The Meat Mafia Podcast

Dr. Tracy Gapin, MD, is a board-certified urologist, men’s health expert, author, and speaker, specializing in precision medicine. 
After experiencing his own health challenges and finding limited results through conventional medicine, Dr. Gapin immersed himself in the study of functional medicine, epigenetics, and precision health. He now runs a cutting-edge practice that combines advanced testing, personalized genetics, and data-driven lifestyle interventions to help men achieve their health goals.

Key topics discussed include:
  • The alarming decline in male fertility and testosterone levels over the past few decades, potentially leading to a male health crisis
  • The importance of tracking key biomarkers, such as free testosterone, DHEA, thyroid hormones, vitamin D, and markers of blood sugar regulation and cardiovascular health
  • The limitations of conventional medicine in addressing low testosterone and the need for a more comprehensive, personalized approach
  • The role of chronic stress, poor sleep, suboptimal nutrition, and environmental toxins in undermining male health and hormonal balance
  • The power of biometric tracking, including continuous glucose monitoring (CGM), heart rate variability (HRV), and sleep monitoring, to drive behavior change and optimize health outcomes
  • Dr. Tracy Gapin's precision method for identifying hidden health issues, creating motivation and momentum, and designing customized protocols to help men achieve their health goals
Timestamps:

(00:02) The Testosterone Crisis
(04:45) The Neutering of the Modern Male
(12:24) Identifying Symptoms of Low Testosterone
(15:51) Importance of Comprehensive Health Monitoring
(29:41) Optimizing Hormones for Fitness Success


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Creators & Guests

Host
Brett Ender 🥩⚡️
The food system is corrupt and trying to poison us... I will teach you how to fight back. Co-Host of @themeatmafiapod 🥩
Host
Harry Gray 🥩⚡️
Leading the Red Meat Renaissance 🥩 ⚡️| Co-Host of @themeatmafiapod

What is The Meat Mafia Podcast?

The Meat Mafia Podcast is hosted by @MeatMafiaBrett and @MeatMafiaHarry with the mission of addressing fundamental problems in our food and healthcare system. Our concerns with our healthcare system can be drawn back to issues in our food system as far back as soil health. Our principles are simple: eat real foods, buy locally, and cook your own meals.

When you listen to our podcast, you will hear stories and conversations from people working on the fringes of the food and healthcare system to address the major crises overshadowing modern society: how do we become healthy again?

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Part 1

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[00:00:00] Should we hit it? Let's do it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Part 1 Sizzle YT: Guys, make no mistake about it, our balls are under attack. In the TED Talk, you mentioned the fact that in a few generations, you think that the growing level of infertility will be almost to the point of us going extinct. If we don't take action, I believe that in 20 years from now, the entire male population will be infertile and impotent.

Why isn't that message getting out there? there. You could look at a 40 year old guy today, for example, and his free testosterone is almost half of what it was 2030 years ago. That's crazy. Women drive most health care decisions. The wives are the ones that get men to seek attention. So for sure, women out there get your do tested.

I like to look at Low testosterone as a symptom of an underlying problem, not the problem itself. Doctors are telling patients, No, you're fine. You're in the reference range. You're, God forbid, the word normal. It's bullshit! What might people need to be paying attention to if they think that their testosterone is affecting their health?

[00:01:00] So

Dr. Tracy, welcome to the meat mafia podcast. A pleasure to have you. Hey guys, thanks so much. Glad to be here. We're uh, we're so pumped to have you here. We were saying before we hit record, there are so many topics that you talk about that we're personally fascinated in. You know, we're right in that like millennial demographic.

And even though we're just about 30 years of age, it's amazing to see the discrepancy already between guys that we went to school with for the threshold of men that take care of themselves versus the guys that are kind of Falling into that standard American lifestyle and the discrepancy that's already forming.

But, um, I listened to your Ted talk before this and there were three stats that I wanted to read off for the audience because they were super informative and I think they paint a really good picture of what's going on. So you mentioned that three out of four men are currently overweight or obese, which is 123 us men.

