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What’s the point of building extraordinary wealth if you don’t have the health, energy, and longevity to enjoy it?
In this episode, Dave Wolcott is joined by Dr. 
Gapin to explore why physical health should be treated with the same strategic thinking we apply to investing and wealth creation. Drawing from his own transformation from an overworked surgeon to a performance-focused physician, Dr. Gapin explains how hidden health blind spots can affect energy, focus, recovery, body composition, and long-term performance—and why high performers need a more personalized, data-driven approach to their health.
In This Episode
- Why high performers can have hidden health blind spots even when they look and feel “fine”
- How the Signal, Noise, and Resilience framework can help identify factors affecting energy, recovery, and performance
- Why Dr. Gapin uses a Test, Design, Track approach to create more personalized health strategies
Dr. Gapin is a board-certified, fellowship-trained physician and founder of Peak Launch, a performance-based medical practice serving entrepreneurs, executives, professional athletes, and other high-performing leaders. After more than two decades in urology and surgery, his own health challenges led him to study areas including lifestyle medicine, epigenetics, hormones, functional medicine, and longevity.
This episode covers health optimization, longevity, peak performance, holistic wealth, physical capital, entrepreneur health, executive performance, personalized health, hormone health, sleep optimization, stress management, recovery, nutrition, genetics, gut health, microbiome health, blood sugar, body composition, wearable technology, health tracking, and building the physical capacity to enjoy financial freedom.
Everything you’re learning here with Dave and his team is amazing for building all this wealth. But what’s the point if you don’t actually live well enough to enjoy it? I want you to start thinking about what might actually be holding you back. Just like I thought I was fine when I wasn’t. Just like that influencer on Instagram thinks he’s fine, but he’s not. You may think you’re fine, but you’re not either.
Dr. Gapin approaches health the same way we approach wealth at Pantheon: strategically, proactively, and with performance in mind. He’s not a traditional physician. He’s board certified, fellowship trained, and the founder of a performance-based medical practice working with elite entrepreneurs, executives, professional athletes, and high-performing leaders. Dr. Gapin operates in a different category entirely. He doesn’t practice reactive, symptom-based medicine, and he challenges the status quo. While most physicians aim to keep you within broad “normal” lab ranges designed for the average population, Dr. Gapin focuses on optimization, identifying the precise markers that drive energy, hormonal balance, cognitive clarity, strength, recovery, and long-term resilience, because average numbers produce average results, and average isn’t why you’re in this room. I personally work with Dr. Gapin and have achieved health markers and performance gains I never came close to on my own, not because I lacked discipline, but because I lacked precision. That’s the difference. Dr. Gapin thinks like an investor. He questions conventional models, studies systems, measures everything, builds strategy around data, and refuses to accept “good enough.” That’s exactly why he’s here today.
A true holistic wealth strategy isn’t just about capital allocation. It’s about being around long enough, and strong enough, to enjoy the life you’re building: to stay active with your children and grandchildren, to lead with clarity, to travel with vitality, to wake up feeling strong instead of slowly declining. Physical capital is one of the four pillars of true net worth, and without it, everything else eventually erodes. This group is about plugging into the right network: the right advisors, the right operators, the right thinkers who operate at a higher standard. Dr. Gapin embodies that standard. Please join me in welcoming Dr. Gapin.
Physical capital is one of the four pillars of true net worth, and without it, everything else eventually erodes.
Good morning. I’m so excited to be with you all this morning. I love Dave, I love this group. I do a lot of talks, but this is actually my favorite group I work with, so I’m excited to be here. As Mike mentioned, we’re going to shift gears a bit and talk about health, but I’m hoping to get you thinking about health in a very different way, and to recognize how directly it connects with all the wealth strategies Dave and his team have shared with you these past two days. You’ll see the connection by the end.
I want to start with a show of hands. How many of you can say, honestly, that every single day you show up at 100% of your full capacity and potential, with high energy, laser-sharp focus, and relentless drive, crushing it from morning until you go to bed at night? Show of hands. One. Amazing. Who wouldn’t want that?
