Scott (0s):
On average, you have about 70,000 thoughts, a huge number. But if you're anxious or if you're stressed or you're depressed, your increased number goes to about 120,000 thoughts per day. And so GABA is able to regulate that. GABA is the regulator of all those other fancy neurotransmitters and neurons that make those neurotransmitters that we know, like dopamine and serotonin, epinephrine, GABA regulates all that. So if you're GABA deficient, you're gonna have so much higher risk of having depression, anxiety, insomnia. So the key for how I think about this and how the companies that I work with think about this is that you have to replete the GABA system. You have to enhance GABA and do it in a comprehensive way. And, and that means improving your nutrients and your gut. Your GI system especially, is very important because the main amino acid that makes glutamate then gets converted into gaba.
Scott (45s):
Only in the brain, by the way, is glutamine. And so glutamine is
Brian (48s):
This week Gyer view, Dr. Scott Sherr. Dr. Scott is a Board Certified Internal Medicine Physician Certified to Practice Health Optimization medicine, a specialist in Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy. And the COO of transcriptions, We dove into the applications and benefits of methylene blue, along with Upgrading your mitochondria, Optimizing sleep with TRO Zs, Problems with too much fasting, the Importance of controlling stress. And Dr. Scott's one tip to get your body back to what it once was. Really enjoyed my interview with Dr. Scott. I know you will too. Thanks so much for listening and enjoy the show. All right. Welcome to the Get Lean, Eat Clean podcast.
Brian (1m 28s):
My name is Brian Gryn. I have Dr. Scott Sherr, and welcome to the show. Hey,
Scott (1m 32s):
Brian. Good to be here.
Brian (1m 33s):
Good to have you all the way from Boulder. Are you in Boulder or
Scott (1m 37s):
Just outside of Boulder? Yeah. Okay. For all intents and purposes, for those that don't live in Cal in Colorado. Yes. That's
Brian (1m 43s):
Where, how long, how long have you lived there?
Scott (1m 45s):
I've been here now for four and a half hours. Four and a half hours. Four and a half years. It's
Brian (1m 49s):
Like, wow, you just moved. Sounds great. Just got
Scott (1m 51s):
Here, just flew off the plane, fresh off the plane. I, I lived in Colorado And now for four and a half years, I lived in California for about nine years before living in this fair state. So,
Brian (2m 2s):
And you do a bunch of things we're gonna touch on today, CEO transcriptions, if I said that right? Yeah, you
Scott (2m 10s):
Did. Yeah.
Brian (2m 10s):
Yeah. And I've learned about you through, through some other podcasts. And you also have health optimization medicine practice, and then one base health, which is hypobaric therapy, right? Yeah.
Scott (2m 23s):
Hyperbaric and, and this sort of an in-home ecosystem to use your technologies. Yep.
Brian (2m 27s):
And what came first, I guess, what sort of led you down this path? I'm curious into like, yeah, I think
Scott (2m 33s):
That's a helpful, it's helpful coloring for people just because it sounds like maybe I'm schizophrenic with my business endeavors and my clinical practice. But I mean, first and foremost, I'm a clinician. I'm an internal medicine doc. I, I trained in, in Baltimore in the early to mid two thousands, really early two thousands, I guess. And I, after finished residency in Baltimore, I moved to California where I started specializing in hyperbaric oxygen therapy. The brief sort of backstory of that is that I'm the son of a chiropractor, so everything was sort of outta the box for me. And I, I kind of went to medical school with the idea, thinking that I would figure out a way to bridge the chasm between conventional medicine, which I didn't know anything about, but learned in medical school and residency, and the conventional, the alternative training that, or the alternative upbringing that I had overall.
Scott (3m 22s):
So hyperbaric medicine was kind of a cool bringing together of those worlds, I found, because there's a lot of really interesting research that had been doing that had been done, and on the alternative side. So it was actually becoming more interesting on that side. But certainly it was a conventional therapy used for lots of different things from a wound perspective, burns and acute trauma. And when I went to Baltimore, you know, it was definitely a, a a definitely a different shift for me as I grew up very alternatively. But I learned the, the conventional side. And then I was in California. I became the medical director of a number of facilities out there for hyperbaric therapy. And I created my own integrative practice around hyperbaric medicine. That evolved over about a decade. And in 2017, I was trained in something called Health Optimization Medicine, health Optimization Medicine and Practice or home, hope not.
Scott (4m 9s):
Or Home Hope for short as a non-profit organization, training practitioners how to optimize health rather than treat disease. It's a seven module certification course that I helped develop, and I helped run that company as a Chief operating officer of the nonprofit. But it really became the foundation of my clinical practice. And it was really evident to me throughout my years of hyperbaric medicine that there was a significant need for people to optimize their health, oftentimes before going into a hyperbaric chamber. And so if there was an acute issue, hyperbaric therapy was fantastic, but if it was more long-term or a chronic issue, then really hyperbaric medicine could be very helpful, but maybe not right away. And sometimes waiting three or six months would be a really a much better idea. And so that's how I got involved in my own clinical practice of helping optimize people's health.
Scott (4m 53s):
And the, the focus of it was a little bit different than functional medicine, which many people know of. You know, functional medicine is really focused, more focused on root causes of illness, which is obviously better than conventional medicine, but it's really not looking at how to keep the people that you're treating and ob and helping optimized and healthy and optimizing for health rather than treating disease. And so that became a big part of my practice. I, I signed on as a COO of the nonprofit. And then in 2020, we developed a for-profit company outside of the nonprofit, or out or out of the nonprofit called transcriptions. And transcriptions was developed to help people right now while they're on the longer path to optimizing their health. And when you're on that path, it can take a long time.
Scott (5m 34s):
It can take six months, a year longer to start feeling better. And so along that path, you need help and you need help with energy and focus and, and immune system activation. And also, you know, a big one is parasympathetic activation. So the idea that you have to be able to figure out how to rest, relax, and detox, which most of us dunno how to do anymore, the kind of culture that we live in. So the product suite really was developed to address all of those needs. And of course, more down the pipe as we have ongoing, we have a practitioner only line as well that I have more higher strength or more targeted things for more clinical uses. And so my clinical practice is, the foundation of it is health optimization medicine.
