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Mental Well-Being and Functional Health w/ Brendan Vermiere - Connecting Minds Podcast Ep03
129 Plays5 years ago
In this episode of Connecting Minds I had the honour to chat with Brendan Vermiere.
Brendan is a Functional Medicine Consultant, Board Certified Holistic Health Practitioner, Master Nutrition Coach, Master Personal Trainer, USAW Sports Performance Coach, and Crossfit Certified Trainer.
He began his career as a personal trainer and nutrition coach at the age of 19 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 Holistic Education.
In our discussion we cover a number of topics related health and mental well-being as well the functional health paradigm.
Episode show notes here: https://christianyordanov.com/03-brendan-vermiere/
Watch this interview in video: https://youtu.be/ua_lAa5crjg
Links to Brendan’s website and social media:
Website: https://www.metabolicsolutionsllc.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/the_holistic_savage/
Brendan’s podcast: https://anchor.fm/holisticsavagepodcast
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Connecting Minds Podcast
00:00:10
Speaker
Connecting Minds is a space dedicated to honoring the amazing authors, researchers, clinicians, artists, and entrepreneurs who are contributing to our collective evolution or simply making the world a better place. These thought-provoking conversations are intended to expand our horizons, so come with an open mind and let us grow together. Here is your host, Christian Yordanov.
Meet Brendan Vermeer
00:00:41
Speaker
Hello and welcome to Connecting Minds. My name is Christian Jourdanov and I'm so glad you're with me on this third episode of the podcast. Today on the show we have Brandon Vermeer, who is a functional medicine consultant, board certified holistic health practitioner, master nutrition coach, master personal trainer,
00:01:07
Speaker
USAW sports performance coach and CrossFit certified trainer.
Brendan's Journey from Navy SEAL to Functional Medicine
00:01:13
Speaker
He began his career as a personal trainer and nutrition coach at the age of 19 after disappointingly being medically discharged from the United States Navy SEAL training pipeline due to an injury.
00:01:25
Speaker
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 holistic education. When he's not educating doctors, practitioners, professionals, helping clients overcome their most severe health struggles, or producing cutting-edge scientific education,
00:01:51
Speaker
Brendan enjoys all things fitness and is probably working out. He also enjoys anything in nature and any activities that expand his heart, mind and soul. So on today's podcast with Brendan we'll talk about mental health, mental well-being and functional health now.
Functional Medicine: Root Causes vs. Symptom Relief
00:02:08
Speaker
It occurred to me during the episode that it's better to define what we mean by functional health or functional medicine because I think many folks still are not familiar with the concept. So very briefly, when we say functional medicine or functional health or when I say I'm a functional health coach, what that means, what the functional paradigm, at least the way I
00:02:35
Speaker
kind of would describe it. There's many interpretations and many kind of ways to describe it. It is utilizing lab tests that help us to glean insights into the body to identify metabolic
00:02:52
Speaker
or other health challenges and balances issues that are generally at the root cause of chronic health complaints. So things like nutrient deficiencies, yeast candida overgrowth, fungal infections,
00:03:11
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bacterial overgrowth, bacterial infections, parasites, gluten intolerance, other food sensitivities, things like that. So functional practitioners look for those imbalances and address them as opposed to a more conventional model, at least what is the prevailing paradigm at the moment is diagnosing disease and then treating the symptoms.
00:03:37
Speaker
And of course, long term, that's most likely not the best strategy. Now, that's not to say that providing symptom relief in the near term, you know, to help someone feel better isn't a good strategy. It definitely can be good, but
00:03:52
Speaker
If you only treat the symptoms, whatever is causing those symptoms will continue to fester. So this is what the functional paradigm is.
Balancing Functional and Conventional Health Models
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So Brendan, he's taught me so much about this stuff. He is such an incredible individual. He's only 28 and kind of makes me disgusted at myself that
00:04:14
Speaker
I have done so little with my life and this guy's 28 and he's teaching doctors and folks probably in some cases twice his age about these cutting-edge, science-based, evidence-based modalities, how to drastically improve people's health
00:04:36
Speaker
And in many cases, we're talking people with extremely kind of seemingly intractable health challenges. So what I love about Brendan is his knowledge of the science. He's such a nice guy.
00:04:52
Speaker
He has a very balanced approach to health. It's not about us versus them, paradigm, functional versus conventional or this kind of stuff, allopathic versus natural. He has a balanced approach. Like I said, for such a young person, he's got a lot of wisdom.
00:05:10
Speaker
And I'm glad there's guys out there like him pushing, like I say on during the episode, pushing the envelope and teaching us, teaching the rest of us and helping us elevate our chops so that we can help more people. And yeah.
00:05:25
Speaker
We're going to cover quite a few topics and I think you'll enjoy this one, especially if you have an interest in health. Even if you have a chronic health issue, you probably learn some things that may help you make better decisions. Just to remind you, the video interview is also on YouTube.
00:05:46
Speaker
The show notes will be on christianjordanov.com where you can find links to Brendan's websites, social media and so on. And yeah, again, I'd like to thank you for joining me. I'd really appreciate you spending the time. I sincerely hope that you enjoy this episode with Brendan.
Brendan's Personal Health Journey
00:06:04
Speaker
And without further ado, here's our guest, Brendan Vermeer.
00:06:08
Speaker
And alrighty, we are live. So today on the Connecting Minds podcast, we have your functional health bro, Brendan Vermeer. Brendan, thank you so much for taking the time out, man. Oh, no, it's my pleasure. Thank you so much for having me, my friend. I'm excited to chat today.
00:06:28
Speaker
That's awesome, that's awesome. So let's, I was reading your blog last night, kind of, I was on your website and I was somewhat, you know, shocked to kind of read a little bit more of your story. You always seem to me like, you know, like a dude that came out of high school and just started crushing it, you know, like I know you did some bodybuilding.
00:06:54
Speaker
in the past, you're like basically like the epitome of an awesome man. You got the brains, a lot of brains, you got the brawn, all that stuff and you're a super nice guy. But after reading your blog, I see there was, you've been through some fairly dark times to say the least. Would you mind giving us a little bit of your story as we start?
