use, at bio t, which is Astra dial, and we use it non Orly does not cause breast cancer. So the nice thing is, is people who've had a family history of breast cancer can take that safely, and actually derive the benefits of the extra doll without having to worry about that side effect. Now, that's not necessarily true of synthetic hormones that are taken orally. So not all estrogens are created equal. I think that's the take home message.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 17:26

Absolutely. Thanks for differentiating that. So to be clear, with biotech and with hormone pellets, we do not use a stone, we do not give oral estrogen, or giving extra dial administered through the pellets. Oh, thank you for differentiating that. What about the myth that estrogen is the only hormone women need replaced? You've kind of already spoken to that, but speak to that more.

Dr. Gary Donovitz 17:47

Well, you know, I actually took the title of my book, testosterone matters more from an another book that a doctor wrote a while back called estrogen matters. And estrogen does matter. But when you look at studies that are in the literature on pre and post menopausal symptoms, testosterone gets more of those symptoms, then does Esther dial so that's why I think that it matters more. It's a bone builder. Yeah, I

Dr. Stephanie Gray 18:11

was surprised to read that in your book.

Dr. Gary Donovitz 18:13

So I mean, it is the hormone that protects women's breast from breast cancer. Now, estrogen doesn't cause breast cancer, but it doesn't protect the breast from breast cancer, but testosterone does. Estrogen protects the heart, but testosterone protects the heart better. Testosterone also can reverse osteoporosis better than Astro dial. And when you look at what happens with Alzheimer's disease, if if estrogen was the primary hormone that prevented it, then women wouldn't be the primary people that get Alzheimer's disease because they have estrogen throughout most of their life. The fact of the matter is as they start losing testosterone in their 20s, and in their 30s, is when women specifically women start having cognitive decline that brain fog their brain slows down. It's also when that that superglue or beta amyloid gets laid down in the brain. So the very early onset of Alzheimer's and dementia could actually be in the 30s, not in the 50s and 60s, which is again, a testament to the importance of testosterone because when your testosterone is optimized, you don't lay down beta amyloid, you don't have the cognitive decline that you would have without testosterone, your brain functions better. Your memory, focus and concentration are better. So that's why I say testosterone matters more.

And it's because testosterone decreases earlier and we're allowing our organs to start deteriorating. I know we want to talk about longevity. But longevity is best if we can extend vitality versus just making people live longer because I don't know why you want to live longer. Stephanie if you're going to be demented, and you're going to have a hip fracture and heart attack. It doesn't make a lot of sense to live a long time. But if you can lived a long time with great vitality and great memory and you're able to exercise and do those things that bring quality of life. It makes a lot of sense to extend life and have longevity. So there's two pathways, extending people's life without extending vitality or extending people's life with vitality. We've sort of chosen that second path.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 20:20

Yes, sign me up for that. Yeah. Now let's talk a little bit more about testosterone benefits in women. So we know memory preservation for short, cardiovascular risk reduction. What about some other symptoms that many women would complain about with low testosterone that replacement therapy can improve? Can you mentioned some of those?

Dr. Gary Donovitz 20:37

Sure. So sleep is is a very common, so a lot of people let us back up, you know, we hit menopause. A lot of people say, well, the most common symptoms are hot flashes, and vaginal dryness. But it's just not true. The actual most common symptoms are sleep problems, and weight gain, and mood swings. And so a lot of people get those those symptoms treated with with medications like sleeping pills, diet pills, and antidepressants and anti anxiety pills, all of which could reduce the quality of your life, what if you could sleep better, because you had your hormones optimized, then you would eat better, because if we sleep better, we eat better. If we don't sleep, well, we don't eat well. And then that's going to lead to other problems with weight gain. And then of course, you're on some sort of diet pills, which have their own side effects and problems. And that affects how you feel about yourself and self esteem. And all of that antidepressants, for sure are going to rob you of quality of life with a whole host of side effects. What if we could reduce the chances of being on those by 50%, we can do that by optimizing your testosterone early.

