00:00
Scott
Not everything synthetic is bad for us. You take insulin, that’s synthetic. If you go to the ER because you have a tracking infection up your leg and you don’t get antibiotics, you could die. So we need synthetic things sometimes. And not everything natural is good for us. You’re more stressed every day because your mitochondria are under significant duress. You may need to take methylene blue on a regular basis. What methylene blue can do is it can compensate, both on the metabolic side of the challenges, making energy, and also on the side of detoxification, because it works on both size and the other big thing about it is just quality.

00:28
JJ
With all supplements quality, make sure they’re testing and testing.

00:32
Scott
Do not buy your supplements on Amazon, please, because you don’t know what’s in that warehouse. You get an ingredient, say it’s methylene blue, in this case, from a manufacturer. If it says it’s from the us, they’re lying.

00:44
JJ
It’s just really frustrating as a supplement producer to deal with this, where you’re competing against these garbage brands.

00:50
Scott
Most people that I see don’t realize that they need to be more relaxed. They just think they need better sleep. I know people love their morning routines, but I’m going to tell your evening routine is so much more important than your morning routine.

01:02
JJ
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01:55
JJ
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02:48
JJ
But you know, there’s something we don’t talk about enough, and that’s when you travel. What happens? Quite often you experience constipation, stomach aches, bloating, and not just during your trip, but also when you get back. This happens because your microbiome gets exposed to lots of different stuff. Different foods, different water, different microbes. Or it could just be the stress from all that travel. Now I recently traveled through the Amazon rainforest and even though I’m used to traveling, I made sure I had these two supplements with me to avoid.

03:18
JJ
Any kind of craziness.

03:20
JJ
Paraguardian and Herbal Power Flush from Bioptimizers paraguardian is a botanical formula designed to support gut balance. Think of it as your reset tool when your system has been a little challenged. And Herbal Power Flush supports regularity gently and effectively, especially when your routine has been disrupted with different schedules, different hydration and different food timing. And if elimination slows down, everything feels off. You feel bloated, inflamed, sluggish. So here’s the bottom line. Your gut is not separate from your metabolism. If your digestion and elimination are off even a little bit more than likely, everything else will be off too. So whether you’re traveling or just feel like your system needs Support, head to bioptimizers.com JJvirgin and use code JJvirgin to make sure you have these two supplements on hand for whenever you’re feeling a little off. Hey, I’m J.J. virgin, Ph.D. dropout. Sorry mom.

04:23
JJ
Turned four time New York Times bestselling author. As a certified Nutrition specialist, fitness hall of Famer, and globally recognized leader in health, I’m driven to keep asking the tough questions and use my podcast to simplify the science of health into actionable strategies that help you thrive. I’d also love to hear your thoughts on the show. And here’s the fun part. When you send me your review, I’ll reply to you using my on demand Virtual Me. That’s right, my team and I created a virtual JJ packed with my books, speeches and wisdom so I can personally connect with you here’s how you do it. Subscribe and leave an honest review of the podcast. Take a screenshot of your review. Text it to 813-565-2627. That’s 813-565-2627. My virtual JJ will reply directly and trust me, this will make your day.

05:24
JJ
So subscribe now@subscribeetojay.com and text me your review. Let’s keep thriving together.

05:33
Scott
When you down regulate somebody’s nervous system to a place where it’s calmer, reactive anxiety is also a possibility. Because they were used to being at such a high level and you’re bringing them down, you have to make sure that they’re in a safe place to be able to do that, because you can have reactive anxiety to come in down to explain that reactive anxiety is this. You’ve been working at a high level for a long time and all of a sudden I bring you down a little bit, but you really want to be up there because that’s where you’ve been such a long time. You’re like, why don’t I feel this? Why can’t I get up there? Why can’t my mind do the things that I used to be doing? And all of a sudden that actually causes anxiety, but that goes away.

06:07
Scott
It takes about five or ten minutes, usually hang out. It’s going to be okay. I’ve had people, some women and men cry or tears come down their face, so the detox kinds of reactions, feeling. But as soon as you can get them down there, then that’s gold. Because then they’re like, okay, I get it. How do I do this more?

06:24
JJ
And so if you master this, would it be that you can get yourself into sympathetic where you need to be, but then you know how to move yourself back out of it?

06:34
Scott
Exactly, yeah. So you always want to have the capacity. The more reserve you have, the more you’re going to be able to show up and do the things that you want. And the best example of this is the gym. If you’re already in that sympathetic dominance before you get to the gym, there’s very little reserve. You have to lift more weight to create tension on your muscles, and you have a much higher risk of getting hurt, actually, because there’s very little reserve that you have. Whereas if you come in relaxed, you have much more tension, much more capacity on your system, and that’s that reserve that you have. But after you finish working out, should you go in your cold plunge, should you go right to meetings? Should you do it? No no, you need to take some time. Take even just 10 minutes.

07:10
JJ
And do what?

07:11
Scott
And relax. The best way to do it is to lie on the ground with your feet up against the ground.

07:18
JJ
Oh, yeah, yeah.

07:19
Scott
Because you’re bringing back blood flow to from your legs and you’re bringing it back to the center of your body to help with, you know, with circulation. Or if you can’t do that, try to sit down and just do a meditation for 10 minutes or just do some breath work where you just prolong your exhales, because that’s going to get you in parasympathetic mode. Because the faster you can get yourself down in parasympathetic, the more benefit you’re going to have from exercise. So we call it the parasympathetic edge for a reason.

07:45
JJ
And that’s because your body can then recover.

