What If Calm Is Your Strongest Longevity Tool with Dr. Scott Sherr - Episode 345

Welcome And Wellness Lens Sandy Kruse 0:02 Hi everyone, it's me, Sandy Kruse. Welcome to Sandy K Nutrition Health and Lifestyle Queen. For many years now, I've been a trusted voice for people in midlife and beyond who want a deeper, more honest conversation about wellness. One that includes the physical, the emotional, the mental, and the esoteric.

Most episodes are solo now because I want to bring you thoughtful research, lived experience, and grounded insight without bias. And when I do bring on a guest, it's because their work genuinely adds something meaningful to the conversation. Here we explore the full spectrum of what it means to be well, how the body functions, how the mind heals, how the spirit expands, and how all of these layers shape life lived with clarity and joy. Thanks for being here.

And if this show resonates with you, please follow, rate, review, and share it. It truly helps the message reach more people. Guest Intro And Midlife Focus Sandy Kruse 1:31 Hi everyone, welcome to Sandy K Nutrition Health and Lifestyle Queen. Today with me, I have a special guest, and it's been a while since I've interviewed someone.

I took some time off over the holidays and I decided to just focus a little bit on some me time. But today I'm very happy to welcome Dr. Scott Scher. Did I pronounce it correctly?

SPEAKER_00 1:55 Yeah, you got it. Nice. I did. Sandy Kruse 1:56 Okay, good.

Dr. Scott is a board-certified internal medicine physician and one of the leading global experts in integrative hyperbaric oxygen therapy and health optimization medicine. Dr. Schur completed his internal medicine residency at the University of Maryland Medical Center and is a long-standing member of the Undersea and Hyperbaric Medical Society.

He serves as the director of integrative hyperbaric oxygen therapy at hyperbaric medical solutions, chief medical officer at OneBase Health, and Chief Operating Officer of Troscriptions. His clinical work focuses on metabolics, inflammation, and performance. And he's widely recognized for his protocols with transcriptions and his integrative hyperbaric therapy protocols and his global telemedicine practice. That's quite the bio you've got there.

And today we are gonna talk all about the nervous system at midlife and beyond, and how can we support it? Now, this is a big topic for so many, not just women, actually. I know that you know, like I mean, Dr. Scott, I hear, you know, it's like women is like we're all the rage right now.

SPEAKER_00 3:29 Menopause, very menopause. Women are the rage. I like that. Sandy Kruse 3:32 Okay, it's all about us, right?

No pun intended. Um anyway, I think that it's important to say that some of this information may also be applicable for men as well. And I use midlife because there's definitely a shift that happens around this time frame. So it's gonna be a fun conversation.

I'm excited to have you. Welcome. SPEAKER_00 3:56 I'm happy to be here. And I 100% agree with you, Sandy, that almost everything that we talk about today will have an application in some respects for the male audience as well.

Uh, me being one of those people as well that are in that stage, right? So understanding, you know, men have hormonal changes too. They're different than women, they're more slow compared to what women often experience or mostly experience during midlife. But there's a lot of correlations that are very similar just because the way society is, which is a society that really gives you much more accolades if you're going, going, going, going all the time, and doesn't give you a whole lot of accolades if you relax and calm down and try to actually, you know, nurture yourself, like it sounds like you did over the holiday season.

So I'm impressed. And I'm also very privileged to be your first guest back in 2026. So thank you for having me. Sandy Kruse 4:47 And you can also be happy knowing that I've become, I've really narrowed down my guests because I have realized that after six years of doing this, resonance for me is really important because I noticed that when I choose something that resonates with me, there's all these other women like me going, oh my God, what a great topic, as opposed to, you know.

SPEAKER_00 5:13 I understand. Yeah. Sandy Kruse 5:14 Yeah. So this is good.

And I love that you called men slow. Sorry, just have to pick that out there. SPEAKER_00 5:19 I my wife would agree with you probably. So, you know.

Sandy Kruse 5:23 I can tell my husband that one. SPEAKER_00 5:25 Women's brains are so much different than men's, right? And how they process information. And so it is a very different type of brain.

And we we are not, you know, we're very different humans. We're different, very different beings. Lots of similarities, but lots of differences. And of course, we like to generalize as everything, but there's a lot of variation too.

But in essence, we all live in the same environments now, right? We live under bad lighting, bad food, the toxic air, uh, water, you know, we have processed foods everywhere. Um, we're supposed to get our kids 17 places every day. We're supposed to do our do 17 things every day ourselves.

Um, we're supposed to be good at everything that we do. Women are like the consummate example of this, like the perfect wife, the perfect mother, the perfect employee, the perfect job owner. Like, I feel bad for for women in this capacity. Like, I'm I always my wife and I used to like laugh about these billboards in California when we lived there.

Um, it was a billboard that had a guy on there. I don't know, I don't had a father with a with a I think it was like a son or something. And it all it said is like, men just show up. That's all it said.

And and like women do everything else, right? That's like that's like the implication, right? I guess. So like the society is is uncool, like and it's not fair.

Um, but we're all living in it. So let's let's figure out ways to optimize it, right? Come on, you know. Sandy Kruse 6:39 Yeah, you know, I love that you that's a great frame for the discussion because and that's why it probably is more applicable for women, although uh, I mean, my husband runs two companies, and for him, I get it.

He's got a lot on his plate as well. So, anyway, I'm I'm excited to talk about them, but I can't start the conversation without first asking you how you got into this Dr Scher’s Integrative Origin Story Sandy Kruse 7:10 field. I think that's always important. SPEAKER_00 7:12 Yes, of course.

So I grew up the son of a very crazy chiropractor who's still in practice in New York on Long Island, where I grew up. And I grew up in a very alternative framework. He grew up a hippie in the 60s and the 70s, living in communes and all these other kinds of crazy things that I learned about actually just recently, crazy enough, when I interviewed him for a podcast, which was super fun. Um, but that was about a year ago now that we're recording in early two childhood 2025.

And so I grew up with, you know, with with really a very different understanding of what health was as a chiropractor, as somebody that was, you know, really interested in things that were outside the box. And so I grew up in his office in the front, like in the front coloring and getting adjusted. Um, and eventually when I was in high school, I was at the front desk collecting money so that I had enough spending money to go in my car and hang out with my friends and then, you know, for college when I would come back home. But that was the framework that I grew up in, grew up in.

And it was always one where if you gave the body what it needed, things would heal, right? The body had this amazing body and mind I'm talking about here, right? Not the body's not separate from the mind, everybody. It's all connected.

Um, that if you gave the body and the mind what it required, that the that there was an amazing natural capacity for it to heal. Now, over the years, I found that actually interestingly enough, my father was getting more and more understanding that there was a role for other things, other than just the natural and the and the things outside of the conventional system. Sometimes the conventional system was absolutely needed. You needed to go to the hospital for certain things, you needed antibiotics for certain things.