And again, mood swings are going to affect your personal life at home, it's also going to affect your work life. And that whole fatigue factor, which is an estrogen if that fatigue is testosterone can be thyroid, but more often testosterone. And it's that afternoon fall off after two o'clock. So if your hormones were optimized, specifically with testosterone, your energy level would be better. So you're more productive at work, you're more productive at home, you're a better person to be around. With all those symptoms being better on testosterone, we can avoid over medicating ourselves with over medication, again, extends the morbidity or extends that time when your quality of life isn't the best. So we're living a life of a very poor quality of life. That's not what we want to do. We'd rather have a great quality of life and live longer. And the way you do that is avoid getting on so many medications with so many side effects.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 22:38

Yeah, scary. I was surprised to read in your book that 85% of those with chronic pain have low testosterone. So even, you know, fibromyalgia.

Dr. Gary Donovitz 22:47

It's the most common category. Yeah, I mean, pain medicine doctors, their patients. It's the highest percent of patients that actually need to stop drone optimization higher than people with HIV higher than obesity higher than diabetes. So it's a very common problem for pain management patients and their life is is turned around and much better. When their hormones are optimized. They still need their pain medications, but they can require less of it, the binding of their pain medications is better. But overall, their quality of life is better. And there's a clear degradation in the quality of their life without hormones versus being hormonally optimized and having their pain medications.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 23:35

Yes, yes. Sounds like everybody needs testosterone. Let's talk about some myths. And you mentioned these in depth again, in your book. But let's speaking to women, one of the myths that you first mentioned is that testosterone is a male hormone. And that's what a lot of people believe. So tell me your response to that.

Dr. Gary Donovitz 23:54

Well, you know, I used to get that all the time patients would come in and and so we would probably take a look at your hormones, both estrogen and testosterone. And they'd be like, Whoa, testosterone is what my husband's on, that's a male hormone. In fact, testosterone is the most important hormone for women, no matter what decade of life that actually came out in a international consensus paper. A couple of years ago, were 10 people pretty smart, that had over 100,000 years of experience with women and testosterone reviewed the literature and the evidence out there would say it's the most important hormone no matter what decade of life. So that's one of the myths we have to get rid of, because women do believe it's a male hormone. The interesting thing is women have testosterone receptors throughout their body. It's not just for sex drive, as some people would believe.

But women do have more health issues than just sex drive. They have diabetes, they have depression, they have sleep abnormalities and weight gain and mood swings and all the things we talked about. And again, those receptors are responsible for extending your vitality. So whether it's a reduction In breast cancer, prevention of osteoporosis, prevention and heart disease, prevention of Alzheimer's, all of those receptors become important. And there are testosterone receptors, again, from your brain, to your muscles to your fat, all throughout your body. And that's a testament again to the importance of testosterone. And that's the same in men. But women have no idea that they were that attached to testosterone and they make four times more testosterone than they do estrogen and have their whole life.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 25:30

Yeah, I was surprised to read that in your book, too. I didn't know that. That's good to know. You already answered the second myth, I was going to ask that testosterones only role is to improve libido, we know that clearly it has other benefits. So let's go on to another one. That that is a fear of some of my patients that I have to kind of talk them off the ledge from which is that testosterone will masculinized them,

Dr. Gary Donovitz 25:49

right. So what happens a lot of times is women don't take hormones because they thought hormones cause cancer, breast cancer or something. And so they haven't been on hormones, particularly women as they go into menopause. There's a reduction in blood flow to the whole genital area and their clitoral gets smaller and their lips of the vagina shrink and all the things that you know, but once you replace testosterone and you improve blood flow to that area, the clitoral will enlarge again and become where it was when you were sexually active and earlier in your life when you're pre menopausal. Now, when that happens, a lot of people think that, that they're getting masculinized, or growing a penis or something, but they're really not, it's just an improvement in blood flow to an organ they had not appreciated. For a while, at the dose that we use at bio T. There is no masculinization at all for women.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 26:42

And your book, you say it's not going to make you suddenly enjoy football, drink beer or smash can over your head, right? The doses we use with women are a lot smaller than the doses we're going to use with men.

Dr. Gary Donovitz 26:52

And that's about 10 to 15 times less.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 26:55

What about women who are fearful of testosterone replacement therapy because they had pcls? And maybe some high androgen symptoms earlier in life? Could those women still need testosterone later in life like in menopause,

Dr. Gary Donovitz 27:08

right? So a lot of women assume because they they've had whiskers on their face or some androgen symptoms that earlier in life and that they have pcls and they've been diagnosed with PCs, they were told that they had very high androgen levels, that they won't need answers. It's not true. It's almost like telling a PCs patient once you stop menstruating, when you go into menopause, everything will be fine, because it's not those people have insulin resistance. And we know that optimizing testosterone will help with that insulin resistance, just like Metformin and some of the other medications that they may or may not be on. But also what we know is those women need testosterone as they get older.

