The Worthy Physician

Balancing Brain Chemistry for Mental Clarity with Dr. Scott Sherr

• Dr. Sapna Shah-Haque MD, Dr. Scott Sherr

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In this episode, we explore the importance of self-care among physicians and the crucial role that maintaining GABA levels plays in mental health. Dr. Scott Sherr discusses innovative methods to optimize health through the lens of Health Optimization Medicine, stressing the need for healthcare professionals to focus on their well-being.

• Understanding the challenges physicians face in stress management 
• The importance of relaxation and self-care practices for physicians 
• An overview of Health Optimization Medicine 
• Exploring GABA deficiency and its impact on anxiety 
• Introduction to Troscriptions: A natural solution for stress relief 
• Strategies for managing work-life balance in mid-career physicians 
• Discussing the broader implications of self-care for healthcare professionals 

Self-care is not selfish. You cannot pour from an empty cup.

Though I am a physician, this is not medical advice. This is only a tool that physicians can use to get ideas on how to deal with burnout and/or know they are not alone. If you are in need of medical assistance talk to your physician.


Learn more about female physicians' journey through burnout to thriving!
https://www.theworthyphysician.com/books

Let's connect for speaking opportunities!
https://www.theworthyphysician.com/dr-shahhaque-md-as-a-speaker

Check out the free resources from The Worthy Physician:
https://www.theworthyphysician.com/freebie-downloads

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21 Day Self Focus Journal

Dr. Shah-Haque:

Welcome to another episode of the Worthy Physician. I'm your host, dr Sapna Shah-Haque, reigniting your humanity and passion for medicine. With each episode, we bring you inspiring stories, actionable insight and expert advice. Get ready for another engaging conversation that could change the way you think and live as a physician. Your income is your greatest asset. Protect it with pattern light. The easy, stress-free way to find the right disability insurance, with unbiased comparisons and no jargon. Pattern helps you to choose the best policy for your needs. Secure your future today at Pattern Life. The link is in the show notes. Let's dive in.

Dr. Shah-Haque:

As physicians, at times many times actually we forget how to relax, how to manage stress. We forget the tactics, the tips and tricks that we teach our patients. Today I have Dr Scott Schur, who's going to be talking to us about proscriptions as well as health optimization, medicine and practice, and proscriptions would be described as a pharmaceutical grade trochee designed to enhance brain function, relieve stress, promote better sleep and just all the things that we forget to embrace as physicians. So, scott, thank you so much for joining me here today. I'm really fascinated about just about all the work you're doing.

Dr. Sherr:

Thanks for having me. I really love the platform to talk to physicians as being one, being an internal medicine physician for many years, working in the hospital as a hospitalist for many years now, although I work much less than I used to and I'm not sad about that, to be honest but I know the system very well and I know how difficult it is for people, for all of us, to actually thrive in this system because of all the different pressures that we have and the main pressure there's so many, but the one that I see we always talk about burnout right, the one that doctors always get to, and that's because we're always supposed to be on, we're always supposed to be helping people, but it's hard to find time to shut off, to turn off, to find ways to relax. Even when we're off work. It's hard to get that nervous system to regulate and have a regular meal with your family or wind down in the evening without a glass of wine or three, and we know this all is not a great thing for us to be doing, especially alcohol, because it messes up and trashes our sleep in the evenings. And then we're back at it again with kids and with patients and administrators on our back and everything else. So I know this world very well and that's really why I've, in my own practice, I've gravitated to more of an integrative practice over the years, but I still do hospital work.

Dr. Sherr:

But the integrative practice really got its start as a trained practitioner in something called health optimization medicine and practice, which you were just describing, and this is a framework that was developed by a colleague and now a mentor friend of mine named Dr Ted Achikoso, and the framework is a foundational framework to optimize health rather than treat disease. And it's a seven-module certification for practitioners for licensed practitioners, for MDs, for non-licensed practitioners as well to learn how to optimize health using some sciences that are really cutting edge compared to what we learned in medical school things like metabolomics and chronobiology, epigenetics, the gut immune system. When I went to medical school and maybe with you as well, nobody knew anything about the gut immune system at that point. It was just something to treat with antibiotics and then to treat more with antibiotics when you got C diff. That was pretty much it. Now we know a lot more about it.

