Transcript of 40-Year-Old Men's Health is a Lie | Dr Tracy Gapin

I believe that there is nothing you can do that will have a bigger ROI, return of investment for your business, for your life, than to focus on your health, to do everything you can to optimize it. We're not talking about treating disease, treating illness, taking pharmaceuticals, God forbid. We're talking about optimizing your health. That is critical. It's paramount for any small business owner, entrepreneur, anyone who wants to really create something that has real meaning to it. To convince someone of that is incredibly difficult. How do you convince someone to want something they don't even recognize they need?

Dr. Tracy, man, I'm so excited to have you on the show, man. These are some of my favorite episodes when I get to talk to people like yourself who are invested in helping us be healthier, more productive, performance. I love this shit, so I'm excited to talk to you, man.

Hell, yeah, man. Glad to be with you today.

Yeah. So something I saw that you talked about and write a little bit about is this idea of health span equaling wealth span. And that just immediately clicked for me. So maybe we could start there. Let's dive in. Maybe what is health span versus wealth span? And how do those two things align? You'll pick this up as we continue to talk. I do probably put a little too much context in my questions. But this, to me, this disconnect between the importance of our health and our wealth is something Something that we were even talking about before we went live, I feel like, is a major miss for so many successful people. So how do we start to connect these? And why have you pulled this out as a core message that you share?

Definitely. Yeah. And I'm a small business owner. I'm an entrepreneur as well, so I can relate to most of the guys, men and women who I work with. But what I find is so common is founders, entrepreneurs, small business owners, executives. We are so focused on building our business, on our career, of taking care of our clients and generating revenue, what do we do? We sacrifice ourselves. We put ourselves behind everyone else. We neglect our own health, not realizing how the way our mind and body work or don't work directly affects that outcome that we're searching for. What I mean by that is your energy, your focus, your drive, your confidence, the way you show up every day, it directly translates to the bottom line for you. So many people don't recognize that, and they will neglect themselves and not really pay attention until there's a major catastrophic health issue, an event, something that happens when it's often too late. I talk about it's not just prevention, it's about early detection. It's about using all the amazing cutting edge tools we have available for us now to really find hidden blind spots, find issues that are holding us back without us even realizing I spend a lot of time thinking about my health.

I have a hormone optimization specialist that I've been introduced to because I was having some issues with testosterone, which I want to dig in with you and get into in a few minutes. I've always been into health. I had a health scare in 2017 that really ignited that. I basically was an athlete until I was 25. Then I got married and lost every habit that I had about being healthy. Then it wasn't until I was 34 I'm 35, 36 that all of a sudden I had this health scare, and I was like, Wow, I got to get my shit together. I tend to, when I get into something, dive super deep. I big into mitochondrial function, which is another question I have for you. And different stuff like that. I have an at-home steam sauna, and I do cool by night. I do a lot of the crazy stuff. And some of it I do for a bit. I don't really... I test it or whatever. I don't do it. But my buddies will be like, What is wrong with you? Why do you spend so much time thinking about this. And as I said to you before we went live, I was like, I tell them all the time, Guys, you can be 40 years old and not feel like shit.

Both of those things can be true. You don't have to just go, Oh, I'm getting older, so now I'm going to walk like, hunch I'm going to complain about my back all the time. I guess my question here is, I have a hard time because I'm not a health guy, right? So I tell people what I do, but I don't... I obviously don't prescribe or anything like that. But it's like, how does someone Someone like me, right? If I bump into another buddy who's a hardworking guy, maybe owns a business or whatever, and I see his health is not in place, what's something that I can say to him? How do I start to introduce him to a more proactive health lifestyle that can get his health realigned.

I believe that there is nothing you can do that will have a bigger ROI, return of investment for your business, for your life than to focus on your health and to really do everything you can to optimize it. We're not talking about treating disease, treating illness, taking pharmaceuticals, God forbid. We're talking about optimizing your health. I think that is critical. It's paramount for any small as an owner, entrepreneur, anyone who wants to really create something that has real meaning to it. However, to convince someone of that is incredibly difficult. It's like, how do you convince someone to want something that they don't even recognize they need. This comes down to the psychology of it all, where you have to want it. I believe that real transformation happens when you're open and willing to receive that. So many people are not. This is why what I like to suggest for a lot of people out there is that's okay, don't invest in your health. Don't do anything. Just get tested. Do me a favor and just get tested first. Look Look at your hormones and inflammation markers and blood sugar control, metabolic health markers, cardiovascular health, micronutrients.

Look at your gut health markers. Look at cortisol, which is our stress hormone that everyone denies stress is a problem. Do that testing first, and let's just see what it shows. The reason I like to recommend that is because you can't convince someone that they should care about something. You have to show them why it matters to them. What I do with the testing is it helps people We'll see on paper, data doesn't lie, that there's some real issues there. Then you can start to tie that back to what's your priorities, what's important to you, what's it really all about for you, what's your legacy going to look like, and what if you weren't here? What would your wife? What would your husband? What would your kids do? What would your team do without you? And when you start to put it in that frame with the data to support the fact that you got to do something, that's when you can start to really reach people. But otherwise, it's hard to get people to want to make a change.

