Male 2.0 — Reclaiming Your Edge With Dr. Tracy Gapin

 

Is the gradual decline in your energy, focus, and drive just “normal” aging, or a solvable problem? Traditional medicine waits for a crisis, but Dr. Tracy Gapin, author of Male 2.0, shares his proactive framework for men to reclaim their edge before it’s too late. He outlines the insidious health shifts that occur across the 30s, 40s, and 50s, revealing how subtle issues like cardiovascular disease and unchecked stress hormones like cortisol are normalized. Dr. Gapin introduces his Test Design Track system for precision performance, detailing how advanced diagnostics expose “blind spots,” how to personalize your health plan (the “cake”) before rushing to biohacks (the “frosting”), and providing quick wins like five crucial steps for sleep optimization. Learn how to transform your health from a future liability into your most critical asset so you can perform at the highest level—physically, mentally, and emotionally—today.

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Male 2.0 — Reclaiming Your Edge With Dr. Tracy Gapin

In this episode, Dr. Tracy Gapin, we talk about Male 2.0, reclaiming your edge.

 

 

Dr. Tracy, so good to have you on the show.

I am going to be with you.

We are talking to you about Male 2.0, a book you have put out, and an area that you have been focusing on for quite some time. What happens to men is they go on through their life successful, high energy, strong, they have got everything together. They hit a point where they start walking down the mountain, and their energy is not the same. They are not able to do some of the things they were able to do maybe in their 20s and 30s. What is happening to men today?

It is a real problem. For most men, it is subtle. It is a gradual decline. It is slow. It is almost imperceptible, but it is happening every day, every week, every month. We are continuing to have a subtle decline. What happens is we compensate. We adapt. Men are, we are simple creatures. We are masters of adaptation, I like to say. We find a way to overcome it, and we adapt. What happens is we normalize it.

We normalize this decline until we fall so far that we do not even realize who we are. We are a shell of the man we once were. My big focus is helping men to recognize and do something about this decline before it is too late. There are a lot of things that we will talk about in our conversation, and things that we can do to prevent that decline.

The Gradual Decline: Health Blind Spots In Your 30s, 40s, And 50s

Every man experiences it in some form or another. Can you maybe talk us through, firstly, what men look like in general? We are going to talk generally here because we want to capture the whole sector. What is happening to men when they are in their 30s, 40s, 50s? Describe those three decades, and you said that there are things that we do not see that are naked to the eye. What are the things that we should be aware of? How would you break it down? Talk us through those three decades.

In the 30s, most men are vibrant, they are alive, they are able to train and build muscle. They are driven. They are having sex with their partners, and they are alive, and they look great, they feel great, and they are really at their peak as far as they can tell. There are actually already subtle things happening by the 30s. We know that cardiovascular disease, for example, is the number one because of death in all humans in the US.

Cardiovascular, meaning heart?

 

 

Heart disease. Cardiovascular disease that starts in your teens. In your 30s, that is already happening under the surface without even realizing it. Hormones are starting to decline a little bit in your 30s already. We already see men in their 30s have slightly lower testosterone, DHEA, thyroid, and some other key hormones. Nitric oxide key hormone that we care about, but for the most part, men in their 30s are able to overcome it and adapt, and they do not really even notice an issue yet. In their 40s, that is when things start to really decline. Growth hormone production starts declining in your 40s.

Growth hormone.

That is right. You are a key hormone as it relates to repair and recovery, deep sleep, building muscle, and burning fat, and a sense of vitality starts to decline in your 40s. Testosterone starts to really decline in your 40s. Sleep quality declines in your 40s. We are driven. Most men are driven to succeed. We are driven to perform, and whatever is important to us at work, at play, at home, we want to perform at a high level. That drive is starting to actually take its toll in your 40s.

We will talk about a stress hormone called cortisol. I am sure at some point. Cortisol starts to become unregulated, out of balance. That causes breakdown of your body without even realizing it. You are starting to put on a little extra fat. You are starting to store visceral fat. You are starting to break down muscle. You are not able to build muscle as well as you could in your 30s. Your brain is not working nearly as well as it did. The neurotransmitter signals in your brain are not being produced at the right levels. Everything is starting to decline. Because we are not allowed to complain, not allowed to seek help, we do not want to seek help.

We are the last ones to ask for directions when we are lost. What do we do? Again, we compensate, we normalize it, we adapt, and we think we are fine when we are not. This is the real challenge that we as men do not want to raise our hand and say something is wrong. We would rather just keep going and pushing, and we grind, and we find a way to get through instead of really stopping, checking, and seeing what is happening under the hood. That is the 40s. That is really the pivotal decade.

When you mention all those, let us say, medical signs, those indicated, help me understand what physically or in reality a man and his boy are actually feeling that he does not pick up, you are saying we do not pick up on all those things, but what are some of the things they would notice?

What they find are things like this. You wake up, and even though you may have gone to bed at 11:00, woke up at 6 or 7 hours, and you wake up and you still feel like crap, like you feel like you did not even sleep. You have aches and pains that do not recover. You have injuries that suddenly do not heal, do not recover. It takes a lot longer. You tweak your hamstring playing tennis, and now it takes you a week to recover. It used to take you a day. Work out in the gym, and you feel wiped out, and it just takes you longer than it did before to recover.

