#144 Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy, Ketosis, and Fasting with Dr Scott Sherr

Scott Sherr (0:00)

In a long-term strategy, a protocol of hyperbaric therapy, it's actually an epigenetic stress on the DNA itself, causing expression and suppression of about 8,000 different genes that allow the body to heal and to optimize.

These are genes that are responsible for growth, downregulating inflammation like TNF-alpha, IL-1, IL-6, IL-12. It's just a healing mechanism in all different aspects. It's the best way to say it. And optimization as well.

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Siim Land (0:31)

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Siim Land (0:39)

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Siim Land (0:44)

Welcome to the Body Mind Empowerment Podcast. I'm your host Siim Land and our guest today is Dr. Scott Sherr. Dr. Sherr is an international medicine physician specializing in health optimization medicine, nutrigenomics, metabolomics, and hyperbaric oxygen therapy.

Scott, welcome to the show.

Scott Sherr (1:00)

Siim, thanks for having me. Happy to be here.

Siim Land (1:02)

Yeah. I'm really happy to have you as well.

We've come to know each other over the course of this year because of attending a lot of these same biohacking events and conferences. I figured that I should definitely get you on the show because you're also an expert in your field and a really smart guy.

Scott Sherr (1:19)

Thanks. Yeah. I know we met first at the Metabolic Health Summit back in I think January, February, February and yeah, it's been really great to get to know you, Siim, and all of your work. You're doing some fantastic stuff.

Siim Land (1:29)

Well, thanks for that.

But let's talk about you. Can you tell us where you're coming from and how did you end up with your knowledge?

Scott Sherr (1:38)

Sure.

I'm an internal medicine doc. I grew up in New York, Long Island to be exact, a place called Northport if anybody really cares.

But my father is a chiropractor. I grew up pretty out of the box, outside of the medical system. Alternative medicine was the main way it was described at that point. Now we have lots of different words for alternative medicine, functional medicine, integrative medicine, healing medicine, anti-aging medicine, hormonal management medicine, all those kinds of things. But back then, it was really just alternative medicine. So I grew up very outside the box, outside the main frame of conventional medicine. I went to medical school thinking I had this high-minded possibility of bringing together alternative and conventional medicine in some beautiful practice that I would figure out later. And that practice initially started off as one really focused on hyperbaric medicine, hyperbaric oxygen therapy, because I found it had significant benefits both conventionally for things that were covered by medical insurance in this country, along with a host of research that was being done in this country and other countries, where it was obvious to me that oxygen and pressure, the two things that we're doing in the chamber, could have massive healing potential, optimization potential. And it was from my practice in hyperbaric medicine that I created an integrative hyperbaric medicine program, my own practice that had that as the focus. And then I got involved in the optimal performance world using hyperbaric medicine as its main driver in bringing me into the world of optimal performance, whether it be the ketogenic diet or the bulletproof types of people, paleo types of people, the health optimization types of people, I guess you could say, Siim. And so it was after getting involved in integrative hyperbaric medicine that I got involved in the foundational practice of health optimization medicine, founded by, as you know, a colleague of mine and a friend of both of ours, Dr. Ted Achikoso.

Siim Land (3:41)

Yeah, that's a really fascinating story. And yeah, I've had Ted on the podcast as well, and he's a really, really smart guy. We can talk about his work later.

But what is hyperbaric oxygen therapy and how does it work specifically?

Scott Sherr (3:56)

Yeah, so hyperbaric therapy is super easy. And that's why I really, I think, gravitated towards it, because just the simplicity of the technology and actually the physiology of it made me realize that it was pretty universal to both healing and optimization. So it's really simple. It's just a combination of increased inspired oxygen with increased atmospheric pressure. So typically at sea level, we're breathing 21% oxygen. And that's just normal oxygen levels in the sea level around us. Now, it might be slightly higher in places and slightly lower in places. The lowest places, maybe you probably know this, Siim, are going to be big cities where there's lots of carbon monoxide in the air and other gases that shouldn't be there. But the most common gas in the air outside of oxygen is actually nitrogen. So at sea level, we're breathing 21% oxygen. In a chamber, we typically increase that amount of oxygen to somewhere around 100%.