The reason I’m here is that we’re all running on empty without realizing it. We think we’re doing great. We’re grinding, we’re making money. Every one of you here is successful, wealthy, learning how to grow that wealth. But I ask you: what’s the point of growing all this wealth if you can’t actually live long enough to enjoy it? What I find so often is that driven, successful leaders are suffering under the surface without realizing it. On the outside, you look great. I actually have a client who’s an Instagram influencer, the guy with his shirt off in every video, lifting weights on the beach, looking like the perfect physique. He has major issues under the surface that he doesn’t even realize. So I want you to start thinking about what may be happening to you without you even realizing it. I know personally, because that was me.
A bit of my background: I was a board-certified urologist for over 25 years here in Sarasota, running a busy surgical practice, doing robotic surgery, prostate cancer treatment, 80-plus hours a week, nights on call, saving lives every day while neglecting my own. I was so busy taking care of my patients that I forgot about myself. I told myself I was fine, until I wasn’t. I hit a wall. I was 30 pounds heavier than I am right now, stressed out, not eating well, not sleeping well, not taking care of myself, and I only had myself to blame, because I’d taken my eye off the ball, so focused on money, wealth, my practice, and my career instead of focusing on what I’d argue matters most.
My wife convinced me to go see a doctor. I went in for my first physical ever, at 40 years old, having never seen a doctor myself. What an incredibly vulnerable experience, to be on the other side of an interaction I’d been on the giving end of for two decades by that point. I remember sitting on that exam table, that thin little paper gown barely covering some very important real estate, if you know what I mean, and it was an eye-opening moment, because I had to face the fact that I wasn’t healthy at all. I had real problems. What turned everything around for me was what the doctor told me: “You just need a statin and to lose some weight.” That was it. I left that visit scared for my own safety and longevity, but also frustrated, because I suddenly realized something was missing. I needed more than that.
If I’m sick, if I’m in a car accident, if I have a kidney stone or a heart attack, our medical system is great for those acute problems. But when it comes to getting better energy, losing weight, actually getting healthy, there’s nothing there. I came to recognize, without question, that our healthcare system is broken: it’s focused on treating disease, illness, and symptoms, not on preventing them or optimizing us before we get there. So I made the decision to go back to school. While still running a busy surgical practice, I spent years studying the science of lifestyle medicine, epigenetics (how our genes are affected by our behaviors), hormones, peptides, functional medicine, and the actual science of longevity: how we can optimize the quality of our lives, not just prevent or treat disease the way our healthcare system is built to do.
I transformed my own health. I lost weight, regained my energy and focus. I was happy again, for the first time in a long time I actually liked who I was, because I’d been miserable and suffering in my career without even realizing how far I’d fallen. So I made the decision to leave traditional medicine. I left a very lucrative surgical practice to launch what is now Peak Launch, because I believe in this so deeply, it changed my life, and I’ve seen how it can change anyone’s life. This became my purpose and my passion. I was this close to leaving medicine entirely, because I was so frustrated and disillusioned with our broken healthcare system. This isn’t just a job or a career to me; it’s my passion project for the rest of my life.
I published a book; there are copies here if you’d like one. I gave a TED talk on men’s health, performance, and longevity, and on how we can change the way we approach health, and this applies to women just as much as men, on how we can take a more proactive, personalized approach to optimization. I built Peak Launch, which I believe is the operating system for high-performing leaders. Because everything you’re learning here with Dave and his team is amazing for building wealth, but what’s the point if you don’t live well enough to actually enjoy it? I want you to start thinking about what might be holding you back. Just like I thought I was fine when I wasn’t. Just like that Instagram influencer thinks he’s fine, but he’s not. You may think you’re fine too, but you might not be.
