The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
167. Iman Hasan: How to Boost Fertility with Cellular Health Hacks
20 May 2025
Chapter 1: What is the main topic of this episode?
The slower you go into menopause, the more life expectancy you can have. If we can slow down menopause, it extends women's life expectancy. I just want to help as many women as possible because the fertility industry is only booming, but they're missing so many key things which makes a woman live a happier, healthier life.
You've really become a voice in women's health and fertility and I think this is a very underserved area of the market right now.
Chapter 2: How does Iman Hasan's journey relate to women's fertility?
I made it my mission on the podcast to interview the best doctors on the east and west coast. I realized that they're applying the lens of longevity to fertility and is getting their patients better results.
I think most people, when they think about improving fertility, they're talking about how do we better harvest the eggs, not actually what is the quality of the egg itself.
Insulin completely destroys your actual egg. If you have an unregulated nervous system and your body's in chronic fight or flight, how are you going to get pregnant?
I think there's a real paucity of understanding for non-OBGYNs that don't actually specialize in female hormones. Where do they start?
You can start with a basic female hormone panel and work with the right practitioner who can read that and say...
Hey guys, welcome back to the Ultimate Human Podcast. I'm your host, human biologist, Gary Brekka, where we go down the road of everything, anti-aging, biohacking, longevity, and everything in between.
And today's guest is a very special guest, not just because she's my neighbor, she only was four minutes away from me in the Grove, I just found out, but because she began her career on the marketing side of things in the health and wellness space, and now has become deeply interested and embedded in a voice for women's health in this industry.
And I had a fascinating discussion with her before the cameras started rolling. In fact, we did half a podcast today in my condo before we came on. So welcome to the podcast, Iman Hassan.
Thank you, Gary, for having me. I've been such a fan of your work for so long. So it's truly a pleasure for me to be sitting here across you.
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Chapter 3: Why are mitochondrial cells significant for women's eggs?
I heard the story about your mother. I'm very sorry to hear about that, by the way. But there are so many people listening to this podcast that are living similar lives and have been on similar journeys. But you turned it into... And it seems that that was a major shift in your life and a level of dedication and sort of commitment, focus, passion that maybe didn't exist before.
And I think very often we find our purpose in our pain. And so I'd love it if you would just share your journey with my audience. And then I have a litany of questions that we're gonna get into, especially for my female audience, fertility, what have you. I think this can be such an exciting afternoon.
Chapter 4: What is the IVF cycle and its implications?
So thank you for taking that up really nicely for me. So I have a background. I've been working in luxury fashion lifestyle for almost 20 plus years. I lived in London, Dubai, and now the US. I've been here for about almost 12 years now. And so I knew how to build luxury brands. I knew how to use that voice. I knew how to get you to the next level. How do you reach your consumer?
How do you market to them? And all my life, I was actually a really sickly child. Now you'd look at me and be like, you had health issues. I had a lot of health issues, actually a lot of ovarian problems. And it was only six years ago that I met a functional medicine doctor and he got me into peptides. And I started trying to heal my body and piecing all this together.
While I went down that whole peptide rabbit hole, a few years into it, the pandemic hit. And my mom, who was already immune compromised and who was not leaving the house, I don't know why her GP, as they called him, general practitioner in the UK, told her to get vaccinated and boosted.
Within 90 days of her getting the booster, she got turbo cancer, which is like a cancer that spreads really rapidly through your body. Before you know it, that's it. Within 90 days of receiving that booster, she passed away. Wow. And my agency, we had been around for almost five years at this point. I worked at really big companies prior to that, being their VP or director at other agencies.
And I called my managing director, who still works with me, and said, Lauren, I love you. And I know we've been doing this for a long time. We're really hyper-focused on luxury. But I think there's such a disconnect happening with humanity on there being lied to. And I really want to build brands, practitioners, clinics, experts in this space that I'm passionate about.
Wow.
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Chapter 5: How can women prepare their bodies for fertility?
And today, we were obviously 95% of our portfolio used to be luxury. We still have a portion of that, but now 90% of our portfolio is health and wellness. That's amazing. You know a lot about clients.
And in 2024, you guys won an award for this.
Huge award, yeah. Yeah, Inc. Magazine's Power Players of 2024. We're an all-female company, by the way. Really? Yeah.
That's amazing.
all female, we're 15 going on 20 employees this year and we're opening up offices in the Middle East, which we spoke about and very passionate about that entire region. And it's been an interesting journey and we're really, I would say our clients are some of like the best voices in the space.