Yeah, I completely agree. I was talking to a buddy of mine the other day, and he's late 30s, and he's doing a startup. Had it successfully starting again. And he said to me, Man, that gear I had 10 years ago, he's like, I don't have that gear. And I was like, Well, why don't you have that gear? He's like, Well, I'm going to be 40 next year. And I go, What does that mean? I go, I'm 44. I go, On a good day, I still feel like I'm in in my late 20s. I have energy, I'm strong, whatever. I said, Why? This isn't rocket science, bro. There's tons of data to help you. Like you said, you go out, get tested, figure out it could be any number of things that you mentioned that you can fix through being proactive. And I feel like people struggle to attach their health to the impact on the business. He can't go 20 hours a day because he's not healthy. He's not falling into flow state like he did because he's not healthy. He does have that afternoon lull where he wants to take a nap because he's not healthy.

It's like, dude, you could get all that time back. You could get that focus back, but you have to be proactive. And that disconnect is I struggle with why so many people don't make it. And maybe it's just because it's hard, right? I mean, it's another thing to think about. Could it be as simple as just it's another thing to think about, so we dismiss it?

Or is it just- Yeah, it's failure to recognize that you have any problem. So a lot of business owners, I hear exactly what you just described. It's middle of the afternoon, it's 2: 00, 3: 00, and they want to take a nap. Anyone who wants to take a nap in the middle of the afternoon, there's something really wrong. You should not want to take a nap unless you're 90 years old. That just is not something that should be part of your day. They have brain fog, they can't quite focus. They lose their sense of drive, sense of purpose. They lose their motivation. They lose their confidence in their ability to lead their team. They quit putting content out there because they don't feel the same level of drive that they once had. They're not sleeping well because of all kinds of other issues we can get into. That perpetuates this cycle of fatigue and brain fog, and you start to put on some belly fat, or for women, maybe in the butt, and you lose confidence in yourself, and everything starts to snowball. But you know what? I don't have time to focus on that because I got to work on the business.

It's recognizing that all those issues directly affect your revenue, affect the success of your business, affect your impact. It's waking up and realizing that you got to pay attention to stuff. It will have a profound effect on not just your business, but your relationship with your spouse, relationship with your kids, with your friends, your family, the community, everything. That's why it's so important.

I was talking to someone the other day, and they quoted me the on how people just aren't having as much sex as they used to have. I thought it was really interesting on a couple levels, but I have... Again, my gut is not that this is some societal move away from sex, but that something is off hormonally with us that we wouldn't want to have. I'm not talking about being a sex maniac, but I'm just saying a natural rhythm and an Even deeper into your life, there's no reason why you can't have a successful sex life into your 50s and your 60s unless your hormones are way off. And what else could it be? I don't know. Does that seem to be... Basically, this person was complaining to me and saying, Oh, well, other people... And I'm just like, Bro, again, it doesn't have to be that way. Something's going on with you that you don't have that drive when you wake up in them, or ever. I'm not saying every moment of every day, you have to be thinking about sex, but there is a natural rhythm to this, and for you to just not have it means something's off, right?

Yeah. There are actually three large studies, longitudinal 20 to 30-year studies that have shown here in the US as well as in Europe, that testosterone levels in men, for example, are about 45 % lower than they were 20 years ago, and it's getting worse every single year by another % or so. So what that means is that a 40-year-old man today has a free testosterone, which is the bioavailable active form that we need. That's about half what it was 20 years ago. That's massive. It's a massive, like precipitous decline. What that translates into is exactly what you're describing. It's loss of drive. It's not just sex. It's loss of drive and purpose in life. You lose mental clarity and focus. You lose ability to concentrate, your ability to perform at every level. It's sex. It's also in sport. It's in business. It's in relationships. Everything gets affected. Testosterone is just one hormone. Guys focus on getting their T-shot or women focus on their estrogen. But we all need testosterone and estrogen and thyroid, nitric oxide, vitamin D, growth hormone, all these hormones. There are 40 others we can go through that all act like a symphony and affect how our bodies perform.

And most of us are walking around deficient and don't even realize Yeah.

I had a testosterone scare two years ago, almost to the month. It was early January. So I'm from upstate New York. It's two degrees outside. We won't see the sun again until May. But I'm used to that, right? That normal, you take some extra vitamin D. That's why I got the... I'm pointing over here, even though it's off camera. I got red light in my steam that I help get some more vitamin D, et cetera. But Two years ago, it was like I ran into a brick wall. I'm 42 years old, and it was like, like you said, couldn't think, no energy, no drive, just felt like a different human. I went and got tested after about a month, and my testosterone was in the seventh percentile. I was basically at zero, essentially. And that started me on this journey of trying to figure out how to do this. I didn't want to go on TRT, so whatever. I took endo Comean or something. I always mispronounce it. And then cycled off of that. And lifestyle and diet have gotten myself back to a good level and feel good again. But what it got me thinking was, if I'm not as neurotic and bodily aware as I am because of how much I care about my health, I probably would have just plowed through that with this massive brain flog and low energy and low libido and low drive for months and not even thought twice about it.

So So maybe for the guys who... What are the signs that, not necessarily just testosterone, but maybe just for men, and then we can do women next. What are some of the things that trigger someone to go, You know what? I got to call Doc Tracy. Something is off here. What should they be looking for in their life that with proper activity, following a protocol you put together, et cetera, that they can start to get their life back a little bit? What are those warning signs?

