Synergizing Nature and Technology: The Science Behind Troscriptions with Dr. Scott Sherr | 063
In this episode of the Wildly Optimized Wellness podcast we explore the realm where nature’s power meets cutting-edge science in our exploration of Troscriptions with Dr. Scott Sherr. Discover the multifaceted roles of Methylene Blue, from its origins to its applications in optimizing health and well-being. From enhancing athletic performance and aiding in altitude training to supporting brain healing after traumatic injury, Methylene Blue unveils its potential as a versatile compound. Delve into its synergy with sunlight and red light therapy, uncovering its effectiveness in the mitochondria. We also talk through the complexities of GABA and the blood-brain barrier, we shed light on the crucial link between gut health and brain function.
In This Episode
00:00 Methylene Blue with Dr. Scott Sherr
01:31 What is Methylene Blue?
08:39 Synergy of Methylene Blue with Sunlight and Red Light Therapy
11:18 Using Methylene Blue for Athletic Performance and Recovery
13:17 Methylene Blue for Altitude Training and Jet Lag
19:00 Methylene Blue for Traumatic Brain Injury
24:29 Different Doses of Methylene Blue for Acute and Chronic Conditions
25:10 Optimizing Brain Healing in the Long Term
29:15 GABA and the Blood-Brain Barrier
30:03 Gut Health and Leaky Brain
41:38 Contraindications with Medications
44:25 Quality and Safety of Troscriptions Products
46:43 Where to Find More Information
Resources Mentioned
Wilderness Reset Retreat 23-27 May 2024
Connect with Toréa
Website: https://www.torearodriguez.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/torearodriguez/
Join the Optimized Wellness Community: https://torea.co/Premium
Submit a Question for the Show: https://www.torearodriguez.com/podcast-question
Troscriptions Instagram: @troscriptions
Dr. Scott Sherr’s Instagram: @drscottsherr
Know more about Dr. Scott Sherr: https://drscottsherr.com/
homehope.org
Transcript
Toréa Rodriguez 0:00
Welcome to the Wildly Optimized Wellness. I am your host Toréa Rodriguez, and I've had a lifelong fascination with the natural world, and its impact on our well being. For over a decade, my work as a functional practitioner has been exploring how our relationship to our environment, to our thoughts, beliefs and emotions can have a profound impact on our physical and mental wellness. And because of that neurology, and brain based rewiring is a core focus of my practice. I am passionate about helping people not only feel better, but actually achieve that vibrant, no holds barred version of themselves. They've been missing for a long time, and how we actually get there. Well, that is what this show is all about. Please keep in mind that this podcast is created for educational purposes only and should never be used as a replacement for medical diagnosis or treatment. And if you liked what you hear today, I would love it. If you would leave a review, hit that follow button or share it with a friend. Because we never know how much we can impact others when we do. Let's start today's adventure, shall we?
Toréa Rodriguez 1:11
Hey, everybody, here is a bit of context before diving into today's episode. So one thing that I like to focus on is what are the ways that I can move the needle just 1% in Wellness Optimization, I'm looking for those, like micro optimizations, if you will. And part of that process includes looking at supplements that can help me move that needle to get in the direction that I need to go or to help me bust through a plateau. That doesn't mean that I stopped doing the basics, of course, but it does help me make further improvements. So I'm excited to share with you this conversation that I got to have with Dr. Scott Sherr who's currently the COO of Troscriptions supplement company, and they have a very unique approach. And I wanted to give more details about Methylene Blue and its impact on the Mitochondria. You remember those things, right? Those are those tiny little things sitting inside of ourselves generating most of the energy that we create, so no big deal. Now Dr. Scott Sherr is also a board certified internal medicine physician. He's certified in health optimization medicine, and he's a specialist in hyperbaric oxygen therapy. He is the founder and Chief Operating Officer of Health Optimization Medicine and Practice USA. And his clinical practice integrates optimization principles as the foundation but with this innovative approach to Hyperbaric Oxygen, including Dynamic Protocols, Comprehensive Testing, Targeted Supplementation, Personal Practices and Synergistic Technologies. So basically, he gets to play with all the bells and whistles when he works with his clients kind of cool, and his work at Troscriptions involves developing powerful and meticulously formulated products to aid in health optimization by addressing common challenges such as Focus, Stress, Sleep, Inflammation, Immunity and Mitochondrial Function. All the things that I'm interested in. Dr. Sherr can often be found lecturing globally on topics like Hyperbaric Therapy Methylene Blue GABA System, and today, we get to talk to him directly about some of these novel approaches. And since we recorded this interview, Troscriptions has released several new products. And you'll discover we briefly talked about a new sleep product Tro Zzz that have yet to be launched when we talked. And so for somebody who is always trying to optimize my deep sleep numbers, and help myself stay asleep through the night, I can tell you that I've been using it consistently and I have really loved the results from this one. I also love that I can fine tune my own dosage so that I'm not waking up feeling like a zombie, as if I took too much melatonin. So without further ado, let's get on with it.
Toréa Rodriguez 4:02
Here we are, I'm talking to Dr. Scott Sherr of Troscriptions. And we're gonna get into some really cool products that they have that can help us with our overall health and wellness. And he and I are kind of going to take this into how this might apply to people who are interacting in nature as well. So let's just get straight at it. I discovered Methylene Blue couple years ago actually when I was going through my own Lyme Disease, healing and mold illness healing and that kind of thing. And I heard about Methylene Blue, but I was like oh I don't know if that is right thing for me. And then more recently, it's kind of come back into my circle of awareness and I got to try it this year for the first time and I was blown away with the mental clarity, the energy, like all sorts of things that I was able to feel from such a tiny tiny little dose that I was like oh my gosh, This is not just for like chronic illness stuff. So I would love to have you talk a little bit about what is methylene blue? Why did true ascriptions kind of come to be with these different products. And we can kind of keep it at a high level because we can refer to other places. I know you've talked about this a lot, but let's just give people a high level overview.
Dr. Scott Sherr 5:22
Yeah, so your high level Methylene Mlue builds energy and increases resilience. That's the easy way to describe it.
Toréa Rodriguez 5:30
Who doesn't want that?