07:47
Scott
Yes. When you recover, your cortisol level comes down and your insulin level goes up. That’s why eating after exercise or even during, but especially afterwards can be good. Because eating after exercise is going to increase your insulin. It’s going to decrease your cortisol, it’s going to increase your capacity to shift over into parasympathetic. And so in some people that are really having a hard time, what I’ll do is like, okay, you’re not going to stop exercising. You think you need more stimulation, let’s get you to exercise. But at least after exercise, let’s get you to sit down and eat something. I don’t care. Don’t stand and eat if you can, because that doesn’t help. Not a good idea. We should be sitting while we eat. But even sitting while you eat is going to get them a little bit more parasympathetic.

08:23
Scott
Some period of time, 10 to 15 minutes after you exercise, to drop down your nervous system. Because that is a superpower. That’s what I try to emphasize. Superpower for all of us is to be able to get that reserve up and use it, but then flip back down as fast as possible.

08:38
JJ
Or you could go in the sauna, put your legs up on the wall.

08:41
Scott
That works.

08:42
JJ
Do a double whammy.

08:43
Scott
I do the sauna. That’s a big one. Yeah.

08:45
JJ
I actually just did the sauna and literally put my legs up and I was like, this is fantastic. Why didn’t I ever think of this before?

08:51
Scott
You were already ahead of the game for today’s conversation. It sounds like right?

08:54
JJ
There you go.

08:54
Scott
Yeah. Because you can use. I use sauna like that, too, as a way of exercise. Then Sauna is a nice combination.

09:00
JJ
It’s going to calm down, but after working out.

09:02
Scott
Yeah.

09:03
JJ
If I could be one of those influencers on Instagram who just spends their whole day doing things. I was like, how does Instagram? I go, let’s just call them out. They’re really not doing those things.

09:12
Scott
No, no.

09:13
JJ
I was like, I don’t know how you have seven hours a day for your morning routine. Give me a break.

09:17
Scott
And it’s their morning routine, not yours. You don’t have to emulate theirs. Please, I promise you that what they’re doing is not what you need to do most of the time.

09:24
JJ
Well, one of the things I do want to get into because I had some, like, biohacking questions. Tell me about methylene blue. Is this worth the hype?

09:33
Scott
The thing about methylene blue is that it’s been around for such a long time, but only over the last couple years has really kind of hit the zeitgeist of what is it, first of all. So it’s a compound that was developed in a lab in 1870 or 1870s. 1870, so a long time ago. Developed as a textile dye to dye things blue. Like your shirt, for example, in the 1870s would have been dyed with methylene blue, or blue jeans from Levi Strauss that would have been dyed with methylene blue. But what was interesting about this class of dyes is that there was a couple researchers at the time trying to figure out ways to treat infection. We didn’t have anything back then. There was no antibiotics, no antimicrobials.

10:11
Scott
And they figured out that high doses of methylene blue would kill pathogens, but wouldn’t harm the host, the human host. And that was an amazing feat of engineering because we didn’t have anything at the time. So methylene blue was the first fully synthetic drug that was registered with the FDA in 1897. So it doesn’t come from the earth. It comes from ingredients that were made in labs. And sometimes people don’t like that even in our natural space. But understanding that not everything synthetic is bad for us. You take insulin, that’s synthetic for diabetes. If you have type 1 diabetes, if you go to the ER because you have a tracking infection up your leg and you don’t get antibiotics, you. You could die. This happened to my son a couple years ago. I was like, watching the thing go up his leg.

10:54
Scott
I’m like, crap. You know? But I gotta give him antibiotics. Right? So we need synthetic things sometimes. And not everything natural is good for us. Right. You can eat the Wrong mushrooms and die of liver failure. So just be aware. And I’ve seen this in ICUs when I was in training. So methylene blue was developed as antimicrobial and by 1897, until about 1950, it was the premier antimicrobial, antiviral, antifungal, anti, parasitic, antibacterial.

11:20
JJ
And was it only prescription then or was it over the counter?

11:23
Scott
So that’s a good question. I don’t know if it was prescription. I don’t think it was.

11:27
JJ
God. So there was no big pharma?

11:28
Scott
There was no big pharma. What a beautiful world. The big pharma was involved in like making your seven up with cocaine. You know, they were doing things like that. But there really was no pharma companies until Bayer actually, until 1950 or so. Bayer was also involved in German things that aren’t great. But that was like the first pharmaceutical company making aspirin. Right. I don’t think it was prescribed per se, but doctors did use it a lot for urinary tract infections, et cetera. And if you were In World War II, you were shipped over to Japan or that in the Pacific you were taking it prophylactically to prevent infection. They called it going blue in the loo. Because if you take methylene blue, your urine will be blue.

12:06
JJ
Yes, I know that. I know that to be true.

12:09
Scott
And so that was the first way that methylene blue was used as antimicrobial. And Even until the 1960s, if you lived in a Soviet bloc country, you had like a throat infection as a kid, your mom, most likely not your father, would be painting the back of your throat with methylene blue because it works as antiviral. Then putting people out in the sunlight because they knew inherently that the combination was actually profoundly anti infective. The other major way we think about methylene blue not only as anti infective, is as a profound mitochondrial support it. We were talking about ourselves being gasoline powered cars. We make waste. What methylene blue can do is it can compensate both on the metabolic side of the challenges, making energy, and also on the side of detoxification, because it works on both sides. Helps with energy and detoxification.

12:54
JJ
Wow.

12:54
Scott
There’s very few compounds out there that are like that. The key with the methylene blue though, is that it has to be low dose for this, like usually around 4 milligrams to 25 milligrams. The stuff that you had is way too high of a dose. And so that 4 to 25 milligram dosing is that redox support that we all, many of us, 94% of us, can benefit from. The biggest example of this is if you like to go on airplanes or you have to go on airplanes. So most planes are pressurized to about 8,000ft above sea level, which means that you’re low oxygen on an airplane. So you go from where you live, which is mostly at sea level, to an airplane that you’re at 8,000ft. All of a sudden they close the cabin door. You start feeling, like, tired and a little groggy.

