11: How Neuroinflammation Affects Mental Health with Brendan Vermeire

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Hello and welcome to the Full Circle Healing Podcast where we merge modern cutting edge science with traditional healing wisdom and everything in between to help you come full circle back to your original natural state of health and well being. I'm your host Michael and over the past 15 years I've helped hundreds of thousands of people find the information, practices, tools, resources and experts they needed to find their way back to optimal health. Our guest in this episode is the brilliant and inspirational Brendan Vermeer. Brendan is a metabolic a mental and metabolic health researcher, functional medicine educator, writer and speaker. He's a board certified Holistic Health Practitioner, Master Nutrition Coach, master personal trainer, USAW sports performance coach and CrossFit trainer. He began his career as a personal trainer and nutrition coach at 18 after disappointingly being medically discharged from the US Navy Seal training pipeline to due to an injury. After being exposed to the power of functional lab testing at the start of his career, he began intensely pursuing that as a career path which led him to be widely regarded as one of the top experts in metabolic health and functional education. He's a proud owner and founder of the Metabolic Solutions Institute for Functional Health and Fitness Practitioners, the creator of the Functional Mental Health Practitioner Certification course. He's also the founder of Metabolic Solutions Research and Education Foundation, a non for profit foundation dedicated to changing the way the world views mental health through advancing the science of mental health dysfunction. Finally, Brendan's also created the Mental Map, a cutting edge lab panel for mental health and the Neuroceuticals supplement line. In this episode you'll learn about Brendan's own journey and struggles with mental health and some practices and lifestyle changes that really helped him shift in a positive way. You'll learn how neuroinflammation or inflammation in the brain can wreak havoc not only on our mental health, but all areas of health. It's learn what can trigger microglial activation in the brain and what this means for those with any brain related conditions. You'll learn why monitoring your physiology while proceeding on a health journey is essential, even more so than chasing root causes. This and so much more. Brendan and I share a very similar past with histories of depression and mental health challenges and it's always great to connect, support each other, share about our journey and our work. And we both started as trainers also in fitness, so we have a lot of similar background and it's always a great, great conversation. I really enjoy it. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. And if you're interested to learn more about the gut microbiome brain connection we touched on in this episode. Head over to RebelHealth Co backslash, gut brain. All one word, gut brain. To watch an in depth training video on the topic with microbiologist Kiran Krishnan. Now let's jump in with Brendan. And we're live. Hey, Brendan, welcome back to the show.

Thanks for having me, Michael. It's always a good time talking to you, man. It's been a while.

Yeah, yeah, likewise. And I guess this is the first time on this show, but we've done a lot of other shows, so welcome to the new show, I guess I should say. And yeah, we always have fun. I think our stories have a lot of parallels to them in a lot of ways and I like where the conversations go and I think that the work that you do and your focus that you've had on like the metabolic side of mental health and how functional medicine principles can be applied to mental health is something that gets often overlooked in the functional medicine world. And I think that so many people that are struggling with some form of chronic illness are also struggling with neuroinflammation, which they don't know. But things like anxiety, depression, brain fog, fatigue, mood swings, you name it, forgetfulness. And I just think it goes unaddressed. And I don't know if you want to speak to that a little bit or what you've seen in either your education side or any clinical stuff like am I making that up or would you believe that's fairly accurate?

