Get Unstuck From a Sympathetic State and Increase Energy

Welcome to the Satiated Podcast, where we explore physical and emotional hunger, satiation and healing your relationship with your food and body. I'm your host, Stephanie Mara Fox, your Somatic Nutritional Counselor.

Once I started to connect the dots that the sympathetic nervous system plays a prominent role in food impulses and behaviors, I began teaching everyone I work with how to identify when their sympathetic nervous system is activated. This isn't something we're often taught as a kid and would be a game changer to learn earlier on in life. I now see parents teaching the nervous system through red light, yellow light, green light language for a kid to get to know their felt sense and how to respond to the feeling of stop, be cautious, and all is clear and you're a go. This is truly exciting to witness so that perhaps future generations might be more body aware and feel as though their emotions and sensations are allies to understand what they need and when. You may just be learning this language of your body and nervous system now though and feel exhausted from living in sympathetic nervous system dominance. And your bodily depletion makes so much sense. I chat with Dr. Scott Sherr about this today.

Dr. Scott is a Board Certified Internal Medicine Physician Certified to Practice Health Optimization Medicine and a Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy specialist. He is the COO of Troscriptions, a line of physician formulated, pharmaceutical grade, supplements that support with energy, focus, sleep, stress, immune support, and more. He trains practitioners on optimizing health rather than treating disease. He incorporates an integrative approach, comprehensive laboratory testing, targeted supplementation, personalized practices, synergistic technologies (both new and ancient), and more. We chat about understanding the sympathetic nervous system and what he calls the Sympathetic Spiral of Doom, mitochondrial health and its impact, the connection between trauma and eating behaviors, integrating nutrition in trauma work, addressing long term health challenges, and practical steps to support your mitochondrial health for improved regulation and metabolic signaling.

As a heads up, Dr. Scott does talk a bit about the supplements he uses in his private practice. Remember to always take the information that works for you here and throw out what doesn't. When anyone makes supplement suggestions, be sure to be working with a practitioner when exploring any new supplement so that you're receiving individualized support. Lastly, ways you can support the Satiated podcast include please leave a review anywhere that you listen to podcasts to help others find the show. You can also check out all of my affiliate links, join Satiated+ and be able to Ask Me Anything each month, or check out working with me 1:1 or in any of my programs. I have self paced programs and my three month live Somatic Eating® Program which you can join the waitlist for. The next class will be in May. All links are in the show notes. Now, welcome Dr. Scott! I am really excited that you're here today, and before we dive into everything we're going to talk about today, I would love for listeners to get to know a little bit more about you and your history and how you got into the work you're doing.

Dr. Scott Sherr 03:57

My name is Dr. Scott Sherr. I'm a board certified internal medicine physician. It's very different from my background. Actually, I'm the son of a chiropractor for since I was born, and he's been a chiropractor now for over 45 years on Long Island. So very out of the box thinking was kind of ingrained in me from a very early age. I always think about problems in a very different way than a lot of my colleagues, and unlike a lot of people in my world, in the sort of functional, integrative world that I am in now. I came in because as a kid, that's how I learned it. A lot of people that are in my position as integrated, functional world have done it because they've had no choice, because they couldn't find solutions in the conventional arena, and then decided to get there. I've been doing this all my life in various ways. I trained conventionally. I have my own integrative practice that's via telemedicine just outside of Boulder, Colorado. I have a couple different things that I do. The foundation of everything that I do is it's called Health Optimization Medicine. It's based on a foundational framework that was created by a mentor and colleague of mine. His name is Dr Ted, and we have a nonprofit that actually trains practitioners in this framework. It's called Health Optimization Medicine, is the practice is a long name and that's what I do with my patients as a kind of a foundational framework, looking to optimize rather than focusing on disease. We really focus on optimizing health. We do this from a foundational biomarker perspective. There's also a seven module certification for those that are interested in learning more. You don't have to be licensed to take it. You can be a health coach and things like that, and learn how to do this in clinical practice. That's what I do as my base. But I also understand that working with somebody to optimize their health, it's not something that happens overnight. Oftentimes it's something that can take six months, a year longer, depending on the situation. And you know, a lot of the work you do is very aligned with, you know, that process, which can take time. So we were interested in in 2020 to find a different way to help people right now, while they're on that longer path of optimizing their health. So we created a company called transcriptions, which is a company that helps make products help with energy, focus, sleep, stress, immune system function and work on that things that people need help with now to get them through a lot of the roadblocks that are blocking and littering their path of health optimization. So I like to say that I'm kind of a conductor of all things health optimization from ground level, you know, from things that are ancient, you know, from psychedelic even things that are more cutting edge and science more of like technology driven, like, you know, hyperbaric oxygen chambers and like saunas and lights and things like that, and kind of everything in between. But I try to always have a base of everything I do found in, you know, in grounded in the science that I work on with my patients and clients, and then from there, we build and we modify and modulate as needed.

Stephanie Mara 06:25

Yeah, super cool. I mean, I feel like that's what's kind of needed these days is an integrative approach, because I find that more and more individuals, even that are coming here and on this podcast, are talking about how it needs to be so bio individual to someone's lived experience, their past trauma, the context of their life that they're living right now. And so I really hear you just kind of trying to pull in everything possible, to be like, what's going to create health within your body.

