[00:00] Dr. Tracy Gapin: When you’re not getting the good quality deep sleep and REM sleep that we care so much about, what’s happening is you’re having the chronically revved up cortisol. And what does cortisol do? Number one, it tells the brain to shut off production of hormones, testosterone, growth hormone, DHEA, thyroid, and many others.

[00:20] Dr. Tracy Gapin: It also makes your metabolism shut down because it thinks you need that energy for more important crisis situations. And so now you can’t build muscle no matter how hard you’re working out in the gym. These guys will tell me that, God, I’m crushing the gym, but I’m not seeing anything happen. Like I can’t build muscle.

[00:34] Dr. Tracy Gapin: What happened?

[00:38] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Welcome to another episode of success for the athletic minded man. Real talk on harnessing your athletic drive for clarity, consistency, and focus in business and life. This is your host Jim Harshaw, Jr. And today I bring you Dr. Tracy. Gap and Tracy is a board certified urologist. He’s a world renowned men’s health and performance expert.

[01:01] Jim Harshaw Jr.: He’s the founder of the gap and Institute where he helps executives, entrepreneurs, and athletes create a personalized path to optimize their health and optimize their highest potential. He is the author of two books, male 2. 0 and codes of longevity. This is one of those fascinating interviews where you’re really going to have to listen to this twice to get the most out of it because he starts throwing things at us sort of later in the episode, sort of tactical things to do habits, routines, supplements, types of food to eat, types of foods to stay away from he lays all this out.

[01:40] Jim Harshaw Jr.: So it comes out. They also like rapid fire. So you’re going to have to listen to this one twice. Definitely, definitely grab the action plan. Cause we’re going to have all this in the action plan for you. Of course, as always go to Jim Harshaw, jr. com slash action, but man, I’m going to get right into this.

[01:55] Jim Harshaw Jr.: We typically try to edit these episodes and usually we don’t have to edit. We can usually keep these interviews under 40 minutes. I aim for closer to 30 minutes. They don’t always get there. But we try to trim them down or just kind of cut out the fluff and really just give you the best stuff. But man, there was, there’s really nothing to cut out here because he just, this is straight fire from Dr.

[02:15] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Tracy Gappin and you guys are going to love this. We talk about testosterone and how to maintain your testosterone level, why testosterone levels are plummeting. Plummeting. It’s scary. Some of the statistics that he shares. So we talk about testosterone, we talk about sleep, fitness, nutrition, all the good stuff as well.

[02:35] Jim Harshaw Jr.: In addition to that. So, all right, let’s go ahead and dive into it. My interview with Dr. Tracy Gapin. Let’s jump right in and talk about health. Generally, we hear about health a lot. Generally, specifically my podcast is for men. You work specifically with men. You target men. Like what is unique? To men as it relates to health, wellness, longevity, et cetera.

[02:59] Dr. Tracy Gapin: Great start. And I’ll tell you that the most common denominator I see in men is that we are simple creatures and we tend to wait until those are problem before we do anything about that problem. And that’s really the downfall of our traditional healthcare system. And I think that’s why we’re failing.

[03:17] Dr. Tracy Gapin: That’s why we’re seeing what I call a men’s health crisis where testosterone levels are plummeting. Obesity is rising. Chronic disease is worsening. And my passion, my focus is getting men to start to commit to their health, own their health, understand what they need to do to really reverse trends.

[03:34] Dr. Tracy Gapin: Sometimes before it’s too late.

[03:37] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Let’s start with testosterone. You said testosterone is declining, obesity rising. Why is testosterone declining? And what is, is it the stuff we’re eating? Is it how we’re living? I mean, what, what’s going on there?

[03:47] Dr. Tracy Gapin: Yes. And exactly. Yeah. So there are several large studies that have looked at this.

[03:51] Dr. Tracy Gapin: Uh, there’s one here in the U S the male Massachusetts aging study, and it looked over 20 to 30 years at testosterone levels. And there are two studies in Europe, one in Sweden and one in Finland. And all three studies showed remarkably the same thing. And that is that testosterone levels are plummeting every year to the tune of, we see that free testosterone, which is the bioavailable active form of testosterone is down by This is ridiculous.

[04:16] Dr. Tracy Gapin: Almost 50 percent

[04:17] Jim Harshaw Jr.: over the last 20 years. So you say the bioavailable, does that mean just like the natural, whatever we got normally flowing through our body?

[04:23] Dr. Tracy Gapin: So you have testosterone floating around your bloodstream. All right. Now for testosterone to have any actual effect, any biologic, physiologic effect, What has to happen is that testosterone has to get into the cell.

[04:34] Dr. Tracy Gapin: It has to bind to the androgen receptor, and then it affects DNA transcription, ultimately affects function. Well, testosterone is bound to big fluffy proteins in the bloodstream, such as SHBG is the most common one, sex hormone binding globulin. That testosterone is no longer available. It doesn’t work.

[04:51] Dr. Tracy Gapin: It’s ineffective. And so what we really care about and what these studies looked at specifically for this reason was free testosterone, which is the amount of Available testosterone that can actually do its job. And so whenever we’re looking at testosterone, it’s important that you focus on not just total testosterone, but specifically the free testosterone, which is the testosterone that can actually have any physiologic impact.

[05:14] Dr. Tracy Gapin: And so all three studies showed that our free testosterone levels are down. By almost 50%. Now, let me put that into context. What that means is you take a 40 year old guy today, his free testosterone levels total as well, but more importantly, free are almost half of what they were 20 years ago. It’s scary.

[05:33] Dr. Tracy Gapin: It’s crazy and scary. Just 20. 20 years. That’s like, that’s not very long. That’s right. And it’s dropping every year. And so to finally come around and answer the question, there’s a lot of reasons. Number one, the biggest culprit without question are toxins in the environment. Okay. Endocrine disruptors, it’s a fancy term for chemicals or toxins in our environment that can crush our body.