Your brain is not working as well as it did before, but it is subtle. It is just a minor shift. You are like, “I cannot think as clearly.” It is like a slight fog, not enough that you are going to go to a doctor, because your doctor is going to tell you you are fine anyway. You grind through even though you just know something is off. That is what I hear a lot from men in their 40s. Just saw a gentleman the last hour, he is 47. He is like, “I feel like something is not quite the same. I do not know what it is. I am just off.” That is very common in your 40s. That makes sense.

Now, let us go to the 50s. That is where I am, 51.

The Fifties is where things start to really break down now.

That is when the wheels fall off.

This is where maybe you are waking up once or twice in the middle of the night, and you think it is because you have to pee, but I promise you, it is actually not your bladder. It is actually the stress hormone cortisol causing problems. Imbalance in your stress systems. You are starting to have issues with aches and pains that do not go away, and injuries that you are now having to seek help for. Your brain is clearly not working like it needs to, and you are finding moments where you cannot think clearly or focus. You feel like you are really lagging behind, and now your energy is not keeping up.

You are not as interested in sex with your partner as you once were, and I have even heard situations where your partner is actually worried that you are cheating on them because you used to chase them around every night, now suddenly you are not even interested like you were before. There is a change in your drive, and your sex drive, and your energy is not the same, and you are not as likely to want to go do some of the activities you once did because your body cannot keep up. There is a real rapid decline we see in the 50s that men are suddenly like, “I am not the man I once was.”

Reactive Vs. Optimized: Why Traditional Medicine Fails Men

Is it fair to say that, in general, and we can talk, you are in the US, that the healthcare system in general and the way that the medical industry manages this is more of a reactive type of model, where if something comes up, we will deal with it as opposed to creating a framework for men to get ahead of this before these things happen? Given that we know what happens in the 30s, the 40s and the 50s, should we not be doing things in our 30s, 40s and 50s ahead of what we think is coming by, for example, I am sure you are going to give us some clarity on what we can do, but why is not the system structured in a way that it is telling us what we can do before it happens?

In general, this is especially true in the US, but even in other countries, the medical system, I will actually say, is not broken. People say it is broken, but it is actually doing exactly what it is designed to do. That feeds into men’s mentality. That is, if it is not broken, do not fix it. It is exactly what you said is reactive. It is in the sense that we are really trained almost subconsciously that you go to a doctor when there is a problem.

The medical system is not broken. It is actually doing exactly what it is designed to do. Share on X

When something is not right, when there is a real acute illness, I have spent twenty-plus years in our traditional medical system. I am a board-certified urologist. If you are in a motor vehicle accident, if you have a kidney stone, if you have prostate cancer, those acute situations, our medical system is great for that. It is brilliant. We are going to help fix those problems when they come up. Because we become so slow to deal with those acute crises, what gets lost, what does not get any attention, is what we just talked about.

“My brain is not working like it once did. My energy is not the same. My sleep is not the same.” You look at the traditional markers that are out there, and they look fine. Your doctor tells you, “You look fine.” That is, the real problem is that our system is not designed to deal with the problems that we are talking about. Our system is designed to treat crises.

I can speak for my own personal journey, that I have always been a relatively quite a healthy person, but I got really into it. I am 51 now, I would say only in the last, let us call it 4 to 5 years max, have I really gone down a rabbit hole in terms of preventive medicine, like looking ahead of what I can do to change things. You start off with the okay, let’s get the diet. I will let you give me your recipe, but I will just tell you what it is like. I am going to get the diet. Simple things like eating more protein, just a more balanced diet.

Dropping the sugar was a big thing. Almost eliminating sugar. It was hydrating, drinking more water, etc. You start delving into the supplements field, and then you try to get some tailored supplements based on your blood, and not just taking just I am just going to take a general multivitamin, which is maybe 101, but like “No, it is actually go get your bloods done.” Let us see what in your system is out of whack.

Do that every six months and make sure you think you should be taking all these things. No, you should just take whatever it is. Ubiquinol, DHEA, omega-3s, Vitamin C, doing some blended thing there and delving into the peptide field, so looking at what will go into a later. Looking at different peptides that exist out there and trying to do that with a professional medical practitioner, not following Instagram accounts and taking advice from social media, but literally I go and see a doctor twice a year, who does my bloods when we analyze and constantly tweak.

Now that is an expensive exercise to do, and I am all for investing, making my health a top priority. For those men out there who do not necessarily have excess financial resources, etc. Of all the things that we talked about before, let us call it the basic standard program you’re going to put men on? What’s your go-to on how a man should respect one’s health?

Male 2.0 Defined: Investing In Performance Over Preventing Problems

I love your perspective there. The way I like to think about it is the best defense is a good offense. There is the concept of preventative, which is really, you are just trying to avoid a problem. I look at it instead from a perspective of optimization. How can I optimize the system to function at a high level? When you optimize, you are less likely to experience problems because you are optimizing the system to work like it is supposed to, as you did back in your twenties and thirties. I look at it as what can we do to optimize, improve, do everything we can to improve your performance, and performance is brain, body, energy, everything, recovery, at the highest level today.

Physical, mental, emotional, let us call it like.

That is going to pay dividends for you in the long run. In terms of the investment part of it, I look at it this way. You could pay for it now, or you can pay for it later. We’re all going to pay one way or the other, and you can invest in your health, which I believe is your most important critical asset, or it could become a liability. That is where I look at it, as you are not paying for something. You are not buying something. You are investing in your future. I look at it this way. We all have purpose and goals. For me, I have a beautiful wife.