Dr. Scott Sherr 06:56

That's really what's key, right? There's nobody in a population of people that was studied in some epidemiological study that is representative exactly of you. This is what we call like the N of one data. Even if you look back in the 1990s, I was looking at some of this recently. N of one data means like the data that's related to your, you, your biometrics, your lab data, wearables, all that stuff from all the various levels that you can look at this now that's the best way of knowing what's going to be best for you, not what happened in some population study of 30,000 people for a cardiac drug that may be helpful, but there's always going to be a number needed to treat in that stuff, which means that you have to treat a certain number of people to get the result that you're looking for in that study. In statin studies, for example, you have to treat 60 to 100 people, something like that, to get a cardiovascular benefit using that particular drug. So like, are you 60 or 100 people for every one person you're actually benefiting? Right? So that's significant, right, if you think about that, right? So when it comes down to it, for me, what I've really been looking at a lot, and which navigates a lot with what your work is Stephanie is like, is this sympathetic overdrive, this sympathetic activation that so many of our patients and clients and people are in in general, and how it sort of really disrupts healing. And that's really where I've been focusing a lot of my time, because it's very simple for me now being in clinical practice for as long as I have been to get on a phone with somebody, or get on a zoom call, or whatever it might be, and know within about 30 seconds or a minute if I'm going to be able to help them or not, purely from a laboratory analysis, optimizing vitamins, minerals and nutrients and gut health and hormones and neurotransmitters, I know within about 30 seconds or a minute, if that's not even going to fly where, what I'm going to give them make them feel maybe slightly better, or maybe even it'll make them feel worse, right? Because if they're so clamped down, from a sympathetic perspective, there is really not a lot you're going to do, and it's one like the only time I agree with conventional doctors when they say you shouldn't be taking supplements. That's just expensive urine. They're not correct a lot of the times. But in the case of having this sympathetic clamp down, you're not able to really process a lot and do a lot with what you're taking. So a lot of my work is really integrating the understanding the sympathetic nervous system and down regulating that, but with support at the same time, especially on that mitochondrial side, which is part of the cell that makes energy.

Stephanie Mara 09:10

Yeah, could you go into more details about what that looks like like? How are you supporting people in that way? Because I do find yes, a lot of the individuals that I'm working with are coming to me with a history of past trauma and are kind of stuck in a sympathetic nervous system dominance. And I don't even necessarily want to use the word stuck, but their body is wisely adapted to their life experiences, and it doesn't know that it doesn't need to be there anymore.

Dr. Scott Sherr 09:37

Yeah, it's they're both correct, right, stuck and adapted. Like what our body is always trying to do is compensate. We're very adaptable. That's why we live in, like the tundra of Siberia, and we live in like the deserts of the Gobi Desert. We can live almost anywhere, because our physiology is very, very adaptable. But it's not always adaptable in a positive way. It's maladaptible either. So we can create patterns in here that get stuck in various ways that make it very difficult to break. And the challenge with this oftentimes is that we don't even know we're in these patterns, or we don't even know that they exist because they've been around, oftentimes for a very, very long time, especially if you had childhood trauma, or if you had significant issues when you were younger, you may not realize that you have all these sort of patterns that have developed over the years that make you feel unsafe in everything that you do in some way. And then, you know, we've had like, sort of, like, maladaptive, you know, schemas and things like that, of not being loved and not being able to be cared for, and then everybody's gonna dislike me and et cetera, et cetera, right? So the key with all of that is that you have to address it. But that takes a while. It takes a while to understand what those patterns look like. It takes a while to reset and reprogram those patterns. In general, sometimes it's one dose of MDMA, maybe, but in general, it does take more than that, especially from an integrative perspective. But the mitochondria, like the part of the cell that I think gets they're starting to become more understood, but like really, it is the crux of the capacity for you to change and actually feel like you're supported along the way, because the mitochondria are the part of your cell that makes energy, right? You have these small they're called the powerhouses of your cell. My daughter, who's 15, just learned about the cell, and she's I have four kids, by the way, and so she's my oldest. And learning about the cell, you learn about the nucleus, the cytoplasm, the Golgi bodies, and you learn about the mitochondria, right? Then you learn there's one mitochondria in the cell. But that's actually not the case. You have some cells in the body that have 1000s of mitochondria. You have some cells in the body that have actually zero or very little, right? So the number one location in your body that has the most mitochondria per cell is the female egg. Okay, reproductive sperm is right behind in the males, in the brain, the heart, the liver, the musculoskeletal tissue, the kidneys, these have a lot of mitochondria per cell. Okay? And so if you're feeling mitochondrial dysfunction, you're going to have symptoms related to the areas where you have the most mitochondria. So fertility rates, they're not going up, they're going down. And brain function, so brain fog, attention issues, mental health disorders, going up and up and up, and then, you know, down the line, right? And the main cause, there's a number of different causes of mitochondrial dysfunction. The main one is sympathetic activation all the time. I'll get back to that in just a minute, but to go through some of the others, insulin resistance, so if your blood sugars are high all the time, that's going to disrupt your mitochondrial function. If you're taking certain medications that actually disrupting your mitochondria directly, even birth control pills, by the way, they cause nutrient deficiencies that could cause mitochondrial dysfunction over time. Toxins in our environment, anything from the air, the water, the food, the people, I'll get to the people in a minute, but the air, the water and the food for specifically, and you also have infections as well, like your covid infections or long covids or Epstein Barr or Lyme or mold. And these things can cause, you know, massive mitochondrial dysfunction, but that sympathetic overdrive, that's the one I want to focus on, because that's the one that's most important here for the context of this conversation, is when you have that sympathetic activation all the time, you're releasing neurotransmitters and a hormone called cortisol. They're doing a lot of things in the body. Initially, they're good because you need these, but if you have them over long periods of time, they significant, significantly disrupt your capacity to make energy in these mitochondria. And so one thing about energy production that's important is that our cells are more like gasoline powered cars than electric cars. We make ATP, which is our energy currency. On average, we make about 150 pounds of ATP every single day. So it's a huge amount of energy that we need. But we don't just make energy. We make carbon dioxide, we make water. When we make energy, we make what are called reactive oxygen species are or free radicals, and these free radicals are good in small amounts, but if you're making a huge amount of energy all the time, your body's trying to because you're saying you're in fight or flight, that you're getting chased by a lion, basically, on a regular basis, you disrupt the capacity to neutralize that stress of making energy, and that's your antioxidant capacity. And so in combination, you have this sort of, this loop that I call it, where you have the sympathetic overdrive, you have mitochondrial dysfunction, is you can't make enough energy effectively, and then you get into this, what I call the sympathetic spiral of doom, which is this place where you get completely involved and invoked in this spiral, you can't get out of it because you're trying to make more energy, you can't your system is trying to make more stress, and you make more energy, and then it becomes very, very difficult to do over time. So how do you feel? You feel you can't recover anymore, that you feel like you're tired and wired. You feel like you know your mood is all over the place. You feel like you just can't do the things that used to be able to do easily. You're just not as resilient, and your reserve is just super low.

