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Today’s episode is an absolute powerhouse of insights into optimizing health and achieving peak performance. Our guest is none other than Dr. Tracy Gapin, a board-certified urologist, world-renowned men’s health and performance expert, and the brilliant mind behind The Gapin Institute, a global leader in high-performance health.
Dr. Gapin brings over 20 years of experience to the table, with a focus on providing executives, entrepreneurs, and athletes a personalized path to optimize their health and fulfill their highest potential.
In this conversation, Dr. Gapin shares his wealth of knowledge delving into the strategies and insights that have made him a sought-after expert in the industry. From his TEDx talks to being a member of prestigious organizations like the American Academy of Anti-Aging, Age Management Medical Group, and International Peptide Society, Dr. Gapin is at the forefront of cutting-edge health practices.
You will gain valuable insights into Dr. Gapin’s holistic approach to health optimization, this episode is packed with actionable advice to help you achieve your health and performance goals.
Tune in to learn from Dr. Tracy Gapin’s expertise and discover the secrets to unlocking your highest potential.
In This Episode
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The principles of functional medicine, emphasizing a holistic approach to health
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Role of genetics in shaping an individual’s health and how understanding one’s genetic makeup can guide personalized health strategies
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Unpacking the impact of environmental toxins on health and performance
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A deep dive into the significance of testosterone in men’s health and performance
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Biohacking techniques and tools that can be employed to enhance physical and mental performance
Welcome to another episode on Wealth Strategy Secrets. Today, we are joined by Dr. Tracy Gapin. This is going to be a special episode for you today. I hope you pay attention because, without your health, you can have all the wealth in the world – but frankly, it’s meaningless. We’re lucky today to have Dr. Gapin joining us on the show to share his insights.
Dr. Gapin is a board-certified Urologist and men’s health and performance expert. He’s also the founder of the Gapin Institute, which is a global leader in high-performance health. He’s got over twenty years of experience and is dedicated to providing personal health optimization for executives, entrepreneurs, and athletes. He is also a TEDx speaker and the author of Male 2.0 and Codes of Longevity. Dr. Gapin, welcome to the show.
Thank you so much. I’m glad to be with you today, Dave.
This is a pleasure. I want to take a moment to set the audience’s level of importance for this. Sadly, I had one of my best friends in college who passed away ten days ago at the age of 55. He had a blockage in his heart. And have a completely healthy, happy, vibrant, beautiful family. My heart goes out to him.
But I stress to the audience that having information about your health is critical. It’s one of the things that you don’t see because we live in this world of sick care – where you go in something broken and you get it fixed. But it’s the things that are under the hood that you can’t see that can have the biggest surprises.
On that note, Dr. Gapin, tell us a little about your journey from being a Urologist to getting into high-performance health. What does that mean to you? And what is your real overview of the healthcare system today?
First of all, I love everything you said. Everything you said was amazing and we align a thousand percent. I come from the traditional healthcare world. I spent twenty-three years as a Urologist here in Sarasota, Florida – in a busy practice, doing a ton of robotic surgery, treating Prostate Cancer, treating Kidney Stones, and doing all the traditional typical things. About halfway through my career – about twelve years ago, I realized that I was a mess myself.
I was about thirty pounds overweight and I felt like crap. I wasn’t sleeping, I was stressed out, and I wasn’t exercising. I realized that I didn’t like who I was. I had a son on the way – my first kid. In my view, being a dad is my big why. That’s what it’s all about, that’s what I focus on every day – how can I be the best dad?
I knew something had to change in myself and my career. I went and I tell the story in my book – Male 2.0. The pivotal moment in my career and my life was when I went to this Concierge doctor here in town and he had no answers for me. It was this nonsense of losing weight, eating more vegetables, and he might put me on a stat. That was it. I said, “There’s got to be more than that.”
I had to humbly recognize that as the men’s health expert that I was as a Urologist, I didn’t have the answers either other than what drug I should use to treat a diagnosis. This goes back to what’s wrong with our entire healthcare system, as medical professionals, and doctors – when we go through medical school, we’re trained to find the diagnosis and prescribe the drug; find the diagnosis, prescribe the drug. It has become a pharmaceutical-driven system that has gotten out of control.
