Tune into today’s #HYNwellnesspodcast #37 and learn everything related to Root cuases of mental health and healing Mental Health holistically by addressing the root cause. From Toxic Mold, Neuroinflammation, Nervous System Dysregulation, Trauma, and many more topics + How to HEAL Holistically! If mental health runs in your family or currently experiencing brain health issues this podcast is for you. I learned so much from it, and I think you will too. This science-based information coming to you, straight from Brendan Vermiere’s lab – Enjoy the show!
Episode Transcript
Hey, everyone. Welcome to the healing natural wellness podcast. Today I’m reopening or relaunching the podcast with Brendan, the holistic Savage. And I’m very excited because we have phenomenal topics to talk about. And most importantly, very, very relevant right now because a lot of people are dealing with mental health.
And especially after these two years, that has been very challenging. And sadly I believe because of what transpired a lot of people dealing with it. So we’re gonna have really good conversations. Brandon, welcome to the healing natural wellness podcast. Thanks for having me, my friend. It’s great to finally connect, you know, face to face through zoom.
We’ve been kind of IG buddies for a while, so it’s great to see you Astrid I appreciate the opportunity and I’m excited to see what all we talked about today. And obviously the audience gets to be beneficiary of, of our conversation. Absolutely. I’m super excited to also finally see you face to face. I admire your work.
You’re amazing. You are definitely changing the world. I hope you know it., with mental health with all of your information. My followers love you because I see a lot of them follow you too. And they check the stories and everything. So anyway, without further ado, let’s get right into it. So, Brandon, why don’t you briefly tell us about your journey on mental health, educating others about healing, and mental health holistically in the, and you are the creator of the mental map.
One of it’s kind in the industry regarding the newest functional lab tests. Yeah. It’s been a pretty crazy journey, you know, every time I get interviewed and people always want to ask kind of. The cliff notes of the story. And it’s like, how do you succinctly encapsulate what has really been the sort of my entire life and especially you know, I’ve been doing my work professionally, my career, I’m 12 years into my career and I’m, I just turned 30 couple weeks ago.
So I started young, which I’m really glad that I did. I have no time to waste. There’s a lot of work to be done. And I was always, you know, I feel very blessed to have always been very clear with my purpose and in my drive. And obviously that has organically evolved and shifted over time because when I was 17 years old, You know, I was a senior in high school and at that point in time, my dream and my life goal and my perceived subjective sense of purpose was to become a Navy seal.
So after graduating from high school, which I will say I was first put on a psychiatric drug when I was 17, my senior year of high school, I was just doing a a fiscal for wrestling and in high school sports. And you know, I think I mentioned something about seasonal effective disorder, cuz winter was coming up and feeling a little bit depressed, maybe.
So without any lab testing done, no blood work, no any sort of evaluation really, or even referral to a mental health. Professional’s just like, well, Hey, 17 year old kid trying to figure out your life like here’s Zoloft, you know? And of course these days, now we have all. Stern black box warnings, but we hand out these drugs like Halloween candy, and I’m sure we’ll get into that more, but it’s an important detail to point out of like, okay, that was senior year.
And then I graduate high school qualified for the Navy seal program, signed a six year Navy seal contract. And then about halfway through bootcamp, they found, I had an inal hernia that they deemed a preexisting injury, therefore not their liability, not their problem. So medical discharge, and it felt like my whole life goal life, dream life purpose, you know, was really taken away from me.
And that was extremely hard. I actually just started working with a new therapist recently and I was telling her this story with starting up our work together and, you know, whereas I kind of bypass it cuz I’m so used to telling my story in a very non vulnerable way. I’m just sharing to the audience and telling what happened.
Whereas then my therapist is like, wow, that, that would’ve been really hard to have your purpose. And I was like, yeah, it hurt hello. That’s exactly what started the whole thing. Right? Yeah. You’re such a, you know, it’s such a, you’re such a young age where we’re so vulnerable to trauma, I’ve learned that like correct me from wrong.
Like we’re, we are always vulnerable trauma to trauma, but late teens, early twenties, I think, cuz we don’t know a lot about this, right? Like about trauma in life, you know, we’re just learning and then your dream is crushed and you don’t know which way to go. And the first thing. The first thing you do is like medication, right?
Right. I mean, I, I could, you know, literally lecture all a day about the shortcomings of our conventional approach to, you know, health, mental healthcare in particular. And so after the Navy seal thing fell through, I was always very passionate about health and fitness and nutrition. So I started as a personal trainer, nutrition coach.
I was kind of at this crossroads, I had spent about a year trying to get back into the special operations program and that wasn’t getting anywhere. And my mental health was getting worse and worse and worse. So I needed something else. And that’s when I got certified as a personal trainer and nutrition coach, cuz it was either that or go to college, which I didn’t want to do academia college kid life didn’t resonate with me at all.
That’s not how I learn. I’m really an autodidact. So once I started my career as a health and fitness professional, I mean, I just fell in love with the science of human health. And really at that point, it was more about metabolic health metabolic performance, which. You know, that being my background, I sometimes almost am caught off guard when a lot of other people are like, well, wait a second.
What does metabolic mean? Can you explain that? Right. And it’s weird now because these days they’re starting to become this movement of metabolic psychiatry where, you know, psychiatry is starting to wake up and realize, oh, well, 88% of Americans are metabolically ill and our drugs do nothing to improve their metabolic health.
So, you know, they’re starting to talk in terms of metabolic psychiatry. Which is great, but for me, it’s like, gosh, you guys are like 20 years behind. And so I know, you know, this is where through my Institute, my functional mental health practitioner certificate program, I now have psychiatrists and various types of doctors and clinicians coming to learn from me because it’s like, okay, you can’t really successfully treat mental illness without cultivating metabolic health and, and resilience.
And so that’s kind of the big missing piece. And I think it really is my background that has given me actually an advantage in the functional medicine space where yeah, now I’m kind of doing my thing. So it’s, it’s been a long journey and there’s so much I left out. I mean, there’s a suicide attempt in there that I didn’t talk about.
There was, I’m sorry to hear that. You know, my ex-fiancee killing herself a couple years ago that I didn’t talk about. So I have a very long and arduous journey with mental health and obviously the metabolic professional. And so it’s really satisfying for me to kind of see what my platform and my brand has become because it’s been such a gradual evolutionary process.
And I feel like I now have it nailed down. Like I know what I’m all about. I’m I’m doing the work. I have the branding figured out and now I feel like I am making a dent, but it took a long time, very long time and a lot of work to get here. Wow, that’s a next you know, pretty incredible story. I know you left out.
I actually, I’m familiar with some of your journey because I started following you a few months ago, maybe last year and you know, the same type of work as the holistic psychologist. I had her on my podcast like years ago, and I was fascinated by that because what, like, with what I do also, like we wanna address, always get to the root cause first I know that you talk about root cause and don’t fix gets fixated on that, but I believe, you know, prevention and also with all, you know lifestyle and the whole, what we always mention, right?
