Business Innovators Radio - Interview with Tracy Gapin, MD Founder of Gapin Institute

Episode Date: April 9, 2025

Tracy Gapin, MD, FACS, is a renowned expert in men’s health optimization and longevity, with over 25 years of experience as a board certified urologist. He founded the Gapin Institute to help high-performing individuals, including entrepreneurs, executives, and athletes, achieve peak performance through personalized health programs. Dr. Gapin integrates advanced diagnostics, epigenetics, hormone therapy, and wearable technology to monitor and transform his clients’ health, focusing on sustainable, measurable outcomes.A thought leader and author of bestsellers Male 2.0 and Codes of Longevity, Dr. Gapin has been featured on NBC, Entrepreneur Magazine, and at Dave Asprey’s Biohacking Conference. He is a member of the American Academy of Anti-Aging, the Age Management Medical Group, Longevity Docs and the International Peptide Society.Learn more: https://gapininstitute.com/Sizzle Reel – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fdwSZvdDEiQLaunch Page – https://gapininstitute.com/launch (useful information and free gifts included!)Influential Entrepreneurs with Mike Saundershttps://businessinnovatorsradio.com/influential-entrepreneurs-with-mike-saunders/Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/interview-with-tracy-gapin-md-founder-of-gapin-institute

Welcome to influential entrepreneurs, bringing you interviews with elite business leaders and experts, sharing tips and strategies for elevating your business to the next level. Here's your host, Mike Saunders. Hello and welcome to this episode of influential entrepreneurs. This is Mike Saunders, the authority positioning coach. Today we have with us, Dr. Tracy Gappen, with Gapin Institute. Tracy, welcome to the program. Well, thanks so much. Glad to be here with you today, Mike. Hey, so I'm excited to talk with you because I know you do really specific work,

and I want to learn all about what you do and how you do it and even why you do it. Get us started with a little bit of your story and background. How did you get started in the medical industry? Sure. Thanks so much. So, yeah, I am a recovering board certified urologist, I like to say. I spent about 25 years in traditional health care. I knew I was going to be a surgeon since I was in fourth grade, literally. knew I was going to be a surgeon.

Didn't know what kind until I got to medical school, but knew I wanted to be a surgeon. About halfway through my urology career, I hit a wall where I was in very bad health. I was 30 pounds overweight. I felt like crap. I had the belly fat. I was stressed out, not sleeping well. And when I went to see a local doctor for my first physical ever, I was 40 years old at the time, this was a real eye-opening moment for me when I suddenly realized.

how broken our health care system is because all he wanted to do is just put me on a statin. And, you know, here I am a urologist. You know, you think I'm the men's health expert. Well, I didn't necessarily have the answers either. You know, I realized that we're great at treating disease. I could treat prostate cancer, kidney stones, you know, you name it. But when it comes to how do I get healthy? How do I get in shape?

How do I be the man that I want to be, the man I need to be? I didn't really have any answers. And so that got me going back to school and studying again. And I learned functional medicine and hormones and peptides and epigenetics, which is, you know, how our lifestyle affects the way our body works. And I started putting all these pieces together and I was able to transform my own health and subsequently my own life where I lost weight, regain my energy and focus. And, you know, Mike, I found my passion for medicine again. And that got me really determined to change the way we approach health care. And, you know, I'm an entrepreneur at heart, and I love to help other entrepreneurs.

But at a deeper level, it's really, you know, I had a crappy childhood. You know, I grew up with no father figure. And I see now how much that affected me as a human, as a man. And now that I had two kids, it's all about how can I be the best father to those kids. How could I be the best leader? And your health is everything. Without your health, you have nothing. And so that's got me to really take a very passionate,

approach toward really shift in the way we think about health and longevity. You know, do you find that you got your passion reignited mainly because you had a specific application to you and you experienced something? Or was it more of a need that you saw in the industry as well? Yeah, great point. And I think it's both. I think, you know, number one, selfishly, I for myself was able to get back in shape again. I didn't like who I was. I was I was a miserable person at the time. And to regain my focus, my confidence, my drive, and to feel like a leader again, to feel like I was productive again, it made all the difference in the world for me.

