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Fix Your Brain Fog By Trying This One Thing with Dr. Scott Sherr - E87
35 Plays1 month ago
94% of US adults show signs of mitochondrial dysfunction: persistent exhaustion, brain fog, and sluggish motivation. These aren’t just personal failings, but a widespread modern problem.
Most people chase surface-level fixes for their tiredness, stuck in cycles of caffeine, supplements, and short-lived hacks that never address the real cause beneath the fatigue. The result is ongoing burnout and frustration, even for those who care about their health.
This episode exposes the truth behind why you’re exhausted, and lays out a blueprint for restoring deep, sustainable energy. From optimizing your body’s cellular powerhouse to upgrading stress resilience and daily routines, you’ll learn what actually works.
Dr. Scott Sherr is a physician, entrepreneur, and founder associated with Health Optimization Medicine and Practice, a nonprofit organization focused on bridging conventional and alternative medicine. Dr. Sherr has developed a clinical approach that combines conventional, alternative, ancient, and cutting-edge therapies. He is also a co-founder of Troscriptions, a company known for pioneering precision-dosed, pharmaceutical-grade health products like methylene blue troches. Dr. Sherr regularly works with health-focused individuals and professionals seeking to optimize energy, cognition, and recovery, and is recognized for his practical contributions to the evolving field of health optimization.
“About 94% of US adults have some element of mitochondrial dysfunction, which is huge. This is from toxins in our environment, some medications that we get prescribed, infections, from insulin resistance.” - Dr. Scott Sherr
In this episode you will learn:
- Why building a strong health base is key before trying advanced biohacks or supplements.
- What methylene blue is, its long history, and how it supports energy and brain health.
- How modern life leads to GABA deficiency and why optimizing this system matters for sleep and stress.
- The risks of using the wrong type of methylene blue, and the safest, most effective ways to take it.
- When to use different TroScriptions products to support focus, energy, and rest.
- How small health wins can set off a positive chain of habits for lifelong wellness.
Resources
- Connect with Dr. Sherr on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drscottsherr
- Discover Dr. Scott’s offerings: https://drscottsherr.com/
- Learn more about Dr. Sherr’s integrative hyperbaric oxygen therapy practice: https://www.hyperbaricmedicalsolutions.com/integrative-hbot/scott-sherr
- Shop his supplements range, Troscriptions: https://troscriptions.com/
This podcast was produced by the team at Zapods Podcast Agency:
Find the products, practices, and routines discussed on the Alively website:
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Transcript
Introduction to GABA and Health Optimization
00:00:00
Speaker
Most of us living lives of hustle, you know we'll sleep when we're dead kind of mentality are GABA deficient. And GABA deficiency equals insomnia, depression, anxiety, mental health disorders, tremors, and all the rest. And so what we did with Trocom and TroZ was create two formulas that enhance the GABA system. And not only enhance the GABA system, but also enhance the endocannabinoid system and other systems as well.
Dr. Scher's Background and Philosophy
00:00:28
Speaker
This is the Home of Healthspan podcast, where we profile health and wellness role models, sharing their stories and the tools, practices, and routines they use to live a lively life.
00:00:42
Speaker
Dr. Scher, welcome to the Home of Healthspan podcast. Thank you for having me, Andrew. It's good to be here, man. I have a number of questions for you on things I have heard a lot about, but not directly from the experts. So I'm excited for our conversation.
00:00:56
Speaker
But before we start that, how would you describe yourself? Well, i I guess I would say I'm a lively physician, entrepreneur, father, husband, um many different things. And a conductor of all things health optimization is ah is kind of how I usually frame it because I've been involved in health and medicine now basically since I was born. My father's a chiropractor for 45 years on Long Island in New York. So I grew up in that framework already of alternative health, optimizing health from a very different perspective. I went to medical school,
00:01:28
Speaker
looking to figure out a way to bridge this sort of huge chasm, the gap between conventional alternative medicine. and over the years, I've developed up my own clinical practice, um trying to do that and looking at creating the best ecosystem I can for my patients, um looking at you know conventional tools, alternative tools, ancient tools, cutting edge, tool like supplements, technology, practices, but foundations are always really important for me. And so if your foundation is good, then everything else is easier.
From Sick Care to Health Optimization
00:01:56
Speaker
And so a conductor of all things, health optimization related to having a strong foundation.
00:02:02
Speaker
I love that. And, and that focus on optimization in that we live in a society that's so sick care based, that the goal somehow seems to be to avoid really bad disease as opposed to how good could it actually get? Like, how great could this be? And so few people are like, I don't have a problem. i said do you not? I mean, are you are you sure? Like you might be a little achy when you get out of bed and you know, you don't have to be, you could have tons of energy and not need eight cups of coffee before you can think.
00:02:32
Speaker
Yeah, I love that framing. And I love the the name of your podcast, really, which because that's really the framework that I think about. And we have a nonprofit organization actually called Health Optimization Medicine and Practice. And this was created by a founder, the founder and the pioneer is a mentor also from of mine. His name is Dr. Ted Achakoso. And his big thing is, well, longevity sounds good, but only if you have health that matches your longevity. Yeah.
