Restore Hormones to Factory Settings? More Science for bHRT

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Restore before more is the number one tenet of Flipping 50. But in this episode, we visit the concept that you restore hormones using bioidentical hormone replacement. Whether you are or you aren't, whether you're on hormone replacement but not bioidentical hormones, stay with me. I'd say most women I know in 2024 are open to and already having the conversation about hormone replacement. In our 10th year at Flipping 50, we've been discussing pros and cons and what happens with the body composition, bone density, muscle mass, and brain health during menopause for that many years. We touch on the anecdotal evidence that we have from thousands of participants in strength training programs, and fewer but more intimately my private clients who use or choose not to use bioidentical hormone replacement and the results that each of them get. In this episode, I introduce a new guest to the show whose book Restore takes a look at the benefits of bioidentical hormone replacement. Whether you are, you aren't, you're on the fence about the ability to restore hormones and the effects on short and long-term health, I I think that you'll like this episode. I'm Debra Atkinson. You're listening to Flipping 50, where I address your top struggles and concerns, but most of all, we hope to inspire you. And so you expect to age very differently than generations have before you, and you demand better products and services. I share what to eat, how to move, and how to change your mindset so you can have the energy and the vitality that you want, you need, and deserve in the second and better half. My guest today is Dr. Gregory Brannan, a surgeon, public figure, and founding— or founder of the leading bioidentical hormone replacement therapy practice, Optimal Bio, where he oversees 7 offices across North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia. In addition to his current role of physician and medical director at Optimal Bio, Brannon uses over 30 years of medical experience to educate others on taking ownership of their health. Dr. Brannon is the author of the 2020 published book, The Hormone Handbook: Optimizing Your Health Through Bioidentical Hormones, and will publish his second book in the spring of 2024 titled Restore. Prior to spending 30 years as successful practice or private practice OB-GYN in Cary, North Carolina. Dr. Brennan completed his medical residency at University of Southern California Women's Hospital, Los Angeles, and then served as assistant professor of obstetrics and gynecology at University of North Carolina School of Medicine with work at Wake Area Health Education Center. Brennan's OB-GYN experience sparked his interest in hormones and how they work within the body. Impressed and inspired in his experience with bioidentical hormone replacement, Brennan opened Optimal Bio in Cary, North Carolina in 2012. Optimal Bio is a bioidentical hormone replacement practice dedicated to bringing people's bodies back to the optimal levels they were initially designed to maintain. So if you can believe that, we're looking at restoring you to factory settings. Let's get started. Welcome. Thank you so much, Dr. Brandon, for joining me.

My pleasure, Debra Atkinson.

All right, hot topic here, pun intended for all those hotties listening. But we— I can't wait to dive into this hormone therapy, bioidentical hormones. I think we could even go back to page one and make the distinction. But before I do that, I think everybody wants to know a little bit about something about my guest that's behind the scenes. And so Why are you doing what you're doing right now? I mean, what led you to this vocation? Did you actually go to elementary school career day and say, I want to, you know, be someone who does bioidentical hormones for women?

That's funny. Well, my whole life I wanted to be a doctor, I could tell you that, since I can remember. So yeah, I've always had a passion of that. And I think me being raised by a single mom was interesting because I ended up being an OB-GYN. And I've been given— I've been blessed with 6 daughters and 1 son. I love delivering babies. I think women are amazing. So the answer is yes, I always want to be a doctor. And as an OB, I found myself that part. I did a lot of high-risk OB, a lot of surgery, but my goal is always to avoid surgery. My goal is to do that as a last resort. That was always my goal. But when I deal with women as a, say, a primary care aspect of them, and when we came with complaints of, say, they're tired or brain fog or libido And I was just very uncomfortable with the conclusion was everybody did need an antidepressant, or everybody was, you know, it's part of aging, or just suck it up. So that drove me about the last 20 years to look for the root cause. And that's why we're here. That's what drove me now, bioidentical hormones. And, and more importantly, as an OB, I was always trained replacement hormone therapy was fantastic, synthetic or whatever, didn't matter. But the more studies I do, do I want to replace the body with the actual molecules made and knows how to work or something synthetic. And we may go over the data in a minute, but I call them the bioidentic hormones are human. Mayo Clinic says these are the hormones are recognized as same. And that's important. It's atom for atom, molecule for molecule, 3-dimensional for 3-dimensional. So the body knows how to utilize it, metabolize it, and eliminate it. It's not foreign to the body. And that's crucial. Because the synthetics are the ones that increase the cancers, the blood clots, the high blood pressure, the dementia, not the human hormone.

