A Functional Approach to Autoimmunity with Brendan Vermiere

WATCH THE EPISODE

LISTEN TO THE EPISODE

Tools mentioned in this episode:

– The Autoimmune Fix and You Can Fix Your Brain by Tom O’Brien

– Hashimoto Protocol by Izabella Wentz

–The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz

About Brendan Vermiere:

Brendan began his career as a personal trainer and nutritionist at the age of 19. He is now an Integrative Clinician and Functional Practitioner specializing in complex chronic disease. He loves all things holistic health and fitness and has many fitness, nutrition, and clinical credentials. He is the owner and founder of the virtual integrative clinic, Metabolic Solutions LLC. Brendan is also the current AFDNP Director for Functional Diagnostic Nutrition. In his free time he enjoys expanding his education, studying philosophy, writing, reading, anything outdoors, and anything that expands the mind and soul 🙂

Contact Brendan Vermiere:

https://www.facebook.com/metabolicsolutionsllc/

https://www.instagram.com/metabolic_solutionsllc/

www.metabolicsolutionsllc.com

Transcript:

Kendra Perry: Hello, hello everyone. Welcome to the 360 Health Biz Podcast. I’m Kendra Perry and hanging out with my friends. Number one is my number one or number two, Christine Hansen, looking sexy, beautiful, unbelievably attractive as always, and I know she loves this intro.Christine H.: I do. I do. It makes my life really … It’s amazing. I have an impeccable style in clothing, which is why Kendra and I are completely matched up today.Kendra Perry: We are matched up today. Awesome. It’s like we planned it or something, hey? Cool, well we have a really good show coming up for you today. We’re gonna get nerdy because we’re hanging out with Brendan Vermeire and he is super intelligent, super smart. We’re gonna be talking about autoimmune conditions and working with clients who have different autoimmune diseases and conditions, which is pretty important because it’s a pretty common thing going on in today’s society. So, Brendan, amazingly, started his career at 19, which blows our mind, because I know me and Christine at 19 were dancing on the bar in white T-shirts. Christine H.: [inaudible] Reminder at least, so it’s painful.Brendan V.: Where are those pictures for the throwback Thursday?Christine H.: On Facebook right now!Kendra Perry: Yeah, I know I actually posted my first Facebook profile picture after I got inspired by Christine’s. Yours is like, you wasted at a bar and I’m in a green leprechaun costume, making a pretty stunning pose, I’d have to say. Anyways let’s get back on track here. Brendan is an Integrative Clinician and Functional Practitioner, specializing in complex chronic disease. He loves all things ballistic health fitness and has many fitness nutrition and clinical credentials. He is the owner and founder of Virtual Integrative Clinic Metabolic Solutions. He is also the current AFDNP Director for Functional Diagnostic Nutrition. He loves expanding his education, studying philosophy, writing, reading, anything outdoors and expanding his mind and soul.So Welcome Brendan! Thank you for being here. Welcome to the show.Brendan V.: Absolutely, Happy to be here, hanging out with you both.Kendra Perry: Awesome, so today we are going to be talking about autoimmune conditions. Can you tell us a little bit about, maybe for some of our newbie people, what is an autoimmune condition, why should we car about it and, people are going to be coming across it a lot, so what should they be looking out for?Brendan V.: Yeah, absolutely. Autoimmunity is one of those weird ass phenomemon where the immune system starts destroying the bodies own tissues. Autoimmune, the name kind of explains it. I think people don’t realize, how big of a problem it is. When you look at the disease statics for America, we all know cardiovascular disease is number 1, but cancer is listed at number 2. The reason why is because all types are cancer are collectively put into the same statistic bucket. The thing is, what people don’t know, is if you took all the different diagnosed… which first off autoimmunity is horrendously under diagnosed, horrendously under screened for, under considered, but even still if you added up all the diagnosed conditions of autoimmunity and put them all together it would our rank cancer. So we really are in an autoimmune crisis, that’s just not public knowledge yet. It’s just not commonly known, but it’s extremely common. We have to realize that a lot of these mechanisms, they have these kind of root caused, contributing factors and it’s just a matter of, Alright you have autoimmunity. I also like to think of like a forest fire. There’s a forest fire raging in your body. Which trees are being burnt, whichever trees are going to be the weak link, whatever is most susceptible to being burnt, whatever is not as resilient. It’s a huge problem.Christine H.: [inaudible] Go ahead Kendra.Kendra Perry: I was just going to say, can we dig into some of those root causes. What would you say are the primary things that are causing these different various types of autoimmune conditions?Brendan V.: Obviously in the functional integrative space, we’re all pretty dead set on the idea of [inaudible] hyperpermeability, kind of setting the stage for autoimmunity. Which you know some people say it’s an absolute, it