The Brain Chemical No One’s Talking About (But Should Be) with Dr. Scott Sherr

Ruth Soukup: Ever feel like your brain just won’t shut off? Like the anxiety is constant. Sleep is a struggle, and your mood is all over the place. You’ve tried meditating, you’ve cut the caffeine, you’ve even taken the supplements. But what if the real problem is that your brains breaks aren’t working? Today, we’re diving into gaba what it is, why it’s so often ignored, and how you can actually fix it without relying on a pill that doesn’t work.

Today we’re going to be chatting with Dr. Scott Sherr, a board certified internal medicine physician and expert in health optimization medicine, and a total powerhouse when it comes to cutting edge brain and body science.

And today’s topic is one that I honestly think. Every woman over 40 needs to understand, especially if you’ve ever struggled with anxiety, insomnia, depression, or brain fog, because the truth is a GABA deficiency might be at the root of all of it. We’re unpacking what GABA is, why most clinicians never even test for it, and why GABA supplements don’t actually work the way you think they do.

Plus how you can naturally support your brain through food, lifestyle, and science backed strategies. This is such a good conversation and I know you’re going to get so much out of it. So let’s get into it. Dr. Scott, thanks so much for being here today. I’m so excited to dive into this topic. 

Dr. Scott Sherr: I’m happy to be here, Ruth, thank you for having me.

Ruth Soukup: You are welcome. So let’s just start with the question I like to ask everyone. Tell us a little bit about yourself, who you are, what you do, and how you got to be doing what you are now. 

Dr. Scott Sherr: My name is Dr. Scott Scher. I’m a board certified internal medicine physician. I specialize also in a couple different things called hyperbaric oxygen therapy, health optimization medicine.

I like to call myself a conductor of all things health optimization really. Uh, my story starts off when I was just born as the son of a chiropractor, and so my dad is a chiropractor for 45 years plus now in Long Island, uh, in New York. And so I grew up in his office. I grew up very alternatively as a result of that.

Uh, chiropractors for, if your audience don’t know, they’re kind of the original integrative functional doctors that really looked at, at things outside the box and not that pharmaceuticals were the answer for everything. And so I grew up in his office. I grew up coloring in, getting adjusted in his front offices and in his adjustment rooms.

And then I grew up. Actually collecting money behind the desk when I was in high school. And that was the money that I got to use as spending money when I was, you know, in high school and in and in college, et cetera. So, um, I, I had a very alternative upbringing overall, but I ended up, I ended up deciding to go to medical school and I went to medical school after, uh, being at UCLA for undergrad.

I went to University of Maryland in Baltimore. And from there I decided I really wanted to do that because I, I really. Had this sort of high-minded idea that I could bridge the worlds between what I grew up in and the allopathic conventional world that I, that I knew a lot about. But I didn’t know a lot about really, that I thought, I thought I knew so much more than I did kind of deal.

But when I got to school, I was very much in culture shock in very many ways. And so I ended up going and doing my internal medicine residency, and from there I specialized in a couple different things. But in essence, what I did after medical school and residency was try to create a practice. That bridge, those worlds.

And I bridge them in a number of different ways over the years. Uh, initially that was in the world of hyperbaric oxygen therapy, which are these chambers that are for healing. But I created an integrative practice around that where I’ll use tools, techniques, laboratory, testing, other types of technology to create the best hyperbaric programs that I could for patients.

And then a couple years ago, in 2017, I trained in something called health Optimization Medicine, which is a foundational approach to health that’s focused on. Not just working on root causes of illnesses, but what we’re actually optimizing and looking for root causes of health. And so focusing on larger picture ideas.

And I work with clients all over the world on a kind of a, a foundational approach that involves looking at metabolism and energy and detox and, and things that are, but more focused on health rather than disease. And so now my clinical practice is kind of a, a combination of all of those things I work with.

People remotely here in, in, just outside of Boulder, Colorado. And I have a, a couple companies that have, that have been, that have kind of come out of the work that I’ve done over the years. Some in the hyperbaric space and some working on products and development that help people right now while they’re on the longer path of, of healing and optimization.

Ruth Soukup: I love that. So how does that like change the way that people come to you and find you if you’re dealing with optimizing health rather than addressing illness? I would, I would think that that is a very different mindset. In the people that you, you are seeing, are you still seeing both or like what does that look like?

What’s the difference between somebody who comes to you because they want to feel better, and what’s the difference between somebody who. Comes to you because they wanna like live longer and optimize their health because they already feel good and wanna optimize that. 

Dr. Scott Sherr: Yeah, it’s a great question. I think in essence it’s the same perspective for both types of patients, because the idea is that if you’re not very healthy, if you’re having a hard time with X, Y, and Z, you need to get your health in order.

Right. And then what I do that’s a little bit different is I don’t focus on just treating or looking at the symptoms and the root cause of the symptoms. The idea is that if you want to be healthy, you have to have optimized cells. Cells that are working well to make energy to detox on the energy you make.

