← Biohacking Beauty: The Anti-Aging Skincare Podcast
Biohacking Beauty: The Anti-Aging Skincare Podcast
Dr. Scott Sherr: Why Chronic Stress Disrupts Mitochondria and Accelerates Visible Skin Aging
01:12:53
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- [00:05]
A
Welcome to Biohacking Beauty, the podcast where we dive deep into the science of aging. Well, from your skin to your cells.
- [00:12]
B
We're your host, Amitai and Anastasia, founders of Young Goose Skincare. And if you're here, it means you're not just trying to look younger, you're ready to be younger from the inside out.
- [00:27]
A
Today's episode is one of those stop what you're doing and listen kind of episodes. We're joined by Dr. Scott, Chair, an absolute pioneer in the field of hyperbaric oxygen therapy and health optimization. He's the chief medical officer of Transcriptions, co founder of the Health Optimization Medicine protocol, and someone who's been translating complex biochemistry into actionable tools for high performers for over 20 years.
- [00:55]
B
And he's here to blow your mind. We're talking about what he calls the sympathetic spiral of doom, the vicious loop that keeps your body in chronic defense mode and absolutely destroys your energy, sleep, hormones, and, yes, even your skin's ability to repair itself.
- [01:17]
A
This is the kind of conversation that bridges everything we talk about on this podcast podcast. Mitochondrial health, nervous system balance, redox signaling, neuroplasticity, even how stress and trauma show up on your skin.
- [01:30]
B
And Scott doesn't just talk theory. He gives practical tools. We're getting into methylene blue, GABA modulation, HBOT psychedelics, and why real recovery, real anti aging, starts with getting out of sympathetic overdrive and and into the parasympathetic edge.
- [01:52]
A
You'll also hear why oral GABA supplements might be a red flag. How mushrooms like Amanita mascaria play a role in neural recalibration. And how oxygen can be used in medicine not just for survival, but for regeneration.
- [02:08]
B
This is one of those conversations that redefine recovery energy and performance, not just for your brain, but or your workouts, but your skin longevity too. Because what happens to your mitochondria doesn't stay in your mitochondria, it shows up on your face as well.
- [02:27]
A
But before we dive into today's podcast episode, we also wanted to take a moment to read a review. We are really thankful to everyone that has been leaving reviews on naru, all the channels where you consume it, be it Apple podcasts, sponsors, Spotify.
- [02:42]
C
But for the record, we choose them off of Apple podcasts because that's the most convenient.
- [02:46]
A
That's 94% of where our listeners are. So if you're listening to this podcast and I've never read your review, that's probably because it wasn't on Apple podcasts.
- [02:55]
C
So buy an iPhone brought to you by iPhone.
- [02:59]
D
Okay, this one is very cute.
- [03:02]
A
I heard a m interviewed on another podcast and was so impressed I immediately started diving into all things yangoos. I have been binge listening to your podcast and although your editor sounds lovely, I vowed to not worry about keeping each episode under an hour. I could listen to you and anesthesia talk all day. I ordered several products and love them all and even feel a difference in the skin on my legs from the body cream in just a couple of weeks of use. Looking forward to trying more items and seeing what results come from consistent use. My only regret is I didn't find you sooner. Big love to Yungoos. Xo Amber.
- [03:42]
C
Thank you Amber. And thank you for the shout out to Jason. That sounds lovely.
- [03:45]
D
No, it was Chelsea who voted to do it.
- [03:49]
A
Under an hour, I believe.
- [03:50]
C
Oh, anyway, someone's.
- [03:52]
A
But shout out to Jackson in general. Shout out to Jackson, our podcast producer as well. Amber Love 1919. If you're Amber Love 1999, please email serviceyoungus.com or DM us on Instagram and we'll send you a product.
- [04:08]
C
Yeah, we forgot to say if we
- [04:10]
B
read your review, you get a free product.
- [04:14]
C
So you better leave that review.
- [04:16]
A
Okay?
- [04:17]
B
Okay. And now without further ado, let's welcome Dr. Scott Scher.
- [04:26]
C
Scott, I welcome you to the Biohacking Beauty podcast. The first time that you are here together with Anastasia, it is.
- [04:35]
E
I'm excited. This is going to be. I feel like I'm a little bit intimidated. I have two people asking me questions right now. I don't know. Well, I think I'm going to be okay.
- [04:43]
D
If anyone is intimidated, it's me because I heard you guys two times on the podcast and you guys like to go very, very deep.
- [04:52]
C
No, no. If anyone is intimidated with me.
- [04:57]
D
Exactly. So some of the listeners are also intimidated. Everyone's intimidated. And this is great place to start.
- [05:04]
C
Send us your intimidation in the comments.
- [05:08]
D
Okay, well, but today's podcast, I think overall we just said, I will set the tone. It's going to be about mitochondria and mitochondrial health, which is on everyone's mind. Anyway, anyone who listens to, I don't know, Andrew Huberman, he's now saying everything starts with the mitochondria. Like everything and everything brought to you by mitochondria.
- [05:31]
C
Anyways, first of all, I used to have an old lecture I gave. I gave it once in the faina and I tried to explain psychological stress and skin aging and it was the photo of President Obama before and after presidency.
- [05:48]
E
Ah, the president photos are usually good. Yeah.
- [05:50]
C
And then the emperor in Star wars, like before, in the beginning and after, where he looks when you're like he's melting off. So I can tell you the audience of like 45 year old career women did not connect to the second one, but they understood the Barack Obama.
- [06:07]
E
Yeah. I mean every president that looks like they always do like the befores and afters and they always look terrible. Right. Because they've slept for less than six hours a night. All the stress of being like the commander in chief, it's a good example of what stress can do to your skin at the very least.
- [06:22]
D
Yeah. And I think all the moms are here also, you know, sleep deprived, Listening to this podcast can, can relate as well.
- [06:30]
C
Yeah. And you know, you sent us a bunch of really interesting information before the podcast and one thing that struck me as very, very interesting is that, you know, most people think that stress is a physiological problem and it's not. So how would you characterize it?
- [06:53]
E
Well, I mean, I think you have to define what stress is. Right. There's a lot of different definitions out there. There's physical stress, there's going to jiu jitsu and get your and getting your eyes knocked around. That's physical stress. There's psychological stress.
- [07:06]
C
For her, that's actually psychological stress.
- [07:08]
E
Exactly. Right. That's what I'm talking about. Right. So for somebody here it's psychological stress, but for you it's physical stress. Right. And so psychological stress is stress that affects us mentally in some way. And then there's other types then, then you have to also designate, well, is this good stress or is this bad stress? Okay, so that's called eustress and distress. So it's not like we're not supposed to have stress. We're supposed to be stressed at times, but we're supposed to be stressed for short periods of time. Acute stress is common. Acute, you know, trauma, acute injuries like these are common. But you're supposed to have a short, finite amount of time when we're in a stress mode and then very quickly get back into a mode where we're not stressed at all. Our default state should not be stress, whether it be physical or psychological. But the problem is, is that many of us, you know, the majority of us now this is our default state. Our default state is either going, going, going, going until we drop and fall asleep. If we do fall asleep and then go, go, go, go the next day. And this is again, it's not all of our faults. Right. We have a lot going on it's the culture that we live in. I mean, I grew up in New York, the city that never sleeps. Right. I didn't grow up in the city, but the, the Long island where I grew up, it was very much that part of that culture. We had people that were taking trains into the city at 4 o' clock in the morning to go to their, do their jobs and work, you know, 17 hours a day. Right. And then, you know, I'll sleep when I'm dead. Sleep is for quitters. I had shirts in medical school with my friends. Sleep is for quitters. Right. Like that's the, the hustle culture that we're all kind of a part of. And so then we bring this into our adulthood and then to our children and then to how we rear our kids, and it just becomes a thing where the best counterexample to all of this. Do you guys ever watch the National Geographic? Yeah, just, just for the, just for the commercials. I don't know. But, but the National Geographic, they did this great documentary a long time ago about an animal that was being preyed upon by like a lion or, or a tiger, I can't remember. It was like a gazelle or something like that. Right. And then the animal is getting chased. So sympathetic, right? Stress, total stress. Right. And then gets chased, but gets away. Right? Doesn't get, doesn't get eaten. And then they go through this physiologic response, this sort of shaking physiologic response. Then within about a minute they're back just to walking like nothing ever happened. Right. You can see this in animals often, oftentimes as well. But that's what our stress response is supposed to be. It's supposed to be acute, short, and then resolve. But that's not what happens in modern society because we don't have that kind of stimulus. We have, you know, pings from our email, we have, you know, we have notifications, we have children, we have, you know, know, poor light, poor food, poor, you know, poor sex lives, everything in between. And then we have other things that are bothering us. And so we live in this sort of world of distress, not eustress, unfortunately.