We don’t get one day of education on nutrition – nothing about stress, the impacts of stress; nothing about fitness, nothing about sleep, nothing about anything other than finding the diagnosis code and treating it with a pill or surgery. That got me going down rabbit holes for my own selfish needs to get better personally.
I found this whole world of precision medicine, which is how we can use genetics and personalize lifestyle recommendations based on Epigenetics – which is the science of how our lifestyle and environment affect our physiology. I learned about Functional Medicine, and I’m going through certifications on how to do hormone therapy the right way. I learned about Peptide Therapy, and how amazing Peptides are.
I learned about this entire world of longevity – it used to be a bad word, but now we recognize that the science is there to slow and reverse the aging process – which is fascinating and it’s real. It’s based on science that got me to turn my health around and it got me to finally find that passion again for medicine that I had lost.
Eight years later, I gave my partner a one-year notice that I was leaving. I jumped off a cliff and I’m done, I’m out. I launched the Gapin Institute four years ago so that I could follow my passion and my dreams. It was the best decision I ever made. My only regret is that I waited too long to do it.
Now I work with high-performing individuals and it’s all about how can I help people to be the best version of themselves. That means optimizing your mind and optimizing your body to function at the highest level. That’s never accomplished with our traditional healthcare system. That’s what’s wrong about it.
If you have a heart attack, if you have a stroke, if you have a gallbladder attack, if you have a kidney stone, the traditional healthcare system is wonderful for those crises – but make no mistake about it. We don’t have healthcare in this system. We have disease care and crisis care.
It’s an amazing journey and transition that you made. Let’s tell the audience about how you would frame this. Because oftentimes, things are siloed, as you also talk about. You might have a particular injury or something’s wrong, you go, and you attack that. But Functional Medicine is a completely different approach. If someone is new to this, where would you start it with?
It’s important to frame why should anyone listen to this care. “I’m here too. How do I make more money? I want to build a massive empire. I want to get to ten figures, tell me how to make money.” Let me put it this way – I believe that how you show up every day, the success you achieve in your business, and the quality of your life, all directly depend on your health.
I have a couple of examples that will hopefully drive this point home. You look at Paul Allen, who was the co-founder of Microsoft. He was worth $30 billion at one point. He died at the age of 65 from Lymphoma – a pretty young age. Steve Jobs – we all know is the founder of Apple. He died at age 56, of Pancreatic Cancer. Those guys have all the money in the world but they couldn’t buy one more day.
It’s incredibly important that we identify the priorities in our life. To me, sure we all want to make money, we all want to be successful, we all want to live a good quality life, and we all want to be successful in our business – but if you don’t have your health as the foundation, as the bedrock, if you don’t own it and invest in it, then you’re going to end up being like one of them.
That’s what it’s all about. It’s about committing to your health. That’s the foundation of it all. When I work with guys, we could talk about the strategies and the tactics behind that, but the foundation of it is first and foremost – to live with intention, decide that you’re going to own it and take charge of it.
That’s valuable because it is all about your vision and your why. When you can understand why; there are days where I don’t feel like doing that workout either, or that next interval, or jumping in the cold plunge.
But when you have crystal clarity on your vision and what it’s all for, it becomes automatic. It becomes a part of your lifestyle. Then you get to show up to your business, to your family, to your relationships, with much more energy and vitality. It’s a great way to live.
Optimize your mind and body to function at their highest level.
Without question, as I mentioned earlier, being a dad to me is the single most important job that I have. It’s all about how can I show up, be present, and be engaged when that time comes. So yes, my business is incredibly important, as well as my clients, my career, and my financials. It all comes down to, as you mentioned, what is your why.
Are you staying true to that why and doing everything you can to optimize yourself for that? When you do that, suddenly, all those micro-decisions that you have throughout the day become much easier. Your commitment level changes when we honor what that why is.
What is the jumping-off point for people – I think a lot of people don’t even understand what Functional Medicine is or the approach. Or people might say, “I’ve got my way, I’m committed there,” But what’s the next step? Where should people start?