00:02:59
Speaker
If you're sick or you have comorbidities and you have 20 or 30 years of extra lifespan, then that's not really that awesome. So what we all want in the world really is is to have what's called morbidity compression, which you probably know, which is the idea is that we live as healthy as we can for as long as we can. And then we very quickly die.
00:03:18
Speaker
So we have a very short period of time where we're, you know, pain and suffering and all that kind of stuff. So that's the goal, right? And so our framework, the health optimization medicine framework is actually focused on optimizing people to when they're 21 and 30 years of age, that age range. So you could be have cancer or you can be an elite athlete anywhere in between. It doesn't matter. All of us need a foundation where we optimize levels, nutrient gut, hormones, neurotransmitters to the levels of between 21 and 30 years of age, because that's when we're most optimized. That's when we're going to feel like we have the best health and the most resilience and everything else like that. So that's what we do in clinical practice. And I appreciate the name of your podcast for that particular reason, because longevity clinics are popping up everywhere,
The Role of Personal Health Data
00:03:58
Speaker
as you know. And I think it's good. It's definitely better than sick care, but living long time, it does not reflect or and always equate for health. And so I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm an amount of mission like you, Ben. So I love that. And I love the mission.
00:04:14
Speaker
I also really like your your description of saying, you know, traditional, non-traditional, ancient, all of these, because the label doesn't matter. I think back to, can't remember if his first or second inauguration, Obama said, look, we shouldn't care if it's a big government or small government. We should care. does it work?
00:04:30
Speaker
And on these labels, like i don't care if it's traditional or non-traditional, if it's ancient or we just figured it out last week. If it works, that's that's what I care about. right so And that's how we have to think about medicine now, right? because if you wait for conventional medicine, you're going to die. You know, that's like the short, because i everything takes such a long time on the conventional side to actually create enough evidence from their perspective to reach clinical practice. You i use ah a science called metabolomics in clinical practice. It's a very interesting,
00:05:03
Speaker
It's a very cool science, but it's been around for almost three decades. And it's just now starting to hit clinical medicine, right? So if you wait, I mean, how long do you want to wait for something to actually hit the hit the actual mainstream conventional? And so this is why NF1 is so important. Like your own data is the most important thing a way to indicate how you're feeling and how you're doing, not some epidemiologic data, not some population data, not some study about 10,000 people that weren't you. So, I mean, that's why actually, even if you look back in the when you're looking at the, how to look at data as the, what's the most important, it's always going to be your own data. That's the most important. yeah people yeah People have to remember that. Now, looking at that in context with other aspects of this, like the age range that we talked about earlier, 21 to 30 is important, but your data is the most
Foundation of Biohacking
00:05:48
Speaker
important. You always have to remember that.
00:05:49
Speaker
And it's more accessible than ever. i mean, with Function Health or Whoop Labs, I mean, there's so many companies, superpower kind of all pumping in to to give you the option here. And this whole biohacking movement, I think that's the the whole idea of saying, you know i think it has a pejorative or or negative connotation with some people.
00:06:08
Speaker
But you know Brian Johnson others doing these N1 experiments and then publishing, it's not saying you should do all these things. It's saying, hey, here's things I've tried that worked or did not for me and here the results. You can yeah go through the same. As a physician, I'm curious this line with...
00:06:26
Speaker
First, do no harm. And ray as if you're doing on yourself, you're not you're not doing the Hippocratic. o It's fine. But there are certain things like, hey, yeah let me go try some gene therapy. And like, well, what is the potential upside versus downside? Where where do you see that for you?
00:06:42
Speaker
So, I mean, so for me, what it comes down to is that having a a strong foundation is the most important. So not all data is good data. We have to be careful there too, right? Data can be very messy. It can be very difficult to interpret. So you have to be very mindful of that. And so the way I think about this is that you need to have a foundational baseline of reliable data that you can follow over time. And once you have that foundational baseline and you optimize at that level, and this is what we do at Health Optimization Medicine, there's other ways to do this too. This is just our framework.
00:07:12
Speaker
is that once your baseline is stable, is optimized, then you can go try all these other things, maybe if it makes sense. Like this is where biohacking needs a rudder. It needs a way to kind of give you a
Interconnectedness of Health Systems
00:07:24
Speaker
navigational map. And the map is missing the actual drawing. If you're just looking at all like your states and your countries and things like that, but you don't actually have like the actual land masses and like the water and like the mountain ranges. And so what we're working on What I work on in my clinical practice with patients is what is that foundation? How do we create that? And then that's why I think most people need to have like a base level of supplements they take ah they take a day every day, like the the base diet, um how much water they drink, things like that, because...
00:07:54
Speaker
That's their foundation. And then they go, oh, this sounds really cool. Let me check out gene therapy. Well, okay, let's talk about the risks and benefits of this. Let's talk about stem cells. Let's talk about the new hyperbaric chamber, the new, you know, the new sauna, whatever it might be. Right. And so if you're just kind of going after one thing after the other, you can get really lost. It's like every doctor, unfortunate not every doctor, but a lot of doctors or influencers like have two QE's a day and that's all you need to do. Or like, or make sure you have like a handful of blueberries or whatever. Like these are,
00:08:25
Speaker
fun, but they're misguided because there's no foundation to it all. right um I gave a talk in 2019 to biohackers and i asked the biohackers in the in the crowd, I'm like how many people are taking supplements here? you know Everybody raises their hand. Then i ask, how many people have measured what they need and are taking supplements that reflect those needs? and About 30% of people raise their hand.
