Back To The Basics: The Gut-Brain Connection ft. Brendan Vermeire
Episode 120
In this part 1 episode of The Integrative Wellness Radio, Dr. Nicole chats with Brendan Vermeire, Mental Health Scientist & Certified Health Practitioner who has a background in fitness. Brendan shares his unique journey starting as a Navy Seal who was released from duty due to a pre-existing medical condition and how he transitioned into health & fitness. Brendan’s personal experience with mental health drove him to pursue a career in the industry. Interested in working with IWG? Book a complimentary consult call to learn more using this link: https://bit.ly/IWRcall2021 Noteworthy Time Stamps: 2:20 Brendan’s journey 13:00 Gut-brain connection 23:30 Challenging conventional medicine & common beliefs 25:00 Manipulation of pathways
Topics: brendan, health, brain, back, fitness, journey, kind, medical
Key takeaways from this episode
- Nicole to learn more about the top trends in integrative medicine to learn about what the limitations are with testing and what you can do to start your health journey.
- And it was always kind of a fall back plan of, you know, health, fitness.
- So, welcome back to another episode of Integrated Wellness Radio.
- Well, I appreciate you having me, Nicole, and I remember back at keynote, yeah, in the good old days when we got to travel and, you know, socially come together and congregate.
- So, you know, it's like a 12-year journey that started as being kind of a high functioning depressed teenager not really knowing it.
Pull quotes
Imagine if medicine actually looked at you as a whole opposed to looking at you as a bunch of separate systems.
Nicole to learn more about the top trends in integrative medicine to learn about what the limitations are with testing and what you can do to start your health journey.
Um, so I'm really excited for him to introduce himself and give us like the real raw story of how you got into this.
Transcript
I've been up all night, no sleep. Imagine if medicine actually looked at you as a whole opposed to looking at you as a bunch of separate systems. Dive into Integrated Wellness Radio with Dr. Nick and Dr. Nicole to learn more about the top trends in integrative medicine to learn about what the limitations are with testing and what you can do to start your health journey. Sometimes I tend to lose myself when I'm out here. All right, everyone. So, welcome back to another episode of Integrated Wellness Radio. We have Brendan Brandon. He is an amazing colleague and and friend of mine. We actually met randomly at the Microbiome Labs. How many years ago was that now? Uh, that was about three at this point, I think. Was it 2019, I think? Yeah, which I guess two, two and a half. pre-pandemic, right? Yeah. Yeah. But it was an amazing seminar that we went to and we just started chit chatting about our passion for podcasts and helping people in all different ways and we both have different reasons why we got into the industry but have come together with a very similar mission essentially. Um, so I'm really excited for him to introduce himself and give us like the real raw story of how you got into this. I love when people like sugarcoat it, but I'm like let's, let's hear why you got into this industry. Absolutely. Well, I appreciate you having me, Nicole, and I remember back at keynote, yeah, in the good old days when we got to travel and, you know, socially come together and congregate. Uh, you know, I'm kind of a wallflower socially and, you know, I was wandering around that pool and you had the best like aura and energy. So, I was like, I'm gonna talk to you. Oh, that's too funny. Yeah. I'm just like, hi, what do you do? Let's talk. Yeah. Yeah, no, you're just very friendly and personable and it makes it easy to to vibe out. So, I'm excited to vibe out today and see where the convo goes. Yeah. And I appreciate the opportunity to kind of because like the bio, right? It's so like flowery and pretty and flower uh flattery. And like, yeah, I'm proud of the bio, but it's more like the painful journey that I had to go through to to accomplish that that bio, right? And it's dirty it's messy. Uh, I get so many messages all the time through social media kind of, well, how'd you get to where you are and like what programs and credentials and whatever. I'm like, you're missing the point. The the point is the hell that I went through to to climb to the top of the mountain, which is more the the real battle in itself. So, you know, it's like a 12-year journey that started as being kind of a high functioning depressed teenager not really knowing it. And, you know, having this very self-destructive like, I want to be a real life superhero, that translated into, I need to become a navy seal. So, at the age of 18, I signed a six-year Navy Seal contracts. And then that was like my life goal at the time. Um, I think my my heart was in the right place, but not really my head. And so, I was about halfway through boot camp and they found I had an injury. They deemed it pre-existing. So, they're like, not our liability, not our problem. Medical discharge, you're out. Uh, so, then that was my life dream ripped away. And it was always kind of a fall back plan of, you know, health, fitness. I was just huge into fitness and and performance and optimizing all of that. So, that naturally shifted into personal trainer, nutrition coach. I worked for uh Lifetime Fitness, which is a huge, you know, billion dollar