You would die if you didn't get certain types of interventions, right? And so there's, and that's why I really decided that medical school was where I wanted to go, which is I kind of felt like I wanted to learn that so that I could find a way to bridge this huge chasm at the time. There was no such thing as functional medicine. Integrative medicine didn't really exist, maybe in like a nascent stages.

So I wanted to be like this doctor that could do it all, right? And and that's what kind of what brought me to like an integrative place in my own clinical practice. And I did my internal medicine residency, which was the fastest way to get through medical school. So I did four years of medical school, then three years of residency in in Baltimore.

And then from there, I developed an integrative practice around a very specific type of technology, actually called hyperbaric oxygen therapy, which you mentioned in my bio. And that was my first foray into understanding how I could bridge these worlds. And then over about a decade, I created an integrative practice around that, and then created a foundation uh using a framework called health optimization medicine, which you also mentioned. And then from there, I have this sort of conductor of all things health optimization, is what I do in clinical practice with the foundation called health optimization medicine.

And then I use hyperbaric therapy, consult with people all over the world using that particular technology. Um, but the base is always the same, which is, you know, how do we optimize somebody's foundational health? That's the most important. From there, everything else gets easier, and everything is sort of, you know, the icing on the cake, as it were.

And so that's that's kind of the framework that I work in now via telemedicine here and just outside of Boulder, Colorado. Sandy Kruse 10:18 Okay. Well, uh, I can't wait to get into some of the details on your practice because I want to understand hyperbaric oxygen therapy. And anyway, but I I I think it's really important that we explain the nervous system.

I mean, most people really understand it, you know, the fight and flight, but maybe you can get into a little bit more detail because I mean, you know, they uh the way that social media plays this out often is that stress is the devil, and we can't have any stress, and cortisol is horrible. And we know that that's not the case. So maybe get into a little bit about that. SPEAKER_00 11:03 Sure.

Autonomic Nervous System 101 SPEAKER_00 11:04 So our nervous system has basically two branches. One is called the sympathetic nervous system, and one's called the parasympathetic nervous system. The the total name for it, like the the the name that encompasses them both, is called the autonomic nervous system. Okay.

And so the sympathetic nervous system is what you were just describing, which is our fight or flight nervous system. It's the one that is activated when we're under stress. Exercise is included here. If you're exercising, you mobilize your sympathetic nervous system.

You mobilize your sympathetic nervous system when something stressful happens. But the challenge with modern society is that stressful things are happening a lot, right? In general, we were supposed to have acute stress that would activate our nervous system. And then we would very quickly downregulate or go down into what's called our parasympathetic nervous system.

Our parasympathetic nervous system is our rest, digest, detoxify, and heal nervous system. So this is the one that where we do all the sort of day-to-day operations of your body's and your mind's work. But the challenge is that in modern society, we don't have acute stress that just goes away. We have stresses that just compound each other.

And that stress is both psychological and it's physical. It's everything from the stress at work, the stress at home, the stress with a partner, um, the stress with a job, with work, and then also, you know, stress that's happening, you know, in internally as well, with toxin exposure, with pollution in the environment, with our water, with, you know, with everything else, with our everything else that's causing stress inside of our system, right? And so back thousands of years ago, we would have had very little of that kind of stress, right? We would have had some of these psychological stress of trying to protect ourselves and not die from being uh preyed upon by another animal, for example.

But that was typically acute stress that would happen and then it would go away, right? And so modern society also rewards people that work really hard all the time, they don't sleep, they don't, you know, eat or whatever, and they are made, they make themselves millionaires, right? And they and so we have a modern society that on top of the stress of everything else, the biological and psychological, that's sort of overarching everything, right? And so we there is good types of stress for sure, but any good type of stress should be transient.

It should happen and then go away. Okay. If it is a stress that's ongoing, then it goes from an acute stress into chronic stress. And that's when some of those hormones, like the cortisols of the world, the neurotransmitters like norepinephrine and epinephrine, when they're around for a long period of time, they cause a significant dysregulation to your hormones, to your immune system, and at its base, your mitochondria, which are the parts of your cell that help you make energy.

So stress is not necessarily a bad thing, but chronic stress absolutely is. And understanding if you're somebody that's in that sympathetic mode more of the time will give you an understanding of whether you are under chronic stress, causing some of this dysregulation that may be affecting you in very many ways. Sandy Kruse 14:26 Yeah, I I mean this is going back so long ago. I remember doing the Dutch test.

And you've probably heard of the Dutch test, right? SPEAKER_00 14:37 Of course, yes. Sandy Kruse 14:37 Yeah. And this is this is way back.

I mean, nobody had even heard of it, but I started seeing naturopath doctors long ago because I had thyroid cancer. I had a child that had cancer. And so uh how does somebody and you know, I I know my answer to this question, but uh people who aren't listening might not know what is too much? Like at what point are we how do we know?

And at what point are we doing damage to our mitochondria? Like that's kind of like the last step where it's really intense, right? SPEAKER_00 15:15 Yeah, I was thinking about this a lot just recently today, actually. Because it is very variable from person to person.

But I think the big category that I would kind of put this in for people would be recovery. How well do you recover from a bad night's asleep? How well do you recover from exercise? How well do you recover from a stressful day?

Does it take you a couple hours? Does it take you a couple days to feel like you're back to yourself, in quotes, right? So I think the big piece here is recovery. Like, because as we get older and as we get more stress in general, our recovery gets more challenged.

And if your recovery is more challenged, this typically means that you are having stress on the system at baseline that's not allowing you to have the reserve to have more capacity when additional stress comes on top of that. So think about it this like the way I think I talk about this with people with exercise, right? If you go into a workout where you're already hyper-stimulated and like really hyped up, your capacity on top of that stress that you're already under is not going to be that high of a change. Like that delta, the above, above which you are, is not gonna be high.

But if you come in relaxed with your nervous system calm down, and then you exercise and really, you know, do some really strenuous work, your delta, your change, your reserve is much higher. Okay. And so then when you're finished with your exercise, where do you go? Do you wear you go slightly down a little bit to where you were already sympathetically activated?

Or do you go all the way back down to your parasympathetic where you actually can relax? And that's when you do most of your actual recovery, right? That's when you actually build muscle too. So if you want to build muscle, you have to be in that parasympathetic mode.

So if you're having a hard time with recovery, that's a big indicator that your system is under more chronic stress. Recovery Clues And HRV SPEAKER_00 17:14 And the other piece that I think is super important is how your brain is working on a regular basis. Do you feel like you are pretty steady throughout the day, or do you feel like you're having major ups and downs where you're good for a little while, but then you need a lot more caffeine to keep you up there? If you're starting to take things to maintain your cognitive capacity on a regular basis, it often means, and I know this personally for myself, that I need you're not taking enough breaks during the day, and that you're too high on the stress side, and that your mind, your brain is suffering because well, where do we have our most mitochondria per cell?

Do you know this, Sandy? It's a trick question. It's not your brain. Sandy Kruse 17:55 Hold on, hold on.