Scott (6m 14s):
The sort of specialty within that would be hyperbaric medicine. I see people all over the country related to just talking about hyperbaric medicine. I see people, just people that are interested in the Home Hope framework as well. But oftentimes it's a, a combination of what I would call like my, my clinical practice as a conductor of all things health optimization. And then I use the products and then other tools, techniques, and practices along the way.
Brian (6m 37s):
Thank you for sharing. Sure. Yeah. So, and I came across transcript since probably about a year or two ago. And methylene blue is something that obviously has been a topic that I, yeah, I guess if you're into health space, you've probably heard it, maybe not, but I know it was used, gosh, was it like in the 18 hundreds? So maybe I know some people are interested in that. Maybe give a little background of, of methylene blue and, And you know what it is, and then you know what, what it's, what it's being used for is applications now today.
Scott (7m 6s):
Yeah. I would say 2025 is gonna be the year of methylene blue, actually. It's, it's been an interesting run and road and path overall, if you wanna call it that. As we were the first company to develop a commercial product with Methylene Blue in it in 2020. And now there's many companies that are doing it. Many people have heard of Methylene Blue. When we first came out of it or came out with it, nobody really knew what we were doing or what it was. So it took a lot of education and, and it still does because it's a, it's a very novel compound. It's a very old compound as you were alluding to. And it's a very blue compound, meaning that it can get things very blue, including your mouth, including where it concentrates in the body when it's coming out your urine.
Scott (7m 46s):
So having blue urine as a common, and it's a very likely thing that you will see if you take methylene blue and it's benign. It's not a big deal, But it does make things kind of shocking if you're not used to it. But the, the quick story with methylene blue is it was developed in the 1870s actually as a textile dye. This textile dye died blue jeans blue if you had blue jeans back then and other things blue as well. And there was a lot of interest in trying to find compounds that would treat infections because there was no antimicrobials available really until the end of World War II when penicillin was developed. And so it was somehow figured out that this class of dyes, that methane blew, belonged to treated malaria.
Scott (8m 28s):
And it worked very well. In fact, it got this name of what, what they called as a magic bullet at the time, because it could be used at high doses, very high doses. It could kill pathogens, it could kill bugs, But it wouldn't harm human cells. And so that's why it got called the magic bullet. And so from about 1897 when it was the first drug registered with our FDA at the time, which was new in 1897 until the early 1950s, methylene blue was the premier antimicrobial around higher doses of methylene blue are fantastically antimicrobial. They do it in various ways, but they basically kill viruses, bacteria, fungus, and protozoa, actually, depending on the situation, especially on the bacteria side, gram-negative bugs, which are common in urinary tract infections, for example.
Scott (9m 14s):
And so it had that run of use and, and still use that is coming back into use in that way. But when antibiotics and antimicrobials came around in 1950s, it became less, less interesting for people to take methylene blue because of the, the blue side effect of the urine. And very high doses can give blue other secretions including tears and poop and things like that. So that's extremely high doses over three milligrams per kilogram. In essence, the dosing for infection, somewhere between one and two milligrams per kilogram. So if you're 70 kilograms or 150 pounds, you, you, you're gonna take a hundred, you know, take 70 milligrams or 150 milligrams or something like that, that's gonna be your dose for infection on average kind of thing.
Scott (9m 54s):
After that, it was the first drug that was realized. It had anti, it had mood boosting properties, and the first antipsychotics were actually derived from methylene blue in the 1950s and sixties. That's because methylene blue is a monoamine oxidase inhibitor, which in short means it increases the amount of norepinephrine, dopamine, and serotonin in the synapse. And so you get those increased in neurotransmitters, typically. Excuse me. Typically people will feel better as a result of that. And so that's why it's also used as a mood booster now. And, and it's been studied in depression and bipolar, and some of my colleagues are weaning their patients off of things like SSRIs, which, which can help people. But we know that serotonin deficiency is not what causes depression.
Scott (10m 35s):
This has been pretty well established over the last couple years. And so I have a couple colleagues that have been able to wean their patients off of SSRIs and some of the newer generation SNRIs, which is norepinephrine release of reuptake inhibitors. And so there's some fantastic potential there. And, and then it's also used in fish tank cleaner, which I don't recommend anybody drink, of course, but fish tank cleaner is, has methylene blue in it because it's an antiseptic, that's why. But it also has impurities in it. You have to be very careful of your methylene blue source. And that's something that we really care about a lot of transcriptions, and we really do a lot of testing as a result of that. But the final thing, and the kinda the bigger bucket, which is probably the more interesting for everybody is, is that methylene blue concentrates in the mitochondria, which are the part of our cell that makes energy.
Scott (11m 19s):
And as a result of that, has fantastic capacity to enhance mitochondrial function and compensate for issues with mitochondria, both on the energy production and the detoxification side of things. And we can go into any of that as you would like.
Brian (11m 33s):
Yeah, it's interesting. I was, I listened to you speak on Simlan podcast And you know, I have some right here actually, if you can see if you're watching on YouTube, comes in these trashes. Initially when I took,
Scott (11m 45s):
It's called the truckies,
Brian (11m 46s):
I knew I'd probably say that wrong, all good, but small. Like I was like, wow, this is small. And I didn't really know as far as how much to take initially. Sure, sure. I started talk about it. Yeah, I started slow. It's like, anyways, I I, you mentioned taking it around flying. Yeah, so I, yeah, I took it the morning of the flight and I took it the, and then on the way back I took it that same day. I'm curious, yeah. Reasonings behind that.
Scott (12m 13s):
Sure, yeah. Yeah. I think that the, the, the sort of overall big picture for people here is that our mitochondria are kind of a big deal. These are the parts of our cell that make energy. And we have a lot of mitochondria in some cells, and we have very few or no mitochondria and other cells. In fact, there's only one cell that does not have mitochondria, that's human, and that's the red blood cell. The red blood cell loses its mitochondria as it matures, so it can carry more oxygen. The cells that have the most mitochondria per cell are the most energy requiring, the most energy needing this would be sperm and eggs. So fertility rates, how are they, they're going down, right? This is because of mitochondrial dysfunction, brain functions.