No, you're spot on. It's a crazy thing kind of being in my position because for me there's this sensation of there's this enormous body of evidence that we all have access to at our fingertips all the time, and yet nobody's talking about it. And even if we look at, you know, CDC disease statistics, was Alzheimer's in the top 10 and suicide was in the top 10 until Covid and cerebrovascular disease and the frequency of dementia or mental health disorders. It's such a huge problem. And mental health is getting more and more trendy. We have Simone Biles repping the mental health kind of mantra at the Olympics and stuff, but we're completely missing the mark as far as the etiological physiological premise for a lot of these disorders. And then there's kind of the psychosomatic and psychosocial component as well. So it gets really, really cloudy. But when you look at just the physiological underpinnings of all these different neurodevelopmental, neuropsychiatric and neurodegenerative It's a lot of the same underlying physiology and a lot of it, you know, I would say a lot of times, I'll say how our conventional psychiatric model is still very much based on this more outdated theory of mental illness, which is the monoamine theory, which is all focusing on neurotransmitters and kind of that brain chemical imbalance theory that we've all been sold by pharma for decades now. And so I always say it's not that that theory is incorrect, it's just at this point, outdated and overly simplistic. So the newer models, the newer theories, mental illness is much more expansive and not just looking at the neurotransmission component with SSRIs or SNRIs or benzodiazepines or antipsychotics and dopamine receptor blockers and stuff. But now it's a lot looking at the immune system of the brain, specifically what we call the glial system, which is my big area of focus. And if I have a claim to fame, it's this whole microglial activation syndrome concept that I've been piloting for a while. And essentially, to simplify it for the audience, what I'm really focused on is every factor, whether it's environmental, whether it's psychosomatic, whether it's, you know, biochemical in nature, anything that's going to be dysregulating the immune system of the brain that contributes to this chronic inflammatory response. And really, if we just keep it simple, you know, we know that inflammation in the brain can cause a lot of brain chemical imbalances and dysfunction, but then chronically, that's where we get the neurodegeneration. I mean, chronic neuroinflammation equals neurodegeneration. And we have so much evidence that really proves this. We have so many amazing biomarkers that we can measure in the blood to objectively qualify this. So I just don't think there's really any excuse anymore for why this isn't more common knowledge or why are we not using these markers? Why are we not, you know, tackling these etiological factors? So that's kind of what my whole career is dedicated to at this point.

And, and thank you. And you. And you teach it so well because it's, it's one of those topics where the, the biochemistry can get uber complex, but it can be taught in a way. You know, if your blood sugar is high, there's this, this component. This happens if. And, and you're mentioning the, the Microglial activation. Like, the first time I ever learned about that was from Dr. Kharazian. And we had him on one of our master classes, and he said he wanted to do his presentation. This was four years ago or five years ago, and he wanted to do his presentation on this. It was brain and neuromaster class. It was before we connected. So I wish I'd have known you were doing this then, because we would have talked. But he came out and he's like, I want to talk about. He talked about that in a nutshell. And I said, I don't know what that is, but I'm sure I'll learn something. Cool. And then he went in. At the beginning, he started talking about symptoms and signs of neuroinflammation, and then he talked about glial cell activation, and then he talked about root causes of this. And I felt like he had been stalking me for the last 20 years of my life and wrote his presentation about me. And it made so many things make sense to me that I didn't understand. Why? Like, because I have a history of concussions, I. You know, I. And I just pieced all these things together that I never thought of. And I had been educating in functional health and interviewing people and producing all this stuff for six years at that point, and I hadn't had heard a single person talk about that topic. And I struggled with lifelong anxiety, with depression, with ADD and, like, difficulty with certain neuro tasks. And nobody had ever, ever suggested any of that to me. And so when I heard him and learned from him introducing that material, I just. It was like this thing clicked. And now, for the last six years, I've been kind of on the other side. And part of what I want to do with this podcast is blend all the sides, because there's really, like, no side to healing. But I've been more on the mental, emotional, spiritual, trauma side of things. And the work you're doing in, like, the testing panel that you created, for example, on neuroinflammation, which we can talk about, but so far, we've only talked about how functional medicine tends to kind of miss the boat when it comes to this stuff. That side isn't even in the lake. You can talk to functional medicine folks about this, about neural inflammation and the biochemistry of that, and they'll get it. They'll be like, oh, this makes sense to get it. And they'll want to incorporate it into their practice. If you go talk to most therapists or psychologists or counselors or people who are Working with mental health from that side. I don't think things like neuroinflammation are even on the, the target board. And so hopefully there's some of those folks who are going to hear this conversation because can you just speak to if somebody's brain is inflamed and we can talk a little bit more about what causes this, but if somebody's brain is inflamed, other than neurodegenerative, which you're talking about, that's Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, dementia, these kind of conditions that in the functional medicine space, everybody kind of knows about. But what kind of quality of life, what does it really look like to someone from a mental health side of things when they're dealing with unmitigated neuroinflammation?