- [09:52]
C
You know, it's interesting, I want to add one thing. It's when you look at elite, elite, elite athletes, one of the parameters to their physical fitness is that intermittent recovery between, you know, elevated exertion, not necessarily how long they can exert maximum effort. It's like how fast can they recover and re. Exert the same effort?
- [10:16]
E
Yeah, the better you can recover, the more effort you're going to make the second time. And that goes into that. This balance of our nervous system, like it's called the, the autonomic nervous system. We have our sympathetic nervous system, which is our fight or flight, our stress nervous system, and then we have our parasympathetic nervous system, which is our rest digest detoxification. And I did a, I did a lecture not too long ago on something called the, we called the parasympathetic edge. The idea that when you're in that rest recovery mode, you recover better so you can actually do more work, you can actually exercise more optimally because you're not in stress mode when you go into it, Right. If you're in stress mode, right when you go into exercise, you don't have a lot of reserve left because you're already in stress mode, Right? But if you can calm down your nervous system before you exercise, calm down your nervous system, especially after you, you exercise, that's when you see the biggest gains. You don't see the biggest gains from exercise when you're working out. You get your gains after you finish workout, working out, and you calm down your nervous system. So if you go from exercise directly to your meetings, directly to, to, to, to doing all your stuff on your calendar and you have no breaks like me today, then you don't have time to get into your parasympathetic mode. And that's detrimental to your biology. Like all of those hormones that you know, that mess up your skin, they mess up your mitochondria too. Like if your cortisol, your stress hormones elevated for long periods of time, that's trashing your skin. It's trashing your mitochondria. If those neurotransmitters are elevated, one's called norepinephrine and epinephrine, Those are elevated all the time. Those are gonna trash your mitochondria and trash your skin. Because truly that common denominator, Anastasia, as you said, is, is the mitochondria, which are the part of your cell that help you make energy. And if you, that part of your cell is not working very well, nothing else is going to work very well either.
- [11:59]
D
So I was going to ask you, how does chronic stress that you were describing literally age your skin? And you kind of touched on it now. Yeah.
- [12:08]
E
Do we want to go into more
- [12:09]
D
talk a little bit more in depth about each one you mentioned?
- [12:13]
C
I would. You know something that's very interesting for me again from, from the sources that you sent, is that definition of a metabolic lock in state? Because I mean, you know, going back to, yeah, I don't know, 14 years ago when I was in the light therapy field, there was a lot of talk about, you know, different states of the mitochondria. But it was really considered woo science or unexplored. And it seems to be in the forefront of latest discoveries and latest kind of strategies, assessments of longevity, of optimal performance. So could you expand a bit more of that about that definition of a metabolic lock in state and how then does it translate again to poor skin aging?
- [13:05]
E
So both your questions are very much aligned, which is like what happens when you're under stress mode all the time is that your cells, your mitochondria specifically try to start protecting themselves from all the stress that you're under. And instead of making more energy, they start making less. And as a result of that, it causes more stress on the system because then the body's like, I need more energy, but I'm not making it, I need to make more. So it pumps out more hormones like cortisol, neurotransmitters like norepinephrine and epinephrine that try to get your mitochondria to make more energy. Like these part of your cell. The, the, the mitochondria are the powerhouse of your cell. They make your energy, right? You make about 150 pounds of energy of ATP every single day. Now. That's a huge amount of energy that you need. And there are some cells in your body that need a lot of energy and there are some cells that don't need as much. Fun fact question. I'm gonna ask you a trivia question, guys. What cell in your body has the most mitochondria per cell? Is it, I'll give you a multiple choice. Is it your brain? Is it ovaries and sperm? Or is it your liver?
- [14:09]
D
Ovaries.
- [14:09]
C
No, no, I think it's the brain.
- [14:11]
E
No, it's the ovaries. Nostalgia is correct. Yes. No, you're right, it's the ovaries. So making or building or you know, growing a baby is the most energetically intensive thing that anybody, any human can do. And so eggs have the most mitochondria
- [14:29]
D
as me growing a baby, but right
- [14:32]
E
behind ovaries and stomach a baby into existence?
- [14:35]
D
No, you can think lab into existence.
- [14:38]
E
I don't think you can do that yet, but maybe soon. But right now it's ovaries and sperm that have the most mitochondria per cell. Then you have brains right behind that. Then your heart, your liver, Your muscle skeletal tissue. And of course we know your skin cells have, you know, there are tons of mitochondria in the skin as well. And your skin is what's very interesting about it, how fast it turns over. And so as we get older, our mitochondria stop working as well for a number of different reasons, which I can talk about. But the skin is one of the main places you can see it happening. So what's really interesting about looking at somebody's skin is it gives them a window into what's happening in the, like in, in depth, in the cells. And so if you see somebody's skin aging very fast, you know that their mitochondria are taking a big hit too. And so it could be the first sign that you see actually is that skin changes start happening and all of a sudden they feel fine, but then they, you know, three or four years later, then they start having energy issues, mental health issues. But you know, to go back to the mitochondria for a second There, you know, 94% of U.S. adults have some element of mitochondrial function dysfunction, meaning their mitochondria don't do as well as they can, either making energy or compensating for the energy we make. We're kind of like a gasoline powered car. We make energy in our cells in the mitochondria. We take electrons from our food, carbohydrates and proteins mostly, and we bring them into the mitochondria to help make energy. But we don't make energy for free. We make this ATP, 150 pounds of it. We also make what are called waste products of making energy, carbon dioxide, water, but also something called reactive oxygen species or R O s, which I know you guys know very, very well. These ROs are important at low doses, but if there's too much of them, the system starts and break, starts breaking down. Because you need antioxidants in the body, things like glutathione and vitamin C, melatonin and many other ones that you guys can also mention. But you need those to neutralize that stress. But over time we get worse at that and we get more stress that builds up. And so we're more like, you know, we're like a gasoline powered car, for example. And so what you, what happens is that, you know what, there's 94% of us adults are not making energy effectively. And that's because we're getting, there's a lot of different things that are the different reasons. One of the main reasons though is this stress component like having chronic stress is causing significant amounts of damage to the mitochondria, also insulin resistance. So if you have high blood sugars, if you have toxins in your environment, like detergents and soaps and skincare and all those kinds of things that are getting not only in the skin but in the body, also infections and then also medications that people take, like people that are taking medications, Some medications actually are causing nutrient deficiencies, causing toxicities, causing skin changes, of course too. But it can also cause a significant direct effect on the mitochondria. So you have like 94% of US adults, it's a huge number. Only 6% of the adults have like optimized mitochondrial function. And so it's a, it's a big, it's a big issue. And, and, and you're seeing the, the manifestations of that in all, all various levels. But the skin is certainly a major one of those because of how many mitochondria per cell are being, are, are always being produced by skin cells in such rapid clip all the time.
- [17:39]
D
Yeah, I would really know how, I would really want to know how to be the 6%. What should we do?
- [17:46]
C
First of all?
- [17:46]
D
What are they doing?
- [17:47]
C
First of all, I think wouldn't it be like a more genetic, like a better definition to say like everyone, 100% of the population experiences mitochondrial dysfunction. 6%, their body is optimized in a way that it can recover from that mitochondrial dysfunction.