You have to have a gut or a GI system that is not leaking and that has optimized levels of. Bacteria and, and, and things that are working for digestion and for, and for expelling and getting rid of waste and things like that. And so it, what I think it, the, the, the deal is that I acknowledge that people, and most people have something right that they have that they don’t like or they’d like to be better, but in essence.

I set the disease aside and I focus on optimizing their health. And that doesn’t mean that they don’t have the disease, it doesn’t mean that they don’t have the symptoms. But the cool thing and the beneficial side effect of optimizing health and focusing on that is that almost everything gets better in the process better.

And that’s, and so in the, in this, in the, and so I work with people that are elite athletes and that want optimization and longevity that are doing great. And I also work people that have cancer and that have. Chronic fatigue syndrome and and fibromyalgia and all those kinds of things in between. And so in essence, what I’m looking at, no matter the person is looking at their cellular health, their gut health, there’s no other specialty out there than ours.

It really focuses on cellular health, cellular medicine. There’s some new ones that are coming, but right now, if you went to like a functional medicine doctor, and I have lots of friends that are functional docs. They’d be looking for your root cause of your illness. They’d be looking for viruses or looking for, um, particular, you know, condition that you might have and try to diagnose you with something and that, and that’s okay.

Like, that’s important. But what I found over the years is if you just kind of jump the gun and start treating something like, like a good example is Lyme disease. If you start just treating Lyme disease without getting your foundational cellular biology in order, you’re not gonna get the outcome that you want.

And that’s gonna been my, the recurring theme in my. My clinical practice over the years is understanding that if you really want to optimize over the long term, you have to shift everything in for perspective and not just focus on the disease and the outcome as much as getting your foundation in order.

And by doing that, everything else. Gets easier going into a hyperbaric chamber gets easier. You know, going and for a run is going to be easier, everything’s gonna be easier, and even having a big piece of chocolate cake is, is gonna be easier to recover from if you are more foundationally optimized. 

Ruth Soukup: I love this.

This is like, you’re like a big picture thinker of health versus. Right, like traditional medicine is super myopic and only looking in specialties and and looking at one thing at a time. Yes. 

Dr. Scott Sherr: Hyperspecialized. Yep. Yes. 

Ruth Soukup: Hyper specialized. And then functional medicine moves down and moves like more into the middle.

And then there’s you big picture like, let’s not even focus on the disease. Let’s just focus on. The big picture of your overall health and everything else will fall into place. I actually really love that approach. 

Dr. Scott Sherr: Yeah. It’s, it’s a perspective that I didn’t come up with. Uh, a colleague of mine named Dr.

Ted Raso, who’s the founder of our nonprofit called Health Optimization Medicine and Practice. He created a framework in that we’ve been using now to train other practitioners to do the same thing. And I was one of the first people trained in it. And we have a seven module certification for practitioners.

And, and the key also, Ruth, is that. We talk about something called the Holo. Actually, I’m, I know you don’t have a recording of our shirts, what we’re wearing, but I’m wearing a shirt called Bion Hacking Here, B-I-O-N-T, hacking. And this is, this is a play on something called the Holo. The Holo is a concept that we are.

These organisms made of not just human cells, but of bacteria, fungus, virus, and all the inputs that are coming in from our environment. So we’re this whole organism. And what we do with our perspective is try to focus on that. You’re not just a person like an epi, like an epidemiologic study, but you’re a person in a population of people and then you’re getting treated that way.

No, you’re getting treated because you are you and all the things that make up you. And we can test those things now. Like that’s the cool thing about where we are. And so we. Like to think about the holo as our framework, which is the holo that is you, your holo organism. And the other aspect of it is that you don’t wanna be optimized for your age if you’re not 21 to 30 years of age.

That’s when we’re most optimized. And many of your listeners can remember being 21 to 30 and how easy things were overall and how resilient they were. And so what we do with our framework is we optimize. Nutrients, hormones, and all other measures between when you were 21 to 30 years of age. And so not just optimized for your age, whatever your age may be, but optimized when you’re most optimized.

When 21 to 30, you’re most resilient. You have the, it’s easiest to make a baby. It’s, it’s easy to recover from an injury. Like it’s easier to recover from a hangover for most of us, not me. I was never good at that, but some people were really, really good at it in their twenties and, and they sucked that at their thirties.

I’m good at that. You see, you must be high, have Irish blood or something like that. Um, I had an Irish, uh, roommate in college that can get so drunk and, and pass out in a hallway and the next day he can run a marathon. So, um. 

Ruth Soukup: Well, maybe not that good. 

Dr. Scott Sherr: Yeah, it’s a skill, but it’s also a dangerous skill as you know.

So, um, if you don’t get hangovers, but anyway, so most of us are pretty optimized around that time, so we move all your nutrient gut and everything, all these networks back to when you were 21 to 30. We look at you as a whole organism with all these inputs and everything that’s coming in. Everything’s going out, and, and that’s, that’s the perspective.

That’s a little bit different, a lot different than what you see out there. And, and that’s the perspective that I use in my clinical practice. 

Ruth Soukup: Very interesting. So, so walk me through that then. Like when somebody comes to you, what’s the first step that you take? 