Dr. Sherr:

There's these multiple modules that we created to help practitioners learn how to optimize the health of their patients, not just treat their diseases, not even just prevent diseases, like on early stages, but what's optimal for the health, for the gut, for their hormones, et cetera. And then, out of that aim, the Transcriptions company, because most people that are listening will know that if you're looking to optimize or recover or improve your health, it doesn't happen in a day. It takes time, it can be six months, a year, longer, depending on where you're starting. And Troscriptions was developed as a company to help patients right now, help people, all people right now, while they're on the path to optimizing their health or optimizing their energy, their focus, their sleep, their anxiety, their stress, their immune system function. So we've created a whole bunch of products in this space and I think where we wanted to go, I think, was on the how we can learn how to relax better. And then we have a whole suite of products that are working on the GABAergic system in this case.

Dr. Shah-Haque:

Yeah, and you're right. When I went through medical school, it was mostly all that you described, and now we're finding out that, hey, what we put into our body really does affect the GI system and that affects your overall health. With these two companies, they go hand in hand really looking at optimizing health, which I love, because it's not just treating symptoms.

Dr. Sherr:

You're actually trying to prevent treating symptoms You're actually trying to prevent. Yeah, when you look at even functional medicine, okay, so functional medicine has got a lot more popular over the last couple decades. Now, what functional medicine is really doing is looking for root causes of illness, and that's certainly better than band-aiding illnesses and just giving people medications. We all know that we sometimes have to do that and that's fine, but oftentimes in the preventative setting, there are things that you can do without just going ahead and giving medications a lot of the times. But functional medicine focus on the root cause of what's going on. That's definitely an improvement overall than just band-aids. But what nobody else is doing actually taking is taking care of the health of your cells and keeping them healthy, rather than just treating the root causes of disease. So if you look at that framework shift, it's a pretty big one, and I'm an anomaly because I grew up the son of a chiropractor and so my framework has always been more of a health-focused framework. But you can use data points from like metabolomic testing. Specifically, which is metabolomic testing is the idea that you can test what's happening metabolically, that's, in your cells, real time so vitamins, minerals, nutrients, the cofactors, associated heavy metals. So the metabolome is nice because it's a confluence between genetic expression and environmental exposure. If you just look at your genome, you're just looking at a static level or number of DNA and genes and things like that. You really don't know the expression of those kinds of things. Epigenetics is talking about how you can change the expression of those over time, so that there's that science which is fantastic and it's one of the modules in our certification course. Metabolomics is where your genes and your environments truly mix together. You can actually look at all this stuff in real time cellularly.

Dr. Sherr:

When we went to medical school, we learned about energy metabolism. We learned about the citric acid cycle, we learned about the mitochondria, but we didn't know that you actually can measure all the intermediates of your citric acid cycle. You can measure levels of oxidative stress in your mitochondria, things like lipid peroxidase and 8-hydroxydeoxyguanine, and your measurements of glutathione levels and others. You can measure these as correlations or correlates, excuse me of what your antioxidant status is too. So if you're looking at all this data, if somebody's so what we often say in health optimization, medicine and practice is just because you're not sick doesn't mean you're healthy, it just means you're not sick, right.

Dr. Sherr:

So we all know that what most people will say is oh, I was really good, I felt fine, and then all of a sudden I just went off a cliff, right, and then nothing was the same. But oftentimes it is much more of a progression than that. People just don't realize that things are building up over time. So if you're looking at foundational biomarkers from the metabolomic perspective, you can optimize for diseases if you already have those, but that's not the goal. The goal is just to optimize the cells for what they need, or you can optimize so that you can prevent those things from developing over the long term as well.