[05:53] Dr. Tracy Gapin: Hormone production, hormone function, endocrine disruptors are responsible for low testosterone, they’re responsible for infertility of almost the same magnitude. They cause autoimmune disease, they cause obesity, they cause cancer, they cause all kinds of psychiatric and mood issues and depression, anxiety.

[06:09] Dr. Tracy Gapin: But specifically for this conversation, they’re crushing our hormones. And so where do we find these toxins? They’re unfortunately everywhere. We are bathing in this soup of endocrine disruption, if you will. They’re in our food. So our crops are sprayed with chemicals like, you know, everyone’s heard of glyphosate.

[06:26] Dr. Tracy Gapin: Atrazine is a much more dangerous herbicide, a weed killer, that’s sprayed on our crops. And we’re eating these foods. If you eat meat, the food that they’re given to the cattle. You can look at the things like, like milk, for example. You could test milk and the number of chemicals that you’ll find in milk off the shelf is incredible.

[06:48] Dr. Tracy Gapin: There are studies that actually showed young men, they measure their testosterone levels. They gave him a glass of milk, whole milk, just from a carton off the grocery store shelf. And their testosterone levels dropped in half within an hour. So it’s in the food we’re eating. It’s in the water we’re drinking.

[07:04] Dr. Tracy Gapin: You know, several studies have showed massive levels of chemicals in our drinking water, Most notably, you don’t ever think about this. This is crazy and scary women’s birth control, synthetic estrogen. So women take synthetic birth control. They urinate it. It does not get filtered adequately through our treatment centers, and we’re ingesting it all over again, and it gets stored in our fat.

[07:24] Dr. Tracy Gapin: And these chemicals, such as synthetic estrogen, Basically block testosterone production and they block testosterone function. And so it’s in the food we eat, it’s in the water we drink, it’s in our personal care products, especially things like laundry detergent, soap, shampoo, sunscreen, deodorant, all these chemicals that we’re putting on our skin and it gets absorbed and it’s crushing our skin.

[07:45] Dr. Tracy Gapin: Function. And it’s not like any one particular exposure. If you put on a bad deodorant today, it’s going to magically crush your testosterone today. It’s a little bit every day. It’s a little, you know, it’s little micro decisions that we’re making every day that are adding up and having a massive impact.

[08:02] Dr. Tracy Gapin: And so it’s about understanding these exposures, understanding how to Avoid these chemicals and exposures and, you know, things like easy things you can do like drink filtered water. I have a stainless steel water bottle everywhere I go with filtered water with, you know, carbon block filter. So you’re drinking clean water.

[08:18] Dr. Tracy Gapin: Plastic water bottles should be banned. Plastic water bottles should be banned. There was actually a recent study last month that showed I think it was one liter of bottled water had like 250, 000 particles of plastic and one liter of bottled water. And these chemicals are killing us and it’s just not getting the attention it deserves.

[08:36] Dr. Tracy Gapin: So plastic water bottles plastic food containers, especially if you’re going to heat up your food Do not use plastic use glass or pyrex or you know, something like that Look at the Ingredients of the foods that you’re eating. You can get an app on your phone. The environmental working group makes a free app called healthy living.

[08:52] Dr. Tracy Gapin: You can go to the store and scam barcodes and it’ll tell you the chemicals that are in these products that you’re either eating or that you’re putting on your body. And. That’s how you can start to reverse this. That’s how you could start to make these little micro decisions every day, specifically just to preserve your testosterone levels.

[09:08] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Why does testosterone matter? Maybe I have some, some general ideas and can probably shoot from the hip here, but tell, tell us in your expert opinion, why does testosterone matter?

[09:16] Dr. Tracy Gapin: So people, when they think of testosterone, you know, the first thought obviously is about sex. It’s about building muscle bodybuilders.

[09:23] Dr. Tracy Gapin: But those are really a small part of the beneficial effects of having optimal testosterone levels. So testosterone is critically important when it comes to cognitive function, mental acuity, focus, you know, all the entrepreneurs I work with, the executives I work with, your mind’s got to be sharp. It’s got to be on, you know, uh, one of the guys I work with, he’s a race car driver.

[09:41] Dr. Tracy Gapin: And he came to me because he had brain fog and he wasn’t able to think sharp and it was testosterone as well as some gut stuff, which maybe we’ll hopefully get to at some point in our conversation today. So it’s incredibly important for cognitive focus, memory, concentration. It’s also responsible for mood.

[09:56] Dr. Tracy Gapin: You know, sometimes when guys have low T, they just, they have a poor mood. They’re, I don’t want to say full out depressed, but they’re just not where they need to be. It’s very important when it comes to bone density. It’s important for muscle growth. Of course, it’s important for cardiovascular health.

[10:10] Dr. Tracy Gapin: This is where it’s pretty powerful. There are over a dozen studies that show that men with low testosterone have about a 30 percent increased risk. Of cardiovascular disease in comparison to men who have optimal testosterone in the top quartile. And so we know that men with low T have worsened lipids, especially typically elevated LDL numbers.

[10:33] Dr. Tracy Gapin: They have worsened insulin sensitivity, which is blood sugar regulation. They tend to have more inflammation, chronic systemic inflammation. There’s also studies that show that men with low testosterone have an increased risk of developing prostate cancer. Now this is counterintuitive. You know, I I’m a urologist.

[10:50] Dr. Tracy Gapin: I spent 25 years as a urologist treating prostate cancer every day, doing robotic surgery. And, you know, for years we believed that testosterone was the enemy, you know, it’s like gas on the fire and that you don’t want to give testosterone to any guy who you think might have cancer and it causes cancer.