Yeah, and you beautifully did that because you anticipated my next question before I asked it. So thank you for doing that, kind of clarifying the difference between synthetic and bioidentical. Come back to this. So maybe I should ask you both questions, but what's the longest documented use of hormone replacement therapy, and then specifically bioidenticals?

Beautiful. The longest happens to be bioidentical. The longest happened to be pellets. The longest and the first in the original was pellets. 1931 was the first time scientists isolated a molecule called testosterone. The very first study ever done was 1935 on women who had hysterectomies. Because this is the thing, people call this Testosterone, a male hormone. No, it's the most abundant hormone in the human body. It's about 50 times higher than estrogen in a young woman. So therefore, it's the most important human hormone. So, by the way, the longest and the most studied is the bioidentical structure via pellet.

Wow. That I did not know. Mm-hmm. So why pellets? How did that come into being?

Well, the first way to actually— what a pellet is, is dehydrated pure hormone. And so again, this is back in the '30s, was that was the— I'll call it the first way they actually had the very first way they isolated testosterone in the first place was in male bull urine and they dehydrated it. To get really nerdy, 5,000 years Chinese would use dry urine of menopausal women for fertility. We use that now as FSH, gonadotropins, how they get people to ovulate. So it was, it was used for centuries, but it's the dehydration of that molecule. Then you could pack it together and crystallize it. So what happens is an endocrine gland, i.e., the ovary or the testicle, does not connect from A to B. It makes the hormone and puts it into the, into the blood vessels, and then it carries around the body and each cell that needs it grabs it. That's what endocrine gland does. The pellet does exactly that. It sits in fat in the buttocks area. And as the capillaries surround it and the fat tissue surrounds it, it secretes at a steady state. It peaks in 48 hours and stays steady for 3 to 5 months. And that's very, very important because the side effects of hormones is the fluctuation of enzyme called aromatase. That's the enzyme that converts testosterone to estradiol. And when that's steady, That's less migraines or a bloating or breast tenderness or mood swings. That's the key thing to it. So the pill is the most steady state. Since that time, shots, creams, orals have occurred. But here's the little secret people don't tell you. Pharmacy companies cannot own an organic molecule or a human molecule. So to me, the onus is on them to tell me why their artificial molecule is superior to what the body makes.

Wow. Okay. Come back to why do some doctors dislike pellets so much?