Sperm count and fertility rates are one half of what they used to be half a century ago. And free testosterone levels are [00:02:00] down 50 percent of what they were a few decades ago. I mean, what, what does that hear? What does that feel like to hear that played back to you? I mean, those stats are abysmal. It's crazy.

Yeah, it's scary. And, and, you know, I call it a men's health crisis, a men's health epidemic, testosterone epidemic. I use all these words to try to get people to just recognize what a big problem this is. And, and it still surprises me that it does not get enough attention and how many young men are shocked when they find out that their T levels aren't where they're supposed to be.

And it's a, it's a worldwide problem. You know, we could talk about all the causes but it suffices to say it is happening around the world It's really interesting to see um, I guess just like From from a guy who's just entering my 30s. It's interesting to see The drop off brett alluded to this just the drop off in overall health Just between two groups of people people who are paying attention to their health and people who aren't [00:03:00] And imagine like the testosterone crisis really coincides and and aligns with that like, you know people who are generally in good health like are still able to generate testosterone at levels that You know Their prior generations could, but then there's this other cohort that seems to be growing the stats that Brett read out that like, it's almost, uh, it's really sad to see, and in the Ted talk, you mentioned the fact that in a few generations, you think that the growing level of impotence and infertility will be almost to the point of us going extinct.

Is that something that you think people are aware of, or like, like, why isn't that message getting out there? Yeah, great question. I'm not sure why it's not getting getting more attention, but I do believe that strongly, you know, the data is clear. There were three massive studies. One was here in the U. S.

The male Massachusetts aging study. There were two others in Europe, one in Sweden and one in Finland, and [00:04:00] these longitudinal studies all looked at men over 20 to 30 years, and they found that levels are dropping by about 1 percent a year. And so you could look at a 40 year old guy today, for example, and his free testosterone, is the bioavailable active form of testosterone, is almost half of what it was 20, 30 years ago.

And that's, that's crazy. When you think about that, it's getting worse every year. And, and so unless we start to make some real changes and pay attention and, and you made a great point that, that there are a lot of men who are starting to, to stand up and, and, and pay attention and start to, you know, focus on what can I do to mitigate this and other men don't find out until sometimes it's too late.

Yeah, there's, there's effectively the neutering of the modern male that's been going on for the last decades. And we love seeing someone like you, who's a urologist by trade, that's kind of throwing themselves into the movement. And it seems like that's a contrast to Western medicine where people tell doctors to really stay in their lane.

Hey, you're a [00:05:00] urologist. Don't talk about diet and lifestyle. I love that you're bridging that gap and speaking up about such an important message. I'm just curious for you, Dr. Tracy, what, what was your light bulb moment of like, damn, things are seriously wrong and we need a course. Correct. And I need to put content out there and spread this message.

Otherwise we're going to be in a really bad spot two decades from now. Yeah. Like most docs who, who make the transition and who suddenly wake up and see the light. It was from my own personal selfish reasons where it started. Um, I found myself, this is about 10, 12 years ago now, when I suddenly noticed those changes happening in me.

And I was a busy urologist. I was in the hospital every, every night. It seemed operating doing robotic surgery till late hours and, and, um, dedicated myself to my clients, my patients while I was neglecting my own health and woke up one day and I'm suddenly 30 pounds overweight and I look like crap. I feel like crap.

I'm not sleeping. I'm stressed out. I'm not exercising. And, [00:06:00] um, my blood work was terrible. And the scary part for me was when my primary care doctor really had no answers for me at all. Other than lose weight, and if it doesn't get better, I might need a statin. That was really it. That was, that was all he had for me.

And my T levels, you know, this was common in my practice as well, where those levels are dropping every year. The testosterone levels we talked about are dropping. But what that's doing is, when you look at a lab slip, you know, LabCorp, Quest, etc., their reference range, It's simply based on the average of all the millions of lab tests that they're doing and so that range keeps Slowly dropping lower and lower and lower and so doctors are telling patients.

