LS 103 - Medical Cocktails to Take Your Life to the Next Level with Dr Scott Sherr

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Welcome to the Longevity show, informing listeners on the important aspects of health, wealth and happiness to ensure you live life to its fullest. With fascinating interviews with top authors and gurus in the field, along with the latest news in the science and technology of longevity, we're going to reveal expert advice and amazing secrets of living a longer, happier life. And now, here's your host, Jason Hartman.

Welcome to the Longevity and Biohacking Show. This is your host, Fernando Aries, in partnership with the Hartman Media Company, filling in for Jason Hartman. This show was created to inform listeners on the important aspects of health, wealth and happiness to ensure you live life to its fullest, achieving a long lifespan along with a long health span. Today, my guest is Dr. Scott Scher. Dr. Scott Scher is a board certified internal medicine physician with additional certification in hyperbaric oxygen medicine. He's a member of the Institute for Functional Medicine, Society of Hospitalist Medicine, the National Hyperbaric association, and the Undersea and Hyperbaric Medical Society. Through his work as an integrative physician, he came to realize that dietary changes and nutritional therapies were the key to reaching peak performance. He's here today to share his knowledge with us and I welcome Dr. Scott. It's a pleasure to talk to you. I'm actually excited to have you on the show. I met most of your team in Pasadena not too long ago. Kara, Cindy and Shanna.

But.

But I don't think I met you personally there. Correct.

I don't think we ran into each other. Of the 3,000 individuals, I probably spoke to about 5%. But I'm happy you got to meet some of the team and experience what we're about to offer in Santa Monica.

Yeah, I am glad too. Now, I do have a clarification question before we get started. Your clinic is located within the Bulletproof Labs in California. Please explain what this means. Is the clinic an independent medical practice? What's the relationship with Bulletproof and the structure? What's your role? If you can kind of give us a breakdown of how it works?

Sure, I'd be happy to. So Bulletproof Labs is opening soon. Coming soon in Santa Monica. And inside of Bulletproof Labs there will be an independent medical practice. I am the medical director of that independent medical practice and we are contracted with Bulletproof to work in tandem in partnership to create an optimal performance space both on the non medical side, which I don't direct and I'm not technically a part of and the medical practice which I do direct. And on the medical side, we have created intravenous intravascular injection therapy to support the health and wellness of the bulletproof clients, those that are coming in to use a lot of the technologies that we're going to have, the biohacking technologies that we're going to have in this space. The medical practice there is to support it an independent entity, but very much as a part of the whole, in the idea of really just optimizing performance and improving the health and well being, energy, focus, vitality of at least the people in Santa Monica to start with, but hopefully the world at some point. We have small aspirations to start off with, but very large ones in the future. Fernando.

So your clinic is physically in Santa Monica then?

Yes. So Bulletproof Labs is going to be right next to the Bulletproof coffee shop, which is downtown just on the border of Santa Monica and Venice. And so when. And we're not open yet, so don't look for us quite yet, but we're coming soon. And we're really going to bring to the public something that's going to be very new and exciting. And my role is really to direct the medical practice within it and as I said, support the Bulletproof lab and their mission. And so we have a facility that's going to be inside the facility of Bulletproof Labs. So you walk into Bulletproof Labs and inside of that we will have our own section. There's no door. There might be a slight screen to kind of protect the privacy of those getting IVs and IMs, but for the most part it's going to be a very integrated piece into the hole.

Okay, excellent. I think that explains it. So your clinic specializes in intravenous and intramuscular drips, injections, and you have some catch names that are associated with these. Hangover Hero, Brain Upgrade, Immune Blaster. Those are just awesome names. But thank you. You're welcome. There are many other, you know, mostly oral supplements which suggest similar promises. So my, my question is, how is IV and IM in intravenous intramuscular injections different? What's the return on investment? And what I'm getting at there, it's a whole new level that someone needs to get you for taking vitamins, you know, intravenously. You have to drive to the facility, have a needle go through your veins, hook up to the IV drip machine. It costs more, you know, what's the roi?