And I was able to get momentum again. That's a key word I like to really focus on is build momentum again. And when I started sharing all this with my patients, my urology patients, they felt the same transformation where they had more energy and they felt alive again. and to see the effect that I had on these men, beyond just treating their kidney stones, their urinary tract infections, and their prostate cancer and all this other stuff,

that's all good and fine and needed. But I suddenly felt like I had a much deeper and more meaningful purpose, and I realized how I could have a much bigger impact, and that's for me, Mike, what changed everything. You know, it reminds me of a phrase that I know I didn't coin or anything, but I've said it for decades,

and I first remember saying it to my wife when, about 10 or 12 years ago she went in for LASIC surgery for her eyes. And we were talking about, oh, it cost X number of dollars. But I said, but you've dealt with some issues with infections or this or that or the other context. It will give you a quality of life. And it sounds to me like, yes, urinary tract infections or things, urology focus that you are dealing with, that fixes some problems when they come up.

But you then ascend it to the next step, which is looking for focusing on. quality of life. Exactly right. And I think that there will always be a place for acute care medicine. And our broken healthcare system is unfortunately designed around treating heart attacks and kidney stones and acute situations. You're in a car accident. You still need those trauma surgeons.

But what it's really poor at is helping you have better energy and focus and drive and confidence and burn that belly fat and have better sleep and enjoy quality. life. And there's, you know, this catchphrase now, you hear it everywhere, this buzzword is longevity. And I want to emphasize that to me, longevity is not, how do I get you to live to be 150? Because I think that's a little disingenuous and unrealistic, honestly, at this point in time. But to me, what longevity is about, how do I improve the quality of your life now, your health span, so you can live a better life now? And that's going to translate to more years to your life. more life to your years is what I focus on now, but that's going to end up adding more years

to your life in the end as well. But so much of it is broken in the fact that it's all based on treating symptoms and disease and illness when they occur instead of being more proactive and intentional. So you did a TED talk focusing on this, the raising awareness on rapidly declining levels of testosterone. What is the main trigger that a man should be looking at. A man should be looking for that might make them think maybe I should go get this checked into. Sure. Yeah. So we're talking about a men's health epidemic where testosterone levels are about half what

they were 20 or 30 years ago. And it may look like this. A guy may notice lower energy, especially late in the afternoon, some fatigue. They're kind of, they crash at the end of the day. They get home and they just collapse, fall apart. Maybe their brain isn't working like it used to with cognitive function and mental acuity focus, memory concentration isn't quite what it was. Maybe it's drive and confidence isn't like it was.

Maybe it's the belly fat that you've tried everything. You're working hard in the gym but not seeing any gains. You can't build muscle like you used to. You can't recover like you used to. You know, you have illness or injuries that doesn't quite clear like it did back in your 20s and 30s. Maybe you have trouble with sleep. Maybe you have trouble with mood and irritability.

You just don't feel like you're really enjoying life. like you used to. Maybe it's sex. Maybe it's low sex drive. Maybe your wife is chasing you or for all those years you were chasing her. Maybe you feel like something's not quite right. You just don't know what it is. All those are symptoms that men may have, which point to this crisis we're seeing with testosterone. But Mike, I'll tell you, most importantly, I have so many men, hundreds if not thousands of men I've seen who have no symptoms at all. They think they're fine. They say, Doc, I'm fine. I'm okay. Now out my levels are fine, come to find out their levels are in the tank. And it's simply

a matter of you find a way to compensate. You find a way to overcome that deficiency by, you know, higher cortisol or doing other things to overcome that problem or you just ignore it, stick your head in the sand and think this is just a natural part of aging. So I suggest that every man out there get tested because I'll tell you, almost every man I see has levels much lower than they need. Yeah, that's the scary thing because as you were going through that,