The problem is, is they there's a protein in your bloodstream, Stephanie that binds up testosterone. Women who have pcls don't have a lot of that protein. So they're very sensitive to testosterone. And we know a lot of patients they say I'm sensitive to medications, these people that have pcls, these women are very sensitive to testosterone, so they need it, but they need much less the nice thing at bio t we've taken that into account. So when we're dosing pcls patients, they're getting dosed at around half of what their other female counterparts are getting dosed at, because they have more of that protein, whereas the pcls patients have less of that protein. But we do account for that so they can derive the benefits of testosterone without having too many side effects at all.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 28:37

What Dr. Donovan's is referencing here is an algorithm online. So by IoT providers have access to this algorithm online that they have developed using hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of 1000s of patients to help kind of refine the dosing so that there is reduced risk of side effects that we take these things into consideration as we personalize the dose for every patient. So let's go on to another myth that testosterone has adverse effects on the heart. Now, you've already mentioned testosterone can benefit heart health. So where does that myth come from that testosterone can negatively impact the heart?

Dr. Gary Donovitz 29:10

Well, I think it probably came from the fact that in the Wi Fi, there was increasing heart attacks from estrogen, but there wasn't testosterone even used, I think also in some studies and their male counterparts using synthetic testosterone. In older men, there was an increased risk of heart attacks. However, for women, the benefits way outweigh the risk. There is no increase in adverse cardiac events with women. In fact, it's protective to the heart. The most interesting thing for me when I started studying all this was so many women think that lowering your cholesterol and using status is actually a benefit. There's no studies to show that status work and women primarily in preventing heart attacks. There is however studies to show a 50% reduction in cardiac events, heart attacks and strokes, keeping your hormones optimized. So for me, it's better to start there than using a drug like statens that have so many side effects without the benefits. We know with hormone optimization, the benefits way outweigh the risk. But in terms of study showing an adverse effect on the heart using bioidentical testosterone, particularly in pellet form, there's no studies out there to show that.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 30:30

Great, let's stay on the topic of safety, I guess, due for a moment here. So another myth that you mentioned in your book is that the safety of testosterone use in women has not been established. And you you clearly say that that is not the case. So

Dr. Gary Donovitz 30:43

expand on that. For us. Well, a lot of times people, particularly FDA in the United States that they have this edict sort of if they didn't say it, that it never happened, it's almost bizarre. And because there's no commercially available testosterone products for women right now, they're gonna say, well, there's just no evidence. But that's not true when there is evidence throughout the literature for the last 80 years about the safety of testosterone. To prove that up at biotech, we actually tracked our first 1.2 million procedures, there was less than 1% complications. Now I've done a lot of things in my life have delivered babies I've done hysterectomy so I did a lot of robotic surgery, I was a pioneer in the robotic surgery field, I can honestly tell you, Stephanie, there's nothing I've ever done with anything that had less than 1% complication. So that was a great thing that came out of that study. In fact, that study is soon to get published, which will be a game changer, because so many people think hormones are dangerous, but then what if they're not?

And now patients have to be re educated to physicians have to be re educated? Because there is all these fears about hormones? And do we really know if they're safe? And in fact, almost every article on hormones ends up with? Yes, this may be a benefit, but we don't know the long term. Well, we actually do. For most of our patients, we have data now well over 10 years, and we have that in 500,000 patients. So we're pretty sure we know the safety on the pellet therapy. And then you wonder why does that myth still out there being propagated? And it's because big pharmaceutical companies don't have a commercial answer to what we're doing. And over the last year or two, there's been about a $2 billion decrease in people buying synthetic hormones and switching off to bioidentical hormones. That is all about the money. And it's not a good thing for your, your people in your podcast to hear that well, Big Pharma would do things that would adversely affect their health just because they don't have a product. But it's the fact of the matter. That's what happens.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 33:00

What about the myth that testosterone can cause prostate cancer in men? We've talked about the breast cancer women, but what about prostate cancer in men?

