← The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #28 Featuring Dr. Scott Sherr PART 2! THE METHYLENE BLUE CLINIC! Debunking Methylene Blue Myths, "Blue Brains," Mechanism of Action, Mitochondrial and Athletic Performance Benefits, Proper Dosing Protocols, Quality Control and MORE!!
01:28:10
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- [00:20]
A
Welcome back to the Dylan Gelli Podcast so you can see if you're watching on video and if you're not. I've interviewed my guest before. It was a tremendous interview. We hit home on so many different topics. But see, he taught me so much in our first episode that we had to come back and do it again and dig deep into a lot of new news and things that are being passed around. So real quickly because I can't really give a good enough intro for my man here because he's got so many credentials, but I'm going to do my best. He's a board certified internal medicine physician and he is certified to practice health optimization medicine. He's a specialist in hyperbaric oxygen therapy, which we talked about in our last episode. And he's the CEO of Troscriptions, one of my favorite companies in the world. And he does a ton of other things. But most of all, he's well known for being a methylene blue expert and we are going to dig deep today on that. So, my friends, this is my friend, Dr. Scott Schur.
- [01:23]
B
Good to be back with you. Dylan, for part, do. That's right depending on which language you want to go part two. Okay.
- [01:29]
A
I appreciate it, man. I've been looking forward to this for a while and I always love talking to you. You taught me so many different things on our first conversation and I don't ever get nervous and I always study people that I'm with. But man, when I talk, the first time I talked to you, I was like, man, I gotta. I got to be super prepared to keep up with this guy. But because of what you taught me, I mean, you've seen some of the content I've been doing. You've inspired me to really dig deep on a lot of different concepts. But we're going to start with methylene blue. And I know it's your wheelhouse. There is nobody that I feel is more suitable to discuss this than you. And so that's why I'm really looking forward to this. Now, methylene blue, I'd like you to kind of get into the craze about it because it's really taken off and I feel like you've contributed to a lot of that with teaching and everything. Why do you think it's taken off like it has so quickly?
- [02:24]
B
It's definitely having its moment and it really got big around mid January or so when it was mentioned on a couple big podcasts. And I think the lynch pin in the whole thing was when rfk, the human Health secretary was filmed or caught taking methylene blue in a drink while he was on an airplane. And that just made things go crazy and great. Fantastic. Now people know about methylene blue. We've been doing this for a long time. So my company transcriptions, as you said, we were the first company to come out with a commercial product back in 2020. And Dr. Ted, our founder, our pioneer, he'd been studying methylene blue for years before we even launched the company. And we were looking at the research together and seeing how powerful this was. It was very intriguing to us as a way of delivering a compound that had the possibility both to increase energy and to improve detox at the same time. It's called the Redox Cycler. And so over the last five years, we've had tons of clinical experience, both in our clinical practices personally. So I. I see patients still. I see people all, every, every week, usually over telemedicine. At this point, Dr. Ted still sees patients. The other docs that are on our team still see patients as well. And so we've gotten a lot of clinical experience on how best to use methylene BL in practice and seeing what really can happen. And like, I'll be honest, when we first started using it in 2020, I was like, I don't think this is gonna work. Like, is it really gonna work? And I was just shocked about how many people almost out of the gate, starting getting amazing experiences and seeing their pain go away, their inflammation get better, their brain fog improve, like so many different types of things. And we can talk about that. And I think we talked about some of that on the last podcast. But when that hit in January, it was like everybody was seeing methylene blue for the first time outside of a smaller, you know, niche audience that had been know and had been learning about it. I mean, over the last four years, though, Dylan, it like, it has been growing, like every year. On top of that, for example, when I. I was the first speaker at A4, one of the largest medical conferences to speak about methylene blue, I spoke about methane blue also at another conference called IHS Integrative Health Symposium, which is the largest medical conference on the east coast as well. And so after I spoke, that was in 2023. In 2024, we started seeing a huge amount more interest in the clinical world because from a clinical perspective, it has tons of, tons of applications because it's a mitochondrial enhancer. 94% of US adults have mitochondrial dysfunction, a part of our cells that make energy. And so clinicians started getting really, really excited about it. And at the end of 2024, there were all these other companies starting to make and sell Methylene Blue and paying speakers to pay at these con, to play and to speak at these conferences that I spoke at for free the year before. And so I knew.
- [05:13]
A
Right, right.
- [05:14]
B
And so we all knew something was going on at the company. And then it really, in 2025, in January is when things just went, you know, bonkers. And it's been a really amazing ride overall because now there's a lot more interest as a result of all that interest. Of course there's going to be a lot more naysayers and people out there that are trying to, you know, bring things down and make various arguments that, you know, they feel are correct. Maybe, or maybe they're just doing it because they know how the social media algorithms work, which is to make a conflict, I mean, make it make a splash and do something to cause a stir in some way and then get eyeballs that way. So it was because of what happened in January that everybody is talking about it's trendy now. And I have mixed feelings about that. Right. Because anything that's trendy, people have a significant, interesting, mixed relationship, typically. Right. And what I'm hoping for is that the knowledge is now coming to the fore. We've been doing this for so many years. You can go back and look at all of our blogs and all of our lectures and interviews and things like that that I've done, that Dr. Ted has done on the team. So you can see that there's gravitas here, like there's legitimacy in what we're doing. This is not just a trend. What I've said is like, believe the hype, but be careful. The bandwagon. Right. In the sense of the hype is true. Methylene Blue's got fantastic potential. But be careful about just following what everybody else is doing without understanding why you're taking Methylene Blue and how you can best leverage it in your own particular situation.
- [06:38]
A
You brought up so many good points. I, I will say this before we move into some of the like benefits and the way that it works, because I want to get into that again a little bit deeper before we kind of get. But I want to point something out that you said that is so very true, that people have to be very careful of, and that is tricky. Titles, clickbaits, things that people say without really knowing what they're saying, but they're just looking for viewers. Some people want to play that villain role. They want to play the heel and. And it might not even be who they really are. The problem is, is then they create this confusion into people's head, and it's misguided and it's not right. And some people feel threatened because maybe they have a product line and they're not selling that and it's taken away from that. But. But it. There's. There's normally a motive there. Unless somebody can sit down and go back and forth with an expert like yourself that's willing to do that and to go blow for blow.
- [07:36]
B
Yeah.
- [07:36]
A
And in a good, polite way with answers and questions. I'm sorry, but it's. The credibility to me is not there. And I just want to convey that message to people so they understand. I've been an influencer for 15 years. I know how this works better than anybody.
- [07:50]
B
You're like, you're one of the OGs when it comes to this, right?
- [07:53]
A
And I am.
- [07:53]
B
Yeah. Yeah. And a big piece for me, Dylan, is that a lot of the advice out there isn't bad, but a lot of it is not good either. And wading through that is really hard. It's not easy as a consumer, as somebody that's consuming social media, looking for good advice and education, it's hard overall. And so I totally understand that. The key, I think, is that when it comes to methylene blue, at least a bit, and this is not just methylene blue, it's sort of across the board, is that be careful taking advice from people that don't see patients or clients for a living, is what I say, because they don't really know what it is to actually treat people and see the nuances of clinical care. It doesn't fall on a page, your mug shot. It's like, you can't somebody like, for example, in medical school, you learn about a medical disease, like a condition, Right. And like, it's on a page, you read about it, but you go see somebody in person, and then they don't fit that book. That's not like. It's exactly that. Right. And so you have to be ready to be more nuanced about how you look at people and how you work with them and how you try to help them overall. And so getting advice from people that don't see patients or clients and don't have the understanding of the breadth of responses that people have is kind of dangerous in some ways. Right. If you're following this person's stack and that person's stack, and then, you know, Brian Johnson's a great example of this. Right. I think Brian's doing some great work overall. But Brian's doing everything himself and he's taking 107 to be vegan. Right. And so I've had a number of people, my clients come to see me that have done terribly on something similar because they can't do what he does on a regular basis and don't have millions of dollars to spend. Right. So that. That's his protocol. Fantastic. Right. But is that protocol gonna work for you? Probably not. You know, and so.
- [09:33]
A
Thank you.
- [09:34]
B
The main thing I always like to point out is if you're looking to take advice for people that, you know are on the socials and influencers in general, try to understand whether they are seeing patients or clients and then how they're framing their advice overall in general. If, like, look, this is what I do. This is what, this is what's worked for me. Fantastic. Right. But if, like, this is what you should do, because this is what I do, like, you gotta be careful with that is what it comes down to.
- [09:56]
A
And to that point, I've always prided myself on giving experience. I'm a data guy. I don't care just what I'll tell you my personal feeling or experience on it. But I won't tell you just because I felt a certain way that that's the end all be all. I want to see hundreds or thousands of people that I'm either coaching or monitoring or that I have data on that are actually providing it out in forums or studies or whatever the case may be. But for me, in comparison to you as a nutrit as and someone that does hormones, I fully understand that every situation is person to person specific.
- [10:33]
B
Right, right.
- [10:34]
A
So you get a piece of data, as a doctor, you look at it and you go, okay, this is great to know, but I still have to implement that on said person to see how they respond.
- [10:43]
B
Right, exactly. Right. It can. It's one thing to read about it in a book, it's another about to actually use it in clinical practice. It's an entirely different animal.
- [10:50]
A
Damn. Right. Okay, cool. So let's do this. Just a real brief before we get into some.
- [10:56]
B
Sure.
- [10:57]
A
Like the, the, the digging in that. I want to do just a brief synopsis of what methylene blue actually is and what it actually does.
- [11:06]
B
Yes, sure. So methylene blue has been around a long time. It's a compound that was developed in a lab, so it's actually a synthetic ingredient. And so it's not made from nature. And that's one of the arguments that we can talk about later. Not everything that is from nature is good for you, just like not everything synthetic is bad for you. I promise. And we can talk about why. But. So it was the first drug that was registered with the FDA back in 1897. And from that point on, it had a number of different sort of chapters overall. In general, though, to keep it really short, higher doses of methylene blue are anti infective, significantly anti inflammatory. It can be used to reverse things like low oxygen states overall, and it does this in various ways. Lower doses are mostly for mitochondrial optimization, and they help improve mitochondrial function in various ways, including what's called being a redox cycler, which means that methylene blue has this really interesting capacity of being able to donate electrons to your electron transport chain, compensate for electron transport chain dysfunction, mitochondrial dysfunction, and at the same time act just like an antioxidant and pick up free electrons just like an antioxidant would. There's very few other compounds out there that can do this. And the power of methylene blue is that it works so well in the mitochondria to compensate for mitochondrial dysfunction. And as I alluded to earlier, Dylan, 94% of the US population has some element of mitochondrial dysfunction.