corporation that has they do a great job. I mean, anybody that knows Lifetime, it's a very impressive corporation. So, I got this exposure to all sorts of sciences and I just, I loved the science of human performance, human health, metabolic illness. And so, whereas like functional medicine, a lot of them are some sort of licensed medical provider whether it's an RD, DC, ND, MD, whatever. And, you know, they went to medical school. They studied, you know disease and maybe pharmaceuticals or natural medicine or whatever. So, they're kind of coming from it at from the opposite side of the spectrum, whereas I started with performance and then I was working with mostly metabolic syndrome, Standard American Metabolism, people that very metabolically ill, but I want to lose weight. Yep. Um And so, as I started creeping down, it's like I started studying more and more, well, what moves people away from health? What moves people away from performance? And it didn't take long before then I'm starting to get into, well the root causes, like what happens when good nutrition, exercise, lifestyle is not enough, right? Because that's the world I came from was fitness nutrition health coaching but that's not always enough and and sometimes it is a little bit more complicated. I would say like 80 to 90% of the population, it's really just the basics that need to be integrated into their day-to-day behaviors. So, that's where, I mean, I went through my own healing crisis. Toxic, you know, narcissistic relationship, living in a moldy home, sprinkle in some MTHPR Wild goose hunt. Yeah. You know, do a few parasite cleanses, trying to figure out what the hell is going on here. Um, there and I'm jumping over so many details at one point. I had an intentional overdose on my psychiatric medications. Um, I actually I was first put on this is probably important for the conversation where I was first put on psychiatric drugs when I was 17. Um, so, I was in high school. I was just doing a a sports uh physical, you know, for for athletic participation. And without any assessment, testing, referral to a psychologist, nothing. just here's Zoloft, kid, like might make you feel better. Um, well Zoloft did not sit well with me at all, which, you know, now we have all these stern blackbox warnings, but we just hand these things out like Halloween candy to teenagers that are just trying to figure out life, right? And so, that was 17. I didn't actually get referred to a clinical psychology or psychiatry office until I was 21. I underwent the formal assessments and evaluation, which was all subjective, right? It's questionnaires, it's symptoms, it's archetypes of your behavior. There was never any lab testing, not even a single blood draw. Um, so, I was officially diagnosed with major depressive disorder and ADHD at the age of 21, put on three different medications, uh Vyvanse, uh Wellbutrin and Adderall. Wow. What a combo. Yeah, pretty potent, you know, blows there. And then literally, it was two weeks after my diagnosis, uh I woke up in the intensive care unit breathing out of a tube because I had intentionally overdosed and I was in a comma for medically induced comma for like 48, 72 hours as they were pumping my stomach. And Um, they did some blood work then and, you know, my liver enzymes were in the thousands. I later found out and, uh, once I was medically stable from the ICU, I got transferred to a psychiatric ward. In in patient sort of experience. I asked if I could, like, what are my rights? What are my medical rights? Can I, can I refuse treatment and go home? I don't want to be here. But it's one of those, well, you can, but if we think that you're a threat to yourself or others Yeah. We can overpower that and you'll be sent to an asylum and that's way less fun. So, you might as well just play along here because it's more mild here is what I was told. So, then I was literally locked up in the psychiatric ward for four days, never got to step outside, see the light day, breathe fresh air. You know, this processed cafeteria garbage food and some of these people were so heavily medicated that they were just sedated, right? These, you know, um, people written off by our psychiatry system as just they're mentally ill, they're a threat to themselves and others. Just sedate them. So, they're zombies and there's the the light from their eyes, it's just gone. Yeah, they're practically a walking corpse. Exactly and you know, I I I I was a high functioning, high motivated, you know, kick ass young man that just, you know, was struggling at the moment. So, you know, I had these battles with the psychiatrist that treated me like this confused, broken thing that could only be mended by their pills and their dogma. And so, that is that crisis, which was then followed by a horrible relationship and mold illness and all these other things. All the shit that nobody looked at. Yeah, right, right. Yeah. It wasn't relevant. No, yeah, they it's it's not even a conversation, it doesn't exist. Like, even the idea of maybe doing like a blood test to look at physiological function for the sake of psychiatry, that doesn't exist because there are no biomarkers of mental health, which is bullshit because there is Yeah, it does not align at all with So, this is where like usually when I'm discussing all of this, it's like we have to understand the language barriers of like there's the narrative that the scientific literature says. Yeah. And the language