#125 Hone Health: On Testosterone, Telehealth, and Building a Modern Men’s Health Platform | Saad Alam, Founder & CEO

About Hone Health

“When people say a good CEO basically works himself out of a job and spends 30 for 40% of his time recruiting, I thought that was a cute kitchen magnet that really probably wasn't real. And the reality is, it actually couldn't be more true.” – Saad Alam

Saad Alam is Founder and CEO of Hone, which is creating an entirely new type of healthcare company initially focused on helping men with low testosterone. Saad describes it as “helping men age with confidence.” Low testosterone is an alarming and growing trend, which is why testosterone treatments like Hone are on the rise. Scientific research has shown that for decades now the level of testosterone in men has been declining. The most alarming statistic is that our generation has around 50% less testosterone than our father's generation, who in turn has less testosterone than their father's generation.

And the reasons behind this are very complicated, but a large part of it seems to be due to growing environmental and plastic pollution, which have caused the level of heavy metals in our bodies to rise while micro plastics in our blood disrupt the production of testosterone and actually spur the production of estrogen. With this context, you would imagine that it's becoming easier to find out if you have low testosterone and get testosterone treatments if needed, but you would be very wrong, which is why Saad Alam founded Hone and set out to revolutionize the way that men are treated for low testosterone.

In this episode, you'll learn why testosterone in men has been dropping for decades and some of the research around that, as well as how testosterone influences everything from your mood to the level of fat your body holds, and even how you sleep. Hone has built a modern direct-to-consumer experience for men to easily test their testosterone level and then get automated at-home treatments that range from an under the skin injection to sublingual mouth drops and even a cream. We’ll cover how Hone is rebuilding the tech stack of healthcare to take what might usually take six months down to mere weeks for their customers.

For more, explore the transcript of this episode.

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Chapters

This episode is our definitive guide to building and scaling a testosterone replacement telehealth company. In it we cover:

00:00:00 – Introduction
00:02:39 – Saad’s background and the genesis of Hone
00:10:12 – Making life whatever you want it to be
00:15:12 – Helping men have confidence as they age
00:18:25 – What is testosterone, and how does it work?
00:24:22 – Non-pharmaceutical treatments for low testosterone
00:27:23 – The risks of high and low testosterone levels
00:32:28 – The patient journey at Hone
00:44:12 – The future of health management
00:50:29 – Learnings from building a telehealth company
00:54:48 – The importance of hiring people who are better than you

Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, Castbox, Pocket Casts, Player FM, Podcast Addict, iHeartRadio, or on your favorite podcast platform. You can watch the interview on YouTube here.

Our Favorite Quotes

Here are a few ideas we'll be thinking about weeks and months from now:

“It also teaches you to really be in tune with the things that make you happy once you've reached those initial peaks of your life early on, but you got to run after them. I always tell people that if you, if you're going to be wishy-washy, you're just going to end up floating around and not doing any.”
“I think that what you find so many people doing is they almost get paralyzed because they think that if they make a career decision or they start to move one way, they're stuck there. And I tell them no, the most beautiful thing about life is you can make it whatever the hell you want it to be.”
“So much of it is about the discipline and the determination to make sure you can follow a plan that you've put in place for yourself, because that's really the muscle that you're building.”
“You don't have to know what you want to do, but what you have to do is you have to pick an end goal for one year or two years, and you've got to sprint to it with as much energy as you can muster and be fully committed to it.”
“These are going to be the simplest things you can do to make sure your testosterone is optimized. Get seven to eight hours of sleep. Don't smoke, don't drink, cut the excess sugars or refined carbohydrates out of your diet, don't play on your phone too much before you go to sleep so there's not excessive blue light until late hours of the morning because that disturbs your circadian rhythm, which doesn't allow your body to heal as well. Make sure you drink enough water every day. Exercise. Do your stress management. If you want, there are supplements like Fenugreek and ashwaganda.”

5 Ways to Dive Deeper

Want to dive deeper? Here the best content we've curated on this subject:

Testosterone — What It Does And Doesn't Do: This primer from Harvard Medical School is a good place start for the basics of testosterone. (9 Min)
The Optimal Indication for Testosterone Replacement Therapy in Late Onset Hypogonadism: Go deeper into the science of testosterone replacement therapy with this journal article from the Journal of Clinical Medicine. (30 Min)
The Future of Aging: In this TED Talk, Ken Arneson covers ongoing and upcoming trends that affect how we age. (16 Min)
The Ultimate Guide To Biohacking Your Testosterone: 17 Ways To Maximize Muscle-Building, Drive & Anti-Aging: Ben Greenfield has put together an extensive explanation and list of non-pharmaceutical methods to improve testosterone levels and aging in men. (60 Min)‍
The Telehealth Era Is Just Beginning: This article from Harvard Business Review discusses the opportunities for improved healthcare that telemedicine brings to our future. (20 Min)