 

 

My world is my two kids, my ten-year-old daughter, and my twelve-year-old son. They are my life. They are everything and everything. Everything I do is to be the most present and engaged father that I can be. It is not enough for me just to perform at work and then get home and crash, and I am done. I have to be able to perform at a high level for them as a dad. Everything that I want to do is optimize and improve that. I focus on that. I look at it as I am investing in my ability to be the best dad and, eventually, hopefully, grandfather that I could ever be. That is a very different story from just preventing any problems.

Is that what Male 2.0 is? If you were to define Male 2.0, which is what your book is all about, how would you best describe what Male 2.0 is?

It is taking a very proactive, personalized approach to optimizing your performance today so that you can perform at a high level both now and in the long term. There are a lot of things we can go into the science of it, but at a high level, it is not just preventative. It is really focusing on performance and focusing on optimizing every part of your system. A great example is like guys think of a tune-up with your car, right? You go for a 30,000-mile checkup, 15, 30, 45, 000-mile checkup.

You are not going there just to look for problems. They are going to change your oil. They are going to change your fluids. They are going to change parts that they know are not broken yet. They are going to refresh. There we go. That is how I look at it. Nothing is broken yet. You are not preventing a problem. You are optimizing so that it works as it can right now. That is really the key distinction. There are a lot of ways that we can do that in a very personalized way.

The Test Design Track System For Precision Performance

You do a whole thing called a test design track. I want you to talk us through that framework in each of those. I want you to give some of your likes, some of you let us call it quick win tips. What can some of the men tuning in take away that they can change their lives right now?

I have talked at a high level about my approach, my concerns with men’s health in general, and philosophy. How does it actually come into real life? The test design track is a peak launch system that I built to help men take a very systematic approach to this. Start with a test, and we use tests to find your blind spots. What I mean by this is we all have issues that are holding us back, and because we have adapted and compensated and normalized them, we do not even realize these subtle changes are occurring. The test part is all about finding the blind spots that are holding you back without even realizing it. For this, we look at blood testing. We look at functional testing, things like that.

Most men are driven to succeed, to perform at a high level for whatever is important to us at work, at play, at home. That drive will start to take its toll in your 40s. Share on X

Blood testing, such as the frequency of blood testing.

In the beginning, tests are about just finding those blind spots, in the beginning, and then depending on what we find, there will be periodic rechecks. It starts with doing advanced comprehensive blood testing, not the ones that your doctor is doing, because most primary care doctors are doing worthless labs that again look for crises.

I worked that out when I went and did my blood. The first time I went to this, you call it optimal medicine, they call it preventative medicine. The first time I went, I got this laundry list of blood displays. I’m looking at it. I have had most of these things checked before. Do you know what it means? A standard blood test does not entail a lot of the different markers or whatever indicators that they are looking for when you do the full comprehensive.

When it comes to the blood markers, I completely agree that they are looking at inadequate markers. They are not looking at the right markers. Also, the really key point here is that they are looking at the wrong ranges. They are comparing you to the sick, unhealthy, and inflamed population. There are two distinct problems there when it relates to the blood work. The blood work is part of it. Functional testing, things that really tell us how your body is working, things like your gut testing, cortisol, and stress hormone.

I want to dig into it. I want to get onto the cortisol.

I will come back to this. Blood work, things like microbiome and cortisol, looking at your genetics, a simple cheek swab can give us 700, 000 plus genes to understand what your body responds best to, what food you should be eating and not eating, what micronutrients you might need more of, what potential sensitivities, how do you clear toxins from your body?

We are not talking about things you are allergic to necessarily, but things that your body gets potentially inflamed by without you even knowing. It might be that you eat eggs and you think they are really healthy for you, but actually cause you a lot of inflammation without you realizing.

For some people, that is right. For some people, for example, people talk about what they should eat. The most common question I hear around nutrition is what do I eat? You hear all this noise around paleo, keto, carnivore, plant-based, and Mediterranean, etc. Did you know that your genetics actually guide that? For some people, based on your background, your ethnicity, and your genetics dictate what you respond best to.

An Alaskan Eskimo versus someone from a tribe in India versus Japan, India, the US, very different genetics that guide how your body responds. You had these influences telling you what you should do, but without knowing your genetics, your gut health, and your markers, you have no idea. You are guessing. The test part is all about understanding what your body needs.

You do the test, then you do the design?

Design is the second phase. Now you have done all the comprehensive testing. Now, it is what do I actually do with these results? AI can interpret labs. What they cannot do is design a plan based on your biology, based on your genetics, based on your health issues, your goals, and really design a plan for you. This is where the analogy I come up with that I think makes perfect sense here is like the soundboard. You go to a concert, and the guy in the back of the room has a big soundboard with all those dials. There are hundreds, if not a thousand, dials on that board. He knows what every one of those dials means. That’s how I look at this. It is like tweaking all the dials that your body needs. Sometimes it is just a minor tweak of one dial versus another.

Also, each dial that you play with affects the other ones. If you have a little bit too much potassium, then it is going to affect other compounds that are in your system.

100%, that is right. It is understanding what dials are right for you. The common thing in men’s health, especially, is that men like to focus on testosterone. If I could just massively increase my testosterone, increase my nitric oxide, if I could just take this magic peptide or this supplement. When in fact, often you’re looking at the wrong dial, trying to crank it up, and not seeing the results. That is the analogy I like to give. The other analogy that I want to emphasize in the design phase here is a cake. You bake a cake, and you have the key ingredients of the cake, but you miss one ingredient, like baking soda, and that cake does not rise.