Dr. Scott Sherr 5:31
And there's very few things out there that do the same thing. At the same time, certain things will build energy, certain things will build resilience. But there's very few things that do it at the same time. The cool thing about nothing blue is that it has that capacity. And we've known about Methylene Blue, it's been around, it was actually the first drug registered with the FDA back in 1897. So is the first
Toréa Rodriguez 5:51
Amazing
Dr. Scott Sherr 5:52
First drug to do that. And so we've have a long history of understanding how various doses of it can help for things like infection. Things like malaria, for example, was the first way Methylene Blue was used in clinical practice. This is back in the 1890s. And then before there were antibiotics, or antivirals, or anti microbials. In general, Methylene Blue was one of the main stays of antimicrobial therapy, because nothing else existed. Now it worked really well. But the side effect of taking Methylene Blue, especially at very high doses is that it's going to make your urine blue, and maybe other secretions as well. If you're really high dosing, definitely
Toréa Rodriguez 6:27
Wow.
Dr. Scott Sherr 6:27
But over the last several decades, there's been a lot of interest and how nothing in blue works in the powerhouse of our cell, the mitochondria and there has been really great research that's being done in models of Alzheimer's disease, traumatic brain injury, stroke, mental health issues, looking at very low doses of Methylene Blue, as a supportive for the way the mitochondria makes energy. And the cool thing about that resilience part is that's the same thing as what we would call antioxidants. So people have heard of antioxidants, what antioxidants do is they basically neutralize stress or inflammation in the body. And what Methylene Blue can do is it can help neutralize stress and inflammation, and actually can neutralize the stress and inflammation, least the stress and the energy that nothing was actually making because when you make energy, you're also making what are called waste products of energy metabolism and you're making carbon dioxide, you're making water, you're making something called reactive oxygen species or oxidative stress or free radicals and people have heard those words before. So methylene blue can energy build, and then build resilience at these low doses that we're using in our products.
Toréa Rodriguez 7:29
Which is amazing, because the first time I heard about free radicals, people were talking about red wine, like drink more red wine to deal with free radicals. And that is not what you want to be doing when you are trying to summit a mountain. Right. So I want to dig further on a lot of those different topics, especially the TBI thing, but transcriptions make some Methylene Blue product, this guy, right? Yeah. And you're right, that's there's many the doses in here are these considered high or low doses.
Dr. Scott Sherr 8:03
So those are considered not even low, but very low doses and so typically, what when you see like a practitioner that talks about Methylene Blue that knows anything about it, though, probably which is not that not that rare, but actually, it's pretty rare. It's getting less rare that more people know about Methylene Blue in clinical practice, but they're usually talking about somewhere about one milligram per kilogram, which is on average, about 50 to 70 milligrams of a dose. So we're using 16 milligrams in that particular product that Just Blue that you just made a nice little photo over there. Thank you Just Blue there it is. Yeah, all right. Yeah, Just Blue is 16 milligrams it and it's also coming in a particular form called a Buccal Troche. So a Buccal Troche is a dissolvable lozenges that goes between your upper teeth and gums, and it's scored. So it looks like there's inside of it, there's a it's a square lozenge that has these scored markings, you can make a quarter of it, I have it or a full because we know that some people are gonna be more sensitive to this, some people are gonna be less sensitive, and some people would need more. And so you can kind of titrate your dose as you need to, to kind of build up a sense of where it's going to help you in your function. So some people will have the experience like you did tutorials where you have like almost immediate improvements in cognitive function and energy and clarity. And that usually means there's some cleanup to do. And there's some mild mitochondrial dysfunction. Sometimes at higher doses, we use the 16 milligrams, and it has the same effect. It just depends on the person as they go through and as they end to get some experience with the product.
Toréa Rodriguez 9:27
Which really kind of leads me to a couple different questions. The first one being, you know, at low doses, is this something and we're talking kind of microdoses because of you're taking the 16 milligram square and then cutting it into quarters sets for, so super micro, somebody who's taking those kinds of doses? Is that something that can be taken every day, or is it a few times a week, or is it kind of dependent upon the situation that they have?
Dr. Scott Sherr 9:54
Yeah, I mean, it's it's dependent oftentimes when I'm working with people, so I have my clinical practice I'm an Internal Medicine Physician, and I, when I'm working with Methylene Blue, I'm often understanding why I'm using it, of course, right in the sense of how significant is mitochondrial dysfunction that I'm working with, how much support do they need. And oftentimes, if people need significant mitochondrial support, it's going to be something that we're going to use regularly daily for months, maybe even up to six months or a year, I've used it so far, on a regular basis. Other people that are relatively well optimized mitochondrial functions, pretty good, and they just need a little bit of extra support maybe two or three times a week, especially when they're traveling or not sleeping as well, or their, their kids are yelling at them, because they have teenagers or whatever it might be and they're, they're more stressed and they just need a little bit of extra support. I mean, the issue here we have is that there's about 95% of the population in the United States has some element of mitochondrial dysfunction.
Dr. Scott Sherr 10:45
Now, classically, we think about mitochondrial diseases, which are very, very rare, but in general, that 95% of us have some element of mitochondrial dysfunction. Because of the world we live in the sunlight, we don't get the grounding, we don't do the relationships that we should not be in. We're the teenagers that um, you see what I'm going on with the teenagers here, I have almost one, almost a 13 year old here at my house. So but in general, we have all these exposures, we have Metabolic sSyndrome, we have Insulin Resistance, we have Chronic Inflammation, all this stuff is mucking up the processes of energy, and resilience. And so most of us can potentially use Methylene Blue on a regular basis, how regular how many days a week, and how often for how long, it really just depends on the situation. So from a relatively well optimized athletes, for example, that are doing everything and they're getting outside, they're doing other things that they do, we may only use it for recovery after large runs, or after big types of events, or if I know that they're going to be at risk for getting a traumatic brain injury, if they're, for example, a football player or something like that. Other people that have chronic complex medical illness they have, they have they have pretty they have Lyme, they have mold, they have chronic fatigue, they have postinfectious kinds of things like COVID, like a long COVID syndrome, for example, EBV, all the other kinds of post viral things. And those kinds of people typically will do better with daily or regular dosing for a period of time.
Toréa Rodriguez 12:09
Got it
Dr. Scott Sherr 12:09
When mitochondrial function is truly well optimized, which again, is in very small number of people, these people don't typically need Methylene Blue, they'll actually feel the same whether they take it or they don't take it because their mitochondria is already so well optimized overall. But what you can do is even in those people that you can actually get a significant improvement, if you go out in the sunlight have to take Methylene Blue.