00:07:19
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Oh, absolutely. Well, I mean, first and foremost, I really appreciate the kind words, Chris, it means a lot. And yeah, I'm just really flattered and honored. And it is fulfilling to share my story a little bit, because I think it's something that's important to be talked about. And it's really kind of what I've committed my life's work to doing. And I actually, well, I'll circle back to that. So
00:07:48
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You know, with my story, as you said, I got out of high school and I jumped straight into the Navy for the SEAL program, which at the time was really my life goal. And growing up,
00:08:03
Speaker
I was always a very motivated person and I just always wanted to be the best. Whatever it was that I was going to do, whatever sets my soul on fire, I just wanted to be the best or kind of one of the best, the elite. And, you know, in maybe my naive and simplistic teenage brain that pretty much equated to I wanted to be a real life superhero and the Navy SEALs kind of seemed like
00:08:26
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the closest thing. And so I did, I chased that pretty relentlessly. And, you know, unfortunately, when I was in bootcamp, they found I had an inguinal hernia, so they had to pull me out of training and figure out what to do with me because, well, you need surgery, you have an injury. And so I was medically discharged, which really sucked at the time because it kind of felt like my whole life dream was being ripped away from me.
00:08:54
Speaker
And the thing is, you hear about this a lot with like sports psychology, where sports psychologists will discuss with their athletes like, hey, you're a 20 something year old superstar athlete making millions of dollars and your entire identity is wrapped up in being that superstar athlete, but you're one injury away from having no purpose in life, right?
00:09:20
Speaker
And in purpose is everything. In fact, there's literature, scientific literature to support that humans need a sense of purpose just to be biologically healthy at the cellular level. So when my, what I thought was my purpose was kind of taken away from me,
00:09:37
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I found myself feeling pretty lost and uncertain about everything, my identity, why I was here. And I think that time of my life really unveiled that, in a way, I was a high-functioning, depressed individual. Growing up and in my late teenage, early 20s, I did really struggle with a lot of just dark, heavy thoughts and emotions.
00:10:06
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And I wrestled with that a lot because I worked with multiple therapists and I never really felt like there was something wrong with me or I had like really bad outlook. And unfortunately, with mental health in the modern world today, there's such a stigma and taboo that surrounds mental health. It's kind of this like shameful, uncomfortable sounding subject. People don't know what to do with it.
00:10:36
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But then when you actually look into some of the epidemiological research and statistics, depression is one of the leading causes of morbidity and mortality in the world today. And in fact, suicide is actually one of the top four killers of ages 10 to 55 for Americans and the second leading cause of death for ages 10 to 34.
00:11:01
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And so I think it's really important and this is where I'm very transparent about sharing a little bit of my story because I think all that taboo and stigma is extremely destructive to us actually making progress and realizing that depression and mental illness really isn't that different than any other chronic disease.
Mental Health and Inflammation
00:11:23
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And we can get more into that later. But circling back, you know, after the Navy, I spent a few years trying to figure out my purpose. I got certified as personal trainer and began my health professional career. But I actually kept spiraling down. And it was when I found myself in a very toxic, unhealthy situation that I actually had an intentional overdose on my
00:11:50
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um well butrin which is a dopamine agonist antidepressant medication and so i found myself um literally waking up in the intensive care unit breathing out of a tube and that was really kind of the rock bottom of my life and that was
00:12:06
Speaker
early 2014. And I've been on this just incredible kind of climb ever since then. So to now be sitting here and you know, I'm still alive. I'm still here. Uh, and to be able to share my story, what I've learned along the way, I was, uh, how old was I? Uh, six years. So I was about 21, 22, something like that. Okay. You're about 28 now, right? Yep. I am. Yeah.
00:12:38
Speaker
Well, actually, I don't know. I don't know that I could say that was the lowest point, to be honest, because it was still pretty rocky for a couple years out of that. It wasn't until later that I was alone and independent and starting to really claw my way out of that rock bottom.
00:12:58
Speaker
Yeah it's really what steered me into the functional medicine holistic health world so you know having started as a more trainer and nutritionist and kind of a little bit more bro science and the lifting weights and working out and eating counting your macros and trying different diets.
00:13:16
Speaker
um that's all great but then then that really steered me into okay so what happens when eating well working out having a healthy lifestyle what happens when that that's not enough and what can we do so a lot of times when i'm speaking about mental health
00:13:32
Speaker
I like to really almost distinguish that there's the major components. There's the psychological side of it and then the physiological. And really, you kind of have to separate it just to make it easier to sort it out. But in reality, it's the two halves of the yin-yang, you know, you can't really separate it. I think that's what makes it so hard for people struggling with their mental health to be able to navigate their way out of the darkness is because it's a compilation of all these physiological factors mixed in
00:14:01
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with the psychological factors, so it can be really hard to know where to begin. And we tend to label mental health issues as solely psychological when we actually know there's a great physiological component to all of pretty much any illness or disorder, isn't there?
00:14:23
Speaker
Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. And that's the thing, you know, these days, a lot of general medical practitioners will throw out antidepressant drugs kind of like Halloween candy. And, you know, certainly there's a time and a place for those medications. I would never say otherwise.
00:14:40
Speaker
But we just overuse it and I've pulled so many kind of alarming statistics on the matter and it really comes down to most people that are put on some sort of psychiatric drug that absolutely can have a myriad of negative side effects. Most of those people have never actually seen the psychological professional or then with our psychological psychiatric model
00:15:05
Speaker
I think it's a pretty outdated model, so there's a huge new wave of integrative psychiatry that's really exploding right now. You have in that blog article I was reading last night, you have a quote, less than a third of Americans taking an antidepressant have actually had an appointment with a mental health professional within the past year, suggesting a critical weakness in a system where medication is widely available.
00:15:33
Speaker
So yeah, so it seems like these drugs are pretty much the first port of call when we have a lot of other much safer and potentially much more effective interventions, don't we?
00:15:49
Speaker
Absolutely. I think anybody that studies holistic functional sciences and just having a more holistic macro view, because I think one of the, I don't know that I want to say failures, but one of the shortcomings of conventional healthcare, the short-sightedness, the myopia, and the reductionistic nature of how we look at things.
00:16:15
Speaker
you know, what we're really starting to see emerging from the research now, and there's all the functional stuff to support it. But we are really seeing that whether it's depression, anxiety, bipolar, schizophrenia, neurodegenerative disease, these are largely inflammatory driven conditions. So
00:16:31
Speaker
there's the more, I don't wanna say outdated, but it's becoming less relevant, the monoamine theory of depression, which is kind of the classic, it's a chemical imbalance, right? Like, well, it's not your fault, you just have this chemical imbalance, you need to take all these drugs, find that right drug cocktail to balance your crazy chemicals. But actually right now, there are interleukin-6 antibody drugs
00:16:59
Speaker
that are actually in phase two clinical trials for treatment resistant depression. So they're literally studying anti-inflammatory drugs as a new therapeutic pharmaceutical agent for depression and other mental illnesses. So I sometimes get some pushback when I say that depression and anxiety and mental illness is largely
00:17:25
Speaker
an inflammatory disorder, but the science is extremely solid and big pharma is already trying to figure out how to profit off that. So then the question becomes how can we reduce the inflammatory burden more naturally and holistically, which is all environment and lifestyle driven. Yeah. So can we go back then to in your case, how did you get yourself out of that hole?