Dr. Scott Sherr: So typically my first step is gonna be an intake, right?

It’s gonna be taking a history and that can be take a long time. I usually, it can take me like, I’m usually pretty quick these days ’cause I’m doing this for a while. But it depends on the person, it kinda where they’re at. But in general, I like to hear where people are, right? What’s going on in their life, what things are.

Wrong or not going right, or what their goals are. And so I have a lot of intake paperwork in that capacity. But once I get that, we set a lot of that aside initially, and then we focus on doing laboratory testing that’s looking to. Create that foundation. And, but the big piece here, and I think this is an important part for the rest of what we’re gonna talk about, is that what I’m also sussing out to use the cool word is that, is what is their autonomic nervous system balance.

And what I mean by that is that, um, you have two parts of what’s called your autonomic nervous system. You have your sympathetic nervous system and your parasympathetic nervous system. Your sympathetic nervous system is your fight. And flight nervous system. It’s one, it’s the one that makes you run fast if you’re getting chased by something or if you’re shocked by something, right?

Um, and then you have your parasympathetic nervous system, which is your rest, digest, detoxify, and heal nervous system. The problem though, is that most of us. Are running on sympathetic overload. We’re running, we’re running on the on switch all the time and don’t how to turn off. And so one of the major things I’ve found over the years working with people is that health optimization medicine and the framework is fantastic.

Let the laboratory testing and, and I can mention that and I will in a minute, but the big but is that I will not even go there if they’re under sympathetic overdrive because they, you can’t heal. You cannot recover. You cannot even see shifts in a lot of things ahead of time or working on laboratory testing if you don’t work on their parasympathetic nervous system.

And you know, I’m, I’m guilty of this too, when I was in medical school. We had shirts made that said sleep is for quitters. Right. It’s like, it’s the, it’s the American way. Like it’s the hustle culture you’re on, on. I’ll sleep when I’m dead, kind of deal. Right. But the problem is our body doesn’t really do very well when we’re always in sympathetic storm.

It’s sympathetic drive and, and this could be related just to. Being in medical school, it could be related to, you know, trauma. It could be related to stress, it could be related to relationships. Um, it could be related to poor sleep. There’s so many different things that fall into this. So even before doing some of the laboratory testing, um, I’m assessing somebody’s balance there overall to get a good understanding of how I can get in there and help them.

Right. Is it by doing laboratory testing right away, or is it by working on some of their autonomic? Nervous system balance before we even go that route overall. But then eventually I’m doing laboratory testing, looking at vitamins, minerals, nutrients and co-factors. Looking at heavy metals in the body, the gut hormones and all those things.

And then creating a full lifestyle behavior, diet supplementation protocol for them that we follow over time. 

Ruth Soukup: Okay, so what is the test that you’re doing for the nervous system specifically? How are you, is that what you get from the intake, from talking to somebody, asking them questions about how they’re responding to things?

Or is it literally you can check their cortisol or whatever other chemicals are in their body? Or is it a combination of both? 

Dr. Scott Sherr: So I’ve been doing this long enough that I know within about 30 seconds, typically when you’re talking to somebody. Yeah, it’s not that, I mean, once you’ve been doing this with.

What’s that to me? So that’s a good question. And actually I was trying to get a sense of this when we were first talking. Um, my sense, were you Yeah, well of course everybody, like I do this with everybody without thinking about it because I’m a clinician, right? There are some people that are more on the higher strung side, and that’s common.

Like people that are type A that are very, very organized, very detail oriented, they tend to be more sympathetically dominant, uhhuh than people that are more. You know, the type Bs like, like they’re more relaxed typically. They’re the second child or third child? Not the first child in general. Are you the first?

Ruth Soukup: Nope. 

Dr. Scott Sherr: Yeah. What, what’s your birth order? The fourth? 

Ruth Soukup: I’m the fourth, but, but my older sister’s six years older, so me and my brother we’re also like the kind of the tail end of the family. 

Dr. Scott Sherr: Yeah. Yeah. So we have 

Ruth Soukup: a little bit of oldest and a little bit of. Middle. 

Dr. Scott Sherr: Yeah, I gotcha. Yeah, so like when you have that many kids, I have four kids as well, right?

So like the, it’s a little bit different, but typically your, your first and second are very common, like your first born and second born. Typically. First is type A, second is more relaxed and has to go with the flow. Like by the fourth it can be like, you have to be so freaking flexible that you have to go with the flow.

Like, it’s like I had one friend of mine, a colleague that had four, he’s like, and he had four kids and he is a surgeon. He’s like, I don’t even know how the fourth one ate. They must have ate off the floor. I don’t remember how they got any food. So like, it can be like that. That’s pretty much me. Yeah, exactly.

So, um, and so it also depends on like sexes and, you know, male, female and splits. But in general, most of us are on the sympathetic side. Right. That doesn’t mean that, um, what I’m typically looking for, Ruth is not somebody that’s just mildly imbalanced from one way or the other. I’m looking for people that are so sympathetically dominant.