Scott (12m 53s):
The brain has a huge amount of mitochondria per cell, brain fog, concentration problems, fatigue, attention, all these are mitochondrial issues in the end. Cardiac issues, pulmonary issues, liver issues, and musculoskeletal issues, right? The, the musculoskeletal system has a huge amount of mitochondria and it needs a lot of in reserve in case you have to run from a lion if you're, you know, evolutionarily, our, our bodies are still paleolithic overall, but we just live indoors in these creature habitats overall. But, so when mitochondrial function doesn't work, all these areas are especially affected. And the other thing about mitochondrial function to, to mention is that, what was I gonna say here is that, you know, when you know, you're looking to see why mitochondrial function is not working, why they're not working very well, the most common reasons are insulin resistance.
Scott (13m 42s):
So if you have diabetes or you have a high blood sugar that's not classified yet there, and that's like a majority of, of US American adults, US American adults is kind of redundant, but American adults, and then you have toxins in the environment, infections, medications, and so these are all things that are causing mitochondrial dysfunction. And, but you also have things that, that are causing mitochondrial dysfunction on a day-to-day basis. So like poor lighting or going on an airplane, for example. And so on an airplane, you're pressurized to 8,000 feet above sea level, and that's so that the airplane's lighter. And so it can travel easier if you live at sea level and you're at, typically at sea level, you have 21% oxygen in the air that you breathe.
Scott (14m 27s):
If you are at 8,000 feet, you have about 15 or 16% oxygen that's in the air that you breathe. And so you're, that's a significant stress on your system and especially your mitochondria, which need the oxygen to make energy. And so what methylene boot can do here is it can help compensate, as I was alluding to earlier, for any dysfunction on your, in your mitochondria that's creating an issue for you to make energy. This could be some of the energy. It's typically what I'm referring to here is what's called the electron transport chain, which is the chain of proteins that's on your mitochondria that allows you to make energy. A fun fact, we make about 165 pounds of a TP per day. And so that requires a huge amount of oxygen and also requires a huge amount of detoxification.
Scott (15m 12s):
And so every time you make energy, you're also making carbon dioxide and water, but you're also making ROS or free radicals that can build up in the system and cause inflammation and stress. And so what methane blue can do is it can help with enhancement of the energy side, But it also can help with the enhancement of the detoxification side working directly like an antioxidant. And so as a result of that, when you're going on an airplane, you have low oxygen levels, so your mitochondrial stress, you have more radiation exposure, these are closer to the sun, so that gives you more mitochondrial stress. You have higher risk of exposure to toxins like jet fuel, for example, which are also going to cause toxicity to your mitochondria. So it's a fantastic companion for flying especially.
Scott (15m 57s):
But really when you're under more stress overall, I would say,
Brian (16m 1s):
Yeah, no, it's, it's unbelievable that it was once used as a die for genes And now, And now like all these benefits are coming from it, like how many studies have been done on methylene blue as far as like helping with mitochondrial function and, and this antiviral effects and things like that. Like,
Scott (16m 20s):
I mean, in total there's been thousands of studies for, with methylene blue, I think there's been less on the mitochondrial side. There was, it's really interesting. So methylene blue is still on the World Health organization's list of essential medications and it, but it's not for infection, actually, it is for its ability to rescue mitochondrial function if there is an inability to carry oxygen on hemoglobin, which is the molecule on red blood cells, that allows us to carry oxygen on the red blood cells. And then also if the, one of the complexes on the mitochondria is destroyed complex four specifically from cyanide poisoning. So it is the antidote for cyanide poisoning, which I don't recommend anybody try anytime soon. But cyanide basically destroys part of the, that transport chain, one of the proteins preventing you from making energy.
Scott (17m 6s):
And then methylene boot can rescue and temporize the situation hopefully while you know you have other ways of improving your particular status after getting poisoned with cyanide. So I mean, the challenge, Brian, is that, you know, 94% of the US population has some element of mitochondrial dysfunction. So it's a huge number of people. And so there's so many people with chronic complex medical illnesses with chronic inflammation, autoimmunity, chronic symptoms after infection, whether it be covid or something else, issues with brain fog and fatigue and concentration issues. And this is all lowest common denominator, or I guess that would be the best way to say it, is that it is the mitochondria that are affected.
Scott (17m 46s):
Now, it's not just that you need to improve mitochondrial function, you need to look at the inputs like what's happening to cause this, of course. But if you can optimize the cells. And so what I do in health optimization medicine in my clinical practice is work on optimizing what's called your metabolomics. It's the study of metabolism or the study of how these small molecules in real time are working in your cells to make energy and a detox and your vitamins, minerals, nutrients and co-factors and toxins and heavy metals and, and fatty acids and things like this, these are all working together in your cells to help them stay healthy or not. But the challenge when you're working on optimizing somebody's mitochondrial function, diet, lifestyle, supplementation, relationships, stress, sleep, everything else, it takes time.
Scott (18m 33s):
It takes a lot of time. And so what can you do right now to help them? Methylene blue is a fantastic way to start helping somebody very, very quickly without really causing a huge amount of stress on the system, because it works in both ways. It works as an energy enhancer and it works as a detoxifier at the same time, especially at these at lower doses at 4 8, 16 milligrams. Fantastic. For mitochondrial support, I always recommend, as you were kind of mentioning earlier, you know, titrating and, and starting slowly with your dose and increasing it over time. Yeah,
Brian (19m 3s):
So one of these, let's see if we can bring it up on camera, if I can get it. One of these tr say tro tro, why do I wanna say trs
Scott (19m 14s):
Troche is, is sometimes how it's said, but
Brian (19m 16s):
TRS the correct way. Okay. So I'm not completely losing it. No,
Scott (19m 18s):
No, all good. I've seen, I've heard, it's kinda like my last name. She, it's pronounced in every which way. So troche is the same way.
Brian (19m 25s):
All right, well hopefully I said your last name, right? So
Scott (19m 27s):
You're fine. Yeah, all good.