- [18:05]
E
That's beautifully said. Yes. Because we're all going to have mitochondrial stress, even if we're part of that 6%, because we're going to be stressed at work, we're not going to get sleep as well. We're going to be on a plane. We're like, we're low oxygen and hypoxic and bad air and all those things. I don't know if people know if you're on an airplane and you're pressurized to about 8,000ft above sea level, so you're low oxygen on a plane. And that's one of the reasons why you feel so crappy on most people. When I get off my planes, because I live in Colorado, I'm at 5,000ft, I go to sea level in Miami. My aura ring was like the happiest it's been in, in a long time because I was, I was. Got two hours of deep sleep. I never get that much sleep, that kind of deep sleep on my oura ring. But anyway. But you're right. You're absolutely right. I'm a ties that 100% of people have mitochondrial stress, but only 6% of those people have the resilience and the capacity from a mitochondrial perspective to really be able to tolerate that without a detrimental effect on mitochondrial function over time. And that's a beautiful way to say it.
- [19:01]
D
Yeah, no, that's for sure. I was just curious, how do you develop that resilience? Because I'm sure.
- [19:06]
E
Yeah, yeah, that's the question, too.
- [19:07]
D
Now you know that there is this problem. You probably devoted some time to research to see how we can move through it better.
- [19:17]
E
Yeah. So it's like, it's not rocket science is what it comes down to, but it doesn't mean it's easy, Right? And that's the difference, Right. We can. We can say simple things that mean a lot but are very difficult for people to do, right? And that could be like, well, try to manage your stress better. You know, calm the fuck down, meditate, do yoga, eat better, sleep better, move more. Right. Have better relationships. Make sure that you're getting outside and ground and get sunlight. Right? And making sure you're, you know, doing these things Sounds easy, but it's not. Right. So what I typically do in clinical practice is that, you know, I work on people's foundational biology at the same time looking at signs of mitochondrial cess, signs of antioxidant deficiencies, gut health, neurotransmitters, hormones. And that's a whole part of, you know, the nonprofit that we run called Health Optimization Medicine and Practice, which is a nonprofit that trains practitioners on how to optimize health using a foundational framework. And that's what I use in my own clinical practice. And so it's nice to pair those kind of pronouncements, like, why don't you move more? Right? With. Well, this is what's happening in your cells, and this is why you need to move more. Look at the toxicities you have. Look at the. Look at the signs of antioxidant deficiencies you have. Look at the hormone imbalances that you have, right? And so, like, look at the stress that's causing all these things, right? And then it kind of puts things together for people. And then you can create a Runway or maybe a roadmap is better a blueprint or whatever you want. No, I don't want to use the word blueprint, but roadmap. Roadmap. That give you a sense of where you want to go here, right? And like. And. And then how you can see feedback mechanisms not only subjectively, but. But objectively as well. And. And so that's the real key, Anastasia, is to understand that it's simple things that can go a long way. But pairing that with. With data is very, very helpful because then people have a roadmap of kind of where they are and kind of where they're going and. And track things over time, but they can't be done with one without the other. They really have to be done in concert. But what I often will tell people and is, is that oftentimes I can get the. There's only a certain. It depends on where they're kind of starting from. But I can often get them feeling a little bit better, to start getting them more motivated due to some of the other stuff, Right? So, like, I can get them feeling better using something like methylene blue, for example, as you both know, to help them feel a little more energy, a little more detox so that they start getting more energy and. And they're like, more motivated to stop drinking alcohol, stop going to McDonald's, you know, stop yelling at their wife or whatever. And then. And then they're like, oh, I really want to start feeling better. Like, I had a patient that refused to stop eating pizza for a while. I was like, okay. Then we started feeling better. He's like, you know, I don't want to eat pizza anymore.
- [21:51]
C
Like, like in general. Jesse was eating pizza 24 7.
- [21:55]
E
No, no, no, no, no. He said, I'm happy to work with you, Dr. Scott. Like, I'm excited to work with you, but one thing I'm not going to give up is pizza. I'm going to have it once a week with my family. I'm like, oh, okay. So we started getting him to feel better, and then six months later, he stopped eating pizza because he realized that he could feel so much better if he didn't. Right?
- [22:13]
D
Yeah. He can have a different ritual with his family.
- [22:15]
A
Doesn't happen.
- [22:16]
E
So the founder of all the nonprofit, as you know, is. His name is Dr. Ted Achicoso. And Dr. Ted is a very smart, brilliant, brilliant guy. And he likes to. One of our kind of taglines at home, Hope is like, we want you to get used to. Get addicted to the feeling of being healthy. Right. And if you get addicted to that feeling, that's where you want to be, Right? But that takes time. It takes effort. Most people, it takes six months or a year or longer to optimize their vitamins, their minerals, their nutrients, their stress and, you know, and so what can you do now to help? And that's where, you know, the transcriptions company Came in as the for profit entity of the nonprofit. It kind of birthed out, well, how can we help people with energy, with focus, with sleep, with stress, with immune system function, and have, you know, cool partnerships and collaborations with skin sprays as well somehow? Right?
- [23:02]
D
Yeah.
- [23:02]
E
Yeah. And so that's how that all came about.
- [23:05]
D
And I love that. And I love that listeners can feel empowered that, you know, if they listen to those symptoms you were mentioning in the beginning, you know, and maybe they identified that, oh, I probably live in a state of chronic stress and I probably have mitochondria, mitochondrial decline. They now know that you can actually take steps and get better. You can, you know, change your status in that. And since you mentioned methadone blue and listed some of the benefits of it now, is there any methadone blue benefit, like taking methadone blue that nobody talks about? That's really surprising, even maybe to you?
- [23:45]
E
That's a good question, because I talk about this a lot. I don't know what's surprising and not anything, but I think that's extremely cool
- [23:53]
D
with a blue tongue.
- [23:54]
E
Definitely. You do, Amitai, I know you're. You look very cool with your blue tongue.
- [23:58]
C
Um, thank you.
- [23:58]
E
What, what, what I would say here is that you'd be surprised what feels better when the mitochondria are working better. And like, I remember when we first started using methylene blue, I was actually quite skeptical myself, to be honest, when Ted brought it to us and he's like, we're gonna make a product with methylene blue. We were the first company to do this in 2020. And I think, Amitai, I think you were one of our first customers. Correct, I remember. Correct. And it had been floating in the biohacking world for a little while, but we were the first company to make a commercial product. And I remember, like, nobody's gonna do this. What are we doing? You know, like, it's. It's blue. It makes your urine blue. But then I started getting these stories. Like, one of, one of the initial stories was a lady, she, like, in her mid-20s, she had given methylene blue or just blue, to her grandmother, who was in like an early 80s with mild cognitive impairment. And this grandmother started telling stories about her childhood when she grew up in Mexico that nobody had ever heard of before. And I was like, really? It can do that? And I've heard a number of stories like that over the years now where people get their life back. And, like, I thought it might help with inflammation, a little bit of, like, focus. We, like, we were Focused on the nootropic side of it and helping with brain function. It certainly does all those things. But people that have had long Covid. For, you know, years after two weeks of methylene blue back to work. People with pain for years getting better and, and I just, I've been kind of floored and surprised with just the, the significant impact I think, you know, I thought it would help people with energy, with focus, with brain fog. But then I'm like, I was almost paralyzed and I now, you know, like I couldn't walk because I was so tired all the time and now I can walk and, and like now my brain functions better. And you know, my grandmother can like all these kinds of stories. I was like, that was surprising to me to be honest, because it's very blue. It's very surprisingly blue. It's blue in your mouth, it's blue in your urine. It's blue on your clothing if you get it on there or your countertops. You gotta be careful everybody. Dark surfaces.
- [25:47]
C
Yeah. The story like that.
- [25:49]
E
Yeah. There, there's one lady I spoke to about getting blue everywhere in the bedroom as well. I was like, well that sounds interesting. I don't know what you guys are doing, but yeah, so you gotta be careful where you blue. But also you can swallow the methylene blue, which is, which is also the better way to go most of the time anyway. But the thing about methylene blue I think is that. Honest, nobody's asked me that question exactly. But I think that was probably the most. And continues to be the most surprising aspect of it is that it. How impactful it has been. And I'm not saying that people need to take it forever.
- [26:17]
D
I hear those stories for sure.
- [26:19]
C
You know, I do want to interject here because I feel we're talking a lot about people's baseline starting point. You're mentioning, you know, 80 year old people, you're mentioning people walking or not walking. But there is something on again, something from the information you sent me which was very, very interesting to me and very cool to kind of set things within an understandable framework.