[11:05] Dr. Tracy Gapin: And it’s all nonsense. We know that that did not be true at all. Now. So testosterone critically important for so many reasons related to energy, metabolism, cognitive function, vitality, cardiovascular health, longevity. Studies have shown that, you know, men with lower testosterone level, they’re dying younger from things like cardiovascular disease, heart attack, stroke, et cetera.

[11:25] Dr. Tracy Gapin: And so this is why testosterone is so important. And I think the key pivot here, I want to end this with low testosterone is not the problem. Low testosterone is the symptom. Of deeper underlying problems.

[11:41] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Okay. I wanna get to the deeper underlying problems. I wanna ask you this before we get to the deeper underlying problems.

[11:47] Jim Harshaw Jr.: You mentioned for years we thought testosterone was bad. It was pouring fuel in the fire. If someone has prostate cancer, why did we think that? What changed? And. What mistakes, you know, 10, 20, 30 years from now, might we look back on today and go, Oh yeah, we thought this. And the truth is that

[12:06] Dr. Tracy Gapin: 1941, there was a study by Dr.

[12:11] Dr. Tracy Gapin: Higgins. He’s a urologist and he had a prostate cancer patient at that time. One patient we’re talking about here, everything started with this one guy. And back then there was no PSA yet. This was pre PSA era. They use prostate acid phosphatase PAP at that time. Yeah. And they found that when they castrated this patient, his prostate cancer regressed, PAP numbers went down, and they found that castration is a treatment for advanced prostate cancer.

[12:40] Dr. Tracy Gapin: From that, we still know to this day that castrating a man will suppress PAP. prostate cancer. There’s no debate about that. That’s true. It’ll also crush the rest of his life and crush his quality of life and everything. All the benefits I just mentioned will be reversed and you have the opposite situation happening, but yeah, it does suppress cancer.

[12:57] Dr. Tracy Gapin: So therefore we always assume there was never a study that ever showed this. This is crazy. This is how things happen because we knew that castration is a treatment for cancer. Therefore, testosterone must be bad for causing cancer and therefore you can’t ever use it, can’t ever give it to a guy. We want to keep low levels for that reason.

[13:17] Dr. Tracy Gapin: And it was assumed, it’s crazy to look back now, it was purely assumed until studies started coming out. This is about 10 years ago now. Studies started coming out. Well, wait a second. If you look at guys in the general population with, Low testosterone symptomatic you give them testosterone to put their levels up where they need to be, you know We’re not trying to make you a superman.

[13:35] Dr. Tracy Gapin: We’re trying to make you a man. Let’s be clear Like we’re not trying to make you a bodybuilder here when we optimize your testosterone levels What happened to the incidence of prostate cancer in those men? Nothing. Nothing changed. She’s like, well wait a second, I thought testosterone caused prostate cancer.

[13:49] Dr. Tracy Gapin: Study after study showed the same thing. You optimize a guy’s testosterone level, the risk of cancer remarkably actually goes down. It doesn’t go up. And so now, we’re on to something here. Abe Morgenthaler was probably the leading guy out there, advocate for testosterone for men with prostate cancer. Then we realized, well wait a second, if you look at guys who have been treated for cancer.

[14:08] Dr. Tracy Gapin: Let’s say they’ve had surgery or radiation. Their PSA is now low and the cancer is gone, but they have low testosterone. Can I give him testosterone without any risk? They just started looking at those men and lo and behold, what do you know? The instance of cancer recurrence. It didn’t change at all, whether you gave him testosterone or not.

[14:25] Dr. Tracy Gapin: So wait a second. Now we know that giving guys testosterone doesn’t cause cancer, nor does it cause recurrence of cancer if you’ve been treated. So let’s look at guys who have cancer. And so sure enough, we did studies on men who have untreated low grade prostate cancer, who we now manage with what’s called active surveillance.

[14:43] Dr. Tracy Gapin: And I have a hundred guys like this. Men who have been diagnosed with prostate cancer, but it’s low grade, non aggressive, I call it the vanilla flavor type of prostate cancer that we now know that we should not be treating. We should leave it alone because the risks of treatment outweigh the benefits for those particular patients.

[14:57] Dr. Tracy Gapin: And lo and behold, when we give these guys testosterone, guess what happens to their cancer? Nothing. Nothing happens. They stay the same. There’s in fact no increased risk of those guys cancers progressing than if we didn’t give them teeth.

[15:12] Jim Harshaw Jr.: So we made some bad assumptions.

[15:13] Dr. Tracy Gapin: Bad assumptions that have finally been dispelled when someone was bold and brave enough to actually do the studies to question that.

[15:21] Dr. Tracy Gapin: Exactly. And so now it’s unfortunately, undoing decades and decades of misinformation about it. And so now it is very clear that there’s this saturation model that a Morgan Teller talks about, where when you go from a testosterone level of a hundred or so down castration, you do in fact suppress testosterone stimulation of any prostate cells.

[15:44] Dr. Tracy Gapin: However, above a hundred or so, infinitely forward at any level, all of those receptors are saturated. You can’t stimulate those receptors anymore. So it is what it is. And so whether you go from a hundred to 200, a hundred to a thousand testosterone level, those receptors, those androgen receptors on that prostate cell or cancer cell are already full so to speak.

[16:03] Dr. Tracy Gapin: And that’s the model that we now understand explains why castration is a viable treatment for men with metastatic advanced prostate cancer, knowing you’re going to crush the quality of life. Unfortunately, which I, I have. Exception to now, but the second thing is that we know that giving guys testosterone is safe in most situations

[16:22] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Quick interruption.

[16:23] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Hey, if you like what you’re hearing Be sure to get the notes quotes and links in the action plan from this episode. Just go to jimharshojr. com Slash action. That’s jimharshojr. com slash action to get your free copy of the action plan now back to the show so you mentioned low testosterone is the Symptom What’s behind us?