The most common symptoms we see are low energy, hitting a wall early mid-afternoon, don't have the same focus, cognitive function, focus, mental acuity stuff, working hard in the gym but not seeing any gains, still have the belly fat, feel like they're doing everything they can, but nothing's moving, nothing's moving the needle there. Low sex drive. Again, sometimes your wife is chasing you instead of you chasing her. If that happens, there's typically something wrong there. Sleep, good quality sleep actually improves testosterone, which improves sleep. It's a cycle. When you have low testosterone, it directly impacts sleep quality as well. All of these are common signs that we see. But I'll tell you, what happens more often than not, Ryan, is that a man has no symptoms whatsoever, and he gets tested and finds that his levels are in the tank. That's because we're simple creatures. We're masters of adaptation where we compensate. We're like, Yeah, I'm fine. I'm okay. We'll chalk it up to just getting older, like you said. I'm 40. I'm supposed to be a little more tired. No, bullshit, you're not. That's not okay. That's not normal. That's a sign something's wrong. We tend to compensate for those symptoms that I mentioned and tell ourselves it's not really there.

I can't tell you how many hundreds of men I've helped where they thought they felt fine. We fixed their testosterone, and they're like, Holy cow, I had no idea how bad I felt until you got optimized. And so this is why, again, it goes back to just get tested. Don't believe me. Don't believe there's any problem. I think, assume you're fine. Let's just get tested and see where you are. It'll be an eye opener when you find your labs are not nearly where they should be.

Yeah, I think that's a wonderful point that you just made that it's almost as if... And I meet these guys. I see them. I I look around, so I coach Little League Baseball. My kids play Little League. I've told this story on the show before, but I went out. My son was pitching, and I went out to just talk to him. He was having a bad ending or whatever. I just went out to talk to him. Whatever was happening, There was a moment where I just did a 180-degrees turn and scanned the crowd. I was literally the only male that I could make visual contact with who didn't have a belly hanging out. I was How is this where we've gotten to? And all the guys will talk, Oh, I'm getting old, and this, and I'm just like, It's crazy to me that this is now acceptable. And then we all have the same bitches. My wife doesn't want to sleep with me. I can't get the energy to get to the gym. Doing yard work is tough, so I let it go. And then all these things start to stack because I'm getting older.

And I'm like, It is insane what the other side of this can look like if you find someone like yourself who can help guide you through proper testing to this place. Guys, if you're listening to this, there is this whole other world where you feel amazing, your best self. And you're back to being, I don't know if you're ever going to feel like you're 22 again, but you might feel like you're 28, still feel pretty good. And it's all there for the taking. And I hate that so many guys live day to day with this nagging pain or, like you said, brain fog or low energy It's just a shame because it's so fixable.

It also directly translates to longevity as well. I want to emphasize that while testosterone is one of, again, 40 plus hormones we look at, it's part of that symphony I mentioned, but testosterone alone is directly tied to cardiovascular health as well. Studies have shown that men with low testosterone, men in the lowest quartile compared to the highest quartile of testosterone levels, have about a 30 to 40 There's an increased risk of a major adverse cardiac event at an early age. Massive difference. It affects lipids, LDL. It affects blood sugar control. It affects blood pressure. It affects systemic inflammation. Testosterone is actually a strong anti-inflammatory, and it's been shown to directly affect cardiovascular health and longevity. This is not just about sex. It's not just about building muscle and looking good in the gym. It's not even about quality of life. It's about lifespan and longevity as well.

Yeah, being there for your family long term. I told you I went to this hormone optimization specialist after I had the testosterone issue. I'm going to butcher it, Enchlomitivine, or I always butcher the freaking name. Some big long word that starts with an E and has multiple Ns and ends in it. And then cycled off of that. And then she put me on a tessamorolin, a peptide. We do three months on, two months off, three months on, two off. And I have found, again, that to me is like a miracle drug. I feel like when I'm cycled on it, after the second week, I feel amazing. No brain fog, inflammation down. I feel strong. I feel driven. I feel really, really good. Now, here's my question for you, because since I've started taking this and I've told a few friends, I get a lot of questions about it. And then obviously, I a podcast, so then more people question me about it because I'm an idiot and I tell everyone everything that I'm doing. I only know how I feel on it, but I know there's a lot of people have questions like, have these peptides been tested enough?

Are there long term ramifications? What should guys be thinking about when considering a S'morolin, which now you can buy Zamorolin with just go online and pay 50 bucks and they'll send you Zamorolin in a vial, right? I think we need to be really careful, but seemingly there's some benefits. So how should we be thinking through these peptides?

I love peptides. I've been prescribing them over eight years now, so huge believer in the power of peptides. They're incredible. I use an analogy, a cake analogy. I'm going to get to the end, though, but it'll make more sense when I explain peptides. For the listener, peptides are simply short amino acid chains, like a small peptide, if you will, and they have very precise function, such as reducing inflammation, with musculoskeletal repair with weight loss, building muscle, better sleep, better sex, better cognitive function, clearing up the gut, even cosmetic stuff. Anything you can imagine, there are specific peptides that can help you with that. Some peptides are FDA approved. Tessimorelin is one that's actually FDA-approved. Semaglutide is another one. There are very few that are FDA-approved, though most of them are not. Where this comes into concern is the fact that it's become the Wild West. What I mean by that is back when I first started prescribing peptides, there were a couple of online wholesalers that you can buy them through as research chemicals only. Keywords there. Now, every other place you look, they're selling peptides. It's gone out of control, and the quality is a huge concern.