Dr. Gary Donovitz 33:10

Yeah, the nice thing is over the last couple years, there's been a couple of nice studies that have actually show that testosterone is protective to the prostate. For years. And really, since about 1941, there was a study with one male who had prostate cancer, who had his testicles removed and was placed on testosterone. One protein in his bloodstream went up after that, and they assumed it was a recurrence of his prostate cancer, which was not that practitioner actually got Nobel Prize for this very flawed patient study. And that was the the standard, if you will, for a number of years, actually, there's never been an article in the history of the world that's ever shown it to stop strong increases the risk of prostate cancer, the severity of prostate cancer, or the recurrence risk or spread of prostate cancer. Now, what we do know is that if you were going to get prostate cancer, if your testosterone levels were optimized, you lower your risk. If your testosterone was optimized, you actually lower the severity. So your risk is lower, the severity is lower. So it's it's a much better idea, particularly it with one of the most common cancers in men to keep your testosterone optimized to lower your risk. There's not an increased risk.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 34:29

And if you want to learn more about that, Dr. Abraham Morgan Fowler, I don't know how to pronounce his name, but he's a Harvard urologist. He's done a lot of research. And his studies are who what I provide to urologist who have questions with the safety of pellets because the data is there, they just haven't seen it. And speaking of other data out one of one of my trainings I attended for viotti. I was blessed that I don't know if I pronounce her name, right, but Rebecca Glaser, but she was one of the speakers that year and she had shared a study where she was actually placing Transitioning to females here. She was placing testosterone pellets near breast cancer lesions. And she was actually able to prove that the lesions were shrinking.

Dr. Gary Donovitz 35:09

Well, a couple of couple things on that subject a pretty interesting one, this was a 92 year old female that she did this to, nobody wanted to operate on er, and Rebecca is actually a breast cancer surgeon, and she didn't want to operate on her either, because she was 92 years old. So she took testosterone pellets, put it around the tumor, and then in about a month and a half, put them around the tumor, again, three pellets, then she started measuring the size of that tumor. And that tumor went from about five cc's of volume. So that's like a small syringe down to point 153 cc's. It almost went away completely on testosterone therapy.

Following that, she actually started a study on breast cancer, and she looked at about 1200 women, and she put testosterone pellets in the way we do back in the fat of the hip, and follow those people for 10 years, and there was a 40 to 50% reduction in breast cancer, which was amazing. It was the first study that's ever shown testosterone to be preventative for breast cancer, we then took that Guiding Light, if you will, and we just finished and are about to be published. It's been accepted for publication now, the largest study ever done and prevention of breast cancer in women three times as many patients as Rebecca had. And that study showed a 40% reduction in breast cancer using testosterone, but also using testosterone and estradiol that had never been done before. So even on testosterone, using Astra dial, there was not an increase in breast cancer, but a reduction in breast cancer and a significant reduction in breast cancer.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 36:54

That's amazing. Yeah, congratulations on that publication. Thank you for thank you for doing that. So as we transition to the last myth here, many of my patients believe that their hormone levels should decline as they age, and there's nothing that they need to do about that. So I know from from biotech training, that that's incorrect, and that, by the time we're 40, which I'm getting close here, I'm gonna have lost half of my testosterone actually, probably more by my levels. So I I believe that that's not acceptable. And I want to age well with vitality, like you mentioned. So what is your response to that, that as we age, our levels are gonna go down? That's a normal part of aging, it's fine, you know, just just deal with it?

Dr. Gary Donovitz 37:34

Well, I think if you go back in time, and I mean, further back than just the 80 years, people didn't live a long time. Prior to the 1920s and 30s. People were dying. By the time they were 40 or 50 years of age, mostly from infectious disease, so we didn't have to worry about menopause and andropause or any pause. So the basic problem was, we were going to die ahead of the time where we started losing our hormones and would obviously have opted to optimize those hormones. Once we got a handle on the infectious disease side of things, much like the way we're having to get a handle on COVID right now, then people lived longer. The problem is, is the ovaries and testicles were not programmed to produce hormones for a longer lifespan. So because of that, people's hormones began decreasing and people had surgery, hysterectomy, and other things, that endometriosis surgery, their hormones decreased even earlier. Now, what we didn't know but we do know now is that the earlier those hormones decrease, the greater your chances are for heart disease and Alzheimer's disease and osteoporosis and breast cancer because you lose that protection. So that's going to be a problem. And so what I answer is, is yes, that's probably true 100 years ago, because people didn't live long enough to need hormones.