Brian (19m 29s):
All right. So if you're looking on YouTube, so these are small Yeah, I, I was doing just like a quarter. So one of 'em is how many milligrams? 16 milligrams is that right? One
Scott (19m 38s):
Full troche is 16 milligrams, and then it can be broken up into quarters. There's a nice scoring mark in the middle, a line in the middle of the trophies that makes it easy for you to cut with a knife or with your hands if you're skilled like I am. And you can just kind of pop 'em up and, and see what I typically recommend if people are using it for more of a chronic issue or even a, maybe an acute issue tube, especially when you're first starting, is like, but for a chronic issue, just to keep that in mind is that I used to have people start off at like four or a quarter of a trophy or eight milligrams a half and then increase their dose every three to five days until they start seeing the response that they're looking for. Oftentimes the response initially is a little bit of a mood boost, then after that it becomes more mitochondrial, which will be the manifestation of improvements that you need.
Scott (20m 21s):
Is it less brain fog or is it less inflammation, less pain, improved musculoskeletal performance with exercise and less fatigue as a result of exercise? These are some of the things that I've seen, and I've been kind of blown away by the people that we worked with over the years. People have used the products, I mean, and it was just kind of flooring to me to be, have this response with people saying, you know, I was, I was in pain and then three days later I was out pain or I had severe brain fog after an infection and nothing would get it better. And then I was back to work next week after starting methylene blue. My mood was better, my energy was better, my inflammation was better, my joint pain was better. You know, all these kinds of things that are related to, you know, mitochondrial dysfunction.
Scott (21m 4s):
So it's, it's a very cool compound at these low doses for mitochondrial support. And then we do have a higher strength version called Trop plus blue, which is 50 milligrams per tr and that's more for acute mitochondrial stress and for acute infection. And that's really where I have all my patients keep it in their medicine cabinets, just in case if they need it, if they feel like a cold or you know, some infections coming on, or if they have significant mitochondrial stress, they have an injury, they have trauma, they have like a low oxygen state in some level, they can use methylene blue as a way to support and really reverse a significant amount of acute stress on the mitochondria in that way.
Brian (21m 43s):
Yeah, it's interesting. I know you've, I've seen some people come out talk about like the benefits with helping with recovery and exercise. Perhaps touch on that a bit that that's cur I'm curious about that.
Scott (21m 54s):
Yeah, so what, what methane blue can do is it actually can act just like oxygen in your cells. And what I mean by that is that, so what oxygen does, it helps with the whole flow of what are called electrons through our mitochondria, which is how we make energy. So really we eat food, especially protein, excuse me, especially fat and carbohydrates, to make the, to really break off electrons from our food and then utilize them in the energy production cycle. And so what methylene blue can do is it can act like the final electronic scepter in your mitochondria and just like oxygen can, and as a result of that, you have the capacity to do more aerobic or oxygen requiring work for longer periods of time.
Scott (22m 37s):
And so it increases your endurance basically. And we've seen this kind of time and time again with, with the athletes that, that have used our products, they can keep their heart rate up for faster or for longer and they can, they can work for longer and fast as a result of that. So we have a number of endurance athletes that use it. I worked with a guy here in Colorado that did the Leadville race, which is an a hundred mile ultra marathon, the highest and most intense one in the world, I think, or one of them. And he shaved off three hours of his time using 32 milligrams of methylene blue every four hours, along with one of our other products, which is a combination of methylene blue with nicotine, caffeine, and CBD called blue canine.
Scott (23m 16s):
That one is our focus formula. It's like Adderall without the jitters, without, you know, come down or crash. If you're taking something like Adderall, don't stop it, take talk to your doctor about stopping any of your medications. But it does have that same feel as at least related to me by people who've been taking Adderall for a long time. So, so
Brian (23m 34s):
He was taking 32 milligrams. Yep,
Scott (23m 38s):
That's a lot. Yeah. Yeah,
Brian (23m 39s):
I was gonna say that's pretty high dosage every four hours. That's
Scott (23m 41s):
High dose. I wouldn't recommend that unless you're doing a hundred mile racing, you need to support. Right. But in general, if people are doing more, you know, average endurance racing or endurance training, eight to 16 milligrams is usually a good dose overall. And you can use it as needed. You don't have to use it every day. A good friend of mine, his name is Brian McKenzie, he's been involved in like the, the performance breath work plays for a long time. We've been, he's been doing some training and some experimenting using hypoxic training and then using, then using methylene blue in com after hypoxic training about two to three times a week. And seeing significant benefits in his VO two max, for example, when he does that. So my sense with methylene blue from a performance perspective is that it can enhance endurance overall.
Scott (24m 23s):
And then from a recovery perspective, what I typically have people do is use it maybe three to four hours after exercise at low doses just from mitochondrial support. But you don't want to, I typically don't have people use it too soon after exercise, especially at higher doses. Because oftentimes with exercise and training, you want the body to have the stress of exercise and then after the stress of exercise be able to come back stronger as a result of that, you know, build it, the muscles, bigger hypertrophy, tension, those kinds of things improve over time. So I would often tell my athletes that using it maybe two, three times a week is pretty good on average, if you have, if you're relatively well optimized, most people could benefit from more times per week than that because of stress and bad sleep and, And you know, bad food and et cetera, et cetera.
Scott (25m 10s):
Right. And then their mitochondria aren't working very well at baseline. So for those people, it's usually more like three to five times per week. And then if it's more of a chronic issue where you have chronic complex medical issue where you have inflammation and you have these chronic symptoms, then using it daily for 2, 4, 6 weeks, sometimes longer can be transformative because not only is it compensating from mitochondrial dysfunction, it's actually cleaning up and rebuilding the mitochondria at the same time. It's not something I use on its own for this though. I'm often having people do more of a comprehensive program with changing their diet, their lifestyle, their supplementation. Sure. Getting laboratory testing, that's a big part of my clinical practice.
Brian (25m 52s):
Yeah, yeah, I was gonna say, I mean obviously this is, this should be obviously an adjunct to doing lifestyle changes as well, I would assume. I mean, obviously it can come in and, and make an impact right away by itself, but obviously, you know, like for example, I was thinking just like visiting my parents, my mom doesn't sleep well. Yeah. And it's like, I actually recommended to her the, the TRO Zs The Zs, yeah,
Scott (26m 17s):
Yeah, yeah. TRO z. Yeah,
Brian (26m 18s):
Yeah. What, what are in those that can sort of help people with sleep? 'cause sleep is something that I think people are always struggling with, right? I'm sure you went through it maybe with four kids at some
Scott (26m 28s):
Point. No, I slept perfectly every night. No, of course. And then I also was a doctor and resident, and I was a hospitalist for many years. And so I was quote unquote used to not sleeping and you can get away with it for a period of time. I think that until I was about 35, 36, maybe 37, I didn't really have any issues. I would just, I would have to get woken up in the middle of the night and I'd go back to bed and then I would be fine. But that catches up with all of us at some point. It's funny, in medical school, my friends and I, medical students, fellow medical students, and I have this, these shirts made that said, sleep is for quitters. And, and that is truly the problem with culture, American culture, is that we think that we can sleep when we're dead. But the problem with that is that sleep is kind of the anchor for everything else that we do.