Stephanie Mara 14:36

Yeah, thanks for going into all the details and explaining that. You know, it makes me think of, you know, for a lot of people who listen here, kind of sometimes struggling in their food interactions, I talk a lot about how trauma can be why someone finds themselves in binge eating, but can also be you're trying to produce energy by eating more food, and you feel so depleted that you're like I must be doing something wrong with food, and you eat more and more and more of it, but what I hear is, when you're eating more and more and more of it in a sympathetic response, you're just kind of staying stuck in this cycle that you're talking about.

Dr. Scott Sherr 15:13

Yeah, it's really well described there, because what happens is that your mitochondria go into hibernation mode, and they go into a place where they can't make as much energy. They're trying to protect themselves from the stress. So no matter how much energy you try to bring in, the system is not being utilized effectively. And that's why you feel like you need to eat more, but you're gaining and you're gaining weight, you know, potentially, but you still feel terrible because the mitochondrial side of things is not being supported along the way. This is what's so important when you're doing somatic work, when you're doing trauma work and things like that, if you're not also looking at supporting the mitochondria specifically along the way, it can be very difficult to do some of this work, because as you down regulate the nervous system, as you go into the parasympathetic mode, you're supposed to feel better, but a lot of people don't, because you're taking your foot off the gas pedal, I should say. And then there's, like, there's just no capacity there for you to make energy now, and so you feel bad. This is where, like, reactive anxiety comes into place, where once you start taking that gas pedal and taking your foot off a little bit, you should feel better. But some people don't, right? There's some psychology here, for sure, too, but a lot of it has to do with this mitochondrial dysfunction that's been ongoing, that also needs to be addressed along the way. And I would even argue, even before doing some of the somatic work and some of the trauma and difficult work, is actually having more mitochondrial support along the way. Not to so much that you're like trying to give yourself more energy, per se, it's more just to have that support there, so that when you starting doing the harder work, that you have that in place as a base to grow from there and to support you when you're coming down on that nervous system activation.

Stephanie Mara 16:52

Yeah, so well said. You know, I find that it's always the conversation of like the chicken or the egg, and like, people often come to me not knowing what they should start with, like, should I be starting with focusing on the nutritional piece? Should I be starting on working on the trauma piece? And it feels very confusing of what's the doorway. And I hear your focus, you're like, we should be focusing more on mitochondrial health to support you in having more energy to even, like, do the trauma work or to actually utilize your nutrition in a different way.

Dr. Scott Sherr 17:24

I try to do it that way as much as possible, because what I found over the years is that if you can do that, you're not going to so what people will often want on some level, they want more energy, they want more focus, they want less brain fog. And all of that is something that we hope that we can provide and facilitate. But the key what I always try to message here is that it's not this is a stepwise approach. We want to get your mitochondrial liquid with some support, so that from there, we can start down regulating your nervous system and you feel better. And then we also have to give you the experience, what I found over the years is that I can't just tell somebody to calm down like, that's not going to work, right? You never tell anybody to calm down, especially your partner or spouse, like, if you tell them to calm down, like that's the exact opposite response that you're looking for, right? But if you can bring some awareness to how it feels to calm down the nervous system, I've also found that that's been very transformative, and so now they know where kind of there is. Sometimes that could be breath work, sometimes that could be meditation before going to do the somatic and like the trauma work and things like that. Sometimes it's actually even supplementation, like giving them things like giving them things that enhance what's called the GABA system in their brain. GABA is the breaks of our brain. It's what calms down the firing of our brain. Most people have heard of GABA. Maybe there's another neurotransmitter called glutamate in the brain. There's always a balance between those two. They're supposed to be. Glutamate is excitatory and GABA is inhibitory. But many of us are walking around GABA deficient because of the stress and the trauma and inflammation and things like that. And when you're GABA deficient, you have more anxiety, you have more insomnia, you have more depression, mental health problems, you know, depression. Is interesting, right? Because we used to think this is a serotonin issue. That's why, if you go to your doctor with any of those complaints, they're going to put you on an SSRI a lot of times. But SSRIs and serotonin drugs are interesting. They may work for some people, but there's no evidence that people with depression or anxiety have lower serotonin levels. In fact, at all. We used to think this when I was in medical school. That's not what I was taught. Like, put them on SSRIs because their serotonin levels are low, but that's not the case in any regard. I really look at that GABA system specifically as a way to help, kind of, like, down regulate the nervous system so people can get the experience of what it feels like. But that's a short term fix, right? Because then, you know, long term it's like nutritionally optimizing. That's more medium term. And then long term, it's really like the somatic work of, let's reprogram a lot of this stuff along the way.