But now we've figured out a way to keep people alive. And if we're going to keep them alive, even longer and extend again, longevity, the most important thing you can do is extend vitality simultaneously. And there's multiple ways to do that with with nutriceuticals. So you have good support for yourselves with hormones but testosterone and estrogen and thyroid and by doing all those things combined with with your very basic diet and exercise. So lifestyle changes so get moving so even your 80 year old grandma should be moving she should be walking she doesn't necessarily need to join a gym. But moving is good eating the right foods is good having the hormones optimized is good having the right vitamins and nutraceuticals is good and all those things together. Combined for a healthy aging. I don't really believe in anti aging we're not in Stephanie and I are going backwards. But we will go forwards and if we have healthy aging and extend longevity, that longs our quality of life, it gives us the best chance to feel our best no matter what our age really

Dr. Stephanie Gray 40:06

agreed, agreed. Well said. I often get asked why we need hormone replacement therapy here in the US when, you know women in other countries can just soar through midlife. And I usually respond to them sharing. We that what I believe at least part of the problem is that we have such high exposure to endocrine disrupting chemicals, which can impact our hormones for the worse. And I've had several podcasts where we've talked about endocrine disrupting chemicals, I'm happy to have read in your book that you agree you mentioned a study that shared women who have high levels of these endocrine disrupting chemicals are going to go through menopause on average four years earlier than women with lower levels. And these are things like what you can be exposed to in plastics, and fragrances, even sometimes dairy and certain grains that have mold, toxins, herbicides, and pesticides, they can all contribute to this load of environment, endocrine disrupting chemicals in our body, which can negatively impact our hormones. So I think because of the toxic world, unfortunately, our hormones are impacted. Would you agree with that? Or do you want to add to that question, like why we need more replacement than maybe women and on other continents?

Dr. Gary Donovitz 41:14

No, I think you touched on it. I mean, we're a very toxic society in terms of the way we eat, our foods are tainted and becoming more tainted. There's plastics everywhere people microwave and plastics, they anything you can do to make yourself toxic, we've have done and bromide toxicity. So that's really not good for your iodine levels. And then you lose that sort of immuno boosting from the iodine that you would have had, but we've already destroyed most of our iodine in our soils anyway. So we've done a lot to make ourselves toxic. And we can do a lot to make ourselves clean again. But again, it takes people like you out there talking about the endocrine disruptors, so that we don't necessarily go into menopause earlier, because we're not trying to to do that. We're trying to actually say, let's individually do prevention, let's individually and every patient is different optimize hormones. So not all hormones are equal. And not all people are created equal.

Not all women are created equal. And men are the same. They come in all sizes and shapes and ages. And certainly in terms of these integrated disruptors, everybody's different in how much of those in the disruptors we've ingested in our lifetime, and the ones who have ingested more are going to have a much more difficult time early on, if they don't get their hormones optimized. And they get much more organ destruction. That's why people like you look at people are like, wow, you're 40 cuz you look 55 whereas other people are 60 years of age, who have clean living, who beaten clean, who don't have all those toxins in their body, and you're like, you're 60 you look 45. And so I think that's, that's what happens.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 43:00

I think that to further echo what you said, I think part of this is my personal belief, part of the cancer risk comes down to the the toxic burden that that body carries. So if you want to reduce your cancer risk, you need to get the endocrine disrupting chemicals out of your life as best you can. So transitioning back to pellets here. We've mentioned pellet therapy, but let's talk about why they're different. So what are pellets made of? How do they work? How are they implanted in a patient speak to nap.

Dr. Gary Donovitz 43:27

So pellets are really simple. They're just bioidentical testosterone or bioidentical estradiol. Then we mix a little bit of stearic acid, stearic acid, it's just a binding agents, the same thing that's in Tylenol and Advil and whatever else, supplements, so it's pretty much everywhere. That's all that we put in our pellets, we then compress them at 10s of 1000s of pounds of pressure, then we sterilize them in the best way that you can sterilize pellets. So there's less than a one in a million chance that your pellets not sterile. We then take and insert it in the fat back into the hip painlessly through a little small trocar we use a little bit of local Anastasia, so you don't feel the pellets. So going in those pellets then lasts for three to four months in women and four to five months and men. So the nice thing is about this is you get relatively constant blood levels. So you're not taking a pill every day and being on a hormonal roller coaster ride or having a rubber cream on twice a day, with big spikes in your testosterone or estrogen levels.