No, you're fine You're in the reference range. You're God forbid the word normal. It's bullshit It's total bullshit but we are led into the sense of complacency because that reference range keeps getting lower and lower and you're in that [00:07:00] range and You're told you're okay, you're told you're normal, and in the, the matrix of the insurance driven healthcare world, you can't even get testosterone if you wanted it because doctors won't prescribe it.

And so, it's, it's a broken system, and through my own health issues, I was suddenly made very aware of this, and that got me, you know, Um, going down rabbit hole after one rabbit hole after another, learning about, you know, how do you truly optimize hormones? How do you incorporate lifestyle? How do you eat the right foods?

How do you use genetics to understand what's right for your body? To understand, you know, what nutrition programs might be best for you? Um, how do you do proper functional testing? How do I clean up my gut? And, and, you know, What's scary is that we have this medical profession that everyone's relying on, like medical doctors in our health care system.

And guess how many days, let alone days, guess how many hours were taught about nutrition in medical school? [00:08:00] You know the answer. Zero. Zero. Nothing. How about sleep? Zero. How about fitness? Zero. How about stress mitigation? All that or a mindset nothing. It's all really diagnosis drug diagnosis drug and I I was Suddenly able to see the light and once you see that you can't unsee it Would you um when you were at that point of seeing the light?

Were you talking to any other doctors and being like, you know? Are you guys seeing this too? Like how messed up this is because I can imagine being on the inside It's a little bit uncomfortable Um, seeing that there's a lot of problems within the system and being the person who wants to actually acknowledge it and then start actually acting on it.

Yeah, it was a great question. Very interesting transition for me where I became somewhat of an outcast in my, um, in my traditional healthcare world of the hospital when you go to the surgeon's lounge, you [00:09:00] know, between cases or your, your lunch at the doctor's lounge in the hospital. And I'm talking about this stuff and the doctors look at me like I'm crazy.

Like, what are you talking, like, why are you worried about that stuff? What are you doing? And, uh, just getting testosterone, you know, why are you worried about all that other stuff? Just getting, just getting testosterone or, or, or if the T levels are normal, leave them alone. Um, so it became very apparent very quickly that I was going in a different direction and, um, I, I decided this was maybe six years ago that I was going to someday get away from traditional healthcare and I kept studying and taking courses and getting certified in all these different fields of peptides and hormones and epigenetics.

And then I gave my practice notice, I'm leaving. And I'll tell you, they thought I was batshit crazy for leaving. Like, what are you doing? You're throwing away a lucrative surgical career. And I, um, I now only regret that it took me that long to make the move. Wow. Because it's amazing the difference that you can make when you focus on the stuff that really matters.[00:10:00]

Dr. Tracy, how difficult is it in modern society to build out like an unconventional functional practice? It's not easy. Um, you have to first, you know, my passion is men's health. That's where I've, I've lived for 25 plus years now in, in urology. That was my focus from the beginning. And so for me, that was somewhat of an easy transition for me, but a lot of my clients were still wanting to use insurance and they didn't understand why their copay didn't work, for example, or they want to just get a prescription drug.

Like, They weren't wanting to spend the time, effort, money on doing the hard work, like understanding what should I be eating, and tracking macros, and tracking sleep, and looking at blood sugar regulation, and looking at data that matters, and how do your genetics apply. And so a lot of it was getting my patients to recognize that mindset shift, and what I ultimately found was that [00:11:00] The patients I had in my urology career, in my urology practice, they were so, um, stuck in that insurance model, disease focused system that it was hard to get them out of it.

So it takes people, um, opening their mind, recognizing how it's not all about pharmaceuticals. And there's a lot that we can do outside of that and and um, it's just a different mindset Do you do you have a sense? So this is I feel like this is kind of a simple question, but I feel like it's important to be said so for someone who is worried about their testosterone levels and maybe doesn't want to have to go through the process of getting blood work done.

What sort of things would they be experiencing? And like, what would you recommend next steps being in terms of actually figuring out like blood work? Obvious answer, but like what might people need to be paying attention to if they think that their testosterone is affecting their [00:12:00] health? Sure. So sometimes men with low testosterone will have no symptoms whatsoever.

