Abel James Show

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You’ve probably heard the buzz around the mythical and sketchy-sounding synthetic compound known as methylene blue.

How is it that methylene blue went from a 19th-century textile dye to a futuristic, cutting-edge mitochondrial-enhancing compound that turns your tongue blue?

After surviving freak bouts of carbon monoxide poisoning, black mold exposure and chronic lyme disease, methylene blue earned its spot in my bag of tricks many moons ago. Should it be in yours?

With mitochondrial dysfunction affecting a whopping 94% of adults in the U.S., I’d say it’s worth a look.

We’re here with one of the foremost experts and thought leaders integrating intriguing compounds like methylene blue into their practice, Dr. Scott Sherr. 

While methylene blue is a remarkable tool for healing and performance optimization of the brain and body, it’s not right for everyone. Since methylene blue can interact with certain medications and supplements and we’re still learning about its effects on the microbiome, it’s essential to exercise caution and be intentional about sourcing, dosage, and frequency of use. 

Dr. Scott is here to separate the truth from the hype. 

In this episode, you’re about to discover:

• How to improve metabolic and mitochondrial function with low-dose methylene blue
• How combining hyperbaric oxygen therapy and high altitude training with methylene blue further enhance performance
• How to dose methylene blue strategically
• And much more…

Find Dr. Scott Sherr and his work at: 

• drscottsherr.com: hyperbaric consulting, health optimization, medicine consulting
• troscriptions.com: high quality methylene blue and supplement stacks
• homehope.org: Health optimization, medicine and training for practitioners

You can also join Substack as a free or paid member for ad-free episodes of this show, to comment on each episode, and to hit me up in the DM’s. Join at abeljames.substack.com. And if you’re feeling generous, write a quick review for the Abel James Show on Apple or Spotify. You rock.

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[00:00:01] Abel James:

Hey, all. This is Abel James, and thanks so much for joining us on the show. Have you ever tried methylene blue? How is it that methylene blue went from a nineteenth century textile dye and fish tank cleaner to a futuristic cutting edge mitochondrial enhancing compound that sets your brain on fire and turns your tongue blue. You've probably heard the buzz around the mythical and sketchy sounding synthetic compound known as methylene blue. For me, after unfortunate run-in surviving carbon monoxide poisoning, black mold exposure, and chronic Lyme disease, methylene blue earned its spot in my bag of tricks many moons ago. Should it be in yours?   With mitochondrial dysfunction affecting a whopping ninety four percent of adults in The United States, I'd say it's worth a look. We're here today with one of the foremost experts and thought leaders integrating intriguing compounds like methylene blue into their practice,   doctor Scott Scherr. While methylene blue is an incredible tool for healing and performance optimization of the brain and body, it's not right for everyone. Since methylene blue can interact with certain medications and supplements and we're still learning about its effects on the microbiome,   it's essential to be strategic and intentional about sourcing, dosage, and frequency of use. Doctor Scott is here to separate the truth from the hype. Quick plug before we get to the interview. Please take a quick moment to make sure that you're subscribed to the Abel James Show wherever you listen to your podcast.  

To stay up to date, make sure that you sign up for my newsletter at ablejames.com.   You can also sign up for my Substack as a free or paid member for ad free episodes of this show. You can comment on each episode. You can also hit me up in the DMs. You can join my Substack at ablejames.substack.com.   Alright. In this episode, you're about to discover how to improve metabolic and mitochondrial   function with low dose methylene blue, which supplements and pharmaceuticals   interact with methylene blue and what to do about it, how hyperbaric oxygen therapy and high altitude training can improve performance, and much more. Let's hang out with doctor Sher.   Welcome back, folks. Doctor Scott Sher is a board certified internal medicine physician expert in hyperbaric oxygen therapy, a leading voice in integrative medicine and health optimization, and a father of four.  

Doctor Scott is also the COO of Transcriptions,   a company revolutionizing   wellness with pharmaceutical grade methylene blue and other cutting edge formulations.   His educational videos about methylene blue are some of the best I've ever seen. So thanks so much for joining us here today, doctor Scott. It's good to be here with you, Abel. Thanks for having me, man. Absolutely.   Now methylene blue, when you look into it, has an absolutely   fascinating history being synthesized   in the mid eighteen hundreds as a textile dye and then going on to be implemented widely in the military and beyond   for use as an antimicrobial   drug to treat malaria and other pathogens, but kind of   randomly and accidentally as with most drugs in their development. So maybe you could share a little bit about how, methylene blue went from this nineteenth century   textile dye to this now cutting edge   health optimization   tool and intervention for biohackers.  



[00:17:03] Dr. Scott Scherr:

Yeah. I mean, it's a really great question. Right? There's, like, such a history behind that, and it's very rich and very blue as you well know, Abel,   and lots of blue urine. And at very high very high doses, other blue secretions like poop and tears and things like that. But that's a really high doses. And like there's it gets thanks. Yeah. There's all these crazy things and and, like, lots of great puns you can use with the blue, like, blueing yourself and blueing others and I got blue and why are you not blue and, you know, go blue yourself and things like that. So we had a lot of fun with that when we first started, you know, thinking about methylene blue back in 02/2020,   way before it was cool. Although as you were describing,   1897 was actually the first   time methylene blue was used. It was actually the first drug that was approved by our FDA at that time, and it was approved for malaria as you mentioned.  

But the the backstory there is that it was a textile dye. It was developed as a fully synthetic textile dye to dye things blue. And if you had blue jeans, maybe Levi Strauss back in the eighteen seventies,   I think they were around back then, you would have blue jeans that were dyed with methylene blue. But interestingly enough, I don't know exactly nobody really knows exactly how this came about, but they were testing all these new compounds   because they were looking for something that could treat infection. Like, this is a time when there was no antibiotics, no antimicrobials.   None of that stuff existed until the nineteen forties and fifties really until penicillin   came around. So before that, there were really few remedies out there and they were testing all these various compounds   including some of these dyes, including methylene blue against malaria. And they found that you could use meth methylene blue specifically at very high doses and kill malaria and you wouldn't harm the normal cells, the human host. And this is why it actually got the name of a magic bullet at the time because this magic bullet   definition at that time was   kills things but doesn't kill what you don't want it to kill. Right? So and and very few things were able to do that. And so methylene blue became the first antimicrobial   available,   as a as a drug that was registered with the FDA. And so between 1897   and 1950,   higher doses of methylene blue over about a milligram per kilogram. So seventy milligrams at the lowest end of maybe fifty to seventy milligrams to as high as maybe two hundred and fifty milligrams was kind of like the dosing that would be used for urinary tract infections, fungal infections,   even viral infections actually was quite commonly used for. And even up until the nineteen sixties and seventies, methylene blue was used in many countries actually as a viral infection treatment. What would happen is if you had a sore throat, your mom or dad would paint the back of your mouth with methylene blue. And I was actually speaking to somebody just a couple weeks ago from   Eastern Europe. I think she was from Czechoslovakia actually. And she grew up that her mom would paint all their mouths with methylene   blue when they had a viral infection.  

And so,   even back, you know, going back to World War two, as you were mentioning earlier, when you were in World War two, if you were going to the Pacific, you had to take methylene blue prophylactically   because you would prevent things like getting fungal infections, etcetera. And so they all these stories and songs about it, about, you know, peeing blue in the loo, basically. The loo being the bathroom. Right? Actually, it was even Eisenhower himself that talked about taking it during World War two and having these experiences.   And so that was the first real chapter   of methylene blue and really significant impact   on the capacity to have an antimicrobial. Like, you know, nothing existed at that time.  