00:08:47
Speaker
This is before things like function health and others where people have more of a better way of of knowing data. But even that newer data, you have to be careful, right Because you have to understand, okay, am I looking at the whole picture here? Am I just looking at one thing? Because when you start optimizing at the foundational level, you understand that you're not just...
00:09:05
Speaker
affecting one node in a network. If you affect that one node, you're affecting all of them, right? So if you give testosterone, you're optimizing the testosterone level. You also have thyroid levels you have to think about and melatonin levels you're thinking about or growth hormone levels. You have to think about your adrenals and things. And so, or if you're using one B vitamin, what about the others? And so it's really important to get a good data set And then from there, be able to optimize from, you know, to get more, to more get and better understand how to create that foundation. And then from there, you built.
00:09:35
Speaker
And those trade-offs. I think that last point you you had too, of like, you know, you
Methylene Blue's Health Benefits
00:09:39
Speaker
I'm going to go in and ApoB may be a bad example. be I'm trying to optimize on this one metric, but then what are the impacts on others by by doing this and trying to get my testosterone up? What does it do to maybe my cholesterol or vice versa? Like I'm stomping on my cholesterol. Now, what is it doing to my testosterone? Right? Like no free lunches there.
00:09:58
Speaker
Right. like Everything's all connected. That's the key. Yeah. Well, okay, so there so many directions we could go from all of that. But ah what I'd love to do is do more of a deep dive on what I believe, and you could correct me if I'm wrong, was the first ever FDA approved drug.
00:10:16
Speaker
back in 1891. um But as in this biohacker world, health optimization world, become more of a ah recent, like we just discovered this, or some people have been doing it like since the 80s or 90s. They didn't just discover it.
00:10:28
Speaker
And I'm speaking about methylene blue. So can you, for our listeners not familiar with this, or maybe you only know it from fish tanks, tell the story of methylene blue, what it is why we care about it, where it came from.
00:10:41
Speaker
Yeah, the biohackers were the first um humans to really use methylene blue from a mitochondrial optimization, energy, detoxification, inflammation perspective, um even 20 or 30 years ago. But our company, Trescriptions, was the first company that came out with a commercial product back in...
00:10:59
Speaker
2020 at this point. And that was ah a product called blue canatine. And the reason why we did that is because Dr. Ted, Atracosa, who's the pioneer of health optimization medicine in practice, also the pioneer of transcriptions, chief science officer of transcriptions,
00:11:14
Speaker
is looking at some of the data that was coming out around that time, a couple years earlier, there's a researcher down at University of Texas, Austin. His name is Francisco Gonzalez Lima. And he was doing a bunch of studies using methylene blue and neurodegenerative models, animal models mostly. And then also there was other researchers doing them on stroke models, traumatic brain injury models, concussion, Alzheimer's. And so we were very interested in the nootropic, the cognitive enhancement aspect of methylene blue. And well, the reason for that is that what methylene blue really does is it concentrates in the mitochondria itself. And in the mitochondria, the part of our cells that make energy, as as all of you know, some of our cells in our body have thousands of mitochondria per cell, and some of our cells actually have very few, but our ovaries and our sperm have the most mitochondria per cell. And then behind that, just behind that is the brain. Okay. And then you have the heart, liver, musculoskeletal tissue, et cetera. And so the brain requires a lot
00:12:08
Speaker
of mitochondria to work effectively. And the the challenge is that our as a population, we're not doing a very good job of this. About 94% of US adults have some element of mitochondrial dysfunction, which is huge. This is from toxins in our environment, some medications that we get prescribed, infections from insulin resistance. So having too high a blood sugar and also being in in sympathetic activation, something I call the sympathetic spiral of doom, which is this sympathetic spiral where we get in this fight or flight mode, very difficult to get out, causes a lot of mitochondrial dysfunction. And it can happen sort of chicken before the egg. it can and And the mitochondria can start being the be the initial aspect or the site the sympathetic aspect and kind of go in a cycle. so But and in any regard, you have 94% of US adults that have mitochondrial dysfunction. And what that means is that they can't make energy well
00:12:55
Speaker
And or they can't detox from the energy that they make, you know, because we when we make energy, we're more like a gasoline powered car where we make energy, but we also make waste products in quotes, right? Waste products like water, carbon dioxide, and what are called reactive oxygen species. And those ROS, free radicals, same name, same thing,
00:13:13
Speaker
our body needs antioxidants to be able to neutralize those. And if you're antioxidant deficient, you're going to have a hard time making more energy effectively. You're going to feel crummy because you don't have the the sort of the waste removal cycles that are available to you. And if you're not pooping every day and like, you know, all these other kinds of things where you have to get rid of toxins, not urinating well, not drinking enough water, not hydrating. But anyway, so you have 94% of US adults that have an element of mitochondrial dysfunction. and then you bring in something like methylene blue, which has this cool capacity to both increase energy and also increase detoxification capacity at the same time. It's called a redox cycler in that capacity. So a redox is meaning it, and and with what I mean by that is it it it can enhance energy and it can also enhance detox. So it's like we talked about a gasoline power car.