SPEAKER_00 17:56 Yeah. Sandy Kruse 17:57 Is it the heart? SPEAKER_00 17:59 No, it's your ovaries if you're female, actually. Really?

Yes, your eggs have the most mitochondria per cell. Sperm are not that far behind because they have a long way to travel, but they're the number one and number two. Sandy Kruse 18:14 Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. But but at menopause, what happens then?

SPEAKER_00 18:20 So, what is the next highest number of mitochondria per cell is your brain. So your brain then becomes your primary, the major site, the most mitochondria per cell. Now, for men, it's sperm first and then the brain. Okay.

And so as, you know, as you go through menopause and your egg and your your ovaries are no longer making, you know, and they're no longer making eggs, you're not gonna have as much mitochondria per cell in your eggs, obviously, there's none there, right? There's not that many left, right? But but in general, why the one of the reasons why fertility rates are dropping dramatically, even in younger women, is because of mitochondrial dysfunction, right? And your brain is just behind the reproductive organs.

So brain fog, concentration problems, mental health issues, depression, bipolar schizophrenia, these all have a significant mitochondrial component to them. And the mitochondria are the part of the cell that make energy, right? So it's the energy that we make, it's called ATP. And we make about 150 pounds of this every single day.

The kilos, I don't know, maybe 60 kilos or something like that. Um, and I'm not that good at the metric system. I should be better. Sandy Kruse 19:29 It's okay.

We're I'm I'm mostly in the US anyway, so don't worry about it. SPEAKER_00 19:34 But that's a lot of energy that you're that you're required to make. And most of us, the crazy statistic is that 94% of US adults, and I'm sure it's similar in Canada, cannot meet their energy demands on a regular basis because their mitochondria aren't functioning at optimal capacity. This is something what we call metabolic health, which I'm sure you're very familiar with.

Metabolic health is a kind of a strange term for people, but what this really means is that you have the capacity to take energy, to make energy effectively. And then after you make energy, are you able to process the energy effectively so that you don't have a lot of waste that builds up? We're like a gasoline-powered car in our cells. We make energy, but we also make waste products of energy metabolism.

We make the ATP, we make carbon dioxide, we make water, we make something called reactive oxygen species, ROS. And these are okay, they're they're they're important, but if you have too many, the body uses antioxidants to neutralize those. If you don't have enough antioxidants around, you start getting more stress on the system and stuff, and the system starts breaking down. So this is why mitochondrial function and understanding how our cells are working is so, so important.

And the other corresponding to this, to bring it all back, is that stress is the major factor causing mitochondrial dysfunction. Stress is this stress causing from this sympathetic activation. So that's why it's so important to understand that these things are very much related. Mitochondria Menopause And Brain Fog Sandy Kruse 21:01 But isn't uh age alone a factor in mitochondrial dysfunction as well?

Like just as we get older, doesn't that just naturally happen as well? SPEAKER_00 21:12 So it does happen. It doesn't have to happen, though, but it does happen in the sense that it's going to happen to everybody at some rate. Let's call it that, right?

The rate of mitochondrial dysfunction, because enzymatic changes, hormone changes, and things like that are all going to happen no matter what you do, even if you fully optimize your system. So you're correct that as we do get older, mitochondrial dysfunction does continue to occur. But you can mitigate that. You can decrease the rate of mitochondrial stress.

And there's times in our life where we're gonna have significant amounts of more additional mitochondrial stress when there's a stressful thing that's happening in our life, or there's significant hormonal shifts, for example, like during menopause, it is a huge mitochondrial stress, right? Because the huge Huge shift in estrogen, huge shift in progesterone, huge shift in the gut microbiome as well. All these things are happening all the same time. And it's like very significant as a stress on the mitochondria itself.

And so, but knowing this and understanding what's happening gives you the capacity to think about what things you can do to optimize on the cellular level and on the sort of more macro levels as well, as far as understanding that you're in this stress system and understanding now it's time to try to start down regulating and coming down to a place where I can recover better, that I feel better on a regular basis, and I'm not feeling so up and down, for example, from a psychological, emotional perspective, which can happen to everybody, men and women together included. Sandy Kruse 22:47 So the way that I kind of see all of this at midlife is like your tolerance, your resiliency, a lot of that kind of tends to go down. And I feel like a lot of the research that I've done, it's like that you're in that middle ground where things are shifting and changing. And then you kind of get to the other side.

And if you've taken care of yourself, taken care of your nervous system, done all the things that you can possibly do during this. I kind of call it a little bit of a volatile period of time for women because it can be like it can be for a long time. Let's face facts. Perimenopause can last for a very long time.

And so if you do that, then you can kind of get to the other side. But it's that really, I don't know, five-year period where things are just shifting and changing. Would you agree that it's a good idea to really take care of the nervous system and be more proactive so that later on it'll be in better shape? Does that make sense to you?

SPEAKER_00 24:01 Of course. I wish that's how humans worked, but in general, we don't, right? We tend to we tend to be more reactive rather than responsive. But I think that trend is changing, though, Sandy, since you and I have gotten involved in this world.

I think you do see more people that are being proactive. Uh, I think the the biggest growth in health interest this year has been in longevity, oh, in 2025. And I think that's a good sign that people are interested in not only what's happening today or tomorrow, but what's happening in 20 or 30 or 40 years from now and how they're going to be healthy then. So I think that that conversation is starting to happen.

But anything that we can do to start working on our nervous system before things go haywire is absolutely going to be helpful because then you have more tools, you have more technology or tricks or whatever it might be that you know the things that are going to help you down regulate your nervous system. So if you figure out that, you know what, this particular breath work pattern is just gold for me. I know that I can do this anytime I get stressed, like that is a superpower, right? You know that whatever it is that you have to do, like if there's certain types of exercise that you feel like are best, like that when you're having a certain type of stress versus not doing others when you're feeling stress.

Like that's also very helpful too. So it's always best, just like anything else, it's always better to practice before there's an emergency rather than you know having the emergency, right? That's why you have the algorithms in hospitals. We need to have our own algorithms to understand our biology better too.

And that doesn't mean it it's going to stay the same. It's going to change, and that's just the nature of things. But having a framework to use can be very, very helpful. And so I that's what I always try to teach with my patients is a framework as best that I can to give them a sense of the basic things that we should be doing on a regular basis to try to optimize our health overall, including our nervous system.

And then understanding that there's going to be stress and that's okay. Everybody's going to be under those kinds of things. But and then having strategies to be able to address that kind of stress when it does happen. Sandy Kruse 26:05 Yeah.

Exercise Without Burning Out Sandy Kruse 26:06 I, you know, I would love your opinion on this. And I'm sure there's a lot of women who are listening who will want to know. So back in the day, you know, you would say, Oh, you know, I gotta go blow off some steam at the gym. I'm really upset, I'm really worked up.

I need to, you know, it was a hard day. I got to go work out. And there was a time I felt that made sense for me. And then it didn't.

And so for me, I I used to work with a personal trainer. I did all the things, the lifting heavy, all that kind of stuff. And then I stopped because I found it wasn't helping me. And what was helping me more was taking my dog for a walk, a nice long walk in the trails in the forest.