That's a really great question, Fernando. And I think it's just simply One word, actually, it's called bioavailability. And bioavailability, what that means is that how much of that nutrient gets absorbed by your body many times. In fact, most supplements have to go through some sort of metabolic process, at least get digested in the gut before they can be used by your cells. When you use an intramuscular or especially an intravenous injection or infusion, you bypass any issues with bioavailability. So when you're looking to get sort of instant nutrition and 100% bioavailability, there's no other way to do it other than intravenous or intramuscular injection. And so that's really the difference. And it's really just sort of the rapid acting and the bioavailability that make the biggest difference. And when you're looking at the comparison, most oral supplements, like at their best bioavailability are about 50% bioavailable versus intravenous and intramuscular. We're talking about 100% bioavailability.

So is it fair to say that it's twice as effective or twice as available?

It just depends on the supplement. But in general, most supplements, most oral supplements are somewhere between 5 to 10% bioavailable. So if you're looking at the comparison, we're looking at IV and IM therapy being around on average about 80% more bioavailable. So when we're looking at nutrition, we need those nutrients to create energy, to burn fat, to optimize our mitochondrial performance. And if you can get more bio available, you can do a lot more in a shorter period of time if you're using IV or IM therapy. And that's really what we're looking at at the bulletproof lab as an entity is maximum performance in minimum amount of time. And that's really what we've created at the medical clinic.

So just to go a little bit deeper into this, you know, many of the supplements, supplements are basically divided into fat soluble and water soluble type supplements. When you take them orally, what difference does it make if I'm taking an IV drip for just your most popular one? Let's take that as an example. Does it play a role at all if I just eat fats or water or it doesn't go through the gut at all and therefore there is no correlation.

So yeah, the latter, Fernando, because you don't have to worry about absorption. That's the beauty of IV and IM therapy. You don't have to worry about somebody's gut being inflamed, what their microbiome looks like what other medical conditions that they may have that relate to their digestive system. That's the beauty of it. So you're completely bypassing that entire absorption pathway and you're getting it directly to your cells and diffusing it further as a result of that into more areas because the concentration is higher. Just like if you're going from a low to high concentration. That's what diffusion is. And supplements, nutrients that come from them in the IV and IM variety have the same capacity going from low concentrations. Sorry, from high concentrations to low concentrations. So, yeah, intravascularly to intracellularly.

So just to wrap up this idea, is it fair to say that if I take twice as much of an oral, particular oral supplement that I can get intravenously, that I still might be able to be doing better with the iv because it's bypassing a process that happens in our gut that frankly must play a role in how the supplement of mineral, the vitamin, is being passed on to the cells.

Right, right. And there's usually a limitation of what your gut can handle as well. So we've all had a number of things happen when we take vitamins. Very lovely colored urine. That's number one. And the other one is some sort of change to our bowel habits as a result of it. Usually it's more on the loose side than the more constipated side. But that's because you've overdone it in the sense that your gut can't process. Even if you're trying to take higher doses, your gut just can't do it. Makes sense. And that's another aspect of what we're superseding by using IV and intramuscular nutrition. Got it.

So while in Pasadena with your team, I chose to get the signature cocktail IV drip. And you know, this is the catchphrase for this IV drip is strong body and clear mind. And I did, you know, I wanted to try it, and I surely did, and the way I guess it's put together, maybe you can explain a little bit. It's a mixture of taking the Myers cocktail and then supercharging it with a bunch of other stuff. Now, please explain the Myers cocktail, if you can, or give us an idea of that. And then what do you do beyond that? And why is that important?

Sure. So the Myers cocktail was invented in Baltimore, actually, in the 1980s. And really what it is, is, is a significant B vitamin and antioxidant stimulus. And it seemed to be very effective in fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue, Improving patients with cold symptoms, preventing colds. And a lot of that had to do with a formula that Dr. Myers made at the time. And it's been used in nutritional medicine since that time. And it's been kind of tweaked as the years have gone by. At its base, it's a very effective formula for energy to decrease fatigue and thereby increase energy, improve immune system function, improve fat burning capabilities. And that's actually all related to the B vitamins inside of it. And what we've really done is create an IV here, which is actually going to be called our bulletproof signature cocktail. When we get open in Santa Monica. We created a bulletproof cocktail in the sense of making that. So typically, this formula, the Myers takes about an hour and a half to infuse. We've created a formula that can infuse in 15 minutes. So instead of it being there long time, hanging out, getting an IV and interrupting your entire day, we're gonna take 15 minutes of your time. And we're gonna also supercharge it with a couple supplements that I find clinically in practice, but also that have been shown in research to be very effective as mitochondrial enhancers, fat burners, anti inflammatories, and antioxidants. Those three, really four are L, carnitine, molybdenum, taurine, and glutathione. These are especially potent for brain mitochondrial function and especially potent for decreasing inflammation and fat burning capability. So basically, we're supercharging.