13:30
Scott
That’s because your oxygen level went from about 21% in the air that you’re breathing at sea level to about 17 or 18% on the airplane.

13:36
JJ
They should have, like peloton bikes or something there. And then you could get some hypoxic training in.

13:41
Scott
You could, right? You can definitely do the intermittent hypoxic training.

13:44
JJ
There we go.

13:44
Scott
I do have a couple guys that I know that have G7s with hypoxic training on their bikes. But in any respect, what methylene blue can do is it can compensate for that low oxygen level. It can prevent you from having a deterioration of energy production because you have methylene blue around. It can work just like oxygen, though cases and clean up the mitochondria, prevent you from having more inflammation. Everything that happens additionally from being on.

14:04
JJ
A plane and altitude, I would assume.

14:06
Scott
Yes, altitude. Altitude is huge. So even if you’re on a G7, you know, which is nice, maybe one day I’ll be one. Even you’re still getting more of the radiation stress of being closer off the earth’s surface. And so you’re getting more stress even being on the G7. But it’s not as much as being on an 8000.

14:20
JJ
Is this something you could take every single day or not necessary, or what?

14:24
Scott
Depending on how healthy you are in general, and more resilient you are already. Well, how much methylene blue do you actually need? So my people that have chronic complex illness, that have chronic brain fog, chronic fatigue, mental health issues, they might eat methylene blue on a regular basis for a period of time. It’s going to take you six months or a year to get better, but we can give you things along the way. Methylene blue is one of those things that I give oftentimes, and it’s that mitochondrial support that so many of us need to be able to downregulate our nervous system that were talking about too. Whereas if I just downregulate somebody’s nervous system without giving them enough mitochondrial support, they’re gonna feel like crap when we downregulate them, and it’s not gonna get better until we do.

14:58
Scott
Low doses, around 4 to about 25 milligrams is my dosing range for most people. And I don’t like people to start off at a higher dose. Even at the higher range, I like to start off at 4, 8, maybe 12 and a half milligrams and then see how they feel.

15:11
JJ
Time of day matter.

15:12
Scott
Mornings are usually better because methylene boot can be activating. It doesn’t give you, like a stimulant kind of feel, but. But it does increase serotonin and norepinephrine a little bit as well. So you have to be aware of that when you’re taking methylene blue and you’re relatively well optimized, what it should feel like is just that you’re elevated and you’re up and you’re good and.

15:28
JJ
You feel like, wanna run downstairs and take some of the stuff you brought?

15:31
Scott
Right now, I take it on days where I have more stress, more travel, bad sleep, or something big that’s going on that day from an endurance perspective, if I’m doing some extra working out, because in those cases your mitochondria more stressed, and so you want to give it additional support so you can do more. Now, if you’re somebody that’s coming from a place where you’re more stressed every day because your mitochondria under significant duress, you may need to take methylene blue on a regular basis for a period of time. In some of my patients, it’s been months or sometimes even years, but I’m slowly decreasing their dose over time. But I always start off the same for everybody. I have start everybody, like 4, 8 milligrams, typically increase the dose every three to five days. So take it daily for three to five days.

16:11
Scott
It’s not one of those things that builds up in your body over 30 days. Over a year, it’s like, no, if it doesn’t work after three or five days, increase the dose. If it doesn’t work after another three to five days, increase the dose. Now, the reason why you want to go slow and not go so high of a dose like the other stuff that you had is that you get to about a milligram per kilogram, which is around 50 milligrams to 70 milligrams for most people. It still can be mitochondrially supportive, but at the same time, it starts increasing the production of hydrogen peroxide in the system. So hydrogen peroxide, you can buy it at the store, but your cells make it, they make it as anti infective, they make it as anti cancer.

16:45
Scott
They make it as a way to kill off cells that shouldn’t be there. So that’s good. Except if your body can’t tolerate that, which many people can’t, if they’re already under significant stress and antioxidant deficiencies. Because when you have more hydrogen peroxide around, you make more glutathione. At least you try to. If you can make enough glutathione you should feel okay, but if you can’t, you’re not going to feel very good. People telling me like, hey doc, I started taking methylene blue and I felt like crap. I’m like, well, how much did you take? Like, I took a lot. I was like, well, this is why. And then. And you need a lot of good detox support. So I have patients of mine with chronic infections that I use the higher doses, but I’m always giving them antioxidant support.

17:19
Scott
I’m always giving them, you know, binder support as well. So they’re making sure they’re pooping every day, they’re going in the sauna, they’re doing all the other things because it’s going to cause some stress on the system. I can even give higher doses for acute infection, acute trauma. I give up to 150 milligrams, about 2 milligrams per kilogram for three to five days. As antiviral, as anti infective in general. My mom was bitten by a tick in New York, where she lives, and we gave her doxy, which is for Lyme, because I’m not stupid and I don’t want her to get Lyme, but at the same.

17:49
JJ
You’re stupid.

17:50
Scott
I try not to be. I try not to be most of the time. But I also gave her the methylene blue and she got 150 milligrams for five days. She felt amazing.

17:56
JJ
Number one, where were you when I got bit by that bug in the Amazon?