When we talk about peak performance, this is what it’s all about to me. The phrase gets thrown around a lot: is it Olympic athletes? Competing in an Ironman? Running a marathon? To me it could be any of those, or it could be showing up at the end of a long day and still being present. To me, peak performance means being the most present and engaged father I can be. If I can make a bunch of money and not be able to do that, what’s it all for? Health and longevity isn’t about how long you live, or any single blood marker or metric, so much as it’s about turning those things into quality of life and performance where it matters most.
Health and longevity are not about how long you live. They’re about the quality of life and performance where it matters most.
I think most of you, in some way, without realizing it, are struggling with some of this: low energy, cognitive decline, altered mood, irritability. Increased body fat, maybe more in the belly for men, thighs or buttocks for women. Decreased lean muscle, not as strong as you’d like to be. Sleep quality: how many of you wake up at two or three in the morning thinking you have to pee, but then can’t fall back asleep? It’s very common, and it’s not your bladder, by the way, we’ll get to that. Recovery from injury or illness taking longer than it used to. Lower drive, motivation, confidence, feeling like something’s just different than it used to be. Sex drive or performance. How many of you relate to at least one or two of these, without telling me which? It’s common. But you go to your doctor and mention it, and the only answer is a statin or a blood pressure medication or something like that. That’s a testament to how broken our healthcare system really is.
The costs are real. It affects your productivity and performance at work, your relationships; your spouse recognizes this, whether you do or not. Your children, your teammates, your colleagues probably notice your decline before you do. Studies show entrepreneurs have a 50% higher risk of a mental health disorder, anxiety, depression, and that those in leadership roles have a significantly higher risk of heart attack or stroke. It translates into real, tangible outcomes.
I believe the problem isn’t that you’re lacking motivation, discipline, effort, or even knowledge. Most of you here are high performers, and you’re here because you want Dave and his team to take you to the next level; you’re proactive, intelligent, and motivated. So what is it? What might be holding you back? You think you’re fine when you’re not. You don’t know what you don’t know. Just like when I first started working with Dave, I had no idea what I was doing; I had all my money in equities. I didn’t know. Now, thanks to Mike and MC and the rest of the team, I understand an entirely different approach. I didn’t know what I didn’t know.
I think of it as blind spots, things that may be holding you back without you even realizing it, and I break it down into three things: signal, noise, and resilience.
Signal. I define signal as everything that tells your body and brain how to perform. Hormones are one part of that. The first one most people think of is testosterone in men, but did you know women need testosterone too? It’s a critically important hormone. The symptoms of low testosterone show up in both men and women, and it’s not just about sex and muscle; it’s important for energy, brain function, focus, drive, and body composition. It affects sleep and recovery. The real challenge is that most people, unless they test it, don’t even realize there’s a problem, because the symptoms are so subtle.
It translates into real medical problems too. People with low testosterone, men and women, have worse lipids (LDL, ApoB), worse blood sugar, worse blood pressure. It promotes obesity and chronic inflammation. But here’s the kicker: dozens of studies show an increased risk of heart attack and stroke in people with low testosterone. One powerful prospective study looked at testosterone levels by quartile, and those in the lowest quartile had a 40% increased risk of dying compared to those in the highest quartile, a dramatic difference. It affects risk of heart attack, stroke, cardiovascular mortality, and, without question, all-cause mortality. Most of us aren’t even checking it, or at least not the right markers of it. Testosterone matters, but there are plenty of other hormones driving your energy, metabolism, and brain function too. I’m not here to give you the full scientific lecture I gave yesterday on this topic; the point is just to recognize how many hormones are driving these systems.
Another signal is fuel and nutrients. A lot of people think, “I’m eating clean,” but the real question is whether you’re eating the right foods for your body. Everyone’s different. There are influencers who’ll tell you carnivore, or paleo, or keto, or Mediterranean, or vegan, or plant-based, and on and on. The reality is what you need depends on your own biology, physiology, and genetics. The signal you’re giving your body may simply be wrong for you, without you even realizing it. And this isn’t just about food; it’s about the nutrients your body needs, things like NAD. Who’s heard of NAD? When I was in medical school, we thought of NAD as just another molecule tied to the electron transport chain, nothing you’d care about. Now we understand it’s a critically important molecule for energy, performance, and mitochondrial function, and a real hallmark of longevity. That’s why we test it: it’s so important to optimize your levels. The question isn’t whether you’re giving your body a signal, it’s whether it’s the right signal for your biology.