Toréa Rodriguez 12:30
That is one of my questions, because we talk a lot about getting out in the sunlight to help you know entrain your circadian rhythms right, and getting that first morning sunlight, I talked about it all the time, grounding all of those practices. You know, using Methylene Blue and combining it with sunlight. I know there's I've heard some combinations, red light, we'll get into that too. But let's talk about sunlight and Methylene Blue, how do those two things work together.
Dr. Scott Sherr 13:01
So it's actually the near infrared spectrum in sunlight, that you can also get on your red light panels, that synergizes with Methylene Blue, so Methylene Blue works on a particular part of the mitochondria and the red light therapy near infrared light therapy works in the same area of the mitochondria. And as a result, they both enhance energy production by working in the same location. And of course, red light, also from the sun or from your panels will also start dilating blood vessels as well. So you get more blood flow to those areas where you're making more energy. And so that's very helpful. Actually, Methylene Blue does something very similar to that, as a result of it, making the mitochondria more hungry for oxygen, because you're making more energy from them when you have more Methylene Blue around. So when your mitochondria are more hungry for oxygen, they have to give all the signals to the rest of the body, like Hey, open up some blood vessels around here because we need to bring more oxygen to this area. So they're synergistic. So typically, when people take our Troches, if they dissolve them in their in our in their mouth, the Just Blue, for example, about 30 minutes to an hour, getting out in the sun, going for a walk or going for any red light panels if you swallow the Just Blue, so typically, our Troches are dissolved in the mouth, but Just Blue, which is our pure Methylene Blue Troche, that one can be actually swallowed. Because Methylene Blue is very, very highly bioavailable, which just means that it gets into the system at a very, very high rate, no matter if you'd have it orally in your mouth. Or if you swallow it and digest it in your stomach and your liver. The difference is just the speed of how fast it's going to have the onset. So in any way you take it, the bioavailability is great so that you can swallow it. And if you swallow it, it's going to be about 60 minutes to 90 minutes before you want to go out to the sunlight. If you're on an empty stomach if you've eaten longer than that, right but in general, the all the rest of it. The trick is that we make our best in the Buccal Cavity up here because it's highly vascular between your upper teeth and gum and it's direct access to your brains and the proximity is right there. And it also prevents liver digestion which happens when you digest your supplements and Things like that. So there's a lot of good benefits for that. But for Methylene Blue specifically, you don't have to worry about it, because it's so bioavailable, regardless of how you get it in the system.
Toréa Rodriguez 15:09
So by taking Methylene Blue ahead of time, before you go out in the sunlight or use your red lights, we're kind of doubling down on the same mechanism. Is that how they're like synergistically working together?
Dr. Scott Sherr 15:20
Yeah, it's just basically a similar. It's a photonic electrons versus regular electrons, basically. And big words for saying that they're both working in the mitochondria in the similar way, in the end processes helping you make more energy. So.
Dr. Scott Sherr 15:35
Amazing
Dr. Scott Sherr 15:35
Synergistic. Yeah, so you'll have people that will feel like huge shift, and Methylene blue by itself, the Just Blue that we have, most people won't have a huge energy bump from it, like immediately, usually, it'll be subtle, they'll feel less inflammation overall, they'll feel like, like, it's more like a rearview mirror kind of thing for a lot of people where they look back at their day, and they Oh you know, today, I didn't have as much of an energy dip in the middle of the day, I had more clarity than I typically do. It's not like it hits you over the head, like a ton of bricks. Some people will feel that, especially if you have further to go if you're, it's the example, if you have 150 pounds to lose versus 20 pounds to lose, you're gonna feel it faster if you have more to gain from taking Methylene Blue in general. But, but overall, it's typically subtle. And it's more of a like a long process where you don't necessarily feel all the results right when you first take it. And it's more of a you accumulate those benefits over time. Although there are some people that will take in and have their joint pain will go away, the next day, their their brain will start working, their brain fog is gone and it doesn't come back and it's actually been pretty amazing to me to see that. But that's,
Toréa Rodriguez 16:41
That's pretty cool.
Dr. Scott Sherr 16:42
That's not everybody, that's more of the rare people that take the products, but it does definitely happen that way too.
Toréa Rodriguez 16:49
And so for those of the people that are really into the outdoor stuff, kind of like I am and are regularly pushing themselves to go to a summit or go to high altitude or do these big athletic events, would you think of Methylene Blue as a supplement to do during activity or more for our recovery type?
Dr. Scott Sherr 17:08
Yeah, that's a great question. So we actually have been testing this with I live in Colorado.
Toréa Rodriguez 17:13
Yeah.
Dr. Scott Sherr 17:13
And as you know, and so the mountains when you're at low altitude, especially if you're not used to low altitude, so if you're somebody that's coming from sea level, like you are, and you're coming out to Colorado and gonna go up the mountains, that day, you're going to be at less oxygen levels. So for example, here, where I am, I'm at 5000 feet is about 16% oxygen in the air, at sea level, you have about 21% Oxygen. So when you go from 21 to 16, very quickly, your body is going to go through an inflammatory process, it's going to be under more stress, because there's less oxygen available, and your red blood cells are going to be trying to carry the oxygen and trying to dump more off, but they're gonna have a hard time doing that immediately. The nice thing about having Methylene Blue around is that it can work and help you make energy even if there's less oxygen around. It has various mechanisms in place where it can actually help you do that. So it helps decrease inflammation. It also prevents all that free radicals, those free radicals that were talking about before. So you have the potential and we're seeing this at least anecdotally that people that go or that are going mountaineering, using Methylene Blue seem to do better at high altitude, as opposed to their colleagues and friends that aren't using Methylene Blue.
Toréa Rodriguez 18:23
Amazing.
Dr. Scott Sherr 18:23
Absolutely if you're doing altitude training, it's one thing like you probably don't want to use it for altitude training, because you want the body to have that stress.
Toréa Rodriguez 18:31
The adaptability.
Dr. Scott Sherr 18:32
But if you're doing it for, like you're just getting from, you're going from zero to 8000 feet in a day, and you haven't done any training like then Methylene Blue, is gonna be fantastic. And that's also why it's great for airplanes, because
Toréa Rodriguez 18:45
Yes.