Stephanie Mara 19:37

Yeah. So what you've been pointing to is, like, all this support for the body, and I'm curious, like, what you have been exploring with individuals to do that?

Dr. Scott Sherr 19:47

Well, there's a lot of different ways to do this, right? I mean, what I found is that I like, as I mentioned, to try to give a break to the spiral as quickly as possible, knowing that there's a short term, medium term and long term to this, right? The long term is always going to be the elephants in the room, right? It's going to be the toxic relationship, the toxic, you know, marriage, or somebody that's snoring in bed with you that you refuse to kick out and get a sleep divorce. Actually, 50% of US adults sleep in different bedrooms because of issues with their partner. They still have great marriages, most of them, but actually saves some marriages to do this. So the elephant in the room is, like, the toxic sort of outward things that are causing the sympathetic dominance, and that could be trauma as well. And on the other side of it is, could be looking at infections and looking at, like, from the mitochondrial side, toxins in your environment there, or medications that you're taking that might be affecting it, or insulin resistance. So like, that's all like long term stuff. It's not going to be fixed tomorrow. Wish all of our patients say, like they want to be feel better tomorrow. That's the stuff that's going to be their longer path, and sustainable one which I take on my in my own clinical practice. That's where we want to get you to work on all that stuff. But it's going to take time. Medium term there is optimizing, you know, vitamins, minerals, nutrients and cofactors, and looking at and various ways of looking at supporting the GABA system and the mitochondria that way. And I do that, you know, in clinical practice, looking at the various co factors and various, you know, vitamins and minerals and things that you need to really support mitochondrial function, like in the short term, like right now, what I really look at is, how can I down regulate their nervous system, but in before that is looking at how I can support the mitochondria. And the two main things that I found in the mitochondria that have been very, very successful. Well, three things I would say that have been very, very helpful. The first one would be something very, very straightforward actually, which is minerals. Getting more minerals in your diet, typically mineral hydration, I found to be extremely helpful, because that's going to support those stress hormones a little bit more. And so it's not going to affect the reason why you have the stress hormones up, but it's going to help you support so you can actually support your mitochondria more, helping make more energy more effectively if you have more minerals on board. I've also found that methylene blue is an interesting one here too. So methylene blue has been around a long time as a for many different reasons, but very low doses of it, if it's a very clean source, have a very, very fantastic benefit at supporting mitochondrial function, because what methylene blue can do is that it helps with both energy production and it all for cells with detoxification together. There's very few compounds out there that both help with energy and detox at the same time. Many things will help with energy. Many things will help with detox. Very few do both and low doses of methylene blue, like around four to 25 milligrams on a daily basis, in the short term, taken once or twice a day, as long as it's clean. You know, because methylene blue can be contaminated with heavy metals and things like that, you'd be careful of your sourcing. If you can find a good source, we have a company that does make it at the transcriptions company, and makes a very good source. And this is something we've vetted over many years, and that's how I've got the clinical experience with this. I've done it now. I've used it in clinical practice now for over six years, and I was skeptical about it initially, because it's a very blue pigment. It's not a natural compound. If it was made in the lab, some people get worried about that, but if you're taking insulin right now. That was also made in the lab too, by the way. And if you're going to the hospital, you need antibiotics. Those are synthetic as well. So not everything synthetic is bad for us, is the short story. But I was very skeptical initially, because it's very blue. But initially I started getting these patients that would come talk to me about how they had these amazing improvements using methylene blue, mild cognitive impairment with significant memory recall mold exposure with, you know, the mold getting better in the body and and, but still feeling terrible and taking methylene blue and feeling amazing. Or just recently, a colleague of mine, you know, years of anxiety just taking a little bit of methylene blue, and his anxiety went away. And you wouldn't think that initially, because not really dealing with neurochemical stuff, it's a mitochondrial side of things. But when you can support mitochondrial function, the body starts to calm down. The system is able to make energy more effectively. And then from there, you can start doing you know, the harder work you know, which is the stuff that you know, that you do very well and others do in the work of long term sympathetic down regulation, right? And so that's how I work on the mitochondrial side. I forgot the third one. The third one was I've found that molecular hydrogen is an interesting one too. Hydrogen gas inhaled, or hydrogen even orally, seems to be helpful, because it works on the antioxidant energy side too. So that's my base while I'm doing the harder work of optimizing their cellular side from, like, specific labs that I check and look at those over time. There's other suite of things that I use on the GABA side, but I'll stop here and if you have any questions.

Stephanie Mara 24:32

What I'm really hearing in all of that is when the mitochondria are supported, like, how much that can further help stabilize the body so that some of the other deeper work that someone may want and need to do, like I totally hear you, it can be really hard to get into your past trauma, when you're feeling malnourished, when you're navigating brain fog, when you feel like it's hard to even get out of bed. It makes it difficult to be like, I know these are things that I need to be looking at, but I don't even have the energy to be able to do that.