What we do is integrate Functional Medicine with traditional medicine – Precision Medicine Regenerative Medicine, and Longevity. We’ve molded them all together. The underlying principle of Functional medicine is identifying the root cause. What we look at is, that we have a clear method of process of how we do this, but we’re looking for what are the underlying physiologic processes that are working well; what are the ones that need attention and how we can optimize those.
My method starts with discovery. First, we dive deep into what’s important to you—your ‘why,’ your challenges, your goals, and how we can keep you consistently engaged. But after discovery is diagnostics – that’s where we dive deep and find the hidden blind spots. I talk a lot about how we all have hidden blind spots that are holding us back or lurking under the surface waiting to cause problems.
Like, you see the picture of the iceberg, but if you look under the water, you see how much bigger it is below the surface. My example here is Bob Harper. He is the head fitness trainer on the TV show, The Biggest Loser. That guy looks amazing. We all aspire to look like him. He’s training people how to get healthy, and he’s in the best shape of his life. Then at age 51, he has a massive heart attack.
The guy almost died, and had surgery for what we call a ‘Widow Maker’, a massive blockage in his heart. Afterward, he was interviewed after surgery, he talked about how things were going in his body that he wasn’t even aware of. Those are the blind spots I’m talking about where if that guy is doing everything right – we talk about how important diet and exercise are, and I 100% agree they are. We recognize there are a lot of things going on that you’re not even aware of that are causing major problems.
To get back to your question, the answer is we’re looking at things like inflammation, we’re looking at hormones – guys always think Testosterone. You have fifty hormones, we got to focus on. Yes, Testosterone is important and there’s a lot more. We’re looking at Cardiovascular risk assessment. We’re looking at vascular health, we’re looking at Gut Health.
The guts are typically not talked about, but the gut controls our whole body. The gut controls our immune system. It controls hormones. It controls neurotransmitters. It controls so much, and most people don’t even think about it. Primary care, internal medicine, and traditional healthcare don’t even know what to do with this whole concept of gut health other than do a scope and look for cancer. It’s looking at all of these facets of our health and understanding that all of these can come into play when it comes to our health and our functional assessment of potential blind spots.
That’s where it starts the diagnostic testing to find what are the areas of concern. We use data to drive decisions from there. What I mean by that is, we’re all different. I love Twitter (X) – in there, we have people battling over what’s the perfect diet, and we have the people who are doing Keto battling with the people who are doing the Mediterranean versus Vegan versus Carnivore versus all these different diets. The answers are all different.
Our genetics and our environment guide what might be best for us. One size fails all and there’s no perfect answer; so we use data to drive it. We use genetics to understand what’s right for your body. We use blood sugar tracking called CGM (Continuous Glucose Monitoring), where we can understand how your blood sugar varies throughout the day. We can look at diagnostics related to the quality of your sleep.
We can talk about how important sleep is. We can measure your stress daily and we know how important stress can be. We can use all this data now combined with the diagnostics that we’ve done to design a clear, personalized blueprint as “This is what you should be eating, this is how you should be moving, this is how you should be breathing, this is the supplementation that we recommend for you. These are all the things that you should be doing to optimize your human system.”
Then we’re going to start over again, and we’re going to see what’s working and what’s not working. We’re going to continue to refine and improve. That’s what it’s all about. We all have KPIs in our business, and we all have metrics of success. But I’ll ask the listeners, what are your KPIs for your health? What are you doing to track success? If what you’re doing is working or not? And that’s where we can move the needle. That’s where we can shift the paradigm and go completely beyond where our healthcare system is failing.
How you show up every day, the success you achieve in your business, and the quality of your life all directly depend on your health.
That’s spot on. I was fortunate enough to learn about Functional medicine, probably at around 40 years old. The first time I went in, did my panels, and all those assessments – I thought I was in the Marines. I’ve done IRONMAN before, marathons, live a healthy lifestyle and eat well, but I could not be more amazed at how I did have gut issues.