- [26:42]
E
Yeah.
- [26:43]
C
Which is that you know that spiral people experience people in experiencing their health.
- [26:49]
E
Yeah.
- [26:50]
D
Hates the, the sympathetic spiral of dude.
- [26:54]
C
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [26:54]
D
Sympathetic spiral of dude.
- [26:56]
E
It sounds dangerous, doesn't it?
- [26:58]
C
You know, you touch it on it slightly when you talk about perceived stress. But you know, I, I really, really find it interesting that, that our body will, will. You know that that initiation of, of, of of the spiral could be either physio, physiological or psychological stress. Like either Mitochondrial injury or. Yeah, stressor. So. So let's start there and, and maybe you can tell us a little bit about that spiral of doom.
- [27:26]
E
Yeah, so I've been so. I know it sounds dangerous and ominous and it kind of is, but there is. It's not the end. It's something we can do about it. And it's just important to I think, recognize kind of where we are in this pattern as humans. Because when we can recognize the pattern, there's something we can do about it. Right. And so I call it the sympathetic spiral of doom. We've been talking about this already in various ways, but the key to understand here is that when you're in fight or flight all the time, put a lot of stress on your mitochondria, okay? A lot of stress on the body, a lot of stress on your immune system. But the mitochondria really like the lowest common denominator where everything starts breaking down from. And then we kind of flip into this energy saving mode is kind of a hibernation mode we were talking about earlier, Amitai, where your body, instead of making more energy, makes less trying to protect itself. It's kind of like a hibernation stage. It's like when a bear goes into hibernate, like it goes in like a low energy state so that it can keep itself, you know, through the winter. It's the same thing your cells kind of do. And this is. And, and then as a result of that, you have this challenge where you're not making enough energy and the body's requiring more. And then you have this spiral where the. Then the system starts creating more of those hormones and those neurochemicals, the neurotransmitters, the sympathetics stuff that we were mentioning earlier to try to compensate for the low energy. And then you get in this spiral where it keeps going and going and going. And, and the key here is to, number one, is to recognize it, okay? And it can be difficult, but it's usually not that difficult if you think about it. Are you wired but tired all the time, you can't sleep very well, you have a hard time relaxing. Like you try go out, you try to go to the gym, and you just don't recover very, very well anymore. You don't. You can't really exercise too much because it makes you feel stressed or you feel like if you do exercise, you're paying for it for three days later. Or if you go into a sauna, for example, and you try to detox and you're. And you can't move for three days after you get out of the sauna or maybe even for 24 hours. These are all. And the mental health, like irritability, inability to kind of regulate your mood as well, these are all kind of signs that this might be happening. And the key though, to understand, and I think this is where you're going, Amitai, is that you can't just address this by addressing the mitochondrial piece, like addressing the energy piece. You can't just address it by addressing just the stress piece. You have to address them at the same time. Because what can happen is if you take somebody's stress and you bring it down, if their energy capacity is very, very low, if their mitochondria aren't working very well, they're going to feel like crap, like, and so you've decreased their stress, but now they feel terrible. Right. And they're going to want to feel like they did before if it means that, you know, they're not going to feel as terrible. Right. So the key is to support both how the mitochondria are working and decreasing the stress at the same time. And that's really what I've developed over the last several years is like, is that this sort of like this nice fine balance of supporting the mitochondria and supporting the stress related systems at the same time. And if you can do them in combination, like, that's when you can see the most powerful changes that are most sustainable for people. And that's really where the, the power of combining something like, you know, downregulating the nervous system with improving the, the mitochondria at the same time can really have a huge impact on your life. And there's very simple ways to do this, by the way. It's not, it's not complicated. I want to make sure that's clear. And, and, and, and actually methylene blue can fall into the category here of something that can help on the mitochondrial side very, very quickly. And on the, on the stress side, what you're looking to do is really help people understand what it feels like to not be stressed. And that can be very interesting for people. Right. Because if they've been in the stress mode for a long period of time, they don't realize that they've been in it because they've been compensating it for a long period of time. Yeah, but so you have to show them and give them the, give them the experience of bringing down the stress levels. And so there's a couple easy ways to do this and there's harder ways to do it. Right. Easy ways are to give a supplement, something that works in the GABA system specifically that can downregulate the nervous system very, very quickly so that they can feel what it feels like to not feel stressed. And that's nice and great as long as their mitochondria are being supported at the same time as I mentioned. Right. Because if not they're going to feel really, really tired and sort of just really washed out. So what I typically do is I give some mitochondrial support first for the first week or two and then I start with the, the sympathetic downregulation. So giving them something that enhances the GABA system and then that combination is very, very effective because you've supported the mitochondria and now you're starting something that's helping with the stress and now that they can tolerate coming down from that stress because they have enough support right now. So short term I use a lot of methylene blue, I use a lot of GABA urgic kinds of supplements. I don't use GABA itself because GABA is too big of a molecule to get into the brain. If you take GABA and it works for you, it means that you have a leaky brain and you have a leaky gut. You need to do something about that.
- [32:07]
C
That should be, you should be, you might be calm but you should be calmly alarmed.
- [32:12]
E
Calmly alarmed, yes.
- [32:14]
D
And it was so crazy. So yeah, if, if, like if a person has been taking GABA supplements and was feeling much better, it's actually alarming because they really shouldn't brain.
- [32:26]
E
Yeah. And I've had, I had a patient recently, last six months. He started off with me using GABA supplements and feeling quite good on them. And then we, he had a leaky gut, we sealed it up, we healed it up and then the GABA supplements stopped working. Now the only exception might be like a, like a nano liposomal type of GABA maybe, but other GABA supplements shouldn't work. So you know what we do is we formulate with things that, that work on the GABA receptor but are not GABA itself. You know, we have a sleep formula, transcriptions that has something called Agarin in it which is from a psychedelic mushroom called the amino acid. Yeah.
- [33:03]
C
Which is very interesting.
- [33:04]
D
Right, the troz one.
- [33:05]
C
Yeah, it's very interesting because, because it's derived from a pseudotoxic mushroom.
- [33:11]
D
It's like very poisonous mushroom. Right?
- [33:13]
E
That is, yeah. At high doses it causes GI distress. But this particular compound is not toxic. It's Actually long acting on the GABA receptor. There's another compound. Yeah, in there.
- [33:24]
C
The reason I'm saying it is because right as we speak right now in the, you know, something really cool with transcriptions, obviously the fiscally positive arm of Home Hope is that you could see the ripples in the biohacking water of what you guys are doing. And one of them is, I feel like there is a. There is an upper tick in kind of the integration of Amanita mascaria into things like honey or things that obviously like kind of grassroots approaches. But it's important to understand that this is. The quality of processing is actually pretty important there.