And and, you know, instead maybe doing some weights at home as opposed to, you know, killing it at the gym. I just, and I'm still at that place right now, Scott. Like I'm not, I'm just not there with the the mindset of killing it at the gym. SPEAKER_00 27:21 And I think that's fine, right?

I think that what it comes down to is that everybody's a little bit different here, right? Everybody has certain predominantly predominant factors. Some people have more of that drive to go and go work hard at the gym, and and that's okay too. But I think what we're always trying to do here, at least the way I think about this, is that we have to kind of dance with our biology.

We have to dance with the intention and the trust in it, but also know that sometimes we have to stress it a little bit to see what those edges look like and see where there might be some challenges that we need to address, right? Um, so and for example, like if if your body's telling you, just you know, as an example, I shouldn't work out hard, why? You know, why is it why is it saying that? Right.

In the sense that is it, is it because that's just not how you want to operate because you were already under a lot of stress and that was making you more stressed, then absolutely, right? But if you're coming from like a place where maybe later, maybe and maybe years later in some cases, right? You know what? I'm go, I'm I'm ready to go back and lift some heavy stuff again.

And I want to see how I feel. Like, then it's that sympathetic reserve piece of it, Sandy, that I was mentioning. And what I mean by that, like late, easy way to say it is like, how much capacity do you have to lift heavy in this case, but then be able to get your nervous system back down quickly? Because that's what we're supposed to do.

We're supposed to dynamically oscillate, dynamically shift from that sympathetic to the parasympathetic. And a good indicator of this for people, if a lot of people have trackers these days and wearables and things like that, is something called HRV, your heart rate variability. And so I'm I I think we've, you know, I think wearables and trackers can be great. I think they can also be, you know, cause anxiety in their own right and for people.

So I totally acknowledge that. But I think HRV is an interesting one, right? Because it's it's measuring the B2B variability of your heart rate. It's giving you a sense of your your capacity to do what I just described, to be flexible, you know, go back and forth.

So if your HRV is not you know not optimal or not very good, and you go to the gym and you feel like crap afterwards, it's probably why, right? And so um you don't necessarily need a tracker to know that, but helping with some data to support, oh, this is how I feel, like then that can be very, very instructive. And so that's typically how I like to think about this. And and so I I think what I guess what I do with my patients over time is I try to regulate their nervous system with, of course, I'm doing facilitating, they're doing the work.

I'm facilitating them, regulating their nervous system, optimizing foundational biology, looking at laboratory markers typically as well. And then from there, once things are kind of at a stable base, then that's when we start stressing the system a little bit, right? Then we say, okay, now can you do a little bit of this? Now can you do a little bit of that, right?

And and then, but not having to, you know, go crazy with it, but just like, okay, let's let's get you started with a little bit of exercise that's doing a little bit of lifting, right? Or let's see how you feel when you go into a sauna for for at 180 degrees for five or 10 minutes, right? And so that's how you can start navigating and testing the waters. That that's how I see it.

Sandy Kruse 30:28 I love what you just said because you're actually treating people like humans, not robots. And that really resonates with me because you asked the question, you know, why why can't you kill it at the gym anymore? And I do believe that we go through different uh seasons in our life, and sometimes we have really tough seasons. And, you know, as a woman who's 56, I've got adult children that still live at home.

I've got uh, you know, a dad that's 88, gonna be 89 in April, mom that's 79. Like I'm, you know, they're still in their own home, but it doesn't mean that I'm not thinking about them or caring for them. SPEAKER_00 31:15 Sure. Sandy Kruse 31:15 I'm their nutritionist, actually.

So, but they don't even need like the only thing they need help with is supplements, but they are old school farmers from Croatia. So they eat very clean, they believe in cooking at home, they believe in exercising, like they're they're doing great, but it doesn't mean that I don't have a lot of stress. SPEAKER_00 31:35 Yeah, and this happens, yeah. I'm sorry to interrupt, I just think this is so important because I know women are typically the caregivers, right?

They are typically the ones that are juggling a lot of things, and that in itself, like you don't want to go from all that and then go work out hard at the gym. You just if you don't have it's just not possible to be able to do that. You are going to reach some sort of threshold, and then you're going to have symptoms related to it. And I think that happens a lot in midlife, especially with with hormone changes too, where you know you have this sort of significant shift you were able to tolerate and be able to maintain, and then you can't as easily because you don't have that same capacity anymore.

And I see I just you see it a lot more in women because they are the ones that are like trying to juggle all of these kinds of things and then also take care of themselves, right? Take care of their bodies and their minds. And it becomes super difficult. And I think about this biochemically.

I I see what's happening with, you know, with, for example, progesterone, which is like an amazing hormone for many reasons, but it's like your main driver of the GABA system in your brain. GABA is your primary inhibitory neurotransmitter in the brain. It's one that calms down, it's like the breaks of your brain. And it and what happens when you become progesterone deficient all of a sudden or very, you know, very rapidly over a certain period of time, is that that GABA system goes offline as much.

And then you have more anxiety, you have more depression, you have more insomnia, you have more mental health issues. And and uh there's there's a biochemical reason for it. You were able to tolerate all of that stress until you couldn't now, because you don't have enough progesterone around, for example. And then you go back on progesterone, for example, if you go on HRT for and then you do start feeling better, right?

You do have more capacity. That's why, you know, I'm a big fan of HRT and the appropriate settings. And I think that it's vastly underutilized. And and I I do see that it's but it's a harbinger of things too.

That, you know, if it if you do have significant, I mean, what I mean by that is that there is a necessity to try to find ways to take care of yourself, right? And then, but understanding that like going from one stressful thing to another is eventually going to be not optimal, you know, and then having to take a step back and look at things biochemically can be very helpful for for for women that I found like, look, this is not, it's not you. You this is the this is your your system that's dysregulated because of what's happening. We can work on that, we can optimize that.

But that takes, it's not just about giving you progesterone, it's about looking at the stress and the other aspects of things that are also compounding what's ongoing. Sandy Kruse 34:06 You know, I this I I usually wake up early and and for me it depends on what's going on in my week. And today I woke up at 5 a.m. and I thought, okay, well, recording at four o'clock in the afternoon.

Typically, I'm making dinner. I'm not, you know, like I'm not my brain kind of turns off for work mode. And so what did I do this afternoon, knowing I was gonna record today at this time? Is I did it was a 20-minute meditation.

And you know, I people listen, meditation is a word that everyone's like, oh geez, like meditation, whatever you breath work, meditation, blah, blah, blah. But you gotta find something that resonates with you because I'm sure you can find something. Because even my husband, who's not really into any of this stuff, you know, I'm teaching him about breath work. Even when my kids were little, they're now 20 and 24.

I was teaching them back when they were little, like eight years old. They played um some really serious competitive sports. And I taught them four, seven, eight. Remember Dr.

