#256 Testosterone Replacement Therapy and Optimization - Saad Alam

Saad Alam (0:00)

And when I went to my primary care physician, the most interesting thing was that he actually thought the entire problem was in my head, because when he looked at my lab values, he thought that nothing was wrong.

Siim Land (0:14)

Welcome to the Siim Land Podcast. I'm your host, Siim Land, and today our guest is Saad Alam. Saad is an entrepreneur from the US and the founder and CEO of Hone. Hone is an online clinic specialized in male hormone optimization and health.

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Saad, welcome to the show.

Saad Alam (1:20)

Thanks, Siim. I'm really, really excited to be here.

Siim Land (1:24)

Yeah, we met first time on Face2Face a few years ago at the Biohacker Summit in Toronto.

And you were actually interviewing me for your websites. And we just was peak, if I'm not mistaken. And yeah, maybe like how's life been since that time?

Saad Alam (1:41)

You know, it's interesting. We actually started, it was a kind of like a content site called Prime, just having a little bit of fun. And we were just so incredibly enthralled with the idea of biohacking because I'm in large part of biohacker as well. And as we got really deep into the industry and I had a bunch of kind of personal problems that I went through on the side as well, we quickly evolved from Prime into peak and peak is now hone actually. And so what we really kind of like focus on is helping men optimize their hormones, having more confidence as they actually age.

And more than anything, like really helping people understand that there is this movement and a narrative that is changing, which is that age should not be a limit. And I kind of take that very seriously coming on 40 here right now and thinking that I do feel like I'm in my 20s, which has been absolutely amazing.

Siim Land (2:34)

Well, that's good to hear. But how did you get into this health and wellness in the first place?

Saad Alam (2:40)

That's a great question.

So I'll actually say it like this.

Health and wellness has always been a really big part of my life. My parents were first generation Pakistani immigrants. And when you are young, all you wanna do is really fit in more than anything. And so the way that I learned how to fit in was playing sports. And so I was an athlete growing up. I still am, I don't know, a pseudo athlete. I don't know if I'm really good at it, get it to any things anymore, but I work out six days a week. I've done it for the past 25 days of my life. I've tracked my sleep with three different devices. I try eating perfectly. I'm constantly researching, experimenting with different dieting protocols. I meditate twice a day. I've got an infrared sauna literally in my office so I can jump in and out of it between meetings. I do cold showers regularly. So I guess it's just, it's a very, very big part of my identity. And the reason that we kind of came into hormones is when I turned 35, a bunch of things started happening to me that were just really, really weird. The first thing is my mental acuity and my stamina started to decrease dramatically. So I was literally having trouble just remembering really simple concepts, which is completely unlike me. And then I could feel my body composition just started to change. So I started to gain quite a bit of weight and I've never gained weight, really. I mean, unless I go eat two dozen donuts or something, but that started happening. And then my libido, meaning like my desire to have sex was like absolutely gone. And even so much so like the plumbing wasn't even working. And that just made for a bunch of really uncomfortable conversations between me and my girlfriend. And that's what really kind of started this new journey or quest to understanding what's happening with my body.