17:59
Scott
Yeah. You need to have your methylene blue with you. Right? That’s what I, with all my patients I have. You have to have it in the medicine cabinet or whatever just in case. At the higher doses, but on a regular basis. It could be transformative to people. It’s a bridge for so many people because it gets you from like point A, maybe to like H, I or J. So you’ve skipped a whole bunch of steps. So that you have more support, that all of a sudden you feel like you can do more. And that bridge has allowed you to change your diet, get out of a bad relationship, get a sleep, divorce, whatever it might be that you need to do that you couldn’t get there if you hadn’t had that support. And that’s why it could be so great for so many people.

18:34
Scott
And the other big thing about it.

18:35
JJ
Is just quality with all supplements.

18:37
Scott
Quality, yes.

18:39
JJ
Peptides, supplements, hormones, quality. Because make sure they’re testing and testing, right?

18:45
Scott
And that’s not just trusting the testing from their manufacturer of the ingredient. And you and I were talking about layers of testing, right? So you get an ingredient, say it’s methylene blue, in this case from a manufacturer. If it says it’s from the U.S. they’re lying. I had somebody a couple weeks ago that said to me, hey, Doc, I bought this methylene blue online from Amazon. It said it was made in the US but it took three weeks to get through customs.

19:07
JJ
That’s so interesting.

19:08
Scott
So interesting, right?

19:09
JJ
That’s so weird.

19:10
Scott
And this is what happens, right? And so methylene blue in this case comes in to the United States from us. We get it from Japan and Korea, actually. It comes to a trusted manufacturer here with a certificate of analysis that says it meets all of our specifications.

19:21
JJ
Right? But then they have to quarantine it, and then they test again, Right?

19:24
Scott
That’s what we do. But many companies do not do this. They just trust their manufacturers and say, oh, it came with a C of A.

19:31
JJ
No, we don’t do it. And you have to quarantine it and you have to test. It’s so interesting when we get something that we end up having to backorder because it came in and they quarantine it and we test it and you’re like, kind of like, ugh. But you want that.

19:44
Scott
You have to.

19:45
JJ
So it is the downfall of all of this is when you do these things correctly, not everything passes right.

19:51
Scott
And we’ve had to throw out thousands of dollars worth it us a year longer to launch the company. So were the first company to come out with a commercial product with methylene Blue back in 2020, one month before the pandemic. Wow. First company to do it. So before that, you had to go to like a chemistry lab or someplace online and buy it from there, which is not something you’d want to do. And so it took us a year longer to launch. And still, even with the same trusted manufacturers, over the years, we’ve had to throw out thousands of dollars because it can contaminate. All supplements can be contaminated, but methylene blue specifically could be contaminated with lead, mercury, cadmium and arsenic.

20:24
Scott
And even if it says USP methylene blue, we’ve tested a lot of that stuff, it doesn’t meet the criteria, unfortunately, because of its potency. So it doesn’t meet label claim for the milligram dosage or its purity with the heavy metal concentrations. And so liquids are the biggest culprits here because liquids, they’re just, they lose potency very quickly. And you know, somebody in their garage could just go on Amazon and say, hey, here’s my methylene blue. And I saw this a number of times, like, even from people like, I.

20:50
JJ
Was like, I feel like Amazon should really, there should be some kind of scrutiny here on these things. It’s just really frustrating as a supplement producer to deal with this where you’re competing against these garbage brands and great marketing and cheap prices.

21:04
Scott
Yeah. I always tell my patients, and I say it online all the time, do not buy your supplements on Amazon, please. The only exception, the caveat is if you’re going to buy them directly from the company that you trust. Do not get them from an Amazon warehouse because you don’t know what’s in that warehouse. There’s been millions of dollars of counterfeit stuff that we’ve seen from, you know, reputable companies by name with their labels on there, but it’s not their stuff. You know, Metagenics is famous for this. Actually, like millions of dollars of their stuff. That was all just rank, not theirs. It was just with their label, so awful. So I always say, go with companies that you trust that will go the extra mile. That’s everything, you know, from methylene blue for sure. But any other like.

21:42
Scott
And I know with your company, that’s.

21:44
JJ
The way I, I grew up in the supplement industry, so I knew about how these things all had to be tested long before GMP was a thing. Sure, sure. That’s nothing compared to what we’ve done with all our testing. So with the methylene blue you’d mentioned before, the sunlight, what I’ve always heard is get yourself in front of some red lights for activation. So is that a thing?

22:04
Scott
Yeah, it is a thing. Yeah. Because sunlight, of course, has red light in it.

22:07
JJ
Right?

22:07
JJ
So the red light would probably be. Is that the better way to go?

22:10
Scott
Red light’s gonna be more intense, of more intensity. Red light. And so red light about 680 nanometers or so. It combines with methylene blue at a very specific part of the mitochondria called complex 4. And they both donate electrons to complex 4, synergizing together to help you make more energy.

22:24
JJ
The other one, besides the methylene blue, the other one that you are deep into is hyperbaric. So one of the selfish questions I want to ask is, I know that a hard shell’s better, but I also know that it’s really easy to go downstairs into my hyperbaric. It’s like crawling into a womb, that thing.

22:44
Scott
You like it, huh?

22:44
JJ
But I wish I want the seated one. But, you know, I can just go in there for 90 minutes. So I know the pressure’s not as high. But let’s talk benefits of hyperbaric. Who should be doing it, and soft versus hard, all of that.

22:57
Scott
I became very much involved in hyperbaric medicine. I still am for the last almost 15 years. So I have a very significant appreciation for what it can do. It can help heal wounds from the inside out and can do this very holistically by really rebuilding your cellular architecture. But very quickly also, I realized that there were different pressures, of course, and there’s also the right time for people. Oftentimes, especially for the deeper pressures. I often like to say it’s not if hyperbaric therapy will be helpful. It’s when and at what pressure. Because milder pressures in the chamber can be very supportive, can be very helpful from a neurocognitive perspective. They don’t cause a lot of stress on the system.