Like broken record sleep lifestyle, like diet, exercise, fitness meditation, try to like stress management, like the whole, all those pillars. Right. And so I think it’s fascinating that You got you like you and, and well, you are teaching actually practitioners, which is so amazing, Brandon, because you know, this is going to, it’s such a shift, you know, in how they are going to start treating people with this.
It’s. It could be the debilitating I’ve, you know, I’ve been exposed to also people with severe anxiety, or as I recently learned the O C D bully type of thing, which I had never heard of. And when I read about it, it’s like, oh my gosh, you know, like, how do you live with that? But, you know, that’s why we’re here to try to spread the, the, the knowledge.
And so I’m gonna go jump in right into the first question. Sure. So the health of, you know, our microbiome directly influences how susceptible or resilient. We will be to the effects of trauma. I got this from one of your posts, why don’t you tell us about the importance of the microbiome and for mental health, but what you said right before, you know, kind of what popped in my head is, and this is something I’ve been thinking a lot about, which is because you talked about the OCD kind of bully thing.
And I think one of the issues currently at hand is we’re so busy trying to define mental health disorders and personality disorders and identifying with those mental health disorders and personality disorders that we’re actually failing and overlooking to define what mental health even means. You know, what does it mean to be mentally healthy?
What does mental health look like for you? If, if we’re also obsessed. Well, you know, how do, what bucket, what label does my behavioral pattern fit into? Is that the OCD bully is that narcissism is at borderline, is it anxiety? Is it depression? Is it bipolar? Right. So I think, you know, we have to really define for ourselves what mental health means and, you know, get to those root cause factors that might be moving us further away from that definition of mental health.
And that’s where, you know, the microbiome, I, I can kind of, at least for the clinical side, the esoteric and Phil philosophical side of my work is a little bit different. And but as far as more, the clinical scientific side, I really do take a very metabolic and microbiome approach to mental health for the most part.
I mean, there’s a lot of other things going on there too. But a lot of these other kind of root cause topics, whether it’s like histamine and stealth infections or, you know, MCASS or whatever, all these fancy things people love to squa about. But if we can really build up the metabolic health and resilience, as well as improve the terrain of that inner garden of life, that is the microbiome.
You know, the microbiome is just the, the comp compilation of all of these different ArcHa bacteria, parasites, viruses, fungi, you know, and it’s in us, it’s all around us. I mean, we live in a microbial. World. We are more microbes and humans. We have more microbial cells than human cells and those microbes influence literally every aspect of our physiology.
And so it starts opening that conversation around, you know, germ theory, which is really what the entire Western healthcare system is built on is germ theory. It’s a theory, you know, versus then terrain theory. And it’s like, well, the truth is in the middle, but I think one of the biggest issues is humans.
As a species as collective, we have become the dysbiotic organism on this planet. We’re not living in symbiotic harmony with the microbes, let alone, you know, other animals and plants and fungi. We’re not living in harmony with, with nature. And we have this like, you know, sterilize ourselves, sterilize the world.
So that’s really kind of an extinction event of the microbiome. , but yeah, that post that you were referring to of now we have research emerging showing how actually the health of the microbiome has a large impact in determining how, you know, a young person will respond early life trauma because of the psycho neuroendocrine immunological axes and the, the gut brain axis is what it’s more simplistically called of how these microbes dramatically influence our metabolic health, our immune function and our neurological cognitive functioning as well.
Everything mm-hmm. Yeah. Wow. You know in, when you were, when you were saying, like to like I know my friend, Catherine Clinton, she talks a lot about 10 to year terrain and I’ve always been a firm believer that for example, a walk in nature, It’s so healing, I’ve been doing it for a long time, even during COVID.
I used to be, I used to, you know, take little videos at the beach with my son or walking. I have a trail that I, that it’s my favorite it’s, it’s, it’s very suiting. And lot of people saying, why are you well there, like it’s, you know, people that are, were the drank the Kool-Aid . So it’s like, like we call it and it’s like, why are you walking in nature?
It’s like, why not? Why are you in the house? You know, it’s like, get out. And so with everything just, just happens with the whole virus thing and like that the worst part is isolation. I know that that’s one thing that is detrimental for brain health, for everything in general. And so also the, the, the hand sanitizers and all that stuff that are full of endocrine disruptors or toxins.
So like what you’re saying, you know Sanitizing and, and not, not, not being connected to nature to other areas. Does that play a, a, a major role in mental health? Like what percentage would you say that play this, the role that it plays, would you say? It’s hard to put an exact number on it. I mean, I would say in between microbiome health, as one subject and metabolic health as kind of a, a second subject that is technically separate, but then those two are heavily interacting.
The microbiome directly impacts our metabolic health and literally every aspect of our physiology. But between those two, I would say that’s like, I don’t know, like 90, 95% of the equation, it’s just a hundred percent. Let’s just go. Yeah, it’s kind of, most of it, you know, and it, you have to like reverse engineer of how did we ever.
Get here in the first place. Cuz you think about like, you know, world war I and the development of the first antibiotic and penicillin and life saving medicine and right. Because like obviously, you know, we’ve gotten too far from nature. That’s the punchline, cuz everybody’s gonna want to freak out of like, okay, cool.
So how do I test my microbiome health? Like what stool test? And then, you know, what probiotic do I take to make it all go away? Right? Like what, what’s the test? What’s the pill. What’s the protocol. So I can keep living the life that I’m living. And it’s like, no, no, no. We’re talking about a lifestyle change.
We’re talking about an environmental change. We’re talking about a collective awakening and a paradigm shift. We’re talking about the fact that if humans don’t get their shit together, we’re gonna go extinct within a hundred years because of our own self-induced destruction. Right. So, you know, there’s a correction that has to occur a returning to nature returning to symbiosis and we’re starting to see.
Hints of this in pop culture. And I was just watching like a Marvel movie the other day, and it showed like futuristic New York with gardens built ins of the skyscrapers. So like, oh, that will be phenomenal. Like that’s what it’s gonna go. It’s either that or, or gone apocalypse. Right. So I do think we will get to a more hybridized sort of modern technology and luxury and comfort insecurity mixed with more vape, natural, because you know, like we’re not trying to return to like primal days where we have to hunt and gather and, oh, you got an infection, but you know, because antibiotics are the devil, like we’re just gonna let you dive in infection.
So it’s trained theory and ger theory, like we’ve gotten to lost in germ theory for the past few decades. Terrain theories starting to get really, really popular. And it’s like, well, we have to combine the best of both. You know, how do we cultivate a diverse and healthy microbiome, not just within our gut or on our bodies, but the microbiome with the planet, you know, this is where regenerative agriculture is a huge part of this movement and conversation as well.
Mm-hmm so, you know, rather than, you know, people might ask like, great, how do I grow a healthy garden? And it’s like, well, eat real food, stop putting crap in your body and maybe take probiotic. Spend more time in nature, but the punchline is we need to return to nature. Like we will restore the microbiome of the planet in ourselves.
The more closely we, we live with nature, ultimately. Absolutely. And like, I always help you. Like, I have a little highlight on garden. Like I learned how to garden. I have a, a small, I don’t know, 20 by 20 bed in a community garden. And I started doing organic gardening. I learned about companion planting the pest study, you know, beneficial and blah, blah, blah.