It is a mess, and you fail. I look the same way when it comes to your performance. It is your nutrition. It is your gut health. It is your hormones. It is your sleep. It is your fitness. It is your recovery. It is your blood sugar control. There are toxins in your environment. It is a community. You see, it is all these key ingredients that come together and produce the outcome. All those ingredients matter, and they are important. When you skip one ingredient, that may end up being the baking soda that your body needed, for example.

Now you bake this cake, beautiful cake, it is on the drying rack, and it is cooled off. Now you put the frosting on. The frosting is the analogy I use here for peptides, for cryo and red light and sauna and PMF, and plasma, for instance, and hyperbarics, and all these biohacks. Complimentary, but it’s not the base. It is not the base. It is the icing on the cake. Those are great treatments. I love peptides. They have their time and place, but there is nuance, and there is a sequence that has to happen first. If you do not bake your cake, you should not be eating the frosting.

If you do not bake your cake, you should not be eating the frosting. Share on X

That is the analogy that will drive the point home. You go onto the tracks. You do that, put them on the program, and then you are tracking 6 months, 12 months, how things change when you are tweaking those dials. That’s the program.

Track it is how do you deal with life? Life happens. How do you deal with situations that arise? I see this all the time, where people start a plan, a program, whatever. Something happens. Travel happens, right? You go on a business trip, and you lose your team, or you are on vacation, or you have a networking event. You have a couple of cocktails, or something happens, or you get an injury. Life happens. How do you adapt, how do you pivot, how do you change your real-time approach? That requires that you continually track outcomes and data and look at what is happening. We use a lot of AI in our business. AI is critically helpful in many ways. In my opinion, never replace is the human-to-human connection that is so important for this.

Nutrition Quick Fire: The Harmful Impact Of Processed Sugar And Vices

If we do like a quick fire. Tell me your views on sugar.

We know that sugar is harmful. We know sugar is bad. I do not ascribe, and I do not recommend a keto-based low-carb diet in general. There may be some special situations where it might come into play, but for most men, it is not sustainable. For most men, genetics guide this. For most men, actually, carbs are okay. This is the key to nuance and understanding what your body needs. We do testing to understand exactly how many carbs, proteins, and fats you need. The quality matters. When we say sugar, I want to be clear. A sweet potato is technically a carb, as a sugar. Broccoli, quinoa, these are all sugars. They are all carbs, but there is a big difference between refined sugar, processed sugars, and complex carbs.

Let’s talk about processed sugars. Let’s talk about processed sugars. Not the sugars you naturally find in fruit and vegetables.

When you are eating processed sugar, candy, pastries, and refined carbs, what happens is it is a massive stress to your system. It massively stimulates an abrupt increase in blood sugar. You have a rise in cortisol, and what does your body do? It is going to store what is typically stored as fat. It turns off hormone production. It affects the gut. The gut wall, people do not recognize. They do not teach us this in medical school either, but the microbiome, which is the balance of microbes in your gut.

They outnumber the DNA genetic material in the microbes in your gut, exponentially outnumber the DNA in our own body, and it controls and drive everything. It drives our metabolism, drives our brain neurotransmitters, our hormone production, it drives our immune system, even longevity, and cardiovascular health that is tied to our microbiome. You know what disrupts that? Sugar.

What do you recommend? Are you eliminated at all costs? Can you have a little bit here and there? What’s your general position on it with your male patients?

We know the harms of refined processed sugars. We know how detrimental they are, and I can show you the data. I could talk about it until I am blue in the face, but when I show you your testing, when I show you your microbiome, your gut health, I show you your blood labs, your cortisol, and your body composition. When I show you all the data, it does not lie. It helps you put it in perspective and understand the consequences.

Of course, you’re going to cheat. Of course, things are going to come up. For your birthday, you should have a piece of cake. You are allowed to. It is life. You have to enjoy those moments, but at the same time, there has to be some element of discipline as well. This is where the track phase is so important. How do you get off the horse, enjoy that moment, but get right back on again?

You have that position on all type of vices when it comes to alcohol, when it comes to what is your position on alcohol? Is it similar to sugar, for example? In moderation.

Moderation is always the key. If you are going to have a drink, if you are going to have a glass of red wine, for example, it is okay every now and then. Even once a week, a glass of red wine, there may be actual benefits to that. It is understood that when you do it in an unbalanced way, when you go and binge, people go on like a cruise, and they are eating like crap the whole time, they are drinking like crap the whole time, and what that does is that sets you back months.

Whereas if you have one bad meal, if you have one night where you are going to go out to a networking event and you have a couple of drinks, the most important thing you can do is get right back on and establish that discipline again. It is unreasonable to expect men to never ever cheat and never ever have a bad meal, have a dessert, and have a drink. You are allowed to, but you have to be able to get right back on and focus again. The most important meal is the very next meal.

The most important meal is the very next meal. Share on X

How To Calm Your Stress Hormone: 5 Steps To Optimize Cortisol & Sleep

I want to talk to you about cortisol. I am asking because it is one of the things that popped up in my blood tests of late that had, you know, like it is out of balance. Can you walk us through how important your cortisol function is, like I travel a lot or all the time, different time zones, and whatever disrupts your sleep, which obviously affects cortisol function, etc? What is the best way to manage your cortisol?

First off, for the listener, cortisol is a hormone in our body. It’s our stress hormone. Without cortisol, you would die. We need hormones. We need cortisol. It’s a good hormone. It is not a good or bad hormone. It is a hormone. It is all about balance, and cortisol should be elevated in the morning when you wake up, wake yourself up, get your body ready, and drive and focus, etc.