has to be there otherwise it doesn’t happen. Others say, well most of the time, either way. The majority of the time we need to be looking at the gut health and the intestinal hyperpermeability but more so, it’s going to be like, what are the triggers, what things are causing the immune system to freak out. That’s where you go to our conventional physician and they pretty much say, alright you’re just one of those unlucky bastards, where your own immune system is destroying your own tissues, we have no explanation for why this ever happens, there is nothing you can do about it, we just need to put you on some kind of drug to manage your symptoms for the rest of your life. If it gets bad enough, we’ll go in and do surgery and remove the tissue. Which is frankly unacceptable. I get really fired up with that, because in reality there is tons of mechanisms and tons of contributing factors whether it’s some kind of pathogen like Lyme disease or Babesiosis or it could be something as simple as toxins, like Bisphenol A, which makes plastic malleable and flexible. We consume tons of BPA and tons of these chemicals. When it gets into the blood stream, like BPA will bind to an estrogen receptor and the immune system doesn’t know what the fuck that is. It’s like Hey let’s go attack that. If that receptor that it’s stuck on. The cell is going to get damaged and it starts triggering this inflammatory cascade and pop, pop, pop, it all just goes up in flames.Christine H.: I also think a lot of people don’t know that they have an autoimmune disease. Like they know they have a disease like Hashimoto’s or Rheumatosis or something like that but they don’t actually know that it is their immune system attacking their own thing. They literately get the name and they get the prescription. Do you sometimes have people who you’re working with or who inquire and then you take an intake form and they actually don’t know that it is an autoimmune disease that they have.Brendan V.: Absolutely. That’s kind of another thing with our health care system. It’s not an educational system and it’s like, how do you overcome disease without some education and without some self ownership. You got to take ownership. This is a thing going on in my body, I need to understand what it is, why it happens, how to fix it, what can I do, what do I have control of to positively influence the situation. Obviously we all know that’s not how it is. It’s like, we think you have this, hears your medication, get it filled up the street at the pharmacy and that’s all there is to it. A lot of people don’t know [inaudible] I’m not licensed, nothing. Your immune system is destroying this part of your body, so you tell me what that means to you. Kendra Perry: It is crazy. It is sad, that ultimately a lot of people who have long standing autoimmune conditions that doesn’t go treated with some sort of effective treatment route, they’re going to get parts of their body removed. Parts of their colon, maybe their thyroid is going to get removed. It’s just crazy because it’s not the organ or tissues fault, it’s the immune system and you need to figure out, what is driving that. Let’s talk a little bit more about some of the non-negotiable things you always do, with people who have autoimmune conditions. What are the things that they need to be doing or considering, if they want to see any type of moving on that needle. Brendan V.: Especially with the demographic I work with, I pretty much assume…where it’s like in the court system your innocent until proven guilty, in my clinic you’re guilty until I can prove you’re innocent. With my clients I am pretty much going to assume they have some degree of autoimmunity and I’m looking for it with my testing. If I can’t find it, I can’t find any data that proves that they are autoimmune, I might be a little more relaxed, but as soon as I see the evidence, it’s game on. We have to be that much more strict. With diet, if I see the antibodies high, we’re going autoimmune paleo for now. Not that you have to be 100% that strict for the rest of your life, but we gotta get control of this situation. Let’s buckle down. The thing with autoimmunity, there is so many factors that could be contributing to it. We can’t be messing around with, lets leave this variable in but lets play with this variable. No we gotta blank slate that shit, start from ground zero and build up, until we get those antibodies negative. When it comes to finding like a maintenance lifestyle, you have to do the same in reverse. Introduce one thing at a time. Your antibodies are remaining negative, so we’re good, Oh they’re starting to go up, Stop, back up. It’s an honest process to say the least. Kendra Perry: What’s some of the testing you use to measure that autoimmune activity?Brendan V.: My standard 3 tests I run on every client that signs up is an, dutch hormone test, an organic acid test, from great plains and then pretty extensive blood work, blood chemistry. I build custom panels. I’ll use the [inaudible] tumor from vibrant wellness or the [inaudible] from BSL labs. Pretty regularly as well. With the blood work that I do, I like to use the little cheap blood test that’s and AA or antinuclear antibody test. It’s like $14 and if it’s positive, we know there is some degree of autoimmune activity. Then too, every blood test I do I am looking at their