Overcoming Health Challenges with Lifestyle Changes
00:17:52
Speaker
That's a really good question. I was in a relationship at the time, which probably was not the healthiest relationship, I'll be honest. And so there was certainly a lot of kind of toxicity to the relationship and some codependency and gaslighting and kind of all that stuff.
00:18:13
Speaker
you know, our life circumstances were hard. She had three children and life was just hard. There wasn't really a lot of support. It kind of felt like her and I against the world in a lot of ways. And our life circumstances weren't really matching up. But to make matters worse, we were all kind of suffering from these more physiological symptoms that nobody
00:18:37
Speaker
nobody could figure out. And so that was actually the big healing crisis that really was what got me into functional medicine. It wasn't as much my own mental health struggles as it was. There was a very specific day where my at the time fiance, she woke up and her trapezius on side of her body was completely locked up. I mean, it was just like this
00:19:04
Speaker
steel cord cramp from hell, you know, she couldn't turn her neck. She was in a lot of pain and agony. And literally that morning was like the marking point of the hardest phase of my entire life. And it wasn't until literally years after the relationship had ended that I got exposed to, you know, a lot of these cool functional medicine subjects, one of which being mold illness, which has now become such a huge focal point in my work.
00:19:32
Speaker
And I never did get to confirm my suspicion, but I'm convinced to this day that we were all suffering from some mold induced symptomology because the house we lived in was old, it was water damaged, it was musty, the bathroom had flooded one summer that we were living there. And it was actually shortly after that that we all
00:19:57
Speaker
started getting symptomatic. She was kind of more the canary in the coal mine. I had a huge flare up in fatigue and my cognitive dissonance with ADHD and depression. Her son had a lot of sinusitis allergy type symptoms, brain fog.
00:20:14
Speaker
At the time, I was just a trainer and nutritionist. I had no idea what I was looking at, but it wasn't until years later that I was like, that has to be it. So that was really what steered me in because we were trying to figure out what was wrong with her. We went to conventional doctors, naturopathic, chiropractic, physical therapy. We were doing everything trying to figure out what was going on with her. So it was a pretty tragic time. Yeah.
00:20:44
Speaker
What interventions, if I can call them that, did you undertake that actually now brought you
Impact of Stressors on Health
00:20:55
Speaker
to where you are now? Now you're obviously super fit, obviously in a great state of mental health. You're actually, you're educating, I'm sure in many cases, folks twice, probably twice your age or thereabouts. So what did you do? Let's talk about
00:21:14
Speaker
The protocol let's talk about the testing side of things for a bit what did you do in your case and we can then discuss what what you do with kind of more intractable cases with your clients.
00:21:24
Speaker
Yeah, so it was after I was out of that house and out of that relationship and getting distance from the situation, that's when the healing really began both on a psychological and physiological level. And again, that's why I like to make that distinction between the two. I just posted about this on social media today, but a lot of times people will
00:21:50
Speaker
do anything they can to avoid having to face themselves internally and kind of face some of those inner psychological trauma that hasn't been resolved, whatever it is. But from more of a physiological perspective, I mean, as soon as I was out of that atmosphere, the kind of unhealthy relationship, the unhealthy environment, I already was starting to feel better. But some of the major things that I was really working on to improve my own physiological health
00:22:20
Speaker
you know, the non-celiac gluten sensitivity was a huge one, which can be its own kind of gut and neurological wrecking stressor, if you will, the mold illness, which I did actually confirm in myself from doing some different mold testing and blood work and whatnot, organic acids and such. I did a lot of work with neurotransmitters as well, which
00:22:46
Speaker
neurochemistry is kinda like my first sort of functional medicine subject love but to maybe simplify some of it cuz these are a lot of specific subjects you know the gut health the gut brain access the reducing the inflammation.
00:23:02
Speaker
balancing nutrient deficiencies, right? So working through that holistically, because I was always fit, I was always eating a pretty clean diet, but that's not always enough. So sometimes you have to identify some of those key root cause contributing factors. Yeah.
00:23:20
Speaker
So yeah, so basically testing and then understanding the metabolic imbalances and then doing something about the most mostly with supplementation diet. And I think you actually you cover a great point there where it's like.
00:23:39
Speaker
The psychological thing can trigger physical actually, maybe this is a good segue. Can you tell us can tell the listeners? What kind of other than, you know, just the psychological stress, you know, like someone honking at you or cutting you off?
00:23:53
Speaker
What are the various types of stressors that can get inflicted on us and how do those stressors actually contribute to ill health or just diminished well-being?
00:24:10
Speaker
Absolutely. One of my favorite phrases I've been thrown around a lot lately is, thoughts become proteins. We used to say, thoughts become things. But I think a little bit more scientifically, thoughts become proteins. Our whole body is really sculpted by all of these protein enzymes that regulate virtually everything about our biochemistry and then our physiology.
00:24:34
Speaker
So we are actually, there's a lot of great neuroscience and psychological research that really shows how in a lot of ways our physiology follows our psychology. And it kind of goes both ways again, but I think a big takeaway.
00:24:50
Speaker
is there's been research studies looking at individuals that if they think that they're ill, if they believe that they are ill and they're shaping their neuroplasticity in this I am ill sort of way, well, before you know it, they kind of manifest their own illness, right? So we do really kind of think our way into a lot of our own ailments in some ways. Now,
00:25:15
Speaker
I think that can get a little confusing. I'm certainly not at all saying that like, oh, it's all in your head, like you're making yourself ill. Well, that's not always the case. But sometimes it's kind of like the chicken or the egg and you really have to, you know, reevaluate the psychology and your outlook and your belief system. So this is a huge focal point of my work.
00:25:36
Speaker
And one of the subjects I'm going to be lecturing about here in about a month at a conference, we're looking at that gut-brain axis of looking at, we have all of these neurotrophic factors that ultimately either induce or inhibit neurogenesis, which is the formation of neurons and neural networks in our brain.
00:25:58
Speaker
And I think understanding the, I don't even want to call it a theory, but the model of neuroplasticity, I think it's very empowering for anybody that's struggling with their mental health because essentially what neuroplasticity research and science is showing us and telling us is we actually have a lot of influence over our brain and our neural networks. And
00:26:21
Speaker
It's really not that different than, you know, if I want to go have big biceps, I go to the gym and do some curls. So I am stimulating those fibers. And of course, you know, the body operates on that principle of specific adaptation to impose demand, which is, you know, personal trainer science 101. That's why we exercise is to create that specific adaptation.
