Episode 40: Cracking The Code To Men’s Health With Dr. Tracy Gapin

TMS 40 | Men’s Health

 

Men’s health doesn’t get much hype and attention it deserves. We are hyper-focused around being highly-successful that we often put aside our bodily needs. However, it’s only a matter of time before it gives you a little nudge or a big whack in the head. When you start feeling weak and unmotivated, when your sex life is starting to be affected, when you start to feel like you’ve lost your edge, it is definitely time to reflect on how you have been taking care of yourself and change your habits for the better. Joining Michael Silvers to discuss this is Dr. Tracy Gapin, a urologist and men’s health expert with 20 years of experience in providing men a proactive and personalized path to health optimization. Dr. Tracy talks about the core principles of his book, Male 2.0 and the two simple things you can change in your lifestyle that will make a radical difference in your health.

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Cracking The Code To Men’s Health With Dr. Tracy Gapin

Part of being in the Mentor Studio is we’re always looking for more mentors. For those of you who want to know more, go to TheMentorStudio.com, get the information and see what we’re about. This is partner too. We talked about this one. She was Tony Robbins’ Vice President for eighteen years. He hit four million miles with Tony. She has seen the world. She’s the one who put him on the Great Wall of China. No one else has done it to this day. I’ll have her tell you a story one day. She was the woman who had the elephants walked through the Lincoln Tunnel in New York. That’s also never been done before.

There are great stories and great learning. The thing about the Mentor Studio is it’s about you. Whether you’re driving, standing, walking, talking, whatever country you’re in. I know a group of you in Melbourne from the whole days, but wherever you are, it’s the education and the piece you’re going to get. You’ll always walk away with something useful. Go to the website and find podcasts that float your boat. If you want to join the membership, join the Mentor Studio, join the mentorship and let us take it out to the villages in 2022. We’re a little bit delayed but that’s okay.

I have a gentleman that I met. It’s about connecting and making networks. You know when you talk to them, and usually within 30 seconds, I know if it’s somebody I want to work with or not. If not, there’s nothing wrong with them. Maybe they’re not ready or something like that. This next gentleman, the minute we got on the phone, I said, “You’re in. You’re done. Be part of it.” What I loved about him is when I said, “Do you want to join us in the Mentor Studio?” He was like, “Yes. Where do I need to sign up? I’m in.”

Those were the people I’m always looking for because that’s what I’ve done. I make them all earn the right on big stage or either I’m up on stage. Usually what happened is I had this bio, I read their bio, I pump up the audience, and get them rolling. On this show, I let the mentors do that themselves because they know their story much better than I do. It’s much more of a heart. I don’t let them talk about themselves for 25 minutes because we only go for less than 20 or 25 minutes. Without any further ado, big standing ovation, give it up, give a big hand for Tracy Gapin. Tracy, how are you?

Mike, thanks so much for having me.

TMS 40 | Men’s Health
MALE 2.0: Cracking the Code to Limitless Health and Vitality

I will add that he is a true physician. He is a doctor. We got a lot of people in the show that they told me they are Dr. such-and-such and they’re a doctor of trashology. That’s a story for another day and that doesn’t matter. Tracy, tell us a little bit about you and your background.

I am a board-certified urologist. I’m a men’s health expert. I’ve been in private practice urology here in Sarasota, Florida since ‘04. I did six years of urology training before that at University of Florida. Before that, I grew up in Texas in the Dallas area. I’m an Aggie and I’m proud to be an Aggie. I have been entrenched in men’s health for many years. It’s become a passion to me to focus on optimizing men’s health. We have experienced what I would call a testosterone epidemic where levels are plummeting. There were three very powerful studies out in the US, Sweden and Finland that all showed the same finding. That is that levels have plummeted by about 30% over the last 30 years which is scary.