Dr. Scott Sherr 18:46
When you're on an airplane, you're pressurized 8000 feet.
Toréa Rodriguez 18:49
That's right.
Dr. Scott Sherr 18:50
So you're going from zero to 1000 feet when you get on an airplane. And they do that on purpose because the air at 8000 feet is not as heavy as it is at sea level. They traveled everybody at sea level, the planes would weigh like so much more have to use so much more gas. So they do 8000 feet, because they think that's like a safe altitude for people to be traveling at and but the problem with that is that 8000 feet is number one, you're getting more radiation exposure up there too, because you're on an airplane. And number two is that you get less oxygen. Number three, you have higher, you have more oxidative stress, more free radicals, so higher risk of infection, etc as well. So that's why it was great for airplanes and we have a full jetlag protocol that we've published on our website.
Toréa Rodriguez 19:30
Amazing.
Dr. Scott Sherr 19:30
On our blog that you can search and you can find that works fantastically well. And also you can actually in addition to using our Just Blue you can actually add on to that our Blue Cannatine, which is our other product that has Methylene Blue, along with Nicotine, Caffeine and CBD. This is our focus product, our productivity product that can really help with jetlag as well and kind of wipe off those cobwebs very fast.
Toréa Rodriguez 19:53
It's amazing.
Dr. Scott Sherr 19:54
This one's not subtle.
Toréa Rodriguez 19:55
Yeah.
Dr. Scott Sherr 19:55
It's got a stronger effect on that one.
Toréa Rodriguez 19:56
Yeah, you know, so I split my time between Santa Cruz sea level Bend, Oregon, about four, four and a half thousand feet. And it's interesting because something that I've noticed in my Oura ring readings are that my resting heart rate goes up, you know, all these things go up my my oxygen saturation goes down when I'm coming here it takes a while to acclimate. And I love that, that now I can use methylene blue to help me acclimate even more quickly, because I have used it when I have summited a peak or gone on a really strenuous hike. And it seems to really help with those times where you just you're sucking oxygen, right, you're sucking wind because you're just not getting that much oxygen from the air that you would down at the trailhead. So I've found that very useful for athletic performance in altitude situations.
Dr. Scott Sherr 20:51
Amazing.
Dr. Scott Sherr 20:52
Yeah.
Dr. Scott Sherr 20:52
That's amazing.
Toréa Rodriguez 20:52
That's awesome.
Dr. Scott Sherr 20:53
Yeah, I'm glad that I'm glad that's one of your experience.
Toréa Rodriguez 20:56
Yeah. And then, so after something big like that, you know, it's some of experience or something like that. Could you use it also as a recovery mechanism?
Dr. Scott Sherr 21:04
For sure, yeah and so this is using a lot of my high end athletes as a recovery tool. Because oftentimes, we want to get the what we call the hormetic stress or the the good stress of exercise and of training, but we want to help them recover faster, so that the next day, they're ready to do it again, as most people want and need to do when they're in high level of training. So yeah, so about two to three hours after exercise is when I would consider using Methylene Blue as a recovery tool to help mop up some of that, those those some of those free radicals, some of the reactive oxygen species, and that seems to work well and it does seem to help people with sleep and recovery. So the recovery stores typically go up when you're using Methylene Blue. Yeah.
Toréa Rodriguez 21:43
Very cool. And then let's talk a little bit about infections, like different types of infections that people get viral infections. COVID. I've been working with a couple people this year who have been out in the back country, and guess what they got giardia? You know, that kind of thing. So can you use it at higher? How would you use it? That's my question. How would you use it for those kinds of infections? Because originally, you were saying it was used as an anti infective? So would that be higher doses? Like how does that work?
Dr. Scott Sherr 22:15
Yes, I'm glad you asked that question, because I think it's really important to delineate between various doses of Methylene Blue. The the issue with Methylene Blue, is that, for the most part, most people think it only works at a certain level. And that's only for infections. But now we know everything we've just described before, we have this potential for mitochondrial optimization for resilience for energy, which is which is fantastic, okay, now, when it comes to infections, this dosing is higher, we often think about the dosing somewhere like for an acute infection, for acute inflammation for acute mitochondrial stress, or even for acute ischemia, like low blood flow, you want to have higher doses somewhere between around one milligram per kilogram. And so we don't think that Just Blue is probably the answer for that. In fact, this is the reason why we decided to create a new product that's going to be for professionals only, that's gonna be sold through professional offices called Tro+ Blue.
Dr. Scott Sherr 23:09
I see
Dr. Scott Sherr 23:10
This is going to happen, this is going to be 50 milligrams per Troche of Methylene Blue specific Wow, for infections, acute inflammation, acute trauma, acute ischemia, those kinds of things. So there's some, there's some additional risks that of having a higher dose of Methylene Blue at 50 milligrams, at least for long term use. But short term is pretty safe. But we wanted to do it through professionals only. So those that are listening, you can look on our website, and there'll be a map for practitioners that have Tro+ Blue and all the other products that are available, that are you that are using it, I'm actually really excited about this product. It's something that we've been in development for a while, we know that Just Blue is fantastic for the things we described. But for acute infection for acute trauma for acute low blood flow, acute mitochondrial stress, then it really does seem that higher dose of Methylene Blue will be more effective for a number of different reasons. It can help. It can reduce, I can basically rescue the mitochondria help you make energy. When there's less oxygen around a cup, you can make still make energy. It also helps with killing infections by creating something called hydrogen peroxide in the in the body and that actually is a great way to help kill kill bugs. and our body does that naturally. But we have ways to do this at a higher level. So when it comes to infection, I think their higher dose and tro plus flu is gonna be the answer there.
Toréa Rodriguez 24:23
Awesome. Really, really cool. So before we get into some of the other stuff that you guys do, I wanted to ask you about traumatic brain injury because I know that you're a hyperbaric oxygen specialist, and so we can talk about what that is. But I would also love to understand if somebody gets a concussed situation and concussed injury or if somebody had one but didn't get the appropriate treatment. How can methylene blue kind of help with those situations because I didn't get appropriate treatment when I got a concussion. So I've been helping myself that way too.
Dr. Scott Sherr 24:59
I understand what you mean. I mean, I had a concussion as a kid. And I mean, we used to not wear bike helmets. And I was even going snowboarding with my kids last year and it was actually maybe two years ago now. And it was the first time I'd been on in 10 years and I was looking around everybody had helmets on, there was nobody that helmets on 10 years ago. So
Toréa Rodriguez 25:16
No, when I learned how to snowboard, we didn't have helmets. Are you kidding me?
