The Crazy Little Mushroom Extract You've Never Heard Of (CRUSHES Workouts, Amplifies Deep Sleep & Bulletproofs Your Immune System?) With Dr. Scott Sherr

My name is Ben Greenfield, and on this episode of the Boundless Life Podcast, the thing about the mushroom, right, as I was mentioning earlier, is that in a mushroom you have 0.03% cordycepin. So you would have to eat like a huge amount of mushroom to get anywhere near the amount of cordycepin that we're putting in these products. In fact, it's the most cordycepin in any other product out there on the market right now. If you find cordycepin out there, it's typically going to be in sort of mushroom blends, like standardized to a certain amount. But we went directly the synthesis pathway. So once Dr. Ted did the initial research, we figured out the power of this thing to work in so many different ways as we've been alluding to here. We decided to synthesize it with a lab and make it at a higher potency that's ever been made ever before. If you were going to eat the mushroom, you'd have to have like 80 grams of, or 150 grams of mushroom itself to get the amount of cordycepin that we're putting in, in these particular products.

Welcome to the Boundless Life with me, your host, Ben Greenfield. I'm a personal trainer, exercise physiologist, and nutritionist. And, I'm passionate about helping you discover unparalleled levels of health, fitness, longevity, and beyond. My friend, Dr. Scott Sherry, he's a board-certified internal medicine physician and he's been on the podcast before. We actually did this big podcast all about— this is a mouthful— gamma-aminobutyric acid, this inhibitory neurotransmitter that Scott kind of figured out how to unlock higher levels of with these special called troches that you dissolve in your mouth. He's also responsible for a lot of people walking around with the so-called Smurf mouth because he has helped to formulate some pretty potent methylene blue troches. And, he's a real expert on hyperbaric oxygen too. I mean, we covered a lot of that in our last podcast, Scott. And, for those of you who didn't— We did. We did. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I'll link to those if you go to BenGreenfieldLife.com/Sherr, S-H-E-R-R, which is Scott's last name, BenGreenfieldLife.com/Sherr. But Scott recently reached out to me and I've come across all sorts of crazy molecules and compounds and mushroom extracts and what have yous. And, he was talking to me about this ingredient called cordycepin and it was so interesting. A lot of you are familiar with Cordyceps. So interesting that I want to have him back on to just talk about that but also some of the newer innovations that he's been working on behind the scenes anyways because he's always got some cool new trick up his sleeve. Whenever I see you at a conference, Scott, you've got some new little square I'm supposed to put in my mouth to unlock superpowers of some level or other.

I work with some fantastic people as you know, Ben. And so, Dr. Ted who you've had on the podcast as well, Dr. Ted Ashikoso, And so, I'm usually patient 1, patient 0 is Boomer Anderson who's the CEO of the company. So, we're always trying different molecules and different combinations. And yeah, it was actually Dr. Ted that found this really cool compound in the cordyceps mushroom that we've been able to leverage pretty dramatically overall in a couple different of our formulas. You were talking about sleep. We spoke about sleep last time when you and I had a chat. And so, it has some relevance there. It also has relevance from an immune system perspective, anti-inflammatory perspective. And more. So, it's a fun one and we're always looking at more tools and tricks and things up our sleeve as are you. So, that's why we're such— we're definitely aligned in mission in that capacity.

Yeah. I want to talk more about the Core 7 thing, but you work with Dr. Ted Achakoso who's been on the podcast before. Some people say he certifiably has a really high IQ. Is there something to that?

Yeah. I mean, supposedly— I mean, that's not supposedly, he was tested many years ago. He has an IQ between 180 and 200. 10, which I guess after you're 16 standard deviations above the mean, you don't get an actual numeral number, you get a range. What Ted likes to say is that when he's at 220, he doesn't like anybody and can't relate to anybody. When he's 180, he can actually kind of relate to people. So that's the range and he kind of knows where he is every day depending on what his relationship to other people feels like that particular day.

Ben Greenfield: What do you mean? Does it fluctuate based on what chemicals he's consuming or does it just fluctuate naturally?

I would say probably both knowing him, but I think it's just the way the system or the way the test works that after a certain amount, you don't get an actual number supposedly. So, yeah, I mean, when you meet somebody like Dr. Ted, you expect somebody that can't really relate to other people because if you have that high of an IQ, you don't seem to know what other people are talking about most of the time. But, what he's been able to develop over many years is more of almost of a high as an EQ as well, an emotional quotient at the same time. So, a very rare person to be able to kind of go across both realms. And, he's obviously very skilled in lots of different tools, techniques, practices, ancient, new, cutting-edge, everything. And so, he's able to synthesize a lot of information from all different types of areas. And now, with leveraging of AI, it's been kind of ridiculous. So, that's been fun to watch but also to be the recipient of having to figure out how to make things actually work has been interesting for us as a company.

Ben Greenfield: Yeah, from a chemical standpoint, obviously, there's a whole world of nootropics and smart drugs from the Navy SEAL Provigil modafinil approach to the biohacker plant medicine or other compound approach. But, I think when it comes to verbal fluency, or word recall or memory, that a lot of those things can upregulate your ability to tap into those skills at a higher level. I still think though you need input, right? Because I think somebody who's uninformed, if you were to give them, let's say, I don't know, a microdose of LSD or something like that, they might not actually spew as much knowledge at such a rapid feed you through the fire hose pace as somebody who actually has a great deal of input going in, right?