23:36
Scott
When you go to deeper hyperbaric pressures, you bring more stress into the system, and that’s not necessarily bad, as long as your system can tolerate that stress. And what I mean by here is the reactive oxygen stress that were talking about before our cells. If you’re flooding the body with more oxygen, is what you’re doing in a chamber, you’re combining increased, inspired oxygen with increased atmospheric pressure. You’re simulating the pressure you feel under a certain amount of seawater. You’re driving a huge amount more oxygen in circulation. We typically carry oxygen on red blood cells. Most of us are doing pretty well already with that. If you put a pulse ox on your finger 98 to 100% for most of us, that’s the number of sites that are bound by oxygen already. So what is a hyperbaric chamber going to do?

24:13
Scott
Well, if you just breathe a mask of oxygen, only 2% of those sites are really available for you to carry oxygen. But in a chamber, you’re pressurizing it so you’re actually driving oxygen not only on the red blood cells, but also in the plasma or the liquid of your bloodstream. The liquid of your bloodstream has very little oxygen in it at sea level, but you can flood up to 1,200% more. 12 times more oxygen in. Sounds like a great idea. And it is. Especially if you have an acute issue, like acute trauma, acute heart attack, stroke, traumatic brain injury, concussion, Same thing. Or spinal cord injury. If you get more oxygen in circulation very quickly, you are going to save tissue, hands down. And there have been studies on all of those things, even in traumatic brain injury, which is like, 50% couldn’t get.

24:53
JJ
My son into, like, when he was in the hospital for four and a half months.

24:57
Scott
Yeah, yeah.

24:57
JJ
It’s hard enough getting fish oil, much less. Forget the hyperbaric.

25:00
Scott
Yeah. You should see what some people are doing with methylene blue and, like, surreptitiously is giving them.

25:03
JJ
I wish I’d known about that. I would have done it too. I did everything.

25:05
Scott
I know. I’m sure you did as much as you could at the time. Right. So what’s happening in a chamber is you’re flooding the body with all this oxygen. That could be a great thing, but it’s also in context, because when you’re flooding the body with all this oxygen, now what happens? So some of that oxygen’s gonna go to your. Your mitochondria to help you make energy. Sure. Can you make energy effectively? I don’t know. Do you have optimized capacity both to make energy? And then the other side of it is.

25:26
JJ
It sounds like methylene blue plus hyperbaric would be the ticket.

25:29
Scott
This is the ticket. Right. And then. But it’s. For me, it’s like, okay, let’s wait. Typically three or six months, unless it’s an acute issue, to optimize mitochondrial function, add in some methylene blue, potentially add in some red light, do some foundational testing, and then that’s when you benefit. So I think you like the story. I was disinvited from speaking at a conference. When I submitted my lecture title was Please do not put them in the chamber. It was a hyperbaric conference, by the way.

25:53
JJ
Oh, that’s great.

25:54
Scott
They’re like, no, you can’t come speak at our chamber. I was like, yeah, that makes sense. And so I love hyperbaric therapy. If you. If you sequence it correctly, you can see people reverse things like cognitive impairment, strokes, concussions, chronic infections.

26:08
JJ
I had a facelift with a. I did a whole thing on YouTube about this, but with a. I got a hematoma because I threw up. And I had to speak at a 4M to like. Like, I literally had the surgery and I KNEW I had 14 days.

26:21
Scott
Yeah.

26:21
JJ
And then I get this hematoma and throw up. And so for days, like, she’s suturing like, three days of this, and I’m like, black in my mouth, black in my ears, like. And I’m like, okay, Now I have 12 days. And I was literally in the hyperbaric every single day.

26:37
Scott
That’s great. Yeah. For plastic surgery, for any kind of surgery, I always recommend hyperbaric therapy. Because if you do the best, actually scenario for the future for you, if you have any more, hopefully you don’t need them. But two or three sessions before, and then you do five to ten afterwards. Deeper pressures are typically better for this because you’re getting.

26:54
JJ
I just didn’t want to go out and see any. I was like, and I’m not going anywhere. Yes.

26:59
Scott
But when it comes to oxygen stress, that’s how the whole system works. That’s how hyperbaric therapy works, by the way. So that you’re flooding the body with more oxygen, you’re creating reactive oxygen species. That’s how you change your epigenetics. That’s how you change how your DNA is expressing itself. So you get new blood vessels, you get decreased inflammation, you get stem cell release, and those stem cells get to mature in the various tissues that you need them. But what are you doing with all that reactive oxygen stress? Do you have the capacity to neutralize that with antioxidant capacity? And that’s where something like methylene blue can come in. But also, like, are you taking enough antioxidants on a regular basis that you need. Are you taking your glutathione? Are you taking your alpha lipoic acid? Are you taking your vitamin C?

27:36
Scott
Like, these are all very important. So the way I think about this is like, okay, you want to get better in a hyperbaric chamber? Where are you now? The first and primary example was I would work with somebody. She was a nurse at the clinic that I was the medical director. And she had Lyme for many years, chronic Lyme. And I saw her do hyperbaric therapy, just be ripped apart, like, so tired, so weak. And eventually by the end of it, she was feeling better, but then she would relapse again and then again, and she’s like, there’s something different that needs to happen here. Right. This is because her system was not well supported. Enough to be able tolerate the benefits of using hyperbaric therapy.

28:11
Scott
And then what she had to do was really optimize that on a foundational level with my other friend that does chronic complex medical illness and ketamine in his clinic that I was telling you earlier. So she was working with him then. She was able to see the benefits long term.