Movement is another signal: how much or how little fitness is in your life, and whether it’s right for your body. I see a lot of people who are actually overtraining, we’ll talk about balance in a moment. Timing matters too: your circadian rhythm, sunlight exposure, when you eat, when you sleep. These timing factors in your daily life matter a great deal, and based on your genetics, there’s real nuance to what’s right for you.
The only way to know whether your signals are actually optimized is testing, and most people never test. When your signals are optimized and right for your body, you have drive, energy, strength, and confidence. When they’re off, you’re exhausted, in a catabolic state, breaking down muscle, storing fat, and everything feels like a struggle. That’s why signal matters so much.
Noise. Noise is simply interference that distorts or scrambles those signals. You may be feeding your body everything it needs, but if there’s too much noise, you won’t see results. I think of noise as the reason effort stops working: why you’re doing everything right, crushing it in the gym, taking every supplement you heard about, and still not seeing the results you want. Often, it’s noise.
The most common source of noise is chronic, systemic inflammation. Inflammation itself is normal: when you skin your knee or catch a cold, it’s your body activating the immune system to deal with an acute problem. That’s fine, that’s acute. What we’re talking about is chronic, systemic, unregulated, excessive inflammation happening in nearly every one of you without you realizing it. It’s the hidden factor blocking the results of all the effort you’re putting into optimizing your signal.
The most common source of that inflammation is the gut. The microbiome is simply the balance of good and bad bacteria in your gut, and it controls far more than most people realize: your hormones, your metabolism, the neurotransmitters in your brain, your energy systems, your immune function, all of it is directly affected and regulated by your microbiome. Your doctor probably knows nothing about it. If he did test it, he likely wouldn’t know how to manage it. This is everything, and most of us have gut issues without any obvious symptoms, no cramping, no irritable bowel, no irregular habits, and yet it’s dramatically affecting all the things we’ve talked about. Poor nutrition, low-quality food, alcohol, and poor sleep all feed chronic inflammation, which in turn worsens sleep; it becomes a vicious cycle.
Blood sugar imbalance matters too, not just for diabetics. It’s a spectrum, not a binary, and the better you regulate your blood sugar, the more you reduce inflammation, improve hormone production, and improve your energy systems. I have a client, I’ll show you her example shortly, who didn’t realize how the food she thought was healthy was directly sabotaging her ability to lose weight.
Then there are environmental toxins: the plastic water bottles everywhere, made with BPA, phthalates, and other chemicals shown, without question, to disrupt our hormones. Even tap water often tests high for synthetic estrogen; birth control compounds aren’t adequately filtered out by municipal treatment plants, so you may be drinking synthetic estrogen and a range of other chemicals. Unless you’re eating organic, your food likely contains a fair amount of chemicals and toxins that disrupt hormones too. The same goes for personal care products: laundry detergent, soap, shampoo, sunscreen, deodorant, all of it can cause systemic inflammation without you ever realizing it. There’s a great free app called Healthy Living, made by the Environmental Working Group; you can scan barcodes in the store and it’ll flag the toxic ingredients in these products so you can start eliminating that source of noise.
What does all of this cause? Trouble focusing, sluggishness, low drive, difficulty building muscle, just feeling “off” without knowing why. This is what may be holding you back.
Resilience. I define resilience as your ability to handle a big life without burning out, and this applies to every one of you in this room, because I call it the high-performer trap. You’re probably stuck in “go mode.” Like me for so many years, you can execute, you get it done, you make it happen, you can turn it on. But can you turn it off? We all face stress, and you can’t eliminate it. I’m not talking about getting rid of stress; that’s nonsense. Stress is everywhere in life, and the goal isn’t zero stress, it’s creating the balance and range your body needs. A workout is a form of intentional stress, designed so that when you recover, you build up bigger and stronger. But most of us just keep grinding, grinding, grinding, like a race car redlining until it finally blows.