If it's not a 503A regulated pharmacy, you have absolutely no idea what you're getting. It is a research compound. I've seen studies where these products either have nothing in them, no active ingredient, or they actually have heavy metal toxins. You're actually maybe causing more harm than good. I don't care if they show you a certificate of authenticity because you cannot prove to me that that paper goes with the bottle that's in my hand. I really caution people against buying peptides online. I love peptides, to be very clear. I love them. They're amazing. They're incredible molecules that can help you achieve goals very quickly. But I would only use a compounding pharmacy. And so when I work with clients, we prescribe it from a pharmacy. It comes from the pharmacy with the label on it. It's legit. And so if you can swipe a credit card, like you're saying, to buy a peptide, I would be really concerned. I I certainly would not inject a chemical inside me in that environment.

Yeah, I'm all about testing things. But the idea of buying a random vial of clear liquid that you inject into your stomach sounds insane to me.

You have no idea what it And the number of stories, guys, if you go out, you go on Reddit, or you go on to any of these message boards, the number of stories of what you said where they're literally just selling you liquid that does nothing in some cases because you have no idea.

It's not you're drinking it. It's not your way of knowing what it is, and you're injecting it into your body. And I think the hard part for people is, I think these drugs do often come with a cost, and in some cases, are not covered by insurance. So some people who are interested in them, I find... I had one guy reach He talked to me and he's like, How much are you paying for Tessa Morland? I was like, I don't want to necessarily answer that question a random person, but gave him a ballpark. And he's like, You're an idiot. You can get it for 25 bucks a vial over here. I'm like, Bro, again, not a doctor, but if you're buying that chemical, that compound for $25 online, you are not getting what you think you're getting. Let's use our brains here. Let's be smart. Work with professionals, guys. Obviously, everything that we talk about in this show, find a professional. Find someone who you can trust, whether it's Doc Tracy or someone else. Find someone who knows what they're talking about, because while these can really improve your body, can improve your quality of life, your longevity, you can also really mess yourself up if you don't do the right stuff.

Absolutely. Yeah. And this brings me back to the cake analogy I teased you with in the beginning, and now it'll make a little more sense. That imagine you're baking a cake and you got a lot of ingredients, right? You got flour and sugar, and egg, and water, and baking soda. And you put all these ingredients together, When you bake your cake and it's sitting there in the drying rack, and then when it's cool, what do you do? What do you put on it? You put Frosting on, right? The Frosting is the sexy fun stuff. My analogy here is peptides are like that Frosting. The ingredients of your cake are optimizing your hormones, fixing your gut, your nutrition, your sleep, fixing inflammation, blood sugar control, clearing toxins from your body, getting fitness part of your daily routine, eliminating the impact The fact of stress that most entrepreneurs will deny is affecting them, but it is. When you fix all of those, those are the ingredients of that cake that's going to taste great when you've used all the ingredients. If you don't use baking soda to bake that cake, what happens? It's not quite the same.

People try to take peptides alone without doing the other stuff, without checking hormones and gut health and everything else we're talking about. You're not going to get the same results. It's like going and buying a can of Frosting It's not the shelf. That's not a cake. That's not the same. Context matters. I've heard guys tell me that they're taking these peptides and they don't see any difference. They're not building any muscle, they're not burning fat, they don't have any energy, they're not sleeping well. And they're like, these peptides don't work. Well, first of all, if you bought them online, you get what you pay for. But more importantly, if you don't bake that cake with the proper ingredients, you have no business eating that Frosting yet.

Yeah, that's a wonderful point. It's like, get Get your sleep fixed, get your diet fixed, get to the gym three times a week or whatever you need to do, and then look to these things that can make you feel amazing. Because I'll tell you, I had a period the second time I cycled back on. So I was on for three months, off for two, and then I cycled back on. And I had this period that was just a super stressful period. There's a lot of stuff going on in business. I was traveling a lot, so I wasn't sleeping well. I wasn't eating well. I wasn't hydrating. I wasn't getting as many workouts in as I want. And to your point, I was like, oh, well, maybe I'm growing not an immunity. My body is. Tolerance or resistance. Tolerance, yeah. I'm growing a tolerance to this. In my head, that's what I'm thinking because one, I don't know what I'm talking about. And two, I'm going, I don't feel the same as the first time. And then I had to... So then I said something to my doctor, and she's like, Well, you've been on the road five or the last six weeks.

Have you been working out? No. Have you been eating well? No. Have you been drinking too much? Yes. Have you been sleeping well? No. Okay, well, there you go. That's why this isn't magic. Like you said, it's this amplifier of a really solid base. So I think that's a wonderful point. You mentioned something in there that... How do we Obviously, microplastic is a huge issue, but like, toxins, these things, we read all these stories about there's all this stuff in our body now because of the way we eat and how our food is packaged, et cetera. One, what role are these toxins playing in how we feel every day? And then is there a way or a method or et cetera that we can start to remove these toxins out of our bodies?

Sure. So I believe that endocrine disruptors, which is a fancy term for chemicals, toxins, toxicants in our environment that affect hormone production, hormone function. I believe endocrine disruptors have clearly been shown to be the The biggest single culprit for the testosterone epidemic I was talking about a few minutes ago, why your hormones are so low. We know that endocrine disruptors crush testosterone levels. They cause infertility, they cause autoimmune disease, they cause ADD, precocious puberty, they cause all kinds of cancers. So clear causative relationship between these toxins and these major health issues. What am I talking about? I'm talking about in our drinking water. Tap water is actually loaded with synthetic estrogen. Women's birth control is in our drinking water. It cannot be adequately filtered. And so women's synthetic estrogen, you're drinking it unless you're filtering your water with some reverse osmosis or carbon block filter. There are many other chemicals in our drinking water as well. In our food, they're loaded with things like atrazine. Most of the crops in the Midwest, especially corn, is sprayed with atrazine, which is an herbicide. People talk about glyphosate, which is the most commonly used herbicide. The second most commonly, just not far behind, is atrazine.