Some of my sports overtraining caused additional issues that I was having – stress in the body, leaky gut, and some different things that I had no idea were happening. Some additional calcification in my arteries was building up. Had I not done that, these things are like landmines in you, waiting to turn into something much bigger.
Then also to your point, it’s all about optimization. Can you imagine the amount of people that in this day and age are walking – around 50% of their actual capacity of feeling good, and having the right amount of energy? If you could optimize that, how powerful would that be in your life?
We all get stuck in this concept of, “Am I okay? Am I normal?” We could dive down rabbit holes of lab test results if you wanted to. But suffice it to say that a lot of times guys will look at their lab numbers and on the right side of the page is that reference range. They’ll be told by their primary care doctor – “You’re normal. You’re fine. You’re in that range.” And you’ll think, “I’m good.” You go through life thinking that you’re fine. When the keyword is optimized, how can we identify areas that we can improve rather than settling for mediocrity?
For sure. Once you can achieve that peak performance, it can take you to new levels. It all starts with education, getting that why in a place like you talked about. That’s one of the purposes of this show – it is to find shortcuts or resources like Dr. Gapin, where you can completely accelerate your health by tapping into his knowledge, his facility, and what you could do versus the alternative – which is you think you’re being healthy, but it’s not customized for you, then something could happen.
I’ll give you a great story that might drive that point home perfectly for you. One of my clients, he’s a professional race car driver lives here in Sarasota. He first came to me a couple of years ago because he was having issues with Brain Fog – couldn’t think clearly and sharply. He felt like it was affecting his decision-making on the track, which is a big deal if you’re racing a car 200 miles an hour – if you can’t make quick decisions.
So we did testing and we found some hormone issues, but that didn’t change anything. Then we tested his gut and he has some mild to moderate issues in his gut. We did food sensitivity testing and we found that he had massive sensitivity to bananas and coffee. Guess what he had for breakfast every single day? Bananas and coffee.
By making that one tweak, this is a blind spot, that we would have never identified otherwise, and that changed everything. For every guy, it’s something different like that – that you don’t know until you dig deep and you find it. That made all the difference in the world for him once we were able to find that and turn things around.
That’s a great example. What do you think about it from a genetic standpoint, if you do genetic testing, how much are you predisposed to some of those markers, or can you change your Methylation pathways?
I don’t want to disparage anyone, but there’s a lot of stuff being sold out there right now. You can get these four markers and they’ll say, “Here is this massive supplement panel you should buy now.” I want to caution people away from directly correlating your genetics with an outcome. There’s this concept called Epigenetics. What Epigenetics means is above the genes and it’s the science of how your lifestyle, your environment, and your behaviors directly affect genetic expression.
Live with intention—decide to own it and take charge of it.
For example, you have a gene called Apo-E (Apolipoprotein E), which is a gene related to Cardiovascular health and Alzheimer’s disease, a cognitive decline for people who have a variant of that gene, Apo-E4, either a 3-4 or 4-4 is what it’s called. But suffice it to say that a variant of the Apo-E gene is at massively increased risk of developing Cardiovascular disease, Cognitive decline, and Alzheimer’s at an early age.
I’m screwed. Not quite, because what we’ve learned is that for those who have that genetic variant, if you change your diet – if you reduce your saturated fat intake specifically, and if you reduce your sugar intake, that risk drops to the same risk as the general population. You eliminate any risk at all by simply identifying how you should alter your diet. That one little tweak changes that entire risk. That genetic variant is no longer a problem for you because you overcome that with your lifestyle.
Methylenetetrahydrofolate reductase (MTHFR) gets a lot of attention. People call it the ‘Mother Offer Gene.’ MTHFR is a gene related to how your body Methylates. Methylation is a process that happens in every single cell of your body, every single day. It’s happening billions of times a second. It’s an important cellular process. For some people who have a variant of this MTHFR gene, you don’t have Methylate as well.
However, if you were eating foods that were high in B-complex Vitamins and Folate, then you would overcome that issue and not even have a problem with your health. What we do when we work with people is we run genetics to understand predispositions and help understand how they can modify that risk or change the outcome simply by what you’re eating, how you’re moving, supplementation you’re taking, and many more.
