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One-time Rockland County boy-made-good, Adam Ofer, an Ob-Gyn in Westport, Conn., has gone over to the enemy ”“ staking his M.D.”™s flag squarely among the nonprescription supplements in an effort to help women who lost their hormone therapies to a wave of data critical of hormone replacement.
His “Harmony” product is perhaps not so surprising to those who know him. Ofer has always possessed twin drives: one medical, the other entrepreneurial.
Ofer grew up on the Hudson”™s west bank and went to Ramapo High School in Rockland County.
“My mother was a nurse and when she sees how many hours I work, she always says she blames herself,” said Ofer. “When I was a kid, she”™d take me to the clinic where she worked and I fell in love with medicine right away.”
Ofer also had an entrepreneurial itch through his life.
When I was 10 years old, I had gerbils and I decided I was going to breed the gerbils and sell them back to the pet shop,” said Ofer. “I got cockatoos and was selling them back to pet shops out of my room, too. I”™ve always enjoyed taking a small project and seeing how far it could go.”
Ofer attended college at SUNY Binghamton University and after graduating in 1994 when on to study at SUNY Health Science Center at Syracuse.
“While in college, I worked at a life guard at a small pool and they didn”™t have any concessions,” said Ofer. “I started an ice cream stand with Good Humor Ice Cream.”
Ofer”™s entrepreneurial spirit even followed him into his residency at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City.
“At that time, there was an emphasis on physicians not signing prescription pads, you needed to stamp your name and DA license,” said Ofer. “All doctors needed to walk around with a stamp.”
Ofer came across a unique pen in Germany that had a convenient fold out stamp.
“They were self-inking pens,” said Ofer. “That was actually starting to take off, but I never realized how many hours I”™d be working as a resident. I ended up giving the business to a family member who drove it into the ground unfortunately.”
Ofer now practices general obstetrics at the Avery Center in Westport, delivering babies, practicing gynecology, and minimally invasive robotic surgery in urogynecology.
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He began practicing in 2003 and his most promising venture would come out of a necessity he saw in his patients.
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“Around 2002 this huge study came out that basically shattered the way that we prescribe hormones to women,” said Ofer. “The study found there to be more heart disease, more risk of breast cancer, and that you should only use it if it”™s absolutely necessary. Our phones rang off the hook and thousands of women were coming off hormone therapy and didn”™t know what to go on. Women were stuck with little-to-no options, and the doctors were stuck with no options.”
Ofer began to see his patients bringing boxes of supplements and store-bought medicines in and asking questions.
“I honestly at first didn”™t know,” said Ofer. “Doctors are trained to be, at-first, anti-supplement because most of that stuff is not evidence based. I literally went o CVS one day and stood there for a long time reading the labels. I found that even for a doctor it is very hard to figure out what is in most of these products, because most are very deceiving. I as a doctor couldn”™t figure out what was in 95 percent of these.”
Ofer began looking at literature and finding which herbal remedies do have a basis in healing and which don”™t.
“I came up with the concept that there”™s a huge discrepancy between what the Eastern medicine guys have been using for thousands of years and what the small amount of medical literature that we have was trying to do,” said Ofer. “I wanted to take thousands of years of anecdotal medicine and bring it into our century and put it through a rigorous scientific process. I saw it as an incredible opportunity where I could help people.”
After different iterations, Ofer has formulated a mix of herbs, including soy, red clover, ginseng, black cohosh and St. John”™s wort and he has found results.
Ofer founded Tao Formulations with his first product called “Harmony,” an all-natural, estrogen-free dietary supplement.
Ofer has also conducted a double-blind, randomized, controlled trial involving 164 women, and his product has been shown to reduce hot flash frequency in 83.5 percent of women.
Ofer lives in Weston with his wife Tanya and their three daughters: Olivia, Emma and Sammy.
Tao Formulations is on the shelves of area specialty stores and can be found online at taoformulations.com.