And from there, things changed because as antimicrobials came around in the nineteen fifties, nothing blue became less popular because it had this side effect, right, which is benign, but it does make your urine blue. And so for the most part,   people didn't want their urine to be blue. There was these new exciting medications that came out and so that nothing but kind of came   less involved in the the human world. But then from there had like this new evolution   in fish tanks as you well pointed out, and also in biochemistry   as a stain in cells. And in addition, the first antipsychotics were actually derived from methylene blue because methylene blue has this other property called being a monoamine oxidase inhibitor, which just means that it has this capacity to increase norepinephrine, dopamine, and serotonin. So three of your major neurotransmitters   that we can talk about later, but, you know, those are really important obviously too. A lot of our antidepressants now,   although there's a lot of controversy around antidepressants,   but those antidepressants that we have now are based on similar kinds of ideas and and also some of our antipsychotics.  

So you have this new   way of making antipsychotics from methylene blue. You have this   capacity now to clean fish tanks. And because   just like it cleans humans, it actually cleans the fish too. But I don't recommend drinking fish tank cleaner, everybody, because methylene blue is has contamination capacity, and we can talk about that. And then the staining part is probably the last piece to mention here because   what happens and this actually is something that I actually did in in biochemistry   when I was in in college. You can use methylene blue to dye   certain parts or stain certain parts of your cell, specifically your mitochondria.  

And that's where things get very, very interesting because that's really the power of methylene blue now that we're seeing in the biohacking, performance, wellness, endurance,   regeneration,   chronic inflammation because mitochondrial dysfunction is such a big problem.   And what methylene blue can do is actually concentrate in the mitochondria and make it work better in a in a number of different ways.  

[00:22:21] Abel James:

So when people are getting into it, something like this, it's   it's kind of hard to understand and conceptualize. Because at first, like, for them, it was old fashioned because it made you pee blue. Now a lot of people are just like, oh, it's from the future because it makes you pee blue. It's it's a fascinating   thing that's going on. But why do you think it's been   and maybe this is me reading too much into it. But as an effective therapy, aside from the obvious   pretty benign side effect of of blue urine, why has it been swept under the rug for so many other treatments   that are you know, supposedly   impossible   to treat or denied by modern medicine, or at least historically, like Lyme disease or some of these other issues?  

But why do you think methylene blue has been so   underrepresented   as a therapy?  

[00:23:07] Dr. Scott Scherr:

I think there's a number of things there. Number one is that we all love new shiny objects. And when the new shiny object comes into our field of view, everything else gets thrown away. This is, like, perfect example. I have four kids like you mentioned, and something is new in my house. It is amazing for like three to five days and then everything else, it just kinda goes back into the, you know, the the background like everything else. And so when even though methylene blue was very, very good at what it did back in the forties and fifties, when you had penicillin come around, it's like, holy shit. This is like this new drug and it has all this and it works so quickly and it's like, it's the next thing since, you know, it's it's the most amazing thing. Right? And then there's then there's new drugs and there's a new drugs and there's a like, and then of course, there's the profit margins associated with that because the longer something's been around, the less it's going to cost. And that's the thing about methylene movies. It's been around such a long time.   There is less interest in doing studies, although this is actually starting to do happen a little bit more now, because they're using what drug companies are trying to do is take derivations   of methylene blue and find drugs to make out of it as this is what we do. Right? Because our culture   and our sort of capitalist   drives are to make as much money as possible. And so if it's not making a lot about it a lot of money, people aren't putting a lot of emphasis on it. And as a result of that, that's one of the major reasons why, you know, methane boot has kind of been like the sleeper compound   because it's been around a while. It has all this great research and more and more research actually that have been done in the last couple decades, especially in mitochondrial optimization, mitochondrial,   function, improving mitochondrial function. And and, yeah, I think the other the other aspects of this and it's an important one is that methylene blue is the first fully synthetic drug that was ever made, which means that it didn't come from nature directly. Now, of course, everything comes from nature sort of indirectly because of the the chemical structures and having to make things from other compounds. But because it's the first fully synthetic compound that also on the other end of it, the people that wanna be natural and, you know, ancestral. Right? And, others like that are like, oh, I don't wanna take anything that's not, you know, and that's not from the ground.  

And so and and I understand that piece because it's a it's an important one. What I often say is, you know, I'm I'm a medical doc. I've been in practice for a long time.   Not everything synthetic is bad for you as just like not everything natural is good for you. I mean, as you know, Abel, probably, like, you can go to forage the wrong mushrooms   and die of liver failure, which I've seen happen. Right? And not only just synthetic versus non synthetic or natural, it's also dose dependence. Right? And I think a lot of the controversy around methylene blue most recently   has been around the dosing specifically.  

And   people out there are talking about how methylene blue could be toxic and it can cause your sperm counts to go down and and it's gonna,   cause brain problems and things like that because they're talking about too high of a dose as well. And so the so it's a dosing issue. It's a synthetic versus natural thing. It's been around such a long time. And as you mentioned, like, I didn't think about sort of like the old sort of new blue thing where like in the sixties and like in seventies,   everything synthetic was actually amazing. Right? And but now we're kinda more, like, more of a natural movement, which is overall better. But and that sort of blue thing kinda looks futuristic too too. I didn't think about that sort of dichotomy though, which is kinda fun.  

[00:26:21] Abel James:

It yeah. It's it's quite bizarre. But let's talk a little bit more about what methylene does when you take it, then we can talk about dosing because that's,   certainly another issue. But in terms of the issues that most people are struggling with, metabolic dysfunction, mitochondrial dysfunction,   What's happening when you take a little bit of methylene blue in your system?  

[00:26:41] Dr. Scott Scherr:

Yeah. So what we know is happening is that, you know, methylene blue is concentrating in that mitochondria. Right? But what people don't realize so when I was in sixth grade or seventh grade and just like my a couple of my kids have just recently been, I watched them learn science or biology. And when you learn science and biology in sixth and seventh grade, you learn that that it you have a cell. It has a nucleus. It has cytoplasm.   It has this thing called the mitochondria in it. It has other things like the Golgi apparatus and and and and and and the plastic reticulum and other things. These are all organelles. But you learn that there's, like, one mitochondria in there, but that's actually not the case. There are some cells in our body that have thousands of mitochondria per cell. We have other cells in our body that have zero. Do you actually know the one cell in our body that has no mitochondria, Abel? This is kind of a fun fact. No blood mitochondria. So it used to have mitochondria, and then it got rid of it so that it could carry oxygen better. It's our red blood cells. So our red blood cells, when they're maturing, they initially have mitochondria, but then they get rid of their mitochondria so they can just carry more oxygen.   But in essence, we have the most mitochondria per cell in eggs and sperm.  

Making a baby takes a lot of work, especially for the female.   That's why eggs have the most mitochondrial per cell of any type of cell in the human body.   And outside of that, we have the brain, the heart, the liver,   musculoskeletal tissue. And so what do people have   symptomatically   when they have mitochondrial dysfunction? They have brain fog, concentration problems,   fertility issues, cardiac,   detox,   exercise induced fatigue, lot of cognitive symptoms because the brain is so intensively making energy, right? Because that's what the mitochondria do. The mitochondria   make this energy currency called ATP or adenosine triphosphate.  

And another fun fact, we make about 165   pounds of ATP every single day. That's a huge amount of energy and that that doesn't stick around for very long. It's always being recycled and used in various ways, but the the thing about making energy is that, there's a cost to making energy. When we make ATP, we don't just make ATP. We also make water, carbon dioxide, which we breathe off and also is a major signaling molecule and we also make what are called reactive oxygen species. These small little molecules of oxygen that are unpaired   electrons that cause a little bit of stress to the system, but they're all at these small levels are really important for signaling. Like how much energy should you make? Should I make more? Should I make less? Do I have to kind of repurpose what I'm doing to, you know, to get other resources in other locations? But the problem is that, you know, mitochondrial dysfunction   is such a huge issue. Like ninety four percent of The US population has some element of mitochondrial dysfunction. That's a huge amount. And as a result, people can't either make energy effectively   because they don't have the capacity to do that or they don't have the capacity to detox with that, you know, those reactive oxygen species that get,   built up over time. And that requires antioxidants. So on both ends of this, you have energy production and you have energy detoxification.  

