Transcript
Speaker: Free testosterone levels are anywhere from 30 to 45% lower today than they were 20 years ago. And every year gets another 1% worse or give or take. Levels are getting lower and lower and lower. You're right. We get lulled into this false sense of security and and doctors don't recognize this. And so they tell patients you're normal. You don't qualify for any treatment because your your note levels are fine when you're not.
Speaker: This is the Home of Health Spam podcast, where we profile health and wellness role models, sharing their stories and the tools, practices, and routines they use to live a lively life.
Speaker: Dr. Tracy Gappin, welcome to the Home of Health Spam podcast. ah Thanks so much. Glad to be with you today. I am looking forward to this conversation for a number of reasons. I think it's very timely given where a lot of the conversation in this space is going right now.
Speaker: But before we get into specifically why and and all of that, how would you describe yourself? Yeah, so um I am a lively recovering urologist.
Speaker: I am a lively expert in ah peak performance and you know what we call precision performance medicine. And I'm incredibly passionate about ah men's health and performance and optimization. And I am a lively father first ah before everything else. And i'm I'm super passionate about our conversation today. Fantastic. And you brought in Peak as the idea. And so everybody, i think listening knows the the name of the show is the home of Healthspan. But Rhonda Patrick, on a relatively recent episode, brought into this conversation, hey, we had been talking about lifespan, lifespan, lifespan.
Speaker: Nobody wants to sit for an extra decade in bed with a bunch of machines hooked up. We should be talking about Healthspan. And then recently said, actually, we should be talking about Peakspan.
Speaker: And i given this focus on peak performance and peak span and living a peak life, how would you describe that and why should that actually be the focus instead?
Speaker: I love the question. Yeah. So there's definitely a distinction there. And this this space around longevity has exploded suddenly in the last couple of years. and And there is now an interest on, you know, what does longevity medicine, longevity even mean? And for some people, it's living to be 150. You got the Brian Johnsons out there, which I think are very few and far between.
Speaker: Then there are people who talk about health span and health span for those who aren't familiar, it just simply you know extending um how long do you live at at the current capacity you are, you know but before you develop real significant disease.
Speaker: What I will argue is that a lot of us aren't even living close to our full potential and studies have shown that you know entrepreneurs and executives and high performing leaders are only operating at maybe 60 to 70 percent of their potential.
Speaker: And so that's where, you know, Peak Launch, which is ah my a company where we focus on on optimization and and how can I get your mind and body to function at the absolute highest level now so that you can perform and, you know, performance. Some people tend to think of that as athletics, like, you know, an Ironman or competing in in athletic you know Olympics.
Speaker: To me, it's how can I... work my butt off during the day and provide as much as I can to my team, to my clients, to my community and content like this. And then at the end of the day, still have enough left to be able to be a dad. Because to me, that's it's all about. And if I can't do that, then I'm failing.
Speaker: And so, you know, peak performance ah is being able to function at a high level in every part of your life, not just in athletics or not just at work. I do want to ask some questions on that because I can also see it being exhausting, right? the The peak optimization, mean, Brian Johnson, you already brought him up, it is a classic example in my mind where i don't know the exact math, but it's like, hey, I'm spending 18 hours a day to buy an extra eight minutes a day.
Speaker: And I'm just not sure of the ah ROI of some of the things that go into that. And the equivalent, I know it's about more than physical performance in sports. It's about overall peak life.
Speaker: But the the comparison I always draw is that was a division one, all American athlete, right? U.S. national team. And the amount of work and effort and training that went into that was inordinate. I mean, the the amount of hours in the gym, the pool, everything that went into it, 40 plus hours a week. sure It's a full-time job.
Speaker: Now, I went to law school, didn't swim for two years. And then in the UK, they don't have eligibility rules. And so I was able to swim my third year. Totally different program. Swam three or four times a week for 45 minutes, no coach.
Speaker: And in the 200 freestyle, i went two seconds slower. This is a race that is less than two minutes long. I went two seconds slower. And so it was something like 20% the effort got me to 80% there.
Speaker: got me to eighty percent there And all that extra work was to eke out that last 2%. two percent And right there's a lot of life where, and maybe this is looking at life as peak as opposed to any one single pillar or metric saying an overall peak life may just be I can get 90% of the benefit with 50% of the work in this. And I can get 90% of the benefit with 20% of the work in this and how to create that balanced portfolio. How do you think about that versus the executives? Like I want to um peak optimize my Ironman time. You're like okay, well, that's going to come at a cost of a bunch of these other things in your life. And does that truly lead to a peak life versus a peak time in this one specific area?