Dr. Scott Sherr 25:07

Yeah, the energy demand is a big one, right? Because your brain is requires a huge amount of energy on a regular basis, and it's very difficult just seeing this in clinical practice, very difficult to live in nuance, in gray, when you don't have enough energy to do it, it's much easier. And that's why people love black and white thinking, right? Because either my way or the highway, it's either red or green or whatever, right? But to live in that gray in between all those spectrums of colors, that's hard, right? Because you have to be able to take information, process it in a different way. And so when your brain isn't working very well, it's very difficult to live there, right? And so if you have enough capacity, then you can start living in that area. You can start processing in a more nuanced way. And so you can have, you know, more challenging conversations that require it, right? So that's a big thing I talk about with my patients, is like you need enough energy to be able to do this. You need enough energy capacity to be able to do the harder work, right? So this even sort of a separate but important piece, is just motivation. Like, if you have a little bit more energy, you got more motivation to take a walk or maybe change your diet a little bit or, you know, get up a little bit later. You know, instead of getting six hours, you get seven hours of sleep. These are things that are really, really important, and I'm always, you know, navigating with patients, and I think that one of the biggest levers that I always talk about with them is sleep as well, right? Where, if you're really going to regulate your nervous system, you really have to dial in your sleep. And that's sometimes one of the one of the first things that I do, depending on the patient, is because if we can get them to sleep better, everything else is going to get easier. But what's funny about that is, you know, sleep is not just, doesn't just start when you hit your pillow at night. It it's the whole day before that that led up to when you're going to bed that's going to give you a good night's sleep or not. And so having that conversation about supporting mitochondrial function earlier in the day, you know, optimizing your diet, you know, getting some, you know, etc, etc, with your light exposure. There's a lot of different things, but that's all going to lead you up to having an evening whee you can get good rest, and then we can help you with sleep if we need to, too. But it's a good way to start with people in that conversation, because it's very tangible to them once they start sleeping better, too. And so that's often a place I do start with patients.

Stephanie Mara 27:15

That's so interesting, because I feel like so many people that I have brought on here recently have talked about sleep. I feel like there's this theme that is happening of just like, you know, maybe it is a larger product of our culture right now where we are staying up late to have, I even said this in a previous episode of like, revenge me time of like, we're scrolling on our phones, we're staying up later and later and like all of those things, are doing something for us that we're maybe not getting earlier in the day, like if it's finally the time of day where you can be quiet and be still or actually get you time, but like you're pointing to that if we are continuing to not address this piece of sleep, it makes it really hard to then feel like you can set up your day in a way that feels stabilizing.

Dr. Scott Sherr 28:05

Yeah. I mean, some people honestly, Stephanie, I'm just like, let's just get you to freaking sleep. Like I'm not even gonna worry about all that stuff. I'm just gonna say, okay, I have some supplements that can help you. You're gonna fall asleep, and you're gonna stay asleep, and it's gonna give you good sleep architecture. And then once you start getting a couple days, weeks of good sleep, then we can have the conversation too, right? Because a lot of it becomes this, like, you can't think yourself out of these things, as you know, right? Like people like, oh, I just need to do more and more to feel better, when oftentimes it's actually gas pedal off, breaks on and like this, the classic scenario is somebody that comes up and says, somebody to me and say, like, I need more stimulants. I don't have enough energy. I'm like, no, you don't need more stimulants. You need to calm down. And of course, we don't say that because that doesn't have a very good response. But sometimes we have to give people that experience of just taking the gas pedal off for them and saying, okay, let's just get you to sleep. So we have one particular product transcriptions. It's called Tro Zzz at my company, and it's working on the GABA system specifically. And GABA is, again, your primary inhibitory neurotransmitter. It calms you down, it relaxes you. And it's extremely important for your sleep. Okay? It helps you get to sleep. It helps you maintain sleep. But Tro Zzz also has a little bit of five HTP, which works on your serotonin, a little bit of melatonin. It has CBD and CBN, non psychoactive cannabinoids. It has adenosine and cordycepin, which work on the adenosine system. It's like eight different ingredients. They're working on endocannabinoid serotonin, as melatonin. It has GABA and has adenosine. So five different systems, right? So with that comprehensive support, if somebody's telling me, you know, like, as you were kind of describing there, there's a lot of psychology around that, and I think that's really important to dive into. Sometimes it's just like, okay, I'm just gonna get you to sleep, and then we're gonna go from there. And so using Tro Zzz is great for that, actually, because I can get somebody to sleep and then they start going, okay, I feel a bit better. What's going on here? Now I can have a conversation. I have enough energy, you know, because my brain is actually functioning better, and I'm not as sympathetically dominant as I was before. And so it becomes one of those levers where I often find the psychology it can be too difficult sometimes for some people to understand is in their way. But having that knowledge of, like, why I'm doing this is super important, but it may not be initially tangible for somebody as they're kind of going through and trying to figure out why they can't sleep, or why they're so wired and tired, or whatever it might be. So that's where I find like the big levers are to give the experience of now having your nervous system down regulate. I don't do it as much during the day for people, though, because they don't have enough mitochondrial support, they may not feel very good, right? But at night, with that GABAergic support and those other neurotransmitter systems and hormones like I find that can be very, very transformative as a way to get people reset relatively quickly and then be able to have the conversations about what to do next.