They're both extremely essential. And 94% of The US population, US adults can't do some of this. Okay. So that's a preamble   to talk about what methylene blue does because I just the context here is that   in the mitochondria itself, that energy production part is something called the electron transport chain. It's this chain of proteins   that flows electrons through them. These electrons actually come from our food, come from fat, come from carbohydrates   and less so come from proteins. But depending if you are a fat burning man or if you're a carbohydrate burning man,   the majority of your electrons from your food are gonna go into your mitochondria, and they're going to go through this cycle and help you make energy. But the problem with those complexes is that many of us have deterioration   of those complexes. Many of us can't make energy well and then on the detox side, they can't, you know, do something with that that that oxidative stress as reactive oxygen species. So the most common reasons why people have mitochondrial dysfunction, number one is insulin resistance. So if you have high blood sugars, you're not making energy well. You're not detoxing well. Number two is is a big category, stress.  

Stress could be from   chronic sympathetic dominance. So your fight or flight nervous system is on all the time and depleting neurotransmitters, neurohormones,   and mitochondrial dysfunction. It could be from a toxic relationship, from trauma in your in your past. It could be, you know, toxic lots of things, toxic exposures, etcetera. Infections, post infectious syndromes, so your long COVIDs, your your chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, things like that with maybe a a infectious component.   And then, medications as well. Like, a lot of the common medications that people take can actually affect mitochondrial function too. Most common ones that a lot of people will take are things like metformin,   proton pump inhibitors   like Prilosec and Protonix,   even other and a lot of other drugs will do it. So that's that's kind of a highlight. I wanted to give that kind of background.  

Now before I get into methylene blue, do you have any questions about all of that? Oh, keep steaming. This is great. Okay. Cool. Alright. Although I didn't realize that about metformin. That's interesting. Yes. The metformin is actually a complex one destroyer. So what metformin does is a diabetic drug for those that don't know. It's been around a long time. What metformin does is it actually,   so there's four complexes on the mitochondria, complex one, two, three, and four. So that's what they're called. Complex one and two are the most important two that pick up those electrons from your food, and bring it into the electron transport chain. Everybody started   NAD. NAD these days, NAD. Some people like to call it NAD. I don't like to call it NAD. That's weird. But NAD is what I call it. And there's and there's and then there's FAD, f a d, f n and and that goes to complex two. And so what metformin does is actually blocks   complex   one, which puts more stress on the mitochondria. So what the mitochondria does as a result of that is makes new mitochondria to help compensate for that. And so newer mitochondria are gonna have better mitochondria and better complexes, at least initially. But I I'm not a big fan actually of using my of of Metformin long term, especially from an antiaging long longevity   perspective because it's doing this. A little bit of stress is good, and I think maybe periodic. I don't know. It depends on the person. But I think if you're exercising and you're otherwise doing other healthy things, I don't think metformin's necessary for most healthy people or on the on the path of of health optimization.  

But yeah. So people don't realize that, like, a lot of your medications are actually having effect if not directly on the mitochondria,   indirectly. So like for example, I have a friend of mine, his name is John Kim. He's a PhD pharmacist. And we were, I had a long conversation with him about all these medications that are depleting antioxidants, that are depleting vitamins, minerals, and nutrients.   The most common actually is birth control pills because birth control pills deplete,   a number of your electrolytes or excuse me, your minerals like magnesium, zinc, and I think it's copper as well. And so these are all affecting how well you can make energy. So that's why it's so important. You know, the larger context for me always is, well, how are we optimizing people's health? It's not just gonna be giving them methylene blue, although it can be very, very helpful, but it's what is the the larger   picture here, the ecosystem that this goes in. And and this is kind of all related to, you know, sidebar, which I can get to get back to later, something called health optimization medicine, which is a nonprofit organization that we run that helps train practitioners on how to optimize something called metabolomics, which is the study of these small molecules that are all working in real time in our cells to help us optimize energy production, detoxification,   cellular function, gut neurotransmitters,   hormones. So that that's kind of like the the base foundation for me as a clinician.  

But   a lot of people are starting at a place where need a lot of help. And this is where methylene blue can come in. Because now that you understand a little bit about energy production detoxification,   the key thing to understand about methylene blue is that methylene blue can help enhance energy production. It can compensate   for any aspect   of dysfunction in that energy production capacity, those complexes that we just mentioned. And at the same time, it can work directly   as an antioxidant. So picking up some of that free radical reactive oxygen species that might be in too high of a supply and work directly as an antioxidant.   So because of that, it has profound implications   in helping people   across the spectrum of health because in in essence, what it's called a redox cycler, r e d o x, redox cycler, meaning it can help with   reduction oxidation.  

Fancy for saying it can donate and   accept electrons in the mitochondria,   helping you make or   dispose of the waste products of energy metabolism.  

[00:35:04] Abel James:

So the problem is that more than nine out of ten people have   underperforming   cells in mitochondria. And when they're underpowered, this is extremely stressful on not just the cell itself, but the whole system. Right? And so we have this happening at scale   year after year, year after year. And that doesn't seem to be getting much better, but   what a powerful tool to have. And I know that when I first   started experimenting with methylene blue, just just a small amount, I felt it immediately. And they're really having taken almost every supplement ever, you know, having hosted a podcast for more than a decade or whatever. It's just like you get sent everything. I've tried most things. And and to be honest, you don't feel most things. And most of these products also probably don't do much.   But boy, methylene blue is is different.  

So let's talk quickly about dosing because maybe we can just address the big piece. Basically, if you're talking about like two hundred fifty milligrams,  

[00:36:00] Dr. Scott Scherr:

this is an IV. This is like this isn't something that you're doing at home, generally speaking, just experimenting or playing around and and hurting yourself. So maybe you can talk about the difference between those two extremes of of what's going on here. Yeah. And I think it's important that you mentioned your experience. Right, Abel? Because the key I found is that methylene blue does have a profound effect on most people, but it's also going to be dose dependent. And it's very important to understand that   what we found over the years and so we've been working now clinically with methylene blue now for about five years. Most people have just heard about within the last six months probably of hearing this podcast. And that's cool. It's exciting that people now hear about it, have a maybe like a slight   understanding of maybe what it does or maybe what other people are using it for. But the key to understand with dosing is that lower doses are extremely   effective for mitochondrial support. So we're talking about   four milligrams, eight milligrams, sixteen milligrams, twenty five milligrams, maybe up to thirty, maybe up to forty milligrams. But really,   the lower the dose   the best way to describe this is that   what I found overall is that people are taking too high of a dose initially, and then they might have side effects. They might not feel very good. And then we always wanna have, like, the lowest dose that's gonna be most effective. Right? And so   what we now know is that from mitochondrial support perspective, most people will actually significant benefit significantly benefit somewhere between about four to about twenty five milligrams in general. But if you find most products out there, most products will be dosing anywhere between forty, fifty, a hundred, or even more milligrams   in the dosing. And the problem with that is that these lower doses of methylene blue are actually very supportive for mitochondrial function. They can enhance the energy. They can help with detoxification. But as you get to be higher on the doses, you get to be, like, especially around about a milligram per kilogram so that on average, it's gonna be about fifty to seventy milligrams in The US, maybe more, maybe, like, depending on what the average weight of a human is these days. But but fifty to seventy milligrams so fifty fifty to seventy milligrams is kind of where you're getting to be about that one milligram per kilogram. And what happens around that dosing is that it becomes anti infective. It's also great for acute stress, acute infection,   acute trauma, and we can talk about that. But the reason why it becomes more stressful on the system is because around those doses, you're making   not only more energy, but you're also making more some of something called hydrogen peroxide in the system. And hydrogen peroxide, people know about hydrogen peroxide. You can go to the store and get it, and you can use it for as an antiseptic. But our cells actually use hydrogen peroxide as a fantastic   antiinfective.  