Speaker: I love that. Yeah. and And I think that there's a lot of low hanging fruit. Like I think for a lot of people, when you optimize hormones, and sleep, and cortisol, which is a stress hormone that most people underestimate, um and the microbiome.
Speaker: I'll say just those four things alone, that's low-hanging fruit that we can fix with with with not a lot of work. You can get, like you said, 80% the way there. And then the further along you want to go now you can start getting into the weeds and start getting into the the nitty-gritty details and the nuance of it. But there's a lot of basic fundamentals that people are missing. And and you know a lot of people are... are are trying to look for the sexy molecule. What's that one longevity molecule I could take that's going to fix it all? And and meanwhile, they're eating like crap, they're not sleeping well, their guts are mess, their hormones are off. And those are what I would submit are going to really move the needle first. And so I think it's meeting people where they are. and And I always like to suggest, you know get testing done to see what
Speaker: maybe holding you back first and then hit that low hanging fruit first. and then there are some people who are high achievers who want to go the extra mile and put in the work like you did. Other people, maybe not so much. And and that's okay. But there's still a lot that you can do without having to kill yourself over it.
Speaker: Yeah, it sounds like a really important step before you start moving on anything is defining what peak life means to you. And in really holistically stepping back to understand, like for you, you say hey the whole purpose, I need this energy at the end of the day for my family. Like that's where I want to be. Whereas someone else, I want to squeeze out the most in my career. or you You just need to know eyes wide open what you're going in for in the first place, I would think.
Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. And I i think a a lot of us tend to underestimate the the real issues under the surface. We think, i'm you know, the most common statement I'll hear is I'm fine. I'm okay. I don't have any major problems. and You know, I'm getting by. And I think we're masters of adaptation. We compensate and we adapt and and we tend to lower the bar without even realizing it. And we create a new normal.
Speaker: And so I think the the testing helps you really identify, you know, what may be holding you back. And, know, And then I think that it's not, ah you know, people say, have better energy. I want to have better drive, have better strength. well Well, my big question is why? and I think this is a really critical point because I had ah a great example. I had a client a few months ago now, he was 60, came in and he wanted better energy. and like, okay, well, why? He's like i just want to be able to perform better. Okay, but that's that's not enough. what like what What is it all about for you?
Speaker: And once I was able to peel the onion several layers, what I found out from this guy was that he actually loved pickup basketball. That was his big thing was to play pickup basketball with some friends at the local gym. Well,
Speaker: it got to the point at age 60 now where he was kind of the last man on the team. He was the last man to get picked and he wasn't even really involved in the game. And his point was, I want to be strong with high energy so that I can be relevant was his key word on the basketball court.
Speaker: And so it's not enough for me to help him get better energy, but help him build muscle mass or have you know his body composition metrics say these certain numbers. It's that outcome that he cared about. I think that's what where we get into real life you know details that actually really drives home why this stuff matters so much.
Speaker: That makes a lot of sense. I mean, when you were just talking about, I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm fine. It reminds me of Plato's allegory of the cave, right? Of if you're sitting in a cave with no light, you're like, look, this is fine. Like this is, this is what it is. And so if every day you wake up inflamed, low energy, need three cups of coffee operating at 60%, you say, I'm fine.
Speaker: Right. Like I don't have cancer. i don't have diabetes. I'm totally fine. You think that's fine. That's just normal until you start addressing some of those. like Wake up and don't need coffee because you just have energy and you're operating at 85%. Whoa, this is 30% more than what I was doing before. This feels incredible. Let me get more of that.
Speaker: That's one side of it. I do want to go back to the getting tested part. And I'm fine. I'm in normal. Now you as an actual physician can correct me on this, but my understanding is that a lot of the ranges of what normal is have, we have ah had some great inflation over the years because normal on the population that's getting sicker and sicker, right?
Speaker: means you're getting sicker and sicker with the population. So you don't want to look at reference ranges versus, hey, what is actually good health here in in some of these tests? Exactly. I'll drive that excellent point home with a great example here. So testosterone. So we can look at, you know, free testosterone is the testosterone that most doctors don't ever look at. They look at total, but I'll argue that that free is what matters as the bioavailable. But if you look at studies, there were three huge studies that looked at population level testosterone levels.