That is what you were talking about before, you were saying that when you get to the age of 40s, 50s, and in the morning you wake up and you feel like you haven’t slept, that sluggish feeling, it have cortisol? Can that have something to do with that?

It can, yes, but what I mean is that it is a little different. Cortisol should be higher in the morning, and then it should drop around lunchtime, and then it should get very low late in the day. In the evening, it should be very low. Again, it peaks again, spikes around 6:00 AM when you are on time, and it should be up again. It follows a daily diurnal cycle.

Problem I see, for example, I have a case study of clients where these wealth advisors come in, and they say, “I am not stressed. I am okay. I am fine. Stress does not affect me. Stress affects the next guy, but not me. I am able to deal with it.” What we see is that the cortisol level is higher than it should be in the morning. It stays high all day. In the evening, it was supposed to be as low as it actually goes, even higher, and it is through the roof. Shit. That’s the problem.

Why is that a problem, though? Explain why having heightened cortisol is the problem.

What that does is it turns off hormones such as testosterone, thyroid, DGA, etc. It makes you store fat. Breaks down muscles, your lean muscle mass. Instead of building muscle, you’re burning muscle, breaking it down, turning off the signals in your brain, the neurotransmitters that you need. It breaks down and destroys the gut lining that leads to systemic food sensitivities and inflammation, and destroys the microbiome.

Is it because it is acidic?

Incredibly harmful effects from cortisol.

Is that because it’s acidic? Is that why it breaks down the stomach line? Is it because it’s highly acidic?

No, it is not acidic. It just destroys the natural microbiome. We have good commensal bacteria, which are good, healthy bugs. When you have excess cortisol, it destroys them. Now, the surface of the gut wall is exposed, and the mucous layer gets broken down. The gut feeds the wall. When you destroy that, now suddenly you have this bare open gut wall that is susceptible to infections and food sensitivities, etc.

It is a subtle thing where most men do not realize it is happening, but again, it accumulates, and it compounds over time. This damage from cortisol is such an important thing. Most guys will say, “I am not stressed.  I’m fine.” That is why I like to take tests. Do not guess. Let us just look at it, let us measure it. It is a simple saliva or urine test. We can measure your cortisol. Most men have no idea their cortisol is through the roof.

What do we do? How do we combat the cortisol issue?

It starts with sleep, and then it goes the other way. When it comes to sleep, it is paramount that you focus on good quality sleep, not just quantity, but quality. How do we do that?

When it comes to sleep, it is paramount that you focus on good quality sleep, not just quantity. Share on X

I am going to pause you there just for a second. I want to highlight one of the things that I was doing without realizing it, which was taking it just casually. Whenever I feel I want to have a good sleep, I take melatonin, which has a very negative effect on my cortisol production or whatever. People think, “It is just natural, it has no effect, but you do not realize all these things that we are told to take, or that they have a lot of knock-on effects on the rest of your operating system. Is that right?

Yeah. I will tell you what. Most people do not respond to melatonin, and for some people it may be harmful. Yes. Our body makes a fraction of a milligram of melatonin a day, a fraction of a milligram. A lot of people are taking like 5 and 10 milligrams of melatonin way in excess. Melatonin is a very important hormone, but for most people, that is not the problem. For most people, melatonin is not the problem, and taking melatonin will not fix the problem.

A lot of it is, first of all, your behavior, which is like we call sleep hygiene. What do you do in the evening to get ready for sleep? First of all, you should avoid caffeine in the afternoon. Limit caffeine as much as you can. For most people, some people do fine depending on their genetics. Some people may not be susceptible, but a lot of people simply eliminate caffeine, especially later in the day. For the two hours before bedtime, I would avoid food or drink.

No food, drink, or devices.

Food and drink for the last two hours before bedtime. I would also eliminate blue light exposure. You mentioned your phone. Anything that is, whether it’s your laptop or a tablet, your iPad, your phone, all these are emitting blue light. Even if you’re wearing blue light-blocking glasses, they still do not completely block.

Basically, it’s like off devices, straight up.

For those last two hours off your device. People will tell, what the hell do I do then? Even TV has a little bit of blue light. You want to avoid that.

What do I do?

I am going to give you five great things, five great, yes, for a tip, five things you can do in the two hours before you go to bed. One is to get in the habit of journaling every night, get a journal, and just write down by hand. Gratitude. What am I grateful for? What am I so grateful for in my life? The people, the things, the accomplishments, the experiences that I have, that I should take a moment to be grateful for every night. Write them down. What did I accomplish today? What was my success and what were my wins for the day? What are my goals? I am going to focus on tomorrow. Journal. It could take 10 minutes or 30 minutes.

I have got to think of the five-minute journal. It takes less than five minutes, literally. What do you do for the other hour?

That is one. Number two is a great time to read a book. Reading a book, and it could be, it should be a paperback, not a Kindle, by the way. You are off a device, and you should be reading something that’s preferably non-business related, not related to your field of industry, so you’re not working. You know you want the mind calming, not revving up right, so reading is number two. Three is meditation breathwork. I am a surgeon, my background.

I was a urologist for twenty-plus years, and I thought at first all the meditation stuff was woo nonsense BS I do not have time for that, but there’s actual science, there’s published studies that show that meditation actually changed genetic expression in your body and actually has a real effect, especially on the cortisol stuff we talked about. Meditation, a lot of people say, “How do I meditate? What should I do?” You simply sit there, close your eyes, and just relax. There are apps on your phone. I do not want you on your tablet or your phone, but if you need it, just to train yourself how to meditate, they’re like on the Calm and Headspace apps that you can use.