You know, there's so many layers to it and components to it. And I think it's important for people to understand neuroinflammation isn't something that they do or don't have. Right?

Yeah, yeah.

A physiological process that's in constant flux. So I always like to refer to kind of this neuroinflammatory load. Right. And the same concept can be applied to the periphery or any other part of the body. It's, you know, to what, to what degree is the inflammation elevated? Right. You know, it's kind of like good old C reactor protein is the most well known, commonly employed biomarker of inflammation. You know, are we talking like a CRP of 3, are we talking a CRP of 9? Are we talking a 15 or a 20 or something? So that same logic can be applied to the neuroinflammatory process in the brain that can be a very self perpetuating cycle. And so part of the trick with neuroinflammation is even if the initial trigger, whatever that trigger was, whether it's like LPS from a leaky gut, leaky brain, or like adverse childhood events, or the vaccine schedule or whatever it is, whatever that initial trigger, once the glial system is kind of hyperactivated, it's kind of a fire that can keep itself going. So then you have to look at all of the gas that's being poured on the fire, whether it's the poor nutrition, nutritional habits, or the stress, or the environmental toxic load, or the, you know, the TBIs and concussions that have racked up over time, so on and so forth. Now, from kind of like a more acute perspective, I think anxiety, depression, fatigue, brain fog, poor memory recall, apathy, anhedonia, These are just kind of common symptoms of this sort of dysregulated, not just neuroinflammatory process, but it's all of it. It's the neuroendocrine system, the neuroinflammatory, the neurotrophic, all these different sort of neurophysiological buckets are all communicating, they're all dysregulated. And then this can compound on itself. So while there can be many contributing factors that contribute to this sort of fire in the brain, I've sort of boiled it down of like, I think the three big pillars are mindset, metabolism and microbiome. Because everything else will kind of fit into one of those categories of more of a mindset, psychosomatic, psychological contributor, more of a metabolic, metabolic illness and lack of flexibility contributor. And then of course, the garden of life, the microbiota that has such a heavy impact on all this. So to your point, you know, I see this all the time. We have a lot of therapists that come to my program, the FMH program, because to your point, they want to learn this. Not all of them, but you know, there's an increasing number of therapists that imagine if you're a psychotherapist and you've been purely trained in, you know, counseling and psychology and behavioral modification, and you're trying to work with people to help them understand their own behavioral patterns. But the thing is, like if they're physiology and they have all this neuroinflammation, they're not going to fully rebuild benefit of therapy because their physiology isn't in alignment with what the goal of psychotherapy is. So I kind of preach that a lot. And there's a lot of times where somebody, they're less stable psychologically, neurologically, psychologically they're less stable. So a lot of times, you know, I'm often preaching that functional medicine or addressing the neuroinflammation, that's not a substitute for psychotherapy. You still have to do that work or the, the spiritual, the introspection, what, whatever it is, it doesn't have to be traditional psychother therapy. That's extremely important for the mindset and the soul part of the journey. But we have to make sure that the cells, the physiology, the tissues are working in our favor. So in a lot of ways, I like to help people optimize that physiology, put out the fire in their brain, restore homeostasis to their neuroendocrine and neurotransmission systems, so that doing that inner work is more feasible. And it has to be both. You can't, unfortunately, and this is being transparent, my practice does attract a lot of people with mental health issues. But sometimes it's like they have raging personality disorders and, you know, working on nutrition or lifestyle or, you know, taking some supplements, that's not going to make the personality disorder or the dysfunctional behavior go away. And if they're not stable psychologically, it makes the holistic intervention really hard to do. You think people want to work on their dietary habits or take a bunch of supplements when they have no sense of purpose or they're borderline or unstable or whatever the case is? So I dream of a world where we marry those things together. We're doing the mindset and introspection, but we also have to address the physiology. And unfortunately, conventional healthcare, it's like, okay, we'll use these neuropsychiatric drugs to try to balance the crazy brain chemicals and then just go talk to somebody. And people recognize that's a very incomplete model and it's not addressing all these root cause factors.