that science use and then there's what actually gets adopted and integrated into conventional healthcare and the language that they use. Mhm. And then there's functional, which is, you know, wild. And then there's the language that the consumers in mainstream and none of us are speaking the same language. So, everybody is very confused about what the hell is going on with mental health. But, that's just like a brief synopsis of what's been like a 12-year thing. So. Well, there's so many things that I want to say right now. But Oh, totally. First and foremost, I'm like, if you didn't see my face change, audience, you I'm sure now you're paying attention because this is the shit that makes me rage. And we can curse on this podcast because people know my personality. Cool. But I'm just, this is exactly the reason why we are so lit up to do what we do and on our spare time, we do podcasts to educate the public because that experience is unfortunately more common than we realize and it is so unbelievably negligent, unscientific and if I hear one more time the conventional medicine model, say, evidence-based research, peer-reviewed articles. And I'm like, what is your research even based off of? It's based off of funded research from pharmaceutical companies to push the agenda. And yes, there are lab tests to evaluate a variety of different things, just inflammation being. One, what we're that scratching the surface. But there are tests that exist to measure if you have an actual serotonin problem, an actual GABA problem, an actual dopamine problem, which are your feel good hormones, your motivation hormones, your thinking straight hormones, your sleeping hormones. And nobody looks at them. That is not even a common test that is run in psychiatry. But we automatically look at the person subjectively and say, well, you know, you kind of fit the mold. And yeah, I'm actually not even going to dig any deeper into the actual real life struggles that you're going through, you know, why don't you just take this pill, get out of my office a little early and you should be good to go. And the amount of individuals that come into my office on their SSRIs, their antidepressants that are actually in serotonin toxicity. So, they're depressed and anxious is astronomical. And did anybody look at their gut considering 90 to 95% of your serotonin is made in your gut? No. Did anybody look to see if you have inflammation in your body? Do you have mold toxicity that's not allowing blood to get to your brain? No. That's not even relevant. It's not even on their radar and if you said it to them, they would look at you with cross eyes because they don't even know what you're talking about. And that's the very, very sad reality of where medicine is at. And yes, you have to be your own advocate because once you start understanding this, that's when you start to seek out for answers and actually more objective evidence around what is going on with you. And half of these labs, we can run it through LabCorp and Quest. And then obviously, when we want to get into the more comprehensive stuff around neuroinflammation and blood brain barrier disruptions, there are labs for that as well now. So, your options are, you know, I don't want to say limitless but there are more options than there ever has been in the past and I do want you to talk about something that you've been developing with the uh DHA labs because I'm that's amazing that you're doing that. But, you know, a couple of other things that I want you to talk about, um outside of just that lab, is when you went through that process of, you know, essentially saying, six-year commitment, you know, into the Navy and now I'm exiting this way earlier than ever anticipated, I would assume that's going to be like a loss of identity. Mhm. Yeah. There's so much, um to unpack that's going to be a fun combo. And as far as that, absolutely. You know, when when you're a young person, like, ah, you know, 18 is the legal age. I feel like you shouldn't be allowed to make any life decisions till you're at least 25 or something, right? Because it's just like, you just, you don't you don't know anything. You don't have any sense of perspective of the world or life and the only way you can really learn is is by experience, right? And there's so much to be said for that. So, I was, you know, I was I was high, highly motivated young man that didn't know who I was or how to channel my motivation or ambition and, you know, I do have my kind of psychiatric phenotype if you will, right? Like we every individual has their unique aura, their unique nature, um, which is this kind of beautiful and complex epigenetic phenotype expression. And I think it's such a double-edged sword of, you know, you we we can talk about COMT and MAO and, you know, some of those genetic things. But ultimately, it's just genetic characteristics that how are they being expressed depending on the input signals the genes are getting from your psychology, your environment, both literal and esoteric environment. Um, you know, your cells are always listening. are programming, our experiences and you know, I think even just if you're a personality that you're like, I make a decision and I have a high commitment and a loyalty to that decision. Mhm. And then that has to shift and pivot and there's a lot of people that don't like to shift and pivot. They're like, Yeah. No, no, no, no, I made this decision. I, this is where this is what I