Go on YouTube to get someone to talk to as well, through meditation.

There are lots of ways of meditating at the same time. Breathwork. I love breathwork. It has such a calming effect. How do I breathe? Let me tell you, a simple, easy way. I’m going to be box breathing. Anyone could close your eyes, close your mouth. Should all be through your nose. You’re going to breathe in for four seconds. You’re going to hold it for four seconds. You’re going to breathe out for four seconds, and you’re a holder for four seconds. That is a box. Four seconds each cycle. You could do that for two minutes, three minutes, simply breathe in for four, hold for four, breathe out for four, and hold for four. There are many different ways of breath work. That is a simple, easy one to remember.

You’re saying, okay, so you breathe in for four, hold it, breathe out for four, it.

That’s sixteen seconds for that cycle. You can do that four times in a minute. Do it for two or three minutes at a time. You would be amazed by doing nothing but just focusing on your breath with your eyes closed, mouth closed, all through your nose. The powerful effect, the powerful calming effect that is going to have on your body. Just that alone. That is number three. We had journaling, we had reading, we had meditating, and breath work. Number four is the sauna

Before you go to bed.

It’s a great way to calm your body. What I love to do is go to the sauna for twenty minutes and then get a nice warm shower, not a cold one. You do not want to catch a cold before bed. That is a stimulating effect. You want to do a sauna before you go to bed.

Do you have a preference between a dry or wet sauna, or does it not matter?

Yeah, dry saunas are great. You could do it with or without the light. I have one that has an IRL light with it as well, but you do not have to. They are great ones. I have a small one in my bedroom on the floor. I have no affiliation, but Sunlighten makes a great one that you lie in. It looks like a little dome that you just lie in, and super easy.

What is it called?

Sunlighten is the brand. There are a lot of them out there. That is one that I like. It is a high-quality sauna that you can do in your bedroom. You jump in the shower, clean off, jump in bed, and you’re great. That is number four. Great way to calm your body. Five is sex. What better prescription? Your mind and body. There you go. Breath work and sex. Sex actually helps improve sleep quality. These are things that you can focus on those five things before bed. Great ways to calm cortisol.

That is a great prescription that you have just given to the audience. They are to go home to their partners and say, Dr. Tracy said, “I have got to have prescribed it.”

I want to clarify that when men hear cortisol and stress, the immediate thought is psychological. I have given you some tools here for the psychological. The biggest load on our system, the biggest stressor, is actually not psychological, is not mental, it’s physical. Things in our body are things like low hormones, nutrient deficiencies, and microbiome issues. I talked about inflammation, all these things that we have to test for to find, can actually have a direct effect on our stress level. It is not just psychological that we have to look at when it relates to cortisol.

The biggest load on our system, the biggest stressor, is actually not psychological, it's physical. Share on X

Are there any, I do not want to say medications, but are there any supplements or anything that help with cortisol levels?

Yes, so there are a lot of things that we can do to calm our bodies and minds, things like GABA and L-Theanine, magnesium, and ashwagandha. There is a lot of individuality to that. Depending on the source. For example, let us say the source of your cortisol imbalance, stress imbalance, is your gut. You have inflammation in your gut.

You have dysbiosis breakdown in the normal healthy microbiome, with no gut symptoms. That’s not, it is not going to show up like that. It is going to show up as maybe some low energy, weight gain, and poor sleep, and that gut is triggering excess cortisol. You can take L-Theanine and GABA until you are blue in the face. Not going to help. I do not like to throw supplements at the problem. I like to fix the underlying cause, and now you can address that in the right way.

That is the point with everything. When just throwing things at it, you might not even be tackling the problem at hand.

That is right.

The Risks And Rewards Of GLP-1: Sourcing And Long-Term Effects

Before we finish off, I want to ask you, there has been a huge trend in GLP-1 drugs, Ozempic, Mounjaro, and the list goes on, and it is a blockbuster for those pharmaceutical firms who are putting it out there. It is extremely popular. It seems to be the go-to quick fix for many people out there. Talk me through your position on them in general, because I am sure there are those people that it is suitable for, but in general, and that what you perceive to be the knock-on effects or side effects that we are not really paying attention to the longer term effects you are all about optimizing for the long term so what does that what does that potentially do given that’s new no one’s really talking about those long term effects. Give us your position on that.

GLP-1, glucagon-like peptide one, is a peptide, but I want to mention, before I go into the details of the exogenous peptides that you could take, GLP-1 is made by your own body. Our gut, the lining, there is a cell called the L cell in our gut lining, which actually makes GLP-1 normally. What that peptide does normally is it has really four things. Number one is that it tells the brain that you are full. It is a satiety signal that tells your brain, “You are full, quit eating.”

Satiety, my hunger versus satiety. Like, “I am full. I do not need to eat. Stop eating.” Basically tells your brain to stop eating. You are number two, which tells the stomach to increase sensitivity to food so that when your stomach fills up a little bit, it breaks it down. The food affects ghrelin levels, which is another hormone in your body that tells your body again, “I am full, quit eating.” The sense that you have had enough to eat. It directly affects hunger mechanisms.

Through two other mechanisms, both insulin-dependent and insulin-independent mechanisms, it controls blood sugar in two ways. It helps better regulate your blood sugar. Which we know has a lot of incredible significance as it relates to heart disease, cardiovascular health. Not only diabetes, but blood sugar control affects our entire body, our hormone production, and our brain function. People have this concept that you’re either diabetic or you’re not, but it’s actually not black and white. It’s a spectrum of what’s called insulin sensitivity.