Um, first off, this doctor, me, I was ignorant. I had no idea what they were about 20 years ago, 18 years ago. And then I started studying and learning about them, but you're, you're taught, I'm gonna say in the optic, but sort of we are, you're trained It's the way I'm trained to be a hammer. Everything's a nail, right? And I think you're just told over time, this is what the company makes, this is what it does. I think sometimes we forget our biochemistry and the very important thing with biochemistry, everything in our body, nothing works in isolation. Sugar affects blood cells, I mean, everything's intertwined. But to make it really simple, I don't know how a car works,, but I know it needs a carburetor for oxygen and it needs gasoline for the fuel. We're the same way. In my mind, the sex hormones are the human hormones. The estrogen, the testosterone, the progesterone is the fuel, and the thyroid is the carburetor because that can turn— the mitochondria turns oxygen into energy, and I consider the thyroid the carburetor. So that's in my mind how simple this works. The complexity of it, way beyond my level. I'm an MD and all that kind of stuff, but to say I know everything would be a lie. But I know this, when you look back at the data of normal ranges, and I use this a lot in my new book called Restore. We have a disease called diabetes. We all know that's a blood sugar that's high. The number's roughly 100. If you're over 100, you're diabetic. And we know the side effects of that are dementia, cardiovascular disease, blindness, amputations. We know that. There's not a disease number based upon low testosterone. There's not. But if you look back at how they— what they do is they usually most studies have 10,000 people in them. They get a median and make a bell curve, standard deviation on each side. So 80% fall in this range. And here's what really got me going. The range today for a woman depends on the lab, but for testosterone, regardless of age, is roughly 3 to 41. But 50 years ago, It was 70 to 250. How about somebody ask the question why? For a man, it was 800 to 1,400. Today, some labs have men down as low as 170. So the question we should look at is why is the curve shifted left? Why are we calling these values normal? Just because most of the population is that range? No, it's like saying if all of us were diabetic, now we call diabetes normal. We would never do that. Yeah, I believe we're doing that for hormones.

Yeah. And very recently somebody pointed out to me that it also— if you're testing in a lab, like right here in Phoenix, I'm being compared to the, the average of people here in Phoenix. Is that accurate?

Some are, some not. Some studies are— you think some of the labs they draw from are are people that went to get their labs. How do we know they were healthy? What are they— are they metabolically healthy? UNC Chapel did a study about 4 or 5 years ago that said— they looked at about a million people in the study— 12% of Americans are metabolically healthy. So this is the problem. A doctor, me, looks at a range. We'll just say a woman comes in and she's 8. You're within normal range. I can't sleep, I'm tired, I got no libido, I'm anxiety and depression. Well, you says you're normal, here's, you know, antidepressant. No, that's what got me. That's what woke my butt up was, okay, what was it when I— I'm 63— what was it when I was in school? So I look back at the data, I'm like, oh my gosh. So the question is, why are we low? And in the body, testosterone converts estrogens, like I said, estradiol. Estradiol is the primary feedback, negative feedback loop back to the hypothalamus. The last 50, 60 years, we've been bombarded with fake estrogens, plastics, pesticides, atrazine, all these estrogen mimickers Trick the body that we have high estrogen, which comes from testosterone, so we make less. That's the culprit. The culprit is not to mask it with the SSRI or to say suck it up. The culprit is how can I fix the root cause? Well, I can't make my testicles or ovaries make more. We can fasting, eating fats, eating proteins, lifting weights. There's certain things we could do to a point, but we are set in the womb, these gonads, to a certain reservoir. There's a paper named Traveston who, at the last 5 decades, this looked at men. We're losing roughly 1% per year since 1970, and we're losing 2% per year since 2002 of both testosterone and sperm. Something's going on with our endocrine system, and that's the cause. But the side effects are osteoporosis, dementia, belly fat, all these metabolic disorders, diabetes. All these things are because of metabolic disorder. So let's reevaluate the Ferrari with optimal levels and then tell me how you feel.

So good. Yeah, I love all of that. And the fact that we do have so much more prediabetes, insulin resistance, osteoporosis. I mean, it's a household word. We used to have to tell people what it was and define it and illustrate it. Now everybody knows.