Speaker: And we found that in the US, Sweden and Finland, three longitudinal studies, 20 plus year studies, thousands of men, they found that free testosterone levels are anywhere from 30 to 45% lower today than they were twenty years ago Almost 50% decline in free testosterone over the last 20 years. And every year gets another 1% worse or give or take. And so what that means is that levels are getting lower and lower and lower. Now, if you look at a lab report, LabCorp, Quest, and the other lab, same story, that reference range on the right side of that lab report is not optimal or ideal or where you should be. or you know that's not
Speaker: necessarily perfect. What that is, is the average of the population, which studies show is again, almost half what it was. So that range 20 years ago was higher, almost double what it is now. And so you're right. We get lulled into this false sense of security and and doctors don't recognize this. And so they tell patients you're normal.
Speaker: You don't qualify for any treatment because your, your note levels are fine when you're not. And so for something, I mean, I realize you don't have an answer, but to me, the really big question here, because sperm counts are also down the similar amounts over early these times.
Speaker: Why? Do we know why? i mean, is it, hey, we're this percent more obese and that's doing it? Is it the microplastic? Is it other pollutants? Is it the... toxins on the food. Like what is it that's driving this down? Like, yeah, I i think it's certainly multifactorial. I think a lot of stuff contributes to it I think, you know, sedentary lifestyle, think poor diet, I think, you know, ah stress, the high cortisol can definitely contribute to as well.
Speaker: I believe in the studies support this, that it's it's endocrine disruption. which is toxins, chemicals in our environment. That's in our drinking water, in our food, and our personal care products that are crushing our hormones. And that includes things like plastic water bottles, any kind of plastic like K-cups or plastic food containers, storage containers, looking at ah the the chemicals that are sprayed in our crops.
Speaker: especially corn crops, for example, in the Midwest, we look at personal care products like our laundry detergent that we're absorbing through our clothes all day, every day, our deodorant, our sunscreen, our shampoo and soap, all these products that we're putting on our body, we're absorbing these chemicals. And so, um you know, drinking water has been found to have synthetic estrogen.
Speaker: Women's birth control doesn't get filtered adequately. And so it's everywhere. it's ubiquitous. And I believe that's the single biggest culprit. And so I think, you know, awareness and avoidance elimination is so critical because otherwise it's going to continue to get worse. And and i' I've really made a bold statement that I'll still hold to. And that is if we don't change the current trajectory in 20 years, the entire male population will be impotent and infertile.
Speaker: It's big deal. Yeah. On, on that study, cause you said it wasn't just us. It was also Finland and Sweden. That's right. Three different longitudinal studies show the same thing. Okay. And so, i mean, the EU is way tighter regulation on glyphosates and like all the other stuff.
Speaker: So what is the commonality? Cause they, they do have stricter rules on the diet. You can put in food, all these kinds of things. I'm just curious what happened half a world apart and what what it could be There are studies that look at Arctic wildlife.
Speaker: we're talking like whales and fish up in the Arctic circle that show they have massive levels of of these synthetic chemicals and toxins as well. So it's a worldwide problem. It's worse here in the US because there's much less, like is it regulation and and ah you know there there's still a lot to use a lot of the chemical like atrazine is unheard of in Europe, but yet it's everywhere here in the US, for example. um But it's a problem worldwide.
Speaker: Okay. I'd also be curious, I don't know if they parse this data as well, but if they looked at the top 10% 20 years ago and the top 10% now, did they stay flat? Was it generic down or if you slept well and lifted heavy objects and ate well, etc., you stayed in that high range or are we seeing the entire curve shift?
Speaker: Great point. They didn't go into that detail on these studies. They just showed the entire, the average, they looked at the average of the population that that it was that massive decline. Yeah. yeah The other thing I'll point out is is that the fertility studies, most of the the best studies on this 50% decline in in fertility that we're seeing is out of Israel, not even the US. So this is a worldwide problem when it comes to endocrine function. you know That goes back to testicular function, basically, you have testosterone and sperm production getting affected.
Speaker: I mean, I always say sexual health is health, right? Like why reproductive health is health. It's just another indicator of or overall health. Okay. So I mean, we've done a lot of scaremongering so far on this, but ah I guess the more interesting question maybe for people is what do you do?
Speaker: You know, like now knowing this, if we buy into my fine is not fine, it's I want to live better than fine. What What are the steps to get there? What are the steps to get to a peak life?