For instance, GLP-1 in a normal human is made, and it tightly regulates blood sugar control and your gut and your hunger mechanisms in your brain. Taking it like semaglutide, tirzepatide, and retatrutide, you try the new one. These are all ways of injecting this GLP-1 at a higher level to augment that process. People take it for weight loss. Obviously, it helps make you feel full quicker. It reduces hunger. It helps better control blood sugar. It’s used for weight loss control, to lose weight, or to control your body composition. The key point here is that it has much more impressive impacts as it relates to cardiovascular disease. As it relates to Alzheimer’s disease.

In a positive way?

Yes. For diabetes, it reduces the risk of all these things because it controls blood sugar. Metabolic health is paramount. We now know that Alzheimer’s disease is being referred to as type 3 diabetes because we are now recognizing that blood sugar control may actually be the trigger for Alzheimer’s disease. They will look at the plaques in your brain and all this stuff. After all this time, what causes this is probably metabolic health problems. This is why controlling blood sugar, and this goes back to your question about refined carbs and sugars earlier, controlling that is so paramount, and that is why GLP-1s may have benefits far beyond just weight loss.

As you position it now, you have sold this as a very positive product that is on the market. Tell me about the negatives.

However, the negative is that there’s potential for abuse. There’s potential for overuse, where people could take too much of it. They look at it as that icing on the cake. I talked about it earlier. If you’re eating like crap, if you’re not sleeping, if you’re not moving fitness-wise, if you have toxins in your body, if you have microbiome issues, if you have excess cortisol and stress, we’ve talked about, you have all these other problems, these other ingredients of the cake. Taking a GLP-1, no matter what it is, is not going to get the results you are looking for. It may actually make you lose muscle mass.

That is one of the things I have read about. It actually breaks down muscle mass.

That is right. Making sure your protein intake, making sure you sleep, making sure you are getting the right nutrition, making sure you are regulating cortisol, gut health, all these other ingredients of that cake that we have baked are so critical. Otherwise, go in and buy that can of frosting, i.e., GLP-1s are not going to get you the same result.

Microdosing Peptides: Exploring Tirzepatide, Retatrutide, And Visceral Fat

What if I told you that your patient is doing all the right things, has everything really in balance? What is the downside of them having a small dose of any one of those GLP-1s?

It is negligible. As long as you’re doing all that stuff, it gets to a point where most people do not need it, though. Here’s the key. Most people do not need it unless they are trying to accomplish a certain goal.

Which is what? Looking good.

If it’s body composition, it’s weight loss, what I do, personally, a lot of other doctors in the space, I microdose every week. I do it not for weight loss. I do not need to lose weight. I am not trying to burn fat. I do it because of the potential long-term benefits of tightly regulating glucose tightly regulating blood sugar metabolic health. There is real science behind that, which may be long-term beneficial.

What is the dose when you say microdose? Give me the dose you’re talking about.

I do not want to get specific doses of what people should tell me.

The range we’re talking about.

What I take is I point one milligram of Tirzepatide, for example. Which would be one milligram, for example, of Tirzepatide.

What is Tirzepatide?

Semaglutide is GLP-1. Tirzepatide is the second generation, which includes two. It includes GLP-1 plus GIP, which is another peptide. When they combine, they work even better. Tirzepatide is the next generation, and that actually helps burn visceral fat better.

Is that like Retatrutide? What was it?

Retatrutide includes three different peptides. The semaglutide, call it if you will, first generation, just GLP-1. Tirzepatide is two. Retatrutide is three.

What I saw about the retatrutide is that it has not been approved, or it is too early to assess or is that the same?

To clarify, most peptides are not FDA-approved. There is no approval process for anything but pharmaceuticals. Peptides are simply sequences of amino acids. You are not going to get FDA quote approval for them. You have drugs like Jardiance, you have Mounjaro, and all of these other ones that are made by pharmaceutical companies.

Ones that people are buying online, like Retatrutide buying online, for example, Tirzepatide from these companies, you have no idea what the heck you’re getting. A recent study just came out that showed that up to 70% of them have no active ingredient at all, and 10% actually had heavy metal toxins in them. What do you do? I’d only recommend that you’re getting them from compounding pharmacies, legitimate compounding pharmacies, or if you’re getting Mounjaro.

A brand new thing that’s been approved.

We only prescribe them from compounding pharmacies. You cannot get Retatrutide yet from a compounding pharmacy. Tirzepatide is pretty much as good as we can get for now. I am sure that is going to change very soon. This is where it comes down, the quality of the peptide, the sourcing matters so much. If you’re able to go online and buy yourself directly from a company, I would run. The studies clearly show you have no idea what the heck you are getting.

The Dr. 2.0 Movement: Transforming Healthcare & Rapid Fire Finale

Dr. Tracy, that was like a one-hour power on Male 2.0. I got a lot out of that, and I hope the listeners did too. Before I finish my show, I always ask my guests some five quick, rapid-fire questions, so I am going to go for it with you. Who would you like to say sorry to, given the chance?

All of the men whom I was treating back in my urology practice, decades ago, before I learned why our traditional medical system is failing, I did not know. Most doctors in the traditional system, they do not know. As a urologist, here I am as the men’s health expert. The only tool in my toolbox was testosterone and Viagra. Now that I have learned about going back to school, there’s so much more to men’s health. Now I would apologize to any man whom I treated back in the traditional system, because they do not teach us what we need to know to help men really get what they need.