need to do. This is the job I need. This is the career that I need. This is the hobby that I need. And now something happens that throws a wrench in that and now having to to shift that and you're like, but I was going to give this my everything. Yeah. That's that's very ground shaking. Yeah. And now you go in and get an evaluation and you're being told like, oh, well, you have poor mental health or, you know, you need the only the only option is a drug that will pate this. What about the actual coaching around life experiences and and shifting the perception around the experience and helping individuals to know that pivoting is not always a bad thing. Like that is there's such a lack of any of that. Absolutely. Well, and part, I think part of it's like when it comes to treatment efficacy, the conventional system, which is, you know, it's it's insurance, it's pharma, it's Big Tech, it's government, it's all in bed together, the system that they created requires such a high level of, you know, treatment, research and efficacy and standardization. They're the only ones that can afford that standard. Like there what are you gonna do? Like who's going to fund a study to show like, eat clean for 30 like, there's no money there. So, they created a system where in order for something to be accepted as efficacious with a treatment perspective and and to be integrated into the system, well, you you guys are the only ones that can afford to produce that level of research. So, it just, you know, it just that's a huge problem, right? And that's where like Coreen has done a lot of work with trying to create a research model that like supplement companies can afford because we don't have the deep pockets that Big Pharma has because we're not monopolizing illness the way that Big Pharma is. But at the same time, I also feel like, okay, we need to do research around something that should be common sense. You know what I mean? Totes. Absolutely. It's like, okay, eat the food with chemicals, feel like shit, or eat, you know, the food that's grown from the ground, not covered in chemicals and feel better. You know, it's like, I like, do we really need to do research? Absolutely. Let's just going to say that, do you really it's it's legitimately common sense, but that that's the really sad reality is that we, I think honestly, since birth, we have all been stripped of using forward thinking, critical thinking, and common sense. Is, you know, and it's the, you know, it's all over the media, social media, etc. right now in just the idea of all you need to protect your immune system is a vaccination and then we see that the vaccination is one of the primary populations of individuals getting the virus, but then we still trust it. And I'm like, there's so many things you can do on a day-to-day basis to support your immune system. And yeah, some of these things are food, some of it is supplementation, and some of it is technologies that you've never heard of before, like immune boosting protocols, using PMF devices. And, you know, there's so much out there that's being, I don't want to say fully hidden. It's just not in the common narrative, but there are so many amazing things that we could do every day on our own. And then also, you know, practitioners in the functional space can facilitate as well. Absolutely. I mean, it's like you you look at the the weight of evidence, uh behind vitamin D, vitamin C and zinc. Like, I don't think anybody can really argue against that and yet that's been totally censored and pulled from social media. And it's just, you know, so let alone PMF. That's like pseudo science compared to zinc. So, it's just it's just crazy. Yeah. We we've lost our connection with our intuition as a species and we're so reductionistic and down the rabbit hole in this matrix gaslighting world. Nobody knows which way is up anymore, right? We're being divided and conquered on a very fundamental level. A hundred percent. And, you know, one of the things that we we briefly touched on that I want, I would love to hear your perspective on it in your experience and now your experience with working with clients is the idea of manipulation of pathways. So, you mentioned you were put on three medications at one point in time that were targeting three different pathways and that resulted in you being in a hospital and being put into a drug-induced coma. Like that's a obviously that's a very severe end of the spectrum. But, you know, how many individuals are walking around in a low grade coma? And they can't feel anything and they are not interacting with their loved ones like they used to. And, you know, I feel like my personal experience with this idea of manipulating pathways even from a functional and natural perspective is, I actually lean away from using different neutraceuticals, um that would try to manipulate the serotonin pathway or manipulate the, you know, the GABA pathway, which is the calming hormone, because I find that once you fix that foundation and you deal with the underlying root issues of inflammation, infections, toxicity, then a lot of these pathways now have the ability to have the burden removed off of that. And go back to functioning optimally, that doesn't mean that sometimes we need the cofactors like the B vitamins and the zinc and some of the some of the nutrients that help those pathways run. But, you know, what has been your experience with that? Because I know that you are working and a lot