And you only have to do it three or four times a year and that's most men twice a year. That's much better than say shots for men because the synthetic shots for men done correctly would be done twice a week would be 104 shots. So most men would rather do something twice a year than 104 times a year particularly when it involves a needle for women. The pellets actually will give you much more consistent blood levels, both consistent on the estrogen side. In the testosterone side, without those big spikes, when you can get rid of those spikes in hormones, you can actually lower your side effects. And we don't have a lot of side effects on the pellets that other people talk about with synthetic hormones taken orally or patches or creams, which is why you don't see a lot of commercial products on the market. They tried to make a patch and the patch had so many side effects that the FDA didn't even approve it. We just don't have them fellows.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 45:29

Sure, it sounds too good to be true. They're safe, they're effective. So why have more gynecologists not jumped at the chance to offer this to the patients.

Dr. Gary Donovitz 45:37

So I think there's been a lot of adversity at the society level, the American College of ob gyn, the North American menopause, society, immigrants society, because they have so much support from big pharmaceutical companies. And the big pharmaceutical companies are going to support those products that they make. And in fact, I was at a meeting not too long ago, and a person who is actually the head of the department of ob gyn at a major university said all she uses for her female patients and All she needs is Premarin and prempro. I found that interesting, because those are the two hormones that were in the whi that had all the side effects. That's all she needs.

And those side effects were not in 1%, or 5%. They're in 20, and 30% of the patients, or more, then she's not up on the literature. So knowledge is power, she's pretty much render herself powerless. But moreover, the societies who should support women's health care, have left them abandoned, as the FDA really has. And there's this huge gender divide. I just wrote another article on gender divide, which got accepted in a magazine, which will be published in the next two months. And the thing about gender divide is there's 31 testosterone products for men, and zero for women. That's amazing, considering it's the most important hormone for women no matter what take it a life, and there's not one commercial product

Dr. Stephanie Gray 47:03

Yanks. Yeah, not fair. Let's talk about the FDA for a second here. So how do you respond when providers or patients ask about hormone pellets not being FDA approved?

Dr. Gary Donovitz 47:13

Well, so far, I mean, the FDA is only going to approve what people bring to them. They don't they don't make substances, they don't do studies. They basically look at studies and then approve them or don't approve them. To this point, everything that's been brought to the FDA had a lot of side effects. And, and the studies were small again, I mean, nobody's got 500,000 patients like we do under therapy at all in the world. Now, having said that, we actually went to the FDA, I went to the FDA about three years ago now. And I was there for about six minutes. And they said, Gary, we've read all of your studies in your book, that was my first book at the time. And we'll we're going to approve your pellets.

But we want you to just go home, and we want you to tell it 40 guys with three pellets and send us their testosterone levels. I said, Well, I've done 66,000 assertions myself, and about 20% of my patients are males, a lot of police officers, firefighters, first responders, emfs, guys, FBI, so I, I'm pretty sure I got 40 in that big number. And I said, I can send you those and they said no, no use all different doses. And I said, Well, that's true. That's because males come in different sizes and different ages. And they were like, No, we just want you to put three pellets and 240 guys and said, we'll approve your pellets. And I said, Well, all right, but they're not going to be optimized. And they said, We don't care about optimization. That was the first red flag. Anyways, I left I was walking down the hall.

And I was like, Man, this just doesn't make a lot of sense. What just happened? And then I was like, Oh my God, we forgot to talk about women. So I ran back down there. And I was like, Hey, I have one more question. What about women? And they're like, we don't care about women, testosterone. So I said, Can we quote you on that? And they said, Sure. And it was a lady that was the head of my committee, there was 28 people in there, but there was a female. That was the head of my committee, and I found it amazing that she would make that statement. So as long as the FDA doesn't realize the advantages of testosterone, and as long as there is this gender divide, that's going to then bleed into the societies and their position statements.

So it's not until Big Pharma comes up with a commercial product that the FDA will approve, and that they can write a big check to the societies for that we're gonna see that move. However, having said that, with 5000 practitioners in the United States doing byo T, and those extending every day to a bigger number, we can actually take this right into mainstream medicine ourselves, because the physicians and nurse practitioners set the standard of care and because of that, we have control over what happens with Care and I believe it is changing healthcare. And we are moving to mainstream medicine. And we are making this more available to patients everywhere.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 50:07

Totally agree and glad to be a part of it. So let's talk about age. So how young Can someone actually start with pellets.