That’s a big one. We did not go into how you actually, what was the seminal moment when you switched?

I had my own health moment where I was 30 pounds overweight. I am in the middle of my urology career. I am stressed out. I am up at night and on weekends. I was all levels, high cortisol, not sleeping, eating like crap, not exercising, and had no idea what to do myself. I am just busy. I got my blinders on and focused on just taking care of my patients, and when they asked me what to do, I did not know either. I am like, “Just take testosterone, just get healthy, and what does it even mean?” I go to a doctor for myself. I am 40 years old, and my first physical ever, my wife convinced me to go.

The wife is convincing the doctor to go get a visit.

Is that not how it is? Yeah, we’re the worst patients. Doctors are awful. I go for this physical, and this doctor wants to just put me on a statin. That was it.

Lipitor or something like that.

I am like, “I know there has to be more. I know I need help.” That got me going down rabbit holes. I first looked, learned about lifestyle medicine and epigenetics. I learned about hormones, learned about functional medicine and peptides, and the science of optimization, performance, and longevity. That’s when I was able to get healthy myself and found this entirely new approach to men’s health that was missing. I knew that I had to make the move. I left traditional medicine. I left a very busy, lucrative surgical practice, and I launched Peak Launch so that I could really help men take this innovative approach. I tell you what, it was the best move I ever made.

I can imagine 100%. What are you proud of being or doing in your life?

Being a dad without quite yet. My two kids are everything, and I am so proud that I am able to be the leader, the role model, the father figure that they need that I never had when I was a kid. I had a crummy childhood. Now I am fixing my childhood.

Breaking what’s called breaking the pattern. When did you receive kindness while needing it most, but expecting at least?

I would say my wife, when I went through my transition out of traditional urology, most doctors will not make the leap, the change that I made. Most doctors, it’s called golden handcuffs, where you’re so accustomed to the life that you’ve built that it’s tough to leave. I left, and I started from scratch. It was a massive risk that I took. I’m the breadwinner. I’m the supporter of my family financially and in many ways.

It was a tough move to make in courage, but to get the love and kindness and support from my wife, who believed in me and believed in what I was doing. When I made this move ten years ago, no doctor would dream of making this, like, “Why would you leave a surgical practice?” I could not unsee it. Once you see it, I had to follow your heart and passion. I am so glad I did, but having my wife’s support was really critical at that moment.

Tell me, what did your mother or father teach you that you frequently remind yourself of?

Integrity, say what you mean, mean what you say. I practice what I preach, I am a man of integrity, and my word is everything. That follows you through, throughout any area of your life. Your word has to mean everything.

Finally, what is Dr. Tracy’s superpower?

It's not about the founder anymore, it's about the movement Share on X

I am a systems guy. I am a processing systems guy. I love to put systems together. I have not built a medical practice. I have not built a program. I have really built a platform and an operating system. I call it the operating system for precision performance medicine. How do I systematize this to make it a methodical way of approaching men’s health so that I can help all the men come into us, but I am now training other doctors to do the same thing. Create the system, the framework, the operating system for that. That is what I am really passionate about.

Scaling Peak Launch: The Dr. 2.0 Mentorship And Transforming Healthcare

I want to finish off on that. I am glad you brought that up. You started off with the Male 2.0, and now you have taken an even higher impact leap, I would say. Your next book coming out is what you have done with other doctors in the industry to change, maybe what their mindset is or how they approach it. Just quickly, before we finish off, tell us about that mission or project that you have.

I am so passionate about transforming men’s health. I know that I am only one doctor, and I can only do so much in my own practice. My real focus now has shifted to scaling and helping other doctors fulfill this mission, also. How do we change healthcare? How do we take it from the reactive disease crisis-focused approach to a test design track at a system-wide level? Doctor 2.0 is a book that I published, coming out in October. I have a mentorship program and a way to help other doctors learn how to escape traditional medicine, and I tell you they’re going through the same misery that I was in.

I am sure the same misery all my clients are in, and they do not even realize how unhealthy they are. It is like how can you help others until you put your own oxygen mask on first? I am really focused on helping other doctors as well to transform health care. That’s why when I left my traditional urology practice, it was Gapin Institute, it was all about my expertise in men’s health. Now we are Peak Launch because it’s not about me, it’s not about the founder anymore, it’s about the movement, and Peak Launch is all about helping my clients, but also helping other doctors as well.

That’s massive. Dr. Tracy, thank you. I really appreciate it. Of course, I loved it.

My pleasure.

 

Important Links

• Dr. Tracy Gapin
• Dr. Tracy Gapin on LinkedIn
• Dr. Tracy Gapin on Facebook
• Dr. Tracy Gapin on Instagram
• Male 2.0

 

About Dr. Tracy Gapin

Tracy Gapin, MD is the founder of Peak Launch, the operating system for Precision Performance Medicine. After 25 years in traditional medicine, he built a modern health platform designed to help high-performing leaders feel better, live better, and lead better. Tracy is a TEDx speaker and bestselling author of Male 2.0, with an upcoming book expected in late 2026 or 2027.

A lot of high-performing leaders feel like they have lost their edge, even when their labs look “normal.” Traditional healthcare does not help because it waits until something breaks. It does not optimize. Peak Launch is built on a simple system: Test. Design. Track. Test to find what is really holding you back. Design a personalized blueprint for peak performance. Track in real time with data that creates momentum and sustained results. The goal is not just better biomarkers. It is better performance in real life.