Speaker: I think it starts with ah testing. I think it starts with finding, you know, call them blind spots. What the blind spots that are holding you back without even realizing it? And, and that may be things like, like toxins that, you know in your, in your environment, you know, you can have, um you know, testing that shows those kinds of chemicals, but I'm talking about looking at hormones.
Speaker: you know we have not just people think of testosterone, you know men think of testosterone, women think of, you know, estrogen, and thyroid, but we have 50 plus hormones that we need to be looking at. We have um blood sugar control.
Speaker: We have, again, the microbiome. One of the things that people don't understand about ah cortisol is our stress hormone, that there's a ah cycle that it should go during the day where it should be high in the morning when you first wake up and then should decline throughout the day.
Speaker: I see with most leaders that cortisol level is elevated throughout the day and even higher just before you go to bed. And that's not people think, oh, that's just psychological stress. I'm not stressed. I'm okay. I'm able to balance stress. No, we're not talking about...
Speaker: Balancing psychological stress. We're talking about stress from things like overtraining, things like toxins, things like ah poor sleep, things like alcohol, things like, again, the wrong kind of foods, nutrients, deficiencies. All these things, toxins can cause stress to your system and you can measure that.
Speaker: And so to answer your question, i think it starts with testing to find what are the things that are that are affecting you that are really holding you back, getting in the way. Then you can start to really focus on the right stuff instead of just taking a shotgun, you know, you know blind approach.
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Speaker: So before we get into the focus on the right stuff on the testing part, when do you suggest people start? Cause from the outside in, I always suggest early it's earlier than whenever you think, because by the time you have a problem, you don't know what your normal is.
Speaker: So for so many of the tests, you want to do it before you realize there's a problem to at least get your baseline to start seeing, Oh, maybe I'm off because this thing is so different than it was six years ago.
Speaker: Yeah. And I think this is where we're really seeing a dramatic shift suddenly, where up until now, healthcare care has been when I'm sick, when I'm proud, when I have a problem, when I'm, when I'm, you know, facing a disease illness, I go to a doctor and then they diagnose the problem. They, they prescribe a medication, a pharmaceutical typically, or ah you need a procedure or surgery, and then you you get back to normal.
Speaker: Now we're starting to recognize that that's not enough. And and that' you know that's really where my focus is on optimization, on on being proactive and not waiting until there's a problem. And sometimes when there's a problem, it's often too late.
Speaker: And so it's a matter of just like you said, it's being ahead of the game and doing the testing before you feel something. Because it's a subtle, gradual decline that we don't even realize is happening. And I would say that starts really in your thirty s where you you test a lot of stuff. You see issues way back in your 30s. And interestingly, there there are autopsy studies that show, you know, atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease, heart disease starts in your in your childhood. Yeah.
Speaker: And it happens over decades and decades. And so the earlier you can test for this stuff, the better you can be. I'll give you a great example. LP little a, it's one of the blood markers as a cardiovascular marker, right? And it's finally getting some attention now.
Speaker: um LP little a, it's a LDL subtype. Okay. It's, it's a marker that, that if it's elevated, it massively increased your risk of having early heart disease. Okay. Guy, Bob Harper, he was the fit lead fitness trainer on the TV show, The Biggest Loser. It's not on anymore, but this this dates me, I guess, right?
Speaker: But Bob Harper, he was this epitome of good health. He looked amazing. He's a personal trainer, teaching people how to lose weight and get shape. The guy has a heart attack at age 51. Guy almost died.
Speaker: And so, you know, if if your argument is, well, it's just lifestyle, it's just fitness and nutrition. Well, how does that happen to a guy like that? The answer is markers like that you don't even realize are there. And that really speaks to early detection.
Speaker: Yeah. Okay. Knowing earlier what you're exposed to. I mean, there are kind of two sides of this too, because there are certain things that whether you're genetically predisposed to something or not, yeah whether you're further along on a curve or not, there's a baseline of actions and lifestyle ah try it changes that are just the right thing to do.
Speaker: Whether you're like good health or average health or poor health, you do these and you get 78 hours a night of sleep. You eat a macro and micronutrient dense diet. You move your body vigorously a certain amount of time. you know, there's certain things that you just need to do.
Speaker: But I guess the flip side of this and this is something I've come around more to is there could be blockers, right? So someone may have low testosterone, um, because they're sleeping poorly. They have high cortisol, they're sedentary, like all these things, but also they don't have the energy to go start moving their body more because they have low testosterone.