of the things you've been posting online is talking about, um, you know, the immune system of the brain, the glial system, talking about neuroinflammation and how this can literally manifest in mental health disorders. So, I would love for you to speak on behalf of that. Yeah, I mean, you really just nailed it, uh Nicole, where, you know, what I just heard and what I would say is, uh support the pathway, don't manipulate it, right? And of course, like, that's again, with with my background of fitness nutrition and and, I don't know, being a nature buff and psychology buff in a lot of ways. Um, when I really went full force into the functional medicine space, I was really caught off guard and bothered by the lack of fitness, the lack of individualized nutrition even. Um, it still felt very, well, run all these functional labs and give all these supplements, but there still felt like, and I'm looking around at, and I'm not trying to, you know, talk ill of anybody, but I'm just like, how many of you done to push up in the past, you know, couple years? Like, when you look at even just movement and how just moving and moving your, like, for example, if there's such a thing as a molecule of mental health, I would say it's Brain Derived Neurotrophic Factor so far, you know, good old BDNF, big biohacking subject, which I think is a little gimmicky. But so far, based on the science, the neurotrophin model and theory of mental illness is really strongest and the punchline kind of goes, neuroplasticity, neurogenesis is how we heal the brain and rewire it, whereas neuroinflammation is like that forced fire that's burning it down. Um So, yeah. kind of those two things are polar, they're antagonistic. So, the punchline really becomes, as neuroinflammation and excitotoxicity, neurotoxicity goes up, neuroplasticity, neurogenesis goes down. And they used to think that this ment uh mental health molecule Brain Derived Neurotrophic Factor, they thought it was exclusive to the central nervous system, hence its name, Brain Derived Neurotrophic Factor. But actually, now we know that this same molecule is produced by your skeletal muscle and it also functions as a myokine. So, now it has a secondary name, which is metabokine because it has such a profound effect on your metabolic function. We see that brain-derived neurotrophic factor, metabokine produced by your muscles actually regulates uh insulin release and can regenerate beta cells of your pancreas. So, they're looking at like exogenous injections of BDNF as a treatment for Type 1 diabetes, which is like unheard of, right? Or as a treatment for neurodegeneration or all these other issues. And, you know, so a lot of what I do as, you know, I'm more Really quick, really quick, layperson interpretation of what he just said is when you exercise, your blood sugar is better and your brain is better. Yep. So, that was my summary of because some people are like, what? Yeah. Absolutely. And and so, like, a lot of what I do on a day-to-day basis, I think I would have made a great pharmaceutical scientist in another life because that's what I love is I love studying what are the mechanisms that are implicated in this condition, but the difference is, rather than I'm trying to create a synthetic drug that, you know, modulates those mechanisms, I'm looking at, well, let's reverse engineer that of how do we functionally modulate those same mechanisms, those same pathways. So, when there's all this research of like, oh, inject somebody with BDNF and that helps their brain heal, it makes depression go away. It heals their beta cells in their pancreas. And I'm like, okay, so how can we naturally, you know, boost BDNF and boost that same effect? Exercise, sunlight, sleep, nutrients, right? So, it just becomes this, the mechanisms are cool, but the science just points us right back to like primal living. Like, we're not supposed to be sedentary living in dark with blue light and eating fake food. Like, just going for a walk in nature with sunshine is a huge boost of neuroplasticity and decreasing all these things and, you know, the technical stuff is cool, but like, we don't need to get lost in the weeds and we are. Yes. So, yeah. And there's so many mechanisms and if people here that's what I try to do is help people understand like mechanistically, here's what's going on. However, you want to attack that. If you just want to attack with drugs, great. If you just want to attack with supplements, great. If you want to do all lifestyle, great. As long as it moves the needle, who cares, right? If you reach your goals. But I want to give people options with their treatment. We thank you for being a listener and subscriber to Integrated Wellness Radio. If you're looking to learn more about Integrated Wellness Group as well as Dr. Nick or Dr. Nicole, you can check out integratedwellnessgroup.com. because I feel like I'm always dreaming. Why run away? That's okay.
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About Integrative You Radio
Integrative You Radio is a root cause medicine and integrative medicine podcast hosted by Dr. Nicole Rivera and Dr. Nick Carruthers — two integrative doctors who build personalized wellness protocols from your DNA, minerals, hormones, gut, and nervous system rather than from a population template. Looking for an integrative doctor who reads your labs together instead of in isolation? This is the show.
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