[16:45] Jim Harshaw Jr.: What are the causes?

[16:47] Dr. Tracy Gapin: Toxins, stress, metabolic issues, inflammation, oxidative stress. I’ll give you a typical type of picture of what this looks like. So I work with high performing guys, just like I know you’re, you have an audience full of them. And I know that’s who you speak to as well. The guys I work with, it’s a 45 year old entrepreneur.

[17:05] Dr. Tracy Gapin: He’s running four businesses. He sold a couple previously. He’s looking to exit one of them in a couple of years and he’s grinding. He’s doing the Gary Vee lifestyle. I’ll, I’ll sleep when I’m dead mentality kind of concept. And he’s grinding away, working hard, building his business. He’s traveling and yeah, I know about my health.

[17:21] Dr. Tracy Gapin: I work out a couple of days a week. I’m fine. I eat pretty clean and that’s it. I don’t have any stress. Stress doesn’t affect. No, no, I’m, I’m, I’m above stress. Doesn’t touch me. That’s the classic picture. And that probably describes half the guys listen to this podcast. The reality is what happens is when you’re a race car in the red, when you’re always on and you never shut it down, which most guys can say they’re guilty of that, it’s not stress per se, in the sense that God, I’m so stressed.

[17:46] Dr. Tracy Gapin: I’m so worried about a deadline or worry about finance. Not that stress is that your system never has the downside to recover. And when you are always on. Which most guys are without an off switch. What happens is you have chronically elevated cortisol level. Okay. Cortisol is our stress hormone. It’s great.

[18:05] Dr. Tracy Gapin: When you’re being chased by a tiger, it’s great. When you’re in an acute situation where you need to be able to act fast, you know, the guy lifting the car up over family member who’s trapped or, you know, stories like that, you hear where people have these superhuman capacities. Cortisol is great in very acute, short term situations like that.

[18:19] Dr. Tracy Gapin: But in general, over the longterm. Crushes your health. So studies have shown if you were to deprive yourself of sleep for one night, studies show this, the University of Colorado did a study. They looked at college kids where they kept them up overnight and they tested their testosterone level before and after 50 percent decline one night.

[18:37] Dr. Tracy Gapin: And the reason for that is cortisol. This is really the big point here when you’re never turning it off when you’re not getting the good quality deep sleep and REM sleep that we care so much about. What’s happening is you’re You’re having the chronically revved up cortisol and what does cortisol do?

[18:51] Dr. Tracy Gapin: Cortisol does a number of detrimental things. Number one, it goes, it tells the brain to shut off production of hormones, testosterone, growth hormone, DHEA, thyroid, and many others. It also makes the brain, Your metabolism shut down because it thinks you need that energy for more important crisis situations.

[19:09] Dr. Tracy Gapin: And so now you can’t build muscle no matter how hard you’re working out in the gym. These guys will tell me that, God, I’m crushing the gym, but I’m not seeing anything happen. Like I can’t build muscle. What happened five years ago? I could build muscle. Like it was nothing. Now I’m in the gym every day of the week and nothing’s, nothing’s changing or had this belly fat.

[19:24] Dr. Tracy Gapin: Now I can’t get rid of this belly fat. Well, cortisol is making a store that fat as well. So it makes you store fat. It prevents you from building muscle. It elevates your blood sugar. Cortisol is again stressful and makes your blood sugar go up, so now there’s no way you’re going to burn fat or build muscle, lose weight when you have chronically elevated blood sugar.

[19:41] Dr. Tracy Gapin: What does all that do? That crushes your mind. Now cognitive function is going to be a blur because you don’t have neurotransmitter production like normal, you don’t have hormones functioning properly. You have this milieu of chronic inflammation and it’s this systemic wide failure. And all of that I just described is simply from that race car, always being in the red.

[20:01] Jim Harshaw Jr.: And that’s what we always want. Like, you know, the guys that you work with, the guys that I work with, the guys who are listening to this, like we want to be on go all the time as much as possible because we get more done and we crush it. And I love it. We thrive off it. That’s great. But what you’re saying is we might need to back off to go faster.

[20:21] Jim Harshaw Jr.: What do we do about this?

[20:22] Dr. Tracy Gapin: First of all, understanding how that’s crushing metabolism, crushing hormones is also tearing up the gut as well, causing gut inflammation, food sensitivities, all this other kind of stuff as well. So first of all, it’s understanding it, but guys are still like, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[20:36] Dr. Tracy Gapin: That’s not me still. I can say all this to him blue in the face. I can make videos. I can write blogs. I can do podcasts and. What I find when I work with guys is data doesn’t lie. It’s the Hawthorne effect. Hawthorne effect is how, when you track something, it changes behavior, right? Just by tracking it. And so what I do with men, and I think this is really powerful.

[20:55] Dr. Tracy Gapin: Any guy out there can do this on their own is track data. And I’ll give you some examples of, it’s all about data and metrics and establish clear KPIs for your health that now you can use on a daily basis. And don’t listen to me. I’m full of shit. You know, I don’t know what I’m talking about. Look at your own data and those numbers are not going to lie to you.

[21:11] Dr. Tracy Gapin: So I’ll give you some examples of things you can do. You can track your stress. You can actually measure your frequent stress level with a metric called HRV, heart rate variability. And you can measure this every single day on your own at home. You can get a, it’s a polar H10 device. I give these to my clients.

[21:23] Dr. Tracy Gapin: I use it myself at home. 6 a. m. I wake up in the morning. The first thing I do get my coffee, of course, and I sit down on my chair and I do my HRV recording has to be the same time every day. Be consistent with it. And that’s going to measure HRV. What the hell is HRV? HRV heart rate variability is the variation in your heartbeat from one beat to the next.