00:13:56
Speaker
This is more like an electric car, right? where You don't have any waste products. You don't have any exhaust from increasing the amount of energy you're making. So it can work just like an antioxidant and it work just like something that increases energy. And there's very few compounds that do both. And if you can compensate for energy dysfunction, you can compensate for detoxification issues, people start feeling better very, very quickly.
00:14:16
Speaker
Energy focus and cognition, mental health issues, even pain, inflammation outside but outside the the brain. But our first focus was this capacity for methylene blue to truly help with energy production detoxification.
00:14:29
Speaker
And how did it get, cause it was initially a commercial die. mean, how did it then kind of make its way to, from commercial die to FDA approved drug to biohackers saying, oh, I'm going to order from like fish tank solvent and start taking this because I somehow someone figured out the benefits.
00:14:50
Speaker
Yeah, the the long arc of it is it's super interesting, right? it started off as dying blue jeans blue back in the 1870s. 1897, it was the first drug registered with the FDA as a treatment for malaria. It was called the magic bullet at that time because there was very few drugs or compounds available that you could give at high doses that would kill pathogens but not harm the human host. And nothing but had that capacity. So from around 1897 to 1950, it was one of the primary antimicrobials around. And antifungal, antiviral, antibacterial,
00:15:19
Speaker
and antiprotozole, right? And so it was used for urinary tract infections, it used for fungal infections, and was used during World War II. And then antibiotics came around in the 1950s. And the major side effect of taking methylene blue is that your urine turns blue. And so that wasn't all that exciting for everybody, right? And higher doses of methylene blue, around a milligram per kilogram or higher, which is about 70 milligrams or above for the most part, um those can also cause biofilm disruption. And so that's good if you have pathogenic biofilms, but it's also maybe not so fun if you have normal biofilms and people can get dysuria actually. So the urinary ah discomfort at higher doses of methylene blue, because it's, it's disrupting the bladder biofilm, for example. So anyway, and it became out of favor for that, for those reasons. And from there, it had sort of number a couple of different additional
00:16:09
Speaker
um chapters The next chapter was the first antipsychotics were actually derived from methylene blue because it works as something called a monoamine oxidase inhibitor. So it increases neurotransmitters, dopamine, norepinephrine, and serotonin. And so as a monoamine oxidase inhibitor, it has that capacity. um And at the same time, um that some drugs were derived from it that were antipsychotics actually. And then after that, the next evolution was as a stain, as something you used in chemistry lab, because what actually, what does it do? It actually concentrates in the mitochondria. um and You can actually actually look at the mitochondria underneath a microscope um as part of the cell.
00:16:48
Speaker
And As a result of understanding, well, it concentrates in the mitochondria. What is it doing in the mitochondria? Now, the through line for all this, actually funny enough, is fish tank cleaner. Because into the 1950s and until now, methylene blue is used in fish tank cleaner not to clean the tank, but to clean and to actually treat the fish as an antiseptic. So that's interesting to be aware of. Please do not drink fish tank cleaner because it's highly contaminated with heavy metals like lead, mercury, arsenic, and cadmium. Actually, even pharmaceutical grade can be contaminated. So to be super careful what you're getting, but especially not fish tank cleaner. But to round out the story is that they realized it was working in the mitochondria and then it actually became well understood that it was an antidote for cyanide poisoning.
00:17:32
Speaker
um Cyanide actually destroys part of the mitochondria. one of the One of the complexes called complex four. And methylene blue has this cool way of like doing these like ninja moves around blockages in the mitochondria and allowing energy to continue to be made. And so it was from there and understanding all of this that i was like, okay, well, and then it's really working
Applications of Methylene Blue
00:17:52
Speaker
in the mitochondria. And then that's when studies in traumatic brain injury and concussion and stroke and looking at Alzheimer's models started all happening at the same time to give us a better sense of, wow, this is really happening in the mitochondria. And this is this can be translated into the biohacking world, into the performance world. um And just understanding that 94% of US adults have mitochondrial dysfunction.
00:18:15
Speaker
Could we double click on the the Alzheimer's dementia side for second? I'm really curious just because it's come up a lot recently, whether it's the the more recent study on microdosing or low dose of lithium and some of its positive benefits and then ketones and potential for exogenous ketones or ketogenic diet to help with that. So where could someone use methylene blue ah if they have a parent or someone that's starting to show signs?