This is Debra Atkinson. 1977, the food pyramid came through. It was pushed through by the grain company. 9 to 12 grains a day. I'm not here about their motive. I'm not going to attack motive. But you can look back from, say, 1910 to 1980. Diabetes, cancers, dementias, metabolic syndrome, PCOS, endometriosis. It was pretty stable. The mid-'80s, it started kicking up. There's a disease called fatty liver. The first non-alcohol fatty liver disease ever in America was actually isolated in 1980, 3 years after the food pyramid. Now 40 to 60% of Americans have it. Duh, it's carbohydrates. We used to be a high-fat, high-protein diet, a diet and complex carbohydrates in between. The problem is we change this processed food. Sugar is not the answer. If you never eat a fat, you'll die in a few months. If you never eat a protein, you'll die in a few months. If you never eat a carbohydrate, you're healthier. It's crazy that we just throw these pro— and I'm not anti-sugar, it's this processed sugar, it's how much sugar, because the culprit is insulin. And you know, you're taught eat 3 meals a day, 3 snacks a day, then you're getting insulin bombarded, you know, 8, 12, you know, 14, 18 hours a day. That's the issue. Put your insulin to like an 8-hour window, that's a different ball game. But we're put— we stress this body's wonderfully made, it can adapt, but the difference between surviving and thriving, That's the key to life.

Yeah, and I think that's really what we're all after, all the listeners for sure. Let's dig back into bioidentical hormones versus not. There are a lot of listeners out there who are here getting fitness information. They're getting tips on how do I exercise to get back my lean muscle or gain lean muscle tissue, stay, stay strong as I age, or gain bone density. And then there are always a couple who will surface and say, but is this the same if I'm on hormones or not on hormones? And by the way, my answer to that is yes. It's just if you're— if you are on hormones, anecdotally I can say we've seen better results. You get a slight edge, and we tend to see that. But what's true in terms of science with documentation, if we talk— if we wanted to talk bone and muscle or brain health, let's break each one down.

Let's do bone first.

Let's do bone first.

More women die of— more women die of osteoporosis than endometrial, ovarian, and uterine cancer combined. Boom. Off the bat. Let's go back on what— how is bone made? Bone is made— what hormone makes bone? There's 12 minerals on it. It's— we need calcium every millisecond for the body to work, but you can't let it float around in the blood or you get all these clots. So it's actually stored in bone. So bone is dissolved, may dissolve, may dissolve, may dissolve every millisecond. A young person, say between 20 and 40, we change our bone 25% per year. All right. But what actually makes the molecules decide to make this? It's testosterone. Testosterone and progesterone, women. Testosterone, men. Estrogen slows down the reabsorption. So what happens by 40? Both men and women lose 0.5% of the bone mass every year. Women in menopause lose 5% of bone mass per year. Here's the, here's the kicker in the rear end. Since there's a paper in 1979, the American College of OB-GYN, testosterone pellets with estrogen increase bone— listen to this— increase bone production 8.3% per year. So you can make more bone on pellets. That's not counting working out. And you get a 35-year-old who works out, the reason why they work out and make bone and make muscle, because the body gets stressed, tells the body make more testosterone because it's floating around. That's the benefit. Testosterone does its function. So hormones are the fuel to make more bone. Again, every single cell in the body needs a— has testosterone receptors. Every cell's estrogen amount it needs is dependent upon what it needs for it, and therefore the aromatase is dependent upon each cell. Same for the brain. Testosterone actually makes more brain called neuroplasticity, makes the synapse talk closer. So I could use— name the thing, I could do it all day long. There's a great book called Nobody Wants You Healthy by Dr. Mark Richards. He was one of the Obama White House physicians, and he goes through the history. He never heard about pellets and testosterone. And he goes through, he said he would spend 10,000 hours of study showing the data of all different systems of the body, how optimal numbers he believes can decrease overall costs in America by a trillion dollars of healthcare per year.

Wow, that is a sad state of events right there.

Yeah, he says just before COVID $2 trillion a year is spent on healthcare in America. 90% is chronic healthcare. He estimates half of that can be eliminated if testosterone levels are optimized. And he has some good facts showing the data how pellets are that because they make— I have a book called The Hormone Handbook that does the same stuff, data. And then the new book, How I Restored— my new book has about 500 references, about 84,000 words going over the science. I mean, to me, it really just applied biochemistry. This body is wonderfully made for a reason. And that's why it's important to understand Band-Aids are triaging it. But to make your bones healthy, I've done 40,000 placements now over the years. I see women who are 65, 75, 85. You would guess them 15, 20 years younger by their activity, their brainpower. It's, it's, it's, it's the way we're supposed to be, bottom line.