And we work with like Dr. Will Cole, Jess Pietros, who you interviewed, Body Bio is a company that I spoke to you about. We've worked previously with Sweetgreen. So we really think do a really good job at curating. We're not just looking for mass brands. We're not just looking at you because you have money.
We want to work with the best to amplify their voices and build them into the next brand, the global voice of the... You know, it's interesting.
I feel like that's a part of the responsibility of the platform of the ultimate human. You know, when I look at the ultimate human, I don't feel like it has any competitors. And I mean, like, not that somebody's not competing with me in the podcast space. I mean that I don't feel like... there is a competitor that I wouldn't feature if they had the right product or service.
One of the things that a partner of mine sent to me a while ago that made a lot of sense, but it was troubling to me was it doesn't really matter what the best brand is. What matters is the best known brand.
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Chapter 6: What role does insulin play in fertility?
Chapter 7: What are the benefits of bioidentical hormone replacement therapy?
I feel like that's a part of the responsibility of the platform of the ultimate human. You know, when I look at the ultimate human, I don't feel like it has any competitors. And I mean, like, not that somebody's not competing with me in the podcast space. I mean that I don't feel like... there is a competitor that I wouldn't feature if they had the right product or service.
One of the things that a partner of mine sent to me a while ago that made a lot of sense, but it was troubling to me was it doesn't really matter what the best brand is. What matters is the best known brand.
And very often you see the best known brands, especially in food and health and wellness and supplements and even a lot of biohacking modalities, the best known brands aren't necessarily the best for you or the best brands. And so I feel like one of my responsibilities is to find the best brands and give them a voice, sort of help push them up through the noise. Is that what you're talking about?
That's exactly what we do. So when you apply to us, we really look into your ingredients. I'll give you a little bit of a personal story. Yeah. We had a brand. My husband actually got contacted. He's like, I'm going to invest in the supplement company. Can you please take them on? And I was like, he's like, the founder is great. The branding is great. The marketing seems really good.
Can you take them on as a client? Give the guy a bit of a discount as a startup. But I think he'll do well. I said, okay, because my husband was investing in the company. Gary, we got the products that came to our house. And I said, this brand has ingredients that shreds your gut. It's typically one of those brands that the guy said, I want to start a longevity company. Went to a manufacturer.
Manufacturer was like, I'll put this, this, this in, including natural flavors, which we know are not good for you. Right. And I called the founder and said, I can't. And they're paying client. I said, I can't work with you guys till you change your formulation. She said, can't change the formulation till I sell out of the units.
I said, then you need to come back at a different time because I cannot put my name and get you in front of my community because I have so many friends in this space and endorse this brand because me endorsing it means, okay, I've signed off on.
I feel the same way. Like if I do, if somebody's watching your podcast or my podcast and a commercial comes on for Avis Rent-A-Car, I mean, they kind of realize, okay, YouTube is pushing that commercial to your audience. But if you do an ad read or you take an endorsement or a sponsorship from them, That's an endorsement. I mean, that's you endorsing that product. And I totally agree with you.
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Chapter 8: How do lifestyle changes affect fertility?
We have the same philosophy at The Ultimate Human is to try to have the message be as authentic as possible. So maybe we just developed a little hack. We'll follow what brands your agency represents.
And go in that way.
Just go with that. It's like a little secret hack of the biohacking community. Yeah, a little backdoor. But, you know, what I find really fascinating is that, you know, the movement from fashion to wellness, that makes perfect sense to me, especially given, you know, the incident with your mother. But you've really become a voice in women's fertility, women's health and fertility.
And I think this is a very underserved area of the market right now because if you look at the rates of women you know, sperm decline, sperm counts, and you look at fertility rates in women, these are both plummeting massively. In fact, for the last more than 10 years, sperm counts have dropped 8% every single year.
Now, that might not sound like a big deal until you realize, wow, in 10 years from now, 20 years from now, 30 years from now, at this rate of decline, which if it's declining at a percent per year, it's probably going to accelerate. we're going to be infertile in no time, during our lifetime.
And so I'd love to back up because there's so many women listening to this podcast now that are either engaging in IVF or thinking about IVF or maybe they've gotten to a certain age and they're thinking maybe I should harvest my eggs and just pause the clock for a while. So let's talk a little bit about the state of fertility.
Right.
And then talk a little bit about women's fertility.
So I'm a woman going through, you know, kind of I decided, me and my husband decided last year, can we start trying for kids? We're in our 40s. Like I'm 42 this year.
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