list. I was like, no, no, maybe. But you're saying that it really, this is a nice list to start with, but that's really not the key indicator because you can have lower levels even without checking off several of those boxes. Exactly right. That's right. Wow. Okay. Well, that's, that's, and so at what age then? So if you, if you don't have a checklist to go through, should this be something that you should be looking at starting at age 30, 40, 50, 60? What do you think? What have you've seen in your research. Yeah, I would say, great question. I would put out there that any man listening to this, any entrepreneur should get their

levels checked. And the problem is that, you know, traditional health care, if you go to your primary care doctor, if you go to even a concierge doctor right now, what they do is they look at your lab slip and they look at the right, even if they're doing testosterone, two problems. Number one, they're checking the wrong lab. So they're looking at total testosterone. You need to look at free testosterone. Free testosterone is the bioavailable active form of testosterone that your body can actually

use. So most of it's bound to proteins making it unavailable. So free testosterone is that one or two percent that's actually available for your body to use. So most doctors aren't even checking free. But number two, they're looking at total and they're looking over on the right side of the lap slip. And you can imagine that column on the right there. There's that range. And you look at that. If you're in that range, yeah, I'm quote, air quotes here, normal. Well, that range is the reference interval or the reference range. That interval is not normal, optimal, ideal where you should be. It's just simply the average of the population. And remember, I mentioned a few minutes ago that our levels are half what they wore 20 or 30 years ago.

And so that range has literally lowered every single year. It's declined to this ridiculously low bar that has caused us to develop the sense of complacency that we're okay when we're just not. Yeah. So here then is another point. If you then think, okay, maybe I should get myself checked, what tests should be run? You know, you mentioned free testosterone, but what is that test? Should there be other tests that go along with that? Yeah.

So I don't think of five general categories I'm going to fly through here. One is hormones you're talking about. So you want to be looking at free testosterone, not just total, free T3, which is the active form of thyroid hormone, DHEA, sulfates another key hormone IGF1 is a marker of growth hormone nitric oxide is one you actually measure with saliva testing not necessarily from blood testing vitamin d is another big hormone those are all key hormones that every guy should be checking cardiovascular health biggest cause of mortality without far without question by far is cardiovascular health you know heart disease apobb most doctors still aren't checking the most valuable marker for lipid health and that's apobbe apolipotene

B LP little A that looks like capital L little P and then little A in parentheses. That's a genetic lipid marker. It's a subtype of LDL that everyone should be checking. You need to be looking at your triglyceride to HDL ratio. Those are key markers of lipid health cardiovascular that most doctors don't check. Miloproxase and CRP and Ferritin are markers of inflammation, something that most doctors don't ever check. Looking at markers of nutrient levels.

Homo cystine is a key marker looking at B complex and folate and other markers of methylation is a key micronutrient marker. Zinc and magnesium, such a common mineral to be deficient is magnesium. So you need to be checking all these micronutrient levels. These are all really key markers of nutrient health. And then the last one is blood sugar or metabolic health. And the key ones that most doctors don't look at hemoglobin A1C, fasting insulin, Uric acid are all key markers of blood sugar, not just fasting glucose.

Yeah. You know, I think the thing that, the word that comes to my mind when we're talking about this is, you know, it's almost like the frog in the water. You turn up the heat and eventually boils because it never was anything drastic. Well, when you start thinking about some of these levels, nothing probably dramatically dropped to where you're like, oh, I feel horrible in this area. but it's just that slow creep. So it really ties to me, it ties into peak performance. And I would venture to say that most men would go, would you want peak performance, yes or no? And most people say, of course, peak performance mentally, physically, all of that, you know, energy, all of those things.