Ben Greenfield: You have to have a huge amount of input coming in to be as voracious as somebody like he is or like you are, for example, to able to bring out the things that they do. So this is where AI has become a little bit more interesting, right? Because now you can consume a huge amount of information and then synthesize it across multiple different specialties. And so that's what, you know, we as a company, we're actually working really hard on overall with our nonprofit side, actually, which is creating more of the practitioner of the future as well. So giving the practitioner the tools that they need to be able to work alongside AI. I mean, that's really what's going to happen, right? And so, and then we formulate the same way, right? That's Dr. Tazan, you know, using various types of AI models to to create different formulas and various— and do all your experimenting without actually having to make the compounds or combine compounds together is very, very cool. And so, that's one of the reasons and how we actually came up with the idea of actually just sticking with cordycepin, for example, or how you combine cordycepin with methylene blue or how you can combine it with caffeine and all these other kinds of aspects we can talk about. But then, you can sort of test these in the real world and say, "Does this really work or not?" And that's what's really cool about kind of what we do. We are really integrating a lot of different types of tools, tech, but the knowledge base, obviously, he has a huge knowledge base, Dr. Ted, but we also leverage all these other knowledge bases that are available now as well. And then, the world is our oyster, man. It's been fun.

Ben Greenfield: And, how close are we, let's say that you do have an AI model trained, let's say for a guy like you who just wants to have a deep knowledge of all things related to the biochemistry of brain or body-enhancing compounds, how close do you think we are to you just being able to wear a special pair of glasses or a watch or something like that that will cue into verbal questions that like I'm asking you right now, you're on a podcast and the answers are just getting flashed right there on the insides of your glasses and making you sound super smart even though you're just augmented with AI. You think we're close to something like that?

Yeah, for sure. I mean, I don't think it's very far away at all. I mean, at this point, these things are almost real-time as far as answering or asking questions or listening to information even verbally now. So, I think we're super close to people having your classic sci-fi AI thing on your, on your glasses while you're listening to a podcast. Maybe that's what you're doing now, Ben. I don't know, but I'm, I'm definitely doing it. I'm just kidding. I'm not. But, but I think it's, I think it's going to happen. It means we're getting more of these agenting systems, right? So people like these, people are using AI in a way to help them do automated tasks instead. And so that's really cool. And so we're looking at various ways to do that for practitioners, right? So as you know, Ben, we have a nonprofit organization called Health Optimization Medicine and Practice, and we're training practitioners on how to optimize health. And we have a 7-module certification for practitioners, and it's based on Dr. Ted's initial framework that he brought over from his classic— from his clinic, excuse me, in Manila that he was working on for many years. And the idea is that you learn this foundational approach using metabolomics, epigenetics, gut-immune system, focus on optimizing health rather than treating disease. And, but the key for all of this is that you still have to interpret data., right? And you still have to be able to crunch a lot of numbers from various types of sources, whether it be gut testing or metabolomic testing or whatever. And so using, you know, AI programs that, you know, we designed to be able to crunch that data in a very, very sort of, in a way that's very much the perspective that we think about, which is not just here's a number, here's a result. It's no, like, how do you network-wide everything together, right? How you throw a network together and then then balance everything to when you were 21 and 30 years of age. So, all of the nutrients and gut and hormone levels that we look at in the whole framework are focused on optimizing somebody to be 21 to 30 years of age, not just normal for your age, which is not what most people want to be unless they're 21 to 30. So, you don't want hormones of a 65-year-old typically, right? You don't want to have the B vitamin levels of somebody that's 45 years old if you're 20 years old or something like that. So, just to give examples. So, we're kind of putting all this together and it's kind of a newer framework that we're really excited about. And hopefully by the time this podcast comes out, we'll have more to share. But it's the idea here is that we are no longer just human. We already know this with our smartphones, but now with AI, it's like it's an entirely different level of being able to really augment what we do. And as a practitioner, that's really great news because most of us are relegated to having to see one person at a time, right? But if you can do it in a way that you can scale yourself without, but then you can also go to the beach and hang out while you're models and other things are talking to your— everybody's talking to your AI while you're hanging out someplace else with your kids. That's pretty cool. So, that's what we're working on.

Yeah. I still think it might create a little bit of friction when you take the glasses off or you remove the augmentation. And, I don't know, you go into your family and you almost might have to learn how to interact with people in two different environments, one where you're augmented and one where you're the native you.

I think you're right on. And, in general, this is what we think about when we think about ancient practices. Like meditation or Buddhism or something like that, right? Well, the idea is that we all have these roles that we play, and some of them are much stronger than others, right? And sometimes we get attached to them, and like, and people are going to definitely get attached to this like augmented human Ben, like that, you know, that has AI, right? Or augmented Scott. But like having to like, to dislike or detach or like unattach from those roles is going to be hard. It's going to be hard. It's already hard for people because these are addicting technologies. So I agree with you. I think there's going to be a lot of challenges along the way. But I think in the end, if it all works out like in sort of like sunshine and rainbows, it should be like your AIs are doing all your work while you're hanging out with your family and actually, you know, not plugged in for once. Right. I think that's the hard thing for a lot of us is like to have that time when we're not on our phones and we're not, you know, in our— in that sort of environment where things are just getting thrown at us at 100 miles an hour.

Yeah. And it feels more natural to be native. I mean, I'm doubling down on that with My sons who have been in wilderness school since they were 6 are still every single day doing a Kamana Wilderness Awareness Program with Native American lineage borrowed sit spots outside each day. They're going on a 10-day vision quest here in a couple of months out in the Sonoran Desert. They are doing mentors and training for other kids, fathers and sons who are going to wilderness survival school up here in Idaho. And, Because of all that, they're probably not as good at prompting AI as some of their peers. But, I like that— this is just a silly way to think about things, I know, but if there was a solar flare or some mass electrical outage that at least my sons are going to be able to survive without the augmentation.

Yeah, I think it's a beautiful way to think about it. And, you've been able to create that pretty significantly in your own space, I think like everybody that's a parent here, it's hard to have— and as I have 4 kids, as you know, Ben, I think, and it's also very hard to integrate the work that we're doing and all this advanced tech and cutting-edge science and things like that and then come back and try to make sure everybody's grounded at the house at least, right? And I think that ground is the hard place to find, but it's possible, I think. But it's not something that just comes. You really have to actively work on it in all the various ways that you do and that I know that I do and with my kids too.