Dr. Scott Sherr 25:20
I know. We need to have them now. Right? So I mean, I think it's, there's a lot more people know, and what we know about concussions a whole lot more now. So we're really definitely in a better place. But the challenge is, treatment is still shitty and that's what it comes down to is that we didn't have the knowledge is great. We're assessing people for concussions, we're diagnosing them at higher rates. They've been happening all the time, of course, but now we're diagnosing them at higher rates. But the problem is that treatment is pretty shitty still. So, hyperbaric oxygen therapy, what I do specialize is a fantastic way to rebuild the brain. After concussion, it works on inflammation, it works on rebuilding vasculature, it works on stem cells, and all those kinds of things were mitochondria were Methylene Blue truly shines here is that when you have these events, you're having a significant amounts of stress on the cells, and in the mitochondria of the cells. And they start getting dysfunctional. That could be because their vascular supply is interrupted, it could be because there's swelling and inflammation. There's lots of different reasons but what Methylene Blue can do is is help rescue these mitochondria that are stressed and as a result of that help them stay vital along the path when you're trying to heal the brain. And so I use it oftentimes in combination with something like hyperbaric oxygen therapy, other kinds of things as well, but anti inflammatories, neuro inflammatory modulators, and things like that are decreasing brain inflammation. So there's Methylene Blue, in the acute setting, for like a traumatic brain injury, I would be using higher doses, somewhere around the 50 milligram dose.
Toréa Rodriguez 26:47
Similar to infection.
Dr. Scott Sherr 26:49
The Tro+ Blue is going to be something that we think just from the research really feels like that's going to be a great dose for that. When it comes to somebody that has more of a chronic post concussive syndrome, three months to longer after a concussion episode. Oftentimes, their brain is now remodeled themselves itself in a way, that's not ideal for those higher doses, actually, it actually is better to use a more of a supportive dose at lower doses. So if something like just blew and help support the system, while you're doing other things to help support, not only the mitochondria, but vascular system, stem cells being released, and getting those into those areas, etc.
Toréa Rodriguez 27:25
Yep,
Dr. Scott Sherr 27:25
Optimizing cellular metabolism, energy production, so vitamins and minerals.
Toréa Rodriguez 27:29
Neural rewiring all of those.
Dr. Scott Sherr 27:31
Your grounding, you know, your, your meditation, your breath work, like these are the things that are really important. I mean, it's important in the acute setting, but you know, honestly, not as important. Because if you can just if you can harness the system very, very quickly, and just accelerate the process of healing, you don't have to do a whole lot more, really to help the brain heal, if you just can give it give it a couple of things, like in the long term that when the brain has started to remodel itself, and and it's, it's now kind of this sort of chronic inflammatory thing going on, you're in a place where you have to do a whole lot more to see that the benefit really be long standing, and helpful and sustainable.
Toréa Rodriguez 28:05
Cool, cool. So here's something that I got a little nervous about when I was trying Methylene Blue for the first time, it's taken me years, because of the mold, the lime all the other things that are part of my own healing story. But it's taken me years to like optimize my sleep so that I can get really good deep sleep, not be plagued with insomnia. So I was very concerned like, Okay, now if I'm actually getting my cells to be energetic, am I going to mess with my sleep? I haven't found that to be true at low doses of Methylene Blue, thankfully, but I would love to kind of segue into what are some of the other products that Troscriptions has to help with sleep issues because so many people are dealing with sleep.
Dr. Scott Sherr 28:52
Yeah, you're certainly not alone, especially if you have chronic complex medical stuff going on. It's harder to sleep, you feel like you need to sleep, but you can't sleep, your deep sleep sucks and so Methylene Blue is interesting, because it's not, it's one of those things you can take any time of the day, for the most part for most people. Now, I know there are some hyper responders that will feel like they're on two cups of caffeine when they take pure Methylene Blue by itself. And those people you don't want to take it before you go to bed, obviously. But we also know that sleep is a highly metabolic activity and as a result of that, it takes a lot of energy to especially to be in REM sleep. So there are some people that take Methylene Blue before they go to bed. They swallow it they say you swallow
Dr. Scott Sherr 29:33
Okay.
Dr. Scott Sherr 29:34
So you get your 60 to 90 minutes before you actually see Methylene Blue start kicking in and then they'll actually see that they get better REM sleep they get better deep sleep and the later in the evening as well. Wow, they take Methylene Blue before they go to bed. So I've done this. Personally, I've worked with with certain clients to do it, but it's not typically what I would call a sleep remedy. It's more something that can potentially support sleep, but it's not my first go to typically what I'll be doing here is using Methylene Blue in the mornings. The half life or maybe in the afternoons as well to half life? It's about four to six hours. So typically people will, even with even later in the day that we don't have an issue with sleeping using Methylene Blue. Has that been your experience?
Toréa Rodriguez 30:13
Yeah, you know, I've taken as late as two or three in the afternoon again, on, you know, a pretty strenuous hike, and have had no issues with my sleep whatsoever.
Dr. Scott Sherr 30:25
So yeah, what we decided was that we needed to make products that can help with anxiousness without with stress, because that's a big thing that prevents people from sleeping. And then we also had to make something that was going to help people to sleep itself. And so we have two products. They're the one that is really great for anxiety and stress is called Tro Calm. This is a product that has four different ingredients to that or whatever. No, it's nice work. Thank you. Yeah, I'm glad you have it. I don't have them in front of me. The Tro Calm was made of two cannabinoids, one called CBD and other called CBG. CBD already CBDs is an anxiolytic. It helps with decreasing anxiety, and stress. It's also neuroprotective, so it protects the brain. And CBG is another one that's really amazing at helping with pain sensations and helping with anxiety and helping with stress as well. So CBG actually is my favorite cannabinoid from the cannabis plant, I would have to say. And so those are working and then we have kava in there, Kava is a nice, a nice way to help decrease stress in the body because it's working on something called the GABA system. The GABA is a neurotransmitter in our brain that's responsible for decreasing the firing of our brain and so it's about 20% of the brain's neurotransmission. So it's a big amount of how much neurotransmitter action is GABA to me, and so you have kava in there, then we have something called Nicotinell GABA is the fourth ingredient. And that ingredient is actually GABA itself. But GABA attached a Vitamin B3. And vitamin B3 with a GABA helps to get across the blood brain barrier. Most GABA supplements don't work, because their GABA is too big of a molecule to get past the blood brain barrier. And however, if you do take GABA, and it works, it could mean you have a leaky gut, and a leaky brain. So it can be diagnostic for you if that's the case. Now. So
Toréa Rodriguez 32:11
That's a wonderful tidbit.