Resilience matters enormously for high performers and leaders like each of you: you have to be able to turn it off, and that balance is something we can actually measure. If you think you’re doing fine, I can measure it and tell you whether that’s really true. What does imbalance and excess stress look like? That “wired and tired” feeling, the crash after eight cups of coffee, poor sleep, an inability to burn fat, slow and impaired recovery, low motivation and drive.
So when does your system actually work the way it’s supposed to? I think of it in these three parts: signal, noise, and resilience. Your system works great when your signal is optimized for your biology, when noise is low, and when your resilience, your range, is high. It doesn’t work the way it should when the signal is wrong for what your body needs, when there’s a lot of noise or inflammation, and when your resilience is low. These are the three systems I think through with high performers who believe they’re fine but simply don’t know what they don’t know.
So I developed a system to fix it. Let’s move on. “Doc, just tell me what to do. How do I identify and fix these problems you say I have, which I’m still not totally sure about?” Fair enough.
It starts with test. The Peak Launch system I built is test, design, track, and it starts with testing. We simply find the blind spots that may be holding you back without you realizing it, because you think you’re fine, but are you? We do comprehensive lab testing, and I want to show you what I mean by “test, don’t guess.”
Our blood labs look at five general categories, cardiovascular markers, hormones, inflammation, blood sugar control, and nutrients. When you go to your doctor for your annual physical and he runs some blood work, none of these are typically on that panel. That’s the problem. They check basic labs like electrolytes and a CBC, which will flag a real problem if you’re sick or acutely ill, but tell you nothing about how to have more energy, focus, and drive, or the body and life you actually want. They’re not built for that.
Here’s a great example: who’s heard of Bob Harper, the fitness trainer from The Biggest Loser? He was teaching people how to lose weight and get in shape, the epitome of good health on TV. He had a heart attack at age 51. He almost died. How does a guy who looks that healthy have a heart attack at 51? The answer was Lp(a), one lab value that no doctor ever checks, and his was massively elevated. He didn’t know. His doctors didn’t know. That was his underlying problem.
We can also look at genetics. Who here has done personalized genetic testing? With a simple cheek swab, we can look at around 700,000 genetic markers to understand what foods are right for you: how many carbs, proteins, and fats you should be eating, what foods to avoid, which micronutrients you need extra support with, how to sleep better, how to clear toxins more effectively, what workouts suit you, and what soft-tissue injuries you’re at higher risk for. All of that from a simple cheek swab. That genetic data gives you a real roadmap, a blueprint, for the rest of your life. I love doing this for kids too, so they know early on what to do and what to avoid.
We can also test the microbiome, the balance of good and bad bacteria in your gut, along with digestive function and how well your gut is protecting your body from damage.
For years, I thought building wealth meant finding the next great investment. But as my portfolio grew, so did the complexity. I had real estate, private investments, insurance, tax strategies, and multiple advisors, yet no one was looking at the entire picture. I was still the one trying to connect all the dots, wondering if my wealth was actually working as efficiently as it could be. That experience taught me something most successful investors discover too late: building wealth isn’t just about owning more assets, it’s about making sure every part of your financial life works together. That’s why I created a complimentary masterclass called the Wealth Friction Tax. It reveals how disconnected investments, tax strategies, advisors, and financial decisions can quietly erode your wealth, and introduces a more coordinated way to manage it. If you’ve built significant wealth but still feel like you’re the one holding all the pieces together, watch the complimentary masterclass at contrarianwealthbuilder.com.
Your doctor has no idea how well your gut is clearing toxins, or these other key markers. We can test this with a simple test to understand your microbiome. Ask your own doctor about it and he’ll have no clue. I have friends who are gastroenterologists, and even they don’t really know this material; their job is to put a scope above or below and look for polyps or cancer, that’s essentially it. The microbiome deserves far more attention than that.