Okay, so question to anybody, any listener who's out there not on pellets, but she is on HRT. Maybe she's doing a combination of shots or creams or oral. She's gonna think right now, oh no, am I, am I screwed? Do I need to be on pellets, or what I'm doing is not working? Is she still getting similar benefits?

No, not similar. Let's go over this together. It's important. I was always trained about hormone replacement. I loved it. When the WHI paper came out in 2002, I called up the most famous OBs in the world up. I said, I said, Dr. Michelle, this paper is terrible. And we talked about it. He goes, you're correct, Greg, continue Prempro. And there's a great book called Estrogen Matters that actually explains the WHI paper, how it's been— how it's actually been blown out of proportion. But that being said, in that study was not estrogen. They used Premarin, which are equine estrogens. Equine, okay? Horses. It did not use progesterone. It used Provera. Which is a progestin. Uh, in my, in my book, in both my books, there's a study for Nero that looks at the progestin versus Provera. Progestin, Provera, increases breast cancer 69% versus progesterone, the natural one, that decreases it 10%. In Dr., um, Mark Richards' book, in my book, Dr. Glazer's papers show that breast cancer can be decreased between 40 and 60% by being on testosterone pellets. So when people are doing creams or shots, I'll go over more detail in a minute, they're getting some benefit, but there's some risk. But the bioidentical, because of the molecules made by your body, it's been when you, when you sieve those out between bioidentical versus synthetic, it actually has increased benefit. I'll give you an example. Testosterone synthetic There's 3 categories. One's called the ester. One's— that's the most common, the cipronate, the ethrate, and the propionate. One is called the, um, the 19-nortestosterone, and one's called 17-alkylation. You can take orally. They all work. They all work great. But there are risk factors of blood pressure and blood clots increase. But the biggest thing is a great book called Neurodegenerative Disease out of Belgium that says those 3 categories can increase apoptosis of the brain cells, so it's increased Alzheimer's. The human hormone that we make actually lowers Alzheimer's, lowers dementia, lowers blood pressure, and lowers blood clots. Just because the key fits in the lock does not mean it turns it on fully. That's why it's so important to get the molecule that your body makes.

Very clear. Thank you. That was—

and then birth control for young women Progestin is in birth control pill. The Mirena IUD is a progestin. They increase the depression because they block the GABA receptor, but a paper in 2018 showed that they increased breast cancer up to 30%. So these are things that must be discussed because can I get benefit without the risk? And I believe the human bioidentical hormone, the data since 1935 shows that it's there.

And is that the longest? What's the longest documented use of bioidenticals?

1935. That's the longest one, the pellet.

And somebody's been using it?

So yes, ma'am.

How old is that individual right now?

Oh, I don't— there's, there's over 26,000 studies on this stuff. So, um, I don't know. I don't know. I don't— I know my oldest patient right now is 93, and I've been doing this for 13 years. Um, so there's been patients here that, that, that have been pills, like older women or men that have been on it before they met me. But the problem is, is that, uh, again, if a pharmacy company cannot own the molecule, they have no incentive to make it, right?

That's the whole key, right?

I want to do this— my whole goal is to make this biologically adapt exactly the body makes to put in physiological optimal levels. Like, you'd never hear this. You'd never hear, "Oh, no insulin is normal for your age." You'd never hear that. You'd never hear, "Oh, no cortisol is normal for your age." No, you'd never say that because those disease processes are very lethal very quickly. But low testosterone kills us slowly over time, and we call it aging. So I believe if we attacked aging as a disease, You would not wait for osteoporosis. You would not wait for Alzheimer's. You would not wait for, you know, disorders. You would— don't get me wrong, biological aging is different than chronological aging. Chronological— and my new book, Restore, the whole holy grail to me is to take the benefit of aging, the wisdom of aging, with the hormones of a youth. That to me is the dream holy grail. That's my goal is to I don't want to get younger, but I want the benefits of the, of the youthful. The sad part is about 20% of my patients are under the age of 30 because again, their levels are so much lower than preceding generations because of what's happening in the womb.