And   it's actually great because   most antibiotics as as many of you that are listening know stop working over a period of time because these bugs become resistant.   But bugs can't become resistant to hydrogen peroxide like they can to other mechanisms of action of these these other antibiotics and antimicrobials.   And so these higher doses of methylene blue, you get this hydrogen peroxide produced if you got a profound anti infective capacity.   However,   what happens also is that if if you're increasing hydrogen peroxide in the system, you're forcing your system, forcing the body to make more antioxidants, specifically glutathione.   And what happens if you're already been sick for a while, if you have a chronic complex medical illness, if you've been having chronic fatigue for a while, chronic inflammation,   you're depleting all these antioxidants, and you're depleting your capacity to make them too. And so if you suddenly give yourself a huge amount of methylene blue,   all of a sudden the body's like, holy shit, what do I do with all this? I don't have the capacity   to make   glutathione, for example, and I have all this hydrogen peroxide. So you're going to feel badly. Okay? And so the key is to start off, especially if you're, you know, if you're just kinda starting your health journey or on the beginnings of that with these lower doses because it's not as stressful to give four, eight, sixteen milligrams. You're just slowly getting enough methylene blue in there to enhance the ability for you to make energy   and help with that detoxification side too without causing the stress of making all that hydrogen peroxide. And and the other issue here too, Abel, is that dosing   is extremely important, but also the quality of the methylene blue that you're taking. Because the the challenge is that   the quality of methylene blue is kind of all across the board at this point because   the way it's developed, the way that the way actually it's made, it's not   unlikely   it's very common, unfortunately, to get it contaminated with heavy metals, things like lead, mercury, cadmium, and arsenic.  

So you don't want those things, obviously. And   if you're taking high amounts of a methylene blue that's contaminated, you're gonna be getting more of that as well. And so   a big push for what I do and, you know, what I've worked with clinically and with with our company is to make sure we get the cleanest methylene blue possible and also precision of dosing. A lot of the liquids out there, for example,   none of them that we tested actually met   any of their label claims for their potency.   So they're all weaker than they say. And and that's because methylene blue in a liquid form is very unstable,   and deteriorates very quickly into something called Azure blue. Azure blue is a metabolite of methylene blue, and Azure blue itself is just it's not as active as a mitochondrial enhancer, but it's more active as a as a monoamine oxidase inhibitor. So it increases your norepinephrine more and serotonin and dopamine, so it could be a little more dangerous. And so I don't like liquids for that reason. I've been asked we've been asked to make liquids many years, and I always say no because of these these issues. And so and what I've what actually a number of people have come by and over the years a clinician of mine, a friend of mine, her name, her name is Ashley and she was taking methylene blue for a Lyme coinfection and she was telling me that she was taking one methylene blue that was liquid at maybe like eight milligrams, let's say. And And then she still took one that was not a liquid in a in a buccal troche form, and it was like night and day because, you know, if you have precision of dosing   so what there's a lot of information out there that people are probably now learning about methylene blue, but the key really is low dosing is almost always the way you wanna go. Even if you need a high dose, like, for a chronic infection, like a Lyme co infection or something, oftentimes, you wanna start off at four, eight, you know, sixteen milligrams or something and then increase your dose slowly over time. So the way I always work with it is that I titrate every three to five days. So start at four milligrams,   increase your dose in three days to eight milligrams, then to twelve, then to sixteen. And so once you start feeling better, that could be the dose we wanna keep you on.  

Or if you don't if we're not quite sure, we might wanna keep going up.   And or if you're at some more of a chronic infection, we might have to keep going up on the dose even higher. But in essence, what what I always say is that I guess the last piece of this would be that people always ask me the question, well, how often do I need to take methylene blue? And my answer to that question is some people need to take methylene blue some of the time and then some of the people need to take methylene blue all of the time for a period of time. And and what I mean by that is that if you have a lot of chronic mitochondrial stress,   methylene blue is a fantastic way to start feeling a little bit better, getting a little bit more energy, getting a little more detox, and then titrate your dose to feel good so that all of a sudden you're able to do some of the things that you weren't able to do before. Maybe start walking, start exercising a little bit. Your mood will be better. You can start taking those supplements that you really didn't have the motivation to take. You can start making dietary changes. And then hopefully over time, you can peel off the methylene blue and start using it less often as you don't need it as much to support your mitochondria.  

Because for the most part, what I love people to be able to do is use it as needed for when they need it. So when they're under more stress, if they have,   airplane flights are going on because it could be great for flying and jet lag or if they have more stress at the house. Like, my kids are starting school this week and things are crazy. Like, it's it's a methylene blue week over here that's more intense, for example.   Or if they're, if they're feeling like they're getting sick, then they can take their methylene blue either as a prophylactic or as a higher dose,   to help them as as as an anti infective. So in in addition, on the endurance side, the people that are in performance,   athletics, like, we know that there's a potential for methylene blue to actually help with endurance because it can work just like oxygen in the cells and increase your aerobic capacity. And and we're seeing this especially   in that community, and I'm working with cyclists and marathon runners   and I had a dude here in Colorado that did the Leadville race, the hundred mile ultra marathon. And he cut out three hours from his time using methylene blue, taking thirty six milligrams of methylene blue every four hours. Crazy.  

Yeah. So it's there's the endurance piece is really interesting,   and we can piece that out if you want to. But there's there's that kind of like what I call in the medical speak is PRN as needed for when you wanna really drive your metabolic function up, your mitochondrial function up and and not need it all the time. So in essence, I think that's, like, the major bag of breakdowns I would I would say would be best. Where do you find having  

[00:44:28] Abel James:

now   been using methylene blue for around five years, I think you said, where do you find your dose usually following? And in what sort of circumstances?  

[00:44:36] Dr. Scott Scherr:

Like, this is a big week, for example. Right? Yeah. Yeah. So a lot of this depends. Right? So a good example would be   my regular dosing is typically maybe about four milligrams   every other day. So not a huge amount. Right? Because I've been doing this for a while.   I'm relatively well optimized. However,   about three weeks ago, two and a half weeks ago, I partially tore my calf. Oh, man. And it was uncool, man, entirely.   And so but as a result of that,   I mean, I love helping people. I have all I know all the tools and tricks. I didn't wanna use them all on me, but I have, of course. And, I'm doing much better now. I'm walking and, you know, thankfully, I didn't fully tear it. But in that acute setting,   I was using   much more methylene blue than I would typically. So I was using   sixteen to thirty six milligrams of methylene blue   twice daily, you know, for about five days,   just because what and because of that what what that does is it's, you know, there when there's a lot more inflammation in the body, right, because you have to create this inflammatory response, what I'm trying to do is help that inflammatory   response help heal   the tissue, but at the same time, not causing a systemic   reaction.  