Food sensitivity testing matters too, especially when there are microbiome issues, since those can lead to a breakdown in your gut wall that lets food particles trigger a systemic immune response, a key source of the inflammation I mentioned earlier.
Here’s an example: Marco, a race car driver, came to me because his focus was off on the track; he felt he couldn’t make decisions quickly enough. One single test changed everything for him: food sensitivity testing. It showed massive inflammation triggered by bananas and coffee. Guess what he was having for breakfast every morning with his protein shake, thinking he was doing the right thing? Bananas and coffee. He made that one change, and he told me it was like overnight, his energy, focus, and reaction time all improved. It’s not that bananas and coffee are inherently bad; for his biology, they were creating noise. He went on to set a 24-hour endurance racing Guinness World Record not long after. That’s how small things can become big things once you test to identify them.
You can also test stress and fitness levels. I had a client with very low heart rate variability and a very low VO2 max, even though he looked like the picture of good health. Cortisol testing is another way to measure stress and resilience. One client, a financial advisor, told me he was fine, not stressed, “it’s the other guy who’s stressed.” We ran a test measuring four saliva samples throughout the day, on waking, at lunchtime, in the afternoon, and before bed, to track his cortisol levels. Again, cortisol isn’t inherently bad; it’s about balance. His bedtime reading was off the charts. I asked earlier who wakes up between two and three in the morning; that’s not your bladder, I promise. It’s this: cortisol imbalance, low resilience.
Here’s what that does: you have sleep cycles, moving from light awareness near the surface, where you’re easily roused by a noise or a nudge, down through light and deep non-REM sleep and back up again, roughly four cycles a night. At the top of each cycle, we all have brief micro-awakenings we don’t usually notice, and that’s normal. But with high cortisol, which I’d argue most of you have, your head “pops up” fully awake instead of staying near the surface. And your brain has a built-in reflex: when you wake up like that, it tells you that you need to pee, but that’s not actually what woke you up. For over 20 years in urology, I prescribed medications like Detrol and Vesicare for nighttime urination, and I now realize the bladder had nothing to do with it. It’s cortisol. Your doctor has no idea, and he’ll prescribe medication because he doesn’t know what else to do, just like I didn’t.
Sean is another great example of turning health around; you should see the transformation from before to after. That was diet, exercise, and discipline, but something was still off: the same low HRV, low VO2 max, and lack of stress balance I mentioned earlier. So we went a step further and did some cardiovascular imaging: a calcium score, a CT scan looking for calcified plaque in the heart. For a healthy 36-year-old like Sean, the score should be zero, no plaque. His wasn’t; it was 212. He’d already developed cardiovascular disease at 36. We also ran a CLEERLY scan, an AI-driven heart scan that maps actual blood flow through the heart’s vessels, and it showed over 30% blockage in his LAD, the main artery of the heart, at age 36. What we found was that Sean had been stressing his body through overtraining, a great example of how too much of a good thing can be harmful. It’s about understanding the balance across signal, noise, and resilience, and what’s actually right for your body.
So now you’ve done the testing. What do you do? I heard some version of “Doc, just tell me what to do” from patients for decades. Well, the answer is: it depends. When we build your plan, we design your specific path forward. You don’t need “a” plan, you need your plan, based on your genetics, your blood work, your functional testing, your microbiome, and everything else I’ve described, because all of it drives the decision of what’s actually right for you.
You’re building all this wealth, but if you develop a major health issue at 59, what’s the point? That’s why building a plan that’s right for you matters so much. So we pull together blood labs (which we’re running for a lot of you this weekend), functional testing, genetics, body composition scanning, metabolic and VO2 max testing, and complex markers of how your body’s physiology is actually working, along with your goals and preferences: what do you want, what are you trying to achieve? Just like Dave and his team do with your money, we do the same with your health. There has to be a North Star, because that’s what determines which hormones you need, what’s right for you, which supplements or peptides might help, which medications you actually need (not just a statin, the way I got handed one at that first visit), and what you should be eating.