Yeah. Yeah. Let's talk about nature's technology. Tell me about this cordyceps and stuff.

Yeah. I mean, the cordyceps, the mushroom's been around a long, long time, right? And it's been around for thousands of years as a sort of delicacy in the world of Chinese medicine in the sense of it was very rare initially to find this cordyceps mushroom used to grow just on the backs of caterpillars or in very rare places and high in the Himalayas overall. But now it's actually been industrialized. You can get more of it.

I'm going to interrupt you super early on just in case people tune out. I realize that many of you have heard of cordyceps. We're not really going to be talking, right? Right. Cordyceps per se. It's just, it's just the starting off point because I know cordyceps is kind of like saturated in the market.

Totally.

Yeah.

Yeah. So, I mean, the idea to get the story really is that the cordyceps is really cool because it, it takes over the, the nervous systems of insects, makes them into zombies. So if you've watched The Last of Us on HBO, that show is about a cordyceps mushroom that's gone mutated and now it's affecting humans. And there's a zombie apocalypse and everybody's dying and all those kinds of things. But it doesn't affect humans, it just affects arthropods like ants. And so it takes over their nervous systems and makes these ants go to certain areas in the forest to where they're going to make the most mushrooms, basically. So it's been of interest for thousands of years because how does this mushroom take over the nervous system in an insect, basically dysregulate their entire immune system, their neural pathways in a way that allows them to make more mushroom, right? So, there's a lot of compounds in the mushroom. There's polysaccharides, there's vitamins, there's minerals actually, but the main, the most active component of the mushroom itself is something called cordycepin. And, this is only by weight about 0.03% of the mushroom. So, it's not a huge amount of the mushroom, but a lot of the power, most of the power of the mushroom itself is because of this compound called cordycepin.

A fitting analogy would be psilocybin and mushroom extract. Psilocin is the very psychoactive component of that mushroom that if you concentrate has a lot of the psychoactivity. With cordyceps, it'd be cordycepin.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So, cordycepin, but just like psilocin, it's a very small amount of the mushroom itself, but the potency of it is very significant as far as what it does in the mushroom overall. It has these other The mushroom has other ingredients. It has other things in there. It has even things like polysaccharides and vitamins and things like that. But in essence, what cordycepin is in our body is an adenosine analog. And adenosine has got a lot of different roles in the body. People have heard of probably adenosine triphosphate, right? So, adenosine triphosphate is how we make energy. And then, we also have adenosine in the brain that works as a neurotransmitter. It also works in the heart. It increases nitric oxide production. So, basically, what Cordycepin does is have a massive effect on the adenosine system in the body. And as a result of that, it has all these various pathways that it can regulate or downregulate depending on the system that we're talking about, everything from decreasing inflammation by going and decreasing the NF-kappaB system itself. So, NF-kappaB is a system in our body that gets upregulated when we have inflammation. It can get really messed up if you have chronic inflammation. You get pro-inflammatory cytokines that just hang around for a while like TNF-alpha, interleukins, things like that. On the other end of it, it can increase things like AMPK activation as well, which boosts things like mitochondrial biogenesis and fatty acid oxidation. And then, so you have the capacity to actually make more energy from fat specifically and actually preserve glycogen when you have cordycepin around. So, I mean, we can talk about some of the various questions you have, but in essence, it's a adenosine analog that has fantastic effects on like multiple different pathways related to how adenosine works in the body.

Well, you guys just have it in one of your products at Troscriptions, right?

So, we have it in two different products actually. So, we have it in Tro Zzz. Tro Zzz is 8 different ingredients. And, some of those ingredients are related to the GABA system which we talked about in your last podcast. But, the cordycepin itself, the way it works here is that Cordycepin, as I mentioned, works on the adenosine system. And so, adenosine is a neurotransmitter in our brain that helps us feel sleepy. It gives us sleep pressure. So, this is why when you exercise more actually, you have more sleep pressure because you're making more free adenosine. So obviously, if you're making more energy throughout the day, you're going to make— so making more ATP, you'll be making more adenosine.

ATP is adenosine triphosphate. When you split those phosphate bonds, you're left with free-floating adenosine. And so, what you're saying is that adenosine could then bind to adenosine receptors and increase sleep drive. So, maybe the person who frequently works out who doesn't one day and has trouble falling asleep, that might be the case because they have less adenosine and they could theoretically use something that produces more adenosine to help with that.

Yeah, that's true. Exactly. Yeah. And so, and this is— it's very common actually. I think the more adenosine you produce, the more of a sleep drive you're going to have.

Have.

But, if you're used to a certain amount of sleep drive and you don't do it as much that day, you may not be able to sleep as well that night. And so, what cordycepin can do is it comes in and acts just like adenosine as a neurotransmitter. And so, adenosine makes you feel sleepy, it gives you sleep pressure. The best experience of this is obviously in children. If you see your kids and they're young and they need a nap and they don't get a nap, they get really, really angry. This is sleep pressure. This is adenosine that's built up. Throughout the day or the hours if you're obviously a baby in that case or young. And so, what we can see here with cordycepin is it acts just like it. And so, the most important corollary to this is what blocks adenosine receptors in the brain is caffeine, right? So, caffeine makes you feel more wakeful by blocking the adenosine receptors directly. And so, people that drink caffeine, that's why they drink it. And so, if you don't allow the adenosine to bind, you're going to feel more wakeful overall. So, there's actually a cool stack you can do with cordycepin where you can actually give somebody caffeine first and then have them take some cordycepin. And then, instead of going to the brain where it's going to cause you to make you actually feel more sleepy potentially, it can go to the rest of the system to help you make more energy with the AMPK activation, increase nitric oxide production, and actually significantly improve immune system modulation at the same time.