- [12:27]
A
Right?
- [12:28]
B
Mitochondria are not either making energy effectively or they're not detoxing from the energy that they make. So most people don't realize that when you make energy, it's like putting gasoline in a car. Okay, when you put gasoline in a car, you can run it, but you also have exhaust. Our cells have exhaust too, because exhaust, not, not all of it is negative. We have carbon dioxide, we have water. We also have reactive oxygen species, free radicals as they're called, or oxidative stress. So the body always is making these and trying to balance out how much it's making with a number with an antioxidant capacity, the number of antioxidants we have in the system. And so many of us are having a difficult time because we don't have enough antioxidants around to help balance out that stress from making energy. And then on the other side, even before that happens, we can make the energy effectively because we don't have the vitamins, minerals, nutrients and co factors to be able to. To do that. And so as a result of m. So you have this mitochondrial dysfunction. There's a lot of reasons why this happens. Stress is a huge one. So it could be, it could be stress from environmental stress, toxic stress, sleep stress, not getting enough sleep. Medications can do this. Toxins on our environment. Otherwise, what else am I missing? Infections can cause mitochondrial stress as well as insulin resistance is actually the number one reason why people have mitochondrial stress. And so, and that's a huge amount of the US population. So if you're, if you're pre diabetic, if you have insulin resistance, your mitochondria aren't very happy is what it comes down to. And like in seventh grade and eighth grade when you learned about the cell, you learned that there was a nucleus and cytoplasm and Golgi bodies. It's kind of my favorite name for any, for any organelles. The Golgi body. I always like that name. And then endoplasmic reticulum and then the mitochondria. You saw a cell with one mitochondria, but that's not the case. There's some cells in our body have thousands of mitochondria and some cells actually have zero mitochondria. The red blood cells in our body do not have any mitochondria. They actually got rid of their mit mitochondria so they can carry more oxygen. They initially had one when they first, when they first develop and then they lose their mitochondria over time. But the cells with the most mitochondria per cell are the eggs and sperm, the brain, the heart, the liver, and the musculoskeletal tissue that has the most in reserve. Makes sense, right? Because you need to make a lot of energy fast. If you're running from some sort of animal that's trying to eat you kind of deal.
- [14:42]
A
Right.
- [14:43]
B
And so mitochondrial stress is rampant. Okay. And the methylene blue overall has this capacity to really support the mitochondria and that's what makes it so powerful. And these lower doses, 4 milligrams, 8 milligrams, 8, 16 or so, they're really great at mitochondrial optimization and up to about, and then when you get up to about 1 milligram per kilogram or above, that's about 70 milligrams of methylene blue and above. That's when you're becoming more anti infective. That's when you're focused on more chronic infection as well. Not only acute infection, but chronic infection. And then you also have like severe mitochondrial stress, hypoxic conditions, like low oxygen conditions, because methylene blue can also act just like oxygen in the cells and maintain aerobic respiration for longer. So I have a lot of athletes that are using it now for endurance, for example, as a result of being able to be able to go farther aerobically when they have methylene blue on board. So in general, short story, methylene blue is a compound that was developed in 1897 or a little bit before that, but it was the first FDA drug at that time. It's a mitochondrial enhancer, it's an anti infective, it's anti inflammatory and it's a redox cycler overall. And so it's got these fantastic capacities.
- [15:55]
A
So couple questions because I've actually been studying cell cellular biology, cellular health. I'm just becoming certified as a cellular health coach with Dr. Yth in her class.
- [16:06]
B
Nice.
- [16:06]
A
Yeah. So, and, and I've been working with timeline on urolith and a. So I've really been digging deep into mitochondrial health, which is one of the draws I have to methylene blue. And so would that be stimulating mitophagy at all or rebuilding or is it just cleaning things up a little bit? And then two, what other type of benefit would it be for an athlete? So for me, I'm using it in the morning, like a lot of mornings when I'm feeling just a little tired or a little sluggish. It's giving me a kick. It's given me a kick. Would anybody know like we're talking about in you know, energy levels, but would you notice strength increase with that for like an athlete that's using it as well, or is it going to be more proficient in like the, the energy levels and maybe endurance levels aspect?
- [16:51]
B
Yeah. So first question about like mitophagy. There are some small studies in animals that show that methylene blue does improve mitochondrial function on its own. So not only can it compensate for mitochondrial dysfunction, but it can actually rebuild part of the electron transport chain, specifically Complex 4 Pro cytochrome oxidase, and help rebuild and reboot the mitochondria itself. There's also some evidence that it does cause mitochondrial biogenesis as well.
- [17:19]
A
Really?
- [17:19]
B
And the reason for that I think is that because it's making the cells more efficient overall and that, and there's more energy available as a result of that. So that the cells make more mitochondria to actually compensate for that or to, to build up a balance as a result. So those are, these are preclinical, so it's hard to know overall. There's really no studies in mitophagy specifically that I've seen, but there is the sense that I have overall that you're just, you know, rebooting mitochondrial functional. And so as a result of that, sometimes what's going to happen when you, when you need to do that is actually you need to kill off mitochondria to start in, to make new ones.
- [17:53]
A
Right, right, right.
- [17:54]
B
So I think that is, some of that is happening. I have seen, as I think about it now, there has been some literature on mitophagy in Alzheimer's models overall and how methylene boom might be able to do this. And it's actually interesting how it might be able to do this is, and this is kind of technical, but the low doses of methylene blue, the 4 milligrams, 8, 16, 20, those, those are, those are really supportive to the mitochondria. Okay. But higher doses, like your 70, 80s, a hundreds, things like that, they're also supportive, but they also stress the mitochondria at the same time.
- [18:25]
A
Okay.
- [18:26]
B
And they do that by creating hydrogen peroxide. And so our cells have this capacity to make hydrogen peroxide. And they do this because it's a signaling molecule in the cell. And it's also something that's an anti infective. So the cell will make or release actually hydrogen peroxide when there's a bug around that, that they're trying to kill. And that comes from the part of the cell called the lysosome. And so what methylene, methylene blue does is increase the amount of hydrogen peroxide that's produced by binding to oxygen, making hydrogen peroxide. And so this causes stress on the system and can cause mitochondrial biogenesis and mitophagy from mitophagy first and then mitochondrial biogenesis as a result of that. And so I have seen some of this, but this is a, this is a very technical point, but what happens with these, these higher doses of methylene blue when you make more hydrogen peroxide, you're also stimulating the body to produce more glutathione directly, which is our master antioxidant. That's through, through, through a pathway called, and the Nrf2 pathway. And that stimulates the hydrogen peroxide, stimulates Nrf2. That pathway produces more glutathione. But you have to make sure you have enough glutathione to be able to, to make it right. Otherwise you're gonna be in, in, in a world of hurt. And so when people start taking methylene blue and they start getting detox kinds of symptoms, especially at these higher doses, it's often because they have this hydrogen peroxide production without the amount of, without the capacity to make glutathione in response to that overall. So, but I don't want to forget your Endurance questions. I got off on a tangent there.
- [19:52]
A
That's okay.
- [19:52]
B
Do you have any, do you want me to go back to endurance or do you want to have any questions about that?
- [19:55]
A
Well, that was a tremendous answer, more than I even expected, but it was very insightful. You have me think in a million different ways now, but I'm going to look into that later. But yes, on the endurance side, I think it's clear that you're getting energy because you know, mitochondria makes ATP, you're fixing mitochondria, you're going to get energy. But my, my question was in terms of the strength, can that be expected at all? Because you know that when we're talking to wider people, audiences that are looking to use this now, it's not just going to be people that need health benefits. You're going to have athletes, bodybuilders, everybody looking into this. So is there any strength benefit? Is there any possible type of muscle gain or sparing capability there? And there may not be, but I know this question is going to come up.
- [20:37]
B
Yes. So in the endurance performance world, two way, two things that we're thinking about here. The first is definitely on the endurance side, knowing that methylene blue is going to increase your capacity to make energy aerobically from your mitochondria for longer. And so I have. I remember when I first started using methylene blue, like three or four years ago, I had one of my early clients taking it and I just said, I'm not really sure how this is going to work exactly. Let's see how you feel. Use it for exercise and let me know how it goes. And then I talked to her a couple weeks later. She's like, Dr. Scott, I'm never going to not exercise with methylene blue. Or like, I will always exercise with methylene blue. I'm like, well, why? She's like, well, when I go on my treadmill, or maybe it was her StairMaster in the morning, it's like, I can keep my heart rate up higher for another 20 minutes compared to what I typically can. So I can maintain a heart rate for longer without having to stop. And this has been repeated now in a number of my clients. And a good example would be a guy that I work with here in Colorado. He did the Leadville 100 mile ultra mile ultra Ultra Marathon here relatively maybe about a year ago now. And this guy came to me because he was having a hard time finishing the race and we were giving him 32 milligrams of methylene blue every four hours. So this is more than I would typically give most people. But this, this is a hundred miles, man. This is a huge race. Right. And so he was able to cut off four hours of his time as well. And, yeah, pretty amazing, right? And so this is just using methylene blue as an endurance enhancer. So I've seen this also with another friend of mine, his name is Brian McKenzie, who does a lot of work with hypoxic and CO2 training. And so what he's been doing is he'll. He'll do hypoxic training, have methylene blue on board, and then do endurance work afterwards. And he's seen his VO2 Max go up like 5 or 10 points, like not a small amount, by doing having methylene blue on board, doing hypoxic training, and then doing endurance work. Right. And so, and the reason for this, again, is that the cells are gonna be more sensitive to taking up more oxygen after you've been hypoxic. And then you have the methylene blue on board there. That's gonna help with the endurance side, giving you more aerobic capacity. And so that's on the endurance side. And so this is pretty consistent. I've been working, I've been trying to work with a couple, you know, semi pro teams and things like that, get them more product and work on like, you know, cyclists especially, that are doing a lot of endurance. Um, but I've had a few that have been interested, definitely people that are doing, like, I have a couple, we have a couple soccer players that are, that are using the methylene blue regularly during games now and seeing significant benefit. So it's fantastic. And, and the other piece, which is really interesting, and I was just speaking to, to another colleague that, you know his name, Thomas DeLauer, about this on his podcast. What he's noticed, and I think this is super interesting, is that he feels that for like an anaerobic kind of workout, what he's been able to use methylene blue for is that he feels that you can recover pre or intra workout and even after workout faster with methylene lube, is you don't need to get to as slow of a heart rate to get the same recovery. So typically for most people, they have to get to it like a slow, like a heart rate that that's gonna help them recover. Like, say if it's, if you're at 120, you need to get down to like sort of 70 or something to recover. But what he's noticed with training is that he can be at A higher heart rate but still have a recovery.