Andrew Wheel. Like, this is when they were little. I'm like, we all need to pull out what tools work for us, and we need to learn what those tools are. Because, like you said at the very start of this podcast, if we, you know, we live in a very different world, we're not growing food in our backyard for the most part, with you know, um, you know, living a simpler life is what I'm trying to say, without lights, without phones, without TVs.

SPEAKER_00 35:53 Right, right. Yeah. Meditation Plus Targeted Support SPEAKER_00 35:54 Yeah. What I would, I love that framing.

And funny enough, right before this podcast, I did a 20-minute meditation before we got started. And what I think is challenging though for everybody, women and men included, is that if you've been in this sympathetic dominance for a long period of time, we've talked about it. You like some of the things you can look out for as to what might be signs that you're there. It's very difficult to know where there is the parasympathetic side.

And so going through and doing meditation, doing breath work, what I found can be helpful here is using exogenous compounds, actually, using things that actually let leverage the GABA system in a way that makes it very, very likely that you're going to get a downregulation of your nervous system back into parasympathetic. And then from there, there you are. And then that's where you can go when you do your breath work, do your meditation, do your yoga. So you know that that's where you're you have like a goal, as it were.

I don't like to make it too like goal-oriented because that's how type A people like to do it and make it an ego trip on some level. I'm I'm guilty of this like anybody else. Um, but uh I always like to give people, if I can, the experience, because I think, you know, like you said, like go meditate, like people like, you know, go fly a kite, right? Yeah, and go, you know, or go do breath work, go fly a kite.

Like I'm too, I'm too busy for that, right? And it's just like the classic, like, you know, like I don't have time to meditate for 10 minutes today. Well, then you should meditate for 20, right? Like that's the that's like the the classic that you hear.

So what I what I like to do clinically is like I like to optimize the GABA system pretty quickly, just giving some supplementation that can help the GABA system work better. Now, I don't give GABA directly, you know, people take GABA as a supplement. GABA is too big to get into the brain typically. Why GABA Supplements Can Backfire Sandy Kruse 37:35 So I need to pause there because I am like, I have to admit, I am uh like a supplement junkie and I'm trained in nutraceuticals.

So to me, just like what you said, sometimes you need to top it up. So, for example, like we had a really weird Christmas. My parents both got that horrible flu. And it, you know, with elderly people, when they get uh a really bad flu, it can be scary.

And I was I was nervous and stressed and worried about them. And you know, like I could feel myself that despite the fact I still believe you need to do those walks in nature, I still believe you need to do those meditations. But then sometimes if you're caring, like I I literally walked into the eye of the storm, like it was so funny, Scott. And everyone in my family's like, oh my God, like you're getting it.

There's no question, right? I was at, you know, the hospital, I was at their house, like I was everywhere. And I'm like, I made it. That must be that, you know, I'm doing something right.

SPEAKER_00 38:47 So yeah, that's great. Sandy Kruse 38:49 But to your point, I had to add, I had to pull out all the stops. Yeah. Because not only was I stressed, but I was in the eye of the storm of the sicknesses.

And I I'd love for you to talk about that because GABA is one of those nutraceuticals that I never really recommend to clients. So let's get into some of that. This is this is stuff I love. SPEAKER_00 39:15 Yeah, you intuitively were actually very correct with GABA.

So GABA is our, as I mentioned, it's a neurotransmitter, it's our primary inhibitory neurotransmitter. So it calms down the firing of the brain. It's like the brakes of your brain. And it's always in balance with another neurotransmitter called glutamate.

Glutamate is our primary excitatory neurotransmitter, and it's actually converted in the brain cofactors vitamin B6 and magnesium for those following at home, to actual the GABA itself. And so there should be a balance between your GABA and your glutamate at all times. But many of us are living in this GABA deficiency mode because of stress, because of, um, because of all the sort of toxins in our environment, everything we talked about before, are causing, especially the sympathetic activation, causing a GABA deficiency. Like a quick side note is that we used to think that people with depression had low serotonin levels, but we now know that that's not the case at all.

People with depression that don't have any lower levels of serotonin, so SSRIs were developed as a way to increase serotonin for serotonin deficiency, which doesn't exist in depression. Now, can they help? Yes, they can help, but they're not the greatest solution, as most of you know. When it comes down to the better data, actually, is that depression is more correlated to GABA deficiency than it is serotonin deficiency.

And so if you enhance somebody's GABA GABA system, you're helping, you're gonna help their anxiety, you're gonna help their depression, you're gonna help their insomnia, all these kinds of things. But the problem with GABA, taking GABA as a supplement, is that GABA is too big to get into the brain. It can't get across the blood brain barrier very easily. And as a result of that, if you take GABA and it works for you, this could be that your blood brain barrier is actually leaking or allowing things in that it shouldn't get in.

And so that's very correlated oftentimes to a leaky gut. So if you have a leaky gut and you're allowing things into the gut, the gut gets causes an inflammatory reaction in the whole body when you have a leaky gut and you have a leaky brain. So a blood brain barrier. This also happens with severe infections, severe stress, severe trauma.

Um, these also can cause a leaky gut and a leaky brain. So if you take GABA supplements and they work for you, it's almost diagnostic that you have some element of a blood brain barrier not doing what it's supposed to do. Um, and I've had patients over the years where uh they're taking GABA supplements and they're feeling quite relaxed from them. And then they we heal up their gut, which was leaking, and their GABA supplements stop working.

So there are other ways to modulate the GABA system that could be very effective. And I use these all the time in clinical practice. I have various supplements that I use that can be helpful. Um, because again, I again I don't like to use these long term, and I, but I will use them as needed long term, just like you were describing, Sandy, with like a cute stressful event, uh, people that get stressed when they go to the, you know, like go to the doctor's office or or they go on an airplane, or you know, they have a stressful event at work or at home.

And then they can, then sometimes you need something to help you, you know, quickly that because you don't have the capacity to go and do four, seven, eight breath work or a 25-minute meditation, right? Um, so you need to have tools. And and I use the supplements as a tool, and some of them I can go into if you'd like, or even technologies like like vagal nerve stimulators, for example, or something that, you know, like uh like a device that gives you vibration helps calm you down. Like there's various ways to do it, but and everybody's gonna be a little bit different.

But the key, the key here is to create the experience for people to have a nervous system that calms down in a safe space too, because when the nervous system comes down, sometimes it can cause reactive anxiety, meaning that because you're not used to being calm, you're not used to being relaxed, and you're used to like operating at a certain intensity, and then you bring down that intensity, you can get this reactive anxiety, like, oh my God, I can't function at this level, right? And so it's really important to do that in a safe space so that you know you're gonna be okay. Because typically, I mean, I typically it doesn't take long to kind of get used to being there, maybe even 15 or 20 minutes. But it's just like this when they when it's actually coming down, that's the part you could be thinking, like, you know, you can get anxiety from that too.

