The Little-Known Sleep-Enhancing Molecule Most People Don't Understand: Truth About GABA & Sleep Hacking With Dr. Scott Sherr.

My name is Ben Greenfield. And on this episode of the Ben Greenfield Life podcast.

Tro Zzz was created to be a comprehensive sleep solution, really leveraging the GABA system that we've been talking about. So it has the hanakyl that we were talking about before. It has the agarin that we were talking about before as well. Agarin from the psychedelic mushroom, the Amanita. Very, very low doses, no psychedelic experience, just long-acting GABA support throughout your whole evening. Has CBD, It has CBN in it as well. It also has adenosine. So adenosine's not acting on the GABA system. It's working on the adenosine receptors in the brain. And you were mentioning caffeine earlier. So this is for your people that like to drink coffee all day long, but it can screw up their sleep. Having some adenosine before you go to bed, um, or can really help with that unbinding of the caffeine to the receptor and getting adenosine to allow it to bind.

Fitness, nutrition, biohacking, longevity, life optimization, spirituality, And a whole lot more. Welcome to the Ben Greenfield Life Show. Are you ready to hack your life? Let's do this.

Alright, folks. So, several years ago, I had this super smart guy write an article for BenGreenfieldLife.com about how to biohack your hyperbaric experience. Meaning, like, if you do a hyperbaric chamber, how to use things like methylene blue and nitric oxide precursors and all sorts of crazy stuff to accelerate the healing or the recovery that might happen inside one of those chambers. The guy who wrote that article was actually my guest or is my guest on today's show, Dr. Scott Sher. And Scott's interesting because he is a specialist in hyperbaric oxygen therapy, but he also is the founder of Health Optimization Medicine and Practice, which is a nonprofit education company that trains doctors about how to treat the root cause of health. He also has this kind of cool sidearm of that called Troscriptions. Troscriptions basically makes these teeny tiny things that you dissolve under your mouth. You may have seen the biohackers who have been accused of having Smurf mouth. That's all blue. Well, that's because one of the things that Scott makes are these little blue methylene blue troches. But I actually don't want to talk with you that much about methylene blue today, Scott, because— You've done that before. Yeah, we've done that before. We've kicked that horse to death.

Exhausted.

Methamphetamine. Yeah. Come on. Nothing else to talk about. Exactly. Yeah. So, actually, it's a pretty fascinating molecule, but—

No, it is.

It's awesome. I digress. So, GABA though is what I'm interested in. GABA. I'll say it so you don't have to, gamma-aminobutyric acid, GABA. The reason is not only because You were showing me some of the things you could put in these under-the-tongue troches to increase the levels of this inhibitory neurotransmitter. But, you also, I think it was via an email, were filling me in on a bunch of stuff I didn't even know about GABA. So, I kind of stopped you and I was like, "Dude, let's just do a podcast about this." So, all things GABA, which I think everybody should know about this neurotransmitter because it's super important, is the topic of today's show. So, Scott, welcome. Welcome, man.

Well, thanks for having me, Ben. It's good to be on with you as you walk and I sit and you're making me feel jealous that you're walking while I sit, but I think you do that all the time too.

Yeah. Anybody who watches the video version of this podcast knows that I move. As a matter of fact, I recorded a podcast last night about inactivity and about the very small contractions that need to take place particularly in the calf and soleus to help regulate lipoprotein lipase, which basically burns down triglycerides. So, even just a very slow conversational-paced walk, I find for me when I'm podcasting is not only a great way to spark metabolism, but I feel like I think better and I focus better when I'm moving just a little bit while I'm talking to someone. And, I almost have this— well, I mean, they've actually looked into this. You see increased levels of brain-derived neurotrophic factor. So, there's a little bit of neurogenesis going on and kind of a mental effect of the so-called walking university, walking talking chats. I think everybody should do this.

Yeah, I agree. I agree. I need to get one for my house when I'm not podcasting in my bedroom maybe.

So— Just imagine all the people in Joe Rogan's podcasting studio walking while smoking marijuana and watching UFC. Drinking whiskey. Yeah, it'd be a party. So, GABA, man. What is GABA? Describe that to people.

Yeah. So, you gave us the technical term— excuse me, the chemical name just now, the gamma-aminobutyric acid. And GABA is the neurotransmitter that nobody knows about, but it's probably one of the most important. I mean, we all know about serotonin. We all know about dopamine and norepinephrine. These are all the cool neurotransmitters that everybody cares about because that's what you hear about on the news. Everybody's got dopamine problems because they're scrolling on their phones and everybody's got concentration issues. They can't concentrate on something more than 2.5 seconds. But, GABA is what puts the brakes on neurotransmission and it actually entails about 20% of the brain's entire neurotransmission. So, it's a significant amount of neurotransmission. And, what the brakes means is it puts the brakes or it calms down the firing of your neurons. And, it is throughout your whole brain. If you don't fire, you're going to calm down, you're going to feel a significant difference if you are in excitatory state. And so, you have GABA around and GABA is always being balanced by an excitatory neurotransmitter called glutamate. Glutamate and GABA make up in total about 80% of your brain's neurotransmission. So, this is a huge amount. And so, GABA is made from glutamate. So, glutamate actually gets converted in the brain and into GABA. But, so many of us these days, Ben, are GABA deficient and there's tons of symptoms which I can just kind of rattle off for people just so they can get kind of an understanding. But, So, top symptoms of GABA deficiency from a mental health perspective are anxiety, fear, depression, migraines, short temper, phobias, impulsiveness, disorganization, addictions, even schizophrenia and OCD have been associated with GABA deficiency. And, systemic symptoms like IBS, diarrhea, hypertension, tinnitus, chronic pain, allergies, frequent urination, flushing, bloating, sweating, salt cravings, and muscle tension are the ones that we typically think about when you're thinking about GABA deficiency. But, this is not— obviously, everybody that has these symptoms doesn't necessarily have GABA deficiency, but it's not on the radar for any clinicians that I really know. And, it's not on the radar really for people when they're having these kinds of symptoms like they're depressed because they're GABA deficient. "Oh, that's not what my doctor told me. They told me to take an SSRI." So, we have all of these potential symptoms and conditions that may be related to GABA being deficient in the brain because those brakes aren't working well.

Ben Greenfield: Now, is there a way to test for this? Because for a while, there were some urinary neurotransmitter tests that I was aware of like the Dutch Complete, for example, which is a great test for hormones, will test for neurotransmitters. But I've heard many times, I'd love to hear your thoughts on this, that the urinary neurotransmitter levels don't really tell you what's going on. In the brain. Is that true?

Absolutely true, yeah. So, they can only be corollary, and that's a significant problem because you really can't get a good sense of what's happening in the brain looking at like an organic acid level of your neurotransmitters. Now, this is why it's really important to have a clinical history when you're talking to somebody and understanding in the context of that what neurotransmitter levels may be correlated to from a brain perspective, but it's still just a correlation.

So, besides symptoms, are there any other things you could test to see if you could be GABA deficient like any minerals or vitamins or hormones or anything like that?