Every other country on the planet, every other other major country on the planet, it's outlawed, it's banned. But here in the US, it's still allowed and it's used on our crops. It's been clearly shown that atrazine crushes hormone production and function. Crazy study, actually, where they exposed frogs. They exposed male frogs to a very tiny amount of atrazine in their drinking water. No lie, these These male frogs became female, and they actually laid eggs and reproduced from exposure to atrazine. We are eating it on our food every day without even realizing it. It's crazy. It's in our drinking water. It's in our food. Anytime you're eating non-organic fruits and vegetables, it's there. If you're eating meat that's not organic grass-fed, it's potentially full of hormones, synthetic chemicals. Personal care products, our laundry detergent, our Our shampoo, our soap, our deodorant, sunscreen, all of these products that we use are loaded with chemicals that, first of all, they didn't use them 20, 30 years ago either. They're saving money, they're finding industrial ways to make these products now. All these chemicals have been shown to crush our health. It's a major problem. It does not get nearly enough attention, so I'm glad you asked about it.

What do we do? I don't want to be all doom and gloom here. What do you do about it is, first of all, awareness. There's an app on your phone, the Environmental Working Group, EW WG has made an app. It's free. If you like things that are free, it's called Healthy Living. You can download. It's a green little icon on your phone. You can scan barcodes of products in the store, and you'll see all the chemicals. You go to Tide and cheer laundry detergent, you'll be like, Holy cow, I can't believe I've been using this for years. It'll help you find products that are clean and don't have all these chemicals. I would insist that you filter your water. I would recommend you never drink from a plastic water bottle again. Those plastic water bottles, like Gatorade and Powerade as well, plastic water bottle, they're made with BPA, bisphenol A, and thalates, and they leach into your water, and they crush you on a daily basis. This is why I always have A stainless steel water container with me with filtered water, with reverse osmosis filtered water. So important. I would focus on eating organic grass-fed meat if you eat meat or wild caught fish if you eat fish.

Otherwise, your fruits and vegetables should be organic if at all possible because they're all covered in chemicals. It's all around us. I call it a soup of endocrine disruption. We just need to really raise our awareness and be very intentional in these little micro decisions we make every day to avoid it.

Is there any way to get the chemicals out of your body. And I'll give you an example. I was scrolling through Instagram, which as a single male in my 40s, is basically how I make all of my buying decisions, since that algorithm basically It has to be more dialed than anyone in history. It's crazy. Honestly, the shirt that I'm wearing, the jeans I have on, the boots I have on, all from Instagram. It's exactly what my style is. But I'm scrolling through the other day, and obviously, Instagram knows that I'm a nerd for this stuff, armchair nerd, I guess. And it was like this. I just thought it was funny, and that's why I'm bringing it up. And I'm interested in the science behind it. But the idea was like, you You adhere these pads to the bottom of your feet while you sleep, and it's supposed to have some charcoal, whatever. And as the blood passes through the blood vessels, the blood passes through the blood vessels, it sucks out heavy metals and different chemicals. And I was like, whatever. One, I don't know if there's any valid science behind that working, but it got me thinking.

I've read that it's very difficult to get microplastics out, but a lot of these other chemicals and toxins that you're discussing, are there ways that we can actually remove them from the body if they do make it their way in there?

Yeah. This comes back to those ingredients in the cake I mentioned earlier. One of them is detoxification, helping your body clear these toxins. And that happens in the gut, happens in the liver. And so there's a lot of things we do to test for and optimize the function of your gut and liver for clearing toxins. So that's a big part of it. Eliminating exposure is by far the first thing we want to do, and then optimize those detoxification pathways. I'm I'm not a big believer in hacks, in buying some tool off Instagram and thinking that's going to fix the problem. It's really optimizing from the inside. Now, one thing that has been shown to clear microplastics, and it's not yet available here in the US, to be clear, will be soon, and that is plasma pharesis. I want to clarify that the plasma exchange that we have available here in the US, the devices that most of... You hear some of these longevity centers talk about offering plasma pharesis. It's actually plasma exchange. It has to do with the device and the filter size that's being used. Basically, the filter size has to be small enough to catch microplastics, and that technology is not yet allowed here in the US.

We hope sometime in the next year, regulation will relax to where we can bring that in. But in Europe, in London, they have these devices all over the place where you can actually filter microplastics. Plasma exchange is great for very short term clearance of LP. It's an LDL subtype that people have that can increase cardiovascular risk. It's helpful for that very short term for a couple of weeks, but not for microplastics yet.

I read somewhere that regularly giving blood can be a simple hack to this, right? Just regular donations of blood. If you go quarterly or whatever, that can be one way to get it out, and then your body is recharging fresh. Again, you have to be limiting your exposure on the front-end, or it doesn't really matter. But if you are So you're not starting to limit your front-end, does even something as simple as just regularly donating blood could potentially help?