Dr. Sherr:

So the beneficial side effect of being health optimized is that whatever diseases and symptoms you might have, those are likely going to get better over time.

Dr. Sherr:

And then the other beneficial side effects is that you're hypothetically and most likely going to feel better and have a more sustainable future from a health and longevity perspective and from a health span perspective as well. Because in the end, if you get three wishes from a genie and one of them is to live forever, the second one also has to be to have eternal youth. Otherwise, why do you want to live forever? So the goal with the third wish you can choose. I don't know if you guys can think about what your third wish would be, but for us the idea is to try to recalibrate your levels of the vitamins, minerals, nutrients, your hormones back to your optimal levels when you were about 21 to 30 years of age, because that's when we're the most optimal from a resilience perspective, and anybody that's listening that's not between 21 and 30, that's older than that will remember what it felt like to be 21 to 30. You didn't have to think about anything because you were fine most of the time.

Dr. Shah-Haque:

And that's a great segue to my next question is how would this help with the attending the mid-career physician that is bouncing between all these hats that we wear? Right, we were discussing, before the recording a physician, a spouse, a parent, one that doesn't get really talked about much the sandwich generation between young kids and aging parents. We already have established that, yes, we as physicians, we as in multiple roles outside of our career, have difficulty turning off the.

Dr. Shah-Haque:

I need to think switch, I need to be, there for everybody else switch the on switch, basically yeah yes, we're eternally on, but we all know that we have to rest. We have to rest our mind, we have to, and without substance, because and that's a really slippery slope and we won't even go down that rabbit hole. You were discussing how these trochies can help with that, to help with anxiety, to help human distress yeah. Tell me more about that, please.

Dr. Sherr:

Yeah, sure. So the framework that I would say here is this right, mid-career, you're super stressed. An option could be getting trained in something like health optimization, medicine and practice and create like a cash practice base that actually, if you're already taking insurance work, it actually will make that work easier for you because your patients will be healthier. You can actually charge them money and see them in that in different contexts. So we have a lot of clinicians that are doing that. So they have their own practice and then they're adding on like additional cash part of their practice, like integrative concierge kind of thing, where they're seeing patients and doing more long form foundational health. So that can help de-stress to some degree. If you're actually seeing the benefit of being a doctor again, right, because most of us got into this because we want to help people. But if you have 15 minutes and you're seeing 40 patients a day, it's very difficult to do that. So I think that'd be my first thing. My second would be that when it comes to turning on, the off switch. So all of us are very easy. Most of us, we love being on, we love being like, we love our focus, we love getting shit done Excuse my language. We love making sure that we're helping as many people as we can for the most part, but taking that stress home, it really does affect us. It affects our lifestyle, our relationships, our health and everything else, and so what transcriptions developed was a number of products that work and leverage the GABA system, gaba being the neurotransmitter in our brain that is the most prevalent inhibitory neurotransmitter it's about 20% of the brain's neurotransmission and so many people, and actually many clinicians and many people overall are GABA deficient these days, and GABA deficiency is not well understood by clinicians, but it's much more prevalent than we realize. So GABA deficiency is associated with anxiety, with depression, with insomnia, with even things as severe like schizophrenia and obsessive compulsive disorder. But your patients and some of you that are listening probably have some anxiety, probably have some insomnia and probably have issues with depression. But we also know that what's often getting prescribed in these cases is going to be your SSRIs, right, your serotonin reuptake inhibitors. But we also know now that depression and anxiety is not a serotonin deficiency. This has been well established over the last couple of years. They've done these huge analysis and there's no evidence that people with depression have a serotonin deficiency. But they haven't looked at the GABA system and it's pretty obvious to me that many of these patients, many of these people have a GABA deficiency.