Are you talking about caffeine receptors outside the central nervous system or just caffeine receptors still in the central nervous system but outside the brain?

Yeah, so caffeine receptors in the brain. So caffeine receptors in the brain are going to block the adenosine neurotransmission.

Blocking those. What I'm saying is if caffeine is going elsewhere, yeah, a lot of people aren't aware of this, which is why I'm asking. Like, caffeine can act in other places besides your brain.

Sure, sure. It works on other organs. It works on the vagal nerve, other places too as well. But in essence, what we found is that the primary aspect of adenosine working in the brain. Cordycepin will modulate in a positive way, so it'll help there. But at the same time, it's also going to help systemically as well. So, in the sense that you take cordycepin, it's going to improve your immune system function. It has some roles of decreasing inflammation, immune system modulation, as I mentioned. It actually activates various things. And so, I think the main thing that we've seen, at least clinically overall, Ben, is that if you block If you have caffeine on board and you take cordycepin, you don't feel sleepy. Some people that take cordycepin, especially at higher doses, will feel a little bit sleepier if they take it because it's going to increase your sleep pressure because it's going to work just like adenosine, for example.

It makes me sleepy, by the way. Even the immune one makes me sleepy.

Yeah. And, that's the thing. So then, in our Troimmune, which is a higher strength of the cordycepin, so there's 40 milligrams of cordycepin in the Tro Zzz. In the In the TroMuNe, we have two different strengths of 75 milligrams and 150 milligrams. Typically, we have people taking those in the evenings because it's going to increase your deep sleep. Actually, if you track it with your Oura Ring, whatever kind of tracker you have, you will notice when you're taking the cordycepin or the TroMuNe that your deep sleep will increase overall. What you may see in corresponding is a slight decrease in REM sleep over time, but it's very, very small compared to your increase in deep sleep overall. And so, We have a lot of people actually that will take the Troimmune on its own as something just purely to increase deep sleep. And obviously, when you're getting better deep sleep, your immune system is going to work better overall, right? You're going to have more anti-inflammatory support. You're going to also notice that your immune system is going to work better overall if you're getting better sleep. So, it's a combination of things, right? So, if you're working on deep sleep on its own, it's obviously going to help in a lot of different ways. But, there's the corollary effects of Tromune or cordycepin on the immune system itself, including improving B-cell activation and natural killer cell activation, optimizing macrophage function, which are— macrophages are things that go to areas where there's inflammation but actually downregulating some of that as well and improving lymphatic detoxification too of the brain. Ben Greenfield: Yeah.

I pulled up my phone because I'm ignoring you. I'm looking at my deep sleep scores because I took it on Thursday and I took it on Sunday. Thursday, I had 31% deep sleep. Let's see, Friday 24%, Saturday 17%, Sunday 37%. See, I was in the 30s on the two nights I took it. You're right. I didn't realize that.

Yeah. Deep sleep is where we do a lot of our consolidating of our memories. This is where we can do our deepest detox as well. Most people don't realize that like at stage 3 and stage 4, your deep sleep where you get most of your immune system reorganization in the brain too. So, our lymphatic system is really, really highly active during deep sleep especially. And the other cool thing about cordycepin which I didn't mention yet is that it's also an anti-infective at the same time because it actually inhibits RNA synthesis in viruses and tumor cells as well. And it does this, so there's a potential indication in cancer as well. And the reason why that is is because one of our base pairs is adenine, right? And so, adenine is also very— it's based off of adenosine. So, what happens in rapidly dividing cells is that you have the cordycepin that can come in there and block halting viral RNA replication and also potentially tumor RNA replication too. And so, triggering a stop in that replication. So, it's fantastic as an anti-infective, especially for viruses overall. So, we have a lot of people people that use it when they travel, of course, like when they're going to a place like on an airplane. If somebody's sick in the house, I mean, I took it for a year straight and I didn't get sick once in my house, which is pretty unusual when I have 4 kids here that are in school and coming home sick on a reasonable clip. I give it to them as well and they do great. So, it's got this inflammation downregulation. It's got this capacity to also help you with the actual infection itself. And, that's actually where I've been using it most and a lot of my patients is as an anti-infective and with the deep sleep piece as well.

Ben Greenfield: I think, and I know you got to be careful because you're a practicing physician, but I think it was you or on your guys' website that I saw some stuff about cordycepin and cancer. Yeah.

So, it's not on our website. We might actually have a, maybe have a blog on it, the Transcriptions blog, but the reason why is that exactly what I just mentioned here is that there is the capacity to block RNA replication in rapidly dividing cells and triggering apoptosis, triggering the death of the cells that are rapidly dividing overall. So, as a result of that, you're getting to this idea where you can stop the growth of a rapidly dividing cell, which oftentimes is going to be maybe a cancer cell, right? So, that's one thing that we're seeing. And then, it's funny because when we first started looking at cordycepin as a compound, we were looking at it for sleep specifically. And then, when we were doing some of the research and then all of a sudden these studies came out in cancer, at least in animal models, and the price of the ingredient went up pretty dramatically after that, as you can imagine, to get it. But, that doesn't stop us, of course. But, it's not being used that way clinically yet, although there are a couple compounds that are like it that are being looked at as drugs overall in cancer. So, the technical term for cordycepin is called 3-deoxyadenosine. And so, basically, we have adenosine we just talked about earlier that cordycepin looks like and acts like adenosine but it's a little bit different. It has something called 3-deoxyadenosine. And, the nice thing about that as well is it's more longer acting. So, adenosine in our body is very, very rapidly acting within about a couple seconds to a minute. The half-life of adenosine is gone, right? It's over. Where with 3-deoxyadenosine lasts for 4 to 6 hours, which is much longer in the body as well. And so, that's why it can help you for short periods of time but then also helps with this immune modulation, which can benefit you more long-term. But from a cancer perspective, it's super interesting and more research is happening here all the time, especially in breast, liver, lung, and prostate. Those are the ones that there's some research coming out.