That means that a 49-year-old guy like you, Mike, has a testosterone level that’s 30% less than a 49-year-old guy 30 years ago. It’s scary. I see highly successful, high performers entrepreneurs, executive C-suite guys every day in my practice and they’ve lost their edge. They’re struggling with low energy, weight gain, and mental fog that’s keeping them from being at their peak. A lot of that is testosterone. The problem with men’s health is that all of these supposed men’s health experts out there, the non-doctors if you will, are telling you that all you need is to get a shot of testosterone and you’ll be fine. The problem is that testosterone only gives you a small part of what you need. I say 10% to 20% of optimizing your health is based on testosterone.

Sure we need optimal testosterone levels but I go way beyond that, I look at optimizing men’s health from a more comprehensive approach. I use personalized genetics to take a granular level individualized approach so that every guy is different and we tailor their health to their genetics. We’re looking at their nutrition, sleep, detox, stress, hormones, not just testosterone but things like thyroid, cortisol, estrogen, it goes on and on. It’s about changing and pivoting men’s health, transforming the way we approach men’s health, to be more proactive and focusing on a personalized approach and not just looking at testosterone.

We are an individual but we are a whole body. We have a mind that controls it all and we sometimes forget that it’s not one-dose-fits-all. We know that if you don’t make it easy, unless you get a true type A and there are a lot of type A’s, but they won’t follow along. It’s got to make sense and it’s got to be fairly simple for me to do. They want to see improvement also in some type. You can boost somebody up quickly but they also want to see that long-term results. How do you handle that despite knowing that?

TMS 40 | Men’s Health
Men’s Health: Men’s health is deteriorating and no one’s doing anything about it.

 

It’s funny you say that because there are six words that I hear over and over every single day. That is, “Tell me what to do.” We’re simple creatures. We don’t want some long drawn-out process. We don’t want to complicate it, “Tell me what to do and I’ll do it.” I give guys a very clear blueprint, a roadmap if you will, on how to transform their health and life. I call it the Male 2.0 Protocol. My book is called MALE 2.0 and it’s based on this concept of the acronym M.A.L.E.

I’ve used this acronym to help make it easy for guys, where M is mindset where I look at mindset and stress resilience. A is age reversal, looking at hormones and not just testosterone but all the other hormones as well as mitochondrial function, cellular efficiency, and all this fun science stuff. I make it easy. L is lifestyle which is nutrition, fitness and sleep which are critical. E is environmental toxins or exposures that we have. I break it down to this very simple framework or protocol which is Male 2.0 protocol to help guys very easily understand what they have to do.

The great thing about that is whether a male or female perspective, everybody knows especially when women are going through the hormonal. They’re not the same energy. What didn’t happen for a long time is men couldn’t report that because it wasn’t okay for us to say, “I’m not feeling the way I used to.” It went to over the top with, “Take a pill. Take your cream,” without looking at the whole human body. That’s a big change that you’re bringing forward. We are one, we can feel better, and we can have energy. Aging does not have to mean feeling weaker, things break easier and we can’t do as much. I’m doing more work with my grandkids. I’m sure you see that every day. From a male perspective, having to get through it, it’s okay to say, “I’m not feeling the way I used to with everything about what I do.”

We’ve come into a different society or different understanding that it is okay to come forward and say, “Something is not quite right here.” A lot of the director to public marketing for testosterone and all the ED medications have made it a lot more comfortable and accessible to have those conversations. I’ll be honest, most of the men come in because they’re starting to have some sexual issues. They’ve been struggling with mental fog in the boardroom. They’ve been gaining weight. They’ve had low energy for years, but when the sex life starts deteriorating, that’s the trigger that brings them in.

Whatever brings them in, that’s great. It’s interesting that that’s the key point that finally gets a guy’s attention. It’s all about expanding the healthspan. I don’t want to increase longevity so you can live 40 years in a nursing home. The point is to expand healthspan and prevent chronic diseases like diabetes, cardiovascular disease, metabolic syndrome, obesity and all these other diseases that are ruining the quality of life. That’s maintaining good quality health to late in your life. We’re not expanding your lifespan, we’re expanding your healthspan.