00:26:44
Speaker
But now we're actually really seeing, well, the brain operates on that same premise and that same basis. So for example, with classic trauma therapy, there's a lot of focus on, you know, really digging into the trauma and kind of like reliving the trauma in order to process it and then work your way out of it. But some of my psychology friends and clients
00:27:08
Speaker
they question that of like, well, if we're trying to reshape our neural plasticity and get out of that toxic negative pattern that we can get so stuck in, maybe we shouldn't spend so much time dwelling there. Maybe we should really focus on better thoughts, better outlooks, and kind of reframing the belief system, right? So that's where you're gonna start quite literally changing the neural connections of your brain.
00:27:37
Speaker
in a way, sculpt your your mind into living in a happier, healthier place. And then the physiology really follows suit with that, whether it's the cortisol through the HP axis or different inflammatory proteins. So the kind of mind over matter thing really can't be emphasized enough.
Inflammation and Chronic Disease Prevention
00:27:56
Speaker
So so by
00:27:58
Speaker
By changing the focal point of your consciousness from, let's say, the trauma or the anger or whatever, you are literally causing... I love that phrase. Thoughts becomes proteins because you're literally causing a different milieu of neurotransmitters
00:28:19
Speaker
immune molecules and so on. So less cortisol, less adrenaline, perhaps more parasympathetic hormones. So that has a direct
00:28:34
Speaker
positive effect on your physiology. Exactly. And with the most popular well-known of these neurotrophic factors that cause that formation of new neural networks is BDNF or brain derived neurotrophic factor.
00:28:50
Speaker
And what we see through the literature, you know, there's all these different factors that will either inhibit and kind of block BDNF from doing its neural network forming work or upregulate it. So we see things like cortisol and stress really inhibits neurogenesis, whereas things like sunlight, things like exercise, things like sleep, or even things like psychedelics actually really upregulate BDNF. And so
00:29:19
Speaker
That's good too. I was just gonna say.
00:29:23
Speaker
I was just going to say I was looking at a study where micro doses of LSD 5, 10 and 20 micrograms stimulated BDNF production. I saw that last week. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. There's a guy called Brandt Cordwright. He has a great book, Neurogenesis, Diet and Lifestyle. He does talk about, you know, certain foods like, you know, blueberries and I think curcumin, not curcumin, but turmeric. And like you say, exercise and sunlight, things like that.
00:29:53
Speaker
So, yeah, that's really cool, right? But that's one end of the equation. But I think maybe folks that are somewhat stuck in the paradigm of it's all psychological might focus on those things. They might even do things like EFT, emotional freedom technique, which is really great, I think.
00:30:14
Speaker
What about all the hidden metabolic physiological stuff going on that people are largely unaware of still? How can that contribute to this? Absolutely. And that's, again, why I create that distinction because I love all of the more
00:30:35
Speaker
psychological esoteric you know modalities whether whether it is doing psychedelics and kind of a more spiritual setting or reiki or eft or breath work or any of these amazing modalities but i will also say that you can do all of that but if you're totally missing out on something like you know your uh
00:30:58
Speaker
gluten sensitive and you don't know it or you have an underlying fungal infection or dysbiosis or leaky gut, leaky brain, some sort of stealth infection. It doesn't really matter how much of that Reiki that you're going to do, you're still going to feel really ill because you are, because there is more of an inflammatory incident.
00:31:20
Speaker
When I'm training practitioners and doctors and health professionals, which is really my way of making a living, I always like to kind of back up and simplify the equation because I think metabolic health gets really confusing really fast.
00:31:37
Speaker
So ultimately, I like to look at it as more, you know, what are the two great plagues of the human metabolism and human body, which is really inflammation and oxidative stress. So I just explain what oxidative stress is for the listeners.
00:31:52
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. So with oxidative stress, you know, easiest analogy is thinking about the iron that's sitting out in the yard and it's just rusting away as the iron is being oxidized and it breaks down. So the same thing is happening in their body constantly as part of our natural metabolic process. So
00:32:12
Speaker
any time we're making ATP, we're also going to be making these different superoxide radicals or hydroxyl radicals and all these, you know, free radicals, reactive oxygen species that do, they damage, they oxidize our cells. So there's kind of all of these pro-oxidants
00:32:31
Speaker
molecules such as you know heavy metals is a big pro-oxidant or different types of you know infections can cause a hyper oxidative environment but then we evolve our antioxidants right and so certainly you know a lot of us are really suffering from excess oxidative stress and inflammation where
00:32:52
Speaker
We're not ingesting enough of the nutrients to be able to really fuel our antioxidant pathways, but we're also in a much more toxic pro-oxidative environment than ever before with EMF has been shown. So Wi-Fi and electromagnetic fields have been shown to induce proxy nitrite and increase reactive oxygen species or heavy metals or all the environmental toxicants, the BPA, the phthalate, so on and so forth.
00:33:22
Speaker
So we really have created a modern lifestyle that's highly inflammatory highly oxidative and then all the while we're not getting enough of what we need to be able to neutralize that inflammation to neutralize those radicals and so we're just.
00:33:39
Speaker
kind of cooking ourselves with the fire of inflammation and sort of the degradation of oxidative stress. So I always like to really focus on, okay, how can we reduce the oxidative and inflammatory burden?
00:33:54
Speaker
which a lot of times that kind of comes down to the 90% of your lifestyle behaviors and then that kind of 10, 20% of the different microbes or different toxins or antigens that are provoking that kind of cytokine storm, if you will.
00:34:15
Speaker
That was a lot of information. That's so important. I definitely, all my closest people and my clients and anyone with a health concern, I always, you know, bang that drum of information oxidative stress and we are not getting enough of the substrate, which is why, you know,
00:34:35
Speaker
Every single day, I take endocytocysteine and glycine to support glutathione, the master antioxidant production. Obviously, the B vitamins to support the mitochondria. And of course, I recommend all of these too. I think I believe most people need to be taking extra zinc, extra selenium, B vitamins, glycine, endocytocysteine, things like that. But here's one thing maybe you can chime in on, Brandon.
00:35:03
Speaker
Some people might be like, I don't have any, I'm fine. What are you talking about inflammation and oxidative stress? Can you tell us what does that do to healthy people that have no actual diagnosable illness over time?