thyroid, I am looking at their thyroid antibodies. In my opinion, anytime you do a thyroid test, you gotta look at the antibodies. Always, Always, because 84+% of all hyperthyroid cases are, it’s not just regular old my thyroid is underactive, it’s Hashimoto’s, and that’s just not looked for enough. Once I do see any evidence of autoimmunity I’ll usually go ahead and run the [inaudible], which is a multiple tissue antibody test. Where basically we are looking for what tissues are being attacked and destroyed. People get really caught up on, well I have celiac and that’s a totally different thing than rheumatoid. Not really, it’s more similar than not. There are things provoking your immune system to destroy your own tissue, it’s just what’s the weak link. We have to identify it and trap it. Christine H.: Do you have clients that have multiple autoimmune, I don’t want to say diseases, but maybe building sites? Where they have their thyroid being attacked at the same time as their pancreas [inaudible]? Brendan V.: Absolutely. That’s where I don’t think clients, patients, need to get too caught up on the label, the diagnoses, it’s more just understanding. This is a complex multi faceted process that’s going on in my body, so what approach do I need to take to put out all these fires. There’s a raging fire in my thyroid, there’s a small fire in my joint tissue. Either way, we got to put out the fire. But yes the most recent, [inaudible] I ran, the thyroid antibodies were elevated, which corresponded with the blood work, blood panel, that we already did. Also like her collagen had antibodies against it. Her connective tissue being attacked and destroyed. Would any rheumatologist diagnose that as some type of connective tissues disease. Probably not, because it was only yay high, but it’s still there, it’s still relevant. Kendra Perry: That’s really good point. I have a big issue with conventional medicine, is that there is this huge spectrum of things that can be happening in between, of when you start having that activity in your body that your immune system goes haywire, starts attacking your system and between when you eventually get diagnosed, which could be 10 or 20 or even 30 years after that process is started. And most people aren’t getting the proper blood work done. When you’re talking about getting antibodies for thyroid testing, few doctors actually run that. Let’s say you have a 30 year span of someone getting their antibodies checked every year, you actually might see those slowly increasing over time. At some point they get out of that “normal range” and suddenly that person gets that Hashimoto’s diagnoses and it kind of leads people to believe that it happened over night. Like I was healthy and now I’m sick, but meanwhile it’s actually been developing for years. It’s just that our system is not really set up to detect that. Brendan V.: One of my best success stories, best clients and also really good friend at this point. You can’t go through an intensive healing process without getting close. She first came to me, like Oh I just want to do [inaudible] testing and I’m like, “Hi, who are you, why”. She had told me, “I was diagnosed hyperthyroid 11 years ago, I was put on Synthroid, I took myself off Synthroid, I feel awful.” The very first thyroid test I did, she had never had antibodies tested and the first one we did he TPAO was over 1,000. Kendra Perry: Whoa…That’s crazy.Brendan V.: Literately it only said over 1,000. It didn’t go any higher. So I don’t know, it could’ve been 1300, for all I know.Christine H.: That’s insane.Brendan V.: That is the perfect example of like, we know statistically 84% of all hyperthyroid cases are Hashimoto’s. She got diagnosed 11 years ago, this is a forest fire that started beyond 11 years ago. 11 years ago is when she got diagnosed with hyperthyroid. Which really means the autoimmunity has been gone on since birth, 20 years, it’s been goin on for a long time. I was the first person to access the wild fire. The beautiful part we put her on a functional, root cause protocol, we dropped those antibodies from 1,000 to 300 in 8 weeks. Kendra Perry: Oh, Wow, that’s crazy. Brendan V.: Yeah, Insane. Christine H.: Let me ask you a question. If you have some people you know are super sick. Their body is weak, they might have done tons of detox’s, which might not happen [inaudible], because we talked about it last [inaudible], we talked about how detoxification can be dangerous if you are not fit and you don’t know what you are doing. I have a lot of friends who are very weak. They come in, their body is not in the best of shape and I know if I push them too hard, it would be too much. So how do you handle that? When you have someone you can see that their body is going from beyond struggling to actually being super exhausted and about to just throw in the towel anyway?Brendan V.: That is one thing that kind of makes it a little bit hard. You’ve got to be working with someone that really knows what they’re doing, because…I don’t know, on the one hand the functional integrative whole space industry, there’s a lot of beauty in the fact that it’s not monopolized. Because anything that gets monopolized gets corrupted. At the same time it also means that it’s harder to know, can I trust who I’m working with, how do you qualify? Like somebody who really knows their shit. I