What are some of those areas that you're finding, that you're working with your patients that they're seeing then once they start addressing this peak performance improving? And I love that you're talking about this because most guys, when you hear the phrase, peak performance, which I love to really emphasize. Most guys think, well, I'm not trying to win Iron Man. I'm not trying to be this huge bodybuilder. But peak performance, let's be clear. What that means is, for me, first and foremost, my definition of peak performance is how can I show up and be the most present and engaged father that I can be on a daily basis

while still being a leader in my community, a leader to my business, and the best partner to my wife. And so peak performance does not necessarily mean physical or athletic or anything like that. It could be that you're the CEO of a Fortune 500 public traded company. You have to be able to perform at a cognitive level. So it's really important to emphasize. Pete performance is for any guy who's listening and for women as well, I'll say, who want to really be your absolute best in business, in family, in relationships, in life.

And so I look at it as mind and body. First of all, from a cognitive perspective, how can you optimize your focus and your mental acuity, your concentration, and your memory, and your ability to think, quickly and dynamically adapt to a situation. And that also, you know, applies to mood. You know, are you a pleasant person to be around? You know, are you able to create relationships and create connections? And so the mind part of it is a big part of it.

And that's affected by, you know, hormones and nutrition and gut health. And, God, our gut controls everything, Mike. And most people don't realize the direct connection between our gut and our mind. And so looking at things like fitness, how fitness can directly affect neurotransmitage in your brain. How stress, most high performers underestimate the intense effect that stress has on our bodies. And we all discount, I'm not stressed. Now it's for the next guy. We're all suffering with a consequence of stress. And so it's understanding how all these aspects affect your cognitive function and also your physical performance as well, your recovery, your ability

to perform daily activities and your ability to build muscle and burn fat, which is directly tied to longevity. You know, something that comes to my mind is it seems like if you are off in one specific area, if you can get that mood or that one area, like we're talking about your testosterone handle, improve, right, it has a cascading effect. So it's similar to like, you know, oh, my whole body hurts because I just stubbed my toe. Well, it's just this little toe. but it emanates throughout your whole body and your mind thinks about it and all that.

So talk a little bit about once you start focusing on this rapidly declining level of testosterone, you know, issue that you're dealing with. And once it starts improving, it's going to help more than just the testosterone levels. It's going to have that carryover, spillover effect. 100%. Everything is connected. You know, when you fix testosterone, testosterone, testosterone is an anti-inflammatory, by the way, as well. It lowers inflammatory mediators and it improves vascular health.

And so it's going to, by fixing testosterone, you're going to actually lower cortisol, your stress hormone. That's going to have an effect on other hormones. It's going to improve other hormones that you need as well, like I mentioned earlier. It's going to improve your gut health. By lowering cortisol, reducing inflammation, it improves your gut health, which directly affects neurotransmitters for your brain. It affects your metabolism. It affects recovery. You know, everything is connected.

And so this is why even things like I talk about how, even. even what you're eating directly affect sexual performance, for example. It's all connected together. And so, yes, the massive trickle-down effect of fixing testosterone. And what happens all the times also, once you fix hormones like testosterone and thyroid and DHA and others, now you have more drive and more motivation. You have better mood. You're more likely to make, you know, smart, good decisions and do the right things

and be more productive and efficient during the day so that you're now being. going to bed when you're supposed to instead of staying up late working because you were never as efficient as you could have been all day. You see, it's all connected together. And then if you have better sleep, that's going to lower your cortisol level, your stress hormone. It's going to help you build muscle better. It all connects together. It all is circuitous. And so this is why you can't look at any of the individual components in isolation. Yeah, for sure. So here then is the question. I'm sure that you can't say, oh, well, when you have this problem here is this. fix it works for everyone every single time we know that everyone's different but um what and and i am very

uneducated in this area that we're talking about but i know i've heard of the phrase t r t testosterone replacement therapy are there other things that you know you are working with men on other than the actual hormone testosterone you know injections or things like that or there's some natural approaches yeah so when it comes to boosting testosterone specifically is that what you mean yeah yeah So there are a lot of natural things that you can do to optimize testosterone, which are good for a lot of other reasons as well. You know, number one, sleep, one of the most underappreciated aspects of our health is the quality of our sleep. And when you focus on good quality sleep, quantity as well, what quality I'm talking about are you getting the key restorative stages that you need? When you get good quality sleep, that's going to directly improve your testosterone.