The next most common question after “just tell me what to do” is “what should I eat?” And again: it depends. All of this testing is what helps us answer that. It may be that bananas and coffee are wrong for you, without you ever realizing it.
Then there’s your training plan, a workout program that’s right for your body without overdoing it, and finally lifestyle and recovery. All of these are shaped by the testing. That’s Peak Launch, and putting these pieces together is really my passion.
People ask me all the time what’s important, what they should take, what I think of some molecule they heard about, some NAD booster, some incredible peptide, some amazing diet plan. The answer is always: it depends. Think of it like baking a cake. You have key ingredients: nutrition first, maybe, hormones a close second, then gut health, blood sugar control, sleep, fitness, clearing toxins, and community and relationships. These are the fundamental building blocks of your health. If you forget the baking soda, the cake doesn’t rise. You ruin it by missing one key ingredient. That’s why you might be taking some magical peptide and wondering why it isn’t working, why semaglutide isn’t helping you lose fat or build muscle the way you expected. You may be missing one of those foundational ingredients.
Once the cake comes out of the oven and onto the drying rack, what goes on top? Frosting. That’s the peptides, the hyperbarics, the red light, the sauna, the PEMF, the cryo chamber, the plasma treatments, all the biohacks you hear about. They’re great, in the right context, at the right time, in the right sequence. But a lot of people try to buy a can of frosting before they’ve even baked the cake, which is why focusing on the fundamentals first matters so much.
The third step is track. How do you actually know that what you’re doing is working? Whatever your plan is, whatever you’re taking, whatever lifestyle changes you’re making, how do you know you’re getting anywhere? I believe strongly in tracking your data and your metrics to know what’s working and what isn’t; you have to know your numbers.
I’m a big believer in wearable technology. Who’s tried a blood sugar monitor? With a simple sensor on your arm, you can track your blood sugar continuously, and the data is fascinating, not just for diabetics, but for anyone trying to have more energy, better brain function, burn fat, build muscle, or sleep better, all of which can be tied to blood sugar.
Body composition scanning matters too. I’d argue your weight doesn’t really matter; what matters is lean muscle mass and body fat. We use an in-body scan at our office to measure this for every client, but you can even do this at home with a body composition scale, something like a Renpho or Withings scale, for under $30 on Amazon, to start tracking lean mass and body fat, the numbers that actually matter. Your weight might not change much at all. I’ve seen clients lose five pounds and feel discouraged, when in fact they lost 20 pounds of fat and gained 15 pounds of muscle. It’s body composition, not the number on the scale.
We can also track sleep, and I’m a big believer in that too. Here’s Ken, a long-time client, who told me his sleep was fine, that wasn’t his problem. So we measured it. This is his Oura data: on this particular night he slept seven hours, which sounds pretty good. But remember, sleep moves through cycles, REM and non-REM, with non-REM including light and deep sleep. Deep sleep is the critical, restorative stage, and you need about an hour of it a night, along with roughly two hours of REM; those are the key numbers to watch, not just total hours. Ken didn’t get one hour of deep sleep. He got one minute. That’s a perfect example of not knowing what you don’t know: you sleep seven hours and think you’re fine, but still feel awful, because the quality wasn’t there. The only way to know that is to track it.
For stress, you can measure heart rate variability, or HRV, the variation in your heartbeat from one beat to the next. A resting pulse of “70” isn’t perfectly steady; each beat varies slightly, and that variation is actually a strong indicator of your internal stress levels. You want high HRV, meaning your body is dynamic, rested, and ready to respond to whatever comes its way. When you’re sick, ill, or overtrained, your HRV drops, and your body becomes static and fragile, unable to adapt well. I’ve seen clear examples of how travel and alcohol crush HRV directly. You can measure it through salivary cortisol testing, or through a simple wearable strap you put on for a couple of minutes in the morning, and you can watch it shift day to day based on your diet, exercise, supplements, or alcohol. When your HRV is low, you cannot build muscle no matter how hard you train, and you won’t burn fat either; in fact, the opposite tends to happen.