Okay, so we've talked about muscle, or I've talked about bone, but I would love to shift to talking about muscle. And, and part of my premise is that when it comes to exercise and the proactive things that we can do there, we actually need muscle in order to do the things that are really going to be most beneficial to us for bone. So talk about bioidenticals and their impact and effect on muscle.

Muscle is one of the highest receptors of testosterone in the body. I got— what's the most important muscle you would consider?

The most important muscle I would consider? Well, I would probably say the glutes.

I would say the heart.

Mm, well, good point.

Yes. Okay, now that's why I bring that up is because the heart is 35% by weight mitochondria, which is, we know, the powerhouse of the cell, and it has double the testosterone receptors than any other tissue in the body. So I agree with you saying the glutes, big muscles, I agree.

Well, we're talking skeletal versus—

yes, skeletal versus muscle. Yeah, but the skeletal muscles to breathe, to walk around, to move, to function You know, you've been— I'm sure you've read many papers that just exercise alone 3 days a week increases— decreases morbidity, mortality. So, I'm a believer in it. But, the underlying reason of that is because there's fuel, the testosterone in there, the estrogen in there, the thyroid, all those things in there, lower the insulin levels, all these things do that. But, the fuel, I just believe today's generation, Ms. Debra, is even exercising, even eating correctly, is doing it with 30, 40, 50%, 100% less hormones than 3 or 4 generations ago. And that to me makes it more of an uphill battle. So if we have optimal hormone and then do everything you've talked about, I listen to your podcast, do the things you've talked about, that to me is optimal bio. That to me is what I want to do. I don't want to ever hear I'm normal for your age. That drives me crazy, right? It's symptomatology. So the idea behind it, what does muscle do? Stores glycogen. They burn glycogen, which is sugar. You convert oxygen to energy. In fact, bigger muscle at a resting metabolic rate actually burns more sugar, burns more energy. That's what it does. So, yes. If I'm correct on this, if you add up over the age of 65, I think it's number 3 or 4 cause of death is falling down. Falling down. So, that's why neuromuscular, have practiced doing things with your balance with your eyes closed, standing on, you know, on BOSU balls, anything that your proreceptor receptors go. So, it's this beautiful system we have, the most important The most sophisticated computer in the world is in your noggin and how it talks to your gut, your muscle, and your brain. It's amazingly made. So the answer is yes, and stress is good for this body. Proper stress, right? Cold, heat, stress, exercise, uh, at— to a point, because your adrenals could adapt. The problem is we're so depleted that we get adrenal fatigue, and now we get in a bad state because we make too much cortisol, store fat. So it's that fine balance. Basically the two— I saw the two master switches, AMPK and mTOR. When they're in balance at the cellular level is when you're at your best.

So good. So say a little bit more about those two for listeners who are like, what is it?