That, that they’re not going to be able to heal if we don’t do anything about that ahead of time. Right. And there are things you can do. There are some testing that I, that I do that I will use. Um, there’s a couple different easy tests to do. There’s one, um, that I use a lot, you know, HRV or heart rate variability, which is a test you can do.

Many people that have like wearables, uh, that’ll be one of the, the metrics that you’re looking at. Heart rate variability is a measure of the balance between your sympathetic co parasympathetic nervous system. Um, you can also do another test that’s actually very easy that a colleague of mine came up with.

Actually a number of people have come up with. It’s called the CO2 tolerance test. Basically, it’s how long you can hold your breath without getting stressed. Overall, the longer you can hold your breath without getting stressed. You actually have less overall sympathetic dominance as well, and you can train this over time actually to increase your CO2 tolerance.

And when you do that, you actually decrease your stress response when stressful things happen. And so hopefully, yeah, there are a lot of different ways you can do it. And so, but in essence for me, like if, if you were asking me for yourself, I would say you’re tilted on the sympathetic side, like most people like me and that.

Mm-hmm. You, you do know how to relax, but it takes, you know, practice and it takes intentionality to be able to do it, you know, compared to others that don’t know how to relax, right? That like, if you give them anything to relax, they actually get anxiety when they feel calm. And that’s, that’s the kind of person that I’m, I can tease out very quickly overall.

Okay. 

Ruth Soukup: Interesting. Yeah. Interesting. I’d say that’s an accurate assessment. 

Dr. Scott Sherr: Good. I’m glad I wasn’t too far off, but, um, I’ll give you that, 

Ruth Soukup: I’ll give you that one so we can move on. 

Dr. Scott Sherr: Okay. Cool. Cool. Yeah, so I’m looking at that parasympathetic sympathetic balance because if you are too sympathetically overdriven, like no matter how many supplements or how many therapies or any dietary advice I give you, it’s not gonna work most of the time or not gonna work as much as you’d like it to.

So, um. But then I’d also focus on metabolism. I focus on looking at your vitamins, your minerals, your nutrients, especially how well, how well you’re making energy overall. Because our mitochondria are the part of our cells that make energy. And we have a lot of them. We have actually the most mitochondria per cell are in ovaries and sperm actually.

And that’s because they create a huge amount of energy to make a baby. Actually, the eggs have the most by any of, of any cell in the body for women or, or men, of course. Um, but a huge amount of energy. But that’s also why fertility rates are going down, is because mitochondria so. Disturbed now overall and dysfunctional.

Um, the brain has a lot, the heart, the liver, musculoskeletal tissue, and there’s a lot of reasons why mitochondria don’t work very well overall. Um, toxins in our environment, stress, we talked about sympathetic overdrive as well as I just mentioned, infections, post infection, like post COVID, post Lyme, um, mold, um, you know, a lot of different things.

Um, insulin resistance. And so anyway, so what I’m always looking at is the mitochondria as a primary. Indicator of everything else, because for the mitochondria to work well, you need to have good inputs, like good things from your diet. You have to have good micronutrients. You have the capacity also to detox.

That’s really important too, because when you make energy, it’s like a gasoline powered car you make. Exhaust from your cells, your mitochondria, and you need to be able to balance that or neutralize that with antioxidants as well. So I’m looking at all of those things, um, with, with testing, and I’m also looking at the gut, the GI system as well because 80% of your immune system’s in your gut, and if your gut’s leaking and it’s not doing well, your brain’s probably leaking too and getting, allowing things in and your blood brainin barrier’s not doing what it’s supposed to do.

And so, um, the gut is super important there. And so I look at the gut, I look at. The, the metabolism. I look at food sensitivities and I look at hormones as well, but hormones are typically a little bit later because once you can nutrient and gut cellular optimize, oftentimes the hormones will get a lot better.

On their own in quotes here. Right. And so I have a hormone imbalance, but then my testosterone’s lower something, but then I optimize their gut, their exercise, and well, amazing, your testosterone’s better. You didn’t have to do something specifically for the testosterone. So that’s the perspective shift, really.

Ruth Soukup: Yeah. Because it’s all kind of interconnected, but you’re saying it all comes back to that cellular, cellular health. Mm-hmm. So you talk about something called GABA and Yes. That, and you called the breaks of the brain, but can you explain, explain this a little bit more, because I’m very, very curious about this.

Dr. Scott Sherr: Sure. GABA is also, the longer name is called GABA gamma Aminobutyric acid, and it’s a neurotransmitter. So neurotransmitters are these chemicals in our brain that send signals or they receive signals. We have receptors that grab them and then they cause various types of responses. And so our superstar neurotransmitters are the ones that everybody knows, like your dopamine, norepinephrine, serotonin.

These are the ones that everybody knows about, but actually. There’s two more glutamate and GABA that are your two primary neurotransmitters in the brain. They take up 80% of your brain’s neuro transmission. So the other ones your serotonin, dopamine, norepinephrine, other ones. There’s other ones as well. A much lower amount compared to glutamate and gaba.