00:18:40
Speaker
Yeah, and these are all, I mean, so what yeah what you're all kind of describing here, lithium, ketones, ketogenic diets, these are all mitochondrial enhancers. all That's all they're all they're doing, right? Because we know that we're better at producing energy from ketones than we are from glucose, especially when get older. And so that's why the ketogenic diet is also so helpful. It's also um helpful because it also regulates the GABA system a little bit better. it regulates the stress response system of the brain. so you get to kind of calm it down. We think of Alzheimer's as probably like a multifactorial kind of condition now where it's not just one thing. and There's multiple sort of pathways that lead to this common denominator, right? And so the amyloid hypothesis is dead. We know that now. but We know that amyloid is there and it's likely because it's a reactionary to something else that's going on in the brain. Is it high blood ah glucose? Is it infection? um is it sympathetic stress? You know, like it's hard to know. that i think there's a lot of sort of of pathways that lead to this common denominator. um And where methylene blue comes in is that it's really that it's a foundational base
00:19:40
Speaker
capacity to improve mitochondrial function now. Now, is it something that everybody needs to take all the time? The answer is probably not. If they can optimize their mitochondrial function, optimize their vitamins, minerals, nutrients, their gut health, their transmitters, hormones, their stress, but these are difficult for people, right? And so what's nice about methylene blue is that you can bring it in very early in the process of optimizing somebody's health. And you can see really benefits very much quickly as they're starting that ramp up of hopefully other therapies and technologies and practices as well.
00:20:12
Speaker
Yeah, I guess on that, think of it a little bit like ah a Kickstarter, like GLP ones, right? It's not the end of the story. Ideally, it's the start of the story. So people who said, Hey, look, it's uncomfortable. I'm so overweight. I can't really exercise. I don't feel good. Or someone's I'm so low energy.
00:20:29
Speaker
i can't go move my body like I should. But maybe this could be the trigger. Like, Hey, now you have the energy. Now you can go do this. And when you start moving your body, you might want to start eating better. And when you start eating and moving better, you'll sleep better. And so back to that flywheel that you were describing before, that could be a negative flywheel. Maybe it's ah a positive flywheel you can kick off.
00:20:48
Speaker
100%. That's what I talk about all the time. I'm like, once you start getting that initial improvement just a little bit, that's when it becomes so much easier for people to be able to start getting on that train and staying on it, right? And getting down a positive spiral rather than a negative spiral. And i think that's That's really what we're all hoping for. And that's what I've seen with methylene blue on countless occasions, which is it's difficult to get started. You know, it's difficult to get going. And then the doses don't have to be high here. And and that's a big thing is that methylene blue dosing eight milligrams to 25 milligrams is a really great range for mitochondrial support. The higher doses around 50, 75 or even higher are great for like acute trauma, acute infection,
00:21:28
Speaker
or even maybe sometimes chronic infection, but they're not as as ah as optimized for mitochondrial function. The higher the dose, the more stress you put on the system. And so you have to be aware of that and when you're thinking about using it.
00:21:43
Speaker
In the acute setting, acute trauma, acute infection, acute low oxygen states, the high amount of methylene blue coming in is very well tolerated typically. um But if you have somebody with a chronic infection and you give them a very high dose of methylene blue just right off the gate, it might be very ah stressful for for the system because it causes stress on the system at the higher doses. It actually increases the production of hydrogen peroxide specifically. So hydrogen peroxide you can buy at the store, but it's actually something that our cells make.
00:22:13
Speaker
And it's an anti-inflammatory, it's an anti-infective, and also an anti-cancer. It's one of the ways that we kind of treat our cancer like our cancer cells in our body because we're always making cancer cells, right? So if our immune system recognizes that this cell has been abnormally dividing, then what it does is it throws a whole bunch of um you know hydrogen peroxide, other stuff at it, including hydrogen peroxide, that kill it off. And so we use lots of different things that that that we actually ingest increase hydrogen peroxide, but methylene blue is a really good producer of this. And when you have more hydrogen peroxide in the system, this stimulates your endogenous supply of glutathione to increase as well.
Troscriptions' Products and Quality Assurance
00:22:54
Speaker
Glutathione being our master antioxidant. That is, of course, if you have the capacity to do that, but if you don't, You may not feel very good if you take a high dose of methylene blue right away. And that's why often ramping up the dose is the key. You start with four or eight milligrams. You increase every three or five days, see how somebody feels. And then from there, be able to find the right dose for them.
00:23:14
Speaker
Okay. And so I'd love to now talk a little bit about the the name of your company, Troscriptions, the Trow and kind of the method of hey don't go buy fish cleaner for not just the heavy metals, but also maybe the the method of taking it. Can you talk about where the name comes from? And then this method?
00:23:34
Speaker
Yeah, so Troscriptions as a company was was birthed out of, it came from our nonprofit organization that I was mentioning earlier called Health Optimization Medicine and Practice or Home Hope for short. And the idea was that when you're on the path to optimizing your health, it's not something that happens immediately.
00:23:54
Speaker
It takes six months or a year for a lot of people to really truly make physiologic and biochemical shifts to see the benefits of the work that they're doing with vitamins, minerals, nutrients, and supplementation. And so how can you help somebody right now while they're on that longer path? And that's where transcriptions came around because we're like, well, let's get things that can help now with energy, with focus, with inflammation, with immune system function, with stress, with sleep.