On blood sugar: one client told me she couldn’t lose weight no matter what she tried. We put a continuous glucose monitor on her arm and found a spike that lasted about three hours, over 200. Normally blood sugar rises a bit after eating, that’s expected, but it should rarely go above 140, and only briefly, if you’re eating the right food for your body. Her three-hour spike over 200 came from sushi. It wasn’t “bad food” in general, it was kryptonite for her specifically. For some people, the order you eat food in matters too, fibrous vegetables and protein before rice, for example, can make a real difference, but the only way to know is to test it. Your doctor knows almost nothing about this and would only recommend a CGM if you’re diabetic, but everyone could benefit from understanding what in their daily life is triggering spikes like that.
Body composition scanning shows this well too: with an in-body scan, you can see skeletal muscle mass and body fat plotted together, and ideally they form an inverse relationship, high lean muscle, low body fat. Someone who weighs 203 pounds with high muscle and low fat looks completely different, physiologically, from someone at the same weight with the opposite balance, high fat and low muscle. That’s why body composition, not the number on the scale, is what actually matters.
We built a dashboard where clients can see all their data in one place, labs, genetics, wearable data, all graphed together, so both the client and our team can track it in real time. Just like a team managing your money should be tracking your financial data in real time, we believe the same should be true for your health data. That’s the idea behind Peak Launch: test, design, track, to identify what may be holding you back without you realizing it, figure out how to address it, and then confirm that what we’re doing is actually working.
I’m proud of what we’ve built at Peak Launch, here in Sarasota, working with clients around the country. We have an amazing team, and I built a signature program combining comprehensive testing and concierge medical care, but the real magic is integrating that with functional coaching. I believe everyone needs a coach; I personally have three. A coach keeps you accountable and gives you the guidance and support you need. The medical side, hormones, peptides, blood testing, is great, and that’s where I started, but I’d argue the coaching is exponentially more important: helping you dial in exactly what you’re doing day to day, what you’re eating or not eating, and tracking your results to make sure you’re actually making progress. And finally, data: repeat testing, scanning, and wearable technology to track the metrics that matter.
That’s the Peak Launch Signature program. We also built a custom app that lets clients see all of their data in one place, and actually text their doctor and coach directly. I’d ask you: what other company lets you text your doctor and get a response in real time? All your results are there, and you can refill any supplement with a single tap. We’ve also recently added PLX, a custom AI agent trained on your own health data, genetics, wearable data, lab results, coaching notes, and medical notes, so when it gives you an answer, you know it’s based on you, not just generic information from the internet.
I built an entire team under one roof: medical providers, coaches, a pharmacy team, concierge nursing, and admin support, so we can address every piece of what I’ve described here today. There are other great companies doing pieces of this, I love Function Health, people sometimes assume I see them as a competitor, but I don’t. Function is great. The challenge is that a lot of people get their labs done there, get an AI-generated report, and then wonder, “Now what do I do?” Taking that data and actually putting it through a full system with coaching and a team is where the real power is. Having everything under one roof, addressing every piece of what I’ve described, is where the magic happens.
I believe it’s all about results. We track outcomes with every client to make sure we’re actually delivering, not just collecting stories, but real data. Every client’s real-time metrics are tracked behind the scenes, because if we’re not actually getting results, what’s the point? We’re obsessed with outcome data and tracking results with every single client.
So I’ll close by asking: what blind spots might be holding you back without you even realizing it? You don’t know what you don’t know.
Thanks for listening to this episode of Wealth Strategy Secrets. If you’d like a free copy of the book, go to holisticwealthstrategy.com. If you’d like to learn more about upcoming opportunities at Pantheon, visit pantheoninvest.com.