Yeah, exactly. So, what you can do is look at what actually turns into glutamate in the brain. So, what you do is you start off with the amino acid that typically is the one that's going to get converted into glutamate and then glutamate can get converted to GABA, which is glutamine. So, glutamine is amino acid that you can measure. You can measure it in urine. You can also measure it in your plasma. And so, you can measure your plasma glutamine levels to get a sense if you have enough precursor to make enough GABA in the brain. GABA precursors include the most important amino acid in this sort of whole process is glutamine. So, glutamine is an amino acid we can get from food sources as many of us know. Glutamine gets converted into GABA via glutamate. So, glutamate then gets converted to GABA, but it requires vitamin B6 and it requires magnesium to do that. So, you can measure glutamine levels, you can measure glutamate levels, you can measure vitamin B6 levels, you can measure magnesium levels. So, all these are extremely important in the whole process of making your GABA.

Ben Greenfield: Okay. So, if I'm deficient in vitamin B6 and magnesium and glutamine, it could be a clue that I'm GABA deficient, especially if you pair that with some of the symptoms that you talked about earlier. This kind of reminds me of glutathione, right? You could supplement with glutathione but also including sulfur-rich foods like say eggs or whey protein or having the amino acid cysteine or taking selenium can all help with your body's own glutathione production. Sounds like it's kind of similar with GABA.

Yeah, absolutely. And, the thing about to think about too is that glutamine is one of our most important amino acids too. It's not just used to make GABA, it's also the main fuel of your enterocytes in your small bowel. So, if you have a leaky gut, if you have small bowel overgrowth, if you have small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, excuse me, then you're going to also have a hard time utilizing that glutamine in another way to make it into glutamate and then to make it into GABA. So, you really do want to be thinking about the precursors here. And when we do testing at Health Optimization Medicine, and I'm one of the co-founders of that company, Dr. Ted Achacoso is actually the pioneer over there. But, when we think about doing health optimization testing, we are looking at plasma amino acid levels and glutamine levels as a marker along with obviously B6 and magnesium. But, what I think is important for people to remember is that this should be on your radar, but it's not because we're more focused on dopamine, norepinephrine, and serotonin. We're forgetting that the brakes are as or more important than the actual drive of the brain itself and how that's causing the brain to fire as opposed to calm down.

Ben Greenfield: Okay. And hopefully, I'm not getting too into the weeds here, but the idea of GABA, like a lot of neurotransmitters, is I'm assuming it's interacting with the cell receptor in some fashion. And based on that, let's say I had enough GABA, are there things that could block that receptor, block GABA from working properly like with caffeine? For example, one of the ways it works is it blocks adenosine, which is a molecule that increases sleep drive from making you feel sleepy because caffeine is kind of almost like a receptor blocker or taking up the space in that sense. Are there things like that with GABA too?

Yeah. So, GABA has different receptors in the brain. There's called the GABA-A receptor and the GABA-B receptor. And caffeine is actually a well-known desensitizer of the GABA receptor. So, it desensitizes the ability of GABA to bind to its receptor and to cause its function. So, what GABA will typically do when it binds to the GABA-A receptor, these GABA-A receptors are all over the brain. The GABA-A receptor will open when GABA actually binds to the receptor. And when it opens, it's actually a chloride channel. The chloride channel opens, chloride goes into the postsynaptic neurotransmitter and neurotrans— postsynaptic neuron. And as a result of that, it blocks the transmission of the signal going forward. So, if you have things that are going to desensitize the GABA receptor hypothetically or antagonize that receptor itself, there's other things that we can talk about that do this that'll also decrease the ability for GABA to bind to its receptor on the actual site and then decrease the ability for it to actually get that chloride channel to open and to stop firing.

Ben Greenfield: Yeah, with the biggest issue with that being that if you're keeping an inhibitory neurotransmitter from being active, you're going to reduce your ability to be able to sleep. And relax, which is obviously a problem for a lot of people. What else besides caffeine could do that?

Yes, all the stimulants can do it really. So, things like yerba mate, guarana, kola nut, they all have the same effect by reducing the sensitivity of the GABA receptor itself. Many people think about L-theanine as something that can enhance GABA and it actually can do this. But, if you take too high of a dose, it actually has a paradoxical effect and it'll actually block the GABA receptor. Opioids do this too. So, pain medications like your morphines and heroins of the world. I don't recommend the heroin, heroin as they used to say in Baltimore where I trained. But so, what opioids do is that they actually inhibit the release of GABA by binding to the— the opioid actually will bind to the GABA receptor itself and prevent the release of this chloride channel or the opening of the chloride channel. THC does it too. So, people who like to smoke marijuana, THC will actually inhibit GABA release. And this is what sometimes can cause anxiety. So, And, that's important. If you're inhibiting GABA, you're inhibiting an inhibitor. So, what do you do there? You're actually causing excitatory kinds of symptoms. So, that's why people who take or have THC might get anxious as a result of that because you're inhibiting the GABA receptor. And then, of course, you have other things that are also going to downregulate the GABA receptor over long periods of time. This is kind of more nuanced, but this makes sense. So, if you're drinking alcohol all the time. So, alcohol is something that binds very tightly to the GABA receptor. It's going to decrease the number of receptors that you have. Okay. So, it's going to downregulate the number of GABA receptors that you have available. And anxiety drugs will do this the same way. Sleep drugs will do the same thing. If you're having a lot of these things that bind tightly to these receptors and actually enhance it, you're going to have a downregulatory effect to the GABA receptor itself. And that's going to cause major issues, especially if you stop these things cold turkey. As you know, if you stop benzos or alcohol cold turkey, you can die from inhibiting the inhibitor. You don't have enough of these GABA receptors and all of a sudden you get all this excitatory glutamate because remember glutamate and GABA are always in balance with each other. So, if you have this imbalance of glutamate, you're going to get this excitatory type of scenario. You get high blood pressure, you get You'll get labile blood pressure, you get hallucinations. These are the things that are happening when you have too much glutamate around when alcohol withdrawal is happening.

Ben Greenfield: One of the arguments that people make for mitigating nighttime alcohol consumption is that it causes you to— I don't know if it contains GABA or if it causes your body to make more GABA, but that wears off later on in the wee hours of the morning like 1:00 or 2:00 AM. And results in impaired sleep the rest of the night. Is there something to that theory?

Yeah. So, what you're really talking about is there's different ways to bind to the GABA receptor. And, this is the weeds for the people who like this kind of thing. You have something called orthosteric ligands of the GABA receptor or you have allosteric modulators of the GABA receptor. So, orthosteric ligands are things that bind directly to the GABA receptor, the GABA binding site on the receptor, and you have allosteric modulators which are things that bind outside of that site to the GABA receptor that modulate GABA release. Either they inhibit it or they are what are called positive allosteric modulators that actually bind to the receptor and enhance GABA function. So, alcohol is a positive allosteric modulator of the GABA receptor. It's a very, very tightly bound GABA allosteric modulator. So, when it binds, it binds tightly. But as you said, it does bind for a very short period of time. And, but that tightly bound aspect of it is what makes it so addicting for people over time because when it's so tightly bound, what happens is that receptor starts downregulating itself or there becomes less of them. So, you need to drink more alcohol to get the same benefits or the same sort of effect. So, this is a tolerance effect. So, if you have a longer-acting positive allosteric modulator that doesn't have as much of an affinity, this could very much help with sleep actually and not have the same potential downside. But, those are more natural things. These are not things that you're going to get in a prescription, but these are things that I've been very interested in is how you can modulate the GABA system because GABA is really, really important for sleep too. You need GABA around to help maintain your sleep. When you're in your REM sleep, when you're getting your dreams of being chased by a lion, you don't wake up because there's GABA around and serotonin too, but they're both really important to maintain sleep as well.