So glutamate. Is your primary excitatory neurotransmitter. It makes you feel wakeful, it gives you motivation, it makes you feel on, norepinephrine does this as well in dopamine, but glutamate is your primary. And then glutamate in the brain gets converted into gaba. Your primary inhibitory neurotransmitter, it’s the one that relaxes you, that gives you calm, it quiets your mind, it helps you sleep.

Um, and so the problem is that if you’re on all the time. On, on, on that hustle culture, you’re depleting your GABA levels over time as well. And when you deplete your GABA levels, you have increased risk of depression, insomnia, anxiety, and a mind that just won’t stop because these are all symptoms of glutamate overload compared to that gaba.

And so I have a question for you, Ruth. 

Ruth Soukup: Yeah. 

Dr. Scott Sherr: Quiz question. Okay. How many thoughts do you think you have every single day? Not new thoughts, but just thoughts in general. If you had to guess, I can give you like a range. Is it a thousand? Is it 70,000? Is it 200,000 or is it 500,000? 

Ruth Soukup: High, like 200,000. 

Dr. Scott Sherr: So it can be that if you’re really, really stressed, but in general, on average you have 70,000 thoughts per day.

Ruth Soukup: Okay. 

Dr. Scott Sherr: That’s still a lot. That’s a lot of thoughts. Of thoughts, right? That’s a lot of thoughts. And so what I always say in, in relation to that is please don’t believe everything you think. Right? And if you have children that those that are listening, I have a 7-year-old now who doesn’t really understand the difference between real and, you know, make believe and real.

And so we have to have this conversation like, yes, hamburgers. You can eat, but hamburgers are not gonna eat french fries. Right. And like these, like little things like that. But that’s a thought. Right. And then he’s like, dad, what if this happens? I’m like, kiddo, don’t believe everything you think. Right. And we talk about this.

Yeah. And we go through that. But so, but if you have a brain that’s GABA deficient, the amount of thoughts can go up to 120,000 or more thoughts per day. And this is a mind that just can’t stop thinking about. Yeah. It might be the same thing over and over again. So you could be super anxious or super depressed and, yeah.

Because of all those thoughts, and so what GABA can do is give you the breaks back so that mind starts becoming more quiet. GABA is also the gate, GATE. It’s a gate, meaning that it prevents us from being overstimulated. It. We have so much information that’s coming in to us at all times. You know, body language when we’re on this conversation, you and I talking with micro expressions and everything else.

Yeah. But if you’re just in a commu, like if you’re just outside walking all of the environmental stimuli. What GABA does is it calms down and breaks that sensory gate, so you don’t get all that information flooding your system. And so if you don’t have enough GABA around, you can get overwhelmed so much easier.

So people that are listening, or do you feel overwhelmed often? Do you feel anxious? Do you feel depressed? Do you have a hard time sleeping? This all could be related to GABA deficiency because the breaks are not. Breaking, like you have a glutamate overload related to that excitatory neurotransmitter that’s overloaded compared to the GABA system itself.

Ruth Soukup: And so this is related to what you were saying about the nervous system before. Yes. Where your people are either in sensory overload or not. And if they’re not, they are in sensory overload, then your body can’t heal. Is that, am I put piecing this together correctly? 

Dr. Scott Sherr: Exactly. Yeah. So for me, when I’m working with somebody and I see this sympathetic dominance, right?

This over. Uh, just overactivation of the system. This is often a glutamate overactivation compared to the gaba, and so it’s one thing that I’m trying to do very quickly with people to try to help them balance that so that we can do the, the more. Called the harder work or the long-term work of actually optimizing their mitochondria.

Because if, if you’re already under so much sympathetic overload of glutamate overload in this case too, which is all the gall goes together, you’re not gonna be able to heal the mitochondria specifically, which is what I care about. And so, so 

Ruth Soukup: GABA comes. First. 

Dr. Scott Sherr: So for me, GABA does come first. So how do, 

Ruth Soukup: how do you fix, I mean, this is something that I’ve, I, I’m talking about health every day, and I’ve never heard of this before 

Dr. Scott Sherr: and that’s why I, I’m trying to get more information out there about it, because if you go to your doctor and you say that I’m anxious, I’m depressed, I can’t sleep, they’re gonna give you like an antidepressant, which you and I are not a big fan of.

Right. And we know that. Depression is not a serotonin deficiency. We’ve known that that’s very well, well understood. Now it’s multiple studies. You know, sometimes SSRIs can be helpful, but it’s not because you’re serotonin deficient. That’s not why they help you. The serotonin increases, you know, can be helpful in some people for short periods of time, but it’s not the root cause, it’s not the solution.

Oftentimes, this is a GABA issue and it’s because they’re deficient in it, because their stress and their, their whole system has just been on overdrive for too long. And so when I think about. Um, you know, everybody out there that’s listening that they’ve never heard about this, about this before, because we don’t have drugs in the, in the conventional world that are specifically, uh, addressing this.