Dr. Scott Sherr 32:13
Yeah,
Toréa Rodriguez 32:13
Just say that, again, I need to like have you back up and say that again, because I think a lot of times people will get work with a functional medicine practitioner, and they'll get these supplements and they'll be like, Wow, it's working. But what really is happening here. So say that one more time so that people can understand what the difference is.
Dr. Scott Sherr 32:31
Sure. So you have something called your blood brain barrier. This is a barrier that protects your brain from infection and basically from things that aren't supposed to get in there. So GABA itself is actually made in the brain in our body, it's made in the brain. It's actually a conversion from an excitatory neurotransmitter one that kind of ramps you up called glutamate, and it gets converted into GABA. And you need Vitamin B six and Magnesium to be able to do that, by the way. So GABA itself when you take it as a supplement, GABA is a large molecule. So there's no way for it to get through the blood brain barrier on its own, except if it's attached to something, and the attachment that we use, is Vitamin B3. And what's nice about that is when Vitamin B3 is attached, and it gets through the blood brain barrier. As it gets into the brain, it gets hydrolyze or broken up into GABA. So that increases GABA in the brain, but also Vitamin B3. And Vitamin B3 is Niacine it gets turned to something called NAD, and NAD is what you need to help your brain make more energy. So the nice thing about Tro Calm is it doesn't make you tired per se, it just makes you less anxious, less stressed and quiets your mind. And so it's not something for sleep, per se. But if your mind is quiet, and you're able to as a result, turn off that monkey mind, then as a result of that, you're going to feel easier, it's going to be easier for you to go to bed, basically what it comes down to. So
Toréa Rodriguez 33:53
More relaxed.
Dr. Scott Sherr 33:54
I should say also with GABA supplements, there's probably if it's attached to a liposomal. So if it's a nano liposomal type of GABA, that probably also gets through the blood brain barrier as well. So I have a couple friends that are in this world and they're pretty convinced that it works and I think it does, actually, if it's not a liposomal. But GABA itself is a regular supplement in your in your product, your sleep product isn't doing a whole lot is what it comes down to.
Toréa Rodriguez 34:16
Yeah, unless you've got this leaky gut, which is also leaky brain so that that barrier is the same you guys, there is no difference between the barrier on your brain and your gut. So if you've got one, you got both. So that's really important for people to understand of like, if I'm taking just normal GABA, and it seems to be working, you might want to also look into some gut healing because you would rather use something like your product where it's attached to that transport molecule to get into the brain properly.
Dr. Scott Sherr 34:45
Right. Exactly.
Toréa Rodriguez 34:46
Yeah. Very cool.
Dr. Scott Sherr 34:47
Yeah. So that's a big deal. and so like, as you said, people get worried about the term leaky brain, but all this really means is that you have a leaky gut most of the time and so if you can heal your gut and your brain is going to get less leaky because there's a as most of us know, there's this Gut-Brain access, but it's much more complicated than its gut, brain microbiota mucosa access the whole thing. And then, you know, everything's interacting all the time. So if the leak if you have a leaky gut, and you heal the gut, I mean, there's even been books about heal your gut, your depression can go away and heal your gut, your bipolar disease might grow significantly improves, right. So there's a significant impact there for sure.
Toréa Rodriguez 35:25
Yeah. and it's related to TBI. It's because TBI cause that leaky barrier. Yes, when we have that impact, right. So all of this is kind of related together.
Toréa Rodriguez 35:34
It can go both when exactly so you can have a leaky brain that turns into a leaky gut. Because, traumatic brain injury for example.
Toréa Rodriguez 35:40
Yeah, truly. So what about so this is helping true calm is helping with people who are maybe overthinking before they go to bed or anxious or dealing with anxiety? What about those people that can fall asleep or finally do get to sleep, but then they're waking up at like two or three in the morning, and then they can't get back to sleep? I know a lot of people are like, Oh, well, that's liver time. According to Chinese medicine. They put them on a liver protocol. What else is happening here?
Dr. Scott Sherr 36:10
Yeah. So what's happening and there's a lot of fun things happening for people to wake up at three o'clock in the morning. Usually, it's a sympathetic spike. It can be a cortisol rise, it can be a rise of some of your stress, neurotransmitters like norepinephrine, or epinephrine, or adrenaline, noradrenaline if you're not in the United States, and what happens is those wake you up, right? And so but what's keeping you asleep at night are a couple different things. One of them is melatonin. Melatonin is really important as we get older, melatonin declines and oftentimes people will have like a nadir or like a low of their melatonin about three o'clock in the morning. 5-HTP is another one. So this is a serotonin metabolite or something that turns into serotonin in the in the brain 5-HTP. That's comes from the amino acid tryptophan. Everybody knows turkey dinners. Tryptophan, sleepy, you know, those kinds of things.
Toréa Rodriguez 36:58
Troche sleep coma? Yeah,
Dr. Scott Sherr 37:00
Exactly.
Toréa Rodriguez 37:01
We got it.
Dr. Scott Sherr 37:01
That's right. So melatonin and 5-HTP are been known about forever, as things that help with sleep, induction and help and also with sleep maintenance. But we decided to go much further than that with a sleep product, what we call Tro Zzz. So capital Z, lowercase z, of course. And so Tro Zzz is our attempt and I think a really great attempt at helping with induction with maintenance and making you helping you feel rested when you wake up in the morning because our slogan, Troscriptions this comes from Dr. Ted, our one of our founders is that "Your day doesn't start when you wake up, your day starts when you go to sleep", because sleep is so important for how you're going to show up the next day. So we have 5-HTP and melatonin in there. People get a little bit worried about melatonin sometimes, but we have a very low dose of melatonin in our product and there's some of the guys that worry about testosterone levels with melatonin, and maybe women too. But there's no indications that melatonin has any downregulation of testosterone levels at all. So yeah, just something I'd like to put out there. So in addition to those, we have a number of things that are in there that are working on the GABA system as well. So GABA is really important for maintenance of sleep because it suppresses those stress hormones that can actually be released, especially during REM sleep. So you're getting chased by a tiger during REM sleep during your dream, but you don't wake up. Why is that? It's because of GABA, actually GABA and actually five HTP as well. But GABA is suppressing the neurotransmission and the firing so that your frontal lobe doesn't wake up and you start running out of bed.