Ben Greenfield: Yeah. Well, you've just said kind of makes sense as to why a lot of people who will use marijuana or THC prior to sleep have impaired dreaming cycles because they're not getting into those REM phases and probably also inhibiting GABA production resulting in less memory consolidation on emotional processing during sleep. That's why I'm not a huge fan of— well, I'm okay with CBD. I think that's actually pretty good for sleep. It is nice for the anti-inflammatory effects, but not so much THC.

Right. CBD and CBG, which are both fantastic cannabinoids that are non-psychoactive, they both modulate the endocannabinoid system in the brain, but they also modulate the GABA system. They're positive allosteric modulators of the GABA receptor. THC, as I mentioned earlier, has a negative effect. It has a negative or a negative allosteric modulating effect. So, it's actually inhibiting the inhibitor, which is GABA, of course, so causing more anxiety. Now, some people will get a beneficial effect initially if they're having a hard time sleeping. THC can help a little bit, but it does break the architecture of your sleep just like your Z-drugs, like your Ambiens, Lunestas of the world, your benzos of the world too. They all break your sleep cycles and they can help you in a pinch if you're really having a hard time. But, in the end, they do have significant detriments on your REM sleep as you mentioned for THC, your deep sleep for your benzos. And, we know that those are kind of a big deal when it comes to longevity and healthspan. So, at all times, I'm really trying to get my patients off of those drugs and wean them onto natural equivalents. But, of course, looking at their underlying foundational biology, are they B6 or magnesium deficient? Should we use those at night to help them sleep? Should we think about their glutamine sources? Do they have a leaky gut? If they have a leaky gut, do we need to seal that up and truly optimize their gut function so that they can actually utilize the sources of glutamine and glutamate? In their diet and utilize them and transition them or convert them over to GABA as we were talking about before.

Now, painkillers like opioids could also inhibit your GABA production or affect those receptors deleteriously. What about something like kratom? A lot of people use kratom. Have you ever looked into that, how that could impact GABA?

Yeah. So, it's not clear because it hasn't been studied at this point. If there is any mu opioid receptor antagonism or agonism in this case. So, the mu opioid receptor, there are a number of different types of opioid receptors. And I believe some of the kratoms do affect the mu opioid receptor. If that's the case, it's going to have the same effect as something like morphine and heroin. So, it is something to be aware of. It probably is strain-specific. And I don't have enough data as far as which ones specifically that the kratoms are from. Yeah.

Probably because I forget if it's red or green or white, but some are are better for sleep and some aren't. But, I know a lot of people use that and that's interesting to know that affects GABA. So, in terms of the deficiency of GABA, that makes sense. And, I want to ask you about ways that we could increase GABA, but before I do, I think this might be important so that people don't take too much. Could you have such a thing as a GABA excess? Let's say if people are hearing you and me talk and they're rushing out to get a GABA supplement or more glutamine and some of these precursors, could you have too much GABA?

Yeah, it's a good question. I mean, so what we're really seeing in clinical practice is a GABA deficiency, right? And we talked about a lot of the reasons. I forgot to mention some mineral deficiencies can do it too. Like, if you're low in copper, for example, you're also going to be potentially not able to bind GABA to that receptor. Also, if you're stressed all the time, if you have sympathetic overload and cortisol all the time, flying around, you're also going to be GABA deficient as well. Infections will prevent the conversion from glutamate to GABA. So, most of the time, Ben, what we're seeing is people that are GABA deficient. Now, GABA excess is usually pretty obvious. It's in people that are really tired and it's usually people that are taking GABA exogenously because the system is so well-regulated between glutamate and GABA because what happens if you have too much GABA around is that you get tired, you get fatigued, you feel like you have brain fog, you feel like you have imbalance, your blood pressure will go down. So, it's very uncommon to see that happen without exogenous sources is what it comes down to. You don't see it in clinical practice. But, what I can say in people that take GABA and then they say they can't wake up for 2 days, that often means that they don't need any extra that if they took it and they didn't feel like they could wake up the next day because they were so fatigued, That often is because they have already a pretty well-balanced system or it can mean they have a leaky brain and they're taking supplements that are getting across the blood-brain barrier like taking GABA supplements, for example. If you take GABA by itself, GABA itself is such a big molecule that it doesn't get across the blood-brain barrier unless you have a leaky brain or you take a lot of GABA. And, people get scared about the leaky brain. But, all that really means is that the blood-brain barrier is not doing its job keeping things out. And, that usually means you have a leaky gut as well.

Ben Greenfield: I know a doctor in Seattle who makes a transdermal GABA cream. I think it's called Somnium. What about transdermally? Do you think that if you're applying it to the temples or to the neck that you could mitigate the blood-brain barrier issues?

I mean, I think possibly. I think there's also some liposomal derivatives. I know Quicksilver makes one. For example, that's pretty good. And I talked to Chris about this in detail, Chris Shade. And so, I do think that with liposomal delivery, maybe transdermal, these are other options. But, what we did as a company was thinking about actually working on those allosteric sites for the most part because those allosteric sites are really easy to reach overall and there's good plants and good supplements that we can use to do that. And there's actually a fantastic mushroom derivative called agarin. And agarin is from the Amanita muscaria mushroom. You probably know that mushroom.

Is that like the Mario mushroom?

Yes, the Mario mushroom. It's the red and white one from Santa Claus mythology, the one that causes psychedelic journeys. But, and this is the thing, so there's two major components of the Amanita muscaria mushroom. There's one called ibotenic acid. Ibotenic acid is neurotoxic. That's what causes the tripping experience. You drink your shaman's urine from the reindeer who ate the mushroom.

Ben Greenfield: Yeah. I read that book. My friend Tero of Forcing Black Mushrooms wrote the book "Santa on 'Shrooms." And look, since my father is Christian Orthodox and Saint Nicholas is actually one of the revered saints in that religion, I've taken a deep dive into some of the, what I would argue to be the truer history of Saint Nicholas. I don't think he was necessarily a mushroom. Enthusiast, but regardless, it's an interesting story. But, back to the Amanita. So, there's different forms of the Amanita.

Ben Greenfield: Well, there's two different major compounds. The one is the ibotenic acid and the other one is called agarin. And, agarin is a positive— it's an orthosteric ligand of the GABA receptor, meaning it actually binds to the GABA receptor just like GABA. It gets across the blood-brain barrier and it is long-acting. The half-life of agarin is about 6 hours. So, it's a fantastic compound for sleep. And, we are the only company using it in a product for sleep out there right now because it's very difficult to find and very difficult to make.

I'm assuming it's legal.