Another example, there are genes related to Carbohydrate metabolism. The PLIN-1 (Perilipin-1) gene is one of the stronger ones. PLIN-1 regulates how your body responds to Carbohydrates. We’re not talking about cakes, refined sugars, and packaged products. We’re talking about complex carbs, quinoa, broccoli, sweet potatoes, and so on.
What we’ve learned from the PLIN-1 data is that some people do well with higher complex carb intake. They actually can lose weight better and have better cardiovascular risk with higher complex carb intake. Do you think that someone would do well with a Keto diet? Not.
That’s how we can use genetics to fine-tune our recommendations of exactly how much one should be eating. If they say, “How many calories should I eat daily?” We can do another test to figure that out. Then with genetics, we can guide you on the macronutrient breakdown, fats, carbs, and proteins that you should be eating daily. Then we can get granular about the exact types of foods that have the micronutrients that can help support potential deficiencies that you may have.
There’s a gene related to Vitamin A. Vitamin A is typically you think of carrots or Beta-carotene are high in Vitamin A. Some people don’t convert Beta-carotene – the dietary form that we think of, into the biologically active form of Retinoic Acid. For those people knowing that dietary Beta-carotene will never get your levels where you want to be.
We simply supplement with a multivitamin that has a high enough Retinoic acid form of Vitamin A. It’s that simple. Once you understand genetics, that’s how you can fine-tune it. I would never suggest that someone go out there and get a genetic panel. I’m not married to any particular company. We use one company in particular here because I like the quality of the data. But I wouldn’t take that data and take it to me that I need to buy these supplements to support that. That’s the problem that it has turned into in our retail market-driven society.
The personalized approach in medicine is important. Everyone out there wants to say, “This diet is better, this exercise program is better.” But it’s a complete generalization. We have the same parallel in investing. Everyone thinks that this type of investment is the best way to go, but it’s completely generalized. You need to do specific things that support your vision of your body and where you are.
Exactly. This goes back to my comment – one size fails all. Depending on your genetics, depending on your laboratory date. We’ll see this a lot also where genetics may show an increased risk for insulin resistance, which is problems with blood sugar regulation, and early diabetes.
I like that.
For a lot of people that doesn’t even show up. You look at their actual laboratory data, their fasting glucose, their fasting insulin, their Hemoglobin A1C, their uric acid – all these markers of metabolic health, they’re stone cold normal.
Longevity was once seen as a bad word, but now we know the science exists to slow and even reverse the aging process.
What that means is that this person’s lifestyle, nutrition, and behaviors have overcome any risk that they may have had genetically. That’s why you can’t rely on genetics as anything more than predisposition, or propensity, and you have to dive deep to understand if it’s having enough.
Let’s talk about toxicity. It feels like we’re living in an age that was never meant for humans. We have many artificial lights and air pollution – things that are messing up your Endocrine system everywhere you go – it’s having a significant effect on us. And people aren’t aware of what’s happening right from a cumulative standpoint.
I like to facetiously say that we’re living in a soup of Endocrine disruption. It is ubiquitous. It’s around us everywhere. I’ll go through some examples to put into perspective. First of all, endocrine disruptors are any chemicals or toxins that affect endocrine function – either endocrine production, endocrine receptor function, endocrine levels, or hormones of any kind. It’s associated with things like autoimmune disease, infertility, and low testosterone.
We’ll talk about, cancers, obesity, and any kind of health issue that we’re seeing can in some way be tied back to toxins in our environment. We can look at the foods that we’re eating. Our crops, especially in the Midwest – corn crops are sprayed with a chemical called Atrazine – it is an herbicide like Glyphosate, and it’s been shown to crush hormone production, especially Testosterone.
There was a pretty scary study where they looked at frogs and they exposed them to minute levels of atrazine in their water. It turned – no kidding – male frogs into female frogs that can lay eggs and reproduce. It is scary to poison them with Atrazine. We have massive levels of Atrazine detectable in our bodies. It is in our food, in our food supply, and we’re eating it every day. We can look at food containers, plastic containers, especially if you’re heating it if you’re microwaving it especially – any kind of food container that’s plastic. These are made with Phthalates, they’re made with BPA (Bisphenol A), and these chemicals are leaching into our food.