- [23:46]
A
Okay.
- [23:47]
B
Because of the methylene booze on board allows him to recover at a higher heart rate and then he can maintain his aerobic and anaerobic training and increase. And, and so he doesn't lose that anaerobic capacity as fast as a result of being. And then he can have that heart rate recovery at the higher level, which is pretty, pretty cool. Right. So that's kind of, you know, this is like a newer thing. It's. We have to test it out more and, and kind of see. But if you can recover at a higher heart rate, that means you can do more work. Right. You don't have to wait for your heart rate to come down further to know recovered until you can do your next set, for example. That's, that's interesting, right?
- [24:25]
A
That's very interesting. Yeah, yeah.
- [24:27]
B
Because, you know, like, if you really want to work like intra workout, and Thomas is really good about this, but intra workout, the idea is to try to get yourself as parasympathetic between sets as possible. Exactly right. Because that's going to get the most bang for your buck when it comes to performance and getting and training and strength. But that's not easy to do now. Yeah.
- [24:47]
A
And interestingly enough then that would be something that I think would be hugely beneficial to a lot of like bodybuilders that are doing physique shows especially because I will tell you this, that people don't understand when they think of cardio. You get muscular endurance and you're doing cardio by training, you know, super setting 30 second rests in between sets. But it's difficult when you're trying to lift heavier and your heart rate is going. Obviously you've got muscular fatigue, but you've also got regular fatigue because you're training at that rate and that pace. So that's interesting. Okay, so I'll tell you right now, I do very hardcore cardio training and I split my day because it's just, it's three and a half hours straight of doing what I do. So I take the methylene blue early in the morning when I go on a walk and then I come home and do 90 minutes of cardio. That's when I take it and that's when I'm noticing it. So I'm going to have to try to implement that before my actual physical training and see how I do on that as well. And I can give you some data.
- [25:48]
B
Yeah, please do. I mean, and check on your heart rate and see, because typically if like a lot of the guys that you know and that I know that are in the weightlifting space, they know when they've gotten to that point where they've recovered between sets. Like just. Is the physiology the shift? Right. And so just interesting to see if, like, oh, I feel that physiology shift, but my heart rate's, you know, 10 points higher than usual. Right?
- [26:06]
A
Yeah.
- [26:06]
B
So I, I think what methane blue is doing there is it's working on the, the recovery aspect of things, allowing you to, to kind of shed some of that oxidative stress a little bit faster so that you don't have to go as deep to get parasympathetic. But we'll have to see. It's still early stages there.
- [26:23]
A
Okay, so I got a couple blood marker questions for you. So you brought up inflammation as one of the things that methylene blue can benefit. I want to know then if I was to take a blood panel, because I analyze blood panels daily and I was looking at somebody and had them on methylene blue, could I expect, like their high sensitivity C reactive protein to go down? Is that something that I could see? And what other potential. I know you can't say with certainty, but what are the potentials that methylene blue could improve? Like, say your liver values or blood counts or micro. Is there anything that I could look at and I would expect to see an improvement on?
- [26:59]
B
So what I can just tell you what I've seen clinically. Yeah. Because it hasn't really been studied in any definitive way to say that if you take methylene blue, it's going to decrease your CRP or decrease your SED rate or whatever. But what I've noticed, and I've been reported over the years, is that what methylene blue does is it can affect, as we've been describing, the mitochondria and help with compensation of mitochondrial dysfunction. And so if you have something that's decreasing inflammation in the system, you're going to see some of these markers get better. And I've seen like in my own clinical practice, like sed rates, CRPs, inflammatory markers, otherwise, you know, like the things you mentioned, like liver, heart, kidneys, like all of it I've seen improved using methylene blue. And so it depends on the person we've had. There's one person that I know that's been taking methane blue for a long time that has, you know, kidney dysfunction, for example, and it was progressing and progressing and progressing and maybe need. We're gonna have to go on like, hemodialysis, for example. He's been able to stabilize on a low dose of methylene blue, and his kidney function stayed the same and it hasn't gotten any worse, for example. And so a lot of this, there's an inflammatory component of the presentation, which there often is, and methylene boot will often have an effect on inflammatory markers related to that inflammatory ecosystem, whatever's happening there, right? And so you can look at these over time and see now, the other aspect of this is that where methylene blue is coming in is in the mitochondria. And so you can look at the mitochondria itself. And what I've seen over the, over the years is that once you can start adding in methylene blue early into, like, various types of protocols to optimize mitochondrial function, that's not the only thing you're doing. Of course, you're really looking at optimizing diet, lifestyle, you know, nutrients, doing laboratory testing, hormones, all the things that you know, and that you can start using methylene blue early and start seeing benefits relatively quickly in some of those mitochondrial markers. But in the end, it's not being done in a silo for me, right? I'm not just using methylene blue at time zero and then at time six months or three months or whatever. And like, looking at mitochondrial function afterwards, like, it's almost always being done, always being done really in a comprehensive way where I'm using methylene blue as a way to help start optimizing the system quickly while we're doing the harder work of optimizing vitamins, you know, minerals, diet, lifestyle, those kinds of things. So it's never easy for me to know, even with inflammatory markers, that it was a methylene boo that did it, because I'm not just using that one thing. So. But in essence, my sense of things is that and getting reports back from customers and other, and people that, that other colleagues that are using it is that that's exactly what you'll be able to see. And it comes out clinically, right? So like somebody, for example, that has had chronic joint pain for years and they start taking methylene blue and all of a sudden their joint pain goes away. I don't have numbers. I don't. I don't. I don't have, like, inflammatory markers on that person, but do I need them to know that their inflammation is likely better? Right? And so, in essence, the way I use methylene blue clinically is not in a silo. It's not being done just with methylene blue. It's being done as a significant intervention while doing lots of other things at the same time. So it's hard to know. And I'd love to be able to do more of like, controlled studies and like taking methylene blue for three months and see. But in the practical, real world, that's just not possible. Right. Because you don't want to wait and just give them one thing. Right. And this is like, this is what clinical medicine is all about. Like, you don't just do one thing with people. You really try to give them a comprehensive approach. And then over time, you peel things off. And, and one of the things I do peel off over time is, is methylene blue, because it's a great way to support the mitochondria. It's a great way to reboot and re, you know, kind of get things going and jumpstart it. And then as you're doing the other things to optimize mitochondrial function, you can wean them off the methylene blue and use it significantly less in a majority of the people that I work with.
- [30:42]
A
Okay. Okay, perfect. So given the popularity, that means that obviously more people are going to start selling it and they're going to be able to try to take advantage of this. A lot of places will not have any idea what they're doing making, selling, where it's coming from, raw materials, coming from, who knows where. I, I, I know for a fact, because that's my world. So I've seen it everywhere. Let me ask you a couple questions then, when it comes to bioavailability on how it's taken. And then I kind of, I definitely want to get into dosing after this, but in terms of how we're ingesting it, because I've seen now liquids, I've seen capsules, obviously you have with troscriptions, the trochees that turn your, you know, everybody's seen the blue tongues. And that's right, you know.
- [31:25]
B
Right, right.
- [31:27]
A
Seems to be one of the more favored methods of taking it. Can you tell me and everybody if there's a superior form and if there's things people need to be careful of? Because now that I'm seeing the capsules and things, I'm very, you know, hesitant or not understanding if it's all the same or if there's a certain method that's going to be better than others? And then also does, does methylene blue need to be taken with food or not?
- [31:54]
B
So let's talk about, I think, the quality first. Right. So methylene blue is, it's made in a lab. It's not made from nature as we discussed. And so the part of the production process of making methylene blue, there is a possibility of it being contaminated with heavy metals specifically. And so you have to be very careful methylene blue that you're actually getting to make sure that it's as low in heavy metals as possible overall. And so if you get USP grade of methylene blue, that's the best type of methylene blue. But even grade methylene blue can go across the map. You have all different types of levels of methylene blue contaminants for the. For that can be. That can be in there. So you have to be really careful. So you always want to get certificate analysis from the company that you're working with, whether you're buying the methylene blue from, just to know what exactly you have in there. Now, that's number one. And I think that this is a big issue for us. When we first started the company, Dylan, like, it took us almost a year and a half, longer than we thought to launch the company because we needed to find a stable and good supply and clean supply of methylene blue. And over the years, we've had to throw out thousands of dollars worth of material of methylene blue itself as the raw ingredient because it didn't meet our specifications. And so what will typically happen is that a company will purchase methylene blue from a supplier, wherever that supplier may be.
- [33:08]
A
Right.
- [33:08]
B
And then it comes with a certificate of analysis that says it's XYZ. Right. It says it's 100% pure or whatever it might say. Right. But we take it another step. We test it again once we get it to make sure that it is what it is. And not a lot of companies are doing that. They just trust the manufacturer that they've had a C of A that says X. And then we have actually a recent story. We were actually looking, we're always looking for new suppliers. And there was another supplier that we were looking at from ethylene blue. And the. Their CFA looked pristine. It looked beautiful. And then we got it tested by our own lab. No, not at all. And so. And they're like, they apologize, oh, there must be something wrong with the batch. We'll give you a new one. So we're testing it again, another batch pretty soon. But. But companies don't do this, Dylan. They trust the C of A from the company that. That that is getting. That's giving them the ingredient. Right. And so they're not taking it to the next level and checking to see if it's actually what is in that what it says it is, Right. And so we were really, this is, we were emphatic about this when we started making our products. So we don't just trust ingredients that come in from our suppliers. We test everything. And this includes methylene blue. And this is why we've had to throw out, you know, thousands of dollars worth of material in the past, because it didn't meet our specific other aspect of it is not only is it from a purity perspective, the heavy metal contaminants, but it's also a potency issue too.
- [34:28]
A
Right.
- [34:29]
B
Most of the products that we tested on the market did not meet their label claim, especially if they were liquids. So we didn't test any of the tablets because those are relatively new. But from a label claim perspective, if you're taking a dropper, first of all, do not ask me if you're taking the right amount if you're telling me you take 10 drops a day, because I have no, no fucking clue how much methylene blue you're taking.
- [34:49]
A
Oh my gosh.
- [34:50]
B
And this is, this is the problem, right? Methylene blue in a dropper form is very difficult to go to dose overall. Almost all the liquids that we tested were less potent than it said on the label. So if it said you were getting 1 milligram in a drop or whatever, you were really getting like 70 or 60 milligrams or maybe 80 milligrams in the drop at most. There was one company actually that 125% more. So it was actually even more per drop than it was supposed to be. So it's across the map. And so liquids are very difficult to maintain a consistent milligram dose per drop. So you really don't know how much liquid you're taking if you're taking liquid. And we had a couple people especially maybe, maybe two, three years ago now telling us about taking the liquid and then taking our troches transcriptions the same amount. And ours was significantly more potent and stronger at the same dose. And it's because it really wasn't the same dose like ours was actually the dose that was on the label. Because we test everything and we do it like a pharmaceutical company. Like, I'm a physician, you know this, Dylan. Like I work with physicians. Like, we wanted to make our products, the trochees, as precision dosed and pharmaceutical grade as possible. So every single batch is tested for purity. Every single batch that we make is tested for potency. And again, we're not just trusting the certificates of analysis of the ingredients that we procure. We're testing them again ourselves before we even go the route of actually making it into product. And so there's no other companies that are doing that, there's no other companies that have four docs in the team that are seeing patients in clinical practice. And of course troche's, nobody else is doing that either because they're not easy to make. I will say, and I don't, I don't. It's not for the, the faint of heart to try to scale trochee production. But what's nice about a troche is that it's easy to break up into small parts, into a quarter, a half or full and find your dose. So you're not relegated to a capsule or a tablet that's difficult to break up and you can figure out exactly what you need and then titrate your dose over time. But to answer your second question, which was around delivery and bioavailability to make a point there, methylene blue is really an interesting compound for a lot of reasons, obviously. But this is another reason why it's very interesting is that it's almost a hundred percent bioavailable. No matter how you take it, whether you take it orally as a trochee, you swallow it or even obviously in an IV. IV is going to be 100% bioavailable, no doubt about it. But it stays active even when it goes through the liver in first pass metabolism. And most things get deactivated on some level. I always give the example of n acetylcysteine or NAC. NAC is about 10% bioavailable. So if you take take 100 milligrams of NAC, only 10 milligrams is actually getting into the body. But if you take 16 milligrams of methylene blue, just about like 16 milligrams is actually getting into the body. Now what's different is how fast, right? Obviously IV is going to be your fastest and that's a good thing depending on the system or the issue with methylene blue. But it also could be the most dangerous because it's going to go to the brain the fastest and we can talk about that. And then a trochee is going to be second fastest because a trochee is going to be dissolving directly into the mucosa of the mouth. That's going to be faster than going through digestion and obviously swallowing it is going to be slower. Now you asked about food. Now if you have food in your stomach when you take methylene blue, it's going to get dissolved much slower overall, so your peak is going to be lower as far as your peak concentration in the blood.
- [38:16]
A
Got it.
- [38:16]
B
What I typically recommend is if you're going to swallow methylene blue, it's a swallowing on an empty stomach, and then you can eat about 15 or 20 minutes later and help it kind of push it through a little bit faster. But that's usually the best way to do it.
- [38:28]
A
Okay, awesome. All right, so I'm going to welcome you into my world a little bit. I'm going to do a small tangent. I don't want to talk too much, but I have to talk about what you brought up, because this is one of my wheelhouses.
- [38:39]
B
Please.
- [38:39]
A
And what I'm talking about is liquid dosing and coas and the raws coming in and the testing and then reconstituting into liquid and the solvents that are used and how it's done. Being that I've been around research companies for so long, I know the entire methodology and the way it goes. First, let me say this about certificates of authenticity. When the raws are coming in from China, if they can mimic and create a Louis Vuitton purse that looks just like a Louis Vuitton, they can certainly make a fake coa, and they do it quite well. There's nobody in the entire world that can make replicas better than they do in China. So if you're getting raws from there, you best be testing the coas triple time at times. And so it's really nice to hear. And I'm not saying you're getting Ross from China, but a lot of places that now are research companies are selling methylene blue. They're doing liquids. And that's step one of where there's a problem. They don't test a lot of their peptides, their sarms that come in. So they're certainly not tested methylene blue. They're just going to assume because it's cheaper than those rods that they're getting what it said.
- [39:37]
B
It's coming with a third party certification to see if anything.
- [39:39]
A
Exactly. And a lot of them come in Chinese language. You don't even know what the hell it says if they're coming from out of there.
- [39:44]
B
Yep.
- [39:45]
A
Secondly, when you're reconstituting these big batches, which they're doing in liquids, of. Of anything, it makes it very difficult to get an accurate dosing into each bottle. Right. Especially the people that don't know how to reconstitute properly, whether it's temperature, timing, or they may not even be using the right solvents. So when you're testing those things, that's part of the reason why number three is when those, those are listed, it'll say 20 milligrams. So it's generally 20 milligrams in a milliliter. Well, like you said, some of these companies, what they do is they put too much in there on purpose to make you feel like you're getting more than what you actually are. So you could be double, triple dosing, 1 millil, maybe 60 milligrams, and you wouldn't even know it. It's the same, same trick they do with underground steroid testosterone and things where they dose them higher so you think you're getting better quality when in fact they're hurting you. So, you know, it's, it's very, it's a slippery slope, like you said. And that's why it's important, especially with something like this, because like I said, a lot of these companies, they're not ever going to test these because the raw materials aren't expensive as a lot of other things for it. So they're just going to throw them in and not really care. And you have to be careful, like, with the liquids. A lot of people don' what the milligram per milliliter thing is, like you were saying.
- [40:58]
B
Yeah.
- [40:58]
A
You know, and it's, if you look at it, it's like, what the hell is this? But if I, you know, if you break it down, it's like every full dropper's 1 milliliter and it's telling you there's 20 milligrams per each full dropper in 1 milliliter. Right. So, sorry I had to throw that in there to explain.
- [41:14]
B
I appreciate the perspective because you've been doing this such a long time and you, you've been playing around with things that are much more tricky than I have over the years with all the peptides and things like that. And it's not safe. Like, if you get more than you need, methylene blue at higher doses can cause more detox symptoms. It can cause more stress on the mitochondria, as I mentioned. And if you think you're taking, you know, 20 milligrams a day, but you're really taking 100 or something like that, like, that's, I mean, I don't. That's kind of an extreme example. But once you get to about 80 or so milligrams of methylene, 80 to 100 milligrams of methylene blue, Per day, you start building it up in the system. You know, you don't fully detox, you don't feel like get rid of it, like in your urine in about, within about 24 hours. And so if you're taking more than that on a regular basis, you can get in trouble. And so my usual recommendation is if you're taking more than about 30 to 40 milligrams a day of methylene blue, you really need to be taking at least one day off a week. And if you're taking more than that a day, then thinking about taking more days off per week to make sure you don't have like the buildup in the system overall. And so I worry about the liquid because I don't know what people are getting. And people always ask me, what's the best liquid? What's the best liquid? Like, we just haven't found one that I truly trust. And I know what we're doing. I'm supervising with Dr. Ted and the physicians on my team. We're supervising the whole process and looking at the C of A. And then we're, you know, we're always in communication with our labs and our, and our contract manufacturers that are making the products that are allowing us to make the claims that we are and also making us feel comfortable that we can use it with our patients and with our families. And like, I wouldn't want anything else overall. So I appreciate you making, you making a big point of it, Dylan, because I think it's less understood the process there than people realize. Like, you could just get a certificate of analysis from a Chinese manufacturer, like, oh, it's great, it looks perfect. Let's just use it. Right? I'm like, no, no, like you don't, I don't care if it's in China, India, US it doesn't matter. Like, it has to be my opinion. And I think yours is like, don't trust the piece of paper coming from the company that's selling you a product. No, like, because they have a vested interest in you buying their product. Right. And so like, especially like the, you know, so like, that's why we always use third party testing, and that's why we're always doing that. And so I call it like fourth party testing or a beyond USP or something like that.
- [43:21]
A
Yes. Yeah. I mean, literally, if you got any kind of skill behind a computer, you could make one look perfect and you'd never know the difference. And when we were, you know, when you're talking about liquids, there's the solvents That a lot of times you have to use. Well, one, specific compounds require specific solvents, and if you use the wrong one, that's part of the problem of like the degradation or the integrity of the compound you're even using. But two, a lot of the solvents aren't good for you. You glycol's not good for you. Everclear, which is used to reconstitute a lot of things. Grain alcohol, not good for you. So these are other things that you have to think of too. Now, before we transition into the juicy stuff that we have to get into, I do want to go back to the dosing really quick because, you know, for somebody like me that's, you know, learned from you, but still not comfortable answering a lot of things yet. And I don't, I defer, I point people to your direction. But, but literally the two most common questions that I get, we've already covered. One, which is what are the benefits and what can I expect? But two is how to dose this. And I always kind of, I look for your literature and, you know, and I understand the scenarios are different. I like to stick on that micro dosing. But I guess let's talk about general dosing for an everyday person. And then I want to talk about like cycling it or how many days a week or you should do it or not, because there's confusion there.
- [44:37]
B
Yeah, I, I've, I've kind of developed this recently because I get this question a lot and I try to make it super simple. If you're using it for mitochondrial optimization specifically, so day to day operations, you're not using it for an acute infection or a chronic infection or like an acute stress. Overall, in general, what I recommend people do is start off with one and quarter of our troche. So 4 milligrams.
- [44:57]
A
4 milligrams.
- [44:58]
B
And then use that for about three to five days. Increase the dose by a quarter. So increase the dose by 4 milligrams every three to five days until you start feeling a response. Now, depending what that response is, is it like, holy shit, I can go run a marathon after being in a wheelchair? Then you're great. But it might be more nuanced than that. It usually is. Right. And so usually the first thing you feel is like maybe a little bit of a mood elevation, a little bit improvement, overall, just feel a little bit better. And then there should be a time when you get to the right dose that you feel that something special is happening. And that could be anything from pain being better to brain fog being Better to your concentration being better. Your brain. I meant brain. I said brain fog already. Maybe I have brain fog. But your endurance is getting better. Like there's going to be. There's gonna be noticeable changes. Typically that's around between 8 and 16 milligrams for most people is what we found. And so once you find the dose that works best for you, then it depends on what you're using it for. If you're using it more for a chronic issue that's been ongoing for a long period of time, you may need to stay on that dose for a longer period of time. It could be two, four, six weeks, sometimes six months, until you can start weaning yourself down, depending on what else you're doing, to try to work on whatever it is that you know is going on in the cells that's causing the. The symptoms that you're having. But in other people that are relatively well optimized, that's their dose. And then when they need it, that's the dose that they need. And so when do they need it? Depends on what they're using it for. It could be used for an endurance. It can be used for a bad night of sleep. It can be used when you're getting an airplane, for example. And so my. In my more optimized patients that I've maybe, maybe they were on methylene blue a lot initially as they were kind of working on their mitochondria, working on their cellular function, their gut, their hormones, those kinds of things. Eventually I like to wean them down to a point where they're taking it maybe on average, maybe three days a week. Ish. And that's a good, good mark for most people to use it in more of like a targeted way for those three days a week. And that could be, again, just more stress on the system, like a long exercise this day, a bad night of sleep, as I mentioned, like going on a plane. And most of us are under stress on a regular basis. Our mitochondria are used to stress on some level, but they're not used to, like, shitty lights and shitty food and toxic relationships and screaming kids or whatever that don't stop. And so, like, I find that most people can benefit from it some of the time on a regular basis, but some people can benefit from it on a regular basis for a longer period of time. But the dosing from a mitochondrial perspective, you know, feeling the energy, feeling the detox capacity, feeling more resilient overall, usually between 4 and 16 milligrams, man, like, I've Been really surprised by that. Like, initially, when we first came out with the product, I was like, this is going to be, I think this might be too low, but, but it's not. I mean, I have some people. A good example is I was talking to a clinician just a week ago or so, a patient of theirs who was widowed. They'd lost their spouse maybe a year prior and just hadn't been able to, like, break out the funk. Right. They were still kind of moping around and they just weren't doing their thing. She gave this guy 4 milligrams of methylene blue. He had like the best day of his life. He was walking around, he was moving, he was doing things around his house. It was like a different person. And I've four, eight milligrams and people, I've, I have another friend of mine. She's Dr. Stephanie Remka. She's great. And she'd be great for your podcast eventually. She's fantastic. But she's like, I give my little old ladies with fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue just a little bit of methylene blue. They can go get their haircut. They can clean, really, and clean their floors and their kitchen, and they love it. And so just these, like, lower doses go a long way. And of course, there's other things that these people are doing with these clinicians. Right. But, like, it goes a long way. Now, if you have a chronic infection or you have severe mitochondrial stress from like an acute trauma, acute low oxygen state, this is when your dose of methylene blue should be much higher in general. So for me, this is from an acute infection. So leave chronic infection out for a minute because that's a little bit of a different animal. But acute infection, acute stress, acute trauma, I'm usually dosing around 1 to 2 milligrams per kilogram for about three to five days, maybe even more than that, maybe a little bit, maybe up to seven days. So that's like 150 to about 150 milligrams of methylene blue for about three to five days. So it can be high.
- [49:11]
A
Yeah.
- [49:12]
B
But then I, I slowly ramp them. I, I, I quickly ramped them down after being at the higher doses. Chronic infection, though, they tend to need higher amounts of methylene blue for longer periods of time, usually in combination with other things as well. And so you're talking about your chronic Lyme and co infections, for example, chronic mold. These people, I know, I mean, I have a couple colleagues that, and I my, myself do this use about 50 milligrams twice daily of methylene blue for five to seven days or longer. Longer. And then we ramp them down. Sometimes we need to be on even longer periods of time of methylene blue depending on like the chronicity and what else is going on. So but for most day to day operations, we're talking about 4-16mg for the most part. And then every, all of my patients have a higher strength methylene blue in their medicine cabinet if they have an acute infection, acute trauma, acute stress, because that's going to be very supportive overall to the mitochondria. Using those high doses for short periods of time is very safe day for the most part.
- [50:04]
A
So what I generally do. So we can talk about like just my personal. To give you an idea, what I do. So most of the time I use blue canadine. Half a troche in the morning with, and I told you this before, and I take the troimune with it, even though I know the troimune tactically should make you like more sleepy or tired. Just doesn't do that.
- [50:24]
B
If you're taking it with caffeine though, that's good. Yeah.
- [50:26]
A
And then I have coffee right after, so I do that. But then if I do the just blue, I'll do the half also. Like, I'm on a packet of that right now, but I, that I do that like every, I don't know, every month, once a month I do that and then I stick with the canteen, but I go about five days and those are my workout days. And then the two days I, I stopped taking both.
- [50:48]
B
Yeah, that's good.
- [50:49]
A
And then I do like the five days back on when I'm working out. Unless I'm just wrecked on the, like a bad day, which generally doesn't happen, but on the weekend. But I figure take the days off, I'm not working out and I'm maybe not working as much, you know, on the computer. So.
- [51:03]
B
Yeah.
- [51:04]
A
Is that a pretty good protocol?
- [51:05]
B
That's a great protocol. I mean, so the blue canadine, for those that are listening, is a combination of methylene blue with nicotine, caffeine and cbd. So it has the stimulants in there, the nicotine and the caffeine. Low dose nicotine, just a milligram and a full troche. So a half a milligram is what you're taking. Dylan there. Caffeine is just a quarter cup of coffee. So it's not a lot in what you're taking, but. But it's A fantastic pre workout boost because you get that stimulant effect of the nicotine and caffeine and you get the methylene boo that's supportive and helping with energy and endurance of the things we mentioned before. So I think it's, it's great. It's great. I think that the blue canadine especially, I do recommend people cycle that one for sure because that one has the stimulants on there. So it's good to take a couple days off at least typically when people are taking that one. Unless you're taking it because you're using it as a replacement for something you'd be taking from a pharmaceutical perspective. But even people that are taking pharmaceuticals like Adderall and Vyvanse and things like that, most of those guys and gals will be not taking it on the weekends.
- [51:58]
A
Right.
- [51:58]
B
Usually it's a similar kind of thing with gluconatine where you'd probably want to stop it on the weekends if you were, you didn't need it if you were taking it for, you know, something as a replacement for something like that, of course, under medical supervision and things.
- [52:10]
A
So I feel a stronger mental acuity and awareness and sharpness when I take the canteen, which is one of the reasons that I like it.
- [52:17]
B
It.
- [52:18]
A
Yeah, I'm not, I'm not saying I'm not a morning person, but for me, I tend to get better as the day goes on and that makes it an easier start for me oftentimes because I don't think that one should drink coffee right away in the morning. It's better to wait about 90 minutes. So that's kind of my start. I go on a morning walk and take that on the walk, get home, get, get acclimated, then make the coffee. And it works well for me personally just to kind of share some data with you and info for others that are, are, you know, looking for methodologies. Let's transition now to the, to the big, the big fun topic that we definitely have to address and I wanted to make sure I left plenty of time for that. So. All right. Now like you said earlier, when something gets really popular, it becomes really polarizing and people utilize that to their advantage, like we said, to get clicks, oftentimes saying things they don't know or someone will put out some published study about blue brains, for example, or things like that. So, so let us do this. Let's pick out you give me, because you would know better than me. I know some of the myths that are being passed. But I want you to pick out two to three of the most troubling or the ones that are getting the most headlines that we need to debunk now.
- [53:34]
B
Sure. So I think a couple come to mind. The first one would be the one you just alluded to, which is blue brains.
- [53:39]
A
Yes.
- [53:40]
B
The second one would be that the only reason methylene blue works is because it increases serotonin. And the third one would be that only people that have mitochondrial disorders should take methylene blue. Okay, how about those three?
- [53:57]
A
Let's do and which. Okay, just for reference points, if we can say who says it, it doesn't matter. So who are the people that have put out these references or myths that we're going to debunk?
- [54:09]
B
So the blue brains. I don't remember the guy's name. He did a blog on it. He's got a relatively popular blog. Yeah, forgive me, I don't remember his name.
- [54:15]
A
I'll look it up while we're talking.
- [54:16]
B
Yeah, the second one, the serotonin thing, that's our friend Dr. Paul Saladino.
- [54:21]
A
I got it.
- [54:21]
B
And he also talked about mitochondrial function as well. So. And, but in the third one, the third One's related to Dr. Chris, Chris Masterjohn, PhD, who is a biochemist. It's a very, very good of biochemistry. But his translational capacity to clinical medicine I think needs a little bit more support overall. And so those are the three corresponding to what I just described. So cool.
- [54:44]
A
Okay, let's knock them down one by one then, brother.
- [54:47]
B
Yeah, sure. So they're relatively quick because it's not especially because we've already had this whole preamble about what methylene blue does overall. But number one, blue brain. So the first, this is a blog that was very good in the sense of showing pictures of these blue brains that were shown after these patients had died. And they did the, the post mortem, they did, they did the, the autopsy and their, their brains were blue. And so the people in this study, it wasn't even a study, it was just a case report of about eight different people had gotten ridiculously high levels amounts of methylene blue over 3 milligrams per kilogram in the IV as a last ditch effort to try to save their lives from shock, sepsis, cardiopulmonary arrest and things like that. So methylene blue is used as a last ditch effort in some of these, these indications of some of these situations to try to do like the last thing you could do to try to save this person's life. Okay. So these people got hammered with IV methylene blue. And then they all died in this, obviously, because they were showing blue brains, right? They did autopsies within about four to six hours afterwards and all of their brains were blue. This is not surprising. Okay? This is a huge amount of methylene blue. And so we know that methylene blue, what it does in general is concentrated in the mitochondria, which is where it's doing all its fancy work and compensating for mitochondrial dysfunction. But it's actually changing color all the time between blue to colorless, depending on its, its redox state. So, but in essence, they got so much methylene blue that it's not surprising that their brains were blue as a result of it. If you're taking low doses of methylene blue, 4, 8 mg 16, 25, even a little bit higher than that, your brain is not going to turn blue. Your mitochondria are going to have a concentration of blue pigment for a short period of time and then it's going to go away. Your brain is not, your brain is not going to get stained blue. It's not like, like, like that's going to happen. So, so this is a great sensational piece where showing blue brains like you're taking methylene blue, your brain's gonna turn blue, right? No, it's not going to do that. Now, if your brain is going to turn blue because of 3mg per kg IV methylene blue, it's because they were trying to save your life. Okay, they failed, but they tried. And so it was a great headline. Your brain's turning blue when taking methylene blue? Yes. If you're taking it at huge IV doses to save your life, because you're going to die all by all means, your brain's gonna turn blue for a short period of time. You know, I doubt it would've stayed blue if these people had had actually lived to see the next day. All right? Because this would've come out of the system over time. But low doses of methane blue are not turning your brain blue. It's only concentrating the mitochondria and then it's outta your system within about four to six hours. That's the half life. So within about 18 hours, it's fully out of the system and comes out through your urine. All that blue pigment is gone. Okay, so no blue brains have been harmed in the world of transcriptions and others using methylene blue. So that's number one. Any questions on that?
- [57:51]
A
Well, I just, I looked it up while you were talking and unfortunately, because of the way that, you know, people search it and the way it ranks, the AI immediately pops up and says, yes, methylene blue can stain organs, particularly the brain and heart, causing a distinction if. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. According to an article published in ScienceDirect.com so that my recommendation. Yeah, you know, what, what my. And this is just me and you spitballing here. The recommendation would be to put out some sort of article doing exactly what you just explained that could pop and alternatively combat that so that when it's searched and viewed, that an alternative response would be given as to why. And that's how you can kind of combat something like that to get the message out on top of. Of like doing this just for. I dig it for reference, you know, to be helpful.
- [58:43]
B
We've put out a lot of stuff over the last, you know, month or two with all this, but it's. It's all good, you know, like, no, you know, all. All press is good press on some level, because I get to have these conversations with you, Dylan, and say, look, this is really what's, you know, the brass tax of the whole thing.
- [58:57]
A
Damn right.
- [58:57]
B
And so. And then you had Paul Saladino, who came on to talk about how his response to all of this was, you know, methyl blue is only working because it increases serotonin. Serotonin. It has no effect on mitochondrial function if. Because if you have optimized mitochondrial function, you don't need methylene blue. That's kind of his whole argument. Right. And so first off, the first part is complete bullshit, you know, in the sense that methylene blue does increase serotonin. That is true. But the idea that the only effects that you have or because you have increased serotonin are completely out of, like, I don't even know where he got that from overall. So we have studies that show what methylene blue does in the mitochondria. We know what it does to compensate for mitochondrial dysfunction. We know it can help with energy. We know it can help with detox. And so that's completely ludicrous to say that methylene blue only works because it increases serotonin. So methylene blue also not only works in the mitochondria, but also works as a monoamine oxidase inhibitor, an MAOI reversible one, which means that it. It prevents the breakdown of norepinephrine, dopamine, and serotonin. As a result of that, you will have more of those neurotransmitters around when you're taking Methylene. And it is a reason why you wanna, you have to be careful actually. If you're on serotonergic drugs like, like SSRIs or SS SNRIs, which are like a newer class of antidepressants, if you're on medications for Parkinson's that increase dopamine, it can be an interaction there. You have to be careful. And if you are taking those meds, it doesn't mean you can't take low dose methylene blue, but you should take it with the supervision of a healthcare provider. Okay, Right. So. So Paul's first argument there was that it was a serotonin effect that was improving people's function. But there's no way that that's actually what's happening clinically like working with patients, which Paul does not do. You would see and get that experience very quickly and get the response very quickly that this has nothing to do with serotonin. I mean, there's something going on with serotonin, but the effects that we're getting are not related to that at all.
- [60:41]
A
Right. And that's, that was, that was my initial thought right off the bat, was, okay, how many people has he observed this on? How can he prove this? What has he seen that would indicate this? Or is this just something he heard and read? And I saw him, I watched some things on his that I like and that I don't like, like a lot of people, but I. He was on some sort of show and they asked him what was the one supplement that you are bothered by or annoyed by.
- [61:06]
B
That's the one. Yeah.
- [61:07]
A
And he sat there and went and thought and thought, well, methylene blue. Well, you know, obviously because it's causing him probably issue with something he's doing and he doesn't like it. Taking all the steam and being talked about. I just, if you're going to go directly at something, you should have a lot of data to back it up and a lot of experience to back it up to make any sort of substantial point or credible, you know, aspect that you're given. So anyway, I, you only had to Talk for about 30 seconds on that where I knew that was. But I appreciate the breakdown. So listen.
- [61:39]
B
No, it's okay. Yeah, I mean, I think it, I think it's, it's good to have a counterpoint in the whole situation to talk about why that counterpoint is wrong, you know, and.
- [61:47]
A
Right.
- [61:48]
B
And that's, and from clinical experience we know that what he's saying is not correct. The other aspect of it is he talked about this, and Chris Masterjohn also spoke about it in various ways, is that if you have optimized mitochondria, you shouldn't take methylene blue because it can make the mitochondria worse. And so this is an important point to distinguish. Okay?
- [62:06]
A
Yeah.
- [62:06]
B
And so, first of all, 94 of the percent of the US population has some element of mitochondrial dysfunction. So there's very few people who fall in this category of optimized mitochondria, number one. And even people that have optimized mitochondria still have significant stress in the mitochondria on a relatively regular clip if they are on an airplane. If all the things we mentioned before, poor sleep, stress, toxins, get an infection, all these other reasons why somebody with optimized mitochondria will still have stress on their mitochondria. Okay? So for that reason, for the first part of my, my first part of weighing of coming back to this, is saying that 94% of the US population has some element of mitochondrial dysfunction. So as just a secondary piece to that is what Chris Masterdon initially said in one of his first treaties on methylene blue, which is a fantastic biochemistry. It was really great for biochemistry. He did a great job. But his conclusion was that you should only take methylene blue if you have an inherited mitochondrial disorder. And this is also crazy because they are 94% of the US population has some element of mitochondrial dysfunction. They may not benefit as much as somebody that has an inherited mitochondrial disorder, but they can still benefit. And we're seeing this on a regular basis on how these people can benefit with sort of any level of mitochondrial dysfunction. The amount of methylene blue that you need may be different. The amount of methylene blue that you need to take on a regular basis may be different. But they can still benefit if they have mitochondrial stress overall. So that's also a big piece of it. And then the final one, which is important, is that they both discuss that you should not take methylene blue if you have optimized mitochondria. And so, okay, we've already kind of discussed that most of us have stress in our mitochondria at all the time. But in the case that you have optimized mitochondria, should you take methylene blue? And they're, and they're both pointing to a study that was done in stroke patients, stroke animals actually. And in these stroke animals, you gave methylene blue immediately after you gave, after you gave an animal a stroke the size of their infarct, the size of the area of the stroke was significantly less. They had better profusion in that area. So they actually had a smaller area where they had the stroke. If you gave methylene blue very, very quickly. Again, one of the reasons why I have have all of my patients with methylene blue in their medicine cabinet, just in case. In that same study, they showed that an area that wasn't affected by the stroke was mildly stressed from an energy perspective, energy making energy from a mitochondrial perspective. So the mitochondrial were stressed in an area that was normal, but in the abnormal area had significant improvements. Right. So their argument is like, well, if you have normal mitochondria, you shouldn't take methylene blue. But number one, if you have a stroke, it could be very, very potentially very, very effective, which is fantastic. But in addition, the piece that they left out is that they're using pretty high doses of methylene blue IV again in these animals. Right. And so methylene blue, at least a milligram per kg in the IV were given to these animals showing some mitochondrial stress in an area with normal mitochondria. So this actually proves my point that higher doses of methylene blue, especially iv, should only be reserved for acute situations. If you're taking methylene blue on a regular basis, it should be oral, it should be lower dose, and it's not gonna cause that mitochondrial stress. We just haven't seen it clinically. And if I can't see it clinically, then that means that it's very likely related to their study design using higher doses of methylene blue in the IV causing mitochondrial stress in normal areas of the tissue in the animal. So in essence, low dose is methylene blue who, not IV especially are not causing mitochondrial stress in normal mitochondria and people that are well optimized, as well as all the other reasons why it's important to make these distinctions between all these different types of populations.
- [65:45]
A
So I just want to touch on a couple things and bring up a couple points and see if you agree with what I've learned and what I've come to see and find out when it comes in relation to mitochondrial dysfunction or when things start to go and maybe as to why, I mean, then. And I've been in class and studying, so I've looked at, at studies and analyzed them now and seen things right on paper that are, that are facts and you know, mitochondrial function, ATP production, it starts to decline probably when we get into our later 30s or early 40s, based on everything and piece of literature I said, and I'm seeing an 8 to 10% decline per decade. And that's just general, just normal, maybe on somebody that's even in good health.
- [66:25]
B
Yeah.
- [66:25]
A
And you know, you can have what, what skeletal, Decreased skeletal muscle function. You could lose mass because of that. What? The entire process of creating new mitochondria slows down when we get older. I think that's a well known fact. So that means that we have a lower number of healthy mitochondria. So I don't know how they could say or determine who or what, because some people start to have a degradation of mitochondria at a younger age too. So. So I don't know how one could say that or prove it that someone's optimized or not based on mere side effects. And especially, you know.
- [67:00]
B
Yeah, you just, you just actually hit another point where I just, I just realized as well. Right. So we are not supposed to live until after about 40 years of age. Right, Right. Like evolutionarily, we're supposed to be dead by then. And so most of us can pretty have, well optimized, Pretty well optimized mitochondria in our 20s and 30s. Because that's when we're most optimized to do almost anything. Right. Especially our 20s. But if you're trying to live a long life with optimized mitochondria, it's very difficult to do if you're not supporting them in other ways.
- [67:27]
A
Yes.
- [67:28]
B
After we get about over the age of 40 or so, for sure. So that's the only other piece that I never really thought about until you just said it, is that aging will deteriorate your mitochondria no matter what.
- [67:39]
A
Right.
- [67:39]
B
And so we need the support. Right?
- [67:41]
A
Yes. And that's why it tends to start happening at that age. Because when you start, I mean, essentially, I don't want to sound morbid, but when your mitochondria start to die, you essentially start to die. That's like the dying process, correct? I mean, of course, pretty much.
- [67:54]
B
Yeah. Yeah.
- [67:54]
A
And don't all diseases generally start in the mitochondria or the cell membrane in general? Yep, mostly. And then I guess you would look alternatively to the gut if it's like that extra 5 or 10% that's left over, but everything.
- [68:07]
B
Yeah, yeah. What you say is like the mitochondria is sort of like your, your common denominator for almost all signs of aging. Yes, deterioration. Your mitochondria are, you know, they're making a lot of energy, so they make a lot of rust over time. They. They rust the System, system. And that's one of the things that ages the system over time too. The oxidative stress related to making energy. And so, and that, and that affects the mitochondria itself. It affects the cell membranes, it affects other areas, the DNA of course too.
- [68:31]
A
So yeah, I'm curious about something. I don't know how versed you are on peptides or not, so if you're not, just throw this to the side. But I'm curious if methylene blue kind of stacks. Well with anything else, especially on the side of mitochondrial health. So I'm thinking, and this isn't peptide related but urolithinate or peptide related, something like MOT C or SS31 that are really may have different functions or mechanisms of action that could coincide and be very synergistic with it. Or is that, am I just, you know, creating something that's not there?
- [69:04]
B
No, you can definitely do the stacks. We have more and more people using mitochondrial peptides along with methylene blue. Again, these are other ways to help support the mitochondria while you're trying to work on optimizing them as best you can with diet, with lifestyle, with supplementation and other kinds of things. So, so we have people that are using a lot of NAD with methylene blue, for example. And I think this is not a bad idea. But it's also important to think about it in context of how else you're supporting the mitochondria. So like I don't think, you know, a peptide plus methylene blue is gonna do it. For example. I think that you really gotta be thinking, I mean it can help in the short term, but long term you really wanna be supporting the mitochondria in the ways that's going to help them be as resilient and more self perpetuating in their function and optimization as possible.
- [69:43]
A
Yeah, and I, I will point this out and I, you kind of mentioned this earlier, but this is something I face when people come to me with a, a certain problem and I'm digging and I'm like, look, your hormones have to be optimized for a lot of these things to work. So we have to make sure that we're making lifestyle changes while taking these things too. So if you're taking a methylene blue, you're taking something else to optimize your mitochondria. You still gotta make other changes in your life. Sleep better, lower stress, eat better, workout, exercise. Like these things are not going to work if you don't help them work. Right, Right.
- [70:13]
B
Yeah, it's all about giving that perspective. Of course, what I love about methylene blue is that you can use it very early on in the process to help motivate people, becoming more of, like, a cornerstone habit, like exercise, where you start doing exercise, everything else gets better, you start feeling better, your energy starts getting better, you're gonna start doing more, you're gonna start taking that walk around the block or getting to the gym in the morning, whatever it might be. So I use it that way a lot in my patients, too.
- [70:36]
A
Awesome. I know we're getting lower on time, but I do wanna. I. I talked to you about this prayer I want to talk about because I saw you talking about sleep and I saw you just. We talked about GABA in the last episode. But I'd like to get into a little more because you know, and you know this as a. As an expert, as a professional, and you teach these things, but you don't always do exactly what you teach because you're doing so much like I'm doing so much. So. My point is, is that I know how important sleep is, but I haven't valued it enough until recently. And some of the things that you've said have helped me take a different perspective at looking at sleep. I'm going on Molly Eastman's podcast soon on the Sleep is a Skill podcast to.
- [71:14]
B
Really great. Yeah. Ye.
- [71:16]
A
Yes. And that's why the Viva Rays that I'm working with now because of. And I'm trying to teach people about sleep importance. And so you've been a pretty good beacon of knowledge on that, too. So I just like to get some aspects on maybe why do people have so many sleep issues? And I know that's a loaded question, but there's certainly some chemical aspects or things to look at, aside from stress and aside from eating, like, and everything. But on the chemical side or your side, what are some of the problems and issues? And how was the GABA relationship there?
- [71:51]
B
It's a cultural thing, Dylan. You know, like, we'll sleep when we're dead.
- [71:54]
A
Right.
- [71:55]
B
When I was in medical school, we had shirts made that said sleep is for quitters. Right. This is the hustle that is just part of American culture in general. So sleep is thought of something that you. You do last in your day. And I may have mentioned this last time, I don't remember, but something that Dr. Ted, who I work with, said very early on when I was working with him was to flip that around, make sleep the first thing you do every day rather than the last thing. So the first thing you ever do, the first thing you do every day is go to sleep rather than wake up. So if you use it as the first thing you check off rather than the last thing you check off, you start understanding the priority over, over it. All right? And so the problem is that most of us are just, just on, on, on all the time, and we don't have to turn off. And this is the off system of our brain that the, the off switch of the brain is the GABA system. Overall, GABA is our most important neurotransmitter. Helps relax the nervous system, calm brain firing. Our brains are firing all the time. We have hard time relaxing because many of us, most of us are actually deficient in this neurotransmitter in gaba. It gets depleted because of stress, because of poor diets, because of leaky guts, because of vitamin mineral deficiencies. And if you don't have enough GABA around, you have more anxiety, you have more stress, you have more depression, and you can't sleep. Because GABA is really important in all the whole, all the stages of helping you sleep better. It helps you with inducing of sleep, helps you with maintenance of sleep as well. And so if you're GABA deficient, you're going to have a hard time falling asleep, you're going to have a hard time staying asleep. And so it's really important when you think about sleep, to think about how much of an, how we've. It's really important to think about how we've put it sort of on this, sort of like underneath the ground is something that's important and put up the pedestal of like, being productive, you know, as being the most important thing that we do every day. But you're so much more productive and you're so much more ready to conquer your day, if you want to say it that way, if you've gotten better sleep in the process. And so I emphasize sleep a lot with my patients. And I'm really leveraging the GABA system to do that in various ways with meditation, with, with breath work, especially near, near bedtime, and trying to turn off the sympathetic nervous system. So getting on, getting off your bright lights, getting off your TVs and your screens, even if you have blue blockers and yellow blockers or whatever on you, if you're still watching John Wick 3 before you go to bed, you're still not gonna be ready for bed, man. Like, I don't care what blue blockers you're wearing. So I really want all of my patients that and people that I work with to take at least 30 minutes off of screens before they go to bed. And it is a very difficult thing for a lot of people, like scrolling right before they go to bed. And then as soon as they wake up in the morning like that, the first thing they do is scroll on their phone to see what's going on. Right. And this is how exactly not to do it. In general, the more parasympathetic you can get, the better you're going to sleep. The more relaxation you can get before you can go to sleep, the better you're going to sleep, and the better your sleep scores are going to be. And so, you know, people have a hard time. I get it. Like, I know in my life, people in my life, you know, the great. For a long time it was, once the kids go to bed, that's when the glass of wine comes out. That's when the. The beer comes out. Like, that's when. And you think it's great. It does. You know, alcohol is working on the GABA system. It's helping relax you. But the problem with alcohol is that it trashes your sleep. It does. It. It binds to the GABA receptor very tightly and it depletes you with GABA very quickly. And then gaba's always in balance with another neurotransmitter called glutamate. Glutamate's our primary excitatory neurotransmitter. And in the brain, it is. Is converted into GABA using vitamin B6 and magnesium. And if you deplete your GABA very quickly with alcohol, for example, that's why you wake up two hours later with a massive headache because you have all this glutamine, glutamate, excuse me, in the brain, and that's your neurotransmitter that makes you awake and on and ready. And MSG syndrome right here by going to a Chinese restaurant and having a bunch of MSG and getting headaches. That's from glutamate toxicity is to going well or a lack of GABA to balance it out. And so anxiety, stress, insomnia, these are all related to glutamate imbalances where you have too much glutamate, you know, some. Some element of toxicity compared to the GABA in the brain. And so the key is to understand this is what's happening and then be able to try to support the system in various ways to help support the GABA system and to balance the glutamate and GABA level. So Making sure you're your vitamin B6 and your magnesium levels are optimized, making sure your gut is optimized. If you have a leaky gut, that's also gonna mess up your GABA levels. A number of different reasons. It's gonna mess em up because of the signaling in your gut itself. But your small intestines fuel is actually glutamine, which is the amino acid where glutamate is made from. And so you're gonna have like a lack of supply to get the glutamate in the brain and then all these other kinds of things. And then your blood brain barrier is gonna get leaky too and, and then that's not gonna be cool. You get more inflammation. And this is why people take GABA supplements. Like they shouldn't work. GABA supplements. GABA's too big of a molecule to get across the blood brain barrier. But if you take GABA and it works for you, it can be almost diagnostic that your blood brain barrier is not doing what it's supposed to do. And so the way we formulated it, transcriptions was ways to get things across into the brain, hopefully because your blood brain barrier is, is intact and then help support the GABA system in a, in a very comprehensive way so that you're not depleting GABA while you're also enhancing the GABA system. And that, that, that's kind of like the secret sauce. At transcriptions, we have something called like an obligate pair or oblipair, which we've actually patented. This actual way of formulating this is all Dr. Ted's brainchild, but patented in a way where you're supporting the GABA system by binding things on the GABA receptor to where GABA would bind. And also a separate site where you increase the affinity for GABA to bind. And by doing them in combination, you decrease the risk of tolerance, withdrawal or any other side effects of binding the GABA system system too tightly and depleting GABA over time, which is what alcohol does. That's what benzia, the benzodiazepines do. It's what barbiturates do. This is what Ambien does.
- [77:46]
A
Yep.
- [77:47]
B
And those drugs as well.
- [77:49]
A
So you brought this up on the last podcast and you just kind of mentioned it here. So if somebody's going to vitamin shop or wherever the hell they get their, their supplements at Amazon, whatever, and they're buying GABA supplements, are you saying that those should not work? Work for them or they will. They shouldn't work.
- [78:06]
B
They shouldn't if they do, it means the blood brain barrier is likely not doing its job really. But a lot of these, but a lot of these supplements also have a combination of things in there. So if they have things like L Theanine or that they have kava or lemon balm or ashwagandha, these are all things that can get across the blood brain barrier and do have an effect on the GABA system in a, in a. Various ways. So the GABA itself in there is not doing much, but the other ones could be, be potentially. So that's, that's what's going on. And so if you're taking a GABA supplement, GABA by itself, then that's when you're thinking, well, is this really working? Is it working? And why is it working? Oh, God, my, my blood, my barrier is leaky. And so if that's the case, don't get scared. It's okay. It's common. The most common reason is that you have a leaky gut and the leaky gut needs to be addressed overall. And that, that's a whole nother conversation. But in general, if you can seal up the gut, but you're going to seal up the blood brain barrier too. And so for me, sleep is a, it's a, it's a dance of a lot of neurotransmitters. It's not just gaba, of course. You have your, your melatonin, you have your five HTP and you have your cortisol and, and making sure your cortisol rhythms are optimized, your melatonin rhythms are optimized and et cetera, et cetera. But enhancing the GABA system really is kind of like the, the one that rules them all overall as far as being able to maintain sleep and really see overall stability in your sleep patterns over time too.
- [79:29]
A
So, yeah, because, you know, TRO Z has helped me. I try to not like, depend on it all the time because I got in this thing where I was like, oh my gosh, I can't sleep without this. And then I started to not sleep as well. And I think it was because it was in my mind. So if we're looking at that particular product, how would you take, is it okay to take it every night? Or do you recommend like, like supplementing that to what's the kind of way to. The best methodology to use TRO Z and do you use TRO Calm with it at the same time? Because that's generally what I do.
- [79:59]
B
Yeah. So TROZY is our comprehensive sleep formula. It has Eight different ingredients in it that are all very supportive onto the GABA system. The serotonin melatonin, the endocannabinoid system with CBD and CBN in there, which are both affecting the GABA receptors as well. It has something called cordycepin and the cordyceps mushroom, which is a fantastic immune system activator, along with increasing deep sleep. And so it's. It's very comprehensive in looking at all stages of sleep and really supporting sleep architecture overall. My hope, though, is that people don't need sleep to take Trozi every night, that they can find other ways naturally, with a good sleep routine and like, an eye mask and the right temperature in their room and all the things that you and I know, and obviously that your sleep is a skill. Podcast host Molly know very well that once you can dial that stuff in, most people don't need a lot of support, maybe a little bit, but you usually don't need a lot of support. If you're taking Trozine regularly, like every night, and you stop taking it after a couple weeks, if you're taking it for a couple weeks, for example, and stop it, you will find that, like, the next night when you stop it, you may not sleep as well. But that's not surprising. There's really no withdrawal that we've seen, and we haven't seen any dependence on it at all either, in the sense that you can stop at any time. You might not sleep, sleep well the night after stopping it if you've had it for a number of days in a row, but that's just because, you know, the neurotransmitter ecosystem needs to kind of, you know, figure itself out over a couple days. But it hasn't been dramatic overall. So it's. What I find is that Trozi and Trocom, you know, Trocom is really for anxiousness and stress, and it can be taken during the day because it doesn't make you feel tired. They're really used more as a prn, as an ad needed kind of thing, as needed kind of thing. And. And my hope is that over time, when I'm working with clients, they need less and less of Trocom, but they use it when they need it. Like, you know, for example, with me, if I'm traveling, it's a crazy day. Trocom is fantastic. If I had a crazy day at work and I have to cook dinner, which is what I have to do after this podcast, I'm going to take some Trocom. I'm going to drop it down a little bit and I'm just going to smooth through dinner. It's going to be perfect. Right. And instead of the wine, it's a great way to kind of just kind of drop that nervous system down a little bit and it doesn't make you tired. And that's the beautiful thing about TRO Calm, specifically because you can take it during the day, we like to say from the boardroom, from the bedroom. Dylan. Right. You take it in the boardroom, like to actually do better, make better presentations, engage, because you're not overstressed. And in the bedroom, it's going to help you sleep, it's going to turn off your brain. It's also going to give you less performance anxiety, if that's what you care about in the bedroom. But, but, but I, but to your question about Trocom and TROZY together. Yes, I have it used that way. So some people will use, use some trocom with Troz, but you have to be just careful with the dosing. You know, what I typically say is start off at really low doses, like a quarter of each and see how you feel, and then you can kind of go up from there. If you have more of an issue falling asleep, Trocom is really great for that because it helps quiet the mind. If you have more issues staying asleep, then Troz is a little bit better than Trocom for that. And so you can kind of balance your dosing depending on which ones you have the hardest time with. Overall, if you do wake up in the middle of the night, night, for example, at like 1 or 2, 3 o' clock in the morning, I don't recommend taking Troz because it's too long acting. I would recommend, you know, thinking about TRO Calm in that case because again, Trocom is going to calm the mind and all those crazy thoughts that everybody gets at, you know, 2 o' clock in the morning, that keeps them up at night, you know, or keeps them from getting back to bed, those kinds of things.
- [83:14]
A
Okay, sweet. I'm gonna ask you one more thing if you got time.
- [83:17]
B
Yeah, yeah. What's up?
- [83:18]
A
Okay, so how would someone know or diagnose themselves with like a, a GABA disruption problem, that blood brain barrier issue? What, what are, is there telltale signs? Is there a test? What would one need to do to know if that was in fact their issue?
- [83:38]
B
Well, you can take GABA and see if it works for you. That's number one. Number two is that if you have a leaky gut in general like if you've been tested, you have a leaky gut and you're working on that, it's likely that you also have a leaky brain too. To okay, if. Also know that if you get a severe stress, like a severe infection, severe trauma, these also oftentimes will cause a temporary leaky gut and leaky brain. So severe trauma, stress, severe infection, these all can cause it. It's common. It typically doesn't last for very long, but it can cause a perpetuation of those afterwards where you don't fully heal from those kinds of things. But if you have a lot of brain fog, a lot of concentration problems, a lot of, like a lot of, of sort of, you know, even depression, bipolar, some of the mental health, Mental health issues maybe that were new for you, that haven't been an issue until recently. This could be related to a blood brain barrier permeability issue. You can't really test the blood brain barrier permeability directly is what it comes down to. It really does. It's more of a clinical diagnosis. And then you can correlate it to other kind of laboratory testing as well. Meaning like leaky gut, for example.
- [84:44]
A
So how would one, just really quickly, how would one test for leaky gut then? Is there. It's like a blood test or something. Because I know people ask. Ask all the time.
- [84:51]
B
Yeah, I usually test people's stool and so okay, yeah, you test their stool. You check for their gut integrity by looking at various markers. There's one called a zonulin level, for example. That's. They're zonulin's. Like, it's the junction between. It's the, it's the, it's a protein that connects the cell, the, the cells in the, in the gut itself. And if that level is elevated, oftentimes it's a leaky gut. You can also take a look at the types of bacteria, microbiota that are there signs of gut inflammation and things like that. And also symptomatically, clinically, like how's somebody presenting? Right. So those are the main ways you do it is usually through stool testing. You can get some ideas through like urine organic acid testing as well. But that's a little bit more indirect compared to looking at the poop directly and having that fun. So, you know, collect your shit, send it to a lab that you. That's reputable. I use Genova's 3D GI effects in mine.
- [85:40]
A
Okay, cool. That's what I thought. All right, I'll talk to you about that after. I need to get that Test done. All right, so I know you gotta go. I really am like a fraction of a fraction of the way through. But we're going to make plenty more of things and people stay tuned for that. We'll keep you updated, but we got some things in the works, so. Man, I love these conversations with you. I always get in a good mood talking to you. I'm sure that everybody listening gets enthralled with information. You're appreciated more than you probably know. Tell everybody and I'll link it in the description, where to follow you and the best places to watch your content.
- [86:14]
B
Sure. So personally, you can find me on mostly on Instagram. Rscottscher D R S E O T T S H E R R also the company Troscriptions. Also on Instagram @troscriptionstroscriptions.com we have our methylene blue containing products, our just blue blue canadine. Our GABAergic ones are trocom or tro z, which we spoke about today. Trocom for anxiety and anxiousness and TRO Z for sleep. And then if you're otherwise interested, you know, we have a nonprofit that trains practitioners on a optimizing health perspective and really trying to shift the focus from disease into health. And that's health optimization medicine and practice. And that's homehope.org if you're interested in me and consulting with me directly, you can find me at probably the best place. Is my. Is my. Is my health optimization practice. It's Home dash sf. Sorry, I'll try that again. Home SF Co. And that's where you can learn more about my consulting health optimization practice. Um, what else am I missing? I think those are the main places, Dylan. I think, you know, I think it's really great to have you, you know, have this platform to bring people on like me to kind of, you know, do some myth busting and, and create some context and come from a clinical perspective. Because when you work with patients, again, it's very different than talking to people on Instagram about what you do for a living and what they should do if you don't see patients or see clients for a living. So thank you for the, the opportunity to hang out with you, man.
- [87:34]
A
Absolutely. I don't do the clickbait, but I like to bring facts, brother. And that's why I bring people like you on where we can really do that. And people will watch just because of the content, not because you fake the funk. So I appreciate it, man. All right, everybody. Well, that wraps up another one. I know that this is going to go a long way with a lot of you, and I hope that it resonates. Stay tuned for plenty more to come. Dylan Gemelli and Dr. Scott Schur signing off.