Dr. Sherr:

And for those who want a quick reminder of how GABA the whole thing works here so GABA is your neurotransmitter in the brain. It is in balance with glutamate. Glutamate is your primary excitatory neurotransmitter, so glutamate is converted into GABA in the brain and it requires vitamin B6 and magnesium to do this. So glutamate is excitatory, gaba is inhibitory. So you can have sources of glutamate in your diet. The most common one that people know about that's not well-liked is MSG, so monosodium glutamate in Chinese food and other Asian foods, but it's also in caviar and hard cheeses. But glutamate is actually also made from glutamine, which is another amino acid. So glutamine is our primary amino acid that gets turned into glutamate and then glutamate gets turned into GABA. So glutamine sources are all over our diet, mostly in fish, chicken meat, poultry of other sorts, bone broths, cabbage. You'll find a lot of glutamine in those kinds of foods. So glutamine is also the fuel of our small intestine, for those who are interested in that. But so glutamine gets converted into glutamate and then from glutamate into GABA. So there's always this balance between glutamate and GABA.

Dr. Sherr:

But what ruins your GABA levels? If you're stressed all the time, you're gonna deplete your GABA levels. If you're magnesium or B6 deficient, you're taking certain medications that are keeping you on all the time. They're also going to deplete your GABA levels. Caffeine also makes you GABA resistant, so you actually are not as able to use the GABA that you have. Heroin and morphine actually inhibit your GABA receptors and give people that are taking pain medications anxiety. Thc also inhibits the GABA receptor as well and that's why people get anxious when they use THC a lot of people.

Dr. Sherr:

So what we wanted to do was how can we optimize this GABA system? So you can do this in a couple of different ways. The more health optimization, medicine and practice way is to optimize B6, magnesium levels, stress levels, your glutamine levels, your mineral levels. Copper and zinc are also involved in the receptor, the GABA receptor itself. So you can do all that using that kind of approach, but you need to help people right now, which is what many of us need. Then we really looked into the literature as to what could be very helpful to support the GABA receptor itself.

Dr. Sherr:

So GABA, the receptor itself. It's a pentameric structure. It's got five subunits. Gaba binds to its receptor at a specific site, but it has all these other sites called allosteric sites, where other things can bind so common ones that we know about benzodiazepines, alcohol, barbiturates, coelutes back in the seventies but, like, those kinds of things bind to these allosteric sites and then, when they bind, they're called positive allosteric modulators. They increase the affinity for GABA to bind as well.

Dr. Sherr:

Okay, the problem with these drugs that I just mentioned is that they have extremely high affinity for the receptor and they make GABA bind at a much higher rate, depleting GABA over time. And then this is why they have a higher risk of tolerance, withdrawal, dependence, et cetera. So you don't want to use those if you don't need them, right. Of course, if somebody needs a benzo or they're going through alcohol withdrawal, you're going to give them benzos for that, right, or you're going to give them phenobarb or something. But you can support the GABA system in a more holistic way by giving a natural positive allosteric modulator. So these are some natural compounds which I can talk about, along with something that enhances GABA binding itself, or it's something that works just like GABA at the GABA receptor. So if you do both if you give an allosteric modulator along with giving something that enhances GABA itself binding to its receptor site. Then you have this combination, which we call an obligate pair, which is something that we've developed at Transcription. So we use something like kava. Kava is a positive allosteric modulator, so it binds to the GABA receptor. And then we use something called nicotinol GABA, which is a vitamin B3 attached to a GABA molecule.

Dr. Sherr:

The reason we do that? So GABA supplements do not work. Gaba is too big of a molecule to get across the blood-brain barrier. So because of that, if GABA does work for you or for your patients, it could mean the patients or you have a leaky brain and that means the blood-brain barrier is not doing what it's supposed to do to keep things out. We have an epidemic of that right now People with chronic viral infections. So if you have long COVID, if fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue, leaky gut, chronic what did I forget? Multiple things like that, like autoimmune issues that are affecting the brain, oftentimes it does create a barrier that's not doing what it's supposed to do. So if a GABA supplement does work for you or your patients, it could be because their leaky brain is letting things in. This is usually a corollary for a leaky gut. So if they have a leaky gut, that needs to be addressed. If you fix their gut, usually that fixes the brain at the same time.