Scott (27m 12s):
I didn't sleep very well last night, and this doesn't happen very often, But it happens and like, oh man, let's get, it's a tough day, right? And if you have a ring or something like I do, and it tells you like, I thought I slept pretty poorly overall by my rings, that I slept better than I did. I was like, oh, perfect. Good day. Right? So beautiful. But when it comes to healing, Brian healing requires our nervous system to shift from being in a fight or flight mode. This is our sympathetic nervous system. Two being in our parasympathetic mode, which is our rest, digest, recover, and detoxify nervous system. And if we cannot do this, we cannot heal. And the main neurotransmitter that's involved in activating our parasympathetic nervous system is our GABA neurotransmitter.
Scott (27m 58s):
GABA is short for gamma aminobutyric acid. GABA is our primary relaxation inhibitory neurotransmitter in the brain. And many of us, many of us in the world are GABA deficient, meaning that we don't make enough or we deplete it so fast that we cannot rebuild our supply or replenish our supply fast enough. And so GABA's always in balance with another neurotransmitter called glutamate. Glutamate is our most excitatory neurotransmitter. And glutamate actually is what gets converted into GABA in the brain. So glutamate people have an overabundance of glutamate. Common symptoms are headache, irritability. Common example of this, or a, an experience of this would be if you go to a Chinese restaurant and have monosodium glutamate, MSG, if you have MSG, many people including me, many people that I know are very sensitive to that, and we get irr, have irritability, they'll have all the tremors, they'll, they won't be able to sleep.
Scott (28m 55s):
And that's because they have too much glutamate compared to gaba overall. So, so there's lots of problems with GABA deficiency. One of, some of the main ones are insomnia. So the inability to sleep, depression and anxiety. And so depression and anxiety are kind of two sides of the same coin in the sense that what happens with both of these is that you have a high number, an increased number of thoughts per day compared to average. On average, we have about 70,000 thoughts per day. Really a huge number. So don't believe everybody, everything. You think everybody, I was gonna say, I,
Brian (29m 28s):
I can't think, I, I don't, I don't think that much, but maybe I
Scott (29m 31s):
Do. And you, most people think much more than they realize. Some people think much more than, and they already realize they do like me. But the, if you're anxious or if you're stressed or, or you're depressed, your increased number go to about 120,000 thoughts per day. And so GABA is able to regulate that. GABA is the regulator of all those other fancy neurotransmitters and neurons that make those neurotransmitters that we know like dopamine and serotonin and norepinephrine, GABA regulates all that it. So if you're GABA deficient, you're gonna have so much higher risk of having depression, anxiety, insomnia. So the key for how I think about this and how the companies that I work with think about this is that you have to replete the GABA system.
Scott (30m 12s):
You have to enhance GABA and do it in a comprehensive way. And, and that means improving the, your nutrients and your gut, your GI system especially is very important because the main amino acid that makes glutamate then gets converted into gaba. Only in the brain by the way, is glutamine. And so glutamine is our neurotransmitter that also has a many other functions, including muscle health, but also it is the main fuel of the small intestine. And so if your intestines are leaky inflamed, you're gonna be using all your glutamine to try to heal that up. And you're not gonna get enough glutamine into the body and not enough glutamate and not enough gaba. So there's glutamine, there's vitamin B six and magnesium.
Scott (30m 52s):
These are two co-factors that are really important for glutamate to get converted into GABA in the brain. And then of course, try not to deplete GABA so fast. And one of the main ways we do that is just being overstressed and not being able to calm down. So exercise has, has been shown to improve GABA levels. 'cause it increases something called BDNF, which is a, something that's released in the brain when you have exercise, it increases gaba. You also have ex, other than the exercise, you have yoga and breath work and mindfulness that have all shown to increase your GABA levels. And so also as you get older, if you're female, you're in, in sort of the perimenopausal state. Progesterone is a very important hormone that the clients, and that's a very important one for GABA as well. And if you have less progesterone as a male or a female, you're not gonna sleep as well.
Scott (31m 35s):
So with sleep specifically what we've done And what we, the way we think about enhancing the GABA system is comprehensively with nutrient, gut optimization, diet, lifestyle. But if you're trying to work on enhancing GABA itself, you can't give GABA supplements. GABA supplements don't work. They shouldn't work because it's too big of a molecule to get across into the brain. And if they do work, it typically means you have a leaky brain or a blood-brain barrier that's not doing what it's supposed to do. And can be diagnostic for that actually. So what we do is we use a couple compounds that work on the, another site on the GABA receptor that enhance the affinity for GABA to bind to where it would bind on the receptor. And then we use something that would bind directly to where GABA would bind on the receptor.
Scott (32m 17s):
So in combination, it's called obligate pairing. That's kinda the fancy patent pending world that we use. But basically that means that we're giving something that enhances GABA to bind and also giving something that binds to where GABA would bind on the receptor. And so in this case, we have something like TRO Z, like you mentioned. So TRO Z has eight ingredients. The one that binds directly to where GABA would bind is called Arin. And that's from a psychedelic mushroom, actually the Amman mascara mushroom, it's not psychedelic though. Amman is the beautiful red capped with white dot mushroom that you find with Christmas imagery. Some people think that Christmas came from this mushroom, there's some evidence of that. There's also Alice Wonderland and Mario Brothers and things like that.
Scott (32m 59s):
But Arin itself is a nons, psychedelic long-acting compound that binds to where GABA binds on the receptor. Then you have Han Kyle or Occhio, which comes from magnolia bark, and that binds to a separate site on the GABA receptor, but enhances GABA or Arin to bind. And as a result of that, you get this really beautiful combination. TRO also has five HTP and melatonin along with CBD and CBN. And then a couple other ingredients like adenosine and, and cortis, which are, cortis comes from a mushroom that is also a pretty cool mushroom that is called a zombie mushroom that that takes over the insects bodies. But it also has fantastic anti-inflammatory and deep sleep effects. So TRO is a comprehensive sleep formula.