28:22
JJ
I have never heard anyone talk about this. This is actually like, they should have had you at this conference because this could change everything for hyperbaric in terms of people’s results.

28:30
Scott
I wish they would care more. But the problem is that people don’t care about what happens after somebody leaves their clinic.

28:36
JJ
But they’ll come back if they feel better. So they should.

28:39
Scott
Yes. I mean, I went back. So in Israel, they were like the primary place that a lot of the research has been done. I have a lot of respect for them, A lot of respect. And they’d done. They did a lot of the studies that looked at anti aging and reversing telomere length or increasing telomere length and reversing senescent cells and all these things. I go there, they show me a picture of a penis before and after hyperbaric therapy. They say, oh, this is how we get all the guys to show up. Because they all get better erections after hyperbaric therapy. I’m like, cool, how long does it last? They’re like, oh, we don’t know. I’m like, well, does it matter? Well, they’ll have to come back at some point to get more.

29:12
Scott
I’m like, okay, well, what if we did some other things like optimize their diet and their health and their mitochondrial function and blah, blah. Oh, and they’re right. It’s too difficult. It’s too difficult to study, actually. Right. You can’t study that. I totally understand that. So I think what they’ve done is great. But what I’ve seen in clinical practice, right, because I work with people that have chambers on their G7s, on their. In their mansions, and also people that have chronic complex medical illness in their home, is that if we can optimize their system, they don’t need as much over time and they will see benefits more long term, just hands down. And so my clinical practice changed about five or seven years ago when I realized I was missing something dramatic, which is that putting the brakes on and saying, you know what?

29:53
Scott
Maybe hyperbaric therapy isn’t for everybody right now. You know, I know you’re coming to a clinic and a clinic needs the money. On some level to stay awake, stay alive, you know. But when you throw this context in there, people care about that. They’re like, wow, you said you didn’t think I needed hyperbaric therapy now? Wow, that’s a big deal, right? You know, it’s like the classic. If you go to a cardiologist, you’re going to get an EKG and echocardiogram. If you go to a hyperbaric person, you’re going to go to hyperbaric chambers.

30:17
JJ
I’ve never heard once in any of the times I’ve gone to hyperbaric that about this piece of it. I mean, at the very least, you would think you would do hyperbaric followed by like a Myers and a glutathione push or something.

30:27
Scott
Yeah. So the thing about the mild chambers is you can get away with a lot more.

30:30
JJ
So is there value, like the chamber we have downstairs, Is there value to these things for, you know, health optimization?

30:37
Scott
I think so. Yeah. I think so. But what’s nice about the chamber, like the milder chambers, is they don’t cause a lot of stress on the system. They give you more oxygen, maybe up to like 3 or 400% more oxygen, depending on your system and your setup. And that’s good because you get a little more oxygen, a little more energy. It typically doesn’t make people crash. You know, it doesn’t make you feel like you’re down for like three or four days afterwards. That’s also a pretty good sign for me is that. And that’s also diagnostic. If you go into a chamber, you feel like shit. That’s often a sign that there’s more detoxing and increased capacity work that you need.

31:05
Scott
And my framework, the way I think about this, jj, is that health optimization medicine framework that I was mentioning earlier, that’s what I use with my patients, is I work on that foundational framework that optimizes from that ground level. It’s called the metabolomic level. And then we change the diet, lifestyle, things like that. And then we say, okay, now it’s time to think about hyperbaric therapy. I think about some of your cool other contraptions you want to get for your house. Great. But let’s get to the foundation in order.

31:29
JJ
Most of the stuff we have just kind of showed up at our house, I’m sure.

31:32
Scott
Yeah.

31:34
JJ
The reality is, although I’m really hooked on my PEMF mat, I will tell you, this is a new. A new toy that got sent and it kind of sat there For a while. And I’m like, I’m just gonna lie down on it. The minute I went to lie down on this thing, the dogs were all over it. The dogs are like, right there. And I’m like on chat going, dogs notice? Cause they are like, right in it. And I discovered the perfect thing for me is to get on that PEMF mat with my red light mask, with my Dr. Joe meditation. I’m like, triple hack right here. But that’s what I’ve always been insistent upon is I see people, you know, with these biohacking conferences with all this ridiculous stuff, and I’m like, so did you exercise today?

32:10
Scott
Yeah, exactly.

32:11
JJ
And they’re like, what?

32:12
Scott
You know, how much have you drank? How much water have you drank?

32:15
JJ
Did you sleep?

32:15
Scott
What’s your hydration?

32:16
JJ
You know, it’s like when you look at the basics of moving and sleeping and good relationships and eating, the stuff that really isn’t. You don’t need to go spend $50,000 on something. Those are the biggest needle movers. They always have been, right? So that’s where I always like to people have. Have them focused and then we can take the step up.

32:35
Scott
And sometimes I would just say that it’s sometimes hard for people to do.

32:38
JJ
Those simple things when they feel like.

32:39
Scott
Crap, when they feel like, right? And so I tell people, you know, calm down. That’s not going to work. Sleep better, right? Or why don’t you just move a little bit more? Like, that just doesn’t work for a lot of people. So giving them a little bit of energy, a little bit of Runway on, ramping, whatever you want to call it, that’s been the key to learning how to be a clinician over the years. It’s like, you got to find where that lever is going to be. That small little inflection point. I met, you know, Dr. Ted, the founder of our nonprofit and transcriptions. I asked him, like, why are you doing this? Like, he’s like the very brilliant, smart guy.