Right? And so there's lots of other things that went into my protocols. But what I worry about oftentimes when people have more of like an acute systemic kind of thing like that is that they get a lot of inflammation, they get like a leaky gut, then their brain gets leaky, and then they get brain fog, and then they get mold reactivation and lime and and all the things. And so what what methylene blue can do is help tamper down that systemic inflammation, which could be really helpful. But but that and that's kind of an extreme example, but and like as the Leadville guy is too. But for me, when I'm traveling, for example, if I'm going to, like, a conference or going to be away for a little while, I typically go go to about eight to sixteen milligrams a day,   for a period of time. And then I'll I'll wean it off when I come back. But it's that extra support that can go a long way because   you're under more stress. You're for example so a good example here is flying. When you're on an airplane,   typically, most of you that are listening are at zero feet of sea water. You're at sea level when you're getting on an airplane. As soon as you get pressurized on an airplane,   that pressurization,   what that feels like is actually because they're simulating   you being at an altitude. Typically that altitude is 8,000 feet. So you've just went from zero to 8,000 feet in about five seconds as soon as they close the cabin door. And that's why people actually get very tired initially when they get on a plane is because all of a sudden it's like they're not getting as much oxygen because 8,000 feet, you're going from 21% oxygen to about 16% oxygen. So   fun fact, also, I live in Colorado. My elevation is about 5,500 feet. So that delta, that change for me, if you wanna have less jet lag, move to Colorado and fly places because it is much better. Yeah. Do you remember that when you lived here? Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. I've also and this is I'm curious if this is kind of a, you know, rabbit hole in and of itself, but I get really into reading research about  

[00:47:25] Abel James:

people and populations who live at high elevation, some of the adaptations that can happen there for people who, especially move to high elevation after not being raised there. Because the people who are raised there are just superhuman   sherpas   for the most part. But, you know, for the mere mortals like us, there are adaptations   that we can benefit from when you spend a significant amount of time,  

[00:47:45] Dr. Scott Scherr:

up at elevation, whether it's training for a few days or weeks, or I think, what I learned mostly is that after somewhere around four or five years, there are some other adaptations that actually kick in that might stick around in terms of the cardiovascular system and that sort of thing. So maybe you could just riff on that a little because it's Yeah. I don't know about those long term adaptations. That's interesting. So I have to look into that because I'm just at that four to five year mark here in Colorado. But you're totally right that people come here all the time to do. So there's the Boulder community where I live just next to is big ultra marathon community here and also Colorado Springs. Colorado Springs is about 7,000 feet and Boulder is about 5,500.   And it's it's obvious. Like, you come here with that hypoxic stress. What happens is that you release a hormone in the body from the kidneys called epogen or EPO for short. This is the doping drug that people know about with Lance Armstrong   finally admitting on Oprah many years later that he took it and all those kinds of things. And so EPO   as a drug increases your red blood cell density, the number of red blood cells that you have in circulation.  

And as a result of that, you can carry more oxygen. And so living at altitude here, you have like an initial   three to five days where you have a change in your   plasma volume, so which is, like, how much liquid you have in your bloodstream and that, you know, that plasma volume change can help you feel better pretty quickly.   However, like, long term, it takes about three months to have a an adaptation where you have that EPOGEN   raise and then you have increased red blood cell density. But then you then then it's been great. I go on an airplane. I go to California. I come to Texas, whatever. I'm like, I feel so much better. I love coming back down to altitude from altitude and my and my aura ring loves me as well. Yeah. Because, like, what have you just done? Like like, I get, like, maybe a 90 once a month, but, like, when I go to even in a hotel room, like a shitty hotel room, I get a 90 fives. It's like Wow. You know, I'm at a conference. I shouldn't be getting 90 fives, you know, but it's because of that. So but, you know, the thing about it is that that hypoxic stress   causes all these physiologic things to change. Right? So we get stem cells released. We get more mitochondria,   that get produced in our cells, and then we get more red blood cells. And so that hypoxia is really interesting. And, you know, I'm I've been in hyperbaric and hypo in hypoxic   world for a long time, kind of understanding how this all can be beneficial.  

And and where where methylene blue comes in here is that especially for an acute hypoxic stress, like this low oxygen stress that's on an airplane,   your cell's like, holy shit, I I can't make enough energy. I don't have enough oxygen around. And so the methylene boot comes in. It can work just like oxygenating your cells to help you produce more energy, even at a lower amount of oxygen percentage. And then it also has a protective effect against radiation so that you have more radiation if you're higher and closer to the sun,   more UV. And then you also have, like, poor air, poor people, not poor people, like, in in monetary, but, like, they might be, you know, coughing on you and and and and things like that. And so methane boot can be very protective in those capacities.  

So I I use it, and I I think, you know, elevation there have been and just kinda going back, there have been some studies looking at, like, the longevity   benefit from somewhere around   three to 5,000 feet, somewhere around there. But there's also some studies showing that there's a higher risk of suicide actually at these higher elevations that people live here for long periods of time as well. So so there's there's that. I also get that. Yes. Yeah. I mean, if you live in Colorado as you well remember, like, there's a lot of sun here. Right? So it's it's sunny at, like, almost all year round, and so we do have that benefit. But, I'm not sure why the increased risk in suicidality at high elevation,   but there is that piece as well,   to be aware of. But for the most part, the hypoxic stress is good for all of us to do at certain periods of time. This is just what even just c o two training. Like, if you're looking at breath holds and things like that and learning how to just hold your breath a little bit longer and being more tolerant to elevated c o twos and low oxygen levels, this can go a long way. And actually, cool I have a friend, I don't know if you know Brian McKenzie, if he's been on your show before, but Oh, he hasn't. Brian's a cool guy. Yeah. Brian's a cool guy and and we talk about hypoxic   hyperoxic training and we also talk about hypoxic   methylene blue training actually. Because that is a great combination actually. And he's he's actually been showing some really cool things there.  



[00:51:48] Abel James:

That's fascinating.   Now   I have a couple of guesses about why the the suicide rates might be higher and that's and the first would be just social isolation because it's so much more difficult. And if you're caught outside after dark,   you might die. Whereas in other you know, living in the South now, that's just not really true in other places, and so that's I think that isolates people a lot more. But also the stress of having   a lower amount of oxygen saturation   over time where you don't get a break, I would imagine that also has some negative consequences   on your psyche. I know that my cognition wasn't as great up there,   as it is down at sea level. Playing saxophone was a lot harder due to that not having as much oxygen in air. Like, there are pros and cons, but definitely there's benefit in going up and down, it seems.  

And there's there are also different thresholds where it's, like, 5,500 is way different from 10,000 or 12 or 15  

[00:52:46] Dr. Scott Scherr:

Yeah. Yeah. We have a we have a number of people that use methylene blue   living at those kinds of altitudes because they can't tolerate being there. The couple like, I think evergreen's up at at, like, seven or 8,000 feet. Right? So it's high. Yeah. It's high up there. And so a lot of we have everybody that comes to to Colorado to visit me, they get methylene blue when they get off the plane. Hopefully, they got the methylene blue before they left, but if not, when they arrive. And I have friends that have houses in places all around Colorado. People come visit. They have oxygen concentrators there for people too. That's not ideal because you don't wanna use the concentrator   if you can avoid it because it's gonna prevent you from having the acclimatization.  

But if you're gonna be there just a couple days, then it can really work to your, to your benefit to having that around. But yeah, I have a lot of people that have actually been starting to use methylene blue for   climbing and going and mountaineering and using it on these bigger mountains because it gives you that additional   oxygen capacity   without it being oxygen. It's just giving you more energy capacity at a at a lower oxygen percentage and also decreasing   inflammation   as well and that sort of stress that's happening on the mitochondria. So I I but I agree with you on on the on the social isolation piece. I think that's a big one,   living at altitude and it's certainly a lot colder here as well. And then I also would say that if you already have any, like, underlying pulmonary issues, it's gonna be harder. Right? I mean, I worked in the hospital for many years and I didn't understand it initially why everybody that was leaving the hospital, not everybody, but so many people, excuse me, in   comparison to working in California were leaving the hospital on oxygen.  

So, like, I would actually recommend if people had pulmonary issues, like, you had to leave Colorado. Like, going to go back to sea level is going to give you more years of life. So there is that piece for sure. But I think the sweet spot is probably where we are. I think it's anything a little bit higher than six or seven. 6,000, 7,000 feet gets to be high,   really high, you know, unless you're like like you said, a a Sherpa and you're used to living at 12,000 feet in in Lhasa into bed or something like that. So Totally.  