Stephanie Mara 30:54

Yeah. I mean, I'm curious, from your experience, it sounds like you've worked with a vast array of different individuals, and I guess I'm wondering, of what you've seen when someone's mitochondria is maybe not working optimally, how that might affect someone's food behaviors.

Dr. Scott Sherr 31:12

You are in fight or flight. You are in survival mode is what it comes down to, right? So the challenge with our biology in general is that we're not programmed to think about more than a couple days from now. We are here for survival and reproduction, and that's pretty much it. And for the most part, when you're in fight or flight, reproduction is not really on your radar. It's more the survival part that's on your radar, right? And so this is what's happening. So when you see food or you don't see food. For example, you might think this is the last time you ever see food, or this is you're never going to see food again, in correspondence, right? And so you have this challenge where there's a lot of inflammation in the body. You're not making enough energy you need to your body's in starvation mode, even though you have enough energy around, starvation mode meaning that they just do not getting enough energy. You're starved of energy, not of food and not of calories, right? And so it becomes one of those things where people will stress eat, right? And one interesting thing about, an important thing to know about eating in general, especially sugar and carbohydrates, is that for a little while, you get a dopamine hit, which gives you reward, and it also gives you a mild decrease, sometimes more, depending on the person of your stress response. So all of a sudden, more blood is trying, at least to get to your belly to help you digest that stuff. And all of a sudden you might feel a little bit less stressed, right? And it's because you've tried to activate your parasympathetic nervous system, and because when insulin goes up, your GABA levels also go up too. That's what's supposed to happen. But unfortunately, that response is often blunted in people that are always in this sympathetic dominance and with mitochondrial stress. But in general, eating is supposed to be parasympathetic, right? That's when we rest, digest, detoxify. If you have gut issues, for example, there's no amount of supplementation that I can give to one of my patients that has a gut issue if they don't also work on their sympathetic dominance, right? If they're not also working on what is causing that, right? I've talked about giving them something to sleep or helping them do that, but long term, I had a lady I was working with recently. She had an alcoholic father, and ever since she was seven years old, she's had GI issues, and she's in her 40s. And I had a couple conversations with her, I'm like, I looked at some of her labs, and I was like, look, there's nothing I can likely do here that you haven't already tried. Just from working on your diet, working on your gut, you know, looking on supplementation, you just don't feel safe, and you're not getting enough blood flow to your gut to make you feel better, to be able to get enough blood flow there to actually digest your food and do something about what's going on here. So eating is a very interesting piece here, right? Because if you're eating, you are doing it because you're getting a reward for that. Typically, that reward is dopaminergic, and that reward is somewhat of a sympathetic down regulation. But unfortunately, those responses get blunted over time, and we just don't see them as beneficial over the long term. Unfortunately, that's why it's so important to think about these things in a holistic way, where we can help people now down regulate the nervous system with good support. We can look at that, but in the end, it really is a lot of the hard work that we have to do as humans to really recalibrate it and reset, you know, these kinds of patterns that have been there oftentimes for a very long period of time.

Stephanie Mara 34:26

Do you find that the blunting effect that you're talking about is kind of like because I've seen this with those that you know are navigating things like binge eating, they need to eat more and more and more food to get the same kind of response. Is that kind of what you're referring to?

Dr. Scott Sherr 34:43

Yes, exactly. So where they don't have the same initial boost of dopamine, like the boost of calm, it takes more and more to get there. The body tries to compensate. The body is really saying, like, you shouldn't be doing this, even if you're trying, because your body needs to calm down first. And so it becomes one of these sort of, again. A spiral in its own right, where you get less of a reaction and a benefit from doing the things that you did before. It's only going to work in a certain way and for a certain amount of time, and that's when things start really breaking down. That's where you're getting in that spiral where you're kind of, you know, floating down in it. And it's really does take a much more comprehensive approach, and it's doable, but it does take some work, and again, those are short, medium and long term ways to address it.

Stephanie Mara 35:23

Yeah, it's really fascinating. What you're naming here is, I find that for anyone listening, it's kind of assessing for yourself, what's the work that I have been doing. What you're talking about is okay if someone has been doing somatic work, for example, because I find you know, somatic has just like triple fold in its popularity over the last couple of years. And so it's like, okay, people are doing this somatic work, but then sometimes maybe not seeing the progress or forward movement that they thought that they would get from doing this kind of work, maybe feeling a little bit more of that parasympathetic nervous system activation and living more in that in their lives. And I know for other individuals who often come to me what you're talking about, they've been doing the nutrition and the protocols, the supplements, all of the things, and they're like, and I still feel stuck in my trauma.