Yeah, I love that explanation. And the pillars, the way you set them up. And I want to reiterate, I do this every time somebody mentions this is when we're talking about the mental or the mindset or the psychosomatic side of things. I think there's a lot of PTSD amongst people in the chronic disease world where they're told everything's all in their head. That's definitely not what we're saying. It's just that that's a contributing factor component. And there's so much, and not that you're making it up, that thought patterns and beliefs and emotional trauma and all of these things alter the physiology. And so they will be a contributing factor here. But I love those silos. And I think that it's interesting that outdated, really ineffective model of giving drugs for neurotransmitter imbalances doesn't even address the microbiome. And where most neurotransmitters are made, regulated, released, kept track of, and come from the gut more than they come from anywhere else. And the psychiatric model, which is the MDS of the psychiatric drugs, that does not even on the radar. So I think that those pillars there are really complement each other and cover all the bases. And I love that you're trying to marry these things together because I've kind of decided I'm going to switch my own personal focus more towards the mental, emotional, spiritual side of things. But I do have this knowledge in functional health to where it's the same foundational principles and practices. I think that around metabolic health, that and the microbiome are gonna complement that. There's not these sides, there's not these individual silos.

Yeah. You know, I just for me, I, I see the gaps in the conventional healthcare system. I mean, I lived through it. Right. And that's where you and I have a lot of kind of parallels with, with our stories and our struggles. And I find mental health to be endlessly fascinating and there's so many layers and complexities to it because even in that, like, let me put it this way, you could have as optimal physiology as, you know, one could really cultivate and still be very much struggling mentally and vice versa. That's what's so wild about it. You know, it's sort of this, you know, union of both the sense of purpose and the psychological welfare, but then also optimizing the physiology. But when you look at like Americans, 88% of Americans are metabolically ill, you know, and this, this rising sort of metabolic psychiatry is, is starting to trend a lot more. But I'm a good example of like, even when I was a nutrition and fitness professional, a metabolic professional, I was still really struggling with severe depression. And, and my, my depression was not necessarily neuroinflammation. My depression was much more related to sense of self worth and you know, maybe some unresolved trauma and self limiting beliefs and all of these kinds of things, plus all these other factors, you know, more tangible things like, oh, I was basically celiac and didn't know it. And we know, you know, gluten can be a major trigger for neuroinflammation amongst other things. So I just, it's weird with the work that I do because I am kind of in a unique position in this emerging field. But the problem I'm running into is then I have too many people coming to me thinking that, you know, the lifestyle work, the diet, the exercise, the sunlight, the stress management, the breath, the supplementation, psychedelics, whatever they want to do as kind of functional interventions in thinking that that's going to be a cure all and then they don't have to go do psychotherapy or they'll never need a medication. I have plenty of clients that even with 30 supplements, even with overhauling their lifestyle and diet, they might still need a neuropsychiatric drug to be stable. OCD is a great example where OCD is a very unique disorder. I think it stands out compared to some of the others. Depression, anxiety is actually kind of simple. I'm not going to say easy, but simple, but something like OCD with the ruminations and the intrusive thoughts. Most of those people still need an SS RI or a benzo just to quiet those intrusive voices in their head. So I just, I dream of a world where we have the drugs when needed, but we have to make the, the functional more. More accessible. But to your point, so much of functional is really just getting back to our, our natural roots. Right. So I know, you know, we were talking about this off air where so much of what drives our neurological health, our cellular health, is really just the nutrition, the sun, the getting, your circadian biology, the sleep, all of these basic lifestyle foundations. So people just have to understand all these different sort of checkboxes that have to be done. I put up a post recently on Instagram about how I conquered mental illness. And I listed probably like 40 bullet points that are all kind of big subjects unto themselves. But every single one of those points is equally important in my mind.