Yes, it's legal. Yeah. So, Amanita actually is a legal mushroom in every state in the United States except for Louisiana. So, you can purchase it, but the problem is if you buy Amanita online or at a store, you're going to have the ibotenic acid in there too, and that is going to cause some neurotoxicity. So, we took the agarin out of there, and it's a fantastic orthosteric ligand of the GABA receptor. It's long-acting. You can use very, very low doses of it like 0.5 milligram, 1 milligram, and you don't get a psychedelic experience from it. You just get long-acting GABA support the whole evening. And, there are other compounds like this. So, kava, you know. Kava is a positive allosteric modulator of the GABA receptor.

Kind of like legal Hawaiian weed.

Yes. So, that's why there's kava bars. Kava bars are like you go and you feel like you've had a couple drinks of alcohol, but kava doesn't have the same addictive potential or the same tolerance or withdrawal potential. Kava is a natural plant. It's a positive allosteric modulator of the GABA receptor. It works on an entourage effect with multiple forms of something called kavalactones, which are the active ingredient of the kava plant. So, you have kava, which is great. You probably heard of magnolia bark or hanakyl before. Yeah.

Isn't that the Chinese traditional medicine treatment for insomnia, hanakyl?

Yep, it is. It's been around for a long time. And hanakyl is one of the active ingredients of magnolia bark. And this works at the benzodiazepine site of the GABA receptor, but it doesn't bind as tightly again. So, it doesn't have the same tolerance withdrawal or dependence issues as something like a benzodiazepine was or would. And so, you have honokiol, which is another one of these. So, I've also discussed some of the cannabinoids. So, CBD, CBG, CBN, they're also working as positive allosteric modulators of the GABA receptor. And, they're also working on the endocannabinoid system along with other areas too. I mean, CBG is a fantastic, fantastic cannabinoid working on the PPAR gamma side and metabolically. It's got some really cool things happening there too.

Ben Greenfield: With CBG, a lot of people will say, well, that's the good endocannabinoid for focus, and they'll say CBN or CBD would be better for sleep. But what you're saying is you could take CBG and it would have a good impact on GABA in terms of supporting sleep?

Yeah. So, I think more of CBG as an anxiolytic overall. Okay. That's where the data is. And so, I think more of CBN is something that helps with sleep support. And there's a little bit of a difference, right? So, we talked about there's GABA-A receptors, but there's different types of GABA-A receptors. Each GABA-A receptor has 5 subunits. And, each of these subunits has a different composition depending on where they are in the brain. So, you have alpha-1 subunits which are more responsible for sleep and you have alpha-2 which are more responsible for anxiety. And so, you can actually modulate the type of receptor you want to address depending on the issue that somebody has. And, yeah. And, these GABA receptors, as I mentioned, are everywhere but they're also in a really cool location. Ben, they're called interneurons. Interneurons are these neurons that kind of like the way stations between other neurons. So, you have a huge serotonergic neuron and a huge dopamine neuron. And, in between, you'll have a GABA neuron. And, what GABA is really doing is it's helping with the processing of information. So, learning, memory, skill acquisition. Oh, wow. It's not all just about dopamine and serotonin. We actually have to be able to put on the brakes I mean, you know this as well as I do, Ben. It's like how much information could we potentially be processing in any one moment in any given time? We have so much coming at us. So, what is preventing us from doing all that processing? It's actually the GABA interneurons that are actually modulating all this. So, it's really cool that we have amazing abilities to do actually some modulation with some of these compounds but also looking at our foundational biology and making sure that we're foundationally optimized so that we can do this when we need to.

Usually, what holds me back most from the amount of information processing I can achieve is whether or not we run out of coffee that day. I actually didn't know that about GABA and its interplay between serotonin and dopamine.

Oh, yeah.

So, you talked about the magnolia bark extract, CBN, CBG, some of these cannabinoids. In addition to that, you brought up the mushroom extract, and acava. Now, are these all things— because you gave me two different products when we were at a recent A4M, the American Academy for Anti-Aging Medicine. We were talking there and you gave me some stuff to help me sleep in Vegas. But before that, I think you'd sent those same products to my home. One was called Tro Zzz, one was called Tro Calm. I don't really understand the difference between the two, but does one of those have all the ingredients you just listed?

Yeah, man. So, the Tro Calm was created for anxiousness and for stress reduction. And, it's a combination of kava, CBD, CBG, and something called nicotinyl GABA. We didn't talk about that one, but nicotinyl GABA is a vitamin B3 attached to a GABA molecule. As I mentioned earlier, GABA itself doesn't get across the blood-brain barrier very easily, but a vitamin B3 attached to a GABA does. And when it gets into the brain, this is super cool, it hydrolyzes or breaks up into vitamin B3 into GABA. So, GABA becomes the neurotransmitter GABA and vitamin B3 becomes vitamin B3. So, it causes mild vasodilation and mild activation. So, that's nice because during the day, if you're taking something for anxiety or stress, you don't want to feel tired, you just don't want to feel anxiety and stress.

Ben Greenfield: That's kind of how some people microdose with CBD, like 10 milligrams of CBD, larger amounts would just knock you out. But, they'll use that for a little bit of relaxed focus. You have theanine, which you mentioned earlier, people will use for that as well. So, what you're saying is this Tro Calm, it's helping out with GABA and relaxation but in a more focused way that could be taken during the daytime.

Exactly, yeah. And, as you know from our Trokis, these are titratable. So, they're dissolvable lozenges that go between your upper cheek and gum, take about 15 to 30 minutes to dissolve bypassing digestion. In your liver and small intestines. So, you get a faster effect. And, as a result of the troche itself and how it's created, it's precision dose. So, each quarter of it is the same amount equal 4 quarters equal the amount that's in the troche. And so, you can take just a quarter to take the edge off and you do that during the day if you're having an anxious moment. So, it's like the example I always give is you're about to give a speech but you can't remember any of your lines because your brain is so sympathetically dominant. That everything has gone blank. If you just take a little bit of Atrocalm, just a quarter of that can take the edge off and all of a sudden you're just firing on all cylinders. So, it's that calm focus kind of feeling. But, if you have more issues with stress and anxiety, taking more of it can significantly help. With that vitamin B3 attached to that GABA though, it's super interesting because you just won't feel that tired. It's something that can help you wind down in the evenings, but it's not going to make you feel sleepy per se. But, for me and for a lot of my patients, it actually helps quiet the mind. I mean, on average, I think you probably know this, Ben, but I think on average, a human has about 70,000 thoughts per day. And, if you are anxious or stressed, you have about 120,000 thoughts per day. If you have depression, it's the same thing. So, you're ruminating on this stuff. And so, what TroCom can do and any sort of GABAergic kind of ecosystem that we're creating with this product, which is very cool, is that you can just tamper down or just as Dr. Ted would say cause constipation of your thoughts, thoughtstipation.

Yeah, yeah. I feel like I usually have thought diarrhea more often than thought constipation. The troche, you said the upper cheek and the gum. I've actually been putting these kind of right in my lower lip where you'd usually put, I don't know, a nicotine pouch or something like that. Is that the wrong location?

So, the lower lip has about 2 layers of mucosa. The upper lip between your upper cheek and, and gum, they have about 8 layers. And the reason why we like it up here in the, in the upper cheek and gum is that it's gonna actually get most of the ingredient to dissolve directly into your cheek mucosa, directly into your vascular system there.

That's interesting. Alright. Well, I might have been wasting some of this stuff then because I, I've never put it up there.