00:35:22
Speaker
Yeah, you know, that's where kind of the topics of immunosynescence and inflamma aging, which is kind of a fun word, just literally inflammation and aging put together. Because we do, we see that there is strong evidence that yes, you know, over time, as we age,
00:35:43
Speaker
uh that kind of chronic lower grade inflammation you know it starts growing over time and as our bodies wear out so to speak as um you know the immunosynescence which really just means the immune system's getting old it's not protecting you uh quite as robustly as it used to so i think a lot of it and that that's why we call it chronic disease right you know you don't just wake up one day with type 2 diabetes or cardiovascular disease or metabolic syndrome or
00:36:13
Speaker
neurodegenerative disease. It takes years, if not decades, of that slow cooking. So in a lot of ways, it's like the frog in the boiling water, where if you throw the frog in the boiling water, it freaks out and jumps right out. But if you put it in room temperature water and then slowly heat it up, you cook the frog. And so I think that's really what we're dealing with these days. And it's disguised as a
00:36:39
Speaker
Well, no, I mean, I feel fine, you know, eating my standard American diet, living my standard American lifestyle with my standard American gut, standard American metabolism, like, I'm fine, you know, but I'm also on, you know, one to five different drugs, and I have to take ibuprofen every week and my allergy pills every week and so on and so forth. And it's like, well,
00:37:03
Speaker
So are you really that fine? And there's a lot of gray area between optimal health versus a diagnosable disease by conventional healthcare standards. And that gray area is really where we work as functional professionals. And this is what I like to tell even like healthy guys, my age or younger, even your age, you know,
00:37:28
Speaker
Dude, you're just gonna age faster. I think sometimes with my friends, at least, it's my last resort to scare them into, dude, just buy some zinc, buy some multivitamins, man. You're just gonna age faster. When you're 40, it will catch up on you. You have to combat this stuff. But let's talk about now, how do you...
Client Education and Empowerment in Health
00:37:50
Speaker
Let's say you have... How do you... Okay.
00:37:52
Speaker
You deal with some fairly complex clients cases, right? Am I correct in assuming? People don't just come to you because they have a call for... Yeah, I've managed to attract people. I've somehow managed to start attracting a lot of people that have been ill for a long time and not really, which that makes me sound way cooler than I think I deserve to sound, to be honest. It's just one of those
00:38:21
Speaker
you know, when you start talking about some of the more mysterious, less commonly understood subjects, well, there's a lot of people that are falling through a lot of gaps. And even in the functional medicine space, I get all these people that went to that clinic and this clinic and that clinic. And I'm like, really? Like, you didn't get better there? Like, oh, I hope I'm able to figure it out. So yeah.
00:38:45
Speaker
So what's your approach? Tell us a little bit what you do with these kind of, let's say, someone with serious autoimmunity or something really kind of debilitating like that. What's your approach? So first and foremost, I almost kind of call myself more of a consultant than anything because, especially with my background as a fitness and nutrition professional,
00:39:12
Speaker
people need to take more ownership of their health and their life. And in a lot of ways, I think kind of the coach client or practitioner client or doctor patient paradigm, I think in some ways that can almost like set one another up for failure in some ways, because it's kind of this, well, I need something external to myself in order to get well, which is simply not true.
00:39:43
Speaker
If you didn't have everything you need to be healthy and happy already within you, none of us would be here. We evolved because we have these amazing meat suits that are capable of some beautifully complex immunology and physiology to protect us. So the reality is,
00:40:03
Speaker
you know, I think every individual is their own greatest self healer. And I think the best thing that we can do as health professionals is help educate and empower that inner self healer so that they can take control of their health. So when I'm consulting with people, I have to make that known upfront, because a lot of times, like I alluded to earlier,
00:40:24
Speaker
I find that obviously these days people have maybe a little bit, I don't know if it's they have a shorter attention span or their attention is being pulled in a million directions all the time because of our technology and information overload paralysis by analysis.
00:40:43
Speaker
So a lot of it comes down to first and foremost, we have to create a safe space for that individual to feel seen and heard and understood and loved and respected and empowered and educated so that they can really take on their own challenges.
Importance of Regular Blood Work
00:41:01
Speaker
So I have to point that out before talking about any of the technical stuff, because if they're not on the same page, or they're looking at you thinking, well, you fixed me. And it's like, no, no, no, it's not how this works. There's nobody that can do the work for you. Doctors can give you drugs, or they can cut you open if you need to, or you can go get an IV stuck in your arm. But ultimately, you've got to do the work psychologically, physiologically, changing your behavior, changing your environment.
00:41:31
Speaker
So once I've gotten through my onboarding soapbox, well, then I am really using different lab testing to look under the hood and figure out objectively what do we see physiologically. And primarily, it's going to be blood work. And there's this explosion of all these sexy new functional tests, which that's great. That's cool. They're helpful at times. But a lot of these functional tests
00:42:01
Speaker
are not really super established scientifically. Some of them are a little bit more experimental, especially it's like, oh, this test just came out yesterday. Okay, well, I don't think we've really clearly established the efficacy, the reliability, the technology, the clinical significance. So I do think we're kind of in this time right now where
00:42:25
Speaker
I think sometimes the functional industry can be better at creating problems than solving them. So a really good example, and then I'll shut up, is one of my favorites, like mycotoxin testing, right? Looking at mold toxins in the urine or the blood.
00:42:43
Speaker
And that's great, but the thing is with mycotoxin testing, you're quite literally measuring mold toxins that you're peeing out of your body. They're being excreted. Now, a lot of clients or patients or even practitioners and professionals, if they get that mold toxin test back and have high levels of toxins, they kind of immediately make a huge problem out of it like, oh my gosh,
00:43:07
Speaker
You know, this shows it like you have mold illness, mycotoxicosis, we have to do this, you know, crazy six to 12 month detox protocol with thousands of dollars of stuff. Yeah, all this stuff. But but meanwhile, what is?
00:43:22
Speaker
does that piece of paper really mean? Because what you're peeing out doesn't reflect what's going on internally in your body. So I think we have to be really careful about how we're interpreting some of these functional tests or how we're extrapolating the significant data. Because a lot of this is not going to be reflective of the internal physiology, which is really going to be best
00:43:47
Speaker
and most objectively assessed with good old-fashioned blood work, just like you would do through your conventional doctor, but looking at it...
00:43:57
Speaker
with kind of a finer eye, right? With conventional medicine, we have these really big reference ranges that are maybe a little bit outdated, right? I think glucose is a great example where it's not until your fasting glucose hits like 115 that most doctors are gonna say, ooh, you're pre-diabetic, here's your metformin. It's like, how many years did it take for that to get to that point? So maybe we should be focusing,
00:44:22
Speaker
looking at the smaller changes over time. So I think everybody should be doing their blood work at least once, if not twice per year, just for general health monitoring.