Dr. Sherr:

So we developed something called TroCalm, which is our anxiety stress relief formula, which has a combination of this nicotine on GABA in it, which is really cool because not only does it have GABA but it also has a vitamin B3 attached. The B3 allows the GABA to get across. When it gets across the blood-brain barrier, it hydrolyzes into vitamin B3 and GABA. So you get the GABA which binds to the GABA site of the receptor, which is good. Then you have your B3, which is increasing your NAD levels, and you're increasing a little bit of energy that way. So you feel more relaxed but you don't feel tired or dead inside, which is what most benzos are going to do.

Dr. Sherr:

So Trocom has nicotinol GABA. It has kava which binds to this allosteric site, increasing the affinity of GABA to bind. But you've given a source of GABA, which is the nicotinol GABA, which is good. So you're not depleting GABA at the same time. And you have CBD and CBG in there. Cbd and CBG are non-psychoactive cannabinoids. Most people at this point know what CBD is. It's an anxiolytic because it works on the endocannabinoid system, a neurotransmitter called anandamide, which is ananda in sanskrit, is actually bliss, which you may know. But the this neurotransmitter gets broken down by an enzyme that cbd prevents from working as well. So there's more of it around. It also works on the gaba system as a positive allosteric modulator, and then cbg does very similar things, although it works on a number of other receptors, including pain perception. The people are gamma system and other stuff too. But but it's fantastic overall. So you take Trocom and you're going to feel like that stress level is going to come down right, and so we developed these things in something called a Troki, as you mentioned.

Dr. Sherr:

A Troki, a dissolvable lozenge. They're buckled absorption, so they go between your upper cheek and gum up here and they dissolve over about 15 to 30 minutes. As they dissolve you will get a pretty quick, rapid result. Because a pretty quick onset, because it's dissolved between your upper cheek and gum. It's going directly into the buccal mucosa here and so it's bypassing first pass metabolism in the liver as well. That takes a longer time to digest things and also your ingredients become less bioavailable when they go through your liver and digestion. Dissolving up here works fast, and the cool other thing about a trochee is that they're titratable so you can break them up.

Dr. Sherr:

I think I actually have one. I don't know if we're on video for this particular podcast, but we do have. They look like this here. They come in this kind of box this is what they call it like this, it looks like this here, trocom. And then I think what's more interesting is that the trokey what it looks like here I can show a picture, if I can think I can show this on camera is it looks like this. So you have a. It's a little it's so. It's scored in the middle.

Dr. Sherr:

It's easy to break that up into a quarter, a half. Three quarters are full and what I find is that if you take a like a quarter of this, it's really nice because it take the edge off. So if you're at work, you're just, your mind is just overstressed and you just can't. You can't think because you're just too much going on. You can just take the volume down just a little bit. You're actually going to perform better, right, and you can see this very much in real time for people, and what's nice about it is that they don't get tired when they take it and you can take it at the end of the day when you're trying to relax and get home and try to be with your be present with your kids, if you have kids. With your spouse, if you have a spouse. With your dog, if you have a dog, whatever it might be, and it's a great way to relax and to de-stress.

Dr. Sherr:

You can take a quarter, a half, a full, depending on what you need and depending on your like, your anxiety level. The more that you do take, the more tired you may get, so you have to be aware of that. But what's also nice about this is that the GABA system helps regulate thought patterns. So on average we have about 70,000 thoughts per day. When you're depressed or anxious, that goes up to about 120,000 thoughts per day, and what Trocom can do, leveraging the GABA system, is turn down the volume of those thoughts as well. If you have a hard time going to bed because your mind will just continue to go and go, turning down the volume or turning down the perseverating aspect of those thoughts can be very helpful for you to be able to fall asleep as well so there's a solution told that we talked about, that is natural non-habit forming and you can actually titrate yeah, and it happens it can help in real time yeah.