It could definitely be helpful. Yeah, plasma donation, especially. It's really all in the plasma, not really the red cells.

Okay, that's good to know. I didn't know that differentiation. Just maybe for people who aren't aware, the difference between plasma and just standard blood donations.

So to keep it simple, just go donate blood, and that can work as well. But specifically plasma is where they actually separate out your... When you spin your blood in a centrifuge, the red blood cells fall on the bottom, the platelets will be in the middle, and then the plasma is all the clear yellowish straw-looking fluid that's at the top, that's separation. That plasma is where all those toxins live, where all the chemicals, all the junk and the debris that you're trying to get rid of. When we do plasma exchange, what we're doing is we are taking that plasma, getting rid of it and replacing it with albumin, for example, and then putting it back in the body. And so that's one option that still is not going to really help with the microplastics, but it definitely helps with toxins in general.

That's good to know. That's very good to know. I want to switch to another topic, mitochondria. So a lot of reading that I've been doing around longevity has brought me to the health of our mitochondria, the energizing our mitochondria, et cetera, helping our mitochondria repair. One, maybe just quickly for anyone who is unfamiliar of how mitochondria work in our body, but ultimately, what role does keeping our mitochondria healthy play in longevity, energy, et cetera? Is this something that we should be thinking about, or is it more of a luxury item?

We learn about the mitochondria a little bit in undergraduate, But then in medical school, we actually learn about a little deeper about how that's where it's the organelle. It's inside a cell. It's the specific part of the cell that produces energy. It produces it by manufacturing a molecule called ATP. Your whole body It needs ATP for energy. Everything that happens depends on ATP, and that's your unit of energy. Without ATP, you would die, you wouldn't exist. The mitochondria are where ATP is produced. It's also where NAD is manufactured as well. Mitochondria are really important organelles. We now recognize that there are hallmarks of aging. The aging process, what are clear signs of aging, and issues with the mitochondria is one of those. We know it's a really important part of not just daily energy production, but actually longevity as well. Optimizing mitochondrial function, a lot of people think, Oh, it's just woo, it's some influences out there making stuff up. But there's actually real science behind it is a key when it comes to energy, when it comes to your daily performance, and when it comes to cardiovascular health, when it comes to longevity, it's all directly tied in the end back to the mitochondria.

How do you supplement? One, should you supplement for this stuff? Let's take this idea of energizing our mitochondria, helping them be healthy, et cetera. Because, again, not a doctor, but there's part of me in the research that I've done that does believe it feels like there's something to this. If you can keep your mitochondria healthy, helps your body. They produce the energy, as you said. That seems like a good thing. I don't need to have a doctorate to see if that produces the energy, we want to keep that producing the energy. One, pre-supplementation, are there things that we can be doing in our lives to help our mitochondria function? And then is there any... Once we have that base, again, going back to your cake analogy, which I love because I completely agree with. Once we have our base, our cake together, is there... Keeping our analogy together, the Frosting, the supplementation that can help take that further?

Yeah, there is. I caution people against listening to this and say, Oh, all I need to do is take some and that's going to fix my mitochondria. Timeline is a great company out there. I have no financial connection with them at all, but they make a great product called Mitopure, and it's quite expensive. It's not cheap, but it's a great supplement for mitochondria. However, if you're eating a diet high in sugar, refined processed sugar, refined carbs, if you're drinking alcohol consistently, if your body in a high Stress, cortisol state, either from poor sleep, overtraining. Chronic stress affects mitochondrial function as well. Toxins, we talked about earlier, can affect mitochondria. Systemic inflammation, which typically comes from the gut, the microbiome and the gut wall, integrity we could talk about. All of these things come back and affect our entire system at a level, really coming down to the cellular level to the mitochondria. Taking antioxidants to try to improve mitochondrial function has been looked at. There are a lot of supplements that you can take. It comes down to the fundamentals, and it comes down to understanding. I do a lot of work with genetics, and based on your genetics, we can actually understand clearly what your risk factors are, how does your body work best, and what supplements may be right for you.

Because so many people take supplements that based on their body, based on testing, it's not even what they need, it's not going to help them. And so that's really the key is to focus on the fundamentals and get the testing done to understand what your body needs rather than just shotguning it and taking a bunch of supplements that may not be what you need?

So for the testing piece, let's say I'm listening to this. I'm on a treadmill. I want to be healthy. I'm trying to get myself in shape, and health is a priority for 2026. If I go to my GP, what should I be asking for in terms of testing so that I'm getting the right test so I can actually make these decisions? Or what's the right way to go about the testing and what should I ask for so that I'm getting the results that we can actually make some decisions on, as you've outlined here? Yeah.

So I practice what is really called precision performance medicine. It is optimization. It's focused on prevention, on performance, on longevity, on preventing disease before it happens. If you go to your GP and say, Doc, I really want to look at assessing my mitochondrial function, and I really just want I'm trying to improve my energy and performance and really just find ways to optimize, your doctor is going to look at you and laugh. The reason is not that you're wrong. The reason is what I learned when I was a urologist, I was a board-certified urologist running a busy surgical practice doing robotic surgery for 23 years. I couldn't see it. It's like when you're inside the bottle, you can't see the label on the outside. I didn't realize it that traditional medicine, especially general practitioners, internal medicine docs, even concierge medical docs, I don't mean to be disparaging against them. It's all we're taught. We're taught these are the blood tests to do to look for disease, to look for a real acute problem. We do a CBC and basic metabolic profile, PTP, PTT, INR, and all these, I'll argue, are worthless labs, but that's all we know to check.