Yeah, and thank you for sharing that. And equally as important, and I think that it's important for people also to start where they are and to see a list of 40 and pick five or three or depending on their state, one. But I think that most of the things are fairly simple people. I know I haven't worked one on one with people in a while, but when I was, they were getting quite complex and they would come in and they would want to run like these four lab tests that they heard about on a podcast. And they would want to do this really detailed protocol using this line of supplements. And they would want to do all this really complex stuff. And I would ask them, like, what time do you go to bed? What's your work day? Like, what's your relationship? Like, how often do you go outside? Like, how much time do you spend outdoors? What do you do for fun? Like, what do you enjoy doing? Then ask about food or exercise or things, but like foundational stuff that our body responds to and our brain responds to. And so many of these people who wanted to go with these really complex approaches right off the bat because they'd seen these nine practitioners who couldn't get them better, answered those questions in a way that it was very obvious that their physiology was receiving signals that they were either unsafe or unhappy or in a date, you know, like it, it was out of alignment with the physiology. And I'd be like, I know this is kind of anticlimactic, but why don't we start these? And I have a feeling a lot of your 40 bullets are those kind of things and not a 52 supplement supplement protocol. It's a, you know, changing simple things about the way that you live can have these massive impacts. So like I'll put you on the spot. How about sharing a few maybe of your starter bullets like when I'm sure you didn't do 40 things at once unless you're one of those one in a million. But what were some of your, what's like a few starter bullets? That would be examples from your, from your post.

Yeah, well, I mean I, to your point, the complexity thing, I see that as a growing problem. I am seeing a trend that I believe over complicating healing. I believe is a subconscious form of self sabotage and I think that's some deep psychologically rooted self limiting beliefs and low self worth that manifests as this sort of. Well, if I over complicate the journey it makes me feel and look like I'm doing a lot of things to try to help myself but it also kind of gives me an out. I don't have to do the work that I don't want to do and is uncomfortable because I have this very, very complex thing that's going to solve all of my problems. Right, so you see this all the time in the functional medicine space of like to your point? No, I don't want to work on the basics of my eating habits or my relationship with myself or my life or my work or sense of purp. Let me just skip all of that because if I can just find that mysterious root cause, it's not my fault. It's this, you know, very mysterious root cause. And who's the practitioner that can figure it out? I've already burnt through nine. Right.

Wow. I have interviewed a lot of people over a lot of years on a lot of subjects and I've never heard anybody hit that one. Just like you did about overcomplicating healing as a form of self sabotage. And I'm sure there might be some people out there that are feeling a little triggered or attacked by that. It's definitely not meant to do that. It's just an observation and I think that when we do get triggered or something, when we hear something like that, it's because we believe there's a kernel of truth there. I've done a couple years of study with Dr. Gabor Mate, who I'm actually going to a conference this coming weekend in Romania as part of my compassionate inquiry training with him. He'll be there and he was one of the first to talk about this whole confluence of psychosomatic and physical disease and things. But he uses an example in the training. This is mostly for therapists that people get really triggered by something somebody says to them or about them. It's because they believe that it's true to some degree. And uses an example he says to somebody that is arguing with him about this. How would you feel if I called you a green bush? And they say, I would laugh at you. And they're like, why would you laugh at me? But if I tell you that you're stupid or what you just said is stupid, you're going to react to that. And they said, well, I'm obviously not a green bush. And he said, well, you're obviously not stupid either. But if you believe or you have an insecurity or you believe that you're inferior to the person or whatever belief, it will cause a trigger and a reaction where if it's just not even true at all, you'll brush it off and it'll be a silly thing that you can kind of laugh at. And I just, I don't know, I felt that appropriate to share right in there. But I think that makes a ton of sense and I think a lot of people fall into that and I think it's exponentially increased over the last however many years. So if somebody wants to learn more about. I mean, you've got incredible practitioner training, you've got a practice, you've got a lab testing panel for practitioners to check out too, that you've created, and mental maps, if you want to just share a little bit about the those things and resources that you've created. Because I think that you've kind of gone to the source where you're training therapists, you're training practitioners, you're training doctors on how to deal with this. And I think that that has an exponentially bigger impact than what you could ever do with one on one work. So if you want to just share a little bit about what you're doing and where people could go, whether they're a practitioner or a layperson, to kind of learn more and get started and kind of go down this rabbit hole for themselves.