Toréa Rodriguez 38:34
Amazing. Yeah.
Dr. Scott Sherr 38:35
So we have a couple of different things in there that are working on the GABA system. We have something called muscle muscle is a really interesting ingredient and actually is a derivative of a mushroom called the Fly Agaric mushroom Fly Agaric is also the psychedelic mushroom. It's been known as potentially as the the origin of Santa Claus, because you had reindeer's eating this mushroom, and then urinating out and with the shaman would drink the urine from the reindeer. And then the reindeer urine experiences.
Toréa Rodriguez 39:09
So this is just, I want to interject here.
Dr. Scott Sherr 39:11
Yeah.
Toréa Rodriguez 39:11
So everybody who has seen like the red mushroom with the white dots on it. This is Amanita Muscaria.
Dr. Scott Sherr 39:18
Yes.
Toréa Rodriguez 39:19
And I've talked about this on previous podcast episodes. But this is the one where a lot of the lore has come from but it's the Muscimol molecule that's in Amanita
Dr. Scott Sherr 39:31
Yes.
Toréa Rodriguez 39:32
That you are using and you have treated the Muscimol in a way so that it's bioavailable, not poisonous, because other people will be like, Oh my God, that's the poisonous mushroom.
Dr. Scott Sherr 39:42
Poisonous piece of it is not the muscimol it's actually it's something called the ibotenic acid.
Toréa Rodriguez 39:46
Yes.
Dr. Scott Sherr 39:47
So ibotenic acid is a neurotoxin and that's why people feel crappy. It's also what causes the psychedelic experience for the most part.
Toréa Rodriguez 39:55
That's kind of scary, right?
Dr. Scott Sherr 39:58
To be on Amanita is that I don't Know that experience, but it's neurotoxic. So that's what's causing the effects. So that's something to be considered about. But the Muscimol itself is not psychedelic. It actually works on the GABA system. And it helps with increasing the amount of GABA in the brain. So we have actually muscimol itself we have CBN and CBD in there.
Toréa Rodriguez 40:22
CBN is my favorite cannabinoid.
Dr. Scott Sherr 40:25
Yes, it's our favorite for sleep. So we have little bit of CBN, a little bit of CBD. We have something also in there called Cordycepin, Cordycepin is a mushroom derivative from the Cordyceps mushroom.
Toréa Rodriguez 40:34
Oh you guys are, like in the mushrooms, some kind of like in this, you know, intersection of nature with your products. This is awesome.
Dr. Scott Sherr 40:42
Yes, everybody knows the Cordyceps mushroom at this point because of The Last of Us series on HBO.
Toréa Rodriguez 40:48
Yes.
Dr. Scott Sherr 40:48
Yeah the zombie mushroom so.
Toréa Rodriguez 40:50
So to be clear, this product is not going to take over your brain. Right? Yep. Okay, good.
Dr. Scott Sherr 40:57
No, no, no, this is the active ingredient of the Cordyceps mushroom called Cordycepin, the one of the most active, it's actually it's actually an adenosine agonist, which just basically means that it helps with sleep as well, because it helps actually increased slow wave sleep, which is really an important part of your, your deep sleep stage for deep sleep. So yes, we have all these ingredients working together to help you induce sleep, to maintain sleep and to wake up feeling rested. So we've done a lot, a lot of testing on it, we're really excited about this product, because it really works on all these different avenues or areas of how sleep is is modulated throughout the night that your sleep architecture. And it's it's helping people with more deep sleep, it's something that makes you feel more rested. The only caveat is that you don't want to have less than a six hour window of going to bed. So you want to make sure you have at least six to seven hours or more of sleep that are going to be that you're going to be available to have because we're trying to maintain sleep. And also that you want to make sure you're having enough so that if somebody ingredients have a half life that's about that long, so you have at least that much sleep to I wouldn't do it. If you had a four hour stint of sleep that night, I wouldn't want to take this particular.
Toréa Rodriguez 42:03
If you have a four hour stint of sleep, we have to talk about other things.
Dr. Scott Sherr 42:07
I think like if you have a flight in the morning or like, you know,
Toréa Rodriguez 42:11
On occasion it's appropriate.
Dr. Scott Sherr 42:13
It's okay, but
Toréa Rodriguez 42:14
If it's a regular deal, we need to talk.
Dr. Scott Sherr 42:16
Yeah, humans are the only animals on the planet that purposely sleep deprived themselves. Like no other animal do this, right? We're the only ones.
Toréa Rodriguez 42:23
Yeah. Yeah, it's kind of crazy. My dog sleeps all day long and I'm always confused as to how she does it. But
Dr. Scott Sherr 42:30
is that why she barks? But that's okay.
Toréa Rodriguez 42:31
Except for when she's Yeah being a hound. That's just her.
Dr. Scott Sherr 42:35
I have my dogs, and they almost always interrupt podcast.
Toréa Rodriguez 42:40
Oh, yep. Totally.
Dr. Scott Sherr 42:41
Yeah.
Toréa Rodriguez 42:42
So Tro Zzz.
Dr. Scott Sherr 42:48
And yeah, the instructions are a little bit different for this one, because yeah, we talked about the buccal cavity, we talked about dissolution, there is a faster rate to the brain, you can digest Methylene Blue. This one is great in the sense that you want to do about half of it in your mouth dissolve about half and then one of the ingredients that the one actually I didn't actually mention, which I can mention now is called honokiol. This is a particular plant that comes from Magnolia bark. So it's a derivative of Magnolia bark and it helps with the GABA system too. So it's a little bit spicy. So you'll get like about halfway through, you're like, Oh, this is kind of spicy. So you just want to swallow the rest. We call it spicing up your sleep kind of thing.
Toréa Rodriguez 43:24
Got it, I love it!