Ben Greenfield: Okay, got it. So, the adenosine piece, I mean, a lot of people use creatine for performance to replace some of the phosphate groups that creatine phosphate is replenishing from exercise. So, if adenosine is present in the cordycepin, theoretically, and I— well, not theoretically, I'm actually curious about the research if there is any. Like when it comes to performance, strength, speed, power, even, you know, this would be more theoretical, I'm guessing, stacking it with something like creatine phosphate. So you're replenishing adenosine triphosphate more rapidly. Anything that you're aware of in that respect?

So the Cordyceps mushroom has been studied, you know, specifically and shown to increase VO2 max, increase ATP production, and actually enhance lactic acid clearance. Right. And so the question is, what in the mushroom is doing that? And very likely most of that is happening because of the cordycepin itself. There are some polysaccharides in the mushroom that also increase ATP production.

Because the adenosine, right?

Yes, exactly. And so, the cordycepin again works just like adenosine. So, you can actually make something called cordycepin triphosphate. So, if you don't have adenosine to go in there, it'll actually make cordycepin triphosphate, which gives you energy directly. So, it's called CTP actually overall. And so, there is some evidence at least clinically that we've seen it, not in studies yet, by stacking it with things like creatine, for example, can be very, very helpful because then you have again, the same way you have the recycling of the phosphate groups. And so, we are doing that and seeing significant benefit. Now, the key, as you kind of alluded to earlier too, is that you feel sleepy when you take it. So, the idea is that you have to block some of those adenosine receptors in the brain or work out very quickly after taking it. And if you take it and work out very quickly afterwards, most of that is going to go to energy production, making cortisone triphosphate specifically, and then modulating all the other adenosine receptors. So, you have multiple different types of adenosine receptors in the body overall, not just 1 or 2. I think there's 4 or 5 overall specifically. Some are anti-inflammatory, some increase vasodilation, nitric oxide production, BDNF increases, things like that as well.

Ben Greenfield: I'm assuming you don't mean work out quickly after you take it like you must work out at a very fast pace. You mean work out shortly after you take it.

Shortly after, yeah. So, your timeframe after taking it needs to be small. You could do a fast workout but make sure it's a good workout.

Don't rush. Yeah. Okay. So, with the Tro-Mune that has the cordycepin in it, is there anything else in there that you stack it with?

So, that's only cordycepin specifically. So, it's pure cordycepin at different strengths. We have something called Tro-Mune which is 75 milligrams and then you have Troplasmune, which is for practitioners only. That's 150 milligrams of cordycepin per troche. But, the thing about the mushroom as I was mentioning earlier is that in a mushroom, you have 0.03% cordycepin. So, you would have to eat a huge amount of mushroom to get anywhere near the amount of cordycepin that we're putting in these products. In fact, it's the most cordycepin in any other product out there on the market right now. If you find If you find cordyceps out there, it's typically going to be in sort of mushroom blends, like standardized to a certain amount, but we went directly the synthesis pathway. So, once Dr. Ted did the initial research, we figured out the power of this thing to work in so many different ways as we've been alluding to here. We decided to synthesize it with a lab and make it at a higher potency that's ever been made ever before. And so, if you were going to eat the mushroom, you'd have to have 80 grams or 150 grams of mushroom itself to get the amount of cordycepin that we're putting in these compounds or these particular products. But, we also talk about stacking it a lot, Ben. So, the idea is if you're optimizing your immune system, decreasing inflammation, your immune system activating, so you're doing all these great things to help the system, what else can you do to also do those kinds of things? So, some of the other products that we use at the company, things like like our Tro Zzz, for example, to help with sleep. A combination that I use a lot in patients is a combination of Tro Zzz with Tro Mune because you have the Tro Zzz that has 8 different ingredients in it that are supporting sleep, and then you have the Tro Mune, which is going to obviously be increasing deep sleep too. So, you're basically stacking additional cordycepin on the Tro Zzz with additional from Tro Mune.

Ben Greenfield: With the synthesis of it, you guys are able— there's no difference in what you get from a bunch of interns in the back room stomping on cordyceps and collecting it and wooden buckets versus synthesizing it?

No. So, I mean, obviously, it's going to be cleaner than stomping on buckets and trying to find some cordycepin in there somewhere. But, it's the same molecule. It's the same exact molecule that you'd found in the actual mushroom itself. But, we've just done it at scale, right? And doing it at scale was the key for us, right? Because we want to make sure we had enough instead of having to go through a huge amount of mushroom. Initially, we looked at it, extracting it from the mushroom, but it's a laborious process kind of like stamping like you were just describing kind of thing. And so, you really want to find a way to not have to do it that way if you want to have this much in a product overall. I mean, there's lots of various conditions where cordycepin has been studied. And we talked about cancer, which is very exciting overall, talked about deep sleep, which is something that you've measured as well, Ben, and seen. And I see very regularly, for example—

Just realized that this morning.

Yeah, it's pretty cool, right? And there's also some additional things to mention. And so, this has also been studied in wound healing specifically and increasing wound healing. And we think this is related to, again, adenosine receptors in wounds and increasing fibroblast production and making these wounds heal better. There's also some studies even at least in animals in neurodegenerative diseases, which is not which is not terribly surprising overall because when you're increasing the immune system activation in a positive way, you're decreasing inflammation. There's also some evidence that cordycepin increases your Nrf2 pathways, which are pathways that are upregulated when you make more antioxidants as well. And so, really, it's like the way I think about it is that— and I've been working a lot with patients that have chronic complex medical issues and chronic inflammation. And they're just doing fantastically well with it. They take it at night and they increase their deep sleep. And they really— obviously, it may not be the only thing they're taking. It's definitely not going to be, right? But it's something that really have found to be a game changer for so many people overall.