I took it, and I felt very good after taking it. There was a little bit of a burning sensation at the beginning, once the IV gets started. But it overall was quick and easy. I don't think it took 15 minutes. I mean, it was actually very easy to do. Amazingly, I could actually taste minerals in my mouth during and immediately after the IV drop. What's going on there?

Yeah, it's an interesting sensation, right? I think anybody that's gotten an IV in the past can actually feel what you're talking about, Fernando. It's an interesting sensation. When you get something that's intravenous, you do get a taste sensation, and we're not actually sure why that happens, to be honest.

Yeah, I was very curious how the mechanism for that.

But, I mean, you do have lots of capillaries in your mouth, and I think that's probably what's happening. Especially one of the more common ones that people may taste a little bit is something called glutathione. And glutathione is a favorite in the functional medicine space. Because it's really our master antioxidant. It basically recycles all the rest of our antioxidants and makes them work better. So it's also got this sulfur group attached to it, which acts like a garbage collector. So it's a very good antioxidant in that respect, kind of cleaning up the cells, cleaning up the cellular matrix, improving immune system function, et cetera. But that sulfur group can give you this kind of strange taste in your mouth sometimes. And so that's something we hear a lot of. And it's really nothing to worry about. You can say you can feel the iv, I guess, in that respect that you feel it's working, but that's really what you're tasting a lot, is that sulfur. So if you ever have like sulfur containing foods, it will be like a similar kind of feeling on the tongue.

How much testing do you do regarding any possible interaction or negative interaction between ingredients of your cocktails?

Also a great question, Fernando. I think it's really important. And our primary goal was to create the safest and the fastest to infuse and to perform IVs and IMs. So you see how I phrase that, right? So the first word was safest. So when we looked at all of our ingredients, the first thing we wanted to make sure is that there were no interactions. So to do that, we went through with our pharmacies and looked at everything together and made sure that that was the case. And the second thing that we did as a corollary to that was to make sure that all of our ingredients were as pure and as clean as possible. And you would be amazed, actually, I was at least about what, what in the wellness space some of these clinics are using. I don't think they have any idea that you have to be careful where you get your B vitamins from. You have to be careful where you get your phosphatidylcholine especially. That's a very specific one, but it's a very, very powerful one. It's in our brain upgrade formula. Phosphatidylcholine is a cell stabilizer. It actually goes into the lipid membrane of the cell and regenerates it. And it's actually derived from soy. And if anybody knows about soy in the United States of America, about 99.9% of it is now GMO. So we've sourced that from Europe to bypass that because we don't want any GMOs. We want purity 100%. So it took us a long time actually to find Sources for all of these ingredients that we felt were the safest that we could find. And we're still searching for safer ones at all times, but we're comfortable with what we have currently. And so that's really what our focus has been. And we've also created waivers that go along with our IVs and IMs that screen out people that may have a problem with anything that we would be infusing. And we have also some health intake questionnaires and some other ways we go over these with our clients. We will go over them with our clients as we're not open yet. But we, we've been practicing and training to go over and to make sure we screen out any potential problems that may occur or could occur. So again, safety is our number one priority and effectiveness is number two. So, and then I guess number three would be fastest. So safety, effectiveness, and fast. That's what we want.

Well, that makes sense. I think that's very important is it's you're taking a direct hit with these ingredients, so must be tested. Now let's talk a little bit about how do we quantify the benefits of these different therapies in IV and im. And I know we can search each ingredient and see if we can tell that there is a difference or we can feel a difference. It's a little bit subjective, but, you know, maybe we should have actual blood tests.

Sure.

And I don't know if you suggest it, but. And the reason I bring this up with a little bit of background, you mentioned glutathione. And I been taking a supplement that promotes increase in levels of glutathione in the body. And I also took the signature cocktail.