[21:41] Dr. Tracy Gapin: Right. So when you say your heart rate is 60 or 55 or 78, it’s not truly just that number. It’s varying every single beat by microseconds. And that variation is actually everything. It means everything because it’s a direct indication of your nervous system and your stress level. And what you’ll find from that is remarkable to understand the stress that you’re experiencing in your life and how different things can affect that.

[22:00] Dr. Tracy Gapin: Example, we took one of my practitioners in my practice, took her and her husband to dinner this past weekend, Saturday night, my wife and I, I don’t ever drink alcohol. I feel the crappy effects of it afterwards. I hardly ever drink, you know, maybe in the holidays I had like one drink and that was good. I had a glass of wine.

[22:16] Dr. Tracy Gapin: The next day, my HRV plummeted. HRV low equals high stress. Okay. And so HRV is a direct way to see the stress, the internal physiologic stress that your body’s experiencing. Even though you may say, yeah, I feel fine. I’m okay. You know, I could overcome it. The numbers don’t lie. You can try blood sugar. You know, one of the common things I see when guys have chronically elevated cortisol is it raises blood sugar.

[22:39] Dr. Tracy Gapin: So you can use a device called CGM, continuous glucose monitoring. And there are a number of companies out there you can do direct to consumer. All my clients, we use this as well, where you put a sensor on, the sensor goes up here on your arm, on your upper arm. And it has a thin little filament that goes just under the skin, barely feel it when you apply it.

[22:55] Dr. Tracy Gapin: And it connects to an app on your phone and you can track your blood sugar 24 seven. For two weeks at a time. And now what you’ll find is when you eat, when you sleep, when you exercise, you’ll see the changes in your blood sugar. And again, the numbers don’t lie. The data doesn’t lie. It’s going to show you how, when you’re waking up and your blood sugar is one Oh five, and it’s supposed to be under 90, that’s when you’re like, Holy cow, what do I gotta do to fix this?

[23:19] Dr. Tracy Gapin: And so it’s using metrics like that, track body composition, things like lean muscle mass and visceral fat, you know, forget about weight, weight, weight’s a relatively insignificant metric. It’s the body composition numbers that matter. Track metrics like that, that matter. Track your sleep. I mentioned before how deep sleep and REM are so important devices.

[23:36] Dr. Tracy Gapin: Like I love the aura ring. That’s probably the best of all the devices out there, but you can use Garmin. You can use Apple is okay. Whoop is okay. The rest of the ones I would probably not recommend, but, but track your sleep metrics. And you want typically at least seven, seven and a half hours of total sleep, but more importantly, you want an hour of deep sleep.

[23:54] Dr. Tracy Gapin: That’s the time during which you’re recovering, you’re repairing your body, you’re building up growth hormone and other key hormones. And then you want two hours of REM sleep. And that’s the time when you’re consolidating memory. You’re repairing as well. You need those two key stages of sleep and you can measure it.

[24:11] Dr. Tracy Gapin: And so these are examples of how you can real time every day. You can track metrics and see if what you’re doing is working or not. And then finally I’ll say, track your intake. Use a device like chronometer is a great app on your phone. There’s a free version or a paid one. Chronometer is a great app. My fitness pal is another one made by Under Armour.

[24:26] Dr. Tracy Gapin: Both of them are very similar, where you can either just take a picture of your food or enter the food in there and it’ll keep track of your macros. And I love chronometer because it’ll give you micronutrients as well. And know your resting metabolic rate, know your caloric targets, know specifically your macro targets, meaning how much fat, protein and carbs should I be eating.

[24:44] Dr. Tracy Gapin: And most guys aren’t even remotely close to what their targets are, but they think they’re doing fine. And when you measure it, You suddenly realize that you’re not where you need to be. And so for me, it’s all about data. You know, that’s how you really drive decisions. Yeah,

[24:57] Jim Harshaw Jr.: that all makes sense. So I’m going to ask you a question that is going to vary from person to person based upon exactly what you just said is data, but what do you generally have to tell guys to do guys that you work with guys who I work with who are listening, is it generally, are they needing to get more sleep or better sleep or eat Fewer carbs.

[25:20] Jim Harshaw Jr.: I mean, let’s say we don’t work with you necessarily, or we don’t buy the tracking. What do we got to do?

[25:28] Dr. Tracy Gapin: So of course, everyone’s different. Of course, everyone’s unique. Of course, everyone’s going to have specific issues. Some guys don’t have any trouble with sleep at all. Other guys, that is their main issue, but I’ll give you some generic suggestions for the four areas of health that I can categorize it into.

[25:43] Dr. Tracy Gapin: And then I’ll give you some summary ways that, um, to apply habits in general. So first nutrition. I think that there’s no perfect diet and that based on your genetics and data, et cetera, you know, what foods are right for you will vary. However, I think more importantly is what you’re not eating. And I think the biggest things that we need to be avoiding are the refined sugars, the package process, cakes, candies, the muffins for breakfast, all of the refined process junk.

[26:08] Dr. Tracy Gapin: I would focus on real food. So for example, what I eat like for breakfast, when I break my fast, typically around 11 a. m. or noon or so, and I break my fast, it’s a whey protein shake. Okay. 25 to 40 grams of protein. It’s coconut water. It’s strawberries and blueberries and ice. That’s it. Now I’ll also add to that Greek yogurt because I know it has very high amount of protein.

[26:30] Dr. Tracy Gapin: I can add a little cottage cheese as well. That’s another 15 grams of protein. Most guys don’t eat enough protein. I would focus on typically 0. 8 to one times your ideal body weight. So I weigh 160. So my goal every day is 160 grams. a protein. It’s hard. You have to work at it. It’s a chore every day to be sure that you’re getting enough protein.