We can look at our water supply. Plastic water bottles was a study that came out last month, in January, that said, one liter of water from a plastic water bottle had, 250,000 particles of plastic in it. It’s Phthalate and BPA that we’re absorbing in our bodies. It gets stored in our visceral fat or subcutaneous fat, and it’s crushing our hormones. It’s causing autoimmune disease. It’s causing cancers. Our water supply is tainted with things such as Synthetic Estrogen.
With women’s birth control – I like to smart-ass facetiously say that all guys are on the pill because our drinking water has massive levels of Synthetic Estrogen that our treatment plants aren’t clearing – they’re not able to filter that out. Synthetic Estrogen is different than our body’s Estradiol that we make in our body from testosterone – it’s different.
Synthetic Estrogen will bind to an Androgen receptor, which is what Testosterone does its job through and it will stick to it like glue. It turns off any possibility of testosterone doing its job by blocking these Antigen receptors. Our drinking water is poisoned. We can look at our personal care products like laundry detergent, soap, shampoo, sunscreen, deodorant, and anything that’s coming in contact with your skin.
We’re absorbing it through our skin and these chemicals are causing all these health problems we’re talking about. There are ways we could talk about mitigating these exposures, but suffice it to say, they’re everywhere and it’s causing a massive effect. It’s getting worse and there’s some attention to it now, but not enough.
I think it’s going to be a significant issue. When you start looking at the numbers in this country of obesity rates, cancer, and diabetes – your top four, it keeps escalating and it seems contrarian. Because we live in a time when there are amazing innovations and much technology, there are more resources and money, yet our healthcare keeps declining. Aren’t we as a country – we’re ranked 150th in terms of health in the world, which is scary.
The stat that I found a few weeks ago was the US spends four and a half trillion dollars every year on healthcare, but we are the absolute worst when it comes to Chronic disease and the absolute worst when it comes to Obesity. Three-quarters of adults in the US are either overweight or obese and that’s getting worse every year. We’re failing. Our healthcare system is failing and paying attention to these toxins is an easy starting point.
I always find it interesting to travel to Europe and Italy. You have such different standards for the quality of food. It’s amazing, after two days, you feel differently. I eat salads and Mediterranean food here, but when you show up over there it’s like I could have a piece of bread and not feel bad. It’s pretty staggering how they manage.
The quality of the food here is night and day difference, versus overseas.
Let’s talk about Testosterone. I know that’s a bit of your forte and wrote a book about it. I’m trying to bring some personal examples to the audience of my journey and how important this is. But my Testosterone was low when I was 40. I think it happens to most middle-aged men for the most part. I can’t speak for women, but Testosterone keeps dropping because of a lot of these different factors. Can you unpack your viewpoint on that?
I call it a ‘Testosterone epidemic’ where we are seeing massively diminished testosterone levels. There was a massive longitudinal study here in the US; there were similar studies in Sweden and Finland that each lasted over twenty years. These longitudinal studies track testosterone levels. What they found was the free Testosterone, which we’ll talk about in a moment – the difference between total and free.
The free testosterone was down 45% over twenty years, and that’s for age-matched groups. To be clear, what that means is you take a 40-year-old guy today and he has a free testosterone level that’s about half of what it was twenty years ago. That’s a massive drop in free testosterone.
This is not about sex. It’s not about building muscle, bodybuilding, or aesthetics. It’s about cardiovascular health. We know that low testosterone is associated with an increased risk of cardiovascular disease – about a 30% increase. We know that it’s associated with cognitive decline, and issues with memory, focus, concentration, and mental acuity.
It is associated with mood alteration and depression. It’s associated with increasing visceral fat – the inability to burn fat and build muscle. It crushes sleep. It crushes drive. It affects bone health. It affects sexual function as well. It has many downstream deleterious effects and it’s continuing to get worse every year.
When you gain crystal clarity on your vision and its purpose, it becomes automatic—a part of your lifestyle.