Don’t just expand your lifespan. Expand your healthspan. Click To Tweet

It’s also important too because this is a different world now before we had the pandemic. We were doing so much online that we’d never done before. With neuro-linguistic programming in the old days, they always said, “If you’re not face-to-face, you can’t do it.” We didn’t have face-to-face video. This was not that long ago, back in 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007 because we were doing a lot of work in Australia from America. We created techniques, systems and ways to capture what’s going on with the client, and make a difference in the change. People we’re saying, “That’s nice but I don’t live in Florida. How could you work with me?” They start with what if, it can’t and it won’t. If somebody was living in Australia or let’s say somebody was in Los Angeles and wanted to work with you, what would they do?

COVID has transformed the landscape of healthcare where telemedicine was previously growing, albeit slowly. It has exploded where most states have dramatically relaxed the requirements for telemedicine. In the past, I would have to see a person physically, touch them appropriately, doing an exam on them, and meet them in person before I can then treat them. Telemedicine changed that to where now I can do it virtually via video conferencing and that fulfill those requirements. I am getting licensed in numerous states so that I can practice telemedicine across the country because guys need this. It’s becoming an epidemic. I don’t think I’m bold when I say that if we don’t do something, in twenty years our entire male population is going to be impotent and infertile. Men’s health is deteriorating and no one’s doing anything about it.

We see it all the time. I was born and raised in California. I’ve been in Seattle for a long time. Seattle is very much an outdoor community. In California, it was very much about staying fit, running and moving. There are parts of the country in the world that don’t do that and don’t have that. The health of the male or the health of how you look, how you feel is not even a thought. Sometimes, we also get so entrenched with the mighty dollar or even making ends meet that we forget that part. For the audience, if they did nothing else, what are 2 or 3 things they could do right now that they could move themselves towards a better existence without having to do anything else?

One of the most commonly overlooked aspects of health is sleep. Sleep is ignored. You should spend 1/3 of your life sleeping. Most people especially high-performance who I work with, they tend to cut it short, they’ll stay up late and wake up early. What’s critically important about sleep is you need that time to restore. You need specifically deep sleep. Without getting too scientific, you go through different stages of sleep. You go through REM sleep which is when you dream typically, light sleep and deep sleep.

You need each of those phases at different times of the night for different reasons. When you miss that deep sleep, that’s when you lose the restorative effect and that’s what can cause or be a promoting factor for chronic diseases. Alzheimer’s disease, obesity, diabetes, even cancers have been linked to poor sleep. I’m a strong advocate for proper sleep hygiene. Some things that people can do around sleep hygiene are number one, you have to go to bed the same time every night.

TMS 40 | Men’s Health
Men’s Health: One of the most commonly overlooked aspects of health is sleep. You should spend 1/3 of your life sleeping.

 

Make a decision, pick a time. It might be 11:00, 10:30, whatever it may be and that’s your time. You try to be as rigid as you can about that. With my clients, I’m very big on living with intention. What are your goals? What’s your why? Live with intention and purpose. That’s your bedtime. Stop the work, whatever work you have, it will wait until morning because that sleep is valuable and vital for your health. Going to bed at the same time every night, you got to turn off your electronics three hours before bedtime, blue light in computers, laptops, phones, all that stuff has to be off three hours before bedtime.

You can use blue light blockers. I have my blue light blockers right here. You have to protect your circadian rhythm. By going to bed at the same time every night, even on the weekends, and by limiting blue light in the evenings, you’re going to help protect your circadian rhythm. You want a very dark room. You want to avoid any electronics in the room. A lot of men are guilty of putting their phone on their nightstand with the Wi-Fi running. All that EMF is hitting you and does disrupt your sleep. You want to get rid of any lights in the bedroom as well.

Any single light, even from an alarm clock, that light is affecting melatonin production and your circadian rhythm. Sleep is a critical aspect. When people ask me, “What’s the one thing that I would focus on?” It would be sleep. The next one which is critical in this COVID era we’re going through is stress. We’re dealing with the health stress, the financial stress, the emotional stress, with your kids being home from school, and everything that people have going on. Stress crushes your health.