Speaker: So you could go tell them, Hey, we're not going to help boost your testosterone until you do all these things, in which case they never do it because they don't have the energy or you say, Hey, you know what? I get that. That's how we got here, but to get you out of here, let's go ahead and boost this to give you the energy to do all these other things and and put you back on an upward spiral.
Speaker: Is that fair? Yeah. Yeah, you're you're exactly right. that That it starts to become a catch-22. And you know where do you start sort of thing? And so when we work with clients in our signature program, we don't implement a fitness program day one. Even though we know that's what a lot of men need, you're right. It's fixing the foundation first so that they have the energy and drive. And now when they go train, they're actually going to get better gains and they're going to want to perform and they're going to want to train. And so there's definitely a sequence and a method to the madness for sure.
Speaker: Is there a consistent... steps. So we're like, we did the testing, we identified what's off, and then now we're going to go implement some changes. Is is that a consistent, hey, here are the five steps in the order that we do, or what does that look like?
Speaker: Yeah, great great question. And so ah my approach, our system, people on system is test design track. So test is looking at your genetics to understand what's right for your body, you know how your body's going respond best and your brain's going to work the best. ah Look at microbiome, hormones, inflammatory markers, blood sugar, cortisol, and so on.
Speaker: the designs where we put all together into a very specific cohesive plan. And there's definitely a sequence to it where there are things that have to happen first. And I would submit that that one of the first things to fix is hormones.
Speaker: Okay, hormones. a lot of people will say, oh, no, you you know, men don't need TRT. It's overused. It's abused. Well, you know, and bodybuilders, yeah, testosterone and, you know, steroids are abused. Absolutely. But for a lot of men, and we're focusing on men's health here for the moment, their testosterone levels are in the tank. And until you fix that, you're not going to see the energy and the focus and the drive and the motivation the and the and the the um benefits of training that you might see.
Speaker: Poor sleep. crushes hormones low hormones causes poor sleep as well so you have to kind of address all of that to get metabolism working to lower cortisol and fix nutrient levels and now you can start to move to the next level so there definitely is a sequence to it um so i find very early it's hormones it's sleep it's microbiome and cortisol really the biggest drivers in the beginning and then we look at things like detox and fitness and you know next level kind of stuff And I know you said we're focused on men's health here, but it would the same be true with estrogen and or progesterone. 100%. Yeah, okay. So just on a understanding, doing your testing, male or female, understand where you are and what the the right balancing is from there. That's right. Okay, so it's optimizing those hormones. It's looking at cortisol. It's optimizing the sleep. And I think that's what...
Speaker: a lot of people miss as well. A prior guest Benazade and friend had this story in his most recent book on this guy who was training, training, training, like couldn't see the impact.
Speaker: And the change was, okay, actually what we're going to do is go not train and sleep 45 minutes more night. And then he started losing weight and all these other things because his hormones got in balance and he had better energy and all these things. And so where we think the entry point is, a lot of times is not the right entry point. And finding that right entry point is critical.
Speaker: Yeah. I look at this balance between stress and recovery and we all need stress. Stress is not bad. People want to say, oh, we're going to eliminate stress. Nonsense. You need stress. Training is stress, right? Business, that life is stress and that's okay.
Speaker: But you need on the flip side of the coin, you need that recovery phase and sleep is when you build muscle. like Like people think you're building muscle when you're training in the gym. You know this, you're not. You're actually tearing down muscle. You're damaging muscle.
Speaker: So that it will recover bigger and better and stronger when you're recovering. That's typically while you're sleeping. And so that's why sometimes less is more for sure. Well, and it's not just physical. It's also when you learn. This is what I explain to my daughter all the time. of you're You're not learning while we're sitting here doing this. We're doing this so that you can learn. it right Because that's when it's written in the brain. Once you get into your restorative sleep.
Speaker: That's right. And I mean, the other thing that I learned more recently is it's also when we clear those toxins out, right? The glymphatic system, all that that, it's only running when we're in deep sleep. So you really need to take care of that.
Speaker: There was a ah big push of you look at how much pro athletes train and based on that saying, well, you can't overtrain. No, no average person is overtraining.
Speaker: I say, okay, well, let's just take a step back on this. LeBron James has a full team and spends however many millions a year on his recovery. He takes this many hours of naps. He sleeps this much per night. He does these kinds of compression and cold plunge, et cetera.