Back then, in those days, I would laugh at functional medicine. I would laugh at this. Back then, it was called anti-aging. Now there's this longevity medicine, an air quote for those of you listening, that I think it gives it a bad name. It's the fact that there's a huge gap between our traditional healthcare system, which is so messed up and broken and focused on disease and based on pharmaceuticals and run by insurance companies and burned-out doctors who are miserable and hate their life and have to see 60 patients a day, and so they don't have time to focus on your sleep and stress and gut health and nutrition and all And then there's this other world of precision performance medicine where we're focused on optimization. And we look over there to where we were. And I'm like, I can't believe I lived through that for so many years. And I was suffering. My patients were suffering. And so what do you say to your GP? I don't know the answer to that because they're not going to get it. And they have a completely wrong perspective because that's all we're taught as we go through our educational system.

So one, I'll just quickly share with the audience, if you haven't heard I told this story before. I had an experience this way. I had a wonderful GP, and then she retired, and I got assigned to someone else in the practice. And the someone else in the practice is not amazing. I'm sure she's a wonderful human, but seemingly not a great general practice, at least from my perspective, because I showed up one day and I had two issues. This was during the testosterone issue, right? I said, My energy is really low. I have massive brain fog. I just don't feel like the same guy. At the same time, I got a basic panel back and my cholesterol had gone from 205 to 250. I've always had high cholesterol since eight. I've been getting blood tests because I've had hereditary high cholesterol. She goes, Oh, no problem. I'm going to write you a prescription for Adderall and Lipitor. I was like, I don't want either one of those things. There you go. Actually, I'll take the Adderall because I can resell that. But I'm not taking the Lipitor. If the FBI is listening, I don't really resell Adderall, just so you care.

But I was like, I certainly don't want to go on Lipitor for a whole bunch of reasons. I don't think I need it. But I said no. And then I went back and I did some research and I came back and I go, First of all, 250 is high today, but it hasn't always been considered high. I said, In two... And this is like basic ChatGPT search. I'm not even... This isn't even me. I go, In second, if my plaque is zero, then is it really... Do I need to be on Lipitor at 44 if I have zero plaque and a 250 cholesterol, which even my LDL is not bad. And she's like, Well, I guess you're right. So then she sends me to the MRI machine. I get the full body scan, come back. My plaque is zero. And she's like, Well, do you want to go on the Lipitor? I'm like, No. My point is, I felt immediately in that moment, I couldn't trust her anymore. She was trying to push this thing on me. And I had to advocate against my GP to not go on Lipitor. I don't understand. I lost all trust.

I was like, That was when I went and found the hormone optimization specialist who's been a wonderful relationship because she's function, longevity, not as deep as you go, but that's her space.

Yeah, that was my story as well, believe it or not, Ryan. So this was back, I was 13 years ago now. I just turned 40, and I go for my first physical ever. I'm a mess. I'm stressed out. I'm fat. I'm tired. I feel old, and I hate my life. I'm a miserable surgeon. Surgeons are assholes. It's true. I was. All my doc wanted to do was put me on a statin. Same story, same exact thing. I knew I need a lot more than that, but I didn't know what to do either. I'm a urologist. That's what made me, triggered me to go back to school and learn longevity, medicine, functional medicine, hormones, peptides, optimization. What I now see is that I almost feel bad for them because they don't have any other tools in their toolbox. That's it. They look at cholesterol. I'll actually argue, first of all, that cholesterol doesn't even really matter. It's actually you want to be looking at APO-B. Apo-lipoprotein B is the single most important marker for lipids that most doctors still don't know about. Ldl-p, which is LDL particle number, the number of LDL particles is so much more important than LDL-C, which is The concentration of cholesterol within those LDL particles.

Tole cholesterol is, I would argue, relatively worthless lab test that they're basing this decision on. Then even if your lipids are a problem, even APO-B is high, There's testing that will show us that in many cases, a statin is the wrong drug for you anyway, even if you were going to take a drug. Not only is it the wrong drug for you, but there are so many things that we can do before that to help optimize lipids without even touching a pharmaceutical, like fixing hormones, making sure you're eating the right diet. Based on your genetics, you may be eating the wrong diet for your body, cleaning up the gut, reducing inflammation, stress, cortisol, all these are the things that we can focus on when you optimize that stuff. A lot of times the lipids take care of itself.

Yeah. And that's exactly what happened to me. So I've always been good with diet. I probably eat a little too much red meat, but that's fine. If I lose a few months of lifespan because of eating too much red meat, I'm okay with that. But basically, once we confirmed diet, she's like, I want you to get back on your workout routine for about a month. So I did that and got that going. And then we did another test, and it was still whatever. And it was a combination of the test of Morland and a microdose, 1. 75 milliliters per whatever of tersepatide. That combination, Cholesterol came down 52 points. What's the fat in your body? Visceral fat percentage came down two percentage points over a three-month period. Massive change. Again, continuing to eat a good diet, workout, I'm focused on sleep, that stuff, not drinking too much. But that combination, and then I was able to cycle off of the Tresepitide and just keep the Tessimorolin and my levels have stayed. I've been blown away by the difference between that experience, which was custom, thoughtful. She didn't immediately start sticking Tessa Morland in my body.