Is there any downside here, like elevation of liver enzymes or anything you've come across as far as people who might not want to take it?

Yeah, there really isn't any. So the cordycepin specifically, so what it's doing is immune system modulating it up and helping enhance the immune system activation. So if you you have an autoimmune condition where if your immune system is already overactive, there's the theoretical that it could make the system be more overactive in some ways and you wouldn't want to take it. So, if you have an autoimmune condition, you want to be careful when you start taking it. So, if you have lupus or Sjögren's disease or something else like that where you have your immune system fighting yourself, then you have to be careful taking it overall. So, I mean, the study is on cordycepin and its safety are very, very good overall. I mean, I think that the other piece of it that we mentioned, not as significant of a side effect, but it can make you feel sleepy. So, you want to make sure you're taking it at night typically unless you're taking a low dose and you're kind of being active relatively quickly after using it to keep that adenosine going in the right direction. There's really very few downsides to it overall. I feel like it's one of the things where we talk about mushrooms a lot now, I know Ben Ling, and their capacity with so many different aspects. And I think cordycepin as the active here is just very, very powerful. Really, the way I think about it is as something to increase deep sleep, to decrease inflammation, to enhance immune system function, and then for the exercise performance aspect things as well. So, those are kind of the 4 ways that I'm typically thinking about it. And, it's a mainstay for almost all of my patients now overall and for my own personal stack as well because of that for those capacities.

Ben Greenfield: Yeah, it's my understanding that a lot of the immune-supporting benefits of mushrooms come from some of the beta-glucans that you find in more of the whole mushroom body. So, I'm assuming if someone was using cordycepin that's synthetically created in a lab to have really high concentrated versions that you would still encourage regular consumption of things like some of the biggies like shiitake, maitake, chaga, reishi, either powdered teas or whole mushroom or something like that to get get some of the other parts of the mushroom they might not be getting from cordycepin?

Oh, 100%. Yeah, I feel like there's so much power in looking at things from a holistic perspective, right? It's not just one thing that's going to help you. And I know cordycepin feels like this sort of amazing compound, and it is, right? But it's not the only thing out there. And the other thing that I've noticed over time is that especially if you're not using it for a significant sort of anti-cancer reason or significant autoimmune thing that you're getting watched closely by a practitioner, it seems best to actually— what's it called— go on and off the cordycepin. Cycle. Yeah, that's the word I was looking for. It seems like the body, like everything, sometimes what I found is that it's better to actually cycle it on and off and that's how the body remains to have the significant effect that it does. Because I think what can happen if you're taking it too regularly at too high of a dose, and this is from personal experience, is that it doesn't seem to work as well when you do have more of a subjective exposure of some sort. So, I found it's better to take it for a period of time, take it for 2 or 3 weeks at the most, and then take it and go off for a little while or use it more targeted like when you're traveling or when there are people that are sick around you and you don't want to get sick. It can really be helpful there overall. So, it's best to cycle overall than rather than staying on it every day, that kind of thing. Thing.

Yeah, that's a pretty good tip though, back when you talked about exercise and adenosine and sleep drive, because there's at least 2 days of the week where, you know, they're easier workout days for me, and I do notice I'm less exhausted when I get in the bed. So even just like using on a couple of nights like that seems like it could come in pretty handy.

Yeah, it definitely can. And we have a couple people that have actually reported exactly that overall when they don't have as much exercise going on. And, um, the travel one is big overall, and improvement just because when people are moving around and they're on airplanes and there's lots of fun things flying around those airports and airplanes with you. I've seen a significant improvement in my patients. So, my usual stack for patients that are traveling, they travel with Methylene Blue and they travel with Tromune. Those are the two. And then, for most of my patients that have mitochondrial challenges, that's what I'm starting off is typically the Methylene Blue low doses, 4, 8, 16 milligrams, and then the Tromune at night. And then, I usually titrate their dose over time. So, it doesn't start off at the 75-milligram dose, which is in the Tromune, start off at a quarter of the Troche and then kind of see how they feel and kind of go from there. But they're my mainstays at this point in how I work with people. And I've just seen transformative things in my own patient population. The goal always, Ben, and I know this is the goal for you too, is that we have a lot of fancy things around us all the time. We have fancy tools, technologies, Cordycepin is part of that, right? But, we have to work on our basics as well. We have to work on our foundational lifestyle, our diet, our supplementation that is focused on what we need, not just what we like to take. And so, cordycepin is one of the things that I can add on in patients very quickly to help them feel better, give them additional immune support, but I'm really trying to fix their gut, optimize their hormones, work on their stress, their sleep, and so that they don't need these things as much over the long term. That's the goal, right?

Ben Greenfield: So, explain this to me. I've talked with Dr. John Laurance before, for example. He has a product that probably competes with yours a little bit. Great guy. I think you know him too. And, he told me that you could just swallow them like the bars or the troches. I think he calls his bars, yours are called troches. I don't know if there's a difference. You could probably tell me. But, can you get the benefits and they just come on more slowly if you swallow it or do you really have to dissolve it? I think the last podcast you told me upper area between the lip and the gums is the best place to do it based on the thickness of that membrane. What's the difference between swallowing and letting it dissolve?

