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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 to health and mental well-being as well the functional health paradigm.
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
Topics discussed on this episode:
- The need for a sense of purpose and how it can affect our mental health.
- Brendan’s personal struggles with mental health and how he overcame them.
- The psychological and physical sides of mental health.
- Every condition has a physiological component.
- The poor management of mental health issues by conventional health care.
- Inflammation drives a lot of mental health issues including depression, anxiety, schizophrenia, , bipolar, and neurodegenerative disorders
- Our lifestyle and environment is a major factor driving inflammation.
- Our thoughts become proteins – physiology follows our psychology. Stress in our mind triggers stress hormones and other molecules that can contribute to (or even trigger) health issues.
- Reframing our belief systems, focusing on positive thoughts, and thus influencing neuroplasticity and neurogenesis results in our physiology following suit in positive ways.
- Focusing on psychology will only take you so far. No amount of mental work will address unidentified metabolic and and health imbalances such as food sensitivities, or gut pathogens/infections that cause inflammation.
- Inflammation and oxidative stress are the two major drivers to pathology. They cause damage and degeneration in the body that may lead to a myriad of symptoms and illnesses.
- Our current environment is highly conducive to excess oxidative stress – heavy metals, toxic chemicals and infections can contribute to it.
- Many of us are not consuming enough of the nutrients needed to combat excess oxidation reactions in the body.
- EMFs such as Wi-Fi can increase oxidative reactions.
- The functional paradigm focuses on reducing inflammation and oxidative stress.
- Over time, chronic low-grade inflammation contributes to faster ageing and gradual immune system suppression.