[00:54:40] Abel James:

Now what about the interactions between methylene blue and, SSRIs or or supplements   or, anything else? What do you need to be aware of?  

[00:54:49] Dr. Scott Scherr:

Yeah. So when you're looking at methylene blue,   the main aspects of it are   we're increasing mitochondrial function. Okay. So that so the main thing I like to tell people across the board is that if you're increasing energy in detox, you might get symptoms related to increasing energy in detox. Right? And that could be your classic sort of detox kinds of symptoms, little abdominal discomfort,   diarrhea, constipation, headache, irritability. But the thing about   those kinds of flu like symptoms is that if you start off at low doses and you increase it slowly over time,   those symptoms are typically mild and typically will go away as you increase your dose. So detox symptoms are probably the most common, especially if you're going up too fast with your dosing. So like mild headache,   mild abdominal discomfort,   those kinds of things, like flu like illness kinds of symptoms. So those are that's common, but if you start off at low doses, not a big deal, and you can just titrate your dose as you go and be well supported, especially if you're gonna increase your dosing. So if I have people on anti infective doses at fifty milligrams twice daily for a,   like for pathogenic bacteria in their gut or something like that, then I'm gonna be giving them more antioxidant support at the same time and more things like activated charcoal or benzeneic clase or more binders to help them kinda get rid of stuff. But from an interaction medication perspective wise,   methylene blue works as a monoamine oxidase inhibitor, which means that it increases serotonin,   norepinephrine,   and dopamine.  

As a result of that,   many of the people that are out there, unfortunately,   or if, you know, but some people it does help are on SSRIs and SNRIs, which are kind of the newer age, newer,   newer classification of serotonergic drugs,   used for depression. Now, you know, side note is that we now know that depression is not a serotonin deficiency. Okay? This is something that I learned when I was in medical school that people needed SSRIs because they're they had low serotonin levels. And as a result of having low serotonin levels, they need to be on SSRIs. So we now know that people that have depression   do not have any lower levels of serotonin   than people that do not have depression. Okay. However,   these can be helpful in some people because it can help artificially increase their serotonin, norepinephrine, and dopamine levels so that they feel better. So and I'm not discounting that. I think in some people that can be very, very helpful. My argument to this and maybe later if we have time, for many of these people, it's actually a GABA deficiency. It's related to their the brakes of their brain, the neurotransmitter system called the GABA system that helps relax firing of our brain. And when that's deficient increases our anxiety, our depression, and our inability to sleep. But that being aside from it, let's go back to serotonin,   and norepinephrine. So if you're taking drugs like these SSRIs, for example, that increase serotonin, and you're taking methylene blue that also does the same,   there is a hypothetical interaction between these two kinds of medications,   and therapies. And so what is the risk there? The risk is hypothetically something called serotonin syndrome.  

If you ask a 100 doctors if they've ever seen serotonin syndrome, two will raise their hand and one will be wrong because it's very, very, very rare. Okay? Now is it possible? Yes. But it's really only possible   clinically with IV methylene blue and high doses of oral   serotonin reuptake inhibitors.   Now, if you're on an SSRI though or SNRI   or a dopanergic drug like Parkinson's medications, for example,   then I do recommend that you follow very closely with a physician if you wanna take methylene blue.   I know it's very safe clinically. I use it all the time in combination, but I only recommend you do it if you're working with a provider just in case. Typically, what will happen if you do start combining these medications combining a medication like an SSRI with methylene blue is that you will sometimes get some GI distress sometimes   because   90% of the serotonin that we make is not made in our brain.  

It's made in our gut. And so if you're increasing   more serotonin in your gut, you're gonna get more of that serotonin in your gut. And the other piece here, which is so important too, Abel, is that it's dose dependent. So lower doses of methylene blue four, eight, sixteen milligrams   are not gonna have a huge effect on serotonergic   reuptake. Okay?   You're gonna have some, but not a lot.   Interesting thing here as a side note again here, but important is that there are certain people out there that have talked about how methylene blue doesn't work for most people, that it's just only working because it makes you feel happier because you give it gives you more serotonin.   And that's the only reason why people feel better when they take it. And so that could be   not further from the truth in general. But, but there is a small inkling there that, yes, people that take methylene blue do typically feel a mood boost. That is for sure. But the overarching thing that's happening with taking methylene blue is because of that mitochondrial support that you're giving it. And this is even a mental health disorders. Like, if you have bipolar disorder, depression,   schizophrenia,   or, you know, more significant, you know, mental health issues, there's a significant component here of mitochondrial dysfunction.  

And that's the piece where methylene blue is so, so important because what you can do is you can start adding it on like we've been discussing these lower doses four, eight sixteen, and then people start feeling better. And then you can actually see them improve their life in other ways because   they have the motivation, they have the cognition, they have the mood to be able to do that. So   methylene blue is working on a serotonergic system. That's not why methylene blue works. In essence, it has a that's a small piece of it. But when you're on medications that are increasing serotonin,   dopamine or norepinephrine,   be careful with your dosing. Go very, very slow and work with your provider. One other piece to say here is that   people with high blood pressure   sometimes are more sensitive to methylene blue than people that do not have high blood pressure. So if you have high blood pressure,   it's important   that you work with a provider, especially if you're on blood pressure medications and make sure that your blood pressure does not go too high when you take methylene blue.  

Again, this is dose dependent.   So   with my patients   that have high blood pressure, they're on medications and I wanna start them on methylene blue.   I start them at very low doses and I have them check their blood pressure two hours after having the methylene blue and then check it two hours later and see how they do. And if their blood pressures are okay, we keep going up. If they go up, then we don't keep going up because some people are gonna be more sensitive to other people. But in some groups of people, interestingly enough, their blood pressure goes down. And you know why?   Because their inflammation   goes down.  

So if inflammation goes down, blood pressure is gonna go down correspondingly   if blood pressure's up because of inflammation.   Some people have the opposite effect where inflammation's really, really high   and   methylene blue actually   binds something   in there that's causing their blood pressure to be low, something called nitric oxide. And that's another piece if we if you wanna go into that, but there are people out there that have very low blood pressures. Things like POTS, for example, so positional orthostatic   tachycardia syndrome, so they have low blood pressure. Methamphetamine boost sometimes can actually help these patients actually increase their blood pressure   and function better because it's binding some of these inflammatory   mediators in the bloodstream, specifically something called inducible nitric oxide, which is something that gets released when you have an inflammation infections,   and nitric oxide could be good. It usually is good, but if it's circulating in the system because of inflammation, infection, and trauma, it is bad. It increases pain. It increases blood vessel dilation. It decreases blood pressure,   and that's what methylene blue can do is these low doses can help neutralize that.  



[01:02:09] Abel James:

And what about   engaging the parasympathetic   and and GABA and the rest of that? I'd I'd love to talk some more about that. It's interesting that methylene blue,   when you take it or at least when I have, the experience isn't like   some sort of drug. It's much more like an alignment with how you should feel. Right? It's like, oh, I remember feeling like this, but it's been a minute. Right? It's it's more clarity focused, but it can also help with sleep. It's not something that's like an upper unless you're kind of reaching that upper threshold   of of maybe where your dose should be. And then in that case, I have experienced some, like, raciness or just, like, a little bit of feeling overstimulated.  

But how do you think about all of this?  