Yeah. You're not wasting it because you're getting it. If you're swallowing it, you're still gonna get the effect. It's just gonna take a little bit longer. And what we find is that for the true Kalm specifically and the Tro Zzz that it's obviously going to work faster this way if it's dissolved up here. And also, you don't have to worry about degradation of any of your ingredients because you don't have any issue with digestion. Typically, with things going through your liver, you're going to get some bioavailability that gets downregulated or gets decreased as a result, but you don't get that with dissolving in your mouth. Ben Greenfield: Alright.

Well, I know there's at least 1.5 listeners thinking this, so I'm going to ask it. What if you just shove one up your butt? For like a, a rectal delivery?

So suppositories are great for mucosal absorption. There's no doubt about it. Um, our troches are not formulated in that way. They have some flavoring. They have a little bit of peppermint, for example, in our other products and a little bit of cinnamon. So you don't want to be doing that in your rectal mucosa. Now I have no problem with suppositories. I think they're fantastic, but not for our troches. But like, as I said, if people don't want to dissolve them in their mouth, they can swallow them. And they do work that way. They're just going to be working a little bit slower and they're also probably need a little bit of a higher dose, for example. So, if you needed a quarter, you may need a half. But, I mean, honestly, 15 to 30 minutes and you start feeling the effect. It's pretty profound for most people.

Yeah, they kick in pretty quickly. For me, I've been using it just because I kind of stick to my tried and true habit. I use the Kion Sleep, some CBD, and if I'm traveling, melatonin before bed. And, that works pretty well for me, but when I've been waking, In the wee hours, I've been popping— actually, I cut the little squares in half. I do half of the Tro Zzz and half of the Tro Calm, and that seems to just kind of get me back to sleep pretty quickly. It just kind of dissolves in the mouth. And, the only issue with it is, of course, I have to take my mouth tape off, Scott, and apply a new piece of mouth tape. Gosh darn it. Maybe that's why I asked the suppository question because believe it or not, I don't tape my rectum for sleep. But the Tro Zzz, the other one, what's in the Tro Zzz? Because you were just talking about the Tro Calm.

Ben Greenfield: Yeah. So, the Tro Calm has those 4 ingredients that are really working synergistically together in low doses to optimize for stress and anxiety and help you get rid of those fast. And, Tro Zzz was created to be a comprehensive sleep solution really leveraging the GABA system that we've been talking about. So, it has the Hanakyl that we were talking about before, It has the agarin that we were talking about before as well, agarin from the psychedelic mushroom, the Amanita, very, very low doses, no psychedelic experience, just long-acting GABA support throughout your whole evening. Has CBD, it has CBN in it as well. It also has adenosine. So, adenosine is not acting on the GABA system, it's working on the adenosine receptors in the brain. And, you were mentioning caffeine earlier, so this is for your people that like to drink coffee all day long, but it can screw up their sleep. Having some adenosine before you go to bed can really help with that unbinding of the caffeine to the receptor and getting adenosine to allow it to bind.

You could use an adenosine and actually kind of knock caffeine off that receptor?

Yeah, you can.

You just gave a whole bunch of people a lot of excuses to have an affogato after dinner.

Yeah. I mean, obviously, buyer beware. It may not work for everybody depending on how much caffeine you have in depending on how sensitive you are, but that's why we added it to the actual formula. We also have another really cool ingredient in there called cordycepin. So, it comes from the cordyceps mushroom and people have some fun interplay with the cordyceps mushroom now because of the show on HBO called The Last of Us and the cordyceps mushroom. But, it's a medicinal mushroom that's been around in Chinese medicine for thousands of years. It does eat the brains of insects and take them over. So, that does exist. It doesn't take over and make us zombies yet, but cordycepin increases slow-wave sleep.

No way. I always thought it was a stimulant.

No, no. Cordycepin, it increases slow-wave sleep. It also has these profound effects on metabolism. It's been studied in cancer. It's been studied in insulin resistance. It is a very cool compound. And again, we're the first company to ever put it in a sleep formula. And, this is, of course, out of Dr. Ted's brain. But, the key with all this, Ben, is we are enhancing and optimizing sleep architecture. So, we are only doing that in a very holistic way. And, that's the key with taking anything for sleep. You really want to try to take things— like your stuff, I'm sure too, it's trying to enhance your sleep architecture and not mess with it. And, we also have some 5-HTP and some melatonin in the formula as well to help round it out as a comprehensive sleep solution.

How much 5-HTP, do you remember?

Yeah, 50 milligrams of 5-HTP.

Okay.

So, that's not too much because you get a lot from the— I guess it's probably more like the Ray Peat, Georgi Dinkov, small niche community online. Dr. Joe Mercola is kind of on this as well. Like, too much 5-HTP could actually be deleterious due to serotonin excesses.

Yes. Yeah, I'm definitely familiar with Joe's interest in that and Ray's interest in that as well. But, I don't see it as being a big issue. I mean, oftentimes, it's a very low dose here at 50 milligrams. And, the other people sometimes will also get a little upset about melatonin in there too. I don't know what your thoughts are on, but I mean, from my perspective, even if people are well dialed in with circadian rhythms, our melatonin production does go down as we get older. And, it's especially important when we're traveling as well. So, TroZzz is a great sleep solution, I feel like, with the melatonin in there.

Ben Greenfield: I travel so much, Scott, that let's say there is, even though I don't think there is, let's say there is a negative feedback loop with melatonin and by supplementing, you're shutting down your own endogenous production or whatever. For me, it's one of the best travel hacks ever. And, it's kind of like guys who just want to maintain libido and strength and muscle mass as they age. Who take testosterone, it's like, well, yeah, you're going to shut down your own endogenous production. You could take Enclomid or Enclomiphene or HCG and mitigate some of that. But, at the end of the day, it's a decision about better living through science and shutting down something, at least the possibility of shutting down something your body makes. And, for me, I'm okay with melatonin. And, if somebody says, "Well, that means you're going to be dependent on it." Look, it's so clutch for me for travel that I'm okay with that.

Yeah. I mean, I think that's a great perspective. And, I also think that people don't realize that melatonin is so important for not only for sleep but it's one of our most powerful antioxidants.

Yeah, amazing anti-inflammatory antioxidant. I have a friend who just got a urinary tract infection and I have recommended them high-dose melatonin protocol by day and methylene or by night and methylene blue protocol by day for that very reason.

Ben Greenfield: Yeah, for sure. And then, people taking very, very high doses of melatonin as an anti-cancer. And I know you've talked about before that on the podcast, I'm sure. So, I think that my sense of it is that very low doses like 2.5 or 5 milligrams, they're not going to have any downregulatory effect on melatonin production. The other thing that people worry about is testosterone production going down with melatonin, and there's no indication that that's case. There's no great studies at all and there's been a lot of lay press biohacker type of people saying that not taking melatonin is decreasing my testosterone. That's also bullshit too. So, I think that there are certain people that will be more sensitive to lower doses. I'm more sensitive in general, so I only can have about 2.5 milligrams. Otherwise, I actually get a paradoxical effect interestingly enough.

Ben Greenfield: Yeah, a lot of people report that. That happens to my wife. She takes too much. How much is in the Troisi? How much melatonin is in Troisi?

5 milligrams.

Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So, if you're cutting that, that's an entire square. So, if you're cutting that in half, you're getting 2.5.

Yeah. Yeah. The average dose seems to be about a half, half a trochee for the Tro Zzz. So, almost all of our trochees, a quarter, a half, a full is kind of deal. But, with the Tro Zzz, it doesn't really work for most people if they don't have another sleep stack with just taking a quarter. You need to take at least a half to get a good experience. But, if you're already taking a sleep stack and you're adding it to the sleep stack, then it may be something you can start off with a quarter and kind of go from there. But, people got to be mindful, of course, when they're stacking things together. I mean, obviously, if you're taking any other GABAergic drugs that are prescription, those are going to be much stronger. And so, you have to be careful if you're taking anything that's going to enhance the GABA system too.

Ben Greenfield: Okay, got it. That makes sense. So, you hear about glutamate, and I know a lot of people who use ketamine. It's actually being used recreationally as an intranasal spray by a lot of people, parties, raves, social functions, et cetera. I've used it before, but from what I understand, it actually interacts with glutamate. So, I wanted to ask you this, is there any interplay between ketamine and GABA? If you were to take GABA and ketamine at the same time, would they counteract the effects of each other or would long-term ketamine use have a deleterious impact on GABA or anything like that? Do you know anything about that?

Yeah. So, it's interesting. I was just talking to somebody about this yesterday. And, the interplay is it's on the glutamate receptors, but what I have a friend in the ER, he told me yesterday that the pharmacists hate ketamine because it's a dirty drug. And, by dirty means it affects tons of receptors. It's not just affecting the glutamate receptors, it's actually affecting multiple different ones including dopamine, norepinephrine, and also GABA as well. So, as a result of that, I mean, ketamine is a great drug. It's got some great therapeutic potential, and it saved a lot of lives. And, we should be using it in ERs instead of giving people Haldol and Ativan and shit and giving them ketamine and getting them psychiatry. There's a big push for that actually. But certainly, we know that when there's more glutamate around, you're going to make more GABA because of that conversion factor, the B6 and magnesium converting glutamate to GABA. So, we know that's happening. Okay. But, if you are always using— if you're using something like ketamine all the time, you are going to start depleting everything. You're going to start depleting GABA as well and you're just going to start depleting glutamate and then you're going to be downregulating your receptors. So, there seems to be a bit of a balance as far as I can tell. When you actually are affecting these NMDA receptors, you're actually also affecting the GABA receptors as well. It hasn't been well described, but you don't see people getting totally excitable. I mean, most people that take ketamine will actually have more of a calming dissociative effect. They don't have this sort of what you would imagine would be a glutamate overactivity, which would potentially present as excitability. It could present maybe as significantly as seizures, but that doesn't happen. So, it's obviously affecting the GABA receptors and other locations too. So, I think we don't know, but certainly, I mean, ketamine as a recreational drug is a little bit scary.

Yeah. I think a lot of people don't realize how depleting it can be. It's kind of like that, what do they call it, the Black Tuesday or whatever it is after the weekend when you've had MDMA where everything's depleted and you got to take glutathione and SAMe.

What'd you call it? Suicide Tuesday.

Yeah, Suicide Tuesday. And, I would imagine a lot of people are using ketamine recreationally, maybe having those issues, not even know that they've got depleted amino acids and depleted neurotransmitters and probably need to replace some building blocks and modulate dosage. I mean, I can't swing a dead cat by the tail without hitting at least 3 or 4 well-known biohackers, health influencers, people in the industry who are dependent on ketamine because they've talked to me about it.

Ben Greenfield: Yeah. No, I'm not surprised. And I mean, I think the best description or the best experience for people to think about glutamate overdose is when you go to a Chinese restaurant and happen to have monosodium glutamate in your food. It's sweet, right? And then, all of a sudden, you start getting headaches and you feel irritable and you can't sleep. That is glutamate overload. That is your brain not being able to convert that glutamate over to GABA fast enough. This could be hereditary to some degree or it could be just something that you don't have the cofactors to be able to do it. That's more common, your vitamin B6 and magnesium. And so, you're going to get headaches. So, if I go to a Chinese restaurant with my father, he's going to have headaches if we have MSG. I don't typically get them, but it can cause that excitability kind of thing. So, if something's pure glutamate, it should cause something like that as opposed to something with ketamine, which is more of, like I said, a dirty drug. And I don't mean that in a bad way. I just mean it's dirty in the sense it's affecting lots of receptors. Or promiscuous. That's the other word we like to use for these kinds of drugs. Maybe that's nicer.

Ben Greenfield: You hear about sauna use, for example, or even exercise as ways to increase and feel-good neurotransmitters like dopamine, epinephrine, and the like. Are there lifestyle factors or even so-called biohacks? I mean, you talk a lot about the hyperbaric chamber, for example, but certain technologies or activities people can engage in that would support healthy GABA production?

Yeah, for sure. I mean, I think the biggest one is that we know that stress significantly depletes GABA. So, doing things that are not stressful are going to have a relationship with increasing GABA production over time. So, meditation, there's been studies on meditation, yoga, and breathwork increasing GABA production. Makes sense. The more parasympathetic you are, the more relaxed you are, the more you're going to replete your GABA levels overall. And also, actually interestingly, although this may be paradoxical to think about, but exercise does the same thing. So, exercise increases your balance between your glutamate and your GABA production. So, you're actually going to have more GABA production in various areas in the brain as a result of having— doing exercise overall. So, exercise is going to do it, meditation is going to do it. And then, of course, we talked about optimizing your diet, right? So, optimizing your diet for glutamine-rich foods. Glutamate foods are okay too. These are fermented foods typically. And, I can run a list if you guys want, but we can talk about those types of foods and also your minerals, your magnesium, your copper, your zinc. All these are really important to build up the ability for you to be able to make glutamine or to get glutamine in the body converted to glutamate, convert glutamate to GABA.

Ben Greenfield: What are the 3 foods that are the highest in glutamine if we just want to pick 3?

So, a couple ones that are good. So, steak, everybody likes steak. Yes. Steak is really high in glutamine, sauerkraut and fermented foods. And I mean, I'm not a big fan of cheeses, but cheeses also have a lot of glutamine in them too.

Does the cheese matter? Because usually it's like the hard artisanal cheeses that seem to be the highest in some of these beneficial compounds.

I think it's those cheeses.

I don't think it's the soft cheeses as much, but I'm not like Parmigiano-Reggiano or something like that. Yeah.

And then, you have your glutamate-containing foods. Seafood is high in glutamate, caviar, seaweed, mushrooms, spinach, dried cod. Those are the main ones that have a lot of glutamate in them. I think where I tend to focus with most of my patients that I work with is on the glutamine-containing foods because I find that if you're giving a lot of glutamate-containing foods to people, sometimes they can get those headaches too for the same reasons that you get it from monosodium glutamate.

Made. Steak and caviar sounds like a real drag, man.

I don't think that sounds bad. That sounds perfect to me.

There's a lot of websites and quizzes I've seen. Dr. Eric Braverman, he probably has the most popular one. I think that supplements company Nootopia, they have a quiz that I think is supposed to be kind of like a neurotransmitter quiz. But is there anything to this idea of genetic predispositions or personality types that would dictate whether you're GABA dominant or GABA deficient?