Um, except for things like benzodiazepines, like Xanax and Valium and a, and, and things like Ativan or sleep medications like, um, Ambien or Lunesta. So these are all affecting the GABA system, actually. But the problem with these drugs is that they’re. Highly addictive, as many of you know and that are listening, and I’m sure you know too, Ruth, is that because they bind so tightly to the GABA receptor that they deplete you of GABA even quicker as a result.

And so that you are already in a bind because you are anxious, depressed, and you know, whatever. And now you’re, now you have these drugs that are causing the system to have more GABA to bind to the receptor and then causing more depletion of gaba and then the receptors downregulate themselves and all these other.

Uh, biomechanical processes as a result of trying to compensate the increased risk of tolerance, withdrawal, you know, dependence and even death if you stop them too quickly. And so the key for me is to do things in multi, sort of dimensional here, right? The first one is what are the, you know, the dietary lifestyle things that we can do to enhance gaba?

And then from there, looking at supplementation that can also enhance the GABA system. In a natural, supportive way. And then from there, then looking at, you know, the more of the, the full workup and getting them more optimized using the whole framework that I use. And so mm-hmm. And, and that’s kind of what I think about.

And there, there are some easy things you can do from a dietary perspective, from a lifestyle perspective. Sometimes easy, sometimes hard, depending on the person. Um, is it ever 

Ruth Soukup: easy? Yeah. But so what are some of these things? 

Dr. Scott Sherr: Yeah, from a dietary perspective, we do know that there’s some, there’s certain certain bacteria in our gut that are very, very good at signaling the GABA system in the brain overall.

So lactobacillus and bifidobacterium. So you wanna have, you know, you know, fermented foods, like fermented foods can be really, really good because they support that gut bacteria overall. Um, ideally, you know, kinda wanna know what’s going on in the gut before you give a whole lot of fermented foods. ’cause if you have a leaky gut, it may not work so well.

But in essence. Fermented foods are really, really good. So dietary and then dietary sources of an amino acid called glutamine. Glutamine is an amino acid that’s in a lot of different types of food, but glutamine is the precursor to that glutamate that I was mentioning earlier that gets converted into gaba, into the brain.

And so and so, those are some of the glutamine containing foods. Um, meat containing products, also cabbage. Um, sauerkraut also also has glutamine. Uh, but, but meat. Is gonna be your best sort of glutamine overall? Um, from, from a lifestyle perspective? Um, all, I mean, of course on the dietary side, we’re also trying to get rid of things that are causing a lot of inflammation.

The standard American diet that goes without saying. But, um, but from a, a lifestyle perspective it is, you know, calming the F down, you know, and finding, find ways to be able to do that. And, and that may not be easy for everybody, right? I dunno if I’m about a cursing your podcast. No. Especially 

Ruth Soukup: if you have teenagers.

Do you have teenagers yet? Dr. Scott? 

Dr. Scott Sherr: I have a 14-year-old, so yes, you define defined. To find dance Buffalo girl, or, oh, she’s great girl. Girl. Yeah. Okay. Oh, she gives me a run for my money, but she also reminds me of me and you know, from like, and so I, I kind of know how her brain works a little bit, but the biting, sarcasm, it’s just beautiful.

I love it. I love it. It’s so good. I, she says something, I’m like, wow. It’s. That’s amazing. Well done. My wife, she might not have the same response that I do, but I love it. I think it’s great. So, so far, so far, um, um, oh, what was I talking about? Oh yeah, from, from a lifestyle perspective, um, calming down, so.

Things like, not going hard at the gym, but like doing yoga, right? Or doing like stretching activities. Pilates, like these are great things to help relax your nervous system. Going for walks, um, meditation, breath work. And what I mean by breath work, I mean relaxing, breath work, breath work that actually helps you relax your nervous system.

And that’s typically just increasing your exhales so you’re inspired. Short, exhale long. Three, five. There’s other patterns, box breathing. These are all very, very helpful. But, but it can be really hard, as you and I know, Ruth, to have this conversation with people that are already highly stressed. And so I often will start off with supplementation is what it comes down to because I know that the supplements will work.

’cause I’ve, I know which ones will work typically. And the big piece here to know is that there are supplements, there are GABA supplements over the counter that you can buy. You can buy a GABA supplement. Um, but the problem is that GABA as a supplement should not work because GABA is too big of a molecule to get across into the brain.

Ruth Soukup: Oh, if 

Dr. Scott Sherr: it does work, if you take GABA and it works, it could mean that that barrier, that blood brain barrier. Is leaking, it’s leaky. So that is allowing things in that shouldn’t get in there. And what that usually means is that you have a leaky gut as well. And so that does require looking at optimizing, you know, your leaky gut and optimizing your leaky brain as a result of that, right?

And so just know that. So if you’re taking G, but with other things in there, the other things may be helping. But if the gaba, you’re taking GABA on its own, it’s working. You need to go get that checked out and see if you have a leaky gut and try to optimize that. So, um, from, but from a supplement perspective, the first things that I think about are glutamine.

We talked about as amino acid, which can be really helpful. And then glutamate in the brain that excitatory neurotransmitter gets converted into GABA and it needs magnesium and vitamin B six to be able to do that. So. A significant proportion of US adults are magnesium deficient. So taking magnesium is really, really important.