So, the upper cheek and gum between that area, your mucosa is about 8 layers of thickness. And so, compared to your lower lip where you're underneath your tongue, that's 1. So, you have more mucosa up here in the upper cheek and gum. And so, what that allows if you have a trochee like we do, you can put it up there, you can park it there, and most of that ingredient is going to get into the bloodstream through your vascular system inside your cheek. Your cheeks are highly vascular overall. And as a result of that, you get into the system faster. Now, it depends on the product, it depends on the compound. In essence, cordycepin, for example, cordycepin is not as bioavailable as something like methylene blue, which we'll talk about. So, cordycepin is better dissolved in the mouth because more of that is going to get into the that bioavailability means how much of that compound is getting into the body after you put it into your mouth or you swallow it, right? And so, cordycepin has a higher bioavailability in the mouth as dissolved in a buccal trochee compared to swallowing it and going through digestion. And so, that's in contrast to something like methylene blue where methylene blue is just about 100% bioavailable no matter whether you take it in the mouth and park it there or if you swallow it. Okay. The difference though is going to be how fast it works. And so, in some people, what they'll find is that if they dissolve methylene blue in their mouth, they're going to feel better faster. And this could be people with brain fog, concentration problems, fatigue, the executive function kinds of things. Well, they'll find that if they dissolve in the mouth, they do better than if they swallow it. But, that's really just because of how fast overall, Ben. But, what I would also say is that John's products are much higher doses than ours. He has things that are 75, 100 milligrams, 150 milligrams. I think it's 150 milligrams per one of his bars compared to one of our troches, which is 16. So, dissolving something of ours in the mouth compared to his, it's like you'll be blue for days if you do something like his, that high dose in the mouth. You'd never want to do that overall.

All right. Well, somebody out there is wondering, including me, so what if you put it up your butt?

Yeah. So, you don't want to put ours up your butt because there's also— in our troches, there's a little bit of peppermint in the formula and that's not going to feel good. From a delivery perspective, up the butt is a fantastic way to get medications and supplements in because it's a highly vascular location just like your cheek, for example, right? And so, we created added the products at Transcriptions, as you know, Ben, in buccal form because, again, it's faster to get at the system. Most ingredients are going to be more bioavailable in the mouth compared to swallowing them. And so, for example, we talked about cordycepin here, but our sleep formula is the same thing. You can swallow it for sure, but it's going to be faster and it's also the ingredients are going to be more potent if you dissolve them in the mouth. And, we've known this, compounding pharmacies have used troches for years and years. And, the other thing that's nice about them too is that they're titratable. You can start with a quarter or a half or a full. So, whether you're dissolving in the mouth or swallowing it, you can actually in either case figure out your exact dose rather than having to take the whole thing the first time. Although for some people like you, Ben, I know the whole thing is kind of your MO.

Ben: Yeah, I've done that a few times, sometimes with interesting results. The personal— what do they say now? That my lived experience is that dissolving in the mouth seems like I get way better results And that's what it comes down to, right?

Because, I mean, and so many people out there have pill fatigue as well, and they're taking so many pills, they just don't want to take anymore. So we designed this in a way that you can just dissolve it in the mouth.

It's like dry powdering without the coffee.

Yeah, yeah. Well, please don't do that, people. I don't know, think that's a good idea in general, but unless you're very skilled at these kinds of things. But what I love about the troches is that I can break them up so easily. And so I can even give the Troimmune to my kids, for example, which I do all the time when they start feeling that something's not, you know, going very well. They don't feel very good. I mean, if you're going to work with kids and give it to kids, I recommend working with a provider. Of course, we only sell to adults as far as how things go, but we know that it's a very safe molecule. But, even my kids will dissolve in the mouth and they don't mind. It's not like it's a big deal overall. It's easier to swallow, especially if you're young. So, I think that troches are not easy to make overall and they're not easy to scale and make it into a company as we have, but we know the power of them overall. So, titratable, rapid-acting, and more bioavailable except for that one which is the methylene blue, which is an important one because of all things that are going to be shocking to the mouth, methylene blue is going to be your most shocking mostly.

Ben Greenfield: Yeah, it's a little noticeable. Okay. So, for me, man, you've always got some kind of crazy thing. You taught me about cordyceps in the last time we chatted. What else is Dr. Ted working on in his secret Batman Labs over there?

Ah, so we are working on many different things. We have a newer version of our sleep trochee that's available, Trozee, out for practitioners now only called Tro+ Somna. And this one specifically, again, just available to practitioners. So, if you're not a practitioner, you can email our team and we can help you find one. But, the cool thing about this is that it's combining 3 different ingredients that are working on the GABA system. And, I think we talked about this last time overall, Ben, but we have this cool patent-pending strategy called ObliPairing or obligate pairing, which means when we're looking at the GABA receptor, what Dr. Ted and our company has done is figure out that there's a better way to support the GABA receptor. Most people take things that will enhance GABA in various ways, but they can deplete GABA over time. So, the idea is that the receptor, you have a binding location where GABA binds and you have locations where other molecules will bind, things like kava or CBD and CBG, which are in some of our other formulas. They bind to other sites on the GABA receptor and increase the affinity for GABA to bind. The problem though is if you're not giving something that can actually replete GABA itself, over time you're actually going to deplete GABA. So, So, what we did in these formulas is find something that actually binds to where GABA would bind on the receptor mimicking GABA or actually like GABA itself or GABA itself. So, something like nicotinyl GABA, which is vitamin B3 attached to the GABA is actually giving the body GABA itself. But, in essence, you have something that's binding to where GABA would bind and something that's binding to a separate site on the receptor that's enhancing GABA to bind there as well. And, that combination is called an obligate pairing.

Yeah, you're almost like combining stimulation and disinhibition.