Scott (33m 41s):
It helps people fall asleep, stay asleep, and and as a result, as a result, wake up hopefully feeling rested and calm. Which is the other GABAergic formula that we have is more for anxiety, stress reduction. You take it during the day if you'd like, you can take a quarter half or full just like with all of our products and trophies. And so you can kind of titrate to what you need. But it has this thing called Nico gaba, which is a vitamin B three attached to the GABA itself. B three does have a transporter that gets across the blood, the blood brainin barrier. So as a result of that, B three kind of goes across and takes GABA with it. And so B three is mildly activating and it's what causing, you know, niacin, niacinamide and NAD. And so, you know, mild activation along with the, the, the GABA itself in the brain, which is obviously calming.
Scott (34m 24s):
So you feel relaxed but you don't feel tired, which is kind of a nice combination. It also has CB, D and and CBG in there as well. So GABA system's really big if you wanna heal, if you wanna recover and detox, most of us don't know how to turn on that off switch and GABA is your key.
Brian (34m 40s):
Oh, sounds, yeah, thanks for that explanation. Sure. Yeah. I noticed you can sort of use those in, you know, the calm one maybe during the day and the Z obviously at night. And as far as dosing, like you said, you can sort of start slow and titrate up if you need, need be right with that.
Scott (34m 53s):
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. And I use TRO sometimes before bed for certain people if they have a hard time falling asleep. But once they get to bed, they're fine. Troon can be great for that because it just helps quiet the mind overall without, and so you, I'd use, I often take TRO tro calm as a wind down thing before bed. I often recommend that for my patients as well. Instead of grabbing that glass or three of wine, you can have a TRO calm and relax and calm down And you know, instead of having your sleep, just, you know, trash because of alcohol. And one thing I should mention about alcohol actually real quick, is that yeah, alcohol and benzodiazepine. So as your Xanax, your Valiums, your, your other benzos, there's many, which I can't remember any for right now.
Scott (35m 38s):
Xanax, Valium, what else? What is what is called so many anyway, it doesn't matter. And, and of course, alcohol, so they're also binding to the GABA receptor. And, but the thing about the binding of these particular products and drugs to the receptor is they bind very tightly to the receptor, the GABA receptor, and they increase the affinity for GABA to bind and then they deplete GABA very, very quickly. And that's what increases the risk of withdrawal tolerance dependence. And if you stop him too quickly, you know, death. So this is why alcohol, if you drink it before bed, oftentimes you wake up two or three hours later and you're wide awake and you have a massive headache like I do typically, although I haven't drank in a long time, because when you have four kids, there's not really a time to drink and wake up at two o'clock in the morning and feel terrible.
Scott (36m 20s):
And so I don't do that anymore. But, so that's the, it is important to realize that those affect the GABA system too. Also, THC affects the GABA system, but actually it's actually inhibits the GABA system. So this is oftentimes why people that have THC will get anxiety is because they're blocking their GABA receptor. Obviously if you drink a lot of coffee or caffeine, caffeine is also going to decrease the sensitivity to the GABA receptor. So you're gonna have more irritability and decreased sleep capacity as a result of having more caffeine around and less GABA sensitivity. Overall. Opioids as well will do this. They actually decrease the sensitivity of the GABA receptor.
Scott (37m 1s):
So often people that are on narcotics will have more anxiety and stress over time because of the, the drugs themself. And so it's important for people to realize that some of the things that we're doing on a day-to-day basis are also having an effect on the gab receptor in a detrimental way.
Brian (37m 15s):
Right. So by things like alcohol, a lot of people have it to wind down, but, but the, but what's, it's sort of, it's not enhancing the quality of sleep. It might help you maybe fall asleep, but the quality of sleep's not gonna be there. Is that pretty much? Yes. Yeah.
Scott (37m 29s):
Yeah. It can help you fall asleep. It can help anybody just about fall asleep, but they're gonna wake up a couple hours later at the, if they don't wake up a couple hours later and they, they think they're still sleeping. They're not, they're not getting very good deep sleep at all.
Brian (37m 41s):
Yeah. And CBN and CBD are in, are in the product as well. Is that just sort of the help, you know, make you calm and reduce stress and things like that?
Scott (37m 51s):
They're also affecting the GABA receptor too? Yeah, the both CBNs CBD along with CBG, which is incom, they're also all affecting the GABA receptor, along with having a modulatory effect on the endocannabinoid system. Like our body's internal system that uses things that are similar to cannabinoids for regulation of balance and homeostasis overall, something like anandamide is a common internal neurotransmitter that works on the cannabinoid in endocannabinoid system.
Brian (38m 18s):
Hmm. Okay. Interesting. Well this is great. What, what I, I like to ask this question to most of my guests. What's like one thing, I mean, you've been in practice, you were, you know, internal medicine and what's like the one thing you've changed your mind on in, in the years that you've been practicing?
Scott (38m 33s):
That's a good question. That's not just just one thing. There's so many things.
Brian (38m 37s):
Yeah. What comes to, what comes to your mind that like,
Scott (38m 40s):
Well the one thing that comes to mind a lot was that there was a significant emphasis on intermittent fasting in the, in like maybe four or five, six years ago, along with the ketogenic diet. And I found that people who fasted too much lost too much weight, it didn't have enough lean body mass. And so people can fast and that's okay, but I think you don't want to over fast and then have, and be underweight or have low bone strength as a result of that. So a big one for me is that I don't like people to fast too much. I think you can fast periodically, but not fasting every day. I don't think a 16 eight every day is really the right thing for, for everybody overall. I think actually having a better breakfast and then having maybe less in the middle of the day and having a, a somewhat larger dinner with maybe more of your carbohydrates at that time or, or maybe carbohydrates after you exercise, depending on when you exercise, is a better strategy overall than, you know, just skipping breakfast.