And it wasn’t really that hard. And I still garden. I, I get a nice, decent, I use my last red onion in February. I was still people like red onion. So it is doable. You, you know, do you have to put in the time a little bit, but you know what? You are investing in your health and you’re also saving money and you’re learning how to be self sustain self sustainable mm-hmm so, yeah.
So I have a question for you regarding the antibiotics and all of that because I’m curious the. Microbiome is a, is a very delicate, you know, combination of good. I don’t like to say good and bad bacteria, but that’s the thesis thing right now. Sure. So when we take antibiotics, I’m actually very, because of what I know and I consume Keer I make my own, you know, stuff like that.
So when I do know that sometimes when you take a round round of antibiotics, it could disturb the microbiome for up to two years. Yeah. So when we’re talking about that, you know be especially, and I also, I always wonder, like, you know, if you are in a situation and I don’t, obviously we can do medical, give medical advice and later on myself, then I’m not a doctor or anything.
So if people say, well, I’m in a situation where I need antibiotics, In my opinion is like, if it’s if it’s like a dire situation where you are, but anyway, I wanna, I want you to tell me what, what’s your, what, what are your thoughts on antibiotics, especially with I’m thinking autistic, autistic individuals or someone who has severe mental health compromised, which is usually linked to the microbiome?
Absolutely. The, I think the biggest problem is we’re overly reliant on antibiotics and pharmacological agents in general. You know, the, my, my whole like mantra that I live by is the greatest treatment is prevention and the grace, most of alls teach people how to not need it. You know, that should be the point.
Yep. And America is really failing MIS miserably in that department. The healthcare system is failing MIS miserably in teaching people how to not need medicine. We’re all extremely overreliant in a lot of ways. A lot of the pharmaceuticals, it’s just kind of enabling our own self-destructive behaviors cuz it’s like, no, no, you don’t actually have to learn how to be healthy naturally, cuz we’ll just give you a pill and then another pill for the side effects that pill and then a pill for this other thing and you know, just compounds.
And so we actually, there was that report recently that we saw that with, you know, health expenditure per capita versus life expectancy and how out of all the countries, you know, on earth, like we’re the ones that are sucking, you know, the, the worst at like we spend more on healthcare than anybody else.
And yet we’re the least healthy. Like it just doesn’t make sense. You know, we can’t keep doubling down and, and thinking that pharmaceutical. Are going to allow us to keep living the toxic pro-inflammatory lifestyle and, and killing the environment the way that we are, we actually have to really reevaluate how, how we’re living and mm-hmm and what we’re doing.
And with antibiotics, I mean, Hey look like if somebody has you know, let’s say Lyme disease and they have an active Burelli infection, or, you know, they’re, they’re septic or something, and they’re, you know, white blood cells and CRP are through the roof and they’re going into septic shock and they have serves and like they’re gonna die.
Like yeah, absolutely. Take the antibiotics. There’s. Definitely times, but then it’s like, you know, you can’t even get any dental work done without them giving you antibiotics, prophylactically like, well, there’s nothing wrong with you right now. You don’t have an infection, just you’re taking the antibiotics prophylactically.
So it’s like, so I’m dropping a nuclear bomb into my microbiome prophylactically, like just, just in case I’m wiping out all of my good flora, like just in case something bad might happen. Like that’s, that’s where the issue really is. And of course the over reliance on the antimicrobial drugs now, you know, we’re having issues with superbugs because the microbes are adapting and becoming more resilient to the pharmacological agent.
So it’s just one of those. That’s the tricky part about where we’re at is. Hey, you know, absolutely. There are times that those antimicrobial drugs are gonna be absolutely necessary, but the goal is to not really need them. And for the most part, you know, pretty healthy metabolically, resilient people, generally don’t, don’t don’t need ’em yeah.
Don’t need ’em and aren’t getting sick enough. And so there’s a whole conversation around just immunosuppression and immune resilience, which obviously pretty relevant these days. Absolutely. And I always, like, I always tell people like, and I do it all the time. They’re like, if I went, well, I have a biological dentist now, but in the past I go, they’re like, well, you know, we, we did this procedure and going onto antibiotics and I’m like, no, I’m not.
He’s like, no, what do you mean? What? No, no, I don’t need antibiotics. If anything happens, then we’ll look into it. But you beat your own advocate. You don’t have to say yes to everything when you go to the hospital, but that’s a whole other topic. All right. Let’s move on to our next question. Thank you brain for that.
Let’s talk about self infections. What are they and why? Are they detrimental and commonly overlooked cause of mental health dysfunction for those of our listeners are not aware. Yeah. Absolutely. Self infections is kind of the term that we use a lot in the functional medicine space. Just. And it’s, it’s really a nebulous.
Like most of the terminology we use in the functional medicine space is extremely ambiguous and nebulous. It’s like, what does that even mean? You know, I think that’s part of like the marketing strategy for a lot of functional medicine. People is if we confuse them and scare them, they will give us their money.
And it’s just like, well, that’s, that’s bad business. That’s why I know you don’t want it’s, it’s sad because we do have really, really good people and PR educators and, and, and functional medicine practitioners in our industry. But we also know that some of them are just like, you know, I mean, you gotta make a living.
I always, so we’ll say, well, why is it so expensive? Because we put a lot of work into it maybe, and also we need to live like, you know, it’s not free, but anyway, let’s I’ll let you answer the question. Oh yeah. I, I mean, there’s a lot to unpack there cuz I, you know, I mean functional medicine, isn’t very functional.
If nobody can access it or afford it you know what I mean? So it’s like exactly. I think there’s. Work to be done there. A lot of work I’ve advocated for I’ve signed petitions. So you know chiropractor actually chiropractor chiropractors are now part of the network, but I’ve signed petitions.
I’ve been like doing a lot of, a little bit of advocacy with other movements to try to get naturopathic medic functional medicine in the system. But let’s go back to the question. Yeah, absolutely. There’s a lot of infrastructure development there, but with stealth infections, generally referring to typically it’s thought of as like the Lymes.
So Basia mycoplasma Bartonella. A lot of it could really refer to a lot of other pathogenic microbes then might be kind of hiding from the immune system and, or not easily detectable could even really include parasites as, as well. I mean, you know, there’s not, it’s not like stealth infection is a clearly defined.
You know, label, it’s sort of just loosely referring to any sort of, and then of course you kind of have to like qualify. Well, how do you really even know if you have a stealth infection? Like, is it because somebody pushed on your arm and you tested weak while holding a bowel of water? Therefore you have some crazy infe.
Don’t get me started on that one. You know, was you gonna say, I haven’t heard of that one? My God, what you haven’t heard of muscle testing? Oh, no, I don’t remember, but I have heard of all the ones that is like, wow, really? Yeah. I’m I’m gonna just set that down and back away slowly. So I don’t get myself in trouble with my friends, but You know, with let’s, let’s use B as, as the typical kind of prototypical example, cuz Brelia which I little Brelia stuffed animal over here.
oh my God. You do not have a stuff. Let me, let me, I got my giant microbes on the shelf over there. Oh, mg. Yeah. You are definitely hardcore with . I would not have one of those they’re fun. I’m building the collection, but with Belli, so it’s kind of this like quar screws, fire key bacteria. And of course, you know, the disease, Lyme disease.