33:08
Scott
And he’s like, well, if we can move the needle on health just a little bit, think about how much good we can do. He’s not talking about, like moving 180 degrees. He’s talking about like a percentage, two percentages. Like what you can see, even population wise, but even individually too, right? If you can just move things just a little bit in people, that’s where things start changing. And you gotta find those levers. And that’s what, you know, clinical practice is all around, all about. And that’s what drives me crazy sometimes, looking on the socials and looking at influencers.

33:32
JJ
Well, you could get driven crazy looking at socials anyway.

33:35
Scott
But just people out there telling people what to do, that they have no clue what it is to treat patients or see people and understand how that works. It’s really difficult because then I have to get. I mean, just my small practice. I get a lot of like, well, doc, should I be doing these 17 peptides? I’m like, well, how about we start with getting you outside and getting some sun or something, you know, like. And so it’s hard to navigate that for a while.

33:55
JJ
I know. Until you’ve actually worked with people.

33:57
Scott
Yeah.

33:58
JJ
I was always like, well, that sounds great, but they’re not going to do it.

34:00
Scott
Right.

34:00
JJ
So that’s a great protocol.

34:02
Scott
Sounds fantastic on paper. Yeah.

34:04
JJ
I was at one event and they said, yeah, here’s what you do. You tell the patient to go drink the shake every day and give them this meal plan, have them come back in a month. And I go, that’s what you do? Like, none of them will follow this. Like, are you kidding?

34:19
Scott
It was like the average appliance. It’s like so low.

34:21
JJ
Like, they didn’t. It didn’t dawn on them that wouldn’t work. Could you ask them if they actually did it? Because they won’t do it. I can promise you. I paid my way through graduate school and doctoral school, working out in the world instead of being a grad research student because they got paid nothing. I was like, I can make more. But it was the best thing ever because I could try. I go, this stuff you’re teaching does not work. It does not work. This is ridiculous.

34:41
Scott
Most people that I see don’t realize that they need to be more relaxed. They just think they need better sleep. Sleep is trash for so many people. So if you can work on optimizing their sleep, then everything else seems to get a little bit easier, like, oh, my nervous system feels a little bit better. Then we can work on other things. Yeah. When we develop things, we are looking to help support all those stages of sleep. But the biggest thing about sleep is it doesn’t start when you just hit the pillow. It’s like three hours before you go to bed. And so I know people love their morning routines, but I’m going to tell you, I think they’re overrated compared to evening routines. I think your evening routine is so much more important than your morning routine.

35:13
JJ
So we are going to do a little speed round.

35:15
Scott
Yep.

35:16
JJ
Most underrated Tool for calming the nervous system.

35:19
Scott
Most underrated tool would be to go outside.

35:22
JJ
Biggest mistake people make when they are trying to fix their metabolic health.

35:26
Scott
Do more instead of less.

35:27
JJ
A supplement that actually lives up to the hype.

35:29
Scott
Methylene blue, man. We were talking about it.

35:31
JJ
Yeah, yeah. Biohacker trend, that’s overrated.

35:35
Scott
Well there used to be the not eating thing, the intermittent fasting thing. I think people gotten to a point where they were getting caloric deficits and losing muscle mass. And I saw this over and over again. So getting enough caloric intake is important. So that’s one that I’m glad is not as popular as it used to be.

35:50
JJ
The omad. Well I love the intermittent fasting. That’s like, you know, I’m eating within a 10 hour window. I go, you mean you’re eating normally?

35:58
Scott
Yes.

35:59
JJ
We had to call it a diet now because we eat. What is it Sachin Panda says or Panda says we’re eating 16 hours a day.

36:05
Scott
Yeah.

36:05
JJ
Okay. The biohacker trend that is underrated.

36:09
Scott
It’s calming down your nervous system. Nobody wants to have a nervous system that’s relaxed because that means they’re relaxed and they’re not doing something. It’s the do, do versus chill, chill. Right. So that’s happening now. There are more devices out there. There are more people talking about it. I know there’s a book coming out, I think it’s called the God Shot which is injecting you in your neck.

36:28
JJ
Oh. And that. Yeah, was talking about that. I was like that sounds awful to me.

36:33
Scott
Yeah. I mean it can work for people that are super stressed. It’s not gonna work long term if you don’t do the other stuff. Right. But it can help drop you. And I’ve seen it like with veterans and PTSD and trauma. It can be very helpful.

36:44
JJ
One daily habit that dramatically improves nervous system resilience.

36:49
Scott
I love meditation.

36:51
JJ
Do you meditate?

36:51
Scott
I do, yeah.

36:52
JJ
What type do you do?

36:53
Scott
Usually just a guided meditation. Sometimes I’ll just do a focused practice with breath. It doesn’t have to be crazy. And I tell my patients this all the time. If you can just take two to five minutes to just observe your mind, that’s all you need to do to start off with. You can go more but just micro levels of that is what I try. I’m not for me like more than 10 minutes is likely not going to happen. But if I can get a 10 minute block, I’m good a couple times a day, three times a day if I try. And then micro meditations throughout the day, just taking a second, going, oh, I’m here. That’s it. You know, just trying to bring yourself back to the moment, like, so very basic things.

37:23
Scott
And I’m a big fan of Sam Harris and his app called the Waking Up App, if you’ve heard of it. He has a lot of great ways and a lot of great teachers on there that talk about just bringing you back to that present moment. Like the proverbial, like proverbial, be here now, Ram Dass kind of thing. But, like, where are you here? What time is it now? Oh, okay. Okay. There you go. That’s it. That’s all I needed. And so this kind of coming out of, like the future orientation to the past orientation. So I’m not somebody that thinks you need to meditate for three hours a day. I think that there’s reasons to try that. Sometimes I have an inclination, like if.