Dr. Scott Sherr 36:15

So it's like, it's both, it happens on both ends. And so it's one of those things where I was talking to a colleague of mine who works with a lot of perimenopausal women, you know, going through the transition with hormones. And she's like, Scott, I was putting them on estrogen, progesterone to testosterone, they feel better. They definitely feel better. And I'm happy that the black box warning came off of hormone replacement therapy for women, because it really does help a lot of women. But she told me, she's like you know, they still don't feel great, like their energy isn't as good. And then as soon as soon as I started them on, like, a little bit of methylene blue, like, things transform for them, right? Because now they have the mitochondrial support that they needed at the same time as getting some of that gap of support and some of the other hormones that are important for the mitochondria as well. The thing about it is that most of us are doing well until we're not right, we're able to compensate until, kind of things fall off. And then oftentimes, those, you know, those wheels fall off during transitionary periods in our life where there is upheaval in some way, you know, there's a divorce, or there's a death, you know, there's hormone changes and things like that. Where you go, you're doing okay, you know, and then all of a sudden, kind of things go down. You don't know why, right? You can't figure it out. And that's why it's so important think about this in a holistic way, because, and you mentioned chicken before the egg earlier as well, which is important, because I think about this a lot. In the end, we don't know, you know, a lot of times it's a combination that's happening with people. And so you really have to address it from a multi factorial way. So I certainly have seen this where, like, you know, no matter how many vitamins, minerals, nutrients and supplements that we give people, they don't get better, or how much somatic work they do, they don't get better. And I was actually lamenting with a friend of mine not too long ago, and her name is Ashley, and we were talking about how a lot of our patients are going to get, like, Ayahuasca journeys and like, you know, going to MDMA journeys and like, psilocybin and like, but they still felt like crap. They worked on their trauma and they felt better, but they still felt terrible, right? Just like people are forgetting that they need to do this too, like they need to work on their gut, they need to work on their, you know, their you know, their mitochondria, and then so it's like, that's one of those things where you're going to access all of this in the way that feels most aligned with you, okay? And that's totally okay. You should be able to work with a practitioner that's able to kind of dive into that realm, but understand that there's likely more things to the puzzle than you realize, right? It's, I wish always that I could just give somebody like, methylene blue and call it a day, or I could just give them something for sleep and say, you're good. Like it doesn't work like that. It's more about as things evolve, as you start working with a program, then you kind of understand, okay, these are the things that are really necessary for me, that I really need to align with. And really think about, well, how do I really want to approach this? Right? And sometimes it could be easy just take the supplement, or, you know, change your diet a little bit. Other times it'd be like, you know, get a divorce, you know, or get out of that relationship, or whatever it might be, or leave the job that you thought was your dream job for the rest of your life, and things like that. So these are harder, but as you said earlier, it takes more energy to be able to do those things, and so we have to give people bridges along the way and help with the psychology along with it. So I think that in the end, we're all very unique here, but the patterns are similar from one of us to the other. So we can take an understanding of these patterns and start helping you approach them in a very intentional way, in a very step wise way, and see massive benefit long term and helping with those roadblocks along that long term path.

Stephanie Mara 39:22

Yeah, thanks for naming that. This is not like a one and done kind of situation. There is no quick fix here, and I find that there's more of a like you are re embodying yourself like something has been building for like decades of your life, and your body has been adapting to your life situations, and you are realizing this isn't working for me anymore. I don't feel energized, I don't feel vibrant, I don't feel good in my body, I don't feel connected, I don't feel here and that there's going to be a lot of different layers to explore in that. And I find like, just a reminder to take your time. Like there's no rush in this. I feel like sometimes there's this panic of like, and I get it like I've been there during my lifetime so far as well. Probably, who knows, will be there again at some point where you just feel this pressure of like, I just I'm so tired of being where I am. I want to feel better. I want to be someplace else. And so there can feel even more of that sympathetic activation of like, I've got to fix this danger, this threat. And if you can remind yourself that it's sometimes all the things that are still working. Yeah, you may be waking up tired, but you are still here. You are still waking up and you are still trying to feed yourself, and you are still interacting with your friends and your family and doing maybe work you semi like. And there's all these things that are still happening that sometimes it's also like zooming out, because sometimes I feel like, even when I've been in certain chapters of my journey, like it feels like there's these blinders, where it's like I just have this end goal in sight, and it actually makes me feel like I'm more in a fight or flight response, because all I'm focusing on is the threat.

Dr. Scott Sherr 40:57

It's very well said, you know, and I think that it's called self love on some level. I'm a big fan of meditation, and like they often talk about, there's one technique to use is like, Would you talk to yourself to somebody else? Your self talk is probably so negative, right? But you would never talk to somebody like that, but like that was a hard place that they were in a challenging spot, like, you would always want to be supportive for them. The other way to do this is, imagine you're talking to your seven year old or eight year old self, and how would you talk to them if they were having those same kinds of thoughts, right? And this is where you can get that, you know, it's called that meta kind of practice, where you get the self love and awareness is like, if you take it to that level and think, okay, how would I treat somebody that was in my shoes? Would I talk to them the way I'm talking to myself? Or if this was me at seven, how would I talk to them or a child, right? And so these are techniques that you can learn, some techniques you can learn over time to be able to help you. But I think that the main thing I always talk about with my patients here is that it can be very difficult to unstick yourself from those thoughts, right? Because your thoughts are really sticky. We have 70,000 thoughts on average per day. Is the average you know that I think is probably pretty relevant. Doesn't mean it's unique thoughts. It could be 70,000 of the same thought every single day. So should you be believing everything that you think if you're having 70,000 of these things every single day? And the answer is, well, no, of course, right? And then you have this one thought that builds on another, another. A great example like my son, like a couple days ago, got super angry at me, was I wouldn't let him play at somebody's house, and then he's still, like, angry, like, 45 minutes later, and I asked him, I was like, Finn, do you even know why you're angry? He's like, no, I'm just angry, you know. And so sometimes you even forget, like, why it even happened. It's like, a great example of that. So what I always try to teach in my patients is to create some space there that could be hard initially, but creating a little bit of space from, like, your base to your thought, and knowing that your thoughts are just these neural depolarizations of your brain that don't have to mean anything. There's lots of psychology there, but there's a lot of techniques you can learn to be able to start doing that. That's something that I find very, very, very helpful in a lot of the patients that I work with.