Speaker: So maybe you can't overtrain in theory as an average person, but you can certainly under-recover. And so it takes the balance of those two things that you're not overtrained, but you're totally under recovered for what your training volume is. And so right is that the starting point of just making sure we need to get your body in a ah safe state before we start loading it with more?
Speaker: Yeah. And the key way to understand that is the third step, but that which is track. So test design track. And you're you're exactly spot on. And you can actually measure this. So I look at you know tracking sleep, looking at sleep quality, looking at deep sleep and REM sleep. So, so important. Most people miss this. And they think, oh, I sleep fine. you know i have an example of a client who slept from 11 to 7 one night and he had one minute of deep sleep. Even though he slept eight hours, one minute deep of deep sleep.
Speaker: And so it's so important. that And the only way you can know this is to track it with wearables. you know i I personally you know believe in RF or sleep data specifically, but um as long as you're tracking it some way.
Speaker: When it comes to stress and recovery, what you're talking about, the best way to measure recovery is with heart rate variability or HRV. And there are a lot of devices out there that measure HRV, but I'll tell you the one way to measure apples to apples and make sure that you're truly measuring your your recovery is a chest strap.
Speaker: And Morpheus makes a great one. um Elite HRV has a great app if you're going to use the the um Polar H10 straps or the two different straps out there that you can use. But you wake up in the morning, let's say you wake up 6 a.m., you sit on the couch, and for two and a half minutes, you you put the strap on it and you get your heart rate variability.
Speaker: measurement that you can then compare to the next day and so on and see trends. And I'll see guys where their HRV will plummet one day and they've either overtrained or they're about to, or they're sick or about to get sick or, so or the alcohol the day before, or didn't have, didn't sleep well or travel. Something's going to show that.
Speaker: And so you can measure that HRV and see those trends. That's how you can know if you're recovered or not. And most guys aren't even close. Yeah. Yeah. It's a, and two unfortunate stories with two friends and you could only really see the data in retrospect, but one leading up to a stroke and you could just see his HIV and another, um, with non Hodgkin's lymphoma, um, same kind of thing over months. Like, Hey, we actually think it was around here that you got it. So, um,
Speaker: The data, it is there. We're we're constantly throwing off data and that tracking is critically important. what What does that look like in practice with your practice? you know Are you coming in every three months? Is it six months? What is that?
Speaker: Yeah. So no, that that yeah three, six months is not nearly ah often enough. Yeah. So we we have coaches at which we have a medical team that that works on the blood testing, the hormones that we do a lot of peptide therapy. um But the coaches, our our functional trained coaches work with our clients on microbiome, on nutrition plan, and looking at genetics to really you know create a ah personalized plan.
Speaker: And they'll they'll track wearables. So we have ah ah a platform, a dashboard where we can see a tile for every metric we want to we want to look at, whether it's sleep or whether it's activity or whether it's heart variability or or whatever ah metric.
Speaker: And we can see those trends. And so we actually touch base on a weekly basis. We're touching base with our clients. Sometimes we'll have multiple interactions throughout a week as well, but we can see, we'll say like, hey, you know, Joe, what happened here on Thursday? Your HRV plummeted. I can see it. what you know and And we can start to understand real time what may be triggering that so that we're not waiting weeks or months at a time. where It's days. Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah. So I get that on the wearable data. I guess my question maybe more is a little bit on the the hormones and blood work. What is that cadence like? Oh, yeah, it depends. Sometimes it's ah it's six to eight weeks. Sometimes it's three months that we'll recheck labs. yeah we typically don't go more than three months, though, for for most labs, especially hormones where they can vary a lot and we're we're fine tuning and tweaking levels. Yeah, so typically three months.
Speaker: Okay. That makes a lot of sense. And is this something you offer remotely? I mean, are people all over the country or how did the people find Yeah. We work with with clients throughout the country. Exactly. It's all tele, you know, in this day and age now telehealth is where it's at. So we're able to do everything remotely.
Speaker: And so for someone listening to this, mean, can you share more information? What would that look like on intake? Who's the right person to to come in? What the costs look like with the in time investment, everything.
Speaker: Yeah, so we work with both men and women, first of all. We work with leaders. We work with high-performing entrepreneurs and founders and business owners and executives and and athletes and anyone who really wants to optimize and perform at a higher level and and who are who's willing to be proactive and invest in them themselves and and do the testing. They're interested interested in data and ah you you know using real precision to understand what's right for them.