It’s amazing. I think a lot of people don’t realize where they are. Coming back to your earlier point, what’s interesting with those markers – what they say is normal is not normal. You’re not identifying that you’ve dropped 40% from where you were in your twenties.
Then the other thing is, that all of the listeners on this show are high performers looking to be normal. We’re looking to be above average and optimize. To do that, you have to start with at least understanding where you’re going.
You’re spot on. What happens is, a lot of times, men will go to their primary care doctor who doesn’t understand this, unfortunately. They’ll get a total testosterone level, which is not the full story. The free is what you want to get. Nonetheless, they’ll get this testosterone number and they’ll be told, “You’re in this normal range and you’re fine.” I want to emphasize, as I mentioned earlier, that the reference range is not necessarily where you want to be.
Think about that reference range on your lab slip. For Testosterone, it’s going to be this ridiculously wide range – let’s say 250 to 900 – something is that wide of a range. How do they get that range? That can’t be what’s optimal. It’s simply the average from LabCorp requests – they will look at the average of all the billion testosterone lab tests that they’ve done, and they will look at two standard deviations above and below that.
Because we’re seeing such a massive decline in Testosterone, that range has gotten huge. Now that’s your reference range – it’s the bell curve – the statistical average of all the labs that they’ve done. But then if you think about the fact that those studies showed us that our levels are half what they were twenty years ago, the average.
You could think that the bell curve has simply shifted to the left. It’s gotten lower and lower. What was twenty years ago is way below the curve. Now you’re in the middle of the curve and you’re being told that you’re okay – that’s the crime that’s being committed against men.
Wow, it’s crazy. What is your prerogative on biohacking and where does this whole world of Biohacking meet healthcare these days?
I love the work Dave Asprey has done. I know you’re friends with him as well. I support everything that he’s doing to bring awareness to this concept of biohacking. There is a clear role for biohacking in everything else that we do. I like to emphasize that sometimes it’s icing on the cake though.
For example, I love Peptides. Peptides are an amazing way that we can take your health to the next level. I love the benefits of Cryotherapy, cold plunge, ice baths, and cold showers. I love the sauna. I love focusing on things like red lights, and PEMF Beds – all these great tools that we have are incredible.
However, if you have not optimized your hormones, if you have not cleaned up your nutrition, if you’re not sleeping with good quality sleep – REM and deep sleep stages are tracked, measured, and optimized. If you’re not moving, if you’re not optimizing your gut, you’re not cleaning up your micronutrient – if you’re not doing all these things, then those tools, those tactics are not necessarily where you should be paying the most attention.
I’m sure there’s a parallel in the financial world of investing where guys like to do these fringe things when they’re not taking care of the main core strategies that they need to have in the first place. That’s the scary part of it sometimes, where you don’t necessarily want to do the hard work. They want the easy button and sometimes, they’ve made us not be ready for that easy button quite yet until we do some of the foundational work first.
Makes sense. What does your morning routine look like?
I get up at six every day. I am not a morning person – I want to clarify that. Some guys like to get up at four, I accept that. So I stay up later and I have my schedule worked out. I get up at six, I’ve tried to get up at five, but it doesn’t work for me. Everyone is different. With my Circadian rhythm, we do genetics around this, and my genetics show that I’m better as a night owl rather than a morning bird. I get up at six, I make my coffee, I do my HRV (Heart rate variability) measurement – it is a measurement of stress. The key is that you want to measure it every day at the same time.
When I wake up, I do a moment of gratitude, get my coffee, sit on the couch, and I’m doing my HRV assessment. It takes two and a half minutes to get that reading. While I’m doing that, I’m planning out my day. I have not opened my email yet, don’t look at social, don’t do anything on my phone. I use my phone to turn on my HRV reading via Bluetooth, and that’s it. I’m focused on what my goals are, and what my big rocks are for the day to get going.
I will later in the day have blocked out time for fitness. For me, I work out best at lunchtime – I have my busy schedule – my team knows that I blocked that out on my calendar from 12:30 to 2:00, and I’m in the gym. You can’t find me, you can’t reach me, you can’t touch me if I am in the gym, and that’s when I work out best. So I’ve made that as a big rock in my day.