Okay, so the currency in your body, the currency in your body are ATPs. And when your body can read this thing called AMPK, could read When you have a lot more ADP, that says, okay, time to make ATP. So what that does is it slows down muscle growth, it slows down fat growth, it slows down all those things to take all those energy things that need energy and to store energy back up again. Then when your energy's stored back up again, then your body goes, okay, so then your body goes, oh, I have extra energy. Now time to build muscle, build bone, build brain. That's the mTOR. It's that balance. And fasting and feasting are crucial balance together. So fasting is one of the— fasting is one of the best things in the world to kick in your AMPK. And then exercise, high protein is the best thing to kick your mTOR. And there's that balance between those. And a lot of medications like metformin and things like that will attack the Refampin will actually attack the mTOR molecule. The complex is a 1 and— there's 2 complexes, a 1 and a 2. But really, the way our body's made, fasting does all that. All these things are trying to mimic fasting. So I'm a huge believer in fasting. I'm a huge believer in feasting. I believe in heat therapy, cold therapy. Those are real things to make this body stressed so your body can adapt. The best thing to be is a fat burner, sugar burner, and your body knows when to do it. Another thing about this, one molecule of glucose gives you 2 ATPs. One molecule of fat gives you around 100. But your body's smart. So if sugar's floating around, it's gonna use it. So we gotta be able to use it when we need it and use fat when we need it. That's the fine balance we have to do.

Yeah, love that. And I'm gonna say this, and you've served probably men and/or women, but I'm gonna guess a larger percentage of women over a long time. Do you, Do you see this or suspect this? Because I'm not sure that you might be hearing it clearly from patients, but I see a lot of women who are fasting. They're working with intermittent fasting, but I also think that one of the things that they get wrong is forgetting the importance of the refeed.

Oh, I can't agree with you more. I can't agree with you more. Men are simple or easy. We're slow for that. Women are complex. Dr. Peltz's book, Fasting Like a Girl, is one of the greatest books I've ever read on women. Estrogen loves fasting, progesterone loves carbohydrates and salt. So that's why I love women off birth control pill. Now, I'm not talking about contraceptive purposes, that's family planning, but I'm talking about their overall having their cycle is crucially important. So if we're on the same page there, Miss Debra, yes, fasting at the beginning of your cycle, the middle of your cycle, give your body needs. It's craving it for a reason.

Yeah, absolutely. And a lot of women here are postmenopausal as well. It's still super beneficial. And yet we cannot forget that part of how you turn on the benefit is by doing that refeed. So we can't have this, I'm fasting here and then I'm also caloric deprivation during my feeding window. That won't work.

That won't work. And again, I'm not anti-carbohydrate. I love Jason Fung's books, The Obesity Code, Obesity Code. I love Sean Baker's stuff. He's my podcast. There's all that goes together. We make it complex. Eat meat, eat fat, eat the right sugars, exercise. And by exercise, walk and lift heavy things. That's how it is. So here's the 5 things I think we should do. Sleep, eat, Exercise, remove stress, restore what you've lost. You know those 5 things, as long as God keeps you, you're gonna be great. Live a healthy life. We make it complicated, and that's the problem, is we make it so complicated. I got the special pill or the special vitamin. Now, I'm a big— I believe in supplementation because the problem is our topsoil has been destroyed, our food source is messed up. So I'm talking the best we can be, but Like these vitamin B's or complex are crucial. But I'll give you an example. People get sprayed with folic acid and enriched flour. 44% of Americans don't have this, you know, MTHFR. We can't metabolize folic acid, so it causes ADHD. Just get back to the way the raw foods, the best we can, and not make it so complicated.

I'm going to ask you a question, and this is, this is like opening up a new topic in the very last minute or two of a podcast is a bad idea, but that might mean I have that. I'm gonna have you back. But, you know, when we're talking to women on hormone therapy, we're talking about eating right, and I think that's all you need, and it sounds so simple. One other question that I think women have as a follow-up for this is, what about my thyroid? Should— do you think we have so many women who are on thyroid medication, is that unnecessarily?