- [34:04]
E
Huge. Right? Because so drying the mushroom is good because it's taking less of the other ingredient called ibotenic acid, which is the neurotoxic ingredient out there. But you're not going to have entirely free of ibotinic acid. And then you are going to be getting some of that in these amanita tinctures. But there are. The longer you dry it, the less you get. Ibotanic acid gets converted into the agarin with drying actually. So what we did is we don't have an amanita extract. We use a synthesized agarin itself. So it's pure agarin. There's no albutenic acid at all. Or using super low doses of it, it's just 1 milligram in Tro Z and it's long acting, it lasts for about six and a half hours. And so we, we have our Tro Z which works on the GABA system, works on serotonin melatonin, it works on the, what's called the adenosine system as well as the endocannabinoid system. It's a very comprehensive, probably the most comprehensive sleep formula that I've seen on the market. This is the way we formulate very low doses with everything. But it's the GABA combination there is the agarin plus something called Hanoki, which is from magnolia bark. And those two combinations, they both bind to the GABA receptor in really cool ways to synergize with each other to help enhance the amount of GABAergic tone, which means how much you feel relaxed. So by the way, if you're GABA deficient, you have anxiety, you have insomnia, you have depression, you have mental health disorders, you have tremors even. And for a long time doctors like me were taught that if you had depression that you had a serotonin deficiency, right? Serotonin being the happy you know, neurochemical. But we now know that serotonin levels are not any lower in people with depression versus people that don't have depression. Okay? And so that theory has completely been, you know, it's hogwash, basically. But we know as there's good data to show that people with depressed GABA levels have depression much more than people that don't. So optimizing your GABA levels very quickly can very, very fast, very, very quickly show you in how it is to be more in that parasympathetic mode. So long term, I optimize the gut. I optimize precursors to GABA, like glutamine, for example, which is also the primary fuel of the small intestine, which is an amino acid. But short term, you can use Drozee, for example, for sleep, you can use our Trocom, which is a combination of additional ingredients that work on the GABA system to really help. I mean, there's also like CBD itself and lemon balm and passion flour and ashwagandha. These are all things that work on the GABA system as well. Not just, you know, our products at transcriptions, but the way we develop them is very much, you know, small. A small little trophy, as you know, in a way to synergize very low doses of ingredients together, making the sum, you know, greater than all of its parts. But that's what I typically do is I'll have my patients get some, get some support with their mitochondria. Like some of the methylene blue is good, typically. And then after about a week or two, I start them on some Trocom or TRO zone, depending on where they're having the most stress in their life. If they don't know, I just start them on the Trocom and then just start having them take it. And then that's, that's actually very telltale for me is like, oh, I don't feel any stress. I'm like, oh, really? You don't, huh? Let's see how you feel. And we start giving you something that calms your nervous system down. But small point there is that. But important when you first calm down your nervous system, if you've been stressed for a long period of time, it can be scary actually, because you're not used to being in a calm state. And so I've had a number of patients over the years where they get this. They can get a reactive anxiety to when their nervous systems calms down. So it's important to know that when you start taking Something to calm down your nervous system. Feeling anxious as your nervous system is going down is, is, is normal. It's okay, it will pass. It's typically only going to be for maybe five or 10 minutes, but just something to be aware of. And that's why I always counsel people that have been anxious for a long period of time, you know, that to, to know that that may happen as they come down. But once they find out where there is, then they can do the meditation, then they can do the yoga, then they can do the breath work, then they can do the, you know, the other things that are a little bit more difficult. But now they know what relaxation really means in calming their nervousness.
- [38:08]
D
You know, it happened to me the first time I went to a sound bowl meditation, so I haven't meditated properly. And then my friend was in town who was already like an avid meditator,
- [38:19]
C
and then she avid, Avid sleeper through meditation. That's what she is.
- [38:23]
D
Yeah. So she took me to a sound bowl meditation and it was my first time that the. Previously I've only tried meditations that were guided where I was listening to a voice and I kind of like was focused on that. Anyway, so here we are in the sound bowl meditation, my friend, true, she's falling asleep, she's snoring next to me while I'm starting to get panic attack. I. It's quiet, I'm supposedly relaxed. All the sound balls, the, the, the, the smell in the studio, everything's supposed to relax me. Like, no light and all of intrusive thoughts are just rushing into me like all at once, as if suddenly my brain is like, oh, you're paying attention. You know what I was thinking about? And it's like all the worst thoughts at the same time. I couldn't wait for it to be over. And then it's over. I'm waking up my friend. I'm like, why did you do it to me? I thought, I'm gonna like burst. And it took me a while to actually understand that this is part of it.
- [39:20]
E
Yeah, that's kind of.
- [39:21]
D
She was like, listen, you really need to meditate. That's what I'm learning from it. And I did too, over time, but it was such a scary experience. So I'm glad that you're warning people that it might happen.
- [39:31]
E
Yeah. So on average, there's different estimates out there, but the one that I think is probably the most close to being true of how many thoughts we have every single day, it's around 70,000 or so. And this doesn't mean that you're having unique thoughts, you know, all the time, right? And there's some people out there that have very little thought and actually like very, very little, you know, person behind them talking all the time. And I very much, I'm very jealous of those people. Right, but most people are not like that. Yeah, most people are, you know, are. Have a lot of thoughts, I think
- [40:01]
D
every time, by the way, we can be jealous of every time. He's like, going through life pretty chill.
- [40:07]
E
That's probably true.
- [40:08]
C
You know, comparatively speaking, to be honest, most of. Most of the person talking to me is this guy, this girl over here, she's the intrusive thought.
- [40:18]
D
Instead of 70,000, I probably have 140,000 subjects.
- [40:23]
E
So when we're GABA deficient Anastasia, we do have an elevation there. So, like when we're stressed, when we're anxious, depressed, we go to like 120,000 on average around that time. So that's why I always tell my diagnosis over here. Yeah, there you go. Well, don't. Well, don't people, I always say, you know, don't believe everything you think, right? Because if you have 70,000 of those thoughts every day, like, which ones are you going to believe? Like, should you believe any of them? Right? Like, that's like, that's the crazy thing about it. So, so it's a big deal. Like, learning how to meditate is essential, right? And what happens when you first start meditating and everybody knows this, that's ever tried. It's like the first five minutes of my meditation are everything that I forgot to do in the last 24 to 72 hours or everything that I have to do in the next 24 to 72 hours and trying to make it, you know, provocative enough for me to break my meditation to do those things, right? Like, I know it's going to happen every single time, right? And like, and people that are meditators, they know. But that's what your brain does, right? Your brain, your ego constructs, wants to stay in control, right? And so having that experience is. It can be. It can be scary, right? Because you're like, you know, if you're not ready for it, you know, that kind of thing. And so, yeah, I'm sorry that happened to you, but it's common and that's why it's important to have that.
- [41:29]
D
I mean, it was. It happened a while back, like probably seven years ago, if not more. And so.
- [41:36]
C
But we're not allowed to have sound balls in the house.
- [41:38]
D
No, but I progressed since Then and I learned to meditate. But it's definitely. But you know, now that you were talking about how the thoughts, like the ego is trying to get like take control over you and make you do stuff. Like that's why actually I also can't work out by myself. Like I have to be part of the class where I'm in a group setting or I have to have an instructor because if I'm left to work out by myself, I can't stop. Like all of the to do list is. So there's so much pressure from my to do list. I keep breaking my workout to write something down as if like I will never remember it again or start on the task and like come back to it later. So yeah, I'm definitely lots of your supplements.
- [42:24]
E
No, I get it. I mean, and I, so many people that are listening feel the same way. You know, I think I talk about this a lot with gym culture and people like that are going to the gym or exercising at their house even and they go and do a set and they're on their phone, they go to another set and they're on their phone. First of all, their posture sucks. And so if their posture sucks, you're not getting good, you know, good and good breath work. You're not being able to calm down your nervous system between sets. It's going to make your exercise less effective. Second is that you're keeping yourself in like dopaminergic, sympathetic, but you're looking at your phone, you're thinking about your stuff. And so a big part of exercising optimally is learning how to, you know, meditate while you exercise actually. Right. Which is maintaining your focus while you're doing this. And this is, it's a common issue for me too, Anastasia and I can relate to this, right. I'm like, oh, that's really, really provocative. I really should go check my phone for that right now because my brain is telling me this, like, no, it's okay. If it's important, it'll come back later, I hope, you know, so, and, and having that, having that, you know, internal dialogue with yourself. But I think one of the things I like a lot and I play around with this with my kids all the time is just reminding them that they're not their thoughts. If you can observe your thoughts, you cannot be your thoughts. Right? So there has to be a place you're observing your thoughts from some other location that isn't the thought. So my 8 year old right now, who's got that transition from being in magical Land and being in the real world, we talk about this all the time. Sometimes he doesn't know what's real versus what's not real. Right. And so just creating some space there is really the key. Over the long term, understand that you're not the thought. You don't have to believe that crazy thing that you just thought.
- [44:08]
A
Let's take a second to talk about why your skin looks less firm than it used to, even though you're doing everything right. And the collagen may not be the problem. Elastin is what allows skin to stretch, move, and return without leaving lines or laxative behind.
- [44:25]
B
And once elastin signaling breaks down, you cannot hydrate or peptide your way out of it.
- [44:32]
A
The issue is that elastin degradation is silent. By the time skin starts to look lax or less responsive, the damage has already compounded under the surface.
- [44:42]
B
Most routines never acknowledge elastin at all. So we built one that does.