00:44:34
Speaker
I'm glad you said that actually I wanted to, this was a question I was going to ask a bit later, but what in your view are the most important blood tests people should run? I know they get the CBC, these standard tests, but I believe there's definitely some less common markers that most GPs run. What are those in your view?
00:44:55
Speaker
Yeah, so that standard blood chemistry with the comprehensive metabolic panel, the complete blood count, iron panel, lipid panel, the most important. That's why it's been the gold standard for all medical systems in the world for quite a while now. It's still the gold standard. And then, of course, how many patients or individuals when they're feeling mysteriously ill
00:45:24
Speaker
go to their doctor, they do some blood work and ultimately they just hear everything looks normal. There's nothing wrong with you. Yeah, maybe it's all just in your head. You want something to make you feel better. So unfortunately, again, and that's where there's a huge amount of gray area in between and looking at that blood work through more of a functional lens. And how can we analyze it more thoroughly and see more subtle sort of like meta patterns that might indicate actually you're starting to trend in a little bit of a way that's
00:45:54
Speaker
you know, oxidative or inflammatory or this is creeping up. But on top of that, there's a lot of different great biomarkers that are not really your routinely measured markers that I think kind of should be. So a good example would be like homocysteine, which is probably one of the actually more commonly
00:46:17
Speaker
used markers. It's not usually unless the medical doctor is considering like cardiovascular disease, that maybe they throw that homocysteine on there. But in reality, homocysteine is an awesome marker for so many things related to mental health or detoxification and methylation and insulin resistance. So there's so many different extra markers that we could be looking at. And I think if we can educate and empower people
00:46:46
Speaker
I'm kind of to the point, I think being able to read your own blood work is almost becoming like an essential life skill, which is unfortunately not at all practical for your average consumer, but I think we do need more education and awareness around that subject.
00:47:02
Speaker
Sure. And I know that you're not doing seminars on reading blood work for practitioners, which I think is great. Thank you. Thank you. It's definitely something on my list of things to kind of get better at reading blood work, because like you say, homocysteine, C-reactive protein, things like whole blood histamine, very, very important. And we can learn a lot from these markers. What about talk to me?
00:47:33
Speaker
I know you love the organic acids test. Tell me, this is actually one of my favorite tests as well. Tell me why you love the organic acids test so much.
Advanced Testing for Health Analysis
00:47:42
Speaker
Yeah, so, you know, it was maybe like three, four years ago, I was sitting at this dinner with some cool people in the industry. And I don't know, maybe I was just feeling my ego maybe was flaring up a little bit because I made the comment of like, Oh, yeah, you know, give me some blood work and organic acid tests and I'll make magic happen.
00:48:04
Speaker
That's what you happen when you're sitting with a bunch of cool professionals having a couple drinks But I do I really like the organic acid test. I think
00:48:15
Speaker
when it comes to the functional labs. I think organic acids is one that it's been around longer. I think that technology is a little bit more established. I think the clinical significance is more established. There's no such thing as a perfect test. Even blood work is horribly imperfect. And all lab testing is kind of this imperfect snapshot of the moment in time, which is why the professional clinical critical thinking skills are so important. But with organic acid testing,
00:48:44
Speaker
The technology was originally used to detect for these gross genetic abnormalities, primarily newborns, such as there's this horrible genetic disease called maple syrup urine disease. And so originally, they were using organic acid testing technology to look for these different amino acid metabolites that might indicate, hey, this individual, this child, this newborn even,
00:49:11
Speaker
has a genetic inborn error, a genetic mutation, and they're not able to actually metabolize certain amino acids, which, you know, to maybe the average listener, it's like, what does that mean? But ultimately, it's like, if we can't process and metabolize amino acids properly, and we can't then form
00:49:32
Speaker
different proteins and enzymes properly. I mean, that is the machinery of our body. It's the proteins are the machinery of life itself. So that's actually huge. And so like with maple syrup urine disease, usually any newborns born with that, they don't make it to the age of three or five. It depends on which gene and severity.
00:49:53
Speaker
But, you know, there are numerous organic acids that in fact are kind of the gold standard for certain things such as, you know, I don't know any doctor practitioner that would rebuttal that like methylmalonic acid is the gold standard for assessing a vitamin B12 deficiency.
00:50:12
Speaker
So it gets pretty technical with biochemistry, but essentially organic acids, we're looking at this metabolite that's sort of a byproduct of a faulty chemical reaction. So I always like to teach it of, you know, if we have a perfect chemical equation, theoretically, I'm not a mathematician or a chemist,
00:50:32
Speaker
But if we have one unit of product that goes into an enzyme, if that enzyme is working at 100% capacity, it has the co-factors, co-enzymes, there's nothing inhibiting that enzyme, well theoretically we should then yield one unit of product for our one unit of substrate.
00:50:51
Speaker
But what we see with organic acids is, well, if that equation isn't working very well, we get this kind of spillover of this metabolite that kind of shouldn't be there. And it's really indicative that that biochemistry is not working at full capacity. So we can use organic acids to assess things like mitochondrial function or different types of microbial imbalances, or even like the glutathione pathway has some
00:51:17
Speaker
beautiful organic acids such as pyroglutamate or 5 oxoprolene
00:51:24
Speaker
or it might be too oxoproline, but these metabolites that show us like, oh gosh, your detox pathways aren't working or you have mold overgrowth in your body. So I think the organic acid test is a very cost-effective way to kind of survey a lot of different systems and pathways in the body that then we can correlate with the blood work, we can correlate with the symptoms to kind of figure out what's going on. And so I know with you having a book on autism, for example,
00:51:53
Speaker
I highly recommend anyone that has an autistic child to do an organic acid test because there's a lot of common disturbances, as you well know. It's a valuable test.
00:52:06
Speaker
Yeah, that's the one test that I talk about in my book is the most important. If you only run one, that's the one you need to run. Actually, I had the pleasure of meeting Dr. Shaw, the director of the Great Plains Lab in Spain last year at a workshop. And he told me I was speaking to him and he said they can actually detect hundreds of organic acids, but they just don't have any, you know,
00:52:35
Speaker
research or evidence on how they can be utilized. So it's actually really exciting to know that potentially in the future we could have, you know, tens more of these markers, you know, on the one test, which I think is amazing.
00:52:51
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. I actually, um, great planes and Dr. Shaw is like five minutes away from me right now. You're in Kansas. Yeah. That's so amazing. So you just dropped samples off instead of getting the courier.