Awful. I wouldn’t wish that upon anybody. Oh. But you know, one of the Belli was kind of the first to start being referred to as a steal infection. The reason why is it can actually change its Protein engines from the, and it hides behind bio crazy thing. It makes it very hard to detect it in the body and identify it. And of course then it also makes a little bit more challenging to treat so itself. Just referring how these, these pathogens can be really real sneaky and like under the surface.
All right. So you were saying oh yeah. So just with the stealth infections being really hard to test for, and, and I think one of the, yeah, the tricks and I try to bring some education around this is how do we really qualify is stealth infection? Because I think one of the biggest problems that I see in my industry that I am very, very vocal about is a lot of times in functional medicine.
These practitioners are using new fancy, somewhat experimental, not always clearly clinically significant data and kind of testing for the presence of something that could be scary or damaging to the body. And a lot of times they’re skipping the part where they’re actually assessing to see is there any dysfunction within the body’s physiology?
And that doesn’t make sense. So follow this where, like, let’s say, you know, you test for Burelli and Lyme disease with like PCR or you do a stool test and you do the PCR analysis to look at all the different microbes genetic material in that stool test, you do a urinary microtoxin test to look for the presence of these microtoxins in the urine or glyphosate, or, you know, looking at heavy metals excreted in the hair.
You’re looking for the presence of something that could be damaging to the body in these different. You know samples, urine blood stool hair, but you have to actually assess the physiology primarily through blood work, primarily not, not exclusively. Cuz if, if the physiology is not disturbed and it looks pretty flawless, it doesn’t really matter what presence of something bad.
Like your, your physiology is resilient to that. So I just, I see that as this recurring problem in the industry where a lot of functional providers, they’re not assessing physiology, but they are, I, you know, testing for the presence of scary things. And it’s like, but if the scary thing isn’t disturbing, your physiology, all that’s gonna do is scare.
You freak you out. Like, guess what? We’re all exposed to life’s sake. Guess what? We’re all exposed to self infections. Guess what? Like, we’re all exposed to all of these bad things, but if it’s not hurting you, you know, and you’re not trusting your body’s detoxification systems and you know, immune system and everything.
Now you’re just freaking yourself out. Right? Right. Wow. So that’s pretty interesting. So are you saying that I, I, I, I hope I understood. I understood correctly if you are fairly healthy or if your immune system, same thing, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s functioning properly. You may ha well, yeah, you know, you may have a stealth infection or parasites or whatever, and you still continue to function.
Is that what you’re saying? Like, if you are fairly healthy, even if you I’m thinking Lyme disease, like with the spiral chip, with the, what is it? It’s not Pella, what is it called? The Lyme disease bacterium, the BIA BIA, if you, that I’m petrified. I adore hiking and we do it all the time, but I’m always still petrified.
And, and I use whatever, you know, natural spread, but if you were to. By a tick and you developed Lys disease. Are you like, are, if you’re healthy enough, is your body, is your immune system going to, you know, be able to fight it on its own? Or do you absolutely. For that particular I’m referring to that particular you know, infection?
Yeah. I mean it it’s bio individualized in context matters. My major point being, I, I see this huge issue with people kind of having this hypochondriac neurotic approach. And I think there’s a lot of psychological things going on there and it’s that, you know, desire for a sense of control and an impart impartial and uncontrollable reality.
But I think there can be damage done when people are doing testing that looks for the presence of something bad. If they’re skipping the part where they’re assessing to see, well, how well is your body functioning? In my opinion, there’s no point in doing these root cause tests to look for something scary.
If there’s not clear indication that we should go look for. So follow this where like conventional healthcare, you know, they assess physiology. They don’t look for root causes, but then functional medicine, they look for root causes without assessing physiology. A lot of the time since like, well, we have to do both, like if the physiology is disturbed and you know, you’re experiencing that through the language of symptoms and health complaints.
Okay. So then we have to reverse engineer of why is your physiology disturbed? What is disturbing your physiology? And then we might look into some possible root cause factors contributing that. But I just, I see too often in the functional medicine space, Consumers jump to looking for the presence of something bad without assessing the physiology, which doesn’t make any sense at all.
That that makes total sense. You know, it’s true. If you’re not healthy to begin with, how are you going to be able to fight, you know, pathogens or, or infections or anything like that? So, yeah, that’s part of the root cause I would say, right. Definitely getting to the root cause that would be one root cause.
Well, yeah. And root, you know, one root cause. Right? We have to be talking in terms of root causes and root cause contributing factors. Cuz even like, I, I think the root cause paradigm has kind of gotten a little outta control where it’s almost like selling people, some ambiguous sort of fictitious root cause.
And then it’s like, who can argue of like, no, that’s not your root cause this is your root cause. And people get lost in that. People get sucked down these like root cause rabbit holes and. You know, we need backup focus holistically and more focus on building up metabolic and immunological health and resilience.
Like when you really support the body, it knows how to handle the toxins. Yeah. It knows how to handle the pathogens. We need to support it in doing that, not get too carried away chasing, you know, these root cause. Rapid holes. Yeah. I, I heard you heard that in one of your lives. And I was like, what do you mean?
I’ve been talking about root cause since circa 2010 when I created my website, but it makes total sense. Thank you for answering that. Now list talk about you had another post that was really good. What are the top 10, most common and prevalent root causes of brain inflammation and how can we prevent them treat, prevent them?
Absolutely. So that was, that was a fun post I could have recently, cuz certainly I’m not trying to you know, criticize the root cause ideology. Too much, cuz there is a lot of validity there, but we just have to be reasonable with how
also more of a NESO for example, if you have a, if you don’t have a sense of purpose in life, you know, I think that’s probably gonna contribute some brain inflammation, but
you know, measure physiological Americans at least are gonna be things that.
Like stress, gut brain access dysfunction and micro bones hyperglycemia and dyslipidemia, some of the standard characteristics of, of metabolic illness. So things like homocystine area, the hyper high blood sugar, high blood pressure, increased body factories, I trauma. And then of course there’s some of the more, you know, typical root cause things like the environmental toxins and intoxicants like heavy metals and bisphenols and glyphosate microtoxins as well as some of those steal infections that could be very relevant for some, you know, I’m not trying to undermine self infections by any means.
It’s a huge, huge issue in getting worse because of the immunosuppression that metabolic illness drives in this country. So there’s certainly a lot of. You know, kind of boxes we have to check when we’re really trying to alleviate somebody’s neuroinflammatory burden. Hmm. That’s very interesting. So where I was getting is like one of your posts, like you were talking, it was let’s see, the, the most common ones that you were talking about were like, oh, you already mentioned all that it’s trauma.
Yeah. Okay. Mitochondrial dysfunction and oxidative stress. Mm-hmm , that’s something that I am not too clear about and maybe I apologize, guys, maybe other, other people are when it, when it’s, when it comes to mitochondrial, mitochondrial dysfunction and oxidative stress what exactly can we address or change when it comes to the mitochondria or to, to get it, to make it.