- [44:47]
A
The Elastin Action Protocol is the system we use to protect elastin function before visible laxity sets in. It focuses on reducing oxidative stress, supporting fibroblast signaling and targeting the areas where elastin breaks down shows first, including the jawline, neck, and under the eye area.
- [45:06]
B
Inside the protocol, you will find structured morning and evening routines, red light timing for elastin preservation, and recovery guidance for post treatment periods when elastin is most vulnerable.
- [45:22]
A
This is not a firming product. It is as a structural intervention. If you want the full elastin protocol, you can download it. We will send it straight to your email. The link is is in the episode description.
- [45:35]
B
If your routine only focuses on collagen, it is missing the real issue.
- [45:47]
C
So I want to summarize kind of what we. Kind of what we've gone through until now.
- [45:53]
E
Sure.
- [45:54]
C
Which is. Which is that that spiral can really happen kind of by two major components. One is what is called like what you call top down, which is like stress, trauma, hyper vigilance, obviously things that happen to you from the outside. And the other one is internal or bottom up, which would be triggered by physiological or biochemical insults, which would be, you know, toxins, infections, redox dysfunction. I would pro. That would. Even though it kind of happens too, from the outside. I would also say, you know, things like exposure to, you know, to a lot of UV oxidative stress, et cetera. Right.
- [46:45]
E
Yeah.
- [46:46]
C
And within that there is. While you're experiencing it, you would experience one or more of those of these characteristics, which is energy collapses, sleep fragments or becomes less deep, hormones become less Balanced or misfire. Inflammation rises and recovery is insufficient. Tanks, however you would like to define that. Did I miss anything?
- [47:16]
E
No. That's a nice summary. I mean, I think in the end, this spiral of doom, as I talk about is one of those things where it's not always. I think the main point that you made there, that I didn't make clearer until you said it, Amitai, is that it's not always the stress that starts the whole process. It can be something that happens from an insult, like a mitochondrial insult, like a toxin and infection. Things like that can also cause this spiral to happen. So it may not be that you had a stressful event, but it also, it could have been that you had, you know, you had Covid or you had. You had to go to the hospital for some sort of, you know, infection and needed to be there for a couple days and that caused the stress on the, on the, on the cells as well. But either way, in the end, you have to address it on both ends, no matter where it starts. Because if you don't, you're going to see long term, you're not going to see the benefits that you would hopefully want to have, you know, long term. And so that. That's the key. But yeah, I think that's a good otherwise summary. Yeah.
- [48:10]
D
And I was, I was going to say that. I know we started talking about dialing up GABA intelligently.
- [48:16]
E
Yeah.
- [48:17]
D
We talked about recoupling mitochondria. And then in the sources that you sent us, you were also talking about leveraging oxygen. I think we didn't get there yet. Do we want to talk about that?
- [48:28]
C
You know, it's funny, we have an internal joke because we did prepare pretty well for this, for this podcast. This is another thing that Anastasia brought to the table. Coming on the podcast, we actually prepare so.
- [48:40]
E
Nice.
- [48:41]
C
We kept saying the sources and now it sounds like we're talking about something that was handed from, you know, the sources. No. So I just want to connect a little bit because you really talked about. First, let's tackle immediate. Interrupt that spiral with immediate interventions and then work on resilience and within people who have things that they want to address specifically as far as their appearance, their skin appearance, by the way, that does not matter if we're talking about a 15 year old or an 80 year old. It's almost unanimous that they're trying to do the latter first. It's almost unanimous where. Whether it's acne or whether it is basically the lack of ability of your skin to support natural aging. Collagen production, et cetera. It's always going to the extreme first using peels, using scrubs, using acids, using lasers, whatever that is, surgery, whatever that is, without interrupting that spiral that leads to, to begin with. And that is actually why the industry has so much money in it. It's because people are not allowing therapies that might be very, very simple to work because they are not optimizing their body to respond to those therapies.
- [50:09]
E
It's a big deal, right? Because we talk about this a lot in regenerative therapies as well, like things like stem cells and PRP and exosomes. Like, they don't work very well if your mitochondria suck, plain and simple, right? They may give you a little bit of a boost for a couple months and then you're back giving yourself another 10 or $20,000 injection. And so having your foundation solid is so key. Amitai and I think that what I always say to my patients and as I educate about this topic is that there are things that you want to do right now to help support mitochondrial function, to break this sympathetic loop, for sure. But long term, you really do have to do the harder work of optimizing your foundational health. Optimize your cells and, and your vitamins, your minerals, your nutrients, your gut, your hormones, your stress levels. And this can be hard. It can be stress from childhood, it could be stress from deaths in the family. It could be really significant trauma that don't allow you to feel safe. And that's difficult. And it could be that you've been sick for 30 years and, and like it's been this diagnosis that's been dragging you for that period of time. And, and it's one of those things where, you know, within about the first three to five minutes, sometimes within the first 30 seconds when I speak to somebody, I'm. It's pretty obvious to me whether I'm going to be able to help them immediately or not. Using a pure physiologic approach, right? Using a pure, like vitamins, minerals, nutrients and cofactors approach. Like, I know if they've already seen 10 doctors, I know if they already, you know, gone through multiple supplements and nothing seems to work for them, then most likely it's that sympathetic aspect that really needs to be addressed. And so, you know, for me, I always go back to what do you, what can you help people right now with that's supportive, right? And then long term, how can you help them really build a foundation of resilience so that they have that they're in that 6%, right? Or maybe in that. Yeah, of the 100, they're the 6% as you described before. And that they have the resilience and that the, the beneficial side effect of optim, optimizing their health is that their skin was going to look better, that their, their, their aging of their body is going to look better, that they're just going to feel better inside and out. And then, you know, we talk about this, you and I, you guys and I have talked about this with, with methylene blue, for example, right? If you're, if you're optimizing mitochondrial function systemically, you're optimizing it in the skin as well. And it's, you're going to see that, right? And then you're optimizing it in the skin. You're gonna see it in the skin, right? And then you're also gonna have some systemic benefits to that as well. So it's an inside out approach as well as outside in depending on the situation. But I'm always looking at things like this in the, in the context of sequencing and what's gonna be the most supportive for people and then also what people are gonna be able to engage in, right? So you don't wanna give 100 different options for somebody. You wanna make it as, as easy as you can so that they know, okay, now I need to decrease my stress. So this is, these are the two things that I'm gonna do now. I need to improve my mitochondrial function. So these are the one or two things that I'm going to try, right? And then go slowly. Don't feel like you have to do everything all at the same time. You don't feel like you have to do everything. Well, just try, right? And see how things go. But I completely agree with you that in the world of skincare, in the world of biohacking, it's like, well, just try this $20,000 device. That's all you need. Everything else is going to work better. But the answer is like, most likely you don't need that. Most likely you can get 90% of the way there, or even more by just doing the basic foundational things and working on those over the long term. It's just not going to happen right away, right? Six months or a year later you're going to feel the benefits of optimizing your cells, your mitochondria, but it doesn't happen immediately in a sustainable way until that time.
- [53:41]
C
But I would say one thing, and that's going to lead Me to Anastasia's question. One thing that indeed does cost money, quite a lot of money sometimes, but is working, you know, as a metabolic leverage, as an immediate intervention, as a kind of a system reset is HBOT is a hyperbaric oxygen therapy. So you know, why, what's the mechanism there? How is it connect, how does it connect to that, to that, you know, laying whether, whether it's laying the foundation, healing the foundation. How, how does it work?