Dr. Sherr:

So within about 15 to 30 minutes is when you start seeing the effect. And that's the nice thing about the buckle absorption because you get it that quickly. It because it's bypassing your metabolism in the liver it's going and dissolving directly into your cheek mucosa. That combination makes it extremely effective very quickly. And what's nice about it is that, if you're thinking about it, either for yourself or for your patients, when most people take anxiety medication like they feel like they're dead, they feel like their brain can't work, they feel tired, they just want to be like a puddle on their couch and that's not really very conducive to being at work and seeing people and being with your family and it's not very helpful.

Dr. Sherr:

But it takes a little bit of getting used to because most people that have taken anxiety drugs in the past are used to feeling that. So when they don't, it's actually like almost a double take for people because they realize that they're awake but their mind isn't anxious and it's a bit of a strange combination for people initially when they first use it because of that. But once you get used to that, it's been transformative. I mean, I take it myself, I take it at night often not oftentimes, but I do take it when things are stressful and I don't feel tired when I take it. I just realized that my mind is much more relaxed, and so it's like a. It's a nice combination for me. I have four kids at the house and things can get crazy, and I know you have some kids too, right, so you know how it gets right. So it's nice to have something that can calm you down without making you feel dead, and you can still be present with your kids and really enjoy that time rather than being just so stressed out about it.

Dr. Shah-Haque:

No, you hit the nail on the head because if you can't modulate it I shouldn't say if you can't modulate a lot of some days are better than others, right? Of course, but when it's difficult to modulate stress, it does have a trickle effect. Unintentionally, it creeps its ugly head into the house at some point. It is easy to lose emotional regulation, particularly when you're tired yes when you're spent, when you've had you've just been putting out fires all day and especially, you said that you work as a part-time hospitalist yeah, that's just one thing after another.

Dr. Shah-Haque:

The human mind can only take so much. So that would allow the user to be to shut that down, be present but not be, like you said, a puddle on the couch.

Dr. Sherr:

That's a win it doesn't mess up your sleep either, most things that people are taking, like the glass of wine or two it seems, you seems innocuous initially but, really what you're doing is you're self-medicating, right?

Dr. Sherr:

You're using alcohol to calm down, and I want to make sure that I'm clear that with my patients. It's not just about having them take your Trocom, right? It's really what else are you doing to try to work on regulating your nervous system? Are you exercising? That also enhances GABA production, because BDNF production increases when you exercise. That increases GABA and also regulates your nervous system, right? Anything that's going to increase parasympathetic tone.

Dr. Sherr:

So yoga, breath work, meditation these are all very important. They've been well shown in the literature to increase GABA as well. But if you're in a pinch, if you're going on a flight, that's a great thing for travel with your kids and everybody else and it's like bags and it's people and Trocom's great for that. And then obviously, trocom's nice for really stressful days at work or winding down after work. So you can get this as a easy button, because some of the other stuff is not easy to do, but it is the most important bucket of things to be addressing as a practitioner in what I do. So when I say, here's Trocom, use it when you need it. But also these are the things that we need to do so that you don't need it as much, and that's the goal.

Dr. Sherr:

And that's the weird thing about our company too, sapna, is that there's four docs, the team including me. We often say that we hope you don't need our products. Very often that if you can regulate your nervous system, if you can optimize your health, if you can work with a practitioner that can do all of that, the need for a lot of the things that we make is going to be minimal, and that's actually okay with us because, again, make is going to be minimal and that's actually okay with us because, again, most of us, even in the best of circumstances, are doing our best but still need a little bit of support with supplements and little things that can help us. But if we can get the basics done, we can see fantastic benefit overall doing that kind of work on the foundation and seeing the benefit over the longterm while we're using something supplements like these to really support the system as we go no case in point with the kids, but no, that's important.