00:24:18
Speaker
And Dr. Ted and i we're both physicians and we very much are aware of what what the world of what's called compounding pharmacies. Compounding pharmacies are not your Walgreens or CVS. These are people that actually make They have the raw ingredients and they can make things in different amounts. They can combine things together. And so the trochee is really cool form factor that's used in hormones like um like progesterone. um It's used in psychedelics like ketamine, for example, um oxytocin, another hormone that is used for. And so Dr. Ted and I knew about trochees. And the cool thing about trochees is that the way that we use them is called a buckle trochee. It's a buckle lozenge that goes between your upper cheek and gum. And what's nice about a troche, it stays up there, is that it dissolves directly into your bloodstream. So it bypasses having to go through digestion, so it's much faster acting. And it's also going to have the higher potency of the ingredients because when things get through the system, through your stomach and your liver, specifically in something called first-pass metabolism, we often have less bioavailability or less potency of our ingredients as they get into the system. A good example of this is something like N-A-C. It's about 10% bioavailable. And that means that you take 100 milligrams, only 10 milligrams get into the body.
00:25:37
Speaker
When you take something orally, and but you put it in the mouth and you let it dissolve as a trochee, it's about 20 times more potent than it would be if you dissolved it, and if you let it dissolve ingested it and brought it through the the body. Now, interestingly though, Andrew, the exception to that rule is methylene blue. Methylene blue is highly bioavailable. And so whether you dissolve in the mouth as a trochee or you swallow it about the same amount is going to get into the system. It's just going to be how fast it gets in. But for a lot of our other products, it's really important to have a dissolve in the mouth because it's going to have much more potency that way. So in essence, the trochee is faster acting because it's dissolved in the mouth. The ingredients are more bioavailable. And also the trochees are scored. So they have a little, they they're squares and they have ah a little cross in the middle. You can take a quarter, a half or a full. And then if you take, you can kind of find and titrate your dose. This is very difficult with capsules and and almost impossible and almost always difficult with tablets as well to try to break them up and find the right dosing and things like that. So the first part of our name, Tro, comes from Trokeys, so Tro-scriptions. And the second part of our name is from the word prescriptions because our ethos as a company to make things precision-dosed,
00:26:48
Speaker
pharmaceutical grade and then physician formulated. And so we are as close to a prescription as possible with everything that we make. And that means we do all the testing and everything that we get. All of our ingredients are are tested multiple different times. So we get our raw ingredients.
00:27:04
Speaker
They come with certificates of analysis. We don't believe those certificates of analysis. We check them again with another independent lab to make sure that it is exactly what it's supposed to be. And what's happening with a lot of companies, so supplement companies don't have any regulations. They they regulate themselves. And so what happens with a lot of companies is that they get the raw ingredients from other countries. We do too. We get our methylene blue from Japan and Korea.
00:27:25
Speaker
It comes into the country with a certificate of analysis. That certificate of analysis says what it says. Do you believe it or do you not? Most supplement companies, they just take their manufacturer's word for it and they put it into production. We don't do that. We check it again with another independent lab here in the United States to make
Trocom and TroZ: Enhancing GABA System
00:27:42
Speaker
sure it meets our specifications. And then, and as a result, we've had to throw out thousands of dollars worth of product over the years But it's worth it to us because we know exactly what people are getting. We know exactly what we're giving our patients, what I'm taking myself, what I'm giving my family members when they need it, right? And so, Troscriptions is a mashup of of those two ethos, really, which is the idea of a cool delivery dosage form called the trochee and being as prescription-grade as possible and being able to trust our stuff every single time we make it.
00:28:14
Speaker
That's really neat. And I do want to get in into each of the individual products but before we do ah the, you know, people spend a lot of money whitening their teeth, whether it's but through their dentist or bleaching or white strips.
00:28:27
Speaker
And one of the big side effects of methylene blue is the blue tongue. I imagine the whole mouth, if you're putting it up in the gum, you're you're probably getting kind of a smurf all over. And so you're saying for at least the pure methylene blue trochee, it should be as effective as slower acting, but should be as effective if you just swallow it.
00:28:48
Speaker
um But you have some others that have other ingredients that not only would it be slower acting, but you would be muting the impact. Correct. Right. So pure methylene blue are just blue. For example, pure methylene blue, 16 milligrams, that one there. Yeah. 4, 8, 16, you can titrate the dose. You don't have to dissolve in the mouth. Now there's a subset of people that do prefer doing that because it's faster acting. And if they have like brain fog, concentration issues,
00:29:14
Speaker
It can give the burst of energy a little bit faster. So there is that. But for the most part, what I recommend is swallowing on an empty stomach and then eating about 15 to 30 minutes later because kind of pushes it through and helps it metabolize. And then the effect will happen a little bit faster rather than just waiting on an empty stomach for a while. so that's what I typically recommend.
00:29:31
Speaker
and But the other ones are blue canatine, for example, which is a combination of methylene blue with nicotine, caffeine, and CBD. That one is blue, but I do recommend that one being in the mouth. There's not as much methylene blue in that one than just five milligrams, but that one is very fast acting because there's a little bit of nicotine in there. So you get increased productivity, increased focus, increased, you know, dropping into flow, verbal fluidity, and you get it within five to 10 minutes if you dissolve it in the mouth. And if you swallow it, you can do it, but you'll need a higher dose.
00:30:00
Speaker
And And it'll be slower acting. Right. And so, so I do have some of my patients and friends that will take the blue canatine and swallow it, but I find it's better typically to dissolve that one in the mouth, even though it is, it is blue. It's not as blue.