Stress causes a rise in cortisol which is your stress hormone, which in small doses is great, it’s fine, it’s needed. For long periods of time, that chronically elevated cortisol crushes testosterone. It causes weight gain. It causes inability to burn fat and build muscle, and alters metabolism. Things that I emphasize for stress, number one, is mindfulness practices. This means meditation. As a medical doctor, people initially laughed like, “Come on, Doc. That’s BS. It’s just woo-woo.” I thought it was woo-woo myself until I dug in.

There’s real science behind the incredible power of mindfulness. It does change gene expression, which is fascinating. We could talk about epigenetics on the next episode, but we know clearly that meditation practices alter genetic expression. Meditation can be as simple as you sitting in a chair somewhere quiet with your eyes closed, just exist and be in your own self with your mind. Some men are great with that. When I first started, I use an app like Headspace or 10 Percent. There are multiple guided meditation apps out there that are wonderful for men or women who have never meditated before. They don’t know what it is. How do you start? It sounds weird and silly.

Live with intention and purpose every day. You don’t get today back. Click To Tweet

I’ll give you an example of how I incorporate this in my life. This is real life that a lot of the readers will hopefully take notice of. I’m a busy physician. I have a very busy medical practice. I have a couple of businesses I’m running on the side as well. I have a five-year-old and almost seven-year-old at home. I’m incredibly busy. I’m stretched in and I do everything I can to stay resilient to stress. One of the things that I do is on my way home from work, I know that when I walk in that door, I’m going to have a five-year-old and a seven-year-old jumping on me. I got to be present and I can’t still be thinking about work.

I’m very big on being present and engaged with where you are and not be somewhere else. Your audience can do this. This is a very effective tool. On the way home from work, pull over somewhere on the road, find an empty parking lot somewhere. I parked nearby elementary school in the empty parking lot at night. I sit there in my car for 5 or 10 minutes and meditate. The power that has of reducing stress and enabling me to center, become present, and engaged when I walk in that door is priceless. I would emphasize when optimizing health, two of the easy things that you can do is focus on improving your sleep, sleep hygiene techniques, practices, and minimizing your stress by some mindfulness technique.

It is important to have that because you’re also creating a break state, which is what we call it too. It is putting yourself in and being able to be there for them. They don’t know it now but they’ll realize when they’re older that you were there for them. You weren’t always on the phone or you weren’t always doing something that you were present 1000%. That makes a huge difference. Many of you out there, I see you with your kids but you’re on your phone the whole time or you’re thinking of the next thing you should do. That meditation piece is important. The audience knows this too. I grew up in LA. My teenage years, my parents were Buddhists.

I was at the Zen Center at Los Angeles. My cousin was the first American Roshi for Zen Buddhism. He created this NPC and moving with Jeff Bridges, but that’s a story for another day. Meditation was a lot of it, but as a teenager I was like, “Yeah.” It was around so it became part of what I like to do when I can sit still long enough because I’ve never sat still, then I start moving to meditation. There are all different types. That is important to take us to that next level, to make sure when we walk in. For all of you out there, those two pieces are huge. If you did those two, you would start changing your life. Let’s say they love what you said, they sat down with everything. This is great because what you’ve said is not just for men. What you said is also for women because it’s that sleep part, meditation part, calming the mind part, and being mindfulness. It makes a big difference. How easy is it to get your book?

It’s funny you ask because it’s free. You can go to DrTracyGapin.com/Limitless, just cover shipping and the book is free.

TMS 40 | Men’s Health
Men’s Health: There is real science behind the incredible power of mindfulness.