00:53:06
Speaker
Yeah, sometimes I will just drive over there and give them my kit. And that was actually kind of a cool like full circle part of my story because like with the suspected mold situation that I previously dealt with,
00:53:21
Speaker
you know it wasn't until years after that that situation was over that i learned about mold and organic acids and so it's just like crazy and ironic that the laboratory that's really pioneering a lot of that research was five minutes away you know the whole time i was just like oh my gosh so
00:53:39
Speaker
But you're right, there's a lot that we don't know. And I think as we continue to do research, we'll see a lot more of these metabolites and understand the clinical significance behind that.
Functional vs. Conventional Medicine
00:53:51
Speaker
Because that's kind of where it's like, these days, I think we're in a time
00:53:56
Speaker
This applies a lot to like stool testing and PCR, very much so, because I think we're at a time where our technology has greatly surpassed our understanding. And so it's kind of one of those, I challenge my student practitioners of, hey guys, just because we can measure something doesn't necessarily mean we should, it doesn't necessarily mean it's helpful. So that's where there's a lot of science to be done.
00:54:22
Speaker
Yeah. I want you to help any... There's always, I think, at least two types of listener to a podcast like this. There's people that are fully... The functional medicine model is amazing. This is the future of medicine. And then there is kind of the more conventionally minded folks that
00:54:47
Speaker
and not without disparaging anybody. I also believe we have some amazing drugs when I broke my leg 10 years ago or what those emergency doctors did was absolutely amazing. So I love certain drugs like metformin, like paracetam for the brain. So we have amazing stuff coming out of conventional medicine. Can you tell folks
00:55:12
Speaker
Because maybe we should have started with what is the functional approach to health and how does that differ from the current paradigm? Yeah, really, really good topic because the way that I've found myself speaking to that a bit more recently
00:55:37
Speaker
I'm not a politic person at all. I don't really care for politics, but it's similar in nature where I almost kind of think of conventional healthcare, conventional medicine, kind of like your Republican party, the conservatives, where maybe
00:55:52
Speaker
if they are a little bit more stereotypical, maybe a little bit stubborn, a little bit closed-minded, a little bit arrogant at times, you know, that's the cliche, that's the stereotype, not saying, but, you know, then on the other side, you kind of have the radical left, liberals, Democrats,
00:56:09
Speaker
And the reality is, isn't the truth somewhere in the middle always? It's always somewhere in the middle. There's a lot of gray space in between those two poles. And unfortunately, we live in a very polarizing world. It's this versus that, us versus them, warrior mindset, instead of a scout mindset of let's check the ego, let's observe, let's look at what evidence, let's stay open-minded but remain scrutiny.
00:56:38
Speaker
So I think it's an exciting time for the industry because I think functional medicine ultimately is more of a paradigm than a methodology. And I think it's showing sort of this
00:56:53
Speaker
I think it should be a humble process of unlearning. I think if we look at the past 100 years of medical research and medical care, we're kind of just now waking up and going, wait a second, we are creatures, we are essentially big walking microbes of the earth.
00:57:13
Speaker
How did we get so disconnected from our natural way of life to the point that we are creating our own disease that is chronic disease? Chronic disease is kind of, in a way, like a new thing. In a way, it's a new paradigm of like, wait a second, lifestyle, environment-induced chronic illness that there is no drug to make 20 years of degeneration go away.
00:57:42
Speaker
So unfortunately, because it's such a polarized space, I think there is a little bit too much like, oh well, dumb conventional medicine, they don't look for the root cause, like so silly and whatever. No, we need more functional medicine where we just do tons of testing to identify that root cause, whether it's gluten or mold or parasites, whatever it is.
00:58:07
Speaker
And I think that can be kind of misleading and damaging as well. So ultimately functional medicine is this more ideally holistic and root cause oriented way of approaching human health. But again, I think sometimes it can be a little bit better in theory than application. Like I said, I think sometimes we create problems better than we solve them.
00:58:30
Speaker
So ultimately, I want to see functional medicine continue to emerge as a melting pot where we're using the best technology with the best research, but also that innate wisdom that we've forgotten, right? Chinese medicine or medicine was always more of a holistic modality until the rise of big pharma. So I definitely think
00:58:58
Speaker
we've gotten carried away with exclusively relying on pills to basically enable our own self-destructive lifestyle behaviors. So I think we all need to kind of check ourselves and realize like the work that's being done by big pharma and scientists and conventional medicine, it's amazing.
00:59:17
Speaker
It's amazing, the technology, the science, I mean, all the science we have is pretty much funded by that big system. So I don't think that's really the problem. I think it's us as the collective, we have to start learning what is a health promoting lifestyle and then yes, not being so
00:59:38
Speaker
drug oriented, but yeah, starting to look at what are those root cause contributing factors that cause oxidative stress and inflammation that ultimately is driving the chronic disease manifestation.
Education in Fundamental Health Skills
00:59:52
Speaker
So it's a matter of education. Yeah, it is education empowerment. Yeah. And ownership. Absolutely. And that education needs to unfortunately start a little bit earlier. It's the school system. We don't really learn a lot of fundamental life skills that we ought to know, you know, so.
01:00:11
Speaker
But tell me, now that you are teaching practitioners, in many cases, medical doctors and even functional, I suppose there's a wide variety of practitioners that go to your seminars and your talks and consume your content and your courses. How has their receptivity to the information, because it can be fairly paradigm busting all the stuff, how has their receptivity changed over the last few years while you're doing this?
01:00:40
Speaker
Yeah, you know, that's a good question. I've honestly been relatively pleasantly surprised by how well it is received, you know, every now and then you kind of get somebody trolling you on the internet and, you know, pushing back, which is
01:00:55
Speaker
I think more of a reflection of like scarcity mindset and fear and anything that challenges somebody's belief system. But ultimately, I think there's a huge amount of interest and I think people are really looking for evidence-based modalities and strategies that kind of makes sense, right? Using, again, mold as just a good example,
01:01:24
Speaker
Using that as an example where, okay, so conventional medicine, they know about fungal infections. That's nothing new. But then this is where the microbiome has changed everything we think we know about human health, about medicine, especially in the year 2020 with the events of this year. There's been a lot of chatter about germ theory and immunity and herd immunity and all of these things.
01:01:53
Speaker
Because classically, if you think back to hunter-gatherer times, we lived in the dirt. We ate germs all the time. We ate animals and plants straight out of the earth. There was none of the modern hygiene as we know it, the sterile world and sterile environment. But it makes sense of how germ theory emerged. Well, if somebody gets sick, it's because they caught a bug.
01:02:20
Speaker
And then there's an acute infection where, oh, you know, you have a viral infection, a bacterial infection, a fungal parasitic, a bug got you. And now you have the fever of 104 and your white blood cells are at 20 and through the roof.