Yeah. I mean, it’s really more of a lifestyle, diet, fitness, environmental circumstances type of conversation. It’s not like there’s really No medications or, or pill. I mean, we can obviously throw a lot of great mitochondrial supplements to try to improve mitochondrial functioning, but, you know, we have to back up of like, but why does somebody have Mito mitochondrial dysfunction to begin with?
Which a lot of times, you know, we have to be thinking in terms of mitochondrial density, people that are active and exercise and you know, are stimulating biogenesis or the formation of new mitochondria, they’re gonna have a lot more mitochondrial density. They’re gonna have a lot more efficient mitochondria.
Whereas things like these environmental toxicants the heavy metals and the, you know, bisphenols and the glyphosates and toluene and Paran and all of these environmental toxins are very disruptive to mitochondrial function. Or if we’re not eating a nutrient dense whole food diet, right. You know, the American public is over fed yet malnourished, you know, too many empty calories, not enough nutrients, you know, what makes the mitochondria function to.
Burn fuel and produce ATP. It’s all micronutrient driven. Right? So what I love about a lot of these subjects, particularly mitochondrial dysfunction, is it’s more of a nutrition and, and fitness and sleep and stress management and cleaning up their lifestyle environment. It’s not so much about like, yes there.
I mean, I have a whole list of some of my favorite mitochondrial supplements, but there’s no point in supplementing if, if the foundational pieces aren’t, aren’t there and especially, you know, exercises in sunlight, you know, is probably the single best way to really boost mitochondrial function. So when, you know, when our mitochondria are becoming dysfunctional and cranking out a lot of reactive oxygen species and driving that oxidative stress in the body and not producing adequate cellular energy, Everything, everything starts failing.
You know, every biochemical reaction in the body is heavily dependent on that cellular energy. So, you know, even depression and mental health disorders. Now we’re really seeing, there’s a large contributing factor with it’s a bioenergetic impairment in the brain driven by mitochondrial dysfunction. So but again, it’s like the sciencey stuff is cool, but it points us right back to the, to the foundations of lifestyle and nutrition and exercise and time in nature and stressing less, sleeping more, all the good things.
Gotcha. Thank you so much for you know, adding to that question. Mm-hmm so let’s jump right to the next one. Maternal immune activation, toxins, pathogens, exposure, and inflammation, having linked to the, to a D D ADHD and autism and their children. Why don’t you tell us a little bit more about that?
Cuz that’s a very. Your topic of mine. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, certainly if we’re talking about a woman growing a human, you know, growing a sentient, being inside of them, whatever is going on with the mother is gonna directly impact every aspect of, of the child and of the fetus, particularly the neurodevelopment.
So, you know, my area of, you know, expertise and kind of my claim to fame is my work around microglial activation, which really refers to the activation of the immune system in our brain, in our, in our central nervous system, which is primarily not exclusively, but primarily regulated by these microglial cells, which are really.
The primary white blood cell of the central nervous system. And these microglial cells are really both the guardians and the architects of the central nervous system. So they help the nervous system and neurological tissues develop and help create our neural networks. So, you know, we’re talking about brain formation really, and the microbiome is probably the primary thing that influences the maturation and activity of the immune system in the body and the brain.
So these microglial cells are heavily influenced by the microbiome, which of course, we get our microbiome really from our mother. So especially like if you’re born VSC section or something, so that whole immune activation in the mom. A good example would be if you had you know, let’s say a standard American woman that has, you know, a lot of these typical metabolic illness, characteristics, and profiles, and they let’s say, get, they get pregnant and maybe they get COVID while they’re pregnant.
Right. They pick up some sort of infection or immunological challenge that initiates this inflammatory cascade. That’s gonna directly alter the immune system that’s developing and maturing even within the fetus and the developing brain of the fetus. So we do actually see that, you know, whether, you know, it’s that analogy or a woman with like chronic Lyme disease or an autoimmune condition, you know, somebody that has a woman that has an immune challenge and this elevated, you know, cytokine storm and inflammatory challenge that, you know, it’s like, How could a baby’s brain form properly in their neural develop, their neurodevelopment goes properly.
If the mother’s body is on fire and inflamed, right? Like that just doesn’t even make sense. So, you know, we don’t even need to be super, you know, cellularly technical to just recognize, well, yeah, if the mother is inflamed, that’s definitely going to cause some miswiring of the nervous system of the offspring, which dramatically increases the risk, autism, ADHD, or some sort of neurodevelopmental delay or, or challenge that’s petrifying, you know?
And I, I always I’ve always spoken about this especially like when, so when, when you say, you know, if your child was born to be a C session, unfortunately mine was, I F. To the last minute. And I think he needed to go home. You know, it was five end of the day and I fought and I said, no, I I’ll wait.
And then of course, you know, all the he’s heartbeat, you know, you com you not gonna compromise. He’s breathing, blah blah. And I look at everything’s fine. So they wanted to do a C session. Eventually I had to, you know, go through with it. And so, but then what I did, I, one thing that I wanted to mention is which is very important.
I don’t know if you would agree with that with when you are carrying a child and I stopped doing all this, I started preparing myself way before I was going to conceive, you know, with healthier. I, I always try to, you know, lead a healthier lifestyle, organic, less chemicals, blah blah. So when I, when I see women like with, you know, that you, you, you wanna do your hair, it’s fine.
You, you wanna do your nails. You wanna look pretty that’s, that’s fine. But keep in mind that all of those dyes and, you know, I do, I have an organic or holistic hair stylist. So they use. Certain types of you know, dyes and, and shampoo. Everything is organic, less chemicals, blah blah. So that would that, would you say that those, those are gen estrogens, right?
Those, the color, the hair coloring the nails and you’re, if you’re pregnant and you’re in the salon inhaling all that, just take a break from that. I think the, the, the health of your child is so much more, it’s more important than potentially, you know, just use a, a natural nail Polish, right. Or I, I wanna emphasize, and I want Brandon to potentially either back me up or correct me if I’m wrong.
These things are detrimental to, to yourself for starters, but also for, to your child.
Oh, absolutely. It’s some really learning. Data and statistics emerging. I think autism’s like one in 45 children these days. And I mean, it’s just, it’s skyrocketing. And so neuro develop neurodevelopmental disorders might be kind of the thing that hopefully saves us all in the sense of it. It gets us to wake up because we’re realizing, Ooh, we, as a population are not producing healthy, thriving children and they, they are the future of this country.
Right. And so that’s actually, if you plot out some of that data and the trajectory over time, like that doesn’t play out well for us, like if we’re producing children that have developmental, you know, disabilities, if you will. How does that play out from a societal productivity? Like it, it doesn’t, you know, the, the cost of healthcare goes up more and more productivity goes down.
Yeah. It just that’s, that’s where you kind of start getting to the collapse of humanity if you play that out for too long. And so, you know, I don’t think there’s any more kind of sensitive subject than the health of our children, the health of our future generations and absolutely the radiation that we’re blasting them with with EMF and the toxins that they’re being exposed to mm-hmm in utero.