No. Yeah, I really appreciate it. It's always refreshing to talk to you because you get it and we're able to these different fields, but have it be this very seamless, fluent conversation that makes a lot of sense and it empowers people. And, you know, we're kind of flirting with the whole placebo nocebo, you know, the Biology of belief is always what people say. I've never read that book, but people always mention it when I talk about this kind of stuff because I think there's a lot of people that are experiencing a nocebo effect. They believe something is hurting them, therefore they're manifesting their own symptoms related to that thing. Right. Even if it's inert. That's the whole point of nocebo. It's the opposite of placebo. So I love getting to train practitioners, but also I started a not for profit research and education foundation. So we have the functional Mental Health practitioner certificate program for providers that want to get trained in these sciences. But then now I also have my research and education foundation where we're starting to put on quarterly educational workshops and those are for everybody, you know. So that way self healers and people struggling can tune in, can learn this information at more of a self healer level. But also then they can obviously work with, you know, one of my FMHP graduates as well. Because to me, to your point, like I'm only one guy, I can only do so much. So if I can educate practitioners, if I can do kind of mass education, if I can develop lab panels like the Mental Map that are tools to help people get clarity on their journey, you know, I want to do everything I can. So those are some different resources people can check out.

Well, you're one guy that's doing a hell of a lot, man. And where do they go for the non for profit, the quarterlies, where do they go to get to check that out and get hooked up with that?

Yeah, honestly, everything can be found through my link tree on Instagram, the link in my bio, or just my website, metabolicsolutionslc.com which just links back to that link tree. Those things are so handy because you can just link everything you need right in there. So, you know, like right now we're like three weeks out from our first workshop and we're going to be doing them like every quarter to, to provide access to that education. I don't think functional medicine is very functional if nobody can access it or afford it. So we're trying, you know, make that.

Yeah, truly people have criticized me over the years too. Like you give away so much stuff for free. You should be charging for this thing. Or you sell your master classes for 67 bucks. You could sell those for 500 or whatever. And I'm like, yeah, yeah, but I don't care. It doesn't help anyone. If only people who can spend a thousand bucks can get the Information. So what's the name of your nonprofit side of it?

Yeah, it's the Medvolic Solutions Research and Education Foundation.

Okay, great. I just wanted to give it a shout out there for audio. We'll put all the links of everything in the show notes, we'll link to your link tree. That's very modern social media. Sounding like I know what I'm talking about and I highly recommend you guys go check out everything that he's offering. Whether you're a practitioner and you want to get in the game here on this level and be able to offer this kind of value to your clients and patients, or whether you're on the self healer level and want to check it out too. And just thank you so much, Brendan, for the time today. Thank you for. Man, you do so much. It's really great and it's really inspiring because I can relate to where you came from too. And I know how debilitating, really struggling with mental health can be to where putting my shoes on today is a challenging thing to do, let alone building a foundation, building practitioner trainings, creating lab panels, working with clients, and now your own career on the side kind of stuff. It's. There's a version of yourself who would look at this and think it would be totally impossible to do a past version. And there's a past version of me that would look at this and be like, what? No way. Get out of here. I'm not even going to make it to next month, let alone 20 years and be doing this thing. So I get it. I know where you've come from. So it's really inspiring. And let's keep in touch and keep, keep seeing ways we can work together and kind of blend these worlds and mush it all together so that we're not existing in these ineffective silos.

Yeah, no, it means a lot, man, because you get it. You've been doing this a long time as well. You're one of the few dudes that I know gets it. And so to be seen and to have that work recognized by somebody that does get it and has walked a similar path, it means a lot that.

Yeah, you deserve it, man. And some of it's saying it so I can hear it too, you know, like, because, because those kind of things, 10 I get said to, they get said to me and they tend to bounce off me and I need to, yeah, I need to reinforce that as well. So, yeah, let's just, let's keep doing what we're doing and help as many people as we can. So go check out Brendan's stuff, and we'll have all the links down below, and we'll definitely have him back on to talk more again, so thank you so much.