Stephanie Mara 42:52

Yeah, well, I'm curious as we move towards wrapping up. You know, I always like to offer people a baby step, and you've been talking a lot today of what people can do. And I always also like to expand it out of like, things that are available now to people, especially where people are at financially, or the amount of support that they are ready to receive. Like, what are resources that feel like free or available to them that people could obviously, you mentioned sleep like everyone can be like, working on their sleep, creating more sleep time routines and things like that. I'm curious if there's anything with what you've been talking about, of like supporting the mitochondria that someone could do starting today in their own home.

Dr. Scott Sherr 43:31

Yeah. I mean, I think you said exactly where I would typically start, which is starting with your sleep, trying to create a good sleep routine, and really doing it, not just like me that when you fall asleep and like in your bed, but like, in your bed, but like, 30 minutes to an hour beforehand, if at all, possibly, if not, even longer than that. So sleep is a big one. The other one that I always talk about a lot is trying, especially if you're in this sympathetic space. It's one of those things where, like fasting and like skipping meals and things like that is probably not gonna be a good idea for you. Trying to get good nutrition, trying to avoid processed food, refined sugar. Trying to keep things as clean as possible is typically a good idea, and trying to regulate your day depending on the light exposure. So eating when it's light outside, not eating when it's dark, can be a big one. For example, trying to see the sun rise is actually really, really helpful, even though it sounds kind of silly, but it does really work. And then watch out for your stimulants. Watch out for the caffeine. And the more caffeine, and the more caffeine is that's going to make you crash, it's going to it's actually going to increase your sympathetic nervous system. And instead of, you know, trying to cultivate that parasympathetic side, those are some things that are relatively free, you know, or can cost you less money by not having your Starbucks coffee every three hours during the day. And then I think about, you know, some base supplementation that can be helpful right now, I think that even though it cost money to get good quality methylene blue, I think you can see a benefit there. At very low doses, we have a product called just blue at transcriptions, which is very low doses of methylene blue. And we have these trophy things that are these dissolvable lozenges you can just swallow them. So when you take a quarter or a half or full and you can get a little bit of a mitochondrial boost that way, and just getting a little more energy, a little more focus and and maybe a little bit less anxiety, and sleep a little bit better in the evening, when you have more mitochondrial support. So I like that. There's also, you know, things that work on the GABA side too. You have to be a little bit careful with this, like we talked about. But you know, your CBDs of the world, l-theanine and others. We have some products at transcriptions, like Tro calm during the day and Tro Zzz at night, which can be really, really really helpful. So those are some things that I gravitate towards. The other thing that I really try to put in people's daytime regiment is some sort of space. Doesn't have to be a lot of space. It can be even couple minutes here and there, but space to like, create that space from your thoughts. That I talked about meditation is a great one. I like sauna a lot, too, as a way to kind of get out of your head a little bit. I mean, exercise can be good as long as you're not too sympathetically dominant. Just taking breaks from your screen, going out for walks in nature, that's not going to cost you much. And again, there's a potpourri, because it depends on the person, but I find a lot of times I just start with supplementation, to be honest, because, like, it's just harder for people to start making too many big changes, but if you can do a little bit of supplementation, feel a little bit better, then it'll usually from there, it's kind of a cornerstone of your building. It really starts kind of creating from there your capacity to do other things you didn't think you had the capacity to do.

Stephanie Mara 46:13

Well, thanks for sharing all that. Like I can really feel your passion for your work and just like really wanting to support individuals and feeling more energy and vibrancy in their body and in their life. And I'm curious how individuals can keep in touch with you and the work that you're doing.

Dr. Scott Sherr 46:27

Well, thank you for having me, Stephanie, I do care. I mean, I've talked about, I mean, I'm a physician, and like, it sounds silly, but like, in the end, if you're doing something that's not really helping people in my world, and why, you know, on some level, but I get that everybody's going to do their best for what they need to do. And that's kind of my frame. And my personal website's likely the easiest place to find me. It's Dr Scott Sherr, my name, D R, S, C, O, T, T, S, H, E, R, R.com, that's where I have my consulting, you can learn about my clinical practice also has links to my company's one called trascriptions, which is a company that makes some products that can potentially be helpful now and then long term, hopefully less needed as you're optimizing your health and doing the harder work of optimizing. We have things like just blue, which is great for a methylene blue side. And we have something called Tro Calm and Tro Zzz for the calm and the sleep side of things. We also have a company called Health Optimization Medicine and Practice, which is a non profit that trains practitioners on optimized health, and that's at home.hope.org. So if you're a practitioner, go check it out. We have lots of cool training, which I think is gonna be really vital. I think as things are moving towards cellular and foundational kinds of principles and not just focusing on disease care, and then you can find us in the socials with those names as well.

Stephanie Mara 47:30

Awesome. I will put all those links in the show notes. And I agree with you. I think that more and more practitioners are realizing that they need a very integrative approach to support someone on multiple different levels. And just thank you so much again for being here and sharing your wisdom.

Dr. Scott Sherr 47:43

Well, thank you for the work that you do as well in the coaches and people in the somatic because I refer a lot to that world all the time, because it's such a huge piece of healing, and I know I can only get so far with the work that I do personally that I have expertise in. So thank you and those that are listening, that are involved in your work, for all the amazing stuff that you're doing too.

Stephanie Mara 48:01

Awesome. Well, thank you for being a proponent of somatics. For everyone who is listening, please email me your insights at support@stephaniemara.com and I hope you all have a satiating and safety producing rest of the day. Bye!

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