Do you have alcoholics in your family? That's the one thing, right? So, because if you have alcoholics in your family, this could be a genetic predisposition to having less GABA available so that you have to actually increase GABA other ways to maintain some sort of mood regulation.

Because our ancestors didn't have Trozies, they had wine and mead and beer.

Well, the thing is, Ben, you actually— this is— you actually— that's a perfect segue. It's not so much that it's hereditary that they have a GABA deficiency. It's more that they're hereditary in the sense of their ability to methylate their B vitamins or their ability to sustain nutrition to optimize their glutamate and GABA levels. So, my strong sense of this, and I've worked with several patients like this and I have colleagues that have done the same, if you optimize somebody that has a history of alcoholism in their family, for example, if you optimize their vitamins, minerals, and nutrients, they don't feel like they need to drink and they won't drink as much overall because they're not trying to maintain a GABA level that they couldn't maintain before because they had a genetic predisposition from a vitamin, mineral, and nutrient perspective. Because actual inherited disorders of the GABA receptor are ridiculously rare, they're just not seen in clinical practice at all. So, I think most of the issues that we're seeing from a "genetic predisposition" like, for example, alcoholism are related to vitamin, mineral, and nutrient deficiencies and maybe some genetic abnormalities or heterogeneities there that are causing it but not the GABA receptor itself. So, I mean, but most of those quizzes are not going to ask about GABA. They're going to ask about serotonin and norepinephrine and dopamine because those are all the sexy ones that people are talking about taking fasts from or at least dopamine to me at least.

Yeah, yeah. So when it comes to sleep, is there anything that you personally do besides Tro Calm or Tro Zzz for sleep that, that for you is just like a game changer? And this is kind of relevant to me right now because I'm working on a new book and there's a big chapter on it with a whole bunch of like updated sleep hacks. So sweet. Kind of like behind the scenes asking, asking some of my guests what their personal sleep hacks are.

Sure. So, from a product perspective, I'm actually more of a Tro Calm guy because for me, as soon as I fall asleep, I'm good. It's a matter of falling asleep for me. And so, that's the type A personality, the perseverating thoughts, the thought diarrhea as it were as you were describing before. So, my thoughts to patient would be Tro Calm in this case. So, I'll take Tro Calm a couple hours before bed.

Oh, a couple hours before.

Yeah, yeah. I find that actually I could take it right before bed too, but I really like having it on board for a couple hours. It lasts for about 3 to 5 hours for me. So, I like having it right before that sort of wind-down period when I'm with my kids and I'm relaxing and I want my mind to be sort of off work, phone away kind of deal and just having it as sort of an evening. So, what people will do oftentimes is take Tro Calm instead of drinking a glass of wine with dinner or having their beer or whatever it might be as their wind-down. So, I like to use it that way. Overall, it's sort of like my wind down for the evening. But, for me, actually, Dr. Ted Achakoso, who's been on your podcast before, he probably gave me the single most important piece of advice that I've ever received from sleep. He calls it his sleep anchoring technique. And, what this means is it basically changes the perspective on the importance of sleep. Instead of saying that your day starts when you wake up, say to yourself, your day starts when you go to bed.

Your day— see, I've always heard it like your night starts when you wake up with ample light exposure, but this is interesting. Keep going.

Yeah. So, the idea here is that if you consider going to sleep as the start of your day, not the end of your day, then you're going to treat it with more respect and with more care and take care and protect it on a day-to-day basis whenever you can. Because your day starts when you go to bed, not when you wake up. Now, of course, when you wake up, you have your morning routine, you have your sunlight exposure, you have your grounding, anything else that you do. But, if you just focus on that but you forgot about the other 8 hours you just went to bed, it's not going to help as much, as you know. So, if you think about your day starts when you go to bed as opposed to when you wake up, that's the frame shift that helped me. I mean, I'm a doctor, right? I had In medical school, my friends and I wore shirts that said, "Sleep is for quitters." Okay. So, I didn't think sleep mattered for a long time. And even through my 30s, I didn't think it mattered. I thought I could be up in the middle of night, do what I need to do, and just work the next day. But no, I mean, like many people, I crashed and burned. And when I turned 40, it's not going to happen anymore, right? So, most of us can get away with it for a period of time.

Yeah.

So, that's the first thing and that's the major thing for what I tell my patients. That's what we tell people at Transcriptions. Because, again, we have great formulas here that can help you with anxiety, they can help you with stress, they can help you with sleep. But, what you should be doing is thinking about what is this whole sleep architecture that we were talking about. So, you asked about my personal thing, so I can give you my personal if you'd like.

Yeah.

So, for me, what I'll typically do is an infrared sauna. I have an infrared sauna in my house. When I found out that I was going to have 4 kids, we thought we were going to have 3 and Somehow, we ended up having 4.

Wait, quadruplets?

No, no. I have 3 kids. I had 3 daughters and then my 4th was a surprise.

Okay.

Okay.

I understand.

Yes. Yes. And so, my oldest is 13, my youngest is 6 now, and 3 girls and my youngest is a boy. But, when I found out that we were going to have a 4th kid, I was like a very small house living in Northern California at the time. So, I bought myself an infrared sauna. And, it's been, I think, one of the best purchases that I've ever made by far. So, I'm in there most nights. I spend about 30 minutes in there. Typically, we do some reading, some meditation, some relaxation exercises of some sort during that time. And then, after the sauna, I'll typically take a temperate shower, so not too hot, not too cold. We'll do my sleep stack of supplements, typically some magnesium, some glycine, sometimes Tro Zzz when I'm traveling, but I don't take Tro Zzz unless I'm traveling typically. Because I don't need it. And then, I have what I call my Pavlov's dog routine. And Pavlov's dog is, for those who don't know, this is an experiment done where they would ring a bell and give food to a dog and the dog would salivate and the dog would eat. And then, eventually take away the food, just ring the bell, the dog would salivate. So, the idea for me for my sleep routine is do the exact same thing for the last 10 to 15 minutes every night. And, that's sleep. It's basically going to the bathroom, brushing my teeth, stretching, and getting into bed with my eye mask on, having a sound machine on, doing gratitude, and then just done, bed.

Ben Greenfield: That's awesome. I love the Pavlovs. I'm the same way to the extent to where I try to choose things for the Pavlov's dog routine that I can replicate when traveling. So, if it's lavender essential oil, I don't use an oil diffuser anymore. I just sprinkle it on the pillow because I can do that same thing when I travel. The sleep mask, easy. The red light headlamp that I use to get around the room at night or the red lights, that's easy to bring to the hotel room. Putting the pillow underneath the back of my knees and breathing for about 5 minutes with 4 in, 8 out before rolling over into a side sleeping position. I can replicate that in the hotel. I try to not be dependent on any large bulky sleep technologies that if I'm on the road traveling, again, because I travel so much, I'm going to feel like I'm not getting my adequate sleep routine that I can replicate because I can't exactly call down to the front desk and ask them to bring me, I don't know, a BedJet air conditioning unit or a ChilliPad for sleep. So, I try not to be dependent on that stuff.