They feel fine. They don't realize how they are not at an optimized state. Some men will develop issues with low energy fatigue, especially later in the afternoon. Um, guys may want to take a nap. And to me, that's a red flag. You're wanting to take a nap in the middle of the day. Typically, that means something's just not quite right.

Um, your, your recovery is not like it used to be where you used to be able to train in the Jim every day. Great. The next day, guys suddenly find it takes two or three days to recover, which is new. Some guys may have issues with cognitive function where they just can't quite think as clearly as they did before.

So, um, you know, some guys call it brain fog where they're just not able to focus mental acuity is off slightly. And most of the time it's subtle. Most of the time it's not a dramatic shift. It's a gradual, slow transition that happens over [00:13:00] many years. Guys may notice that they're starting to suddenly carry more fat around the belly and they can't shake it.

And they used to be able to go to the gym and burn it off quickly and now suddenly they can't. Um, men will have trouble sleeping. A common symptom with low T is difficulty sleeping. Men may have issues with difficulty building muscle. They can't build like they did before. They're losing muscle mass as well.

Um, you know, the obvious ones would be, you know, decreased sex drive, decreased libido. I've seen so many cases where couples will come in And the woman's concern because Doc, you know, my husband has been chasing me around the house for years and suddenly I'm chasing him like something's not quite right here and I actually had one couple of years ago where the woman swore that he was cheating on her, even though he wasn't.

But that was creating those issues. So all, you know, a [00:14:00] wide array of symptoms that may, that may be an indicator of low T. But I'll tell you guys, I, I have tested so many men who have really no symptoms whatsoever. And their T levels are in the tank and they're somehow compensating, they're getting by through other means, you know, cortisol is our stress hormone.

We can talk a lot about how cortisol crushes everything, you know, chronic cortisol elevation, crushes testosterone, crushes your gut, crushes other hormones, makes you store fat, etc. Um, but a lot of guys are running and thriving on cortisol until that burns out and suddenly they crash. Yeah, that's that's super important information in the story that you said about that couple.

It actually reminds me of a podcast interview we did with this gentleman, Josh Whalen, who's the founder of blokes, a male male telemedicine company. He actually said the people that compliment me the most and thank me are not It's not the male patients I have, but actually the wives of the male patients, because to your point, it's like we think about testosterone as this like arbitrary [00:15:00] number when it actually is a reflection of almost who you are as a man and as a human being in general.

So it just makes you realize that it's so much more important than a number of it on a screen. It's actually a gateway to become a better person in the difficult, as you said, I think you, I think you alluded to the fact that this decline in testosterone is, it's this very gradual process over time that comes from.

Probably not making the right decisions that compound over time. And it, yeah, it just, it makes me think about the fact that it's like all these, these choices that, that, that really add up and you're ultimately in control of that, which is why we need to identify what the right biomarkers are. That way we can understand where our baseline is at and actually make those changes.

Dr Tracy, what are the right biomarkers that men should be looking for that actually signify if you're in good health or not? Yeah, yeah, I love that question and what you just, I just want to reflect briefly on what you just said, because it's such a powerful statement that, you know, women drive most healthcare decisions, the wives are the ones that get men to seek [00:16:00] attention and I've spoken on so many women's podcasts, women's health arenas where they're all clamoring like what how do I get my man to wake up and do this and their mood is off and and you're right that the women are the ones that often are the ones that pay attention more than the guys so um for sure women out there you know get your guy get your dude tested uh simple easy blood test check your free tea um but to answer your question you I like to look at low testosterone as a symptom of an underlying problem, not the problem itself.

And this is where I think sometimes we miss the mark where so often the answer is we'll just give them testosterone. And no offense to any company out there selling testosterone, but whether in person, online, whatever. But I look at it as a symptom of an underlying problem. And so I want to look at what are the other markers, other biomarkers of those underlying problems that are causing these symptoms.

For example, when we have low testosterone, we almost always have low DHEA, [00:17:00] which is a steroid hormone. It's a precursor to testosterone, and it's a very important hormone in and of itself. And almost every man that has low T has low DHEA as well, because that steroid hormone pathway is just not working properly.