Yeah, yeah, that's a good idea. So, the idea of stimulation and then also just creating a substrate. You have stimulation that's making a substrate bind to receptor, but the problem is that you can deplete that substrate. And many people are actually depleted in that substrate already, in this case being GABA. GABA deficiency is very common if you have sleep issues, anxiety, depression. These are all oftentimes related to GABA deficiency. And so, if you're giving something that's trying to stimulate the GABA system but you don't have enough GABA around, you're going to get into trouble over time. Your receptors are going to try to reorganize themselves and downregulate themselves and you get issues with tolerance, withdrawal, dependence. This is alcohol, for example. This is benzodiazepines. This is sleep medications. They work but they also have significant downside over time because they're depleting GABA pretty dramatically and then causing all of this. And so, So, in the Tro+ Somna formulation, we have 3 different things that are working on the GABA receptor. We have agarin, which is in the Sleep Trochee as well. Agarin is from another mushroom, the psychedelic mushroom, the Amanita mushroom as you probably remember. Yeah. Yeah, but it's at double the dose in Tro+ Somna. And then, we have DHHB, dihydrohanakyl beta, which is the most active form of magnolia bark or honokyo Hanokkial.

The old Chinese traditional medicine insomnia cure.

Exactly, yeah. Exactly. And so, the most active form of that is hanokkial or hanokkial. Sorry, the active form is dihydrohanokkial beta, DHHB. And then, we have the third ingredient there is apigenin, which you've probably heard of before as well. It's in chamomile and other tea and some green leafy other vegetables. But apigenin is an antioxidant, so it's a mitochondrial support, but it also works on the GABA system as well. So, that's the newest one that just came out recently just in May of 2025 when this is being recorded actually just last week.

Ben Greenfield: You sent me some and I tried one and I probably made the mistake of using it when I was traveling. So, I had the whole thing happen where I woke up in the hotel room and had no clue where I was because I was so just dead asleep. So, it knocks me on my ass. Yeah. The downside, if there was a fire in the hotel, I'd be screwed. But yeah, I mean, that stuff works, that's for sure.

Well, the idea with that whole formulation was to actually make something strong enough to knock almost anybody out, but in a very safe way, in a very comprehensive way. And that's how we do things at the company. The idea is we're not trying to pay Peter to pay Paul or whatever the analogy is. So, we're working on that. That's a very, very, I think, very effective formula, especially people have really bad sleep issues that really don't want to be on on pharmaceuticals and want to have something that's more natural. If your sleep issues aren't that bad overall and you just need a little bit of help, Trozi is fantastic for that. It really does help for most people. So, we've been working on that. I'm trying to think what else we're working on. I think that the other main thing that we're really working on, and I alluded to this in the beginning of our podcast, is the idea of creating and helping practitioners of the future, trying to help people really become well-versed in understanding how they can leverage things like AI in their own clinical practices. And our whole nonprofit, the Health Optimization Medicine and Practice Company, is focused on creating practitioners of the future. So, we're teaching people how to optimize health. We're using things like metabolomics, hormone analysis, gut health, and shifting all those networks to when you were 21 to 30 years of age focused on not the organ-based system but the holobiont system, the system of of how we are these whole organisms that are made up of humans and human cells and viruses and fungus and bacteria and how we can optimize all those. So, our main driver always, Ben, as you know, is to try to work on foundational health principles overall because if we're doing that, then everything else gets better. I mean, we have a company, we have transcriptions that's available to help people right now while they're on the longer path to optimizing their health. But in essence, the longer path requires support too, right? And that's what Health Optimization Medicine and Practice is all about. So, that company has been growing really fast. We have more and more practitioners that are getting trained in our framework. And we do it in a way where we have cohort style where we have our metabolomics module, which is our primary module, our foundational one. 3 times a year, we have small groups of students that go in with us We meet every week for a lesson. We talk about the lesson of the week. We have case presentations, we have journal clubs, and then we're going to start it— starting to do with some of the other modules as well. So that's, that's our big push this year. It's been going on for a while under the surface, but we're really trying to get out there and, and make it happen this year.

Yeah. If I'm not a doctor, am I allowed to take it, or do you need to be a board-certified physician?

No, you don't. You don't have to be a board-certified physician. You can— any kind of practitioner working with clients.

I personally like to geek out on that stuff sometimes myself.

Yeah, I know, I know, I know. And I know you see clients as well the way you do things, Ben. But the way we do it is different than functional medicine. Functional medicine is focused on root causes of illness, and that's important. It's obviously better than conventional medicine, which is focused on Band-Aids and really great at acute care, really bad at prevention and long-term care overall. So, health optimization medicine and the framework is looking at for the root causes of health. How can we optimize and keep you healthy? And so, we actually have a big drive here as well within the sort of new framework now that's involved with the administration. It's, well, what if you had a new system entirely that wasn't run by the American Medical Association, the American Heart Association, excuse me? These are organizations that are focused on really just treating diseases overall. So, what we're really trying to advocate for is let's create a whole new system where we can find organizations like ours that are focused on optimizing the health of the patients and clients that the doctors and practitioners that are using that are getting trained in that system. So, this is the metabolic health framework as well. And, there's metabolic health companies or organizations out there that are doing something similar. But, what if we had a whole new system that wasn't isn't being relegated or being regulated by systems that are just focused on disease. So, these are big missions, but these are ones that we're really involved with now and really hoping for seeing some change this year.

Yeah. Well, I'd love to support, man. I'll link to all that. I'll link to that in the show notes. For those of you who want to try these crazy TroQees, proceed at your own risk with that sleep one.

Geez. Yeah, TroPlus Omna is specifically only for people with really significant sleep issues, but TroPlus Immune and TroImmune are very, very well-tolerated and easy and easy to integrate into a program.

Alright, BenGreenfieldLife.com/Sherr, Dr. Scott's last name, you guys. BenGreenfieldLife.com/Sherr. Check out these troches. Leave your questions, your comments, and your feedback in the shownotes. You can also leave a review and anything else you want to say, type in over there. I read them all. So, Dr. Scott, thanks for coming back on for a two-peat, and I'll link to our other show and the show with Dr. Ted, again, at BenGreenfieldLife.com/Sherrr, S-H-E-R-R. To discover even more tips, tricks, hacks, and content to become the most complete boundless version of you, visit BenGreenfieldLife.com.

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