Dr. Shah-Haque:

I'm glad that you brought up because that was going to be one of my questions. How long has it been? Has this company been around and it is physician, founded and led correct.

Dr. Sherr:

Yeah, so we found the company in 2020, just before the pandemic a month before, actually, the nonprofit was incorporated in 2017. And so we had a slow start because everybody's donating their time and it's a nonprofit. But we have the coursework now that's been developed. We have the seven modules overall and we have more in the works, and we also have these groups of students that come through at least twice or three times a year. Our first module, which is called the metabolomics module. That's our foundational module.

Dr. Sherr:

It's a 12-week cohort style where you work with the faculty including myself and some of the other faculty every week going through the lessons. In fact, we have another chat tomorrow on toxicities. That's the second lesson, the first lesson actually, of the metabolomics module, and so we'll all be doing that tomorrow. But the nonprofit developed transcriptions. It took us a long time to launch the company. Actually, it took much longer than we anticipated, because some of the ingredients we use are pretty novel and pretty strange overall.

Dr. Sherr:

Like the nicotinamide, we use something called methylene blue pretty strange overall. Like the nicotinib GABA, we use something called methylene blue. We use something called agarine, which is a psychedelic mushroom actually, but it's not psychedelic, but it helps with that. It's a long-acting GABA agonist that works for sleep. The GABA system is really important for sleep as well. So we have a product called Trozy, which is a eight-ingredient combination that modulates the sleep cycle, enhances sleep architecture, doesn't trash sleep architecture like your alcohol, your benzos, your THC, those kinds of things. But so we we have some novel ingredients and so we started the company, the prescriptions company, in 2020.

Dr. Sherr:

And we've been yeah, it's been about four and a half years now, so it's been a good ride, but we're always physician first, we're always clinician first and always making sure that we actually have a specific ecosystem for practitioners only.

Dr. Sherr:

So if you're a practitioner, you're interested in our products, you can sign up to be a prescriptions practitioner. All that means is that you get access to our practitioner portal where we have webinars, interviews, physician desk references for our products, access to wholesale pricing. You can purchase it for your office. We'll have a dropship option pretty soon, like a full script kind of thing that many docs know about now, so you can get supplements online from an online dispensary, kind of thing. That's what we'll have as well. But that's the big part that I work on is actually practitioner education and doing practitioner lectures. So I've lectured on the GABA system and just lectured a week ago, a week and a half ago on GABA system and GABA deficiency, and so we have a whole platform there for practitioners that are interested in learning more too with the nuance and the neuroscience to me is just fascinating.

Dr. Shah-Haque:

And again, with all the research coming out, I really appreciate the novelty and the special niche that you all have established, because, you're right, we're treating a lot of these conditions with chronic medication that maybe in five, ten years won't make any sense at all, and it already is starting to do that. If the listeners wanted to reach out and I would encourage them to do what is the best way to reach out to you or to inquire more about these companies?

Dr. Sherr:

So if you're interested on our nonprofit side, so this is Health Optimization, medicine and Practice. This can be found very easily at homehopeorg on the web, and so it's a nonprofit right. So all the money that gets made gets put back in to making more courses. None of us take any salaries for this. It's all done as a volunteer work because we know truly that as practitioners in the conventional model we're really not moving the needle on health very much. We're doing a little bit and we're doing our best and we're definitely helping people, patching them back together as best we can. But it's very difficult to see long-term changes and I think what we're hoping to do is move the needle on health and we need practitioners that are doing things out of the box and doing foundational work with patients, and so it could be a cash part of your practice. It's all telemedicine based. You don't actually have to see people in person. If you don't want to, you can do everything virtually by doing all the testing, virtually Metabolomics. That first module has been called the stethoscope of the 21st century for the reason because of how much power it truly does have in it, within it and when you learn how to use it. So that's homehopeorg and our primary module. I guess our foundational module of it would be the metabolomics module, so people can check it out there. We do cohort styles where people can go in small groups and learn from faculty about twice a year. We just started a new one a couple of days ago, about a week ago or so. Our next one will probably be early in 2025.