It helps calm down the brain firing, because it enhances that gaba. It also decreases glutamate toxicity, like that glutamate overload. It actually decreases the response of the brain to the glutamate directly. So magnesium is great for so many different things as, as you, as you know, I’m sure. Um, and, and then I think about what supplements are gonna help support the GABA system that are gonna help.

Overall, holistically doing it without depleting, you know, GABA in the process. And so I use a lot of CVA Cava, C, B, D, ccb G. These are Nonpsychoactive. Cannabinoids. Yeah. So Cava 

Ruth Soukup: too, huh? 

Dr. Scott Sherr: Kava. And then also something called Nico gaba, which is a vitamin B three attached to the gaba. When you attach a B three to it, B three gets across a brain, no problem.

It takes GABA with it. And then you have B2B three in the brain, which is mildly activating, and you have the gaba, which is relaxing. And then the combination is like you have this sort of relaxed calm without feeling tired, which is really nice. So there’s a combination of one of my companies, it’s called TRO Tcom.

It has C-B-D-C-B-G kava, and it has, um, this nicotine GABA in it. And it’s, it gives that downregulation of the nervous system without making you feel tired and. When you start feeling more downregulated, you are like, oh, this is what it feels like to not be overstressed all the time. And that could be scary for some people.

Like a 

Ruth Soukup: hug for your brain. 

Dr. Scott Sherr: It’s like a hug for your brain. It’s like calming down. But you can, but the idea is that you can titrate your dose. You can take a little bit just to take the edge off. Mm-hmm. Or you take more if you’re like, feeling like true anxiousness and tension. Yeah. And really wanna quiet the mind.

And, and there’s also a sleep product that we have as well called TRO that has some of these GABAergic things in, in them. But the key that we always and has other things like five HDP and, and, and works on deep sleep in other ways, but in essence. The key here is that you wanna support the GABA neurotransmitter system.

You want to, you want to rebuild those breaks so that they’re available to you. And that from a dietary perspective, a lifestyle perspective and supplementation, um, you can start retraining and rewiring the nervous system in a way that’s more balanced. 

Ruth Soukup: Yes. And 

Dr. Scott Sherr: then when you’re more balanced. Then you can start really working on that metabolomic, the, the metabolism itself, and then energy.

And then, because once you start doing that, you’re already gonna start feeling so much better. Yeah. And, and people think that they need to do more and more and more. But relaxing often makes us do more, like we’re actually more productive when we’re a little bit more relaxed. And yes, everybody’s had that symptom of like.

Being in front of an audience and forgetting all your lines, what you were gonna say, and or going on a podcast like, oh man, what was, I was gonna say, I forgot. Because your brain gets so overstressed that the blood flow to your frontal lobe actually goes down because of constriction of blood vessels.

And so if you can just take the edge off a little bit, your brain’s frontal lobe gets more of that blood flow back. You get that executive function back and you can, you flow right. 

Ruth Soukup: Yeah. Instead of like all the racing thoughts. That makes total sense and, and I, it reminds me of, we talk a lot on this podcast about metabolic flexibility.

Yeah. And the importance of healing your metabolism so that you can eat the cake occasionally and not completely throw your system off. But it sounds like you’re basically talking about metabolic flexibility for your brain so that your nervous sy or for your nervous system, so that your nervous system is also flexible so that you can handle everything and function better.

Yeah. So. Interesting. So tell me about these supplements. Do you take, is it like a drink that you take or is it a pill, or how do you, how do you, 

Dr. Scott Sherr: yeah. 

Ruth Soukup: Do you like sipping? Sipping a little calming drink and having that be better than a glass of wine? 

Dr. Scott Sherr: Well, that’s the thing, right? So alcohol, let’s talk about that for a minute, right?

So alcohol, okay, let’s talk about it. Okay, so people that are listening probably drink some alcohol some of the time, and that’s okay. But the problem is that alcohol binds into that GABA receptor really, really tightly, and that it takes itself off very quickly too. So this is the. For me, not for you it sounds like, but I go to bed after drinking alcohol.

I wake up two hours later, wide awake with a headache. And that’s because you have this glutamate overload. ’cause you’ve depleted all that GABA we were talking about. Right. And so people that get headaches, irritable. Feel terrible. That’s because you depleted all that GABA very quickly, and this is why alcohol trashes your sleep.

Um, and so if you drink too close to going to bed, you’re not going to sleep as well. I don’t care if you wake up in, in the morning feeling okay, your sleep is not gonna be as good as it would would’ve been if you didn’t have alcohol on board. So alcohol does affect the GABA system, but it does it in a way that is detrimental because it binds so tightly to the receptor.

And then. Un binds very quickly. And then over time, if you’re drinking a lot, um, it can, you know, cause dependence and withdrawal and all those kinds of things, but I get it, people wanna relax, right? Like, especially if you have kids and they’ve just gone to bed. Like when I had younger kids, like it would be very common for my wife to have a glass of wine and I.