00:30:11
Speaker
And so if your mouth is a little bit of blue, you can brush your teeth. You can rinse your mouth with some baking soda. Afterwards, you can drink some hot liquids. Those are some ways to get it out a little faster. Okay. Well, can we, can we touch on each of these? So when would you use one versus the other? So if we could start with just the pure, the, the just blue.
00:30:28
Speaker
So pure methylene blue is great for sustained energy without a crash, like as opposed to having more caffeine, for example. It's also great for just, you know having this elevated capacity for longer. um It's good for inflammation. It's really good for mitochondrial stress for like, you know, chronic fatigue, you know, brain fog. It's really good for for all those things where what's nice about it is not stimulating. So you get this sort of energy rise without feeling stimulated. The blue canatine, for example, is much better if you want some stimulation. If you want to have focus, productivity, flow, you know verbal fluidity with a little bit of elevation, with a little bit of oomph, that's what's nice about blue canatine. Also, the nicotine of blue canatine is interesting because it's also anti-inflammatory. So I do add it oftentimes to the just blue. even So I have people take like ah like a quarter, a half of the just blue and maybe a quarter of the blue canatine together because at that low dose, the nicotine is anti-inflammatory.
00:31:23
Speaker
And it's so it's got this immune system modulation effect as well, which is super cool. so um But in in essence, the Just Blue is really for sustained energy, for inflammation, um for really just getting you this sort of like clean capacity for longer. um And where blue canitine is sort of like take that capacity and raise it and then go, right? So it's like it's like more of a stimulating, but the nice thing about blue canitine too is it doesn't typically make people feel too edgy because... They have their CBD in there, which kind of calms the whole thing down and gives you an off-ramping without a crash, for example. um So that's that's typically how I describe it.
00:32:02
Speaker
Okay. And then on that off ramping, I'm thinking, you know, a lot of advice is, hey, don't drink caffeine after noon because the half-life and you want to be able to fall asleep. So do you have recommendations on what time of day people should normally take this versus, like, I used to take ah vitamin B12 at night and then people were like, no, like that's giving you more energy. That's actually a morning thing you want to do. You're going to impact your sleep. So is this similar with these?
00:32:27
Speaker
Yeah. So typically I recommend starting methylene blue in the morning. So I just blew, I would start it off in the morning and if, or maybe early afternoon, some people can take it later because it's not stimulating, but some people do feel like it does have a detrimental effect on their sleep if they take it too late. So typically if i'm going to dose it for my patients, it's typically in the morning. Sometimes I'll add an additional dose like early in the afternoon. For blue canatine, that's typically before two o'clock in the afternoon because it does have a little bit of caffeine in there. It's only a quarter cup of coffee and a full trochee. So if you're super, that's 50 milligrams of caffeine. and But if you're super sensitive to caffeine, I wouldn't do it. But if you're not sensitive, it's probably not a big deal to have it a little bit later. Nicotine is super short acting, just a milligram of nicotine. And it lasts for about an hour to two hours. And so the average dose of blue canatine for most people is a trochee.
00:33:18
Speaker
So that's only going to be a half a milligram of nicotine and 25 milligrams of caffeine. But another combination that use a lot for these two is I'll have the blue canadiene in the morning. And then in the afternoon, early afternoon, have a little bit of just blue to kind of keep the day going without feeling too overstimulated having a difficult time with sleep, for example.
00:33:38
Speaker
Yeah. so a quick ramp up and then kind of hold that steady a little bit. Yeah. You hold it with the just blue. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And then I guess you have a couple others, the, the calm and the Z's, uh, that I imagine.
00:33:51
Speaker
Yeah. Are doing something pretty different. So can you, can you talk about those? Yeah, we're working on the off switch here, Andrew. The off switch of the brain is the GABA system. So many of us, we know, and society also, um it really gives us a lot of you know positive reinforcement that we should be on all the time. On, on, on, hutle hustle, hustle, hustle, right? But we have to be able to calm down our nervous system. If we can't calm down our nervous system,
00:34:15
Speaker
We can't relax. We can't sleep well. This is what we call the sympathetic versus the parasympathetic balance. so So parasympathetic is our rest, digest, detoxification, and recover nervous system. And that's the off switch that we need to get there.
00:34:28
Speaker
And the off switch is the GABA system. It's our primary inhibitory neurotransmitter in the brain. It's one that calms down the firing of the brain. And so GABA is so important. And most of us living lives of hustle, anxiety,
00:34:41
Speaker
you know, we'll sleep when we're dead kind of mentality are GABA deficient. And GABA deficiency equals insomnia, depression, anxiety, mental health disorders, tremors, and all the rest.
00:34:52
Speaker
And so what we did with Trocom and TroZ was create two formulas that enhance the GABA system. And not only enhance the GABA system, but also enhance um the endocannabinoid system and other systems as well. So Trocom, for example, is a combination of something called B3 GABA,
00:35:08
Speaker
in combination with Kava, CBD, and CBG. And so B3 GABA is important here because GABA itself... You'll find a lot of GABA supplements on the market, but GABA itself is too big of a molecule to get across into the brain.