[26:47] Dr. Tracy Gapin: If you’re not familiar with how to, how do I get enough protein in me? So focus on foods that are lean, focus on foods that are high in protein in general. I think gluten is in general, very damaging to the gut and promotes inflammation. Even if you’re not a celiac, even if you have no true gluten allergy, I generally recommend avoiding gluten.

[27:04] Dr. Tracy Gapin: You avoid gluten for a week or two, you’ll feel better. Feel a big difference in cognitive function, energy, just sense of wellbeing. And so in general, I like to limit gluten as well. Otherwise it’s about eating real foods. I don’t espouse any particular diet. Yeah. If you like meat, eat meat, but make sure it’s lean.

[27:19] Dr. Tracy Gapin: Make sure it’s grass fed. Make sure it’s organic. If you’re eating chicken, make sure it’s grass fed that it’s, you know, farm raised eggs, that it’s clean, organic, real food. Spend the extra money for organic fruits and vegetables. It does matter. It does make a difference. If you can afford it, it’s well worth the difference by local buy from local farmers that, you know, they’re growing and producing organic foods and avoid all the foods that are sprayed with chemicals and pesticides

[27:42] Jim Harshaw Jr.: question for you about food, about organic food for the person who thinks like, ah, I don’t want to buy organic because it’s too expensive.

[27:48] Jim Harshaw Jr.: And has there been any research done on like, there’s a return on that investment in terms of, you know, Cost savings of medical bills or anything like that. Certainly there’s just all of this intangible stuff that we’re talking about here with testosterone, et cetera. But

[28:02] Dr. Tracy Gapin: I have not seen any studies like that.

[28:04] Dr. Tracy Gapin: I think that’d be pretty, pretty tough to construct a study like that, that didn’t have so many outside variables that would affect it. What I can tell you is. The, the micro decisions you’re making on a daily basis add up and every little thing you can do matters. And so if you can get organic, yes, if at all possible, I’ll give you an example.

[28:25] Dr. Tracy Gapin: Sometimes I’ll go to the grocery and my treat. If I have a snack, it’s an apple, organic apple, honey, crisp apples, what I eat. But a lot of times the ones that I have at the store, they look awful. They look disgusting. They don’t have, and I can’t get organic. And so worst case scenario, it’s not going to be organic, but I’m going to do everything I can to get organic, if at all possible.

[28:43] Dr. Tracy Gapin: Understanding that, Hey, life happens, you know, you can’t be perfect every day. You have to also accept the fact that you’re not going to be perfect. So Superbowl is coming up in a couple of days, guys, it’s okay. You know, have a snack, enjoy it, you know, try to moderate it. The key is to make yourself full before you go to the party so that you don’t overeat.

[29:02] Dr. Tracy Gapin: But then the next morning is a new day. Start over. Don’t beat yourself up over it. Know that, you know, holiday and events happen. And a lot of guys, they let that snowball because I had one bad day. forget it, it’s over. I’m never going to reach my goals. And they just, they fall off the wagon and they’re gone.

[29:17] Dr. Tracy Gapin: You know, instead of understanding that was just one day, it’s okay. Kind of move on, let it go. Right? So that’s the, the, the food part of it. I’m going to come back to the habits of the very end, which I think will help give people some real strategies on the nutrition. When it comes to sleep, the most important thing that matters is what you’re doing those last couple hours before bedtime.

[29:34] Dr. Tracy Gapin: So you need to be putting your mind into the state of getting ready for sleep. And so I think of five things in general that you can do. In those last two hours before bedtime. And if you only do these five things, you’re going to be okay. One is reading from a book, not from a tablet. One is journaling. I love journaling because it helps kind of get your mind clear and strategize and focus.

[29:51] Dr. Tracy Gapin: And it’s amazing what happens when you just write your thoughts down. Three is you can do a sauna sauna is great for relaxation. Turning off the mind meditation meditation is amazing. Whether you’re meditating on your own, whether you’re using, you know, headspace app on your phone, if you need to, I love the brain tap device.

[30:09] Dr. Tracy Gapin: It’s amazing. Actually has binaural beats with a guided meditation. And I tend to fall asleep every time I listen to one of those. Whatever you need to do to meditate is helping turn off and calm your mind. And if you’ve never done it before, try it a couple of times. It’s. So powerful headspace is a nice beginner way to get going in, uh, into it with an app, you know, app to help you.

[30:27] Dr. Tracy Gapin: And then the fifth one is have sex, have sex with your partner. I know I would not do all five of those things at the same time. That’d be super awkward. So pick one and go with it, obviously joking, but those are things that you can do those last couple hours. I would not eat or drink anything in the two to three to four hours before you go to bed, super, super important that you don’t, if you need to take a sip of Of water with your pills.

[30:47] Dr. Tracy Gapin: That’s okay. Otherwise, no food or drink for those last few hours. Certainly no tablets, no devices, no computers, laptop, phone, et cetera. Watching TV is better than your phone. By far. The blue light simulation is exponentially less intense and obtrusive from TV. So if you have to watch something late in the evening, make a TV, not on your tablet, not on your phone.

[31:09] Dr. Tracy Gapin: Okay. Um, don’t bring your phone with you. When you lay down in bed, it’s bad. The bed’s good for two things. One in the sleep. It’s not for your phone, not to be, to be scrolling on social. Uh, it’s the worst thing you could do because you’re stimulating your mind. You’re, again, you’re trying to get your mind into a ready state for sleep and turning off cortisol and stress.

[31:28] Dr. Tracy Gapin: Those are all the things, you know, we could, we could talk about supplements for, for sleep. Things like L theanine is a great supplement. Uh, guys can try magnesium. It has to be either threonate or glycinate. Those are the only two that’ll hit the brain. So that’s great for sleep as well. Ashwagandha, What about

[31:42] Jim Harshaw Jr.: melatonin?