She's like, I want you to take a month and make sure that your diet, workout, et cetera, is in shape before we go down this path for all the reasons that you said. She didn't want you Frosting a green bean casserole. She wanted you to be Frosting the cake. Again, it's why I love talking to people like yourself, because What you're talking about, everybody needs to be exposed to this shit because they just accept. And again, I think you're completely right. We should not, nor do they deserve to bash GPs. But there is so much more that can be done for you if it's done in a way that's thoughtful and custom and understands this level of how your body actually works.

Yeah, I agree.

Yeah. So with the few minutes that we have left, I wanted to ask you and finish with gut. You've mentioned it a few times, right? I think that in general, this is another area where people just don't have a good understanding of what's going on in your gut essentially drives what's going on in the rest of your body. I think most people don't think about that. And again, I'm broad-stroking it, not a doctor, but it's so incredibly important. And Basically, we just shove things in our face and we forget that we did that. And I don't understand the microbiome piece. There's like certain bacteria or whatever. I don't understand that. So maybe we could dig into that. But why is what's happening in the gut so important to our overall health and functionality. Sure.

So the gut has infinitely more DNA material than our whole body. Crazy. And it's a signal. The gut sends a signal to our brain for neurotransmitters. It sends a signal to everywhere else in our body for metabolism. It controls hormone production. It controls almost everything in some way, shape, or form. The gut is, I really believe, your health starts and ends in the gut. Now, I want to clarify. I'm not talking about, do you have any irregularity, any cramping? I'm not talking about that stuff because most people who have gut issues have absolutely no symptoms. I don't mean gut issues in that type of sense. When we're talking about the gut, what we're talking about is you have this balance. To make it simplistic, to make this concept easy to understand, it's literally good and bad. You have this battle going on in the gut between the good microbes, the good healthy organisms. You need bacteria in your gut to produce key hormones, produce nitric oxide, produce butyrate, produce these other key molecules. Glp-1 GLP-1. Glp-1 is semaglutide, tereosepatide, these peptides that we now talk about. Glp-1 is actually made in the gut, and it's made by the L-cell, a specific cell lining your gut, and it needs acromansia, a key microbe to make it work.

Without acromansia, that cell doesn't produce GLP-1. We believe a lot of obesity issues may actually tie back down to the microbiome as a driving force for that. Our bodies make GLP-1s. They make a lot of hormones. Neurotransmitters get affected by the gut. This balance between good and bad is really important. It also affects the gut lining. Our gut lining is composed of a bunch of cells stacked next to each other with a mucus protective layer, an immune layer called the secretory IGA layer. It's full of immune cells and mucus, and it protects that gut wall so that only single molecules of fats and carbohydrates and amino acids can get absorbed through those cells. When you get breakdown of that gut wall, suddenly food particles can now creep between those broken down cells. Once these food particles get below that cell wall, that cell line, now everything starts to go haywire. It triggers an immune response. You get systemic inflammation. You get food sensitivities, it affects-Is that when you're talking gut?

Yes. Is that when people refer to leaky gut?

That's what we're talking about. That is leaky gut. Exactly. It's breakdown of the gut wall, and typically it's from alcohol and stress and poor diet and breakdown of the microbiome, breakdown of the protective layer of the gut, and that leads to leaky gut. That's when you have issues with thyroid problems, issues with autoimmune disease, issues with brain fog, issues with I can't burn fat, I can't build muscle with low energy. All these symptoms, you're like, Oh, wait, I thought that was testosterone. It may actually be coming from your gut. This is where, again, it comes back to tying back to where we started almost an hour ago that people think my gut's fine. Well, okay, let's just test it and see, and you'll be shocked to find that it's probably not. And that may be the reason why you can't burn those few extra pounds in your belly.

Tracy, I could talk to you for hours, dude. I have like 30 more questions. Love to have you back on the show sometime because there's so many things that I want to talk to you about because I just... Taking it all the way back to where we started, I believe as much as I believe If you're not happy with anything that helped this idea that you talk about of health span equals wealth span. It's absolutely, positively the case. Your success long term, we can have microbursts of success, maybe if we're unhealthy. But If you want to consistently be healthy and have strong relationships and be around for your kids and your partner and all the fun things you're supposed to be working for in your life that you actually want to do someday, why be hunched over and barely able to walk and miserable and unhappy and brain foggy and low energy when you actually get to go do the fun stuff that you've built this business to provide for. And I love that there are people out there like you who are focused on this, who are sharing the message, who are doing in a way that's very understandable.

So for the people who've listened to this that are like, I want to either get deeper into your world or work with you specifically, where do they do that? How do they do that?

Oh, thank you so much. So website is gappininstitute. Com. That's G-A-P-I-N-Institute. Com. And I have a gift. So if you go to gappininstitute. Com com/launch, as in peak launch, so L-A-U-N-C-H. I have, first of all, a complimentary copy of my best-selling book, Mel 2. 0, which focus on men's health, but even the women need it for the men in their life. I have a high-performance health handbook, which is 15 strategies and tactics everyone can start using today. Then finally, I have an ultimate peptide guide there for you as well. Really a detailed scientific deep dive into a lot of the peptides that we use today.

Tremendous. Guys, I'll have that link right at the top of the description wherever you're listening to the show, or if you're watching on YouTube, just scroll down. I'll have the link right there. Make sure you go over and check it out. Your health span is equal to your wealth span, my friends. And, Dr. Tracy, I appreciate the hell out of you, man. Great.