I was totally on board with that. Right. But, but I totally understand. Like it’s a lot for all of us. Right. And so, but there are alternatives, right? And, and that’s really what it comes down to. And when we were developing our products, our companies called transcriptions, and as we were developing our products, we wanted to help people.

Right now. While they’re on the longer path to optimizing their health and from our perspective, so I’m in, I’m a clinician and I know about these things called troche. A troche is a dissolvable lozenge that goes between your upper cheek and gum, and it’s scored. So you can take a quarter of it, a half of it, a full three quarters, and kind of figure out what your dose is.

You put it there, you let it, you put it between your upper cheek and gum, and you let it dissolve. It takes about 15 minutes to 30 minutes to dissolve. 

Ruth Soukup: Yeah, and 

Dr. Scott Sherr: it’s a fantastic form factor because you can find out the dose that’s right for you and you can take the right dose depending on what you need.

You can take a quarter, take the edge off, you can take three quarters if you really need to kind of like wind down after a night of craziness in the house and 17 different places you had to take your children that day or whatever. Mm-hmm. Because when you have four kids, as you do as well, you were, you were one of, you’re one of four, right?

So like, it’s like every night it’s like, how many places do I have to go every night to be before everybody’s driving? You get my point, right? So the, the idea is like, you want to create, um, a way to help people calm down their nervous system and, and, but do it in kind of a titrated sort of way overall.

And so the trophies are great because they’re, they’re breakable like that. And, uh. The ingredients in them, the are, are very fast acting as a result because if they dissolve it in your, in your cheek, they’re gonna go directly into your bloodstream pretty quickly. As opposed if you swallow something it takes longer because it has to go through your stomach.

Mm-hmm. Your small intestine and then the liver as well detoxifies or degrades things that from being active and so you get less activity of your supplements if you swallow them compared to being dissolved in the mouth as well. And so the troche is faster, it’s more bioavailable, meaning that more of the ingredients get into the system and they’re tit treatable, which is great.

And so the TRO com specifically here, the Kava C-B-D-C-B-G, and the nicotine on gaba, these are all working on the GABA system to help enhance it in a holistic way. So you’re getting things like Kava and CBD and CBG, which work on separate sites on the GABA receptor. Basically they enhance GABA to bind and they increase the affinity for GABA to bind, but they’re also giving Nico gaba, which is GABA itself.

Really, that’s getting into the brain. So it’s holistically supporting the receptor as opposed to just binding to a site and increasing the affinity for gabaa bind only, which we could potentially deplete GABA over the time. But, but there are supplements out there like, you know, kava, people take kava all the time as a drink, as you probably know, and Kavas been used for thousands of years, and it’s fantastic.

Overall. There’s things like. Passion flower. And there’s, um, what else is a really great, um, there’s something, Magnolia bark is another great one from that, it works in the GABA system. Valerian root is something that people use also that works on the GABA system. Um, we have an an extract of magnolia bark.

In our sleep product called tro, and we has also also something in that one called Arin as well. Arin is a long-acting molecule that works on the GABA receptor where GABA binds, and it’s from the Amanita musca mushroom. That is a psychedelic mushroom. It’s the one that has been known. For many, many years to have a psychedelic experience.

This particular compound in it is not psychedelic, but Santa Claus mythology is thought to be related to the Amman Mus musca mushroom in Siberia. Yeah. Yeah. It’s really, yeah. So if you look up some the Amman mushroom, look up Santa Claus, you’ll see all some really amazing stuff about the mushroom and shamanistic experiences and reindeers flying and reindeers love to get high on this mushroom, evidently in Siberia.

But this particular compound is not psychedelic and we use a very low dose of it. Okay. Good to 

Ruth Soukup: know. 

Dr. Scott Sherr: And it works on the GABA system. And so, 

Ruth Soukup: so is it better to do it while you sleep put to like bring your, bring your GABA levels up while you sleep? Or is it better to do it while you’re awake or is both beneficial?

Dr. Scott Sherr: I think both can be beneficial. It just depends on the dose and it depends on the, the reason overall. So you can use like low amounts of it during the day to help take that edge off. Mm-hmm. Or if you have like true anxiety, you can take it to, you know, calm down anxiety as well. Yeah. At night, you know, we need GABA around to help us with sleep onset or getting, getting us to sleep, and also maintaining our sleep.

And so the reason, one of the reasons why we don’t, the serotonin’s also involved in this, but, but GABA’s also involved, one of the reasons we don’t wake, wake up in our dreams is that we have enough GABA around to keep us asleep. Because if you’re going bungee jumping and then, you know, going to Niagara Falls and then, and then fighting demons like.

That could wake you up. It wakes people up sometimes too, right? Yeah. But what actually keeps you not waking up is the GABA that’s there. And so having like GABA around is really, really important at night when you’re sleeping to help maintain your sleep. 

Ruth Soukup: Yeah. Oh, interesting. Yeah. Well, I feel like there’s a lot more that we could talk about, but we are out of time.

You can find Dr. Scott Sherr at home-sf.com or at homehope.orgFind his GABA products HERE.

Or on social–at @drscottsherr or @troscriptions on Instagram