So you have to be aware of that. But the the key here, I guess the big picture is that sometimes we do need things to give us that experience. And that hopefully over the long term, we don't need them as much because we can find other tools that are more uh, what's the word, that are sort of better for us, or not even better for us, but that are just more optimal from a lifestyle perspective, right? So your meditation, your yoga, your breath work, and things like that.

Sandy Kruse 43:38 Yeah, it's it's it's kind of funny because even last night I can actually feel it when my progesterone really kind of kicks in. Because I I take micronized uh bioidentical progesterone. And then I'll even say to my husband, I'm like, I'm going to bed. I'm just feeling so good right now.

I'm gonna ride the wave and uh, you know. It's just such a great feeling when and for me progesterone is my you know it's my but you know what though I will say not only progesterone but estrogen as well like it's it's all about that that's yeah and so I actually love those and then you know what else and we yeah we can talk a little bit about supplements because for anybody who's watch watching or listening I encourage you to for sure just don't take this as advice because you have to speak with a practitioner that knows you um for for anything. I say that for anything, you know, because we don't know you. So we're just gonna throw some things out there.

SPEAKER_00 44:47 This is not individual medical device. Yeah, yeah. Sandy Kruse 44:50 Um, but I personally I like um phosphatidyl serine in the evening. Um, I actually I did a TV spot for the first time I was trained for television.

Anyway, that's another story. Um, in December. And I'm like, okay, I'm so used to being on camera, but not for TV nationwide. Like, I need I need to do something here.

And I actually took uh phosphatidyl serine because I do know that it does have an effect, just kind of a calming effect. And um, what about L-theanine and you know, green tea? And so, like, there's so many nutraceuticals, or even like I said, like green tea is very high in L-theanine, so you could just drink green tea, right? Calm Focus With Smart Stacks SPEAKER_00 45:39 So yeah, I think it depends on what you're looking for, right?

Like for something like a TV spot, what you're what you're really looking for is this calm focus, right? So you have both the elevation of a caffeine or caffeine like you know, the the that's in green tea, and then you also have the L-thene in there, which is working on the GABA system, interestingly enough. So, like during the day, you don't want to feel washed out, you want to feel relaxed so that you're you're you sort of so the thing is the the example that I always give, which I it's kind of an extreme one, but it's like it's the dream you have where you're going up in front of an audience to give a speech and you forget all your lines or you forget what you're supposed to say. And this is because when your brain is so sympathetically dominant, the blood flow to the front of your brain goes down.

And so that executive function, the capacity for you to think of your next thought, get things from long-term memory into short-term memory, keep things in your memory, goes kaput. And so if you can but just downregulate the nervous system just a little bit, then your brain starts coming back online. So that's why, you know, it's interesting, like when somebody comes and tells me they have anxiety, um, or sorry, they have a hard time focusing, for example, right? And then what they want stimulants oftentimes.

They want something that's going to stimulate them. But oftentimes it's not the stimulation that they need, it's actually calming down the nervous system that they need so that their brain is not at hyper-stimulatory mode and actually brings it down. But that's uh it's a bit of a trick because you know, I give a lot of calming agents to my patients that want to focus better. And it's an interesting dance here because you want to give them something that's gonna calm down their nervous system, but not make them feel tired, right?

Right. And so, so uh so you talked about there with um with the comp with with green tea, for example, is a great example because it's got you know it's got the caffeine in it, it's also got the L Then in it. I also use um I use a combination of of ingredients typically, but I use one called nicotinyl GABA, vitamin B3 GABA, because it's a it's a B3 attached to a GABA, and that can get across into the brain because B3 has a transporter, it hydrolyses, it hydrolyzes into B3 and into GABA, and then you have some B3, which is niacin, which is which turns into NAD. So that gives you a little bit of energy while you're also getting the GABA stimulation.

So that's kind of nice because then you don't feel tired, but you are more relaxed, right? And so you can use uh you can use things like caffeine and alphenine together. You can use CBD as a as a calming agent as well with with caffeine. Use you can use nicotine and CBD specifically as well.

That's another interesting combination because nicotine, obviously a stimulant. Um, it's vilified, but low doses that are not smoked or vaped are actually fantastic at cognitive enhancing. And the cool thing about nicotine, Sandy, interestingly enough, is that it's both enhancing to the brain and calming to the body because it enhances the vagus nerve. So it gives you parasympathetic tone outside of the brain, but it stimulates the brain itself.

It's super interesting. So that's why low-dose nicotine, I use we have I use trochies, but also there's patches and there's gum and things like that. It's very short-acting. Um, it can be very stimulating, but if you use a little bit of CBD or something else that's kind of rounding it out, you can use a combination like that to see nice benefit without getting overstimulated.

Sandy Kruse 49:04 Sorry. So you you're saying nicotine is calm calming, no, calming to the body, yeah, but more exciting. Yes. For the brain.

SPEAKER_00 49:16 Yes. That's why people that smoke, like you'll see them like smoking if you were. Oh goodness gracious. Yeah.

Sandy Kruse 49:24 I know, right? SPEAKER_00 49:25 Yeah. Sandy Kruse 49:25 Um, well, I used to be. It's like almost 20 years since I quit.

Like, you know, we both smoked when we got married back in the day, but I quit so long ago. Um, you know, I can't force him to quit. But you know, I I you know, you, you know, back in I don't know if you've ever smoked, but I remember, you know, you that was the break. So it calms you down, right?

SPEAKER_00 49:50 You would smoke and it would calm you down because what nick so the the the mechanism here, I won't get into too much detail, but but nicotine increases a bunch of neurotransmitters when you when you have nicotine, when you smoke it or vape it or have it as a troche or dissolve it in the mouth. Nicotine, one of those neurotransmitters is called acetylcholine. Acetylcholine is our major neurotransmitter of helping us with our memory, but it's also the major neurotransmitter that is powering what's called our vagus nerve, that is the one nerve that comes out of our brain and goes all throughout our body and is our relaxation nerve. So it calms down the capacity.

So it's our parasympathetic activation. So nicotine has this sort of uh paradoxical reflex of making you feel relaxed systemically, even if you feel more stimulated cognitively. So it's not really working on the GABA system, it's five, but it is working on this capacity to give you this stimulation and this relaxation at the same time. So I very much leverage all the neurotransmitter systems that are required to tell people feel more focused, more relaxed.

And of course, with sleep, Why Sleep Fixes Are Complex SPEAKER_00 50:56 right? Sleep is a big one. And you mentioned progesterone, and that's like the number one, you know, GABA agonist out there that, you know, that women going through midlife. But there are others as well, you know, that can be very, very helpful.

Um, I use one called agarin, which is from uh the ammonita mushroom. Um, it's uh it's a psychedelic mushroom that's poisonous if it's not dried. Um and there's another ingredient there called ibotenic acid, which is neurotoxic, but this agarin is a long-acting on the GABA receptor. So we have we have a couple products at one of my companies that uses agarin in a sleep product that helps with you know optimizing sleep and it binds to directly where GABA would bind on the receptor.