Dr. Gary Donovitz 50:14

So for me, I don't start women typically under 25, because that's when they start losing testosterone. I don't tell it teenagers, if you will, even though there's a lot of teenagers that seem like they'd benefit, we just don't men usually in their mid 30s. Young men with low testosterone, I typically in using other medications to try to derive testosterone from their own testicles for a while if I can, and then come in with pellet therapy in their 30s. So that's where we start, there really is no upper age limit. I have people in their 90s getting pellets because they want to feel their best no matter what their age.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 50:49

Yep, agreed. And I would say my patients that are older that are getting pellets, they they're aging very well. And they look great, and they feel great. And they say they're never stopping. They're, they're therapy. Exactly. The pellets are actually also safe for women postpartum. So even if they're breastfeeding, and I had my son and you know what lactation? It's interesting, I want to share this with the audience, because even women who are breastfeeding can receive testosterone pellets that does not pass on into the breast milk. And that's a great strategy postpartum, especially if women are very sleep deprived and tired and moody and needed an energy boost. They're

Dr. Gary Donovitz 51:23

one of the best therapy Stephanie for postpartum depression. So women who are prone to that who had it with her last pregnancy, one of the best things they can do is get pelleted after their pregnancy. And again, as you mentioned, and rightfully so it's not passed in breast milk, so you can still breastfeed and at the same time, prevent postpartum depression. So it's kind of a win win situation for you and the baby.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 51:46

Absolutely, absolutely. I do want to being fully transparent, because I know the listeners are going to want to know, I do want to talk about the risk of side effects. So I know with my patients and it sounds like with you as well as really, with IoT the side effect profile rate is very low, like less than 1%. But what are those side effects? What could a woman or man experience with pellets.

Dr. Gary Donovitz 52:09

So women to 10% will get some acne in the first round, tradeable is not a deal breaker, most people will stop their pellet therapy 10% may develop some facial hair and not like me, but they may have a few facial hairs occur again, that's typically going to be in the midline, not a deal breaker they can can pluck those blacks, those that that is a fairly common side effect less than 1% have hair thinning, most people associate testosterone with hair thinning. But thyroid is is the lion's share of hair thing that we see way more than what you see with testosterone. So that's a very rare side effect. Those are the major ones that we see in women, other than some women say, Wow, my libido is a lot higher than it's ever been.

Could we reduce the testosterone, but it's not really a side effect. That's sort of a secondary benefit, if you will. Now men on the other hand, they don't develop so much the acne, they can have a little bit of back acne. But that's that that's not as common as it is in women. bigger problem in men is you're going to have a reduction in sperm counts. So for men who are trying to conceive, they need to know it's probably not a good idea to be on pellet therapy. And I'm not a believer in HCG and other add ons because you're still not going to have normal sperm counts on pellet therapy, you're basically taking over their testosterone production. And because of that, their sperm count will be near zero. So in the source, it's male birth control, short term, now, it takes about eight months for that to come back.

So once they come off their pellets or from the time from their last pelleting, about eight months later, their sperm count will recover. So timing of the pellets to timing of when they want to try to have a baby is always an important conversation on the male side there is about a 10 to 15% shrinkage in the testicle, but that's because the Tesco wasn't working very well anyway, and we've taken over that production. Again, that's not a side effect. That's a deal breaker and people especially when you first run it and tell people as you said transparently, this could happen or will happen there, they're actually okay with that also. So for males, that's the the two major side effects. We don't have a lot of growth in the prostate, or anything like that, or pellet therapy, we don't have an increased risk and cardiovascular disease, it is protective to the bones in the male also. So we don't have as you went through the myths before. We don't even have the liver problems. Synthetic testosterone in men particularly has led to liver cancers. We don't have any on bioidentical testosterone, so you don't have any liver abnormalities either. And that's the major risk from testosterone therapy unless you have some Some others you experienced.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 55:02

Yeah, I want to actually speak to benefits for a second because we didn't talk a lot about bone health. But I was absolutely like floored, like, shocked when I started using hormone pellets in my patients to see bone density levels improve, like not just minorly improved, like dramatically improved. So with a lot of the medications that I was trained in school to use, maybe if we're lucky, they will preserve more, you know, prevent more bone loss, but I never saw bone mass gained per se. So with pellets, one two years in, I would see these dexa scans come in on my desk and I have to go show my staff I was so excited. Look at the percentage increase, you know, you get to call this patient back and tell her that she no longer has osteopenia or no longer has osteoporosis. And that was super exciting. I had never seen any other intervention through my career that had improved bone density to that degree. So that was another added benefit that we didn't talk much about today. But I have men and women both who have osteoporosis who need hormones for their bone density.