37:54
Scott
Especially if you learn how to concentrate again, which I think everybody needs to do, like having some concentration practice, something that I’ve been trying to work into my days, short little bursts, micro meditations. That’s what I have. That’s what I love people to try to do if they can.

38:07
JJ
What’s next for you and where can people find you?

38:09
Scott
So I have a company called Troscriptions. The company has been developed, we launched just before the pandemic. As I mentioned, were the first company to come out with a commercial product with methylene blue. And our goal with this company from the beginning was find ways to help people now while they’re on that longer path of optimizing their health, which, as we talked about, can take a while, six months, a year or longer. So we’ve created products for energy focus, sleep, stress, immune system function to help people right now along that path. But I always educate in the way we’ve been talking about today, which is, these are great. I know they can help you now, but you still gotta do the work. I’m gonna try to make it easy for you.

38:46
Scott
And then over long term, I hope you need these things less so that you don’t need Trocom to calm you down. You can just go outside or do some breath work or use your vaginal nerve stimulator, if that’s what you have. Right. But the goal with the company as we grow and as we continue is that we want to be. We are one of the premier brands of methylene blue out there with a practitioner’s choice. The practitioners go to us, because I’m a clinician, I see patients, right. Dr. Ted, who is on our team, he sees patients. We’ve been seeing patients for a long time. And we care about quality, we care about dosing, we care about education. Right. And that’s with everything that we do.

39:18
Scott
And so we’re, I’m hoping as we create new products, we’ll create more education around them and give people these solutions now along that path. And then we have our nonprofit organization called Health Optimization Medicine and Practice Home Hope for short. That’s@homehope.org and that is that ecosystem is training practitioners, licensed and non licensed, to learn how to optimize people’s health rather than focus on disease. And then we’re growing that so we have more clinicians, we have more practitioners coming through. We have a seven module certification for practitioners and it’s foundationally associated with the idea of not just looking for root causes of illness. I have lots of functional medicine docs.

39:55
JJ
That I, we’ve already got that covered.

39:56
Scott
But there’s no other specialty out there that’s creating a standard of care for health, not disease.

40:01
JJ
Isn’t that bizarre? I mean, as you start to talk about the beginning, I go, wow, we don’t really study what it means to be healthy.

40:06
Scott
We don’t, we don’t. And then we’re the first specialty to really focus on that. And we do that by optimizing you, not just for your age, not to be normal for your age. You want to be optimized for it.

40:15
JJ
But I don’t want to be normal for my age.

40:17
Scott
Hell no. Right? None of us do. Except if you’re between 21 and 30, which is when you’re most optimal for everything you’d want to do. And so that’s what we do. We shift your nutrient networks, your hormone networks, everything to that level to back to when you were 21 to 30.

40:30
JJ
And then you have a podcast too, right?

40:32
Scott
Yeah, we have our own podcast. We just rebranded it. You’re going to be coming on too. It’s called the Health Optimization Medicine podcast. And we’re really trying to bring on is experts that are working in these places, which you have been doing for, you know, longer than a lot of people.

40:43
JJ
Because I didn’t have any like medical tools. I was a lowly. Now it’s very cool to be an exercise physiologist, but back then it was not.

40:51
Scott
You had to be scrappy about it. You had to figure it out along the way. And the evolution for me also is another Company called One Base Health. One Based Health is a company that we developed, that I developed a number of years ago. Initially it was on hyperbarics specifically and helping optimize. But what I realized over the years is that we need to learn how to integrate these tools together, like how to use your hyperbaric therapy, how to use your lights, how to use your sauna, how can you get good data. And so we’re creating an ecosystem of software that’s connected to hardware to be able to figure all this out.

41:15
JJ
This is great. It reminds me, early on I actually went and switched grad schools to study pharmacology to learn how to put drugs and supplements together. I was like, don’t do that. I’m like, well, the clients are coming in with them. And I feel like it’s the same way here with these trying to figure these things out and you don’t see clinicians doing it. So then you have just people with podcasts talking about it. And I’m like, well, yeah, but now.

41:41
Scott
The cool thing is we can use wearable technology and we can use sensors that are on machines to get a sense of what’s actually happening with the machines with you and how it’s all doing.

41:49
JJ
And so we’ll see how the PEMF plus red plus dog plus Dr. Joe works. Cause I think I’ve got a winner there.

41:55
Scott
That sounds awesome. I don’t think you need any biology, you don’t need any metrics to know for sure. I think you’re good.

42:01
JJ
Well, thank you so much.

42:02
Scott
Well, thanks for having me, jj. This has been fun.

42:08
JJ
Be sure to join me next time for more tools, tips and techniques you can use to look and feel your best and be built to last. Also, I’d love to connect with you and hear your thoughts on the podcast. Here’s how. First, subscribe to the podcast and leave an on honest review. Second, take a screenshot of your review and third, text it to 813-565-2627. That’s 813-565-2627. When you do, I’ll reply using my brand new virtual jj. It’s my on demand virtual self built from my books, talks and years of experience so I can interact with you directly. You’ll make my day and I can’t wait to hear from you.

42:58
JJ
Thanks for tuning in and I’ll catch.

43:00
JJ
You on the next episode. Hey, JJ here. And just a reminder that the well Beyond 40 podcast offers health, wellness, fitness and nutritional information that’s designed for educational and entertainment purposes only. You should not rely on this information as a substitute for, nor does it replace professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. If you have any concerns or questions about your health, you should always consult with a physician or other healthcare professional. Make sure that you do not disregard, avoid or delay obtaining medical or health related advice from your healthcare professional because of something you may have heard on the show or read in our show notes. The use of any information provided on the show is solely at your own risk.

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