A few days later.

After taking that cocktail, I had my levels checked by a lab. My glutathione levels checked by a lab. And what I saw is they actually decreased. They decreased 22% from about 1500 micromoles per liter to about 1200. And I started to search around and try to figure out why, and I ran into a couple of mentions in the literature, and one of them says, I'm quoting here, for normal individuals, the infusion of glutathione intravenously increases plasma levels for only 10 minutes. You know, that's it. It doesn't keep going. So that's one issue. The second issue is the blood levels of glutathione may not reflect levels inside the cells. That's a different study by 2012.

Exactly.

Typically, the body tries to balance itself to optimal levels and either low levels or high levels have detrimental effects, so the body tries to compensate there. What is it called? Homo. It will come to me. But glutathione is an example of something difficult to measure directly, and vitamin D is probably the opposite, and I've been able to measure that difference. But what comment do you have regarding this? What do you suggest for measuring results and for people not to run into issues like it? Maybe I should have done the research before, but I just try it.

I think it's really common what you did, especially in the performance biohacking wellness space, the quantified self space. I think that's really what you're getting at, is understanding not only what's in it, but what is it doing for you, how is it affecting your physiology? And. And I think the word you were looking for was homeostasis. Am I correct?

Yes, it was homeostasis. Now that you.

Homeostasis.

Yes.

No, no problem. That's fine. I just wanted to get that point in there for you. But you're right, the body is always looking for homeostasis, always looking for a way to balance itself. And the challenge with a lot of the testing on the ingredients, like you mentioned, is that blood and plasma levels do not correlate. So you have to be understanding of what you're testing, how you are testing it, and then what your reaction to that testing is. So a big part of what we're going to grow into at the medical clinic at Bulletproof Labs, it's actually called the Clinic at Bulletproof Labs, is that we are going to create a comprehensive laboratory analysis piece of what we do. And that will be there to support what we're doing in the infusion aspects and the IV and the im, and also allowing clients, patients to understand what their physiology is looking like when they're going through some of the IVs and IMs, and also going through some of the equipment on the other side on the bulletproof labs, and understanding how all of that's coming together. And that's kind of the beauty of this project is that, you know, The N equals 1 is now going to be greater than that because we can look at certain populations of individuals that did certain treatments in the IV and the im. We can see how they did on certain pieces of equipment. And then what you were getting at in your question, Fernando, was how do we test this stuff? And that's the fun part. That's the seriously fun part. And that's.

You can see the results where they meet. Where the rubber meets the road.

Exactly. And for Me, as a clinician, that's really where the meat is, where I am looking at a number of different aspects to this. But on the comprehensive laboratory analysis piece, really, the number one thinking we're looking at is inflammatory markers. So if you're looking at something like C reactive protein or sedimentation rates, or some of the cardiac inflammatory markers like LPP, LH2, and others like that, you can look at the fatty acid profiles, you can look at other inflammatory markers like fibrinogen, and you can see, we hope and we know, at least from the N equals one category, that these supplements, these nutritional IVs and IMs that we're working on react and interact and improve those inflammatory markers. So really, what it comes down to in my mind, Fernando, and I think in the nutrition world, especially like the bulletproof diet and others like it, it's all about decreasing inflammation.

Yeah, for sure.

Because if you can do that, everything gets better. Your gut microbiome will get better, your energy will get better. Some of the work I do in hyperbaric oxygen therapy medicine also is all about inflammation. It's all about decreasing inflammation.

Since you mentioned the hyperbaric oxygen portion, we're running to the end of the show, but I wanted to. You are certified in hyperbaric oxygen medicine. Can you explain what it is and what benefits it provides?