They will often have low thyroid as well. You know, thyroid is typically thought of as a women's hormone, but it's important for men as well. And it's a hormone that's important when it comes to metabolism, mood, energy, sleep. Um, it helps, um, uh, regulate, uh, gut health. It's intimately tied to balance with cortisol or a stress hormone.

And so thyroid is super important as well. Most guys with low T and low DHA have low thyroid as well. Vitamin D, non vitamin, is actually technically a hormone. Um, I, I'm here in Sarasota, Florida, and I'll tell you nearly every guy I check has low vitamin D levels. And that's, uh, surprising, you think, you know, sunlight, you have, you know, your body, your skin makes vitamin D from sunlight.

But most men even here in Florida are deficient in vitamin D. Nitric [00:18:00] oxide, a key hormone, um, related to, um, to blood flow and vasodilation and vascular health. So many men have deficient levels of nitric oxide. Blood sugar regulation. I'll do testing to look, you know, a fasting blood sugar. It should be under 95 for sure, if preferably under 90.

Hemoglobin A1c is a long, longer term marker of blood sugar. That should be under 5. 4. Fasting insulin is probably the best marker to look for blood sugar regulation. Guys, you know, the, the high performing guy that I work with, he's the 40, 45 year old entrepreneur. He's grinding hard. He's staying up late working.

He's waking up early. He's doing the, trying to do the Gary V thing where he's just, you know, driving himself into the ground. His cortisol levels are through the roof. His hormone levels are in the tank. Blood sugar. is chronically elevated because of that. And what does that do? It, it crushes energy, makes you store fat, can't build muscle.

[00:19:00] And, um, and it has a lot of, you know, downstream cascading effects on things like the gut and immune function. So markers of blood sugar are so important. We can look at cardiovascular health markers, you know, the, the typical cholesterol panel honestly sucks. It's, it's, it's such a, uh, a narrow view of, uh, lipid health, but things that do matter are things like LP little a LP little a is a subtype of LDL that, that is typically inherited.

And it's a marker that you're at increased cardiovascular risk. Um, other markers, you know, APO, lipoprotein B or APO B is probably the best lipid marker that we have. Um, LDL P, which is different than the typical LDL you get from your doctor, LDL P is the particle number. And we know that the particle number is more accurate or more predictive than LDL concentration, which is what we typically get.

How do you treat those is a whole other conversation, but nonetheless, uh, those are, uh, very helpful markers for cardiovascular health. [00:20:00] So you see how I've just gone through, I rattled off a few here, just so you can understand that testosterone, yeah, it's important, it gets all the attention, but shit, we have all this other stuff that we need to be paying attention to as well, and that's why low T, I really look at it as a symptom of a much bigger underlying problem.

There's so much good information on what you just said. I'm actually fascinated by that Gary V archetype, that 45 year old high performer. He's cranking, you know, he loves the feeling of working hard. He's probably deprioritizing sleep because he's so motivated on building his business. How do you convince someone like that to get some of these biomarkers in check or get more sleep because it's so tough when you almost have that addiction to success.

And I would imagine that that, you know, I don't know if a patient like that is difficult to deal with, but I would imagine that that is probably difficult. So great point. It's a mindset shift. How do you get a guy who thinks he's doing everything right to realize that he's doing everything wrong? That's what it comes down to, [00:21:00] right?

It's pivoting. And you ask him, are you stressed? No, I'm not stressed. Come on, I'm not stressed. I'm fine. Every guy says the same thing. I'm not stressed. Stress doesn't bother me, doesn't affect me, etc. And so I am all about data. I, I love metrics, I love KPIs, I love data, and there's a thing called the Hawthorne effect.

that has shown that when you track something, it changes behavior. Studies have found that just by monitoring or tracking something, it changes the way you act around that. And so I will rely on data for this kind of stuff. So I'm obsessed with tracking data as it relates to blood sugar. So my clients, we do CGM tracking.