So it's super cool. And again, these are just some options, but the goal is to hopefully have people beyond as minimum as they they need over the long term, but these can be really great levers to pull when you need them. Sandy Kruse 51:44 Yeah, and it's kind of like what we were talking about. So, you know, for me, it was a pretty significant window uh of latter stages of perimenopause where I was kind of all over the map and trying different things.

And now, for now, but as you just you said this earlier, it doesn't mean that it's gonna stay like this forever, but for now, my sleep is pretty stable. Like I I you know, I I do quite well with my sleep, but I was trying a lot of different things. I was trying uh passion flower, I was trying herb, like a bunch of different herbs, and you know, I found it was kind of hit and miss, I have to say. And I even tried CBD uh for sleep, you know, and I think I don't know.

I I think that we're just you know, it's never gonna be this silver bullet that's gonna work all the time. But it just so happens I'm now over that hump of menopause for a year. And so my mix of my bioidentical hormones are great for now. But doesn't mean it's yeah, it doesn't mean it's not gonna change though, right?

SPEAKER_00 52:57 Yeah, yeah. And it's also important for people to realize that that sleep itself is is multiple neurotransmitters, hormones all working together. GABA is one of them. But there's also serotonin, there's also melatonin.

There's the adenosine system. Adenosine is a neurotransmitter in our brain. Actually, caffeine blocks the adenosine receptors to help you make you make you feel more wakeful. But adenosine gives you sleep pressure, sleep drive.

And there's also the what's called the endocannabinoid system. It's our our body's own internal homeostatic balancing system that was discovered because of the cannabis plant. But we have our own internal system that has neurotransmitters that are focused on balancing your brain and your brain chemistry too. And so these are all working together.

So just trying to use melatonin or just even just trying to use progesterone may not be enough as you're going through midlife because you're going to have deficiencies in some of these others potentially as well. And melatonin levels go down, serotonin levels down, do decline, not correlated to depression per se, but just decline as well. And so yeah, I always think about things in a much more comprehensive way rather than just one thing that's going to do it. And but understanding the foundational biology of it all, understanding what's happening from a cellular perspective can really be great so that you can sort of build your way up from there, right?

Because it's not just about treating brain fog, it's about treating the underlying capacity of your cells to make energy, right? It's not just about treating stress with passion flower. It's about understanding the underlying biology that is giving you the stress or the psychology that's providing the challenges to your body and maintaining you in this sort of spiral of sympathetic activation, fight or flight, and mitochondrial dysfunction. Right.

So I think that we need to look at it at all levels. We need to help people where they are right now and give them the experience. But then long term, it really is how can we really fix or at least help optimize that biology as best as we can? Sandy Kruse 54:54 Yeah.

I actually I just thought of another one. I tried Valerian root. That's that's another like I have my cabinet right there that I'm looking at. And you know, you can get all these tinctures and it's it's actually great because a lot of these nutraceuticals that we you know we're talking about are a do-no-harm, right?

Like I think that that's important to note. These are not of course these are not drugs because you could go to your medical physician and get. You know, this would have been a couple years ago. I was having a hard time sleeping.

And my mix, I was on a very light dose, like I wasn't on a solid dose, I wasn't in full menopause. I was taking hormones, it wasn't optimized. And and I just I just said, no, I got this, I'm gonna figure it out. But kind of to your point, there it's it's complicated because you don't know exactly what is it that's causing the lack of sleep necessarily, right?

Like like you said, you could take melatonin, it might help you, it might not, because you don't really know what is it that's causing that sleep deprivation. SPEAKER_00 56:19 Yeah, and that's why I'm so emphatic that we have to look at this on both levels. We have to try to help somebody now while they're on the path of optimizing their health and their stress. And then over the long term, we can find you know significant strategies that are more sustainable, that don't require as much supplementation, don't require as much intervention per se, rather than more sustainable behaviors and lifestyle measures that we do that can truly support our foundation, along with optimizing our vitamins, minerals, nutrients, cofactors, you know, hormones, et cetera, because that's all very important.

You know, we don't have um avatars or meat suits, whatever you want to call them, that we're supposed to live after the age of about 45 or 50 years of age, right? We weren't supposed to evolutionarily, we're supposed to die so that the younger people in the village had enough resources, right? Some of there was always supposed to be like one or two elders that lived until their 80s and 90s to be able to pass down the stories of generations and everything else. So we're we're working on borrowed time on some level, right?

And so to optimize that borrowed time, you know, which we're all you know very grateful for, I try to be grateful every day, you know, like, but we have to optimize it. It's not something that's going to happen on its own, is what it comes down to. We really do have to have an intentional way of addressing that. Now, you have some people out there that do have those longevity genes that don't have to do very much, and they're fine.

That's not very many of us out there. That's a that's a small minority. Um, I always say with my wife, like everybody lives in her family into the 90s and hundreds, and unless like she gets into an accident, you know, God forbid, like she'll be around for a long time, most likely, right? Um, but there's other of us that many and the majority are not in that situation where we really do have to think about how we were going to optimize our biology on a day-to-day basis and sustainably to get us there, you know, as healthy as possible.

Sandy Kruse 58:05 Yeah. Okay. So we we touched on a ton. So anybody who really wants to understand the nervous system, I guess you could start with even I love that you brought up, you know, look at your own clues.

How fast are you, you know, bouncing back after a tough workout, after a stressful event? Um, look at your HRV. Then perhaps work with a physician who does this kind of, you know, blood work for optimization, just to understand what's going on with your actual numbers. And then what else?

What else did we forget? SPEAKER_00 58:47 We went through a lot of things here today. I mean, we went through understanding that there are all these changes that are happening as we go through midlife. And that, you know, if we're always in that sympathetic activation, it's gonna be much harder for us to compensate as those things are happening.

Understanding there's deficiencies in the GABA ergic and neurotransmitter system, that we can balance that, understanding that the mitochondria are a big part of this as well, because if we're putting a lot of stress on our mitochondria over time, they're gonna become it's gonna be harder to make the energy that we need. And then we're gonna see deficiencies in our, in our, in our cognitive processing, in our physical capacity. Um, and it's really important to think about these things holistically and not just try to play whack-a-mole, you know, and then and just try to do one thing at a time. Um, try to find a provider that can help you, but think about these things from a base level.

What are the foundational things that you can do on a day-to-day basis to optimize your nervous system, like we talked about as well? And then using that as an algorithm when you do have more stressful times that require more, you know, more capacity, right? And I think that um the way I like to frame it for my patients is that this is not something that that's gonna happen overnight. It's gonna take time to find sustainable things that work for you.

Um, but you can find things right now that can help along that process. You know, things like looking at GABA supplementation, for example, not GABA itself, but things that enhance the GABA system, right? To get you the feeling of what it feels like to be calm, to have that parasympathetic nervous system downregulate, um, improve your mitochondrial function by doing things that get you outside, get more sunlight, you know, do some, you know, get some uh get some time away, like go for a walk in nature, like you talked about, Sandy. So I think in the end, what we're trying to convey here is that there is a recognition that's extremely important.