[31:43] Dr. Tracy Gapin: So yeah, melatonin in general sucks. And I love melatonin for other reasons, not for sleep. Believe it or not. It’s actually good for immune functions, mother systemic benefits, but melatonin, most people don’t respond to melatonin. Most people have enough melatonin already and you need very little anyway.

[31:59] Dr. Tracy Gapin: And most of the time your body doesn’t need more than a half a milligram, but most of the time people take like two, 12, 20 milligrams of melatonin, you know, way over the top.

[32:08] Jim Harshaw Jr.: So it’s just, you’re just wasting it. You’re just Do you think more than you need?

[32:11] Dr. Tracy Gapin: You are. It’s not yet. That’s why typically it doesn’t work because most people don’t.

[32:15] Dr. Tracy Gapin: Melatonin is not what’s going to move the needle for you. Yeah. So DHEA is another good one. DHEA is good. It’s a hormone that we all need, but it’s also good for regulating cortisol. So I like that one in the evening as well. So those are good supplements, but most of it’s behavioral. Most of it’s, it’s turning off the blue light and setting it.

[32:31] Dr. Tracy Gapin: The other thing is consistent schedule. So one of the most powerful things about sleep is going to bed the exact same time every night. You can set an alarm on your phone. Your body has a circadian rhythm. It knows when you’re supposed to be going to bed. And if you vary that day to day, you screw up the entire system and just doesn’t know.

[32:48] Dr. Tracy Gapin: And so, so your body’s internal melatonin production, for example, is dependent on that circadian rhythm and you have genes that regulate that. So make it 10 30, make it 11, you know, whatever that number may be, but make it consistent every day. And then finally sunlight in the morning. Studies have been, have shown that early morning exposure to sunlight has a great effect on sleep cycle as well.

[33:07] Dr. Tracy Gapin: So first thing in the morning, go out for 10 minutes, you know, drink your coffee out in the deck, whatever. And that’s been shown to be helpful as well. That’s sleep moving on to fitness. Get off your ass. I can’t tell every guy here what program is right for them, depending on your genetics, depending on your fitness level.

[33:21] Dr. Tracy Gapin: You know, in general, most guys don’t do enough resistance training. They do this nonsense cardio. They go get on the stepper or get on the treadmill or the bike guys over the age of 40. Your main goal, your main passion and focus every day is how do I build muscle? How do I build muscle? How do I build muscle?

[33:36] Dr. Tracy Gapin: Muscle is a lot of

[33:37] Jim Harshaw Jr.: muscle after 40, right? You

[33:38] Dr. Tracy Gapin: do. Yeah. You’re, you’re wasting away every single day. Think of it like some cities, you know, some, some towns, some cities are kind of growing and thriving and there’s new homes being built and they’re growing. And then other cities are just decaying every day.

[33:51] Dr. Tracy Gapin: Which town are you? Which one are you? You’re it’s either, or you can’t be both. You’re either or. So are you in an anabolic growth state? Are you in a catabolic decay state? And most guys are over 40 if you’re not working out every day. You’re in a decay state. And so focus on resistance training. I’m not talking about overdoing it, but you need to be doing resistance at least two, three days a week.

[34:10] Dr. Tracy Gapin: You need to incorporate some cardio and some aerobic exercise. And that could be, you know, going for a nice walk with the family. Take the dog for a walk for et cetera. Uh, yoga is good. You could do some sprinting. So incorporate some interval training as well. What I love to do. I love to play tennis. Any kind of activity, sport that incorporates that.

[34:27] Dr. Tracy Gapin: So it’s more fun. It’s not just work. It’s not like, God damn, I gotta go work. I gotta go walk. I gotta go run. It’s not supposed to be like that. Join one of the local centers that have group programs, classes like a boxing class or, you know, a circuit training sort of thing. But vary it up and make it fun, make it exciting, make it part of your daily routine, but above all else, just get off your ass every day.

[34:47] Dr. Tracy Gapin: You got to do something, you know, they talk about 10, 000 steps a day. You know, some guys you got to live, you got to be realistic as well. I focus more on, are you doing something every day toward an anabolic growth mindset? Rather than decaying

[35:00] Jim Harshaw Jr.: for the listeners. You guys know, you’ve heard me talk about F3.

[35:03] Jim Harshaw Jr.: I’m going to plug F3, find an F3 group in your town. Free men’s workout group. Always free. Always outside. It’s awesome. It’s easier to work out with a bunch of other dudes.

[35:12] Dr. Tracy Gapin: Absolutely. It’s accountability. Yeah.

[35:14] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Yeah.

[35:15] Dr. Tracy Gapin: So that’s fitness. And then finally, the last part of stress, and we talked earlier about, you know, race car in the red kind of concept is you need to have a plan in place for how do I turn it off?

[35:23] Dr. Tracy Gapin: What is my go to for turning it off? And some examples may be, maybe you go for a walk by yourself. Maybe it’s music, maybe it’s meditating, maybe it’s going to the gym and just sitting in the sauna by yourself. What I used to do an example of how you could apply this in real life is when I was working my urology job, it was across town and every day I leave the office 536 o’clock or so when I’m, when I’m not going to hospital, I’m on my way home and I will stop at this parking lot.

[35:50] Dr. Tracy Gapin: In front of a school. I know that sounds creepy, but bear with me and I’ll, and I’ll turn on headspace in my car, I’m parked in the parking lot and I turn on headspace in the car and just sit there and close my eyes for 10 minutes. And what that does is it shuts off the stress centers. It turns off your nervous system and allows you just to decompress.

[36:11] Dr. Tracy Gapin: And you open your eyes and you’re like, holy cow, I feel so much better and relaxed. And it, it has such a powerful effect. There’s real science too. I used to scoff and I used to laugh at one of my team members. She’s real woo into meditation and mindfulness stuff. I used to think it was BS, but there’s real science behind the actual genetic changes that you see with mindfulness meditation practices.