Dr. Sherr:

From the transcription side of things so transcriptcriptions the name of the company is a mashup of the word trochee and the word prescription, so it's Troscriptions, and it's because we have pharmaceutical grade and then physician formulated products that everything comes with a certificate of analysis. Everything is coming with purity and potency, from the raw ingredients to the products, to each lot that we make like much more than any other, most other supplement companies out there, because, again, we care more, because we're physicians and we're giving our patients this stuff too. And then you can find us at troscriptionscom on the web. You can find us on Instagram at troscriptions, and those are the major places that we talked about.

Dr. Sherr:

Trocom specifically, which is our anti-anxiousness, stress, tension formula that can be titratable depending on what you need.

Dr. Sherr:

We also have our TroZ, which is our sleep formula, which is, as I mentioned earlier an eight ingredient combination enhancing the GABA system, with something called Hanokyle, which is a positive allosteric modulator, along with something called Agaran, which is I mentioned was from a psychedelic mushroom it's non-psychedelic but that actually binds to the GABA site of the GABA receptor. So that combination that obligate pair allosteric site, increasing affinity for GABA to bind, and having something that can bind to the GABA site of the receptor is what we've done very differently, so you don't have any issues with GABA deficiency or GABA depletion over time. So it also has 5-HTP melatonin, another mushroom called cordycepin specifically, which is the active ingredient. A couple other things in there too. So it's really enhancing the GABA system and helping people fall asleep, stay asleep and hopefully wake up feeling rested at the same time. So you can check out Trocom Trozee, both to help turn off after being on. So turn on your off switch, as we would say, would be, I think, the major places to go check things out.

Dr. Shah-Haque:

Thank you for that. This has just been really refreshing and I love the science behind it, so thank you, my pleasure.

Dr. Sherr:

Oh, and I guess the final place is myself. My name is Dr Scott Scherr. You can find me on Instagram at Dr Scott Scherr D-R-S-C-O-T-S-H-E, and I've done lots interest in some of the other things we do. You can just search my name in your favorite search browser or search window or search, whatever it's called.

Dr. Shah-Haque:

And these links will be in the show notes. Scott, what is one last word of wisdom or pearl of wisdom that you would leave with the listeners?

Dr. Sherr:

Don't forget to take care of yourself, and I think that, physicians, we're all guilty of this on some level. It's very easy to help other people. I think that physicians, we're all guilty of this on some level. It's very easy to help other people. It's much harder to take the time to help ourselves, but if you want to, like Michael Jackson said, if you want to be the change in this world, you got to start with yourself, or at least include yourself in that combination. So self-care is really important and learning how to regulate your nervous system can be very important, and working on the GABA system can be very important as a way to help turn off what we need to turn off and feel better as a result and have better longevity, better health span and better practice span, if that's what we choose to do as well, to stay longer in practice 100% agree Stress kills.

Dr. Shah-Haque:

everything that you highlighted at the beginning downregulates the GABA and really it's a very vicious cycle.

Dr. Sherr:

Indeed.

Dr. Shah-Haque:

For the listeners. The links are in the show notes. Again, self-care is not selfish. You cannot pour from an empty cup. How are you going to fill yours? Click on the links below, check it out and, if you have found this episode helpful, subscribe. Share with a friend, because we can all use camaraderie. Amen. Thanks for tuning in to another episode from the Worthy Physician Podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe, leave a review and share it with someone who'd love it too. Don't forget to follow us on YouTube, linkedin, instagram for more updates and insights. Until next time, keep inspiring, learning, growing and living your best life.