Ben Greenfield: I'm totally with you. So, I have my long routine, which is when I'm home, and then I have my short routine when I'm traveling. I mean, this is something you've dialed in so much because of how much you travel, but it's just certain techniques or certain things that I will do that just trigger my brain to know that this is time to get to sleep. And I think the biggest part for me actually is taking those 30 seconds or a minute when I'm in bed and just doing a full body scan, doing a small gratitude practice, and just being comfortable and grateful for the day. And, and setting intentions for the next day too. So, it's really important for me. So, nothing fancy there really, but I like the fancy tools as well when I have them, of course.

Ben Greenfield: Yeah, the body scans are pretty incredible, the so-called Yoga Nidra or non-sleep deep rest protocols. There's not many voices that I don't find kind of grinding for those, but there's one lady on YouTube. And, I've got YouTube Premium, which I think is the ultimate life hack just because you can download tons of stuff, view it online ad-free. They still don't have the ability to take your downloaded videos and make playlists out of them, which I think they need to add. At least that can be used in offline mode. So, tip to anyone who works at YouTube, make playlists downloadable and available offline. But anyways, this lady, Allie Boothroyd, I think is her channel, she has non-sleep deep rest protocols that range from 20 minutes up to a full 8 hours. And, when I flew back from Qatar the other day because I just got back from India, I did her 8-hour on the plane with noise-blocking headphones. Incredible. And, usually what'll happen is if I wake up at 4:00 a.m. or whatever, I want to kind of lull myself back to sleep. I, of course, pop a Tro Calm, Scott, but I'll lay back and do her— it's the 2-hour one if I want to lay in bed until 6:00 or so. And, it's incredible. You aren't actually sleeping but you're in this drool coming out the side of your mouth, non-sleep deep rest state. And, because you're scanning your body, I think this is why it works is my working hypothesis at least. You can't think about work when you're thinking big toe, breathe, next toe, breathe, next toe, breathe, small toe, ankle, heel, back of knee. So, it just kind of keeps your thoughts from Racing. But, her voice in particular is incredible. And, what I do, I'll get a little techie on you here, Scott. This will be the pro tip. There's another app called SleepStream and it plays white noise. It blocks out a lot of ambient noise. And, a lot of times these Yoga Nidra sessions, there's long periods of just silence in between what the person says is the next cue. So, if the kids are up and awake getting ready for the day and I'm not ready to get up yet or the dogs are barking or the rooster is crowing, which usually starts about 4:30, This SleepStream app, I can play it simultaneous to the Yoga Nidra in just my cheapo headphones and it'll block out ambient noise while I'm still able to hear the Yoga Nidra voice. So, that's what I'll do if I just need to use some kind of a sound to lull me to sleep. I still like that. There's an app called the NuCalm that's also really good. But, for Yoga Nidra, combining something like Ali's Yoga Nidra tracks with the SleepStream app, it's incredible.

Do you have one headphone going in one ear? How does that work? Is it also both being piped in your ears at the same time?

I have the SleepPhones. They're like the soft— they're only $20, I think, on Amazon. Yeah. But, they're good for side sleepers. I tend to roll on my side. And, if I happen to have forgotten to get those out before bed, I'll literally just use my old-school Apple white wired headphones and put those in. Yeah. Yeah. No, it plays, it layers over. So, the SleepSpace white noise layers over the Yoga Nidra. So, it's not coming through two separate speakers. Both those tracks are coming through both headphones into both ears. Cool.

You're doing a real-time mix, man. That's cool. I dig it. Yeah. Yeah. I'll use the old Apple old-school headphones when I travel too for the white noise. I find that helps a lot.

Yeah.

And, I have a free app that I use for the white noise piece of things too.

You know the other hack for this, and this is something I learned from Luke's story, those underwater swim headphones that are They use bone vibration to transmit sound. You can have in your regular headphones and then in your underwater MP3 player that you're using on dry land, you can pump out— what Luke told me is he'll play Joe Dispenza meditation tracks while playing NuCalm and he'll play the NuCalm through his regular headphones and play the Joe Dispenza meditation tracks through his bone vibrating headphones if you want to call them that. And, that's another way to layer. So, all sorts of different ways to sleep if you, like many other people, can't turn the brain off at night or at least stop up the brain diarrhea.

Ben Greenfield: I love that. Yeah, I've used NuCalm before. I like it. And, I'm a big fan of Sam Harris's Waking Up app as well. And so, some of his longer meditations, and I've had a couple of friends learn how to splice those things together with various other tracks like NuCalm and other things. This is getting fancy, but it's interesting to play around with. I think the body scans are great for the reasons you mentioned, Ben. It's a way to get out of your head a little bit and it's a way to just kind of let everything relax. And, that's typically what you need is you just need your brain to shut off enough so you can start jumping into deep sleep, which is what all of us need to do in that early time when we get into bed.

Ben Greenfield: Yeah. Well, Scott, this has been a wide-ranging valuable resource of information for all things GABA. And sleep and beyond. So, the Troscription stuff, I know you gave me a link and a discount code and all that kind of good stuff for people who want to try Tro Zzz or Tro Calm. You also have the methylene blue ones and the— what's it called? The canotine?

Yep, blue canotine.

Yeah, blue canotine. So, I'm going to put all the show notes for everybody listening at BenGreenfieldLife.com/GABApodcast GABA Podcast. I'll include some links and discount codes to Dr. Scott's stuff. I'll link to the very interesting article he also wrote on hyperbaric therapy because if you have a hyperbaric chamber, I think it'd be incredible for you to learn some of the ways that Scott upgrades those. So, Scott, thank you so much, man, for coming on and sharing all this stuff with us and for sending me this Tro Calm and Tro Zzz. I really like it.

My pleasure, man. It's my pleasure to be with you today. And yeah, your code's easy for people. It's just code BEN, B-E-N. At checkout for 10% off your order. And so, it's easy and I really appreciate the opportunity to speak about the forgotten neurotransmitter. And, I hope that people listening here learned a little bit about GABA. And, as I wrote an article, there's a bunch of articles on our website on transcriptions on GABA as well as our other products.

Cool. Alright, I'll link to all that.

Check it out.

Awesome. So, BenGreenfieldLife.com/GABA-Podcast. Till next time, I'm Ben along with Dr. Scott Sherr signing out from BenGreenfieldLife.com. Have an amazing week.

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Want free access to comprehensive show notes, my weekly roundup, cutting-edge research and articles, my top recommendations for everything that you need to hack your life, and much more? Visit BenGreenfieldLife.com. In compliance with the FTC guidelines, please assume the following about links and posts on this site. Most of the links going to products are often affiliate links, of which I receive a small commission from sales of certain items, but the price is the same for you, and sometimes I even get to share a unique and somewhat significant discount with you. In some cases, I might also be an investor in a company I mention. I'm the founder, for example, of Kion LLC, the makers of Kion-branded supplements and products, which I talk about quite a bit. Regardless of the relationship, if I post or talk about an affiliate link to a product, it is indeed something I personally use, support, and with full authenticity and transparency recommend in good conscience. I personally vet each and every product that I talk about. My first priority is providing valuable information and resources to you that help you positively optimize your mind, body, and spirit. And I'll only ever link to products or resources, affiliate or otherwise, that fit within this purpose. So, there's your fancy legal disclaimer.