Dr. Gary Donovitz 55:57

And you can reverse it and reverse it without using bisphosphonates and these drugs that cause nausea, and super hard bones and other complications. We've seen double digit meaning 1011 12% year over year increase in BMD just like you did, and that's a wonderful thing, because these people would have suffered with osteoporosis taking primary and prempro, which would have never reversed it. And in fact, it could even get worse. Now we have a way to reverse it. Because a hip fracture, keep in mind a hip fracture in a postmenopausal woman 30% of those die within the first year, because of not because of the hip fracture, but complications there up so we can prevent osteoporosis and hip fractures. And I believe that we could completely prevent osteoporosis if we get there early. Because one in seven women will develop osteoporosis after the age of 50. This is a totally preventable disease preventable with hormone optimization, preventable starting early,

Dr. Stephanie Gray 56:59

totally agreed. So I know the listeners are hopefully not convinced how important optimizing their hormones really are for them. So I encourage listeners to find someone well trained in hormone pellets that can run the right tests that can interpret the test appropriately that can dose you and monitor you correctly. Through your journey. I think at this point, you mentioned you've done 60 or 70,000 pellet insertions. I've done 5000, which sounds a lot less, but that's a lot. Yeah, you want to find a provider who knows what they're doing, you're going to have reduced rate of the side effects whatnot, they're going to be able to refine that dosing, and provide that personalized medicine that Dr. Donovan's keeps mentioning here. So I do want to conclude this podcast asking Dr. motivates his top longevity tip. And I have a lot but if you had to pick one, what would your top longevity tip be?

Dr. Gary Donovitz 57:46

My longevity tip would be exactly what we talked about. Find out first of all, what Where are your hormones today? Where are those hormones in relation to your age, get your hormones optimized early, keep your hormones optimized early, and then exercise, eat right and decrease the toxins. If you do all of those things, which is not hard, you'll live a much longer life but moreover, you'll have a much happier life. And I really appreciate everything you're doing Stephanie and I haven't told you that today.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 58:19

Well thank you thank you for changing healthcare and for founding a company to educate providers like myself so that we can help we can we can reach the masses right? reach more people really optimize health and longevity and our patients. So if you're listening and you want to learn more, check out bio t medical, as well as my clinic website i h h clinic.com. And your longevity blueprint comm To learn more, so thank you Dr. Donovan's today for spending so much time with us and coming on the show and sharing all about what your company offers.

Dr. Gary Donovitz 58:46

Thanks. Great to be with you.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 58:49

Wow, what an expert. I'm so blessed to have had Dr. Donovan's on as a guest when I first learned that testosterone alleviated more symptoms than estrogen or progesterone. I was shocked, but it's the truth. And although this podcast wasn't about progesterone, or thyroid hormones, if you followed me for a while, you know those are important too. They all play roles in your hormonal Symphony. If you're listening and you feel miserable, you can feel better. The benefits of hormones are extraordinary. So don't suffer. Find a provider who can listen to you screen you and treat you appropriately. The sooner the better. Be sure to check out my book your longevity blueprint. And if you aren't much of a reader, you're in luck. You can now take my course online where I walk you through each chapter in the book. Plus for a limited time the course is 50% off, check this offer out at your longevity blueprint.com and click the course tab. One of the biggest things you can do to support the show and help us reach more listeners is to subscribe to the show. And leave us a rating and review on Apple podcasts or wherever you listen. I read all of the reviews and would truly love to hear your suggestions for show topics, guests or how you're applying what you've learned on the show to create your own longevity blueprint. The podcast is produced By the team at counterweight creative As always, thanks so much for listening and remember, wellness is waiting.

The information provided in this podcast is educational. No information provided should be considered to be or used as a substitute for medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Always consult with your personal medical authority.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai