← The Thyroid (and Hormone) Fixer Podcast: Thyropause, Menopause, Metabolism and How to Fix It
The Thyroid (and Hormone) Fixer Podcast: Thyropause, Menopause, Metabolism and How to Fix It
548. Mastering Stress and Energy: Methylene Blue for Cancer, Thyroid, and Menopause
00:51:16
Loading summary
Transcript61 lines
- [00:00]
Dr. Amy
Welcome to the thyroid fixer podcast, where we dive deep into the world of thyroid and hormones, especially for you ladies navigating perimenopause and menopause, and really for anyone struggling with hypothyroidism, I'm your host, Dr. Amy, thyroid and hormone specialist and CEO of a global telemedicine practice where we prescribe the right thyroid treatment and bioidentical hormones to all 50 states and most of Canada, helping you become that badass human that you're meant to be. So if you're battling weight gain and hair loss loss, you can't lose weight no matter what you do. Your energy levels are plummeting and your libido left town. Then you're in the right place and you have found your tribe. Remember, I want you to embrace every inch of that badass woman that you truly are. So if you're ready to dive in and fix things, let's get started. You have questions about your thyroid, about your labs, what they mean. What about your hormones? What about insulin? Why are you gaining weight? Why are you so tired? Why are you losing your hair? Why won't my doctor listen to me? Why won't my doctor test these things? All of these questions that you have running around in your brain and you know that if you just had the answers that that could push you over the edge into optimal health, that you could be that badass human that you are meant to be. Well, I got you covered there because I am going live every single week in the just fix your thyroid Facebook group. That is my Facebook group. A beautiful community just filled with amazing people where I am in there, my nurse practitioners are in there, my health coaches are in there. There are patients in there that have been with me for so long, they're experts in their own right, and they answer just the way that I would. So we have you completely covered in this group. So not only can you post your question every single day, every single hour, if you want, you can mark your calendars for our weekly live Q and A sessions where you get to ask your question to me and I'm going to answer it live on air. And not only that, we are doing product giveaways. We're doing working with our team giveaways. You're going to want to be in there and actually be live on that call. If you're at work, go into the closet, just shut the door, Take minutes for yourself, take a half an hour for yourself, take an hour for yourself so that you can get the information that you need to Bring yourself into optimization land, where you're not looking sideways at a brownie and gaining weight at the same time, where you can feel amazing every single day. Because that's my goal for you. You know that I love, love, love to answer your questions, and this is the place where you can get them answered live. Are you absolutely frustrated with working with doctors that keep telling you that you're normal and everything is fine, or are you frustrated with going the functional medicine or integrative medicine route and you're still not getting optimized? Maybe because they're focusing on other things other than the thyroid and hormones or they're not a thyroid and hormone expert. Listen, just because you go to a functional medicine practitioner, it does not mean they know what they're doing with your thyroid and with your hormones. They might tell you they do, but the reality is, if you claim to be good at everything, you're really good at nothing. That is why we focus on thyroid and hormones now. Yes. What else is involved in thyroid and hormones? You got insulin, you got your adrenals, you got cortisol. Of course the gut is important. Of course it is nutrient deficiencies, all the things. But we look at all of that and the bottom line is you could do all the gut healing protocols, detoxes, adrenal fairy dust sprinkling that you want to do. And if your thyroid is in the toilet, if you're not being treated properly, if your free T3 is low, if your reverse T3 is high, if your hormones are in the tank, then it doesn't matter. You're going to be wasting your time, you're going to be wasting money, you're going to be throwing a bunch of supplements at it, just getting more and more frustrated and getting supplement fatig week. You need to work with people that will hold your hand, actually care about you, ask you how you're feeling, not have a cap on any kind of dosing. Oh, that drives me crazy too. All those docs out there that say, well, you can't go above XYZ dose of T3. That is complete BS. Do not listen to them. Or doctors that tell you that hormones cause cancer. No, no, do not listen. We can get you to optimization land where you feel amazing, where you're not gaining weight, looking sideways at a brownie, where you have consistent energy through the day, your hair is not falling out, and yes, you actually poop and detox every single day. That is a win. So you're going to want to book a call with my team and this is Totally free. And this is where we go over, hey, what have you tried? What has worked, what hasn't worked, where are you at on the frustration spectrum? And, and here's how we can help. And we are going to tailor a program for you and your needs to get you to optimization land, because I always talk about it. It's a beautiful place to live and I invite you all to join me there because in optimization Land, you are confident and strong. You want to go out, your brain works, you have energy, you have motivation and you feel so good every time you get dressed. Oh, and you have a libido. It's a beautiful place to live. So I'm going to invite you to click the link below. We always put it in the show notes how to work with us. So you're going to book a free call, no obligation. We're just going to go over everything with you and at least you'll have some guidelines and know what your next steps should be if you really want to get optimized. We got you. We've been doing this long enough. You're not a tough case, I always say that. But it is time to put you first because like I say, we only have so much time on this planet. Let's live it in optimization land because you deserve to be the badass human that you're meant to be. So I look forward to seeing you in one of our programs so we can help you level up and bring you into optimization land. So today I'm here with Dr. Scott Sharer and we've been friends for a while, colleagues for a while, and I wanted to bring him back on because the. A couple different things that I want to talk about. And yes, this ties back to my cancer journey. So this is really, it's kind of at the forefront of my mind right now because as I was going through my very recent journey with uterine cancer, they took my ovaries out too. But uterine cancer, so many people asked me, are you taking methylene blue? Are you taking methylene blue? Scott's been on the show before and we've talked about the importance of methylene blue. But Scott, that was like a couple years ago. So in my mind I forgot all the benefits.
- [07:00]
Dr. Scott Sharer
Sure.
- [07:01]
Dr. Amy
But yes, as soon as people started asking me, are you taking it? I started taking it. And today I want to go over the why? Why am I taking methylene blue? What's it doing for me? How's it helping with all aspects of my health? And then we're going to transition a little Bit into a topic that is also related to my journey, and that's insomnia, stress, the inability to sleep, anxiety. Yeah. And that rings true for so many perimenopausal and menopausal ladies as well. So we're talking two different sides of the coin today, but they do have a. A nice ribbon that ties them together.
- [07:37]
Dr. Scott Sharer
Yeah, for sure.
- [07:38]
Dr. Amy
So, Scott, thank you so much for jumping on, because you're the expert in these areas, and I love bringing on experts to really pick their brain and give this information to my audience, and then it helps me understand it as well. So thank you.
- [07:49]
Dr. Scott Sharer
Well, I'm happy to be here, Amy, and it's nice to see you again. I know it's been a challenge for you the last several months, and what actually ties all this together, and we can get to this a little bit later, but I think it. It kind of helps under people understand. I. I call it. I'm starting to call it the sympathetic spiral of doom. So the sympathetic spiral of doom, meaning that we have our fight or flight response that is up and going for much, much longer than it should. This causes significant effects on everything in the body, but especially the part of our cell called the mitochondria that makes energy. And then you deplete and you deteriorate mitochondrial function. And then what's happening, because you're not making enough energy from these things is that your body's trying to compensate by making more of those stress hormones. And, like, you get this sort of psychedic spiral is what I'm calling it. Or maybe cycle. Maybe that'd be a better way. But in essence, it's interesting that. And very, I think, Zeitgeist, in the last six months or eight months or so now, since January of this year of 2025, there was a podcast by, you know, Rogan, and he had Mel Gibson on there. And Mel Gibson was talking about how all these friends were getting cured of cancer with three things. One was ivermectin, one was an antifungal fungal called mebendazole, and the third was methylene blue. And so it was that plus a couple other mentions of methylene blue. Early in January, rfk, for example, the human health secretary, was on an airplane putting methylene blue in his water. And then there was another podcast with Rogan talking to somebody else about a nice guy, a former veteran, who was taking. Taking methylene blue, and it cured his seizures. And. And then as a result of those kind of three things happening, like it went from Amy, you and I Talking about methylene blue two years ago and like this slow increase in visibility in the zeitgeist of it to be like, holy shit, now everybody's talking about it. But the, the problem with all of that rise so fast is that like nobody really knows a lot about methylene blue. They just heard about it someplace and now they heard about somebody taking it for something. And so it's not surprising to me you've had more and more people reach out to you about taking it for cancer in your, in your world. And so I'm happy to kind of dig into methylene blue here and let maybe why that would be an interesting thing to potentially include in a, you know, regimen to things that you were doing. And a lot of it has to do with what the goals are typically. Right. Like the goals are, are we doing like more supportive kind of therapy with mitochondrial support. We're doing more sort of anti tumoral therapy, like potentially. So like there's a lot of sort of mix and things we can talk about here. But in essence, like I can, I'm happy to start wherever you'd like, but I just want to give you like, give the background for the people that are listening. Like that's why people are like, that's where it came from in the beginning of this year. That's why people are. What is this methylene blue stuff? Oh my God, like this sounds really awesome. And then you have other people like, well, I should be taking it, but what I should, what should I be taking it for? Or why should I be taking it? So I'm happy to dig in.
- [10:24]
Dr. Amy
But that's the cool thing about methylene blue is I really love these very unique, I guess we'll call them ingredients, supplements, products, xyz, that multitask.
- [10:34]
Dr. Scott Sharer
Right? Right.
- [10:35]
Dr. Amy
Because, you know, I mean supplement fatigue is real. So if you have to take this for energy and this for mitochondria support and this for immunity and this for anti cancer prevention, what do I take? And then half the time you don't even take it. And I can speak from experience. There are many days where I walk into my supplement pantry and I just go, oh man, I just want to take one or two things. What are the most important, right? And I think that's where methylene blue falls is. It's so multi use, multifaceted and it does so many different things. So let's talk about it. Let's start with the cancer piece and why Mel Gibson even mentioned methylene blue. And then we'll get into the mitochondrial Aspect, energy is huge. With my thyroid population of thyroid sufferers out there, and even perimenopause menopause, you start to lose energy. Your energy starts to tank when your hormones tank. So let's talk about methylene blue in that aspect.
- [11:28]
Dr. Scott Sharer
Yeah. The first time I spoke about methylene blue in the world of oncology was actually maybe three or four years ago with Dr. Naysha Winters and her group that does training on metabolic oncology. And we spoke about it in a couple different ways here. One is that we know a lot of cancers do not do well on, on fat, right? On fat oxidation, on. So they, so, excuse me, they didn't do well on sugar. So like. And so they don't do well with a lot of sugar, for example. And so they, they are more, they are more stressed when you have like what's called a ketogenic diet, like a high fat, low carbohydrate diet. And the key with those kinds of diets is actually what you're actually making the mitochondria more efficient in those capacities. And you do that. And that's actually very helpful for your normal cells, right? But it's not as helpful for, for cancer cells because cancer cells don't have the same capacity to make energy from fat. So there is some thought here that with methylene blue at low doses, for example, that you're enhancing mitochondrial efficiency of normal cells, you're not having a beneficial effect on cancer cells as a result, right? Because the benefit, the cancer cells don't have the same capacity to make energy from the fat, but they, but the normal cells do. And so it's sort of gravitation of the methylene blue towards your normal cells to help them work better while still stressing the cancer cells. Right? So there's like the low doses of methylene blue are also very interesting here because when you're going through chemo or radiation, going through a big surgery or something like that, that's a significant mitochondrial stress overall. So as a result, these lower doses, and when I'm talking low doses, I'm talking 4, 8, 16, 25 milligrams of methylene blue, like super low doses. These are really great mitochondrial support. And as you mentioned, it's got this significant mitochondrial focus. And this is really what's helpful for almost everybody is really kind of falling into this camp, right? Because like 94% of US adults have some element of mitochondrial dysfunction. Like, it's pretty dramatic out there. And the cool thing about methylene blue is that it's, it's Enhancing energy production. So, and then it can leverage those ketones, for example, in fat burning, but it also, in normal sugar burning, you know what we typically do, it can also enhance that too in our normal cells. And it's also working on the detoxification side as well. So when you make energy, you're not only just making energy, you're also making what we call waste products of energy metabolism. You're making water, carbon diox, we breathe out carbon dioxide after breathing in oxygen, of course. But you also make something called reactive oxygen species. These are small molecules that are more reactive. Oxidative stress free radicals, that's what they're called. And methane blue has this capacity to actually neutralize those directly, just like an antioxidant. From a cancer diagnosis perspective, if you're coming in and thinking about methylene blue, the first thing that I think about typically is mitochondrial support. And because I think about that as making your normal cells work better, stressing your cancer cells, as mentioned earlier, and then also with that normal cells working better, it's also helping them recover from the stress of being under the knife or getting radiation or chemotherapy. And that's the first ways that I really kind of got a good sense of how to use methylene blue here because chemotherapy is toxic and it's toxic to the cell, mostly to the mitochondria of that cell, other parts too, but, and that's why people feel so much fatigue and brain fog and cognitive issues, attention, and then even other things like systemic symptoms like, like muscle pain and, and exercise induced fatigue. These are all mitochondrial symptoms. And nothing blue can do at these low doses, at 4, 6, 8 milligrams, you know, they can really start coming in and just like slowly start helping rebuild some of the mitochondrial destruction. And, and what mitochondrial destruction means is that the, the mitochondria itself, it's called the electron transport chain in the mitochondria stops working. And so some of the, the protein complexes don't work well and then can't get electrons to flow through and then, then the whole thing gets stopped up and then so the, the whole thing starts getting all like, you know, stopped basically. And so that's not only the sort of the cancer diagnosis and the, the chemo, the radiation and the, and the fat stuff and, and the, so fat metabolism, but it's also the stress itself of having a cancer diagnosis. Because actually the stress, as I was mentioning, mentioning that sympathetic spiral of doom and you also have this sort of the stress related to that and that's increasing all these neuro hormones and chemicals like cortisol and, and, and catecholamines like norepinephrine and, and epinephrine that are forcing these mitochondria to make more energy. But like, holy shit, they can't make energy because they've already been stressed by the chemo or the radiation or the surgery and then, or the cancer itself. So it's like this. So as you guys can hear, it's like it's all happening at the same time. And, and what you can do with these very low doses of methylene blue is start building up that mitochondrial reserve efficiency and rebuilding them. And that's going to help on all these other aspects that I've just been describing.
- [15:42]
Dr. Amy
That's so amazing. Even as you were talking, I was thinking about a friend of mine who recently went through a pretty, pretty invasive back surgery and she was even saying like, I need to get out of the sympathetic, because being in that sympathetic state post surgery is increasing her pain, is decreasing her mood. So you're basically saying that methylene blue can come in and actually help get people out of that, like intense, ah, stressed out pain. I just had surgery, my body's all thrown off kind of state.
- [16:13]
Dr. Scott Sharer
So what it can do is be like the one, two punch. Think about it this way, like the one, the one, two requires sympathetic downregulation in other ways. And that's what the GABA system is so, so important for, which we can talk about later. But what really happens? And Amy, if you just work on one or the other, like if you just work on sympathetic over dominance and sympathetic just being in that mode, fight or flight, without working on mitochondrial function, what can happen is that you downregulate your sympathetic function, you get more relaxed, but your mitochondria are like, I got nothing to do here. I can't, I can't move. I don't have, I don't, I don't have anything to work with. Like what's, what am I doing? But if you just don't work on mitochondrial function as with methylene blue here, without working on that sympathetic dominance, you won't see people get better. So it's actually like this thing where the, like, it's a very, you know, quote unquote, California thing, which I'm not trying to make a, make a whole thing about California. I used to live there for a while. But like just deal with your trauma, deal with your stress, man, and everything that's going to get better. Like, yeah, it does work. It's going to be helpful. Believe me. But it's usually not the only answer. Usually you got to figure out that stress response. You got to downregulate it, and then at the same time, you got to work on mitochondrial function. And that's where methylene blue really shines. Amy, I think that these lower doses of methylene blue are super safe. Again, 4-25mg, once or twice a day. You take it in the morning, maybe take another one, maybe early afternoon at the latest. Some people get like a more of a kind of awake feeling and so that they can't go to bed if they take it too late. But these lower doses, it's like. I mean, I've seen this time and time again. I mean, I remember speaking to somebody recently. They had a cancer diagnosis. They went through chemo radiation, cancer was gone. They felt like shit, right? They're. They had chemo brain, they had pain everywhere. I mean, it was obvious they had significant mitochondrial dysfunction among sympathetic overdrive and all those things. But that wasn't as big a thing for this particular lady. It was more just such fatigue. And so all we needed to do was start, like, low doses of methylene blue. I think I started on 4 milligrams. She's like, I feel a little bit better. And I started on eight. She's like, holy, I'm back. Right? And it's like. Like, that's classic for people that just need that mitochondrial support and just. And that's. It's such a big deal just for all of us these days, but especially if you're going through a more significant issue, whether it's a chronic, complex medical illness and you've been sick for a long time, or if it's a more of an acute, traumatic kind of illness, a cancer diagnosis, the methylene boot coming on there, it's got this natural capacity to not stress the system. And that's the biggest deal, I think, with methylene blue, and you mentioned this early, Amy, is get all. All these things in our supplement drawer. Like, what are your things you can take? Gonna give you the most bang for your buck. And methyl blue is one of those things because it gives you that energy, but it also gives you the detox at the same time. And there's very few things that do that. There's things will give you more energy, things give you more detox, but there are very few things that will do both at the same time. And that's what makes methylene boost so special in my estimation.
- [18:44]
Dr. Amy
Okay, so. Well, this is cool, because I was taking it after my surgery and I didn't even realize that it was helping me detox from all the garbage that they put in to my body during the surgery. Bonus, bonus. Now you had mentioned dosing.
- [18:57]
Dr. Scott Sharer
Yeah.
- [18:58]
Dr. Amy
So you're saying 4, 8, 16. I don't have methylene blue in my line. I use transcriptions. So what I was doing is using. And it's really nice because each little square perforated. Right. So I was breaking it.
- [19:10]
Dr. Scott Sharer
You're taking 8 milligrams probably.
- [19:11]
Dr. Amy
Okay.
- [19:12]
Dr. Scott Sharer
Yeah.
- [19:12]
Dr. Amy
Okay. So I was doing the average.
- [19:13]
Dr. Scott Sharer
That's a good mitochondrial dose. But like for example, if you go through a surgery like you did Amy, a lot of people actually I would recommend increasing their dose for a short period of time because their needs for more mitochondrial support are higher because it's just more inflammatory stress. And so in my people that are doing more an acute kind of issue like that, we actually at transcriptions we have a practitioner only line and we have one called TRO plus blue which is 50mg 5 0. And that's. And so like an acute surgery like that, I'd be giving somebody 50 to 100 milligrams a day for three to five, maybe up to seven days. And. And that would give them additional mitochondrial and additional inflammatory support for a short period of time. And the problem is that like most products out there and most people are thinking of that dosing as the standard of care dosing. But unfortunately I think that's too high of a dose for most people that 30 to 50 and up to 70 milligrams. This is more. When it becomes more anti infective and even more sort of like oxidative in some ways where like in combination with other therapies that you might be doing from an oncologic diagnosis, you might get that, you know, really good bang for your combination buck. So this all came from. At least in my world, I'm involved in hyperbaric medicine for many years as you know, and like combining hyperbaric therapy with IV vitamin C, with the ketogenic diet, with chemo with radiation. So you're kind of throwing on all these oxidative therapies at the same time. And then methylene blue can do the same kind of thing. It could become an oxidative therapy at these higher doses, especially if you're giving it iv. And so IV methylene blue is going to be a higher dose oxidative. And what I mean by oxidative is that it's going to cause more stress on the system and the way it does that actually is it makes in the body something that you can go buy at Walgreens. It makes hydrogen peroxide. Our cells make hydrogen peroxide in small amounts to actually kill bugs like viruses, fungus, bacteria. This is why methylene blue was a, and still is a fantastic anti infective. And that's also something I use perioperatively at these higher doses as a result of that. And also things for like, you know, acute viral infections and, you know, urinary tract infections as well under close physician guidance. But these higher doses make this hydrogen peroxide. And this hydrogen peroxide is anti infective, but it also has, it's anti cancer, it's an anti oncologic, or it's an oncologic in that capacity, so it can kill cancer cells. And so the you, the higher the dose, the more that gets in fast, the more hydrogen peroxide you produce. That's good for these reasons. However, for people that have more mitochondrial stress, most likely they're also going to be antioxidant deficient, which means that their body's been sort of inflamed for a while. They've depleted all their antioxidants, things like vitamin C and glutathione and alpha lipoic acid and, you know, vitamin D and things like that. And so if you put in a huge hydrogen peroxide stress, what the body tries to do is increase the amount of glutathione that it produces to help neutralize that hydrogen peroxide. But if you don't have the capacity to do that because you don't have the, you know, the building blocks of making glutathione, it's going to cause more stress on the system. And so when people tell me that they didn't do well with methylene blue, it's almost always because they started off at too high of a dose, because they started off at 40 or 50 or 70 milligrams or something. I'm like, dude, gotta go low. But that this is from clinical experience now for the last five years. And we learned, you know, even from the beginning, we always started off at lower doses. Amy the most people when we started, we were the first company to make a methylene blue commercial product back in 2020. And now there's 50 or 60 companies that are selling some sort of mystery liquids on Amazon that we're worried about. And it's a whole different discussion on quality and potency and things like that, which we can get into if you want. But it's really Difficult to find good stuff out there now. And we've tested a lot of this stuff, especially the liquids which don't meet the label claims and they trust third party certifications coming from other countries and other things like that. But in essence, like, we have a lot of clinical experience and we know that these lower doses are probably more effective for the majority of people, unless you have a very specific circumstance where these higher doses can be really helpful.
- [23:04]
Dr. Amy
Okay. So yeah, I do want to talk about the potency and safety profile out there because that's something we touched on our last podcast together with just some myths floating around about what methylene blue actually is. But let's stay on the dosing really quickly. So doses of 4, 8, 12, 16, that's still considered a, we'll say a lower dose that would not produce that oxidative stress. Someone just like the patient that you referenced, someone can start with let's say four and if they're like, oh, I don't feel any better, I'm not noticing anything, go to 8 and then go to 12, and then maybe go to 16 and do that for a while to see how your body responds, they don't have to worry about that even 16 milligram dose of producing that oxidative stress. Correct.
- [23:47]
Dr. Scott Sharer
If you're super complex and been sick for a long time, even low doses can cause wouldn't, I would call them detox types of symptoms. So it wouldn't be causing stress on the energy production side, it'd be causing stress on helping you try to start cleaning up the garbage. Right. So when you have like detox kinds of symptoms, these are because your body is, you know, have a lot of, you know, sort of like the inflammatory molecules and you're trying to get rid of them. So what I do is very slowly increase the dose of methylene blue while making sure that somebody's very well supported from an antioxidant perspective as well. I mean, nothing blue does work like an antioxidant, as mentioned, but even so, it's good to support it further with binders and other things that can help you expel the toxins and things like that that you have built up in the system. But in essence, the lower doses are very safe and very well tolerated. But people will sometimes get those detox kinds of symptoms even at these low doses. But they're usually typically well tolerated, not significant in the place where you have to stop taking the compound because of them.
- [24:43]
Dr. Amy
Right. And, well, I think that's important to mention too because I always say this about iodine, too, because it can produce that detox reaction. That's not necessarily a bad thing.
- [24:51]
Dr. Scott Sharer
Right, right, right.
- [24:51]
Dr. Amy
You are detoxing your body from a bunch of different. That's in it. So not a bad thing. If you can ride it out. Can you, can you just explain to the audience what some of those detox symptoms might be so that they know that it's that and it's not them, let's say, having a. An adverse reaction.
- [25:08]
Dr. Scott Sharer
Sure, sure. So some of the most common ones would be mild headaches, mild worsening of fatigue. It's not, you know, typically severe, but it could be mild. Also. Irritability, mood changes. These are, these are typically very mild. Again, abdominal crampings like flu like illness, flu like symptoms are the most common. But again, if you start off really low dose and you increase. I typically have people increase their dose every three to five days. So if you start off at 4 milligrams and then you increase after three days, if you don't feel much, then. If you don't feel much after that, then 8, then 12, then 16. Usually within that range. We see significant benefit for most people from a mitochondrial support perspective. But there are people that will require a higher dose, and that's why we have our higher strength, the practitioner. Only the TRO plus Blue, that's available to practitioners. And we have a practitioner map where you can find somebody that can help you if. If you're looking for it. But we did that on purpose because we found that most people did benefit in that lower range and it's just safer if you're going to be taking that lower range over a period of time rather than at a higher amount. It really is better to be monitored by a clinician just to, you know, just to keep. And keep an eye on you.
- [26:11]
Dr. Amy
Sure. No, definitely, definitely. Do you want to know the biggest health secret that nobody is talking about? Everything. I mean, everything certs in your gut. But every day your gut is fighting the silent war against all the processed foods and the stress and the pesticides and the toxins in the air that you breathe. And then when your gut's in trouble, your whole body feels it, not just your gut. So here's where it gets a little bit crazy. Most people are spending money on probiotics that don't even work. I see this every day in the practice. Why? Because 99% of those traditional brands die in your stomach acid before they even reach your gut. So you might as well just flush them down the drain. That's what makes just Thrive spore based probiotic. Completely different. I have tried it and I am sold. I am totally sold. And when I learned more about it after I interviewed the founder of Just Thrive, my eyes were opened up. I said, this is why I see no change in patients when they throw in a typical probiotic that they got at the grocery store or at the nutrition shop. You need these live probiotic strains in order to do anything in your gut. Just five is the only one clinically proven to arrive at 100 alive in your gut. That is crazy. 100%. And it does something no other probiotic can. It turns your gut into an antioxidant factory, creating protective compounds exactly where you need the most. So that means better digestion, better immunity, more energy, a lot easier weight management. Just Thrive probiotic comes in capsule or berry flavored gummy. So there's an option for everyone in the family. So if you're actually ready to transform your health in 2025, you gotta take this 90 day challenge, love the way you feel, or get a full product refund, no questions asked. So to join the gut health revolution and take control of your health today, visit justthrive.com and save 20% on your first 90 day bottle of Just Thrive Probiotic with the promo code, Dr. Amy D R A M I E. So don't forget to check out all their other natural, clinically proven products too, like their newest product, digestive bitters. Focus and memory. Gluten away and more. So that's Just Thrive. J U S T T H R I V E Health H E A L T H.com promo code, Dr. Amy D R A M I E so kind of flipping back to what you were saying about quality.
- [28:58]
Dr. Scott Sharer
Yeah, yeah.
- [28:59]
Dr. Amy
You know, one of the things we talked about in our first convo together was how there's this talk going around the Internet and these misperceptions about what methylene blue is. And of course, the naysayers out there say that it's a solution to cleaning a fish tank. So can you please unpack that and just demystify that whole myth that floats around out there?
- [29:21]
Dr. Scott Sharer
Yeah, of course. So actually was a great headline. About six months into the pandemic, a couple of our friends were actually featured in this headline from the New York Post. I think it was biohackers drinking fish tank cleaner to reverse their age. And great clickbait. Any publicity is good publicity. And this is the case in this particular article as well. But really where this all comes from is that methylene blue is used in Fish tank, aquarium, ecosystem, whatever you want to call it, actually cleans the fish itself because it's an antifungal, anti infective. And so it is used in fish tank cleaner. Now, methylene blue and fish tank cleaner, however, is not pharmaceutical grade. It is industrial grade and it often contaminated with heavy metals like cadmium, mercury, arsenic and lead. However, it's not just the industrial stuff that gets those heavy metals as well. It's also the chemical grade and it's definitely also the pharmaceutical grade as well. The, and so pharmaceutical grade is called usp. So if you're looking for methylene blue, you should be looking for USP on the label. But the problem is, is this Amy. And this is what we figured out is that, you know, most companies are getting their methylene blue from a manufacturer that is not their own, right? It's getting from either overseas, maybe US based, but usually it's going to be overseas. We get ours from Korea and Japan, other people get it from, from China and then most ingredients are being sourced from these countries. So, so this is not just methylene blue. What happens is once you source an ingredient from these countries, it will come with a, with a certificate of analysis which will say that its purity is this, its potencies is this. It's got microbiology that says it doesn't have mold or anything else in it. But the problem is most companies in the methylene blue space, but also in other, in other spaces as well, and you might resonate with this, they just trust those certificates of analysis. They don't actually do their own due diligence and find another company that's not associated with the manufacturer to do their own testing independently of those labs to make sure it is what it is. And back in 2019, it took us a year and a half longer to launch transcriptions because it took us that long to find a reliable source of methylene blue because we'd, we'd get it from another place, bring it, come in with a C of A that said it was 99% and it was like, you know, no heavy metals. And then we test to be like, what the hell is this again? And this had just happened recently again. We were looking for a new supplier and then they sent us their certificate of analysis which was completely clean and we sent it to another third party lab and it was not clean at all. And it was like, this is the problem is that so many of us are getting ingredients from other countries as supplement manufacturers, but we're not doing the due diligence. Many of US are actually checking those to make sure it's actually what it is that they said it is. And I don't know if you just saw this, but there was this recent, this, there was a recent expose on creatine gummies. Actually, you know, creatine gummies coming from this manufacturer in China that had zero creatine in them. But the, the CFA certificate of analysis said all creatine. But then they actually tested another third party lab in zero. And so what we do at Transcriptions is that we get all the ingredients for, from wherever we get them, some again, Japan, Korea, some of the US based as well. And then whatever CFA it comes with, we don't believe that we actually take it the next level. We test it again just to make sure that it is exactly what it is and then we'll put it into products. And this is what we do with methylene blue. And we know this is not happening in the methylene blue space. We know it's just coming from these other countries. We have. I heard this other story recently, Amy. This, this practitioner, I mean, again, no offense to practitioners out there. Just one dude that was making methylene blue in his garage and then put it on Amazon to sell and then he was just, you know, selling thousands of bottles. I mean, impressive, right? But got to be careful out there. As a short story.
- [32:43]
Dr. Amy
Yeah, you really do. Oh my goodness. And same thing. We, we always get our products third party tested at my supplement company as well. And that's, it's just so important. And people don't realize, you know, the average consumer, unless they're listening to a podcast like this.
- [32:56]
Dr. Scott Sharer
Right, right.
- [32:57]
Dr. Amy
That makes their jaw drop. They don't realize the difference in quality. They just think, oh, I'm going to go to Amazon because I can get it tomorrow and I really want to start taking it. But unless you're actually purchasing from, let's say, Transcriptions, Amazon Store or the Fixer, Amazon Store, you don't know what you're getting. So even our products can be counterfeited. Thank you.
- [33:21]
Dr. Scott Sharer
Yeah, company called Metagenics, actually they had a counterfeit company that was selling, quote unquote, Metagenics products from Amazon. Millions of dollars worth of just rancid fake stuff going to people's houses. And so I always recommend, if you're going to buy supplements at all, buy it from the company and the companies you trust directly. And even buying on Amazon, you know, for, if you want to save us, save us the company some money, that'd be nice. But that's not really, the major issue, the major issue is just you just don't know what you're getting when it comes from their warehouses. And I don't trust it. And we don't actually have our stuff on Amazon. I know a lot of people do, and that's totally okay. But it's, it's one of the things, you just gotta be really careful. You know what you're getting.
- [33:56]
Dr. Amy
Yeah, no, you really do. Okay, so methylene blue, variety of different uses, variety of different applications for, let's say thyroid for low energy, for detoxing, for cancer. And that's why I said I love it because it covers so many bases. It's really one of those things that anybody can add in and get benefit, even if it is just, hey, as we're headed into cold and flu season, you know, when the kiddos go back to school and they bring home all the germs that up levels your immune system as well. What about autoimmunity, Scott? Is there any tie with autoimmunity and like, let's say, lowering of Hashimoto antibodies?
- [34:31]
Dr. Scott Sharer
Yeah, I mean, we're seeing at least anecdotal reports of people taking methylene blue and requiring less thyroid hormone support and also their, their antibodies going down as well. And I think this is related to that mitochondrial efficiency aspect of things because when you have an autoimmune condition, you are likely having challenges with making energy, so your mitochondria aren't able to produce energy as effectively. And you're also depleting antioxidants because of inflammation in the body. And so antioxidant depletion will be again, one of these perpetual cycles where you can't fully clear the, the stress that's created because of energy. And so then there's more stress in the system than the energy producing. The mitochondria can't make energy as efficiently. So there's this almost little cycle of, of, of challenges there. So you have this energy efficiency aspect of things with methylene blue, and you also have the detoxification aspect of it too. So I do think that there are roles for it. I don't think it's going to be a curative for things like Hashimoto's or other autoimmune conditions. But I do see a significant benefit as adding it to a regimen where you're supporting the system. And as I think you just aptly sort of frame for people, Amy, is that most of us are under mitochondrial stress on a regular, regular clip, even if we don't have Significant mitochondrial dysfunction. Even though, you know, 94% of U.S. adults have some element of mitochondrial dysfunction, it's a huge number of people. This is from the stress that we're describing here. Any kinds of stress from mitochondrials, Mitochondrial stresses is, can be from, you know, a lot of different things, but like stress from a partner relationship, poor sleep, you know, all these kinds of things, that sympathetic dominance aspect of things, plus infections and you know, medications that we're taking that cause mitochondrial stress. And of course insulin resistance or post infectious syndromes like long Covid, these and autoimmune would follow in, follow into that where you have this mitochondrial stress. And so most of us are dealing with that on a relatively regular clip. There's only about 6% of humans out there that are mitochondrially optimized and, and I would argue even those 6% are still stressed at times, you know, going on airplanes or having kids that are coming, that are coming home, that are sick and things like that. So I think there's a role for what I always, I like the framing that I use is this, which may be helpful. It's that I think methylene blue can be used some of the time in some people and all of the time in others for a short period of time. Meaning that in the beginning when you're first, you know, you're stressed, you have all this stuff going on, you have mitochondrial dysfunction, you feel like shit. Like you can start methylene blue and take it all of the time, for a period of time until you can start weaning it down, hopefully because you're feeling better and you can start weaning it off and you, you know, you're feeling better because you're doing other stuff that's helping. But, but the methylene, because a big sort of fulcrum in that it was a big piece where you actually felt more energy, felt more alive, your attention, your focus, your brain fog was better so that everything else gets easier. And then as a result of that, you can wean it off over time in the other capacity. You use it periodically when you need it, when you have an extra need for stress support, you have a long day at work, or you're traveling, or you're gonna be doing a lot of endurance training, for example, where you know methylene blue can help with endurance, will help you can go further longer because it can act just like oxygen in your cells. And that's why it works for jet lag and airplane travel, because it can support and compensate for low oxygen on an airplane, because it can work Just like oxygen, too.
- [37:37]
Dr. Amy
Yeah, Yeah. I really pretty much gave up alcohol unless I'm having, like, a really good ribeye that I want a glass of wine with.
- [37:45]
Dr. Scott Sharer
Okay. That's just your combo. I like it.
- [37:46]
Dr. Amy
You know, inevitable, right. That glass or two of wine will kick my ass the next day because I've given up alcohol and because I'm just getting older and less tolerant. So that is also when I pop methylene blue. Just. And again, I didn't know about the detox aspect until I talked to you today. So I'm getting the detox from the alcohol poison that I just put into my body, but I'm also supporting my mitochondria, basically, to kind of come back to life after pounding it with the poison.
- [38:13]
Dr. Scott Sharer
Yes, you have. It's in the. The technical, nerdy way of saying it is that methylene boost a redox cyclone. It helps with energy and helps with detox. Energy. Detox. And so you need more energy. It can help you do that. You need more detox. It can help you do that, too. The key is just knowing what dose you need. And then that can take a little bit of time. You start with a little bit, then you go with more like 4mg and increasing it by 4mg every three to five days until you feel a difference. And that's the other thing that's interesting about methane blue, maybe to. To round that out, is that it's not like you should wait for it to build up in your system for 30 days or a month or something like that. It doesn't work that way. It works more immediately once you find the dose that's right for you. So it may not be like that day, but it may be. It should be within about 72 hours or so. You should really be like, okay, there's something different about this dose. Is it the dose that I want to stay on, or is it a dose that I want to keep going up and see if I can get a better benefit? Right. Because what I. What I found over the years is that once you find the right dose for people, once you increase it a little bit more, they don't see a huge amount of impact improvement, so that you can kind of dial it back down to where they were before. So that's usually the way I kind of think about it. So the key is dosing. The key is titration and understanding why you're taking it. And then, you know, maybe, you know, having a higher dose of methylene blue in your medicine cabinet just in case you have more of an acute, you know, surgical need or trauma or, you know, infection or something like that, that would require the higher doses.
- [39:27]
Dr. Amy
Okay, beautiful. So now we're going from energy production and detoxing to calming the f down.
- [39:34]
Dr. Scott Sharer
Yeah.
- [39:34]
Dr. Amy
And chilling out and being able to sleep better. And I gotta tell you, my perimenopausal, menopausal ladies, of course we put them on progesterone if they're a patient. I try to educate my audience on the benefits of progesterone and even. Even dosing progesterone through the day for those women that. Or men who are just more anxious and uptight and running in that sympathetic state, not able to get into the parasympathetic. So let's talk about gaba, because inevitably, I always say to these people, are you taking gaba? Are you taking GABA during the day? Are you taking GABA at night to sleep? Are you taking gaba? So let's unpack that. It is what I call the. The calming neurotransmitter. Am I correct there?
- [40:16]
Dr. Scott Sharer
Yeah, it is. It's like the brakes of your brain. So it calms everything down. And unfortunately, many of us are stuck in this sympathetic dominance. Right. Stuck in this fight orf flight all times. And it's hard for us to calm down. This is a multifactorial thing. So when you're in sympathetic overdrive for long periods of time, you're in that fight or flight for a long period of time, you deplete GABA very, very quickly. So you're GABA deficient by way of. And when that happens, GABA is always in balance with this other neurotransmitter in the brain called glutamate. Glutamate is your primary excitatory neurotransmitter, and GABA is your primary inhibitory or relaxing. What happens is, if you deplete gaba, what's going to happen is you have too much glutamate around, and that's excitatory. And people don't even know about these two neurotransmitters, interestingly. Right. But people think about norepinephrine and dopamine and serotonin. These are like your superstar neurotransmitters. But no, it's actually glutamate and GABA that are running most of the show. About 80% of your neurotransmission is these two neurotransmitters. Okay. So it's a huge amount. And so GABA gets deficient because of the stress response, because we're always on, on, on all the time. It also gets deficient if we have micronutrient deficiencies, magnesium or vitamin B6, which glutamate gets converted into GABA in the brain. So it's very interesting. Like these two neurotransmitters are imbalanced and they're always. The conversion is required in the sense of getting glutamate to gaba. Gaba's not made anywhere else really in the body except for the brain. And so you have to have always this balance. And so you can have micronutrient deficiencies, you can have electrolyte deficiencies, you can have a leaky gut and cause significant inflammation in the body. And the inflammation is going to prevent that conversion from glutamate over to gaba. And you mentioned people taking their GABA supplements, and this is a really big point that I want to make actually, Amy, is that if you take a GABA supplement and it makes you feel more relaxed or calm, there's a high likelihood that you have a leaky brain, a blood brain barrier that does not actually do what it's supposed to do. Because GABA as a supplement, GABA as a compound is too big to get across into the brain. Unless you're taking very, very high doses of it or you're taking a nano liposomal variety of it. Those are the only two, like over 3 grams of GABA in a supplement, or you're taking like a nanoliposomal gaba. Potentially. You can get some GABA in the brain that way, even if you have an intact blood brain barrier. But what most people have when they take GABA supplements and they work for them is they have a leaky brain, meaning that things are getting across that shouldn't get in there. This means you have a leaky gut almost all the time. And so this is extremely important to think about when you have, you have an acute inflammatory stress. A surgery, a trauma like this causes an acute instantaneous leaky gut in these cases. And this is why after Covid, we've just seen like a rampage of people with, with viral infection reactivation, right? Your EBVs and your HHV6s and mold and Lyme. It's because the blood brain barrier was intact until they had this fantastic inflammatory stress. The gut got leaky, the brain got leaky, and then things that were kind of walled off in various locations, not causing an issue all of a sudden was causing an issue. And so the GABA depletion happens, and then you have this really big challenge of optimizing the system to make sure that your blood brain barrier is working well and that your micronutrients are optimized and that you're not. You don't have a leaky gut anymore. But in the short term, you want to be thinking about how you can support that GABA system so that you can start feeling better faster while you're doing the harder work of optimizing vitamins, minerals, your nutrients, obviously your stress levels as well. I guess maybe the final point I should make here for people is that from, like, a clinical perspective or from, like, personal perspective, if you have anxiety, if you have insomnia, if you have depression, these could all be related to having low GABA levels. Being GABA deficient. We used to think that everybody had a serotonin deficiency, right, Amy? Like everybody's serotonin deficiency. That's why everybody need to be on SSRIs. But we know now that depression is not a serotonin deficiency. It may be a GABA deficiency, and that's a big deal. And that's a really big deal.
- [44:02]
Dr. Amy
Okay, so when I tell my patients to use trocom, what exactly am I telling them to do? So they're not taking straight up gaba, they're taking a precursor to produce their own.
- [44:14]
Dr. Scott Sharer
So, interestingly, no, it's a little bit different than that. And this is what's super cool, is that. So the precursors for GABA are important. So let's talk about that briefly. So the precursors to gaba, the first precursor is glutamine, which is an amino acid, and that is actually the primary fuel, this particular amino acid of your small intestine. So if your small intestines are under stress already, they are going to need a lot more glutamine. And this is one of the things we give people for leaky gut, as you know, Amy. We give them glutamine, L. Glutamine, right? Which is something that supports their small intestine. But glutamine gets converted into something called glutamate, and then that glutamate is also an amino acid, and that goes into the brain, and then gets from glutamate, again gets converted into. Into GABA in the brain, right? So glutamine, glutamate, glutamate to gaba, okay? And glutamate to GABA is in the brain. So precursor wise, I do think about that, and that's really important. Right? And you also think about the. The micronutrients that are really important for that conversion from glutamate to GABA. And that would be magnesium and vitamin B6. And we know, you know, that most of our patients are magnesium deficient, and then most of our patients are also vitamin B6 deficient as well. But so those are sort of the precursors. But what we've done is interesting, right? Because think about it this way. I have a question for you. I'm going to have a quiz question. How many thoughts do you think we have on average, every single day? I'll give you a range. Do we have 5,000 thoughts, 70,000 thoughts, 120,000 thoughts, or 500,000 thoughts per day? What would you think?
- [45:39]
Dr. Amy
I'm just gonna go high. I'm going 500,000.
- [45:42]
Dr. Scott Sharer
Wow. You are. You might have a lot of thoughts. I like that. But no, no, no, it's not that many, I promise. Actually, it's still all ridiculous. But we actually. On average. 70,000 thoughts per day. On average. And so this is our brain on normal mode. So this doesn't mean that you have 70,000 unique thoughts per day. It's like if you're depressed, you're thinking about the same thing all the time, right? You're depressed about whatever it is. If you're anxious, you can also have a lot of thoughts, but they're not all gonna be about the same thing. They're. They're all gonna be about very much the same thing. And. And when anxiety and depression hit. Excuse me. It goes from 70,000 to 120,000 thoughts per day. What GABA is really is like the gate of all this information, and so it quiets the mind when you have enough around. Alcohol can help you in the short term, right? Everybody knows. So alcohol is interesting, right? Because what alcohol does is it binds to the GABA receptor, not where GABA would bind, but on a separate site called an allosteric site. And when that happens, it binds to the receptor and increases the affinity for GABA to bind. And then a huge amount of GABA binds. You're like, oh, this feels good, right? I feel relaxed. I feel calm, right? But then you try to go to bed, and two hours later, you're like, oh, crap, I feel terrible. I have a headache. Because you just depleted all that GABA very, very quickly. Okay? So the same thing goes with benzide azepines, like the. Like Xanax and Ativan and Valium. These also work on the GABA system. They bind to that separate site. Similar site to where to alcohol binds, but it's their own site, and they increase the affinity for GABA to bind. And they. They vastly deplete GABA very, very quickly. Now, even natural compounds, things like valerian and KAVA and CBD and cbg, things that we have in our products, actually, and Hanokial, they bind to these allosteric sites, but not as tightly as your. Your benzos and your alcohol and your barbiturates and your Quaaludes, which nobody has anymore. And then also, what's the other one I'm missing? Your Ambiens and your sleep drugs and those kinds of things. The, the prescriptions work similarly, but they work, and they bind so tightly to the receptor that they deplete your gaba, cause increased risk of tolerance, dependence, withdrawal. But. But even these supplements can do that to some degree because they're not giving you a supply of GABA that's binding to where GABA would bind at the. At the site of where GABA binds. And so we did at trocom is we created something that has the combination of both things together. It has something called vitamin B3, GABA or nicotinel GABA. So that has actually a GABA with a B3 attached. And that B3 has a transporter that gets across the brain, takes GABA with it. The B3 is mildly activating, turns in NAD, and you have the GABA, which goes to the GABA site on the GABA receptor binding there. And you have cava, C, B, D, and C, B, G, all three that are what are called allosteric modulators of the GABA receptor. So they increase the affinity for GABA to bind. But you have a GABA that you're actually giving to the system at the same time, so you're not depleting GABA as well. And this, like, if you can imagine, right, if you're already GABA deficient and you're giving somebody something that binds to these separate sites, even if it's CAVA or CBD on its own, like you're gonna deplete their own systems of gaba, even. It's not gonna be as much as a benzo, but it's gonna be significant over time. So the way we created it, it's called, like an obligate pair, basically something that binds to where GABA would bind on the receptor, in this case a nicotinel gaba. It's actually GABA itself, along with the Kava, cbd, CBG that are working on the separate sites. And this is Trocom. It's a fantastic combination because you get this anxiolytic effect, the anxiety, the less anxiety effect and you feel better, less anxious, but you don't feel tired at the same time. And that's, that's the key with this formula, is that there's a much lower risk of tolerance, withdrawal dependence because we're giving them both. You're getting a GABA supply, you're getting a, getting an increased affinity for that GABA to bind, but you're not depleting, depleting gaba. And, and the main thing that we don't want to do is deplete more GABA when we're already GABA deficient.
- [49:13]
Dr. Amy
Right, no, that's a great point. And I love that it doesn't make you tired. That's why I recommend it to my patients during the day. Because when does anxiety hit? Okay, yes, absolutely. We can get the racing thoughts as we lay our head down to go to bed. But a lot of people experience anxiety through the day and that impairs their day to day function. So having something that can take that edge off, of course, to your point, point, without having to use a Xanax or a benzo, that has such detrimental side effects and long term effects that, that's the key is having something that we can use during the day that actually works to take that edge off of anxiety without putting us on the couch.
- [49:52]
Dr. Scott Sharer
Exactly right. And that's what we want, really is we want to be able to have that downregulation of our sympathetic fight or flight nervous system so that we can do better. Right? We can, we can perform better at work, we could be a better parent, a better spouse, a better sibling, whatever it might be. Because when you're so sympathetically dominant, our brain kind of shuts off. You don't have that capacity to think anymore. But just taking down the edge just a little bit, all of a sudden your mind's kind of more coherent, that energy sort of flows better. And so it could be a performance enhancer in that way. And like we talk about it, our little quip is from the boardroom to the bedroom, and we mean there, the boardroom, right. So you can perform better whenever you're doing things in front of people or you have tasks or podcasts or presentations or talking to your colleagues. But in the bedroom, we talk about the wind down period. So instead of the going and drinking the, the alcohol, like you can go to the Trocom so you don't get the detrimental effects of drinking. But also in the bedroom you can quiet your mind. You know, Trocom's gonna quiet your mind so that if you're one of those people, I fall into this category where once I fall asleep, I'm good. But the falling asleep part can sometimes be hard. Yes, trocom's great for that because it just quiets your mind enough, but it also jumps you out of sympathetic. Right. And that's that fight or flight. So performance anxiety for men is a real thing. Right. And so. And performance anxiety is related to this sympathetic parasympathetic stuff. If you're more parasympathetic, you can have an erection easier. As a male, you will actually be able to get aroused if you're in sympathetic. It's very difficult, actually. And so, but what's interesting about this is that parasympathetic is erection, sympathetic is ejaculation. So you're able to stay parasympathetic for longer if you have Trocom on board. So that may make your partner happier as well from a performance perspective in the bedroom. So sleep, yes, but also with, you know, with intimacy, there's. There's a potential benefit there. But all in all, this is all related to that breaking of that sympathetic spiral that we were talking about and getting people to feel like they can calm down because, you know, a lot of people don't even know what that feels like. Right. And once you can give people that sense of how it feels to be calm and then how to get back there, it's. It's such a big deal, right? Because, like, oh, I'm calm. This is what my patients will tell me. Like, I'm calm. You really, you think you're calm?
- [52:04]
Dr. Amy
Really?
- [52:05]
Dr. Scott Sharer
Like, this is how I calm down. I do this, I do this, I do this to this. I'm like, you know, calming down is doing less, not more typically. Right? And so, but giving them something like tro. Calm can be great, is have that experience of what it feels like to be calm without feeling tired. That's like, oh, this is what it's supposed to feel like to feel calm and then learn how to do breath work, learn how to do meditation, learn that to divorce your partner if you need to, or at least get a sleep divorce. So I get sleep in a different bed. Like, if they're snoring all night, then you'll say, oh, this is what it felt like. Now I know how to break that cycle. I can take Trocom when I need it, but then I can also sleep in a different bedroom. Right. Or, you know, I can take a walk in nature, you know, etc Right.
- [52:43]
Dr. Amy
Yeah, exactly. No, and getting into that state makes everything work better. Because when we're in that amped up high cortisol state, especially for my listeners that are battling weights, you know, when you have that high cortisol, you have high blood sugar, you have fat deposition, you're in that fat storage mode instead of the fat burning mode. So really, we can even tie being in that parasympathetic state to weight loss as well. We just can.
- [53:11]
Dr. Scott Sharer
Absolutely. Yeah. This is why you've heard this, like, this crazy diet out there called the sugar diet that's, that's going around.
- [53:17]
Dr. Amy
Are you serious?
- [53:18]
Dr. Scott Sharer
Oh, no, it's real. You have to check it out. Yeah, so it's called the sugar diet, and people just eat like a crap ton of sugar and they're losing weight. It's true. Like, but this is the thing, Amy. It works for a short period of time for this one reason. Because once you eat sugar short term. Okay, I'm not talking about long term here, like short term, your insulin level goes up, your GABA level goes up with it. And so you take yourself out of fight or flight eating sugar, and then as a result of that, your body goes into parasympathetic mode. And then, holy shit, you start losing weight. Right? It happens. And so you can do this really only, it's only really appropriate to do if you're metabolically healthy to start off with, to be clear to people that are listening. But the reason why it works is because all of a sudden you have your keto carnivore. People that have been in their. That maybe not getting enough calories, maybe they're, they're always in sort of like a little bit more on the sympathetic side because of that. And all of a sudden you give them sugar. It's like, oh, God, I feel so good. And my body's like, sheds weight. They're like, oh, sugar diet's the answer. Like, no, no, no. The answer is you gotta become more parasympathetic. And you can use these extreme diets to help. Short term, maybe, but long term, that's not the solution. But I, I love that it's been a crazy. You'll hear about it if you haven't heard it so far. I have a couple of my friends that are, that are doing it now, but they're also metabolically very healthy. And they're using it to shed like 1 to 3% body fat for a period of time and then going back on their, their regular diet, you know, optimized diet otherwise. But the key here is that it's a prime example of going from sympathetic to parasympathetic and seeing how that shift makes you feel better because it's like your body's out of that fight or flight mode finally, you know. But there, there are better ways to do that long term. Right. So we talked about optimizing the GABA system, right. Micronutrient depletion, optimizing your gut, working on stress, of what's causing your stress. And, and that's. I'm not trying to take away from the fact that we need to have sometimes psychosocial emotional care and optimize our stress and deal with our trauma like that's all needed, but that's usually not enough. Usually. That aspect. Repleting the GABA side, working on the mitochondrial side, as we mentioned, with the methylene blue, but, you know, with other things too. Of course. Right. But this is just the framework that I think about to kind of bring it all together for everybody.
- [55:23]
Dr. Amy
Beautiful. Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful. So this has been a fantastic conversation because we've gone from one side with the low energy, we talked about cancer, we talked about mitochondrial function, all the way over to calming down, having a better sex life. That goes for women too, because if you're all in your head, you're not going to have an orgasm. So there you go. And. And sleep, which just. And I love these two sides of the spectrum. And both sides are as important to our health, our longevity, our quality of life. It's a conversation that has to be had. And I love that we had it all in one episode.
- [55:57]
Dr. Scott Sharer
Yeah, that's what I've been trying to do lately is give it. Give people more of like a full spectrum picture here. There's not one solution that's gonna be right for everybody. But I would also say that it's important when you're looking at solutions, that it's a multi. It's a multifaceted aspect of things. Because if you just address one, it may not be the whole picture, especially the psychosocial emotional things. I 100% think that's really important. But if you're not also working on the cellular aspect of things at the same time, it's not going to be as dramatically effective as you might think, is what it comes down to. So combination therapies, cellular therapies, that's the key.
- [56:28]
Dr. Amy
Absolutely. 100% agree.
- [56:30]
Dr. Scott Sharer
Well, Amy, thanks so much for having me today. This has been great. I really do appreciate the time. If people are interested in more about my company, it's called triscriptions. You can check it out@transcriptions.com it's also @triscriptions on Instagram. Tons of information, lectures, webinars, blogs, everything else on our website. So go check it out. Also my personal Instagram @Dr. Scott Sher D R S E O t t s h-e r r My website is drscottscher.com and you can find us there. And if you guys have any more questions or concerns, thoughts, questions. You know we're always pretty active on the socials and Amy and I are just chatting and thanks so much for the time and and I look forward to you know, the next time Amy Hopefully. Take care.
- [57:13]
Dr. Amy
The information shared on the Thyroid Fixer Podcast is intended solely for informational and educational purposes. It is not a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Always consult with your physician or other qualified healthcare provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition, treatment or before making changes to your healthcare regimen, including medications, supplements or other therapies. Use of the information provided in this podcast does not establish a doctor, patient or client provider provide a relationship between you and the host or between you and any other healthcare professionals featured on the show. Any medical opinions or statements made by guests are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of the host or affiliated parties. Statements regarding dietary supplements or health related products mentioned in this podcast have not been evaluated by the fda. These products are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease. Some episodes of the Thyroid Fixer Podcast may include some sponsorships or affiliate links. The host may receive compensation for discussing or promoting certain products or services. Any such sponsorships or affiliations will be clearly disclosed during the episode. All opinions expressed are those of the host or guests and do not necessarily reflect the views of any sponsors. The inclusion of a product or service does not imply endorsement by any healthcare professional featured on this podcast.