00:35:22
Speaker
If you take GABA and it works for you, it's because you have a blood-brain barrier that's leaking things in that shouldn't get in there. okay This often corresponds to a leaky gut. And if you optimize the gut, you optimize the the brain barrier too. I've had patients take GABA supplements. They feel very calm on them. We optimize the gut. The GABA supplements stop working. And so we did it at Trescriptions is we created some...
Dr. Scher's Work and Contact Info
00:35:45
Speaker
formulas that optimize the GABA system without giving GABA directly. um So B3 GABA is a vitamin B3 attached to the GABA and B3 gets across into the brain. It has a transporter, takes GABA with it, breaks up into the brain. have mild amounts of B3 along with the GABA as well.
00:36:01
Speaker
The B3 is mildly activating and the GABA is obviously calming you down. So the nice thing about the Trocom is that you feel relaxed, but you don't feel ah's sedated. You don't feel tired. You just feel like you're less anxious, which is really nice. And then Kava, CBD, and CBG are also working on the GABA receptor just at a separate site to where GABA would bind.
00:36:20
Speaker
So we call it this obliper system. It's a patented system that we have to formulate at Troscriptions. It's obligate pair of something binding at separate sites on the GABA receptor, both on the where GABA would bind and a separate site together to enhance the capacity.
00:36:35
Speaker
And so that's really cool. And then we have Trozee, which combines something called Honokial from Magnolia Bark, which is a GABA agonist working on a separate site to the GABA where GABA would bind. And then something called Agarin where binds that binds directly to where GABA would bind. And Agarin is from a psychedelic mushroom called the Amanita mushroom, which is...
00:36:54
Speaker
psychedelic at high doses, um but this particular compound is not psychedelic at very low doses. And so we use it as a long acting because it works on the GABA system. And in in addition, on TroZ, we have things that are working on the adenosine system. Adenosine is a neurotransmitter that helps make us feel sleepy. It's what caffeine actually blocks. That's why you feel more wakeful when you take caffeine. And we're also working on the endocannabinoid system there with CBD and CBN. We're working on the, we have 5-HTP and melatonin in Trozee as well. So it's it's probably the most comprehensive sleep formula on the planet because it's actually addressing five of the major sleep molecules that are involved in sleep, right? GABA, adenosine, also the endocannabinoid system, of serotonin, melatonin all together. So that's why it's it's such a ah really impactful product that helps so many not only fall asleep, but stay asleep as well.
00:37:41
Speaker
That's amazing. Yeah. I can't wait to to try them out. In transparency, I am doing a ah dry January from all supplements. So I'm going just food ah for the month of January, but excited to them out. food either?
00:37:55
Speaker
I am doing food. So do food is no supplements do a I'll do a fast, but i't I only do five day fast. I don't do 30 day fast. Well, five days is a lot. That's a lot. After three days, you've already gotten your golden window, man. So but we talk about this with methylene blue, actually, because we have people that are using methylene blue as as a way to enhance their fast as well and help clean up their cells while they're doing the fasts. And so um there are some cool people that I work with are working on using methylene blue, you know, combining with the ketogenic diet, combining it with endurance and athle athletic performance, looking at autophagy with fasting, at least intermittent fasting and and things like that. So there's the nice thing about the methylene blue it's such a metabolic enhancer. So it really does seem to stimulate and augment those kinds of things.
00:38:38
Speaker
Oh, that's neat. Okay. Well, maybe you fold that into a fast sometime. Maybe not this month. You're on a dry market ninety nine month. Not this month. Yeah. Yeah. Well, Dr. Schultz, this has been great. i have certainly learned a great deal and I know our listeners will as well. Where can people find more about you, more about prescriptions? If they want to get some of this stuff for themselves, where can they do so?
00:39:02
Speaker
Yeah, so you can check it out on our website. It's transcriptions.com. We have all of our products there. If you're a practitioner, we have a practitioner portal for practitioner-only products as well, which are pretty cool, a little bit higher potency. um You can check us out on Instagram at transcriptions.com.
00:39:17
Speaker
Now we have a whole suite of things there, but most the education is going be on our website. We also have a YouTube channel at Transcriptions and we put out a video every week on various health topics. Some that have been around methylene blue. We had one viral video of me just answering questions about methylene blue. That's been seen one and a half million times, crazy enough.
00:39:34
Speaker
And so you can check that out. I don't think it's all that special, but... YouTube did, I guess. And so, um, so you can check it out there on my personal websites, drscottsher.com. My name, D-R-S-E-O-T-T-S-H-E-R-R.com. And, um, you can find a list of, of my consulting hype of, you know my health optimization medicine practice, um, or you can check out our nonprofit as well at homehope.org.
Conclusion and Resources
00:39:56
Speaker
Those are the websites, I think.
00:39:58
Speaker
It's asking, and we'll make sure to include links in the show notes to make it easy for people. But thank you again for not just your time today, but your work with your descriptions and your work for educating people on this potential of optimization to help everyone enjoy healthspan, not just extended lifespan.
00:40:18
Speaker
I'm with you, man. Thank you for having me. i appreciate it. Thank you for joining us on today's episode of the Home of Healthspan podcast. And remember, you can always find the products, practices, and routines mentioned by today's guests, as well as many other Healthspan role models on Alively.com.
00:40:33
Speaker
Enjoy a lively day.