[01:02:51] Dr. Scott Scherr:

My sense here, Abel, is that I I look at it in a couple different ways, but the main way that I've been thinking about it lately is   what I've been calling the sympathetic spiral of doom,   which is   this spiral that many of us get into where we kinda get stuck in fight or flight. If you get stuck in fight or flight, there's so many different reasons why this could be. This could be from trauma when you were a child. It could be from a a terrible illness. It could be from a family member getting ill, a death in the family. There's so many different kinds of things. It could just be from By the way, it just happened to me. I just had a car accident a couple months ago, which we were ended. And, like, feeling like you're trapped in your own body that that that fight or flight thing is terrible. I and we've all been there at some point. We've all been there. Right? And that's that's the sympathetic overdrive. And what happens is that that what that starts doing is having a significant effect on hormones,   on mitochondria,   on so many aspects of your biology, and then you start getting mitochondrial dysfunction. And what happens is that as the mitochondria start dysfunctioning because of all those stress hormones,   the mitochondria are, like, giving signals for you to make more energy to try to compensate for the capacity that they don't have. And then it becomes a sort of circular   spiral where things just get worse and worse and worse, and then your stress hormones get depleted and your antioxidants get depleted and your b vitamins and and everything else in the process. And so how do you break the cycle? Well, you break the cycle by both addressing the mitochondrial piece, but that's not the only piece. You have to break the actual   sympathetic spiral. And so the main neurotransmitter system involved   on that side is your GABA   system. So GABA aminobutyric   acid is your primary inhibitory   neurotransmitter.  

So it is the breaks of the brain. It is the breaks of the person that should have stopped before we were ending you. Right, Abel? So like the breaks of the brain calm things down. And when we're hyper stressed and those neurotransmitters   that are involved in like that stress response are up really high for long periods of time, it depletes our GABA. And if GABA gets gets depleted, we have higher levels of anxiety,   of depression, of insomnia, because what GABA is is that breaks of the brain. And one of the main ways that people can   experience this is in our thought generator. So our brain   is constantly producing thoughts, unless   you take a drug or in a, or you're in a flow state where the mind becomes quiet. But in general,   we   on average have about 70,000 thoughts per day. And that's, that's on average. If you're stressed, you're anxious, you're depressed, you have on average about 120,000   thoughts per day. It doesn't mean they're unique thoughts. They're just 120,000   thoughts. So I always like to say in correspondence to that numbers are those numbers,   don't believe everything you think.  

Don't believe most things that you think, because that's this thought generator. It's just trying to keep us alive.   And if we're sympathetically dominant,   120,000   thoughts per day, you can't sleep, you feel tired, but you're, but you're wired. It's like all these kinds of things. And so if you can enhance the GABA system   by supporting it in multiple different ways,   that's when you can start getting your brain to come back and down regulate off that fight or flight and back into more of a balanced oscillation   between that parasympathetic   mode and sympathetic mode. Parasympathetic is our rest digest and sympathetic is our fight or flight. Sympathetic is what we need to, you know, get rid of get it for danger. But for most of us, most of us throughout the day should be more parasympathetic   overall than we are sympathetic.  

And unfortunately, that's not how our culture works. We're the hustle culture. We're the culture where we'll sleep when we're dead. And I had medical in medical school, we had shirts that were made that said with my friends that said sleep is for quitters. So I mean, these are these are things that we do as and and I grew up in New York and, you know, New York, the city that never sleeps and all these kinds of things. And so   but if we can start   engaging our parasympathetic nervous system by enhancing the gabicide,   then we can actually detoxify. We can actually heal. We can actually, for those of you out there that love to exercise, you can actually build more muscle and make more gains with less work overall. Because if you're overstressing and overtraining,   you are not giving yourself enough time to signal that GABA system to start helping you relax.  

If you don't have enough GABA around, you're not gonna have enough growth hormone around because when GABA goes up, growth hormone goes up too, by the way. Right? And so these are really important kinds of things. And so in my practice,   I'm always looking at engaging that parasympathetic mode by leveraging the GABA system. But the problem there, Abel, is that you can't just take a GABA supplement. It's not that's not the answer. Because the thing about GABA supplements   is that GABA is too big of a a compound to get across into the brain.   If it does   work for you, if you take GABA and it feels good, it could mean that you have a leaky brain, that your brain is allowing things to get across that shouldn't get across and that often is corresponding to a leaky gut. A leaky gut is very common but if you can seal the leaky gut up, you can typically seal the brain. So the best way to heal up the GABA system   over the long term is optimize   vitamins, minerals, nutrients,   gut health, lifestyle, but this can take time. So in in my world, what I do is I give the co factors that help GABA get converted into the brain. So GABA gets converted in the brain from another neurotransmitter called glutamate.  

Glutamate is our primary excitatory neurotransmitter, actually, and GABA is our primary inhibitory. About 80% of the brain's neurotransmission is just those two   neurotransmitters. People think about norepinephrine and dopamine, serotonin,   superstars, but those are small players compared to glutamate and GABA. So if you can help that system work better where glutamate can convert to GABA better, so you have b six and magnesium actually are their most two important cofactors there. So So I'll give some of that. And then I'll also look at how you can enhance the GABA system by the receptor itself   and enhancing the amount   of GABA   produced or not the GABA the amount of GABA produced, but the the amount of   support you're giving to the GABA receptors that you can make,   that receptor work better, but not depleted in the process. Because the problem is, like most of the drugs out there, like your benzodiazepines,   your   sleep drugs,   alcohol, alcohols, everybody's famous GABAergic   drug,   those all deplete GABA over time. And then you're gonna give you a higher risk of dependence, withdrawal, and tolerance.  

So you need more. You can't get off of it easily, those kinds of things. And what they do is they they bind the receptor very, very tightly, so they deplete GABA in the system as well. So you get this corresponding increase in anxiety,   and insomnia and depression and things, especially if you're, if you're not getting as much as you need over time because you're more tolerant to these kinds of things. So the way I think about it is is combining,   things on the receptor that enhance affinity, but also that can bind directly to where GABA would bind in the receptor so that you can prevent   that depletion.  

And there's some really cool compounds out there. My favorite is something called agarin, which which is from a psychedelic mushroom called the fly agaric mushroom. Have you no. Do you know the fly agaric mushroom? Yes. Yeah. The new cereal mushroom of love. Red cap white spots, Luigi, Mario,   Alice in Wonderland, Santa Claus.   It is psychedelic,   but not the psychedelic like tripping out like a regular psilocybin mushroom. It's more of a it's more of a kind of twilight ish relaxation kind of psychedelic,   but there's a non psychedelic and nontoxic   compound in there called agarin, which is a long acting compound that works on the GABA receptor. And it sticks on the GABA receptor exactly where GABA would bind. So we use it for sleep because it's a it's a it's about a half life of about six and a half hours. So it sticks on there. It sticks on there for a while. So immediately, you can work on sleep by by leveraging the GABA system. Immediately, you could work on anxiety and stress by leveraging the GABA, etcetera. But doing it a more comprehensive way is is ideal so you don't deplete GABA and, you know, pay the piper later because of something you're taking now. Right.  



[01:10:25] Abel James:

Very quickly, I would love for you to also talk about hyperbaric therapy.   When should it be implemented? What is it doing in the body? And,   how accessible do you see this being as a therapy,   for people in the future? Because right now, it's you know, there are some that you can buy or use at home and that sort of thing, but not for most people. Right? So what are we looking at with this sort of thing?  

[01:10:46] Dr. Scott Scherr:

Yeah. So I guess the the context for me clinically is that I started off in hyperbaric medicine for a decade. It's from about 2012   to about February,   02/2023,   like maybe a little bit earlier, maybe 02/2020. That's that's all that I did was talk about hyperbaric medicine. But in the beginning, very early in the beginning, I realized that   if you're going into a hyperbaric chamber,   you needed to have some capacity to make energy effectively in there. Because what hyperbaric therapy in essence is doing is super saturating the body with a huge amount of oxygen. We combine oxygen   with pressure, increased atmospheric pressure, and that drives a whole lot more oxygen in circulation, not just on red blood cells, which typically carry it. We were talking about earlier with that EBOGEN   hormone, but also into the liquid of your bloodstream and into the plasma.  