 

You don’t make it any easier than that. That’s awesome. I would get the book, share it with people because this information is so critical. We hear it a lot in the show, “I don’t have the same energy anymore.” There’s so much going on in the world right now that it can go into depression and all of that. If you get the right sleep, you’re able to put yourself centered, and you put your body in the right state, it changes everything. From a business perspective, if you’re not in the right state, it’s funny how cashflow gets affected. People around you don’t want to work with you anymore. It’s everything. There are those triggers and we know what the main trigger for man is, but there are those other triggers too that come up. What would you leave the audience with? What should they remember and take away from this?

I would ask yourself, what is your why? What keeps you up at night? What is the driving force behind everything you do? Why do you exist? What’s your purpose? I would push you to live with intention so that everything you do is in alignment with that why. Otherwise, what’s the point? Why are we here? My brother-in-law died at a very young age and it was very unexpected. He was this larger than life guy. One thing he always said and it’s so powerful to me now, “You don’t get today back.” We say, “That’s true.” When he died, I was like, “You don’t get today back.” I would emphasize that everyone needs to take a moment and think about, what is your why? What’s your purpose? Why do you exist? Do everything you do in alignment with that why because you don’t get today back.

I got nothing else to say on that one. It is so true. I wanted to thank you for being on. For most of you, we do the shows right around drive time which is 18 to 22 minutes. Many of you are driving but let me tell you, a lot of people are on the road nowadays. If you go to LA, they’re at 120% of normal traffic already because nobody wants to be on the bus. Thank you for being on. This is a critical mentoring piece. I’m also going to have Tracy Live on the Mentor Studio for some questions because that’s an important piece for everybody to listen to.

As we move forward, you’ll see more of him because I suddenly had ideas about the Mentor Studio in the package and what he presents. It’s the information. What you did is you made it clear succinct, easy to listen to, you gave them something to use right away, and you love what you do. Next time we do a show, we could also get into biourologists. I’m going to have a friend of mine who’s a gynecologist and that’s going to be my first plan. There is a story for another day. Tracy, thank you so much for being on. It’s great because there’s so much going on in the world where people are stuck at home. There are things that are not working. They feel held back. This is the thing that you can create health anywhere you are. It starts up here and it starts in here. That makes a big difference. Any last words before I let them go and I do a sign off?

Thank you so much, Mike. Check out my book and the book is free.

Thank you.

Mentor Studio audience, you are amazing. Go to TheMentorStudio.com. Find the episodes you’d to listen to, which should be all of them. We have a lot of upcoming good guests. Some of them I can’t announce yet because we don’t have the contract signed but the minute it is signed, I will. We’re going to take a look at the music industry. We’re also going to look at the entertainment. We’re going to go back through health and wellness. We’re also going to circle a little bit on a film particularly. It’s going to be a great couple of months. It’s all about mentoring and how to get that different idea in your head.

Don’t forget, those that you want to go with us in 2022, we’re going to take this out to the villages. We’re going to gift them. We’re going to do what it takes. Each person in the village has what they need to share with other villages so they can get the mentoring that we don’t have. We’re also taking a look at what Starlink is doing and the services that we’ll be bringing Wi-Fi around the world. It’s an exciting time. Life is great every day. If it’s not, wake up, get enough sleep, do whatever it takes, read a great book. I know one called Male 2.0. Everyone, I want to thank you. You’ve been amazing. Goodbye, everyone.

 

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About Tracy Gapin

TMS 40 | Men’s HealthI left my doctor’s office that day knowing it was time for a drastic change. I directed my focus and energy on getting healthy.

I applied everything I had learned during my years of medical training. I researched quality, published medical studies. I went to medical conferences. I read tons of books about optimizing health, nutrition, and epigenetics.

Through hard work and determination, I discovered the secret approach I needed to regain my health and vitality.

Six months later, I went back to my primary care doctor for my follow-up visit. I had lost over 20 pounds. My cholesterol had come down to 195! Most importantly, I felt young, energetic and healthy again.

How did I make the change? It wasn’t magic. It was a focus on proper nutrition, fitness, lifestyle, and mindset. It was a shift in mentality. It was living with intention.

 

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