- [54:16]
E
Yeah, there's a couple different ways I think about hyperbaric therapy in this particular context. I think the biggest one to understand is to kind of where people are on that stress spiral actually if they're super stressed. Hyperbaric therapy is not likely a very good idea, especially deeper pressures because it's going to cause more stress on the system. Where hyperbaric therapy is fantastic is in the mitochondrial side of things, in the inflammatory side of things, in the blood vessel regrowth side of things. But and I've learned my lesson over the years, if you start it too soon, you don't see the benefits and don't see the long term benefits especially. And so what I often do is the sequence is to optimize foundational biomarkers. I do that using the health optimization medicine framework. Start supplementation that can help with mitochondrial function. Start supplementation that can help with bringing down that sympathetic balance, sympathetic tone, right? Bring it down to be more par. Parasympathetic. Then once that's all in place, then in about three or six months, typically that's when hyperbaric therapy can come in and be that accelerator of everything that you've just done. And that's where I've seen the most power because it can improve mitochondrial function, it could decrease inflammation, it can improve blood vascular growth. Some great studies showing all of these things. And so if you're going to use it earlier in the process, like in the beginning, I typically use only milder pressures as, versus deeper pressures in the later stages. We're really trying to do like deeper healing for people. The milder pressure is like 1.3, 1.5 atmospheres. Those are more for, for neurologic improvements and more for like general energy, general just oxygenation focuses or for purposes. And it can be very helpful. But you don't want to go deep pressures for sure until, until later in the process and not, you know, not intensive therapy until they have the machinery that could be really able to leverage, you know, bringing in a lot more oxygen. So it becomes like the, but for me it's almost like the Icing on the cake, honestly. And then over the years I've used it less and less as I've realized that if you can optimize, you know, in the, in the foundational frameworks, optimize using supplementation and then peel off the supplementation, hopefully over time while you're doing all the things to build their foundation, both physiologically and psychology psychologically, then you can use hyperbaric therapy. Absolutely. And I still do, but I've used it a lot less over the years because if you use this framework oftentimes, you know, you don't have to use it as much, which is nice.
- [56:27]
D
And one of the kind of questions that our listeners always like to know about any modalities that we talk about, it's what do people get wrong about it? So what do people get wrong about like HBOT and healing, for example?
- [56:41]
C
Yeah.
- [56:42]
E
As I was just alluding to, they try to do too much too soon. Typically they're not thinking about the biggest
- [56:47]
D
misconception, the biggest one. Jump into it.
- [56:49]
E
Yeah.
- [56:50]
D
Crank it up. Yeah, yeah.
- [56:54]
C
No, no, I note that I put there from reading the sources was that interrupting the spiral buys you time, but the long term recalibration is the true exit of that spiral. And that's kind of what you were talking about. And that is what to your point prevents re entry or builds resilience.
- [57:18]
E
Exactly, yeah. And that's the key is that long term we don't really want to be on as many supplements as possible. I don't want, you know, people having to take methylene blue all the time or taking Trocom or Tro Z. The goal is to, to have these things when you need them, when you're part of that 6% and you have additional stress and you need it, then you take it. Right. And I took Atroplus column last night, right. And I do take these, I take some of these things myself. Right. I take methylene blue three or four times a week at this point, you know, depending on the type of year and what's going on. And so I feel, but I feel like the biggest emphasis that I often have when I talk about this is, is that all of us don't want to take things all the time. I mean some of us do, some of us like Amitai and I, we like taking supplements, we like doing all this stuff, but, but many of us
- [57:57]
D
don't want to do that. Yeah, I cannot imagine when he's not going to take supplements.
- [58:03]
E
Yeah. My, my supplement cabinet behind me is, has been relegated to my cabinet Specifically because it's too large. Right. And so, but what I always say here is that we should all have like a base of supplements that we're taking that, that we've measured what we needed and we're using supplements that are related to that. And then we can have other things that we want to play with and have fun with. That's fine. But, but, but in the essence, I know that most people don't want to be like Amitai, be like me. They want to have as very few things that they take as possible. And the key with that is building resilience and breaking the spiral and having a long term, you know, long term Runway when you're optimizing at foundational levels. I think that is absolutely my motto all the time. I tell my patients this all the time is that we're going to be supplement heavy in front like as we get going, but as we optimize, as you work on all these things, you're going to see this, all these things come, come down and peel off.
- [58:48]
C
I love it. Okay, so let's talk a little bit about the true exit. You know, we can do it like a rapid fire since that's what we normally like doing in the end. But let's see if, if you could give us actionable tips.
- [59:01]
E
Sure.
- [59:02]
C
Through, through the, you know, obviously a lot of things are going to be repeated, but actionable tips and approaches for. Let's start with. You're going to read the first one.
- [59:10]
D
Micronutrient and cofactor balancing.
- [59:13]
E
So this is your, like your vitamins, like your B vitamins for example, your selenium, your minerals, things like that. The best way to do it is get it tested, see what you see what you need and get some foundational testing done and watch it over time as you optimize your diet, your lifestyle and your supplementation for sure.
- [59:27]
C
Redox restoration.
- [59:29]
E
So redox restoration means how well your mitochondria are working basically. And the best way to do that is, is to measure as you again to see what's kind of going on and then to understand which of the inputs or the outputs in the case. Like is it the inputs the problem? Is it the problem? Making energy is the problem detoxing from the energy you make and then, and then kind of giving yourself a focus depending on which one, which side of the coin it typically is. If you don't know and a lot of people don't know because it's hard to know. Again I, that's, I use methylene blue for this because it works on both sides. And low doses, around 8 to 25 milligrams are very, very supportive for it. And that's what we have at, you know, in just blue, at transcriptions. A small amount in there and you can get, you know, get it, Get a good redox support while you kind of try to understand where in the system you're kind of breaking down. Is it in the energy production side or the toxic vacation side or both? And doing testing is typically the best. And then, of course, understanding your stress and how that's affecting everything, of course, is a big one, too.
- [60:21]
C
So just, by the way, just as a. For me actually to know, for in just blue, it's Basically, you have four big squares that are divided into four little squares. You have 16 little squares. How many milligrams does a, does a, you know, a little square have?
- [60:37]
E
So at troscriptions, we have a form factor called a trochee. A buccal troche.
- [60:42]
C
Yes.
- [60:42]
E
It's a dissolvable lozenge that goes between your upper cheek and gum and, and dissolves here. Now, the nice thing about a buccal troche is that you can get very fast absorption because it bypasses digestion in general entirely and goes directly from the cheek into the. Into the system. And it's also, the ingredients are more potent because they go directly from the cheek into your system. Now, the exception to this, though, is methylene blue, because methylene blue is so highly bioavailable, which means almost all that gets in the system, whether you dissolve in the mouth or you swallow it, you don't have to have a blue mouth, you don't have to have a blue tongue. You can just swallow it. Yes, your urine will turn blue, but not your mouth. Okay. And the additional thing about troches that's good is that they're titratable. So one trochee is scored. So it's got a cross in the middle. And you can take. And you can break it up into A quarters, halves, three quarters are full. And so adjust. Blue is 16 milligrams per troche per full trochee. You break it up into a quarter, that's gonna be 4 milligrams of methylene blue. So I usually recommend starting off either 4, 1/4 or 1/2, or at 1 or 8 milligrams of methylene blue and finding the dose that works best for you. And you should feel more energy, more focus, more sustainability. It shouldn't feel like caffeine. It shouldn't feel. It doesn't typically feel like stimulating. It just feels like you're just higher elevation energy and more sustained energy for longer. So instead of those caffeine, you know, ups and downs, you just get like a sustained kind of, you kind of go. And that's, that's typically how people, people should feel when they take it.
- [62:04]
C
And how many milligrams does a blue canadine, which also has, has some nicotine and cbd, et cetera. How much, how many milligrams does scored small square half.
- [62:19]
E
So blue canadine is a combination of methylene blue with nicotine, caffeine and cbd. Okay, so we talked about methane blue already small amount, just 5 milligrams. Nicotine dose is 1 milligram, also pretty low. Nicotine's great. It's an anti inflammatory. It's, it's, it's a helps with cognitive function. It's got this cool capacity to enhance brain function but relax your body at the same time. That's why people like smoking, but I don't recommend smoking. Smoking is much higher amounts of nicotine. Please do not smoke or vape. But nicotine at low doses is great for cognitive function and inflammation. And so we use that in the formula. One milligram. There's caffeine 50 milligrams five zero and then there's CBD five milligrams. And so the average dose of that is half of all those doses as a half of a troche. But that's when more of your, your stimulant feel. It's your focus, it's your productivity, it's your verbal fluidity. It's getting, you know, getting shit done for three to five hours. And so it's, it's a favorite of the biohacker community. But it's also a favor of people that just want to, you know, feel better and work longer and not have to feel like their mind is going in a billion directions. So for pre workout, Anastasia, it's also good because it kind of quiets the mind for focus. That's why caffeine and nicotine are used as a pre workout actually, because they quiet the mind. They let you focus so that you can actually do your reps and focus on your muscle and your strength and do all that and not, you know, lose your, you know, your mind thinking about, you know, your to do list and things like that.