That's also going to help you have better metabolism. It's going to help other hormones. It's going to help cognitive function. So sleep is a big one. Mitigating or reducing stress. And a lot of that comes down to, you know, what can we do to reduce stress in our life? Well, it comes down to things like work-life balance and mindfulness. And are you scheduling time for things that you love?

Are you practicing gratitude, mindfulness? There are a lot of ways that we can reduce stress by just simply being aware of it and being intentional about it. Micronutrients, you know, things like zinc and magnesium and B-complex vitamins are really critical. for testosterone production. Complex carbohydrates. If you're not eating a well-balanced diet, that can affect testosterone production. You need healthy fats. You actually need some complex carbs.

These are all key aspects of testosterone production. Fitness is a big one as well, especially working on the big muscles, like the quads and the hands and the back and the core. Boosting testosterone is going to definitely be a side effect or result of focusing on strength. training. But I'll tell you, Mike, one of the biggest factors for testosterone that's not really talked about much are toxins in our environment. So toxins, chemicals called endocrine disruptors are a key driving reason why men are seeing declining levels of testosterone. It's affecting other hormones as well. So we're talking about chemicals in our drinking water. You know, you measure the chemicals in your tap water. It's full of chemicals and toxins and synthetic women's

estrogen, all these chemicals that are crushing our testosterone levels. In our food, you know, the chemicals spread in our crops, the animals that we eat that are injected with steroids and other chemicals. Personal care products like our laundry detergent and our sunscreen and our deodorant and our soap and our shampoo. These are loaded with chemicals that are crushing testosterone. So simply being aware of and avoiding these chemicals are a big part of it. So there are a lot of things that we can do besides just giving TRT. And it's not just, I'm broken, my levels are low, I need to go fix them. There's, you know, like when you start hearing what you said about an environment, it's like, man, it's not your fault.

It's like we just live in a world where, you know, whatever, pesticides has called this or the environment has cause of that. So get it checked out and take it, take your health seriously because getting back to that peak performance comments that we were talking about, you know, it really is something that is powerful that can have overarching benefits. many areas of our life. Yeah, absolutely. And I can't tell you how many hundreds of men I've seen literally who've come into my practice and they've been on testosterone replacement therapy, they've gone to some tea clinic at the next corner, and they still feel like crap. And they say the same thing. You know, doctors tell me what to do because their energy is still low, cognitive function is off, they can't burn belly fat, sex is bad, quality life is diminished, and they're on testosterone. And it's such a common story where testosterone is just one piece, it's one

ingredient of this cake that we're trying to bake, so to speak. And most men are not going to get there by just getting testosterone shots. It's a big part of it. Helps kind of get you some momentum going, but then you've got to focus on everything else as well. Yeah, 100%. Well, if anyone is interested in learning a little bit more about this and potentially how you can help them, what is the best way they can learn more and also reach out and connect with you. Oh, thanks so much. So if you'll check up our website at Gappen Institute.com. That's G-A-P-I-N-N-I-N-U-N-U-C-com. And I have a page with a bunch of high-performance gifts for the listener. You go to Gappen Institute.com forward slash launch. That's L-A-U-N-C-H. We have a number of gifts. There's a copy of my TED Talk there that you mentioned,

a copy of my best-selling book, Mail 2.0. I have my high-performance-health handbook, my ultimate peptide guide. A lot of gifts that I have there for anyone who's listening. and if you want to reach out to my team, there's a way you can book a complimentary call as well. Excellent. Well, thank you so much for coming on. It's been a real pleasure talking with you today. My pleasure. Thanks so much.

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