Mm-hmm get the phone away from the belly, right? Yeah. I’ve seen women with the phone sitting on their stomach is like, don’t do it. Oh yeah. Well, and, and the metabolic illness too, it, it kills me to see, you know, children that lessen the age of 10 and they’re already, you know, diabetic in everything. And it’s like, it’s so much harder to ever achieve any.
You know, sense of metabolic health when you’re starting out that way and right. You know, they’re even, it’s the science just keeps it’s like how much science do we need before we wake up? Like, you know, that’s the thing, like I, you know, I, science is, is my whole career, but I’m also a common sense guy. And I’m like, how much science do we need before we’re gonna wake the hell up.
Realize exactly. Yeah. Like we shouldn’t need that much science to be like, oh, we’re doing, we’re doing something really, really wrong here because even. You know, there’s really cool research going into how like metabolic illness in the mother changes the genetic, the epigenetics of, of the child. And it sets them, them up for a life of metabolic challenges.
Yeah. You know, so it’s like, man, you’re getting shot in the foot before you’re even like starting entering the world. Like I know sucks that that’s tough. Well thank you for entering that. Now we’re gonna move on to the next question. So you have one of your posts that I found really interesting. It’s a little cycle and you had it you know, you had the little picture there, inflammation causes nervous system dysregulation and nervous system, dysregulation causes inflammation.
How do, what do we do in that situation? Yeah. , you know, it’s all these like chicken or the egg sort of exactly situations. Cause I, I mean, that’s what kind of kills me with the, the work that I do is. And I don’t know. I don’t know if I should even say it. It’s almost like people say kind of don’t stand a chance.
Like that’s what worries me. And, and that’s what gets me outta bed. That’s what motivates me to do the work that I do and, you know, share the free education that I do because otherwise I don’t think people stand a chance. And, you know, unfortunately I, I see this divide with, especially through social media where, you know, people, once they’ve kind of gotten onto this idea of like, I am unwell, I need to heal, I need to self heal.
I need to do something about it. And then they usually kind of split into one of two camps of either more, the esoteric quantum, psychological. Psycho-emotional like, alright, I’m gonna sit with my inner wounded child and I’m gonna tickle my VA nerve and tell it, you know, whatever activates and I’m gonna learn how to yeah.
Being facetious and, you know, regulate my nervous system and everything. Or they kind of do the other thing where they sort of bypass all the inner work and they’re just like, no, no, it’s not my fault. Like I just have some mysterious root cause. And once I find that root cause with the right test and then throw the right, you know, protocol at it, and then it all goes away in my life gets better.
And it’s like, well, actually it’s all of it. Like it’s all the above. And I think people get so lost in their own little interests and pursuits where, well, how do I regulate the nervous system? And, but there is that vicious cycle where yeah, inflammation activates the HPA axis and HPA axis drives more inflammation.
So it’s, it becomes this asinine pursuit to try to figure out why it started or how it started, or, you know, we’re thinking of it too. Simplistically. When in reality, we need to more address everything holistic. Returning to the foundation. So you, you take this person that’s so caught up in their own, you know, self-destructive narratives and like, oh, well I have to consume all the free content on the internet and integrate and implement none of it.
And it’s like, take that person, just pull ’em out of all that, you know, go stick them. Like in nature, where they’re hiking every day, they’re eating, just clean organic food. They’re close to the earth. They’re in sunshine. They’re laughing, they’re disconnected from this hypochondriac monkey mind of something’s wrong with me.
And I have to just heal, heal, heal, and it’s all about me. And I can’t show up for my life until I heal and enough like enough, like, and it’s like, people don’t believe that the basics actually work as well as they do right. and, you know, I look at the lifestyle that I live and, you know, it would take me a while to explain it, but I live an impeccably, healthy lifestyle.
I’m extremely fit. My, you know, diet is impeccable, my sleep hygiene. Everything is very on point. And it’s like, that’s, that’s it. You know? Sure. I also take a lot of supplements and whatever, but it’s the big rocks analogy and any health coach should have been taught this at some point where it’s like, you know, people are so worried about the pebbles and the sands that do you know, the big rock analogy, you know what I’m talking about?
Yeah. Right. You have the bucket and you gotta get the, the big rocks in place. Then you pour in the pebbles, then the sand, then the water, if you’re trying to fill the volume of the bucket and the problem is these days, everybody’s trying to do it the other way around. Right. They’re so caught up in details.
Yeah. Yeah. And the foundation isn’t there, the big rocks are not in place. The big rocks are your diet. Your exercise, your sleep, you know, stress management time and nature time with loved ones. Get those big rocks in place consistently before you get too caught up on, on details. There’s no point in chasing root causes.
If the foundation is cracked, right. You know, and I’m, it’s, it’s a, it’s really good that you’re talking about this and it sometimes for some people, but you, you always talk about accountability and that’s so important. Now I’m gonna throw a curve ball. I try to lead a healthy lifestyle. I’ve I’ve cut down.
I’ve done the intermittent fasting. I overdid it and I kind of broke my metabolism working seven days a week, working out once I was given the green light because I have a, at a hernia disc. And so for someone like me, for example, because I know some of my listeners are probably in that situation, I try to leave the lifestyle.
I do walk, I train three times a week. I gotta, I just started following a program a few months ago, cuz I was doing weight training, but not. Program. So I think that might help. The sleep has always been my culprit. I believe somewhere in my growing up, my mom had a business and we stayed up late, whatever.
But also when I worked in corporate, I worked at night. So I’ve been trying to work on that, on those circadian circadian rhythm regulation. And going out there in the morning is the first thing to do. Sunlight is so crucial that has been actually the paramount or one of the best things I’ve done to help with circadian rhythm regulation.
So where I’m going with this is for someone who struggles with, let’s say, wait, for example, for me even though I’m active, I love to, to work out. I I’m walking out there every day, even 17 degrees almost every day. What do you, what, like, what would you recommend for someone who’s trying it all. But it doesn’t, doesn’t quite get there yet.
Do I need a little more discipline? Do they need a little bit more? Like, what do you think would be a good place to start to see results? Yeah, I mean, this is where like through my Institute and, you know, I’m training practitioners of how to onboard a new client or patient, and we have to take everything into account.
And I I’m really big on being objective and data driven because I think the healing journey or health goal pursuit or whatever we want to call it, if it’s too subjective, we don’t know what’s working and what’s not, we have to be very scientific in our approach. Very structured, lack of structure of a healing program or health and fitness program or whatever lack of structure is what kills success.
Right? Because from a. At the end of the day it’s it’s lifestyle change it’s behavior modification. In order to change behaviors, we have to change belief systems. We have to develop skills. We have to quite literally build new neural networks associated with new belief systems and new skills that move our physiology closer to what, what we’re trying to accomplish.
Mm-hmm so there’s so many things that we have to take into account with. Well, what are they currently doing? Where are they trying to get? You know, what timeline are they trying to get there? So there’s so much psychological coaching that goes into it, as well as physiology where, you know, from the beginning of my career, I’ve always been big on like, you know, even from day one, as personal trainer nutrition coach, the vast majority of my clients were weight loss clients.