Scott (39m 35s):
I don't, I don't think that's the greatest idea for, for at least a lot of people that I work with overall. It, it can work for some, but
Brian (39m 41s):
It's in, yeah, I was just gonna say, it's interesting that you bring that up. 'cause that's like one of the things I've changed my mind. You know, I used to actually be big into fasting. I came out with a journal and I've worked with clients as well And you know, I think there's a time and place, but like you said, especially, you know, obviously aging middle aged individuals that are looking to maintain muscle. Yeah. And bone strength, it's like, well we gotta, you know, you don't want to be in this catabolic state for too long. And especially if you're trying to, you know, build muscle and, and do resistance training, it's like, okay, I found for myself that I wasn't eating enough, you know, even with two meals.
Scott (40m 15s):
Yeah. It's hard for me to get enough food in usually. Me too. Yeah. And, and it's, it's one of those things too where I don't like to personally eat a lot during the day because it can make me more tired. And so it's like, I'd rather eat in the morning and then eat at night and then have less during the day, but it's still hard enough to keep my calories up over. And so I know that's not a problem for a lot of people, so, and I understand that, but, but I think that it's a very individual process overall. And I think that what really what can dial this in for people is getting some laboratory testing doing, you know, and getting some additional scans done. Like getting a, like a DEXA scan for example, can give you a sense of your lean body mass and your, your fab as, excuse me,
Brian (40m 50s):
Bone density as well.
Scott (40m 51s):
Yeah. Your bone density as well. And that'll give you a sense of, you know, where you are there. And I think, you know, when I do testing, I, I test what's called metabolomics, as I was mentioning earlier, which is looking at foundational measures of vitamins, mineral nutrients, and co-factors. Your gut health is really important to checking your GI health and, and checking that over time and getting a sense of is this, is this working for you? Whatever you're doing. And then being able to modify. And of course, you know, personally, I modify things over time as I look at various metrics, I'm like, why the hell is that the way it is? I'm like, oh, okay, then I gotta do this. Or with my patients it's the same deal. Like, and so I have a harder time if people are vegans or vegetarians in general just because of the bioavailability of the nutrients from those foods. Unless you're, you know, Brian Johnson and spending three millions of dollars, $3 million a year and taking 175 supplements a day.
Scott (41m 36s):
Yeah. Which not many people can do, or nor nor do I recommend that they do overall. So for me, I, I think the biggest piece, I mean there's a lot of things that I've changed over the years, different types of exercise, stress levels, and really a focus on stress and parasympathetic authentic activation as being a big, big piece for healing because nobody heals if they're stressed, it just doesn't happen. And then the other piece of the stress is the, the psychosocial emotional aspect of things where nobody's gonna heal if they have things going on that, that are stressing their mouth and they're not addressing overall, right. So if you have, you know, previous trauma, which a lot of people do, or if you have a snoring partner and every night you wake up because they snore, like you're not going to heal very well if you're not addressing these kinds of things.
Scott (42m 20s):
So parasympathetic activation, the GABA neurotransmitter system, really working on that with patients as kind of my primary way in for most is kind of how I do it. And then just knowing that too much fasting is also can be very stressful in the system too. Right, right.
Brian (42m 36s):
Yeah. Yeah. 'cause I've had some of, I dunno if you're familiar with like the pro metabolic approach, Georgie dink off and some individuals Yeah, yeah,
Scott (42m 43s):
Yeah. Those guys. Yeah, yeah,
Brian (42m 45s):
Yeah. So Jay Feldman, I've had them on the podcast and 'cause it, they're all about, you know, mitochondrial en you know, building up the, you know, a TP mitochondrial energy and, and so, you know, obviously fasting is just one of those things that can be a stressor as well in the body. And so it's
Scott (43m 1s):
Definitely not Yeah. Yeah. They're, yeah, I know that they lot, they like lots of carbohydrates, So
Brian (43m 5s):
They do like carbohydrates. Yeah, yeah. For production,
Scott (43m 8s):
Like white carbs too, right? It's like, I think that they're,
Brian (43m 10s):
Yeah, they, they, they, well typically for people initially they want, you know, to ease into the, the easier to digest carbohydrates first. Right, right. Yeah. Yeah. 'cause a lot of people are coming with gut health issues and they can't digest these, you know, these fibers and these things that right off the bat. So, you know, white rice is something that's, that would be one example. I'm just saying like, yeah, easy, easy to digest for individuals who've maybe gotten away from carbs for years And, you know. Yeah. So, no, you got it. Yeah, I've had them on, but it's been interesting. Good. I know we have a hard stop soon, now that I think about it. Maybe we'll do a part two of this, but what would you say all good? Yeah. What would you say, what's like one tip you'd give someone who's looking to get their health in order?
Brian (43m 51s):
I know we've talked about methylene blue and things like that, but I typically, a question I ask is like, what's one tip would you give someone that's maybe looking to get their body back to what it once was maybe 5, 10, 15 years ago?
Scott (44m 2s):
Yeah, I mean, I think it kind of goes back to what I was just describing is that what we're often trying to do is too much, rather than realize that we have to kind of step, take a step back and we can do less if we have, if we're more recovered and we're more able to access our parasympathetic nervous system overall. So the challenge with a lot of us is that we're just kind of burning the candle on both ends. We go directly from our workout directly to, to our stressful life, and then directly from our stressful life, we go directly to sleep. Right. And there's no real time in there to recover. And then so your body's gonna suffer that way. So trying to find times in the day for both actually for, you know, if you're sitting a lot exercise, little snacks and getting up and moving, but also time during the day where you're actually just taking your, taking your breath and relaxing.
Scott (44m 46s):
Right? And so one way you can actually relax, you're, if you allow yourself to, is actually eating. So when you eat, your body's gonna try to become more parasympathetic if you allow it to. This is typically if you're sitting, if you're relaxing and you're not looking, you know, scrolling on your phone at the same time. If you're having a conversation with somebody, if you're, if you're having a family dinner, like these are really nice ways to become more parasympathetic overall, and you're going to heal and digest better your foods as a result of that. It's a, it's a bad habit of mind of standing and eating because I have, you know, four kids running around. But I know it's, it's much better. I think in like, in the, in the Ayurveda world, it's like eating while you stand as kind of equated to death or something like that.
Scott (45m 27s):
It's like pretty significant, so.