Speaker: um Rather than guessing, you know, a lot lot of programs out there, you know, standardized, you know, eat this keto, you know take this keto diet or do this workout program when you don't even know if it's right for you at all. So I'm very personalized. And so those are the kind of people we work with. ah The program Peak Launch Signature is our our a flagship program. It is a a six month program. It's meant to be a year, but we do six months at a time so that clients can see results, see outcome data.
Speaker: And, um, we follow the, again, that the system I described, the test design and track ah process. And, uh, we have an amazing integrated team. So there's a medical team, there's coaches, have a concierge, a full-time pharmacy team.
Speaker: You know one of the biggest things I see with clients is they may be on a few supplements, a couple of peptides, some hormones, and every month, obviously some of those are going to run out. And the most common issue that we've overcome is that clients should never run of their stuff.
Speaker: You know especially things like like hormones, like testosterone, like thyroid, for example, you cannot run out of that. And so we ensure that, you know we're sourcing from compounding pharmacies from high quality, you know, sourcing that that we will ah coordinate that stuff. so So pharmacy team, um so a full team, you know, really integrated approach. And um it's all ah ah either in person or most of the time telehealth like this.
Speaker: We have an amazing quarterly live event as well. So as part of that program, every quarter, ah we have one coming up next Friday. Anyone who's welcome to come to Sarasota ah end of April. oh These are in-person live events. We have a live event in person in Sarasota end of every quarter, exactly where clients can come in. We do all kinds of advanced testing, VO2 max and metabolic testing. We can do coronary calcium score imaging, full body um MRI. We can do body comp scanning, blood testing, anything someone needs. We do on those ah fun days at fun day of content and coaching and, great day of community as well. So that's Peak Launch Accelerator. So um and then for a lot of people, we we recommend a testing bundle. So it's called Launch Diagnostics, where going back full circle to where we started, Andrew, a lot of people are like, you know, I'm fine. I think I'm okay. Well, let's do testing. Let's see where you are. And so a testing is our our upfront offer called Launch Diagnostics is blood testing, is microbiome, is cortisol, is food sensitivity. And it's a great way for a lot of people to get started.
Speaker: And on that kind of testing, if someone's coming in, they've already done function or superpowers, could they bring that to you and say, here's my baseline or would you want to still do something? We can use that. Yeah, we typically do a lot deeper testing than what we get from those. But I tell you what, those have been a great source of clients for us because clients will do that. And the problem with a lot these direct-to-consumer, they're like, well, okay, what do I do now? You're right. They have their AI report that's been generated, but what the heck do I, how do actually fix this? And so that's what we actually do is actually fix it. So the science that you hear out there, we're actually applying that on a daily basis. Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah. I mean, I think that's where we are through this transitionary period of it used to just be go when you're sick. It's the doctor just told you, you didn't have any knowledge what's going on to the democrat democratization of data where we can get our own tests. We can get our own where we're getting all this information to this next step of, well, how do you act on it?
Speaker: And I think that's where stuff like what you're doing is really taking into that next phase of we don't just need knowledge, we need action to change that curve. And so I'm really excited by your work, what you're doing. For those listening who want to learn more, where can they find you? What should they do?
Speaker: ah Thanks so much. So yes, our website is peaklaunch.com. And ah it we're still, I think, forward to Gap and Institute. You know, we we started as Gap and Institute, which is when I left my traditional urology practice.
Speaker: But now we've really become client-centric rather than founder-centric. And a lot of other doctors are running Peak Launch as well. So now that's why we rebranded to Peak Launch. But um if you go to gapandinstitute.com forward slash launch, um I have a great gift there for the listeners. It's a high-performance health handbook. It's 15 strategies and tactics that they can start implementing today. So easy to use guide that um they can check out. Again, it's GappinInstitute.com forward slash launch L-A-U-N-C-H.
Speaker: Make sure to include that in the show notes. Dr. Gappin, thank you for your time today. Thank you for all your work. Of course. And I am hoping more people can live a lively life. Thanks to work like yours. Appreciate it Thank you for joining us on today's episode of the Home of Healthspan podcast.
Speaker: And remember, you can always find the products, practices, and routines mentioned by today's guests, as well as many other Healthspan role models on Alively.com. Enjoy a lively day.