Right. So it’s like, great. So what’s your goal? Why I wanna lose weight? Do you want to lose weight and feel better? Do you just wanna lose weight? I could chop your arm off. Like that would take off a few pounds, you know, so you have to break it down. You have to really break down into specifics and how are we gonna measure success?
How are we gonna qualify success? Cuz of course, as a lot of individuals wanting to lose weight, they’re thinking in their head while gauge. Based on the scale. Right. And if that scale is going down, I’m succeeding. And if it’s not, I’m a failure. Right. And it’s like, okay, well that’s a for agree, grow test way of assessing progress.
So even as an 18 year old, I recognize that, which is why I was like, no, no. So we’re gonna use, you know, a $10,000 bioelectrical impedance scale to accurately measure their body fat percentage. We’re gonna do metabolic testing so I can assess their VO two or their, the maximum amount of oxygen. Their body is capable of utilizing during exercise.
Oh wow. They’re resting metabolic rate and determining their respiratory quotient. So I know, are they burning fat or sugar at rest, which we should be burning fat most are burning sugar. I would do blood work. So I have their basic chemistry cuz it’s. You know, Hey, Mr. And Mrs. Client, I guarantee you like your lipids, your liver enzymes, your blood sugar, your insulin, your leptin, your cholesterol, you know, a lot of your blood work is gonna shift before we ever see the scale change, your body composition and body fat percentage is gonna shift before the number on the scale changes, or you feel different in your clothes.
You know? So my point being, it’s not until we really get hard data in the baseline in assessing what are they currently doing and what resonates with them. Because if it’s not sustainable, you know, you’re not gonna, you’re not gonna succeed. Mm-hmm right. So that’s the thing is people want that like, well, what’s the easy way to start or what’s the secret or whatever.
And it’s like, no, there are no secrets. It’s assess data, change something, make some sort of interventional change. Whether it’s you go from walking. You know, 2000 steps a day to now you’re walking 5,000 steps a day. You go from not at all being mindful of your nutrition and now your food logging. So again, we have to change the paradigm of we’re changing the day to day behaviors while monitoring data.
And the data will tell us objectively if we’re doing the right things and shifting your, your physiology. And a lot of times the psychology is gonna kind of trail behind that because that’s what I love about lab testing is being able to objectively show somebody like whether you think you’re making progress or not is kind of irrelevant.
The, the data tells us the data doesn’t align right direction. Mm-hmm yeah, it doesn’t lie. Like your VO two is gonna get better first. Your, your strength is gonna get better. First. Your blood chemistry is gonna get better first. So then you can use that to, to reinforce. and give the person the sense of reward that their neuro limbic system requires to then solidify those new neural networks associated with this new lifestyle.
That’s how we ultimately get long term sustainable behavior modification, but it’s ultimately, I think the data and data tracking, it keeps us honest. It keeps us on course. And I think that’s where a lot of people go wrong is they’re, they’re not data tracking. They’re not being scientific in their pursuit.
And they just, you know, are monkey minding it and freaking out of like, well, I don’t feel different and it’s been two months. It’s like, you know, do some of these healthy lifestyle habits for a decade consistently. Yes. And, and then, and then tell me if you’re not making progress right. That’s not enough.
Yeah. You know, it’s and, and also that with, with the, it, it’s so hard in a lot of the testing strategies are so obsolete and the conventional health system. Right. So we, I, I was just listening to you. I don’t think I’ve ever been tested for my VO too. Like I, you know, and that would be phenomenal.
I just figured, oh my God. You know, cuz that’s connected the lungs, whatever, but that will be another podcast. Thank you so much for answering that Brandon. And let’s move on to the next question. So the microbiome and trauma so the health of your microbiome directly influences how susceptible or resilient you will be to the effects of trauma.
That was another one of your posts. And I thought that was so incredibly interesting. Your, the health of your MI. So you react you explain it yeah, absolutely. And this will probably be last question I’ll be able to do for today, but. The, the microbiome directly influences the nervous system and in our neurological tissues, really quite profoundly.
In fact, the short chain fatty acids that a healthy microbiome should be producing adequately. And I see the, so like many, many millions of people have very poor microbiome health, very poor microbiome, diversity and short chain, fatty acid production. And these short chain, fatty acids have so many impacts on all of our physiological systems, especially the immune system in the brain in particular, which is kind of where the mental health and neuro inflammation piece comes in.
So the thing about trauma, psychological trauma psychoemotional trauma, you can kind of think of it as it’s like an energetic, emotional injury to the brain. It actually is kind of similar mechanistically to a TBI or a concussion. It has similar physiological effects. So, you know, if you’re a football player and you slam heads and you have a concussion and you know that that’s a physical injury, that’s like a bruise to the brain that activates this microglial neuroinflammatory response.
The thing that we’re learning about psycho-emotional trauma is it actually kind of elicits a similar reaction as a physical injury. Would you know, it is this more energetic, emotional injury that still kind of causes almost like a brain bruise, which is a simple way of putting it, but it does still activate this, the immune system in the brain, the microglial cells that then causes this neuroinflammatory neurotoxic cascade that then can cause neuronal damage and mental illness and neurodegeneration at times, if that gets outta control.
So this is where the microbiome has such a large regulatory effect on that immune system of the brain. That like, let’s say, you know, you have one person, you know, twins, or I don’t know, two people, one has a really healthy microbiome and the other has a really unhealthy microbiome. The person with a healthy microbiome is gonna have less of a trauma response to a traumatic event than the person with a really poor microbiome health.
Right. Oh, wow. Because of the way that the microbiome is influencing the activation of that immune system in the brain, essentially. So it kind of dampens the effect. If you will, the, the trauma isn’t gonna cause as much damage because we have a healthy microbiome, that’s kind of mitigating that, buffering that to some degree.
Gotcha. Brandon, and do you have two minutes for questions that they send a million, but I’m just gonna condense it to, I think most of the most important ones, just like two questions. Sure. If you don’t mind. So one of them, I think was pretty interesting. It said I get these symptoms where I feel like my autoimmune nervous system switches to manual.
So I need to. I feel like I do have to swallow breathe or eye blink manually. Is that connected to that sounds? I mean, so that’s kind of like a autonomic nervous system dysregulation type of question where like I get what they’re, they’re saying like what are the symptoms connected to, or you said nervous system dysregulation, I guess that’s where they’re trying to get at.
Yeah. But the thing is like, you, you don’t, that’s, it’s kind of like somebody that’s too caught up in their own head a little bit, to be honest, right. Where it’s like, they, they are reporting that they feel like they have to think about swallowing or blinking. Well that’s because you’re thinking about it.
You don’t actually have to, you know, those are all involuntary movements, like Persis and breathing and blinking, like our body’s going to do that, whether you’re thinking about it or not. So that sounds like somebody that’s fixating on it a little too much, and I think they need to, why are they fixating on that?
What are they spiritually bypassing? And they’re fixating on this and, and believing it to be a symptom when there’s probably a lot of other things going on in their life and in their reality, that probably needs a little bit more focus than them worrying about. Oh, I have to think about swallowing because they oh, wow.