01:02:36
Speaker
And so our medical system has been so focused on that. And I think where conventional health care started going wrong is ultimately when they focused on disease rather than health. You know, they were so focused on what causes disease that they were never looking at, well, what actually facilitates health. And so all of this microbiome research, it's kind of destroyed all of that.
01:02:59
Speaker
we're now we're really realizing like, wait a second, we're coated with microbes inside and out and actually this, you know, garden of life that is our unique microbiota, it regulates everything about our health, our immune system and every system of our body. So that's where, well, gosh, how do you then test and identify and diagnose and treat a
01:03:25
Speaker
faulty microbiome. What does that mean? We don't really know yet. So that's where it's like on this side of the spectrum, you have your acute infection that any medical doctor should be able to spot right away and give you antibiotics or antifungals or whatever.
01:03:40
Speaker
But then there's, if it's not that, there's this huge gray kind of unknown area that's dysbiosis, microbiome disturbance, which has been associated with every chronic disease known to man. But we haven't really pinned down, well,
01:03:56
Speaker
What should the microbiome look like? How do we test that? How do we measure that? How do we qualify that? So I think now we have to really kind of learn more about how we fit into the natural biological world of microbes. So it's crazy times. Yeah. So ultimately, you know, I think we live in a very exciting time where the most simple way I think I could put all of it that almost ties it all together.
The Microbiome's Role in Health
01:04:24
Speaker
is if we, I think sometimes we're so focused on medicine and how do we advance medicine and how do we treat disease, we've lost sight of the bigger picture of what it means to be at homeostasis and live symbiotically with the natural world
01:04:42
Speaker
that we've evolved in. Humans are ultimately a very young species and we've come a long ways in the past 100 years, especially with the technological advances that we've made in the past 50 years. So our technology and way of life has just skyrocketed in these crazy ways.
01:05:01
Speaker
But ultimately, the problem that is causing a lot of our illness as a species or the destruction of our home planet is we are the only species on this planet that's living dysbiotically with the natural world. So what I hope to see is, especially with the events of 2020 as we all wake up a little bit and realize that as essentially big microbes in this species, that is the humans,
01:05:31
Speaker
We need to return to symbiosis. We need to unlearn a lot of our ways and relearn how can we live in peace and harmony with the natural world, right? So I think we'll find a lot of our solutions as we work towards returning to symbiosis
01:05:50
Speaker
And I think microbiome research is really just pointing us and pushing us more in that direction.
Symbiotic Living with Nature
01:05:56
Speaker
But as of right now, though, unfortunately, as we see with the events of 2020, our government health care system is still very gung ho on germ theory. They're still trying to really pull us this way. We need more vaccines. We need more antibiotics. Whereas the research is pointing us literally the exact opposite direction. So we got to sort that out.
01:06:20
Speaker
Yeah, you know what? I'm actually, sometimes I listen to you and I almost get goosebumps because like, for such a young man, you know, there's a lot of wisdom coming out there and I'm glad, you know, there's guys like you kind of teaching and not just teaching clients, but teaching teachers, teaching the practitioners because, you know, that's kind of what actually the word doctor meant, used to mean is teachers. And, you know,
01:06:50
Speaker
We have to become a little bit more humble because as you just outlined in terms of the microbiome research, we don't know what we don't know. We know so little that we've grabbed the elephant's tail, now we think the elephant is a snake, that kind of way.
01:07:13
Speaker
I love the work you're doing, Brendan. Thank you for really kind of stepping up and we need more guys like you. Thank you for stepping up. Thank you for creating all the resources that you are and I wish you all the best with continuing to expand this kind of already really good bank of information that you provide. So can you tell folks where they can find you?
01:07:35
Speaker
Yeah, Christian, thank you so much for that. It really does mean a lot. Sometimes I start feeling, I'm just like, wow.
01:07:46
Speaker
I don't know. Why are more people not getting it, right? It's almost when you start looking at the big picture and breaking it down and looking at the evidence, it's like, how are we not getting it? How are we still so stuck in our ways? Unfortunately, I don't think humans are the most objective or humble species on the planet. So it really means a lot. And to your own credit, I mean, you know, like
01:08:13
Speaker
There's a lot of amazing work being done out there. No one person can do it all. So the more that we can come together symbiotically and do this work. So I really appreciate you and the platform that you're doing because you're doing a lot of amazing work yourself. And it's when we all put our heads together.
01:08:32
Speaker
that's where the magic is. Actually, before you tell the folks where they can find you, I just want to add to that point.
Connecting with Brendan Vermeer
01:08:39
Speaker
What you said is actually very important. As a species, we're not very humble. This is where
01:08:50
Speaker
some thinkers of our time think that we are coming to a crescendo in terms of our egoic identification with ourselves. And this ego will continue to kind of inflate and destroy until whatever the species or the planet or the host cannot bear anymore.
01:09:11
Speaker
And we will suffer some type of crisis as we can kind of see that we're heading in that direction. But through that crisis, maybe we can kind of have this kind of ego death rebirth that the transpersonal psychology talks about. And maybe that's where we're heading.
01:09:33
Speaker
But we have guys like you out there pulling our collective evolution in that direction. This is actually what the podcast is about. It's the folks pulling our collective evolution. It probably needs to be a quantum leap in terms of our evolution. We cannot linearly solve the problems of our time, as Einstein said, with the same thinking. So it clearly needs to be a paradigm shift.
01:09:58
Speaker
And you're one of those guys. So again, thank you for your work. Please tell folks where they can find your training and resources. Yeah, thank you so much. I really couldn't agree more with everything you just said. So anybody can find me on the internet. I'm not too hard to find. We've got Instagram is kind of our main platform that we put a lot of just daily content out. So that's at the holistic Savage.
01:10:21
Speaker
which is the name of my podcast. And then we've got our website, MetabolicSolutionsLC.com. So Metabolic Solutions is the business. But we do, we try to just put thought provoking educational content just to elevate, educate, empower people, and kind of empower self healers to take control of their health and their lives. So it's really been an honor. It's been a great conversation.
01:10:50
Speaker
Thank you, brother. Of course, we'll have all those links in the show notes and on the website. So once again, Brendan, Vermeer, thank you so much for joining us on Connecting Minds. Hey, thank you, Christian. Thank you for listening to Connecting Minds.
01:11:14
Speaker
We hope you enjoyed this conversation and found it interesting, illuminating, or inspiring. For episode show notes, links, and further information on our guests, please visit christianjordanov.com. If you found this episode valuable, please share it with someone who might also enjoy it. Thank you for being here.