And then after the recognition, it's going slowly, but trying to do it in an intentional way at rebuilding and finding a sustainable way to have a healthy second, you know, half of your lifespan, right? To have as much of it to be a health span as possible. Hyperbaric Oxygen For Recovery Sandy Kruse 1:00:46 Yeah. The only thing I uh we didn't touch on, I just want to ask you really quickly, how do you use hyperbaric oxygen therapy for your patients?

What do you use that for? SPEAKER_00 1:00:58 So, hyperbaric therapy, you can think about it as a fantastic accelerator and optimizer of healing and recovery. Okay. Um, but you have to be mindful that hyperbaric therapy itself, especially when you go into the deeper pressures, can also cause stress on the system as well.

So milder pressures, the ones you get like in a soft kind of chamber, can be great because they give you a little bit of extra oxygen. They give you a time to relax in the chamber outside of your, you know, your nervous system, all the other responsibilities that you have. And it gives you a little bit of a little oxygen, a little extra energy, and it can give you like a little bit of an umph, which is really great when you really need it. Um, and I use milder pressures as people are kind of going through their shifts and optimizing their biology as we've been describing.

But for true healing and true systemic benefit, um, the deeper pressures in the chamber are more optimal. But I don't typically use those right away. I really wait until the system's a little bit more optimized because it does cause stress. It causes stress on on the it causes stress in inside the mitochondria, stress in making energy.

And so you have to be aware of that. That some of that stress is positive because it actually makes the changes happen. New mitochondria, new blood vessels, decreasing inflammation, new stem cells released. That's all good stuff.

But it's only good stuff if you have an ecosystem that's going to allow it to manifest in positive ways. And so I I used to be very much like everybody should get in the chamber now thing when I first started getting involved. But now I'm like, no, wait two or three months until the system's more optimized, then accelerate your capacity to heal, to recover, to really feel like that inflammation is really getting taken care of and really do the, you know, sort of like the deeper, like the the extra 20%, you know, like 80% of the way they're for the most part. If you have a condition specifically, maybe this doesn't apply.

But for you, but for 80% of people that are just kind of feeling the trials and tribulations with midlife, 80% of it, maybe 90% of it really, is what we've been describing outside of hyperbaric therapy. And then that extra icing on the cake for the days when you have extra stress and need extra recovery, and you know, getting off a plane and you have jet lag, like that's where hyperbaric therapy can really, really shine. And that's how I use it clinically. Um, not so much in the beginning, but more in like that that latter, you know, third or quarter of somebody's uh experience as they're moving through midlife or just moving through the health optimization journey, to be honest.

Sandy Kruse 1:03:25 Yeah, I love that you said that. And that kind of goes, I I remember many, many years ago, many years ago, what four years ago? It's not that long ago. I remember when Cold Plunge was just kind of starting, and some of the big advocates for cold plunge were like, everybody needs this.

You must go and do, and I'm like, that's bullshit. I don't buy that shit. Sorry, it's not you can't make a blanket statement that everybody needs this. You don't know what I'm going through stress-wise.

And it might be healthy for some, but it could actually maybe do more harm, depending on what that person's um, I guess what their resiliency is at. SPEAKER_00 1:04:09 Absolutely, right? That's a stressful event going into a cold plunge. It releases a whole bunch of stressful neurotransmitters.

So I'm a big, I've done videos on this on the past. Like, please do not cold plunge if you're already in this sympathetic activation. It may feel good initially, um, but it's not going to go well if you keep doing it, is what it comes down to. Sandy Kruse 1:04:25 Yeah.

And you know what, Scott? I actually, so we built a therapy room years ago, and I bought one of like the original Juve panels, remember? And we have um a far infrared sauna in there as well. And I haven't gone in my sauna in so long because I have rosacea.

I was at one point, I had some really, really major hot flashes. I'm like, this does not feel right for me right now. Like red light therapy, sure. But the the far infrared heat sauna, no guy.

I was like, nope, that's not for me right now. I don't care if it's in my basement. Yeah, bioindividuality, right? SPEAKER_00 1:05:12 Absolutely.

It's a hundred percent the case. Resources And Final Takeaways Sandy Kruse 1:05:15 Yeah. So let us know where we can find you. SPEAKER_00 1:05:19 So a couple places.

I think the easiest place is probably my website. It's just my name, dr Scott Scher.com, D R-S-E-O-T-T-S-H-E-R-R.com. And there you'll find my various consulting. So I have my telemedicine practice that's based on something called Health Optimization Medicine.

It's a nonprofit organization, also, that's training practitioners on a framework that optimizes health rather than treats disease, focusing on optimizing people between the ages of 21 and 30 years of age. So optimizing your levels of hormones, nutrients, gut, everything to between 21 and 30 years of age. And that's a framework that is available to practitioners, both licensed and non-licensed. That's what I'm trained in.

Um, I also have a consulting practice there that's involved with that specifically on hyperbaric therapy. And then it also has links to a couple of my companies that are involved in the health and education and wellness space, including Troscriptions, which is a company that makes precision dosed what are called buckle troches, these dissolvable lozenges in the mouth, uh that increase energy focus, uh, help with sleep, stress, immune system function. We use some novel compounds like methylene blue and and a couple of the ones that I mentioned on the GABA side, like agarin and nicotinal GABA and things like that. And then I have a company called OneBase Health that does a lot of work in the integrative hyperbaric space that looking to create ways to integrate technologies together, including hyperbaric therapy and better ways to track your data and outcomes and things like that.

Sandy Kruse 1:06:37 That's awesome. Dr. Scott, you better be optimizing your nervous system with all that. SPEAKER_00 1:06:43 I have to.

That's why I meditated before our pet broad podcast today. Sandy Kruse 1:06:46 Yeah. SPEAKER_00 1:06:46 But again, what with there's a quote that I like. I forget where it's from.

It's that it says, you teach best what you need to learn the most, in the sense that I talk about these things because I am as guilty as all of you on a more regular basis than I would like to admit, but I will, of, you know, burning the candle on both ends, right? And so I try to optimize as best I can. I'm gonna have days when I don't have those days, and that's okay. Um, but I try to always anchor my sleep, you know, trying to make sure that I have a good anchor and I'm sleeping well.

That's the most important way that I find that I can regulate my nervous system. Uh, my colleague Dr. Ted likes to say, your day starts when you go to bed, not when you wake up, and treat sleep like the primary first thing you do every day and not the last. And that's been a big shift for me.

So um, if you want to regulate your nervous system, sleeping is uh a big part of that. So, yeah, and I think that's that's everything, Sandy. Sandy Kruse 1:07:36 That's awesome. That's a great way to end.

Thank you so, so much. I loved our conversation. It was awesome. SPEAKER_00 1:07:43 My pleasure.

It's nice to be with you. Sandy Kruse 1:07:47 I hope you enjoyed this episode. Be sure to share it with someone you know might benefit. And always remember when you rate, review, subscribe, you help to support my content and help me to keep going and bring these conversations to you each and every week.

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