Anyone out there can get, see, you can go online, you can actually buy it directly yourself. Um, CGM tracking, which direct to consumer companies, and we use companies that work with us directly. where you can see your blood sugar and see how your food and your behavior and your crummy sleep and your stress is affecting blood sugar real time, [00:22:00] 24 7.

Like the data doesn't lie. Um, you can track sleep. You know, there's a ton of mark of ways to track sleep out there. Um, I, I love the aura ring. It's probably the, the most validated device on the market. I have no financial interest in them, but, um, the studies have shown that they're as accurate as you can get as compared to sleep study data to track quality of sleep.

And we know from studies that deep sleep, And REM sleep are the two stages of sleep that really, really matter. We can track stress through a metric called heart rate variability or HRV. And HRV is a metric of the balance of your nervous system. And in general, higher is good, lower is bad, but you don't want a lot of fluctuations either.

So if your HRV suddenly spikes up really high, that's actually not a good thing. Although you may think high is good. It's more about balance, but you want to be slowly getting better over time. HRV is a daily metric that you can measure. And I do this with my [00:23:00] Polar H10 strap. Every morning at 6 a. m. I wake up.

The first thing I do is I measure my HRV. And I can now compare that from one day to the next. Example, I, uh, took my wife and I took, uh, uh, one of my, um, one of the practitioners in my practice, uh, took her and her husband to dinner Saturday night. I had one freaking glass of wine I never drink. I hate drinking.

And I'm like, fine social situation. Have one glass of wine and my HRV. tank the next day. Real time data. It tanked from one. So one glass. Yeah, for me, just one glass of wine. You know, I don't, you know, I try like, um, is the New Zealand white. You know, I know that the California Pino's crushed me. I've tried the French ones.

I tried. I think it's just the alcohol itself. It hits me hard. Um, but the point of it is whether it's blood sugar data, whether it's Um, sleep data where there's HRV numbers, you know, what you, and we can also talk about, you know, tracking body composition, looking at tracking lean muscle mass and visceral fat.

[00:24:00] Numbers don't lie, right? Tracking macros, numbers don't lie. When you see the numbers, it, it changes behavior. And so, What I rely on, honestly, is using data to help drive decisions and look, it's not, you can't ever have a glass of wine. That's not obviously not the point, but now I can't unsee that drop in my HRV that day.

Like, you know, you, you, you see that and you're like, holy shit. So next time, maybe I'll have a half a glass, have a glass share with my wife. I don't know. But, um, for the guys who are out there having three, four, five drinks, you a night and they see that data. Maybe now they'll only have one glass, for example.

Maybe they'll cut their alcohol intake in half and see that it's not crushing their HRV. And, you know, you're wanting to build muscle, Joe. You're wanting to burn fat. You want to have better energy, but look at the data. This is, this is the, the data that you're producing. So you can't expect to have this outcome if you don't change this behavior.

And so to me, that's how the Hawthorne effect comes into play, how you can use data to drive that. [00:25:00] It's so amazing what's happening right now with, with medicine, where we're getting these tools that are coming into much more of the common arena where you can track your sleep. You can track your blood glucose.

You can get done. It's becoming more popular. So it gives me a lot of hope. The one thing that you mentioned earlier, the vitamin D levels is really fascinating to me because vitamin D plays a massive role in how we metabolize. glucose or how glucose is metabolized in the body. And I think about the metabolic crisis.

I'm like, is this a vitamin D problem? Like is it's, and I think it's like a part of it. It's not the whole thing, but it's just really fascinating that vitamin D is across the board, uh, deficiency that you see. And that coincides with the testosterone, low, lower testosterone as well. Absolutely. Yeah. The other facet to that is there are several studies that show that, uh, People with vitamin D deficiency had [00:26:00] much worse outcomes related to COVID as well.

So it's definitely an immune function interface there too. Do you think that that vitamin D deficiency is driven purely through just We're spending more time inside or is there something else that is taking away from like our body's uptake of vitamin d Yeah, I I do think there's something else at play and I can't tell you know what that answer is Um, we do a lot of work with genetics personalized genetics to individualize stuff like that and there are genetics related to Vitamin d production, you know, there's a conversion of vitamin d There's a couple different steps in that pathway to produce the the end product of vitamin d if you will And so Sometimes it may just be steps in that conversion of 125 hydroxy and you have, you have 25 hydroxy, 125 hydroxy, um, and sometimes it may be in that pathway where it's not happening efficiently.