That’s my morning routine. My kids get up at about 6:30 – they are my everything. I spend about thirty minutes enjoying the morning with them, going with them on the couch, and spending quality time. Then I get ready for work and I go. That little time with the kids for me is important because sometimes, my work will go on late at past dinner time; at least I know that I’ve had a great time with them in the morning. I’ll get some time with them before they go to bed as well.
If you’re not moving, optimizing your gut, and cleaning up your micronutrients, then those tools and tactics may not be where you should focus your attention.
Awesome. It’s insightful. It’s been such a pleasure having you come on the show, Dr. Gapin. I can’t stress enough how important this is. I applaud the work you’re doing. Because we live in this world with a broken system, and you’re going against the norm and trying to help other people, educate them, and get them on the right path which truly can be life-saving. That’s great.
If you were to give one piece of advice to the audience about how they could accelerate – the one thing that they could do to accelerate their health in 2024, what would it be?
Get tested. Get some diagnostic testing done. Check your hormones. Check specifically the free testosterone, your free Triiodothyronine (T3), DHEA, Vitamin D levels, Testosterone oxide, and key hormones. Look for inflammation markers. Check glacially the blood sugar regulation. Look at your gut health.
Get those diagnostics as a baseline to start to understand what may be some hidden blind spots that you don’t even realize are problems that need to be addressed. I deal with high performers all day, every day and they tend to think, “I got this. I’m good. I’m not stressed out, no problems here.” Things are happening underneath the hood that you don’t even know are there. Would you rather catch it now? Or would you rather be like Paul Allen, Bob Harper, or one of these guys who didn’t know until it was too late?
That’s great. If people would like to connect with you and learn more about the Gapin Institute, what is the best place to find you?
Thank you. The website is gapininstitute.com. I have a gift for the listeners – we have a High-Performance Health Handbook, which is fifteen strategies and tactics to go more granular than we have today, to help guys have a starting point of what can do to optimize their minds and body.
Text the word ‘HEALTH’ to the number 26786. You’ll also get with that a complimentary digital copy of my best-selling book, Male 2.0. You’ll also receive a link to contact my team if you want to explore how we can work together.
Awesome. I appreciate the time and insights today, Dr. Gapin.
For sure, man. I had a good time.
Thank you.
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Further Resources
Your 10-Step Actionable Checklist From This Episode
✅ Define a clear reason for pursuing optimal health, whether it’s family, career, or personal fulfillment. This keeps you motivated during tough times.
✅ Track and improve the quality of your sleep and stress levels, as both are crucial for maintaining peak physical and mental performance.
✅ Avoid generalizations in diet and exercise. Focus on tailored approaches based on personal health goals, genetics, and laboratory data.
✅ Switch to toxin-free alternatives for daily products like detergents, soaps, shampoos, deodorants, and sunscreens to reduce chemical absorption.
✅ Specifically, measure free testosterone, free T3, DHEA, Vitamin D, and markers for inflammation and blood sugar regulation.
✅ Address low testosterone levels by improving lifestyle factors, such as nutrition, sleep quality, exercise, and stress management, before considering supplements or treatments.
✅ Prioritize foundational practices like proper nutrition, sleep, exercise, and gut health before exploring advanced biohacks like peptides, cryotherapy, and red-light therapy.
✅ Block out time for fitness that aligns with your energy levels. Make it a non-negotiable priority in your schedule.
✅ Schedule annual or bi-annual diagnostic testing to catch any underlying health issues early. Pay special attention to hormones, metabolic health, and inflammation markers.
✅ Work with health optimization experts like Dr. Tracy Gapin to stay ahead in your health journey, ensuring longevity and high performance as you build your empire.
About Dr. Tracy Gapin
Dr. Tracy Gapin is a board-certified urologist, world-renowned men’s health and performance expert, and the founder of The Gapin Institute, the global leader in high-performance health. He has over 20 years of experience focused on providing executives, entrepreneurs, and athletes a personalized path to optimize their health and fulfill their highest potential. He is also a TEDx speaker as well as the author of Male 2.0 and Codes of Longevity.