That huge amount of oxygen is gonna go into your body. It's gonna help you make more energy, so that ATP that we talked about, but it's also gonna cause reactive oxygen species, this oxidative stress kind of thing. And so that's good just like exercise is good, but it only it's only good if you can tolerate   that. And and the problem I found is that if you were sicker, more inflamed, you've been having issues for many, many years, we put you in hyperbaric chamber, and all of a sudden you had all this oxidative load,   you did not feel good, and you did not feel good at all. And so over the years, I've kind of gravitated towards more of a a system where I understand hyperbaric therapy as this fantastic tool for healing, for recovery,   for wounds   especially, but it's always almost always done in the context of optimizing your health in the same   breath.  

The only time it's not done in that way is more for an acute issue. So acute trauma, acute, like surgery,   injury. So when I, injured my calf a couple weeks ago,   it is fantastic as leveraging your body's capacity to heal faster. It decreases inflammation, decreases swelling, stem cell release.   It's an anti infective. It improves lymphatic flow, immune system function. And so it does all those things very, very quickly   and very, very efficiently, more efficiently than you can do on your own. So like for example, if you get a surgery,   have a surgery, you can heal from the surgery by 50% faster in general. Like a calf injury like mine, which will probably, you know, really take about six to eight weeks to heal on average typically, like I'm gonna be probably be good in about four as things have been going. And obviously not just using hyperbaric therapy, lots of other things too. Right? So if it's not like I'm doing anything in like a little box or silo here to do that. But   I love hyperbaric therapy as that acute   stimulus to do all the things that I just mentioned. Right? But long term, if you have a long term issue like chronic Lyme or you have mild cognitive impairment, chronic pain,   Parkinson's,   the list goes on and on, autistic spectrum, like I have a lot of lots of kids that see a lot of benefit. If you don't get your house in order first, if you don't start getting that cellular architecture   working better, that mitochondria working better, you're not gonna see the long term benefits.  

And so this is like, you can't out supplement a bad diet. You can't, I would hyperbaricize   a bad diet like McDonald's and alcohol every day is not gonna, you know, know, if you're doing that, you're not gonna see the benefits of a a longevity protocol because, like, there's actually good studies now that longer hyperbaric protocols, 30 to 40, sometimes more sessions can rebuild   the architecture of your body, new blood vessels, new stem cells that develop into tissue, and new connective tissue and new neurons, a new heart, new cartilage, new bone, like all these kinds of things. And so that's all happening.   However, you need to have that foundation in order. So I use a lot of methylene blue in my protocols for the longer hyperbaric protocols now, because it's that mitochondrial support while we're trying to get their foundation   of mitochondrial support done and optimized over six months or longer in some people.  

And then there's also nuances as far as pressures, like milder pressures that you'd might find like in a home unit are better for neurocognitive kinds of things, wellness,   jet lag,   recovery, those kinds of I have that one of those in my house. And then for more systemic issues,   deeper inflammation,   that's when the harder heart chamber is going to deeper pressure is 1.8 to 2.4 is better. So I have a 1.3 at my house, but when I had my calf injury, I was in a 2.4 chamber for ninety minutes with air breaks because that's what I needed. Because the deeper you go, the more stem cells you're gonna release. But the the context for me is always important, Abel, because there's all all I mean, when people are listening, it's like, oh, there's nothing blue. There's GABA. There's there's, like, hyperbarics. It's like, what does this dude really do? And so for me,   like, clinic clinically,   what I'm doing   is I'm trying to create a foundation for people. And that foundation   is based on the work that we have at our nonprofit called health optimization medicine.  

And that   nonprofit is training practitioners on how to optimize myself. Main thing is metabolomics that I mentioned earlier. And that piece is looking at cellular data and optimizing that over the long term. But looking at circadian rhythms and chronobiology and and toxic exposures and and also looking at the psychosocial emotional aspects of things as well and adding all all those things in.   But   those things take a long time. It's not like if you took forty five years to get to how you feel right now, it's not like tomorrow you're gonna feel better doing those things. You can feel a little bit better, but that's where things like methylene blue come in. That's where things like leveraging the GABA system come in. That's where things like working with a therapist and doing trauma work and whatever it might be. That's where those things come in.   And about three to six months later, typically, that's when hyperbaric therapy comes in because that's when somebody's   optimized enough that I can go, okay. Now you're gonna be really able to utilize all this   oxidative stress, this oxygen that's bringing in to help leverage that and see the benefits. Because you've started to really, you just don't see the long term benefits there. So the cadence for me is health optimization medicine,   then immediate tools to help you along that path, and then longer term tools that are gonna help you over the long term as well. So that's kind of the the way I like to frame it. I like that framework.  



[01:17:03] Abel James:

Awesome. Doctor Scott, what is the best place for people to find your work transcriptions and everything that's coming next?  

[01:17:09] Dr. Scott Scherr:

So my personal website is doctor Scott schurr, d r s e o t t s h e r r   dot com. And you can find most of my companies and my consulting there, hyperbaric consulting, health optimization medicine consulting, and then my companies. The one company that we were talking about by way of methylene blue and the GABAergic things is transcriptions.   It's like the word prescription, but with but with a t r o in front. That's at transcriptions.com   at transcriptions on Instagram. And transcriptions has a couple different products that are based on methylene blue. In fact, we were the first company to develop a methylene blue product for commercial use back in 02/2020.   That's one called bluekenatine.  

That's methylene blue with nicotine, caffeine and CBD along with methylene blue and that's for focus   stimulant   fantastic for that. And then we have something called Just Blue, which is sixteen milligrams of pure methylene blue. And then we have some GABAergic products, something called Trocom and Trozi   for anxiousness, stress during the day. Trocom's fantastic.   It combines things that works on the GABA receptor as I was describing   along with trozi that has GABAergic things in it, that agarin from the psychedelic mushroom along with other   aspects, other compounds that are working on other aspects of of sleep architecture, but it but it enhances sleep architecture. And we have something called the buccal trochee, which is these cool dissolvable lozenges   that are scored. Either you can have a quarter half or full. You can figure out your dose. They dissolve in your mouth. If you don't wanna be blue though, you can just swallow the methylene blue ones. That's okay. But the nice thing about the buccal absorption in the mouth is that it's faster.  

The ingredients are more bioavailable and it doesn't go through that's what's called first pass metabolism in the liver, which degrades things, anything almost, but it's supplements included. So you can check it out at transcriptions.com. We have tons of information on methylene blue. Be careful of your quality out there, everybody. Watch out for liquids. Watch out for forged certifications of analysis from random companies around the world. We've been seeing a lot of that lately, so be mindful there. And then the nonprofit is called Health Optimization Medicine and Practice,   and the website is homehope.org.  

And if you're a practitioner, you're interested in more training, you wanna learn how to optimize health   from a foundational perspective using metabolomic   science and other things like that, check it out at homehope.org.  

[01:19:18] Abel James:

Right on. Doctor Scott, thank you so much for joining us.  

[01:19:21] Dr. Scott Scherr:

Thanks for having me, man. This has been fun.  

[01:19:46] Abel James:

Hey, Abel here one more time. And if you believe in our mission to create a world where health is the norm, not sickness, here are a few things you can do to help keep this show coming your way. Click like, subscribe, and leave a quick review wherever you listen to or watch your podcasts.   You can also subscribe to my new Substack channel for an ad free version of this show in video and audio. That's at ablejames.substack.com.   You can also find me on Twitter or x, YouTube, as well as fountain f m, where you can leave a little crypto in the tip jar. And if you can think of someone you care about who might learn from or enjoy this show, please take a quick moment to share it with them. Thanks so much for listening, and we'll see you in the next episode.