- [63:37]
D
So since you recommended it for me, I have a caveat. Like, I mean, I'm still breastfeeding, so probably I still can't use anything like, so Pregnant and breastfeeding have to stave off all the truckies. All of, all of the supplements you guys make?
- [63:52]
E
Yes. I mean for now, I mean, we don't have any that are available for pregnant women or for breastfeeding women at this time. All of our products for adults, some of them are used in kids with practitioner supervision. We have our methylene blue containing products that also have a potential interaction with SSRIs. The interactions, you know, it's not typically dangerous, but if you are on an ssri, you should be working with a practitioner to make sure it's okay to take methylene blue. If you have high blood pressure, you have to be monitoring your blood pressure. If you're taking methylene blue, you have to have normal, you have to have kidneys that work. If you don't have kidneys that work very well, methylene blue is going to stick around for longer too. And it may cause damage. Not, not damage, but may cause, you know, it build up in the system over time. But our, our GABAergic ones, like the Trocom Troz, again, you can't use them if you're pregnant or breastfeeding. But very few contraindications, very few reasons otherwise that you couldn't use those particular products. They're very well tolerated. Unless you're using other compounds that are similar. Like if you're drinking a whole bunch of alcohol, you may not want to take them in combination with things that are also working on the GABA system or taking benzodiazepines and things like that.
- [64:55]
D
You guys make the coolest stuff. So I, I've, you know, I, I've been happy to be on this journey of motherhood, but I do miss my trocom and tropy that I used to take before getting pregnant and now lab is going to be two, two years in a couple of days. So I just chose to breastfeed for longer. But that's like the only downside for me. I'm like, I miss my supplements because, you know, have to, to think about how. And at this point I don't even know how much is transferred because it's more already for like soothing than nutrition. Of course he's like a carnivore. He's eating equal amount of steak almost with the mutai.
- [65:34]
E
So wow, nice.
- [65:35]
D
But gotta wait a little bit longer until I can get back on track with my transcriptions. Now I also get on track with the questions.
- [65:44]
C
Yes, I mean I'm going to eliminate some of the questions. Unfortunately. I do want to Touch on one last thing. And this is the thing, the last piece, something we haven't spoken about for a couple years on this podcast, which is part of the True Exit, which is the psychological and emotional reset using psychedelics. And this is not, we're not gonna, we're not talking right now about, you know, recreational psychedelics now. We're talking about, you know, medical supervision, etc. This is, this is basically kind of the third, the third spokes. Wheel here. Spoke wheel. Spoke wheel. Anyway, the third kind of. Yes. Okay, in, in that, in this, in this, in this mechanism that. That's going to get you, that's going to get you to orbit. Right? So how does one approach that? Why is that important? Why can't we just get into hyperbarics and forget about it? Why do we need that?
- [66:50]
E
Forget about it. Right, Yeah, I like that. I mean, you talked about orbits and psychedelics together, which is interesting too. But I think what we're really talking about here, Amitai, and it's an important piece, is that when you're dealing with stress, if there's a trauma component to it, especially psychedelics can be very, very helpful here. And the psychedelics help break that sympathetic activation because they can break those patterns, those psychological patterns that have been manifest related to previous traumatic experiences. And I've seen a lot of this in the world of ketamine, for example, which is a legal psychedelic being used in a therapeutic setting, which is important, not just a doc that gives you ketamine and sends you out the door. You don't want that. But using psychedelics is a great way to, in the long term, break that sympathetic aspect of that spiral. Because, you know, I had a patient recently, like we talked about how her dad was an alcoholic and she never felt safe as a kid, right. And now she's in her 30s and has GI problems since she was 5. Right. And so there's no amount of supplementation that I can give her that's going to help her GI system. There's no diet that I can give her that's going to change her GI system dramatically. The only thing that's going to work is by really addressing those aspects of our biology. Because, you know, you guys have probably read or heard of the book the Body Keeps the Score. Because this is true, it does. And so, you know, talk therapy can be helpful. Emdr, which is a trauma release type of therapy with rapid eye movements, can be helpful. But really psychedelics are the frontier of this, which is, you know, having somebody go from having PTSD from Being in war to not having PTSD in war in three days is just not something that we've seen otherwise since psychedelics have come on the, on, on the, the scene over the last, you know, several years. So I'm very excited for what's happening there. Certainly not everything's legal, so you have to be careful what you're getting. Just like you have to be careful what kind of methylene blue you're getting out there because it can be contaminated with heavy metals and toxins and especially liquids on the methylene blue side. But psychedelics as well. You have to be careful of your, of the person that's helping you, your officiator, your shaman, your, your guide, whatever you want to call them.
- [68:50]
C
At least no one, no one's cleaning, cleaning fish tanks with psychedelics. That would be a whole different.
- [68:55]
E
That'd be a waste. That'd be a waste. But it's, it's a piece that's important because when I talk about breaking that sympathetic side of things initially, you can do it by things like GABAergic supplementation, trochom troz, you can do breath work, meditation, yoga. That's only gonna go so far if you really don't look at the root of it all, the sort of why, and there's tons of reasons why it's not just one. But finding that and then addressing it, the via psychic psychedelic route is very, very compelling. And I've been sending more and more of my patients that route when I can.
- [69:24]
C
And you know, within, within, within skin health, it's pretty interesting for both, both reasons. So Anastasia talked about it before. We've actually had people on the podcast talk about the, the need for elevation and then did a healthy decline of, of catecholamines or stress, stress hormones in the, or stress molecules in the brain. And if we don't have that, we increase the kind of bad molecules like mmps that we express in our skin which then age us faster. So that's just like in general. But also we see a lot of people who are undergoing anything from plastic surgery to cosmetic procedures to anything from even microneedling or laser resurfacing. These things which require the body to get into this kind of semi, you know, hibernation state or kind of self care state. Yeah, parasympathetic if you are, it can definitely trigger trauma or kind of trigger heightened elevation of emotions. And I think even within that piece, it's extremely important to pre treat yourself within that aspect before undergoing anything really that would stimulate renewal in the skin.
- [70:36]
E
100. I mean, everything like you guys are in a business where everything comes back to what people care about first, which is how they look. Right. And so with that aspect in mind, everything else falls in the same category of ecosystem. Right. Where you access your products, where you access our products. It's all the same ecosystem if you think about it. Right. It's a matter of where people are and where they're going to go. So hopefully we can take them on the road of optimizing their health from their skin.
- [71:04]
C
Yeah, well, listen, we have to wrap up.
- [71:07]
D
Yeah, we are at time, but as always, it's such a pleasure to have you and I am so grateful I got to be part of this discussion this time. And I think we touched on a lot today, but hopefully it was very relatable podcast. I think everybody could hear a little bit of themselves or identify themselves and you gave so many tools to. To act on it. So I hope it was helpful to everyone. I think it was. It was definitely very helpful for me.
- [71:39]
E
Well, thank you for having me, guys.
- [71:41]
D
Consultation. But get to share it with everyone.
- [71:44]
E
Yeah, yeah. And if anybody's more interested. And of course, we've, we've done more. Amitai have done a couple podcasts in the past. We've taken some deep dives as well. And they can always check out our other work at Triscriptions and find out more, educate more, and we'll have more
- [71:58]
C
of those in the future. And obviously we're a big fan of what you guys are doing. We love you guys as human beings and we are very excited for our continued joint journey.
- [72:10]
D
Yeah, we're now developing so many more different products. Spoiler alert. I'm gonna be sending some your way, so you get always the first to try them.
- [72:21]
C
Don't even, you know, I'm excited.
- [72:24]
E
Yeah, I need. Yeah, I need it. I need everything I can get over here, guys. So, yeah, thank you very much. Thank you all for you do.
- [72:30]
D
We love you.
- [72:31]
C
Bye. Take care.