I'm so happy. 1979. America took iodine out of our food. They replaced it with another halogen called bromine. If you look at the periodic table in your head, you have fluoride, chlorine, bromine, iodine, and astatine. All those are poison to your body but iodine. So what happens is we have these halogens compete with, with less iodine. We used to eat 200 times more iodine than we do today. The moment they took it out, women increased thyroid disorder. Ready for this? 800%. Okay, breast cancer, breast cancer increased 400% because iodine does something very important to glandular cells in breast in women, prostate in men. It pumps in one iodine molecule and one and two sodium out to keep the actual structure. Iodine also makes a molecule called delta-iodolactone that's a known scavenger of cancer cells. So we dropped our iodine. We had breast cancer at 1 in 20, um, 50, 60 years ago. Now it's 1 in 6 to 7. Japan still has the same rates we did 50 years ago because their iodine rate's the highest in the world. So iodine, I check thyroid, same thing, the same thing with hormone levels. Have they changed over time? We've dumbed down the thyroid range for thyroid, and I check a TF panel. The thyroid, I check TSH, free T4, free T3, reverse T3, antibodies, TPO, TGA, mitochondrial antibody, and ferritin. I check all 9 of those parameters. And my goal, the most important ratio— this comes from Dr. Broda Barnes' papers from the '70s— that a reverse T3 to T3 ratio is the biggest predictive value for overall health, morbidity, and cardiovascular disease. I want to keep the T3 as high as— free T3 as high as possible with no symptoms like palpitations, arrhythmias, and keeps your reverse T3 under 10. So, we can spend hours on the thyroid. I have a whole section in my book on this. To me, again, the thyroid is the carburetor, the sex hormones are the gasoline. And, when they're working together, you're the Ferrari, the Bugatti.

Okay. I want mine red, by the way.

Okay.

Very cool. Okay. So, perfect segue. So, please share. And, I do think we could have you back easily. There is so much more we could dive into, but you gave such such great answers, such passion behind your voice for those answers. I hear it, feel it. Tell us a little bit about your book and where everybody can get their hands on it, because I believe this is going to be the next best resource.

Well, my thank you. Uh, our website is optobio.com. That's my company. We have 7 offices in 3 states. We're in North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia. We're opening Texas in a few weeks. We're going across the country slowly, steadily, so we make sure we keep the quality of the office. We're across all social media platforms. My first book's called The Hormone Handbook. It's about 130 pages of good science on this kind of detail. Then my new book's called Restore, comes out, um, Amazon, everything, on March 12th. It's already pre-sale now. It gets about 84,000 words. I put about 500— the beginning of the book is non-science, none of it. It's this whole holy grail, the look for the fountain of youth. And I wanted to take people away, this journey that For sense, you should be looking for that. Again, the fact that the secret, the holy grail, is not living longer or being youthful. It's like Mark Twain said, "The youth is wasted in the young." I wanna have this passion as we age of gaining knowledge and wisdom, but tied together with healthy youth. And I believe that together, a guy named Schlesinger, a philosopher in 1850, said, "The three greatest blessings in life are not recognized while you possess them, only after you've lost them, which are your youth, your health, and your freedom. And that's what drives me is I want people to live free. And so the book called Restore, it's on our website. There's a whole section on our website, on our social media stuff to get that. I hope it helps people drive into it and become educated because I really believe the king and queen is the mirror. I understand we have councils, we ask for nutritionists and doctors and philosophers. I got all that. But ultimately, liberty demands responsibility, and I want people to be in charge of their life.

Amen. Dr. Greg Branagh, thank you so much for joining me.

Well, I'm honored, Debra. I truly appreciate the opportunity.

Okay, listeners, so now it's your turn. I know that from this conversation, there inevitably was something that you wish I would have asked, so you can give it to me if you see this posted on Instagram or Facebook. Facebook, you know you can reach out to me privately. I see all those and take them in. But I want you, if you're listening, to come over to the show notes. That'll be at flipping50.com/restorehormones. And on this page, I'm putting the links to all of the things. So I'm sure you were like, what was that book he mentioned? I got him. I got them all. They're right here. Not only his and the one you're going to want get Restore. That should be easy to remember from Restore Before More from Flipping 50. But the other books that he mentioned will also— if you don't already have them on your bookshelf or in your audiobooks, you will want to grab that as well. And what are you waiting for? Let's start flipping 50 today.