Brian (45m 28s):
Okay. Yeah. Yeah. It's like my wife grazes around, I'm like, maybe you should sit and eat.
Scott (45m 35s):
Yeah. I do the same thing. It's hard. Yeah, it's hard when you're busy.
Brian (45m 37s):
Oh, I wanted to ask you a quick question 'cause you brought up snoring. Any thoughts on that? Like, I've been, this is something that's come out with my, my wife has told me, like, and I don't want to keep her up and like, I feel like I'm in good shape and I do a lot of right things. I'm like, why am I snoring? I have no idea. I've tried mouth tape actually to see if that's could help. Is there anything thoughts on snoring? You
Scott (45m 59s):
Should probably interview somebody that, that has a, an expertise on it overall, I would say. Yeah. But I mean, I'm actually funny enough for our own podcast after this one, I'm interviewing a lady that works on the jaw and the airway and learning how to repair or regenerate and, and do this. And so this is, these are speech language pathologists typically, but they probably have more of a, a bent on sort of myofascial aspects of the jaw, the tongue, the airway. So my sense of it is that it's the nose, oftentimes if the nose has been broken, if there's not good airway, excuse me, not not good air through the nose and also just the, the palate, the airway and the tongue placement.
Scott (46m 39s):
So it's one of the things where I usually recommend if people are snoring and we're having issues, it could be related to, I mean, like in Colorado here, like a humidity is a big issue, right? Because it's so dry that it can be an issue for people that they have a hard time sleeping at night because their, their nose gets so dry. You know, that kind of thing. Or it could be any of the things that I mentioned. So yeah, so for me, I guess it would be like, the first step typically is what to think about as a sleep study if, if it's pretty significant, the snoring, and then if it's not or or if it, and then, you know, then maybe an appliance that sometimes can be helpful. Sometimes mouth tape can be helpful, but then I, I think maybe looking at the jaw, the palate, the tongue and the airway. But I'll know more about that in an hour and a half after I speak to my oh
Brian (47m 22s):
Guest. Well, I'll have to, I'll have to listen to that. And that's the Smarter Not Harder podcast, right? Yeah.
Scott (47m 26s):
The Smarter Harder podcast. And we interview, I, I do a lot, lot of the interviewing for on clinicians or, or with clinicians that looking at frameworks of clinical practice And what they're doing with their patients and kind of rubber hits the road stuff. I, I think that's really important because there's so many people out there that are talking the talk, but not walking the walk or used to talk the talk or used to walk the walk, but don't talk the talk anymore or something like that. Well,
Brian (47m 49s):
Yeah, especially with social media, there's a lot of so-called experts out there when
Scott (47m 53s):
Exactly. And so I like to bring on, you know, true experts in what they're doing and really dig into some really cool fields and, and have fun with it. So
Brian (48m 2s):
That's cool. And I know you interviewed your dad. I listened to some of that. Oh yeah,
Scott (48m 5s):
Yeah, I did. Yeah. That was probably my, my most fun episode to record overall, as you can imagine, right?
Brian (48m 11s):
With with your dad. Yeah. That's cool.
Scott (48m 13s):
Yeah. Dr. Acher, he's a, he's a chiropractor in New York on long island and he's been in practice for 45 years. So,
Brian (48m 20s):
Well, Scott, I know we got a hard stop, so I appreciate you coming on. I will put some Links in the show notes for all transcriptions And you know, HBOT and your home optimization and, and you work with individuals all over. So you do like it, you know, if someone wants to work with you and they're in Illinois or wherever you can, you do telehealth sort of?
Scott (48m 40s):
Yeah, I do some consulting. It just depends on the situation, but if it's, but typically my health optimization medicine practice, which is the foundational approach that I really work on, optimizing diet, lifestyle supplementation that's done remotely and it's done in a consultation basis. So I don't become anybody's primary care doctor. So I typically can do it across state lines and my hyperbaric consulting, I do that everywhere, all over the world. And I, I, I don't have a clinic that I directly work in anymore. I did that for many, many years. And then of course transcriptions you can find anywhere@transcriptions.com. We talked about our Just blue, which is 16 milligrams, our TRO plus blue, which is 50, that's for practitioners only. So if there are practitioners listening, you can go to transcriptions.com and sign up as a practitioner and get a practitioner account and then drop ship to your patients or assign sell in your office if you'd like.
Scott (49m 25s):
And then there is Blue Canine, which is a combination of methylene blue with nicotine, caffeine and CBD. That's our focus formula productivity, you know, get things done for three to five hours. Very, very, very effective. Yeah, I saw that one really kind of rip off the, the, the brain fog and the cobwebs, but then we have, we have ROCOM and tro, which we discussed and we have something called TRO Immune, which is an immune system optimizer with a high strength mushroom mass tract called Cortis. So yeah, check it out at transcriptions on Instagram. You can check out me at Dr. Scott Sherr on Instagram A at D-R-S-E-O, tt, S-H-E-R-R and are, yeah, I think those are the major places. Overall, if you're interested in my health optimization practice, you can check out home sf.co as well.
Brian (50m 7s):
And then home hope.org is where, oh yeah, where you, is that meant for like just doctors to go through that? Or is that, or can like health coaches go through that? Health coaches
Scott (50m 17s):
Can go through to anybody that's seeing clinic clinician, excuse me, anybody that's seeing clients. Clients. So if you're, if you're a doctor, if, if you're healthcare provider, if you're a health coach and you're seeing clients, you can use our framework to truly enhance and really, I would say transform your practice
Brian (50m 32s):
Overall. Oh, that's cool. Okay. I'm always curious about that. I, All right, well thank you again. If
Scott (50m 37s):
You're interested, lemme know, we can get you hooked
Brian (50m 38s):
Up. Okay. Yeah, I will. I appreciate that. All right, Scott. Thank you.
Scott (50m 42s):
Enjoy the rest of your day, man. Thanks. Yeah,
Brian (50m 44s):
Appreciate it. Thanks for listening to the Get Lean Eat Clean Podcast. I understand there are millions of other podcasts out there and you've chosen to listen to mine and I appreciate that. Check out the show notes@briangrin.com for everything that was mentioned in this episode. Feel free to subscribe to the podcast and share it with a friend or family member that's looking to get their body back to what it once was. Thanks again and have a great day.