Than interesting. That’s very interesting. The other one was like anxiety, panic related to travel and being away, I posted this from home, never wanted to take any meds. I think it was anxiety, panic related to travel and being away from home, I guess I’m experiencing anxiety, panic related when I’m away from home.
And I don’t wanna take medication. Yeah. I mean, it’s kind of like a, a Agora, a agoraphobia sort of thing going on there again. And this is where like, look, I mean, there’s people are so caught up in their own depression and anxiety and a lot of times kind of self-induced suffering and, and why. Right?
The, and so that’s where there’s the psycho emotional work that has to get done and kind of getting to those root cause factors that create self-limiting belief systems and the sense of anxiety and whatever. But then there’s the physiological contributors to the anxiety where it’s like, well, the more inflamed and oxidized their brain is the worse, the symptom of anxiety is really gonna be right.
Mm-hmm . So that’s where it’s like, you have to kind of dismantle both of what factors are causing or what physiological factors are contributing. To the prevalence of the anxiety or the depression or whatever it is in their nervous system versus what are the belief systems and false narratives that are causing that sense of anxiety too.
So, you know, that’s where I’m a big, big fan of, you know, working with a psychotherapist or doing psychedelic work or meditation or yoga, whatever it is that grounds them and brings them closer to their core truth, but also optimizing their physiology and metabolic health. So that way their brain isn’t on fire, because you can do all the inner work you want, but if your brain’s on fire, you’re still gonna be anxious and depressed.
So kind of takes a combination of both. Excellent. Last one. And then we’re gonna go into how they can get in touch with you. How does low T testosterone affect mental health? I mean, pretty directly, and I think, you know, I would say low testosterone is really more of like a symptom related to environmental toxicity and metabolic illness more than anything else.
So it’s just kind of like yet another. Physiological preservation related to the big picture of toxic environment. Pro-inflammatory sedentary lifestyle. So, I mean, we’re gonna fix a lot of it by cleaning up the environment, cleaning up our lifestyle. But yes, I mean, low testosterone directly plays into depression.
It alters our dopaminergic system in the brain. So, you know, low testosterone, high, high estrogen is a huge endocrine issue in, in our country. And it’s primarily driven by chronic inflammation and which is really caused by the lifestyle, the environment primarily. Gotcha. How can they get in touch with you, Brendan?
Also Brendan has a phenomenal free guide that you could I’m going to link it when in the, his page that I created on my website. How can they get in touch with you and also the free guide that you’re offering in your program for practitioners? Yeah, absolutely. I appreciate it. Probably the best way to.
Kind of connect is follow along at the holistic Savage on Instagram. That’s my main platform. And then I have my link tree, which is just the little link in the profile bio and, you know, everything that I have to offer can be found through that link tree. So, you know, and if it’s not in the link tree, I, I don’t offer it.
You know what I mean? So I link yeah. Link trees where everything is so free guides, resources, podcasts, courses, just everything. Excellent. The latest project that, that you’re working on. Why don’t you tell us a little bit about that? So they know what it is about it and where they could find it.
Yeah, the big thing consuming in my life these days is the functional mental health practitioner certificate program. So this is an advanced clinical training program for doctors, clinicians, nutritionists, health coaches, any sort of functional medicine professional that wants to really be working with mental health and metabolic health at more of a root cause level.
So it’s a massive program. It’s a year long. It’s shaping up to be probably close to 200 hours in length. It’s wow. Extremely dense advanced in nature, very science lab testing. Yeah. It’s, it’s absolutely huge. So that’s. That’s really becoming, like taking over my life currently, but I’m, I’m good with it.
You know, it’s just hard to keep up with everything. I know. It’s so hard. I’m working on a digital course myself to reverse good as it reflects natural. Like I did. So guys actually, Brenda, thank you so much for your time for your for sharing your knowledge with us. You are definitely part of the shift empowered them and I am so happy in honored to have you on my podcast.
Thank you so much again, and I hope I could have you on the podcast again. Oh yeah, absolutely. We can do that sometime. I, I appreciate having me. It was a great conversation and it’s always a pleasure Ari. So I hope the audience enjoys the episode. Oh, they absolutely will. All right. You have yourself a wonderful day and I hope to see you soon.
Sounds good. You too. Thank you.
About Today’s Guest: Brendan Vermeire
Brendan is a Mental and Metabolic Health Scientist & Researcher, Functional Medicine Educator, Writer,
and Speaker. He is a Board-Certified Holistic Health Practitioner, Master Nutrition Coach, Master
Personal Trainer, USAW Sports Performance Coach, and Crossfit Trainer.
He began his career as a personal trainer and nutrition coach at the age of 18 after disappointingly being
medically discharged from the United States Navy Seal training pipeline due to an injury. After being
exposed to the power of functional lab testing in the start of his career, he began intensely pursuing that
as a career path which has led him to be widely regarded as one of the top leading experts in Metabolic
Health and Functional Education.
He is the proud owner and founder of the Metabolic Solutions Institute for Functional Health and Fitness
Practitioners and the creator of the Functional Mental Health Practitioner Certificate Course. He is also
the founder of the Metabolic Solutions Research & Education Foundation, a not-for-profit foundation
dedicated to ‘changing the way the world views mental health’ through advancing the science of Mental
Health Dysfunction. He is also the creator of The Mental M.A.P.TM, a cutting-edge Lab Panel for Mental
Health.
Podcasts Quotables
…We don’t know what’s working and what’s not. We have to be very scientific in our approach, and very structured. Lack of structure of a healing program or health and fitness program or whatever is what kills success. A healthy metabolism is a must in order to address root causes of mental health.
At the end of the day, what leads to change is behavior modification. In order to change Behavior, we have to change belief systems,we have to develop skills, and we have to quite literally build new neural networks associated with new belief systems and new skills in order to get closer to the physiology we’re trying to accomplish.
~ Brendan Vermeire
Show Notes
Resources/ Links Mentioned
- Coupon Codes:
- https://www.healyounaturally.com/resources/
- Real Mushrooms (HEALYOU)
- Biotrust https://www.healyounaturally.com/biotrust-coupons-supplements/
- The BEST and my favorite Adaptogenic gummies when I need a little support managing stress.
Foods, Supplements, and Herbs Mentioned
- – Organifi Red and Green Juice: https://bit.ly/Organifi-Supp
- ~Biotrust Grassfed Whey Protein: https://bit.ly/Biotrust-GrassfedWP
- My ebook is here: https://www.healyounaturally.com/downloads/download-lymphatic-health-foods-ebook/
Turmeric is nature’s most potent anti-inflammatory make your own Ancient Golden Paste or try organifi Gold here
Omega Krill (Try it here)
You can also use my favorite supplement Metabogreens
Grass-fed Whey Protein (Get 20% off with coupon code HEALYOU20)
Connect with Brendan:
Don’t forget to visit, follow and interact with my amigo Brendan:
To learn more about Brendan, please visit:
www.metabolicsolutionsllc.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/metabolicsolutionsllc/
Instagram: @the_holistic_savage https://www.instagram.com/the_holistic_savage/
Linked In: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brendan-vermeire-23754693/
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Coconut Ice Pops Sugar, Gluten & Dairy Free + (Easy Recipe)