[36:32] Dr. Tracy Gapin: And so it’s a matter of trying it. Try for five minutes here or there twice a day. Just try meditating. If you need help using app, what is your leisure activity? You know, this is another fun story. I have great example. I have a client who comes to me. He lives in Miami. He travels around the world and he owns legal practices.

[36:51] Dr. Tracy Gapin: And like, Hey, I won’t say his name, but I’ll make up Joe. Hey, Joe, you know, what do you do for fun? I like to work. No, like what, what’s your leisure activity. I like to make money. And that was it. That’s all he does 18 hours a day. He said, sometimes he will work. That is a race car in the red, ready to blow.

[37:09] Dr. Tracy Gapin: And so don’t be like Joe create time in your daily life for what do you love to do? Is it sailing? Is it tennis? Is it bowling? Is it whatever the hell you may like to do? When I talk about living with intention, it’s about freaking making time for the things you love to do. And. If you don’t schedule it, something else will fill that time.

[37:30] Dr. Tracy Gapin: And so I’m really big on living with intention and making sure that you focus on the things that freaking matter. We talked about our kids. You have four kids. I have two beautiful kids. Mine are eight and 10 and they’re my everything, but they’re my big why. And I’m very intentional about creating time every single day, just for them.

[37:46] Dr. Tracy Gapin: Because to me, that’s what gives me the biggest joy. And that’s what helps ground me and actually lower my stress and gets me ready to pounce on it the next day.

[37:55] Jim Harshaw Jr.: And for the listeners, like the self goals that you hear me talk about in our sort of four steps for four different areas where we set goals, like this is self goals, like this is important.

[38:03] Jim Harshaw Jr.: This is the most underestimated underutilized. everybody understands relationship goals and health goals and, you know, wealth career goals, but the self goal, the fun goal, the stuff that’s for you, that’s enjoyable, that, that you used to do, but you stopped doing and you’re not doing it anymore. Like it’s so critical.

[38:22] Jim Harshaw Jr.: It’s so important. And then just overall, you, you need to have goals in these areas to be intentional about your family, to be intentional about your health. You have to write this stuff down and have a plan and have accountability and have experts like Tracy in your life. This is how it’s done. You shouldn’t be trying to figure it out on your own.

[38:37] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Bring these people into your life, bring the accountability into your life, bring the intention and the planning into your life.

[38:43] Dr. Tracy Gapin: Exactly. I’ll briefly finish up with one minute on habits. You know, BJ Fogg wrote an amazing book called tiny habits. I cannot recommend the book enough. It’s so powerful on understanding how habits are behaviors are a factor of motivation plus.

[38:59] Dr. Tracy Gapin: Ability plus a prompt. And so we all have the motivation. Yeah, I’m going to do it. I’m going to do it. I’m gonna do it. And then you never freaking do it. Right. Well, the reason why you typically never do it is the ability is not there. And the ability means, can I do this on a daily, regular, consistent basis?

[39:12] Dr. Tracy Gapin: Example, back to the nutrition piece, we talked about a way to make that easy. You’re motivated to eat healthy and clean, but I just can’t, I don’t have time. Blah, blah, blah. Go to the grocery, get all the stuff we talked about and then spend 10 minutes at home that day, prepping all that food. So when you open the fridge.

[39:28] Dr. Tracy Gapin: It’s right there. Easy to grab easy, healthy, good food for you to eat.

[39:34] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Reduce the friction to making that the good choice.

[39:38] Dr. Tracy Gapin: Exactly. So for me, for example, my HRV tracking for the longest time, and I want to track my HRV every day, once I’ve recently in the morning, I forget about doing other stuff, I’m busy on my.

[39:46] Dr. Tracy Gapin: Journaling and this and that, and I freaking forget about it. Now, what I do is I put it on the coffee table right next to where I sit in the morning with my coffee and my journal, and it’s right there. And that’s an example of how you make it easy. My workouts I have in my schedule. I have blocks in my calendar where my team can’t touch me because I’m specifically working on those times.

[40:04] Dr. Tracy Gapin: You can’t touch me. You can’t find me. You can’t schedule. I’ve improved my ability to do that because I’ve made it so freaking easy because it’s there on my calendar. I can’t ignore it. And so figure out what it is to make those habits easy in your life and attach it to an anchor. The final thing, the P in there behavior equals motivation plus ability plus a prompt.

[40:23] Dr. Tracy Gapin: What anchor, what prompt can you attach it to? So that you’ll do it on a consistent regular basis. For me, when I sit down with that cup of coffee in the morning, that’s my prompt to put on the HRV strap and do my reading. And that’s just one easy example of how you can set behavior, tiny little habits in your daily life that will add up over time.

[40:39] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Excellent. Tracy, this is an episode that the listeners need to listen to twice, download the action plan, print it out, put it on your desk, read through it. I can come back to this stuff. So Tracy, where can the listeners find you, follow you, et cetera?

[40:53] Dr. Tracy Gapin: Thanks so much. So my website is drtracygappin. com or my center Gappin Institute is gappininstitute.

[40:58] Dr. Tracy Gapin: com and I have a gift I like to give away every time I speak. Um, I have a high performance health handbook. It is simply 15 strategies and tactics you can use starting today to really achieve high performance in every area of your life. And all you got to do is just text the word health. H E a L T H to the number two, six, seven, eight, six, again, two, six, seven, eight, six text health.

[41:18] Dr. Tracy Gapin: And you’ll get a free copy of my high performance health handbook. And I’ll also give you a free copy of my bestselling book. Mail 2. 0.

[41:25] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Perfect. Tracy, thanks for making time to come on the show. Absolutely.

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