Dr. Scott Sherr 43:25
Spice up your evening with a little Tro Zzz before you go to bed. So like an hour before you go to bed, I would say I would do put in your mouth, what it is all about halfway. Swallow it in about 20 or 30 minutes, you're gonna start feeling like you really need to go and find your bed.
Toréa Rodriguez 43:39
I cannot wait. I cannot wait. I've become such a such a sleep junkie, since starting my own, you know, health journey and everything else. So I cannot wait. I can't wait to see the results that will show up on the aura ring and get the the stats from sleep for that. So I'm excited that you guys have come out with this product. One last question and I think we'd be amiss by not asking this question because there is there is a large portion of the population that have been prescribed certain types of psychoactive prescriptions SSRIs SRNIs, as well as the rise in the usage of certain or just psychedelics like here in Oregon, for example, people can now go to a clinic and receive those sessions. Is there any kind of contraindication with any of your products and those kinds of things?
Dr. Scott Sherr 44:34
Yeah, so I mean, it's really important to think about those I mean, especially with with the other medications or supplements you're taking, you always have to make sure that things are going to be safe when it comes to Methylene Blue, the major interaction there is a potential interaction with SSRI and SNRI medications and also psychedelics because nothing but also increases serotonin, a little bit in the brain and so to these drugs, of course. Now at very low doses is likely safe, but we always recommend you You're going to take an SSRI and methylene blue, you do it in the context of working with a practitioner that can just monitor you closely. When it comes to our higher strength Methylene Blue or Tro+ Blue, we don't usually recommend recommend putting them together unless you're very much closely working with a practitioner and working on that. So it's a strong suggestion to make sure you're working with a practitioner if you're taking any SSRIs or SNRIs and using Methylene Blue. Now when it comes to Tro Calm this in and also Tro Zzz these, these both have what are called GABA ergic molecules in them, which means that they're in enhancing GABA. So you don't want to combine them with things that also do that like alcohol, for example. Not agood idea. So alcohol is a very, very high affinity to increase GABA in the brain, just like Xanax and Valium, and Ativan and Burton, and all of your your sleep drugs like right, Ambien Lunesta, so they bind very tightly to that to that receptor. And that's why they have such high risk for tolerance, withdrawal dependence. The nice thing about things that are coming from plants, in general, at least, especially the ones that we're using here is that the affinity is not as high at all. So your risk of those things is extremely low, if used as directed, okay. But in combination with any of those things, it could be could be a significant risks. So you'd want to be taking any of those medications that would potentially be enhancing the GABA system, excuse me, at the same time, as you'd be taking either tro calm, or trip.
Toréa Rodriguez 46:22
Great. Great. Thank you so much. I wanted to make sure that people kind of were aware of these are great products to be able to use but at the same time, you just want to make sure that you are monitoring whatever. We'll call it a cocktail for lack of a better word, but you've everybody's got a particular cocktail of stuff going on whether it's supplements or medication and so just making sure that people were aware, where to use caution where to get physician supervision was really important. So thank you so much.
Dr. Scott Sherr 46:52
Absolutely. I mean, I'm a clinician, right, and I think it's important for people to listen that there's four Doc's on my team, including me, the one thing that we cared about more than anything, is that we were making safe products. So every one of our products is either pharmaceutical grade, or comes with certificates of analysis, we test everything, before we get it, we test everything after we get it, we test everything after it's made. So it's and we're making this all available on our website. So if people want to see what we're doing, there are very few other companies that are going to do this. And but we were very concerned about quality from the get go. And in fact, it took us nine months longer to release our first products, because we needed to find a good source of methylene blue, because a couple of our sources, even if they were USP grade, which is pharmaceutical grade. Also, we're still contaminated. So it was not a fun process to tell you the truth. But we got there, and we found a great one. And we have a whole system. So we care about that. And then we use these products in clinical practice, I use them all the time. And I use them as a result of doing multiple things. It's not just these products are like silver bullets, or magic bullets for everything. They're used in ways that can extremely be extremely helpful. But should you you know, hypothetically need something to go to sleep at night? The answer is, you know, probably not, you know, probably you can be able to optimize your sleep over time to only use something periodically. But when you're in a bind, and you're you're sick or you're having a hard time you need a break a pattern, like these are great to be able to do that without having the potential of the risks going forward. So So I think quality is a huge, huge piece for us. And I really appreciate you talking about it, because that's, that's number one, quality and safety are like number one or number two, we say precision, pharmaceutical grade and physician formulated.
Toréa Rodriguez 48:29
Well, we we really, really appreciate it. I know I appreciate it. And I know the listeners appreciate having a company who's gonna go that extra mile to do that kind of testing and then make the testing available is pretty rare right now. And we appreciate that because it's important that people understand where their stuff has been sourced. How pure is it? Because there's just too much unknown, right? This is why we need mitochondrial support to begin with. Indeed, so yeah, thank you so so much. Where can people find out more about the products? And if they want to learn about them? Like where can people find out more?
Dr. Scott Sherr 49:08
So troscriptions.com is the place to go. So it's the word troche and the word prescription mashed up. And so troscriptions like prescriptions without the beginning, right? So troscriptions.com
Toréa Rodriguez 49:20
We'll have it in the show notes,
Dr. Scott Sherr 49:21
Right. And it's on Instagram, where they're at at Instagram and on Instagram @troscriptions. My personal Instagram is @drscottsherr where you can find more about me www.drscottsherr.com is my website and that's a place where you can find stuff about my hyperbaric practice, and my clinical practice as well. But those are the major places and then we also have a nonprofit organization that's training doctors and practitioners and how to optimize health and rather than treat disease, it's a it's a whole found its whole framework that was developed to help because we're not just about giving people products really about sustaining and optimizing health over the long term and you can check that out at homehealth.org
Toréa Rodriguez 49:58
Love it. Love it. Thank you so much for Coming on to the wildly optimized wellness podcast. We've had a really great conversation. Appreciate it.
Dr. Scott Sherr 50:04*
My pleasure.
Toréa Rodriguez 50:07
Hey, thanks for joining me for this episode of the Wildly Optimized Wellness podcast. If you're looking for new ways of thinking about your wellness, you can check out my website torerodriguez.com. Want to have a peek into what it's like to work with me? Check out the Wellness Curiosity Collective or any of my other programs or retreats. And if you found something helpful in today's episode, don't forget to leave a review hit that follow button or share it with a friend because they're gonna love that you thought of them. Until next time, See You Outside.