To answer your question, I'm sure there's other factors at play, but I can't tell you exactly [00:27:00] what that is, but it's definitely not sunlight alone because I have guys here in Florida who are out on the beach every weekend and their levels are still in the tank. Yeah, interesting. Got it. Um, it sounds like when it comes to men's health for you, there are so many different levels, levers that we can pull, whether it's Whether it's food, whether it's lifestyle, whether it's stress, CGM, sleep, etc.

It's like there's probably an incredibly comprehensive list. Say you're, say you're working with a client. He's like 20 to 30 pounds overweight. His testosterone is in the tank. Is there a particular lever that you're going to first pull that's at the highest priority? Maybe it's sleep, whether it's nutrition.

Um, I'd love to just learn more about your approach when you're taking that patient that has a lot of work to do. Yeah, for sure. And I do have a methodology. It's my precision method. It's discovery, diagnostics, data, and design, and discoveries where we first understand what's your why, what are we trying to accomplish.

Like a guy this morning, a guy from California I was working with, his [00:28:00] main goals, is he wants to be able to ski again, he wants to be able to scuba dive again and play tennis. Those are his, that's his why. So everything we do is we focus on how do I get him back to playing these sports and doing these activities.

Some other guy, maybe I just want to have sex with my wife, you know, so first of all, it's important to do that. Then the diagnosis where we do the advanced testing to find what are the blind spots. And so, You know, to answer your question specifically, it depends on what those blind spots are. And we all have blind spots that are under the surface.

They're just lurking, waiting to cause a problem that you don't even know. It may be hormones, it may be blood sugar, it may be gut. It may be, um, um, inflammation from toxins. You know, I had a guy who had tremendous, um, fatigue. And the first thing I did was fix his hormones, I cleaned up his nutrition, I fixed his sleep and micronutrients and, and nothing helped.

And we're like, damn. So we did further testing, come to find out he had mold in his gut. Wow. Mold. And we tracked it back to, he had a water leak in his home. He had [00:29:00] massive black mold in the walls of his house. Wow. So like certainly black mold is not the first thing I do. And that's not, you know, I'm not the black mold doctor.

But we were able to go through the testing to find that hidden blind spot that was ultimately the source of his fatigue. And every guy is so different, right? So it's all about the diagnostics. And then the data is where we, we talked just a few moments ago about personalized, you know, biometric tracking to understand if what you're doing is working or not, whether it's genetics or wearable, sleep, stress, blood sugar, et cetera.

And then the design, honestly, is where I put it all together. So that's where I answer your question. And it comes back to understanding what are those blind spots. In general, hormones is very early in that process. And I'll tell you why. If a guy needs to lose 30 pounds, And his T is low, his thyroid is low, DHEA is low, blood sugar is high, cortisol is high, nitric oxide is low, all these, you [00:30:00] know, imbalances and hormones.

And I try to get him on a fitness program. Is he going to be motivated to do that fitness program? Hell no. If he's not sleeping, is he going to have the right hunger and satiety signals and the right Um, um, desire to eat the right foods that he knows. No, he's gonna, he's gonna be eating like shit because he just doesn't, he's not there yet, you know?

And so I am big on creating motivation and momentum in the beginning. And the way you do that is by fix the low hanging fruit first. And so it is often fixing hormones first. It's fixing testosterone, thyroid, DHEA, vitamin D, nitric oxide, um, all these hormones, getting a guy sleeping as well, fixing some basic micronutrient levels.

Cleaning up the gut and get to start tracking data. And then you can really start to dial deep into what are the, what's the nuance of what you have to address from there. And, and once I get a guy's hormones optimized, I get him sleeping. Well, I get him now eating the right foods. Now he's ready to hit the gym and do [00:31:00] the work that he's got to do because he's now motivated and he has some momentum at that point and that takes a little bit of time to get there.