Yeah. So, just to be clear, the medical clinic at Bulletproof Labs and Bulletproof Labs will not have hyperbaric therapy at the present. However, my expertise and certification do correlate to a lot of what I'll be doing there, as I'm an integrative physician that uses or utilizes hyperbaric therapy as one of those integrative modalities. And what hyperbaric therapy is, is an ability to create increased oxygen in the body by actually bypassing red blood cells and saturating the plasma or the liquid of the blood with oxygen. And it does that by a pressurized chamber plus 100% oxygen that you breathe. And by doing that, you change the physiologic diffusion capacity of oxygen from outside of the body to inside. And by increasing the amount of oxygen in circulation, in a chamber, you can get up to about 1,200% more. About 12 times. You really change physiology. You change how DNA transcribes proteins. Actually, it modulates at least 8,000 genes. It decreases inflammation as a result of that, improves blood vascular flow by angiogenesis or new blood vessel formation. It increases stem cell release from the bone marrow and from the neurologic tissues that create stem cells. In the neuron. Neuron structure matrix and basically creating a scaffolding to regenerate and to heal wounds. When it comes down to it, inflammation is a big part of that. I got involved with Bulletproof actually through my work in hyperbaric therapy as an integrated physician, because I saw the power of diet. And in fact, I was using the Bulletproof diet before I knew what the bulletproof diet was. I was using high fat, moderate protein, low carbohydrate diets on patients with brain injuries, with strokes and with other neurologic injury, and their brains would just light up. It was just amazing to watch and to see. And then I had a conversation with Dave, Dave Asprey, the founder of Bulletproof a number of years ago. And we talked about hyperbaric therapy medicine, we talked about inflammation. And I just knew he was a brilliant guy. And I knew that he had finally codified something that made it easy for patients. All I had to do was say, look at the roadmap. And I was telling them to go to a website that was branded and all those things. But I really believed in the products and just not even so much the products as just the way of thinking. So I've used diet as a very big piece of what I do in the hyperbaric work that I do, in the integrative work that I do. And so looking at labs, supplements, genetics, diet structure and other technologies, that's my background. So that's how I got involved in this project. And so it's just a couple of pieces of that at the medical clinic currently. But we're also creating a community around the Bulletproof lab and my medical clinic there that's going to enhance and support and we are going to support them in the functional space. So it's a very exciting project for that.

Very exciting. I look forward to it. I look forward to going down. I've been to Santa Monica to the Bulletproof shop and I look forward to. When do you envision your part being open to the public?

So we'll all open together. And right now I would just say we're at the tantalizing end of construction and we are. We're getting so close, but at this point, it's still coming soon. And I can't give you an exact date, but I can say that we will have that information on our websites and then when we are open, we will definitely make sure that your listeners know about it, I hope, and that others will come and join us. You're definitely welcome, Fernando. For a free tour, everybody's actually welcome for a free tour.

We all show up at once.

How's that? By all means. Lines are good. Right. They show that you have something that everybody wants. Well, I mean, it's Russia, Santa Monica, whatever. Right.

Very good. This is very exciting. I definitely look forward to it. And I can see the benefits. I'm going to try the hyperbaric oxygen therapy as well. I know. I've read about the benefits and you described it, and you did a great job in how it integrates with everything else, especially nutrition. And that's what it's all about, finding ways for that longevity to happen.

Exactly. Longevity is what it's all about. And again, like you said in the introduction, it's not about just the length of life. It's about the health of the life that you have. And so I think you have all these technologies and all these physicians and integrative health practitioners and people in the performance nutrition space coming together. It's just a really exciting time, and I'm just really looking forward to seeing how everything comes out and being a part of the whole process.

So before we forget, Scott, please give our audience any URL or links that they can go to to find out more about you and your work and your clinic.

Sure. So the website for the clinic at Bulletproof Labs is theclinic. IO. It's fancy, not dot com, but IO.

Yeah, I was gonna say make sure that that's a new one. So make sure it's a IO at the end, not anything that you're familiar with.

Yeah, so if you Google it, I think it'll come up, too. Bulletproof Labs has its own website, and it's bulletprooflabs.com of course, the regular bulletproof websites as well. We also have a Twitter and Facebook handle, which is the clinicplabs at the clinic at BPLabs for the Twitter handle. And yeah, please, I would encourage everybody to sign up for our mailing list, keep tabs about when we're going to be opening. We're going to have lots of promotions starting off to get everybody involved and everybody excited. And I'm excited to have lots of lions, I hope. Right?

Excellent. I'm sure you will. Well, thank you very much, Scott, once again. And you enjoy the rest of your day. Okay.

Okay. Thanks so much, Fernando. Thank you very much for having me.

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