know, for me, I like the nitty gritty complex people. One of my current clients, who is Lyme, mole, Hashimoto’s, everything is wrong with her. It’s like we got to take it one step at a time, and when I’m looking through her initial testing, I’m looking for every indicator that might tell me her body’s not ready for x, y or z. Such as like, everybody loves giving people glutathione, because glutathione detoxes everything. You give glutathione to the wrong person, at the wrong time, you will destroy them. Kind of like with remineralization, you can’t just start releasing a ton of toxins or heavy metals into the system, if their body is not prepared to conjugate and detox those. It does, it gets pretty complicated. Kendra Perry: I love how you just said remineralization, you probably saw me light up. I love talking about minerals. Brendan V.: We get to nerd out in like t-minus one month. Kendra Perry: I know, I know, me and Brendan are doing a webinar together for Functional Diagnostic [inaudible] Mineral Analysis. I’m really excited about that. Christine H.: That will be awesome. Brendan V.: That’ll be really good. I had to say it I knew you’d light up. Kendra Perry: Yeah, I’m like, let’s talk about minerals, but no let’s not talk about minerals. Let’s talk about toxins because I know, obviously we live in a world where we’re getting exposed to heavy metals, chemicals, pesticides, all this crap, drugs, all this stuff. I feel it’s a bit hard sometimes to convince people that this is actually playing a major role in what’s going on with you. Maybe sometimes I wonder if it’s playing the biggest role. Can you speak a little bit to that and how metals and chemicals might play a role in somebody’s autoimmune condition. Brendan V.: I agree, I think that is probably the biggest offender that is probably driving a lot of this. We don’t really have, we’re in that early stage right now, where those of us, really it’s only the Functional Integrative field that is leading that charge. Because that’s what we do, we’re the nerds that are trying to figure out, what thins are affecting our health negatively. What can we do to fix that. Period. That’s the name of this game [inaudible]. I think the chemicals and things like [inaudible] electromagnetic fields. I’ve had the pleasure of hanging out with our friend Laura Adler and our friend Nicholas Beano, who are 2 figures who are each kind of in the nerd bubble of spreading awareness on that topic. The chemical topic, my God, there’s, I’m trying to borrow from Laura’s power point presentation, 86,000 chemicals that are registered in the US, for chemical manufacturing. Basically none of them have truly been thoroughly tested for human safety. The toxicology is more about, if we give you a dose, this big, of this one thing does it immediately cause acute organ failure. That’s the standard we’re going off. When in reality we are breathing in, smothering ourselves, Ingesting, thousands of chemicals, all day, every day and these things can have synergistic, compounding effects. Compound is literately to make more intense. That’s what the definition of compound is. What happens when you compound thousand of chemicals in your biology that has not evolved, with these chemicals. That’s where if you look at, not to go too hippy, but we got to talk about the planet too. You look at the living planet report, we’ve killed off, half of everything that lives on this planet in the past 40 years. How? Well look at how the timeline adds up with chemical manufacturing. The deer outside, they don’t get to filter their water like I do. I can educate myself and do something abo it. Where all these poor plants and animals, they’re stuck with, I either need to evolve my organs to know what to do with all this crap or I’m going to die off. And that’s what’s happening. Everything is just dying off. Kendra Perry: That’s really interesting to think about and I really wonder what’s going to happen to humans. I look at children’s health and I think there is something to be said about general toxicity right. It’s just accumulating over time. We have these kids who are born with diseases you wouldn’t typically see until later in life and I think that’s a huge red flag. Christine H.: I think it was an article that said if you’re a woman, actually not just my daughter, but my daughters, granddaughter, is still going to be effected by things that effected my DNA. Because you eggs are basically being influenced with that. It’s not just one generation I think it’s two or even three generations that are going to be effected by it. Kendra Perry: It’s so true because the eggs, it’s like if you have your kid and if that kid is a daughter, it’s her DNA passing on to her next child as well. So there is 2 or 3 generations in there that are getting effected by this. It’s not something that’s just going to go away with one generation. It’s going to take a lot of work and education. Not everyone is going to up for it, I don’t think. Brendan V.: At the end of the day, maybe society is more sophisticated and complicated, but it’s Darwinism is at full effect all the time. At this point, we’re not evolving we’re kind of devolution is really occurring. I think everybody has heard the statistic, about, you can measure 200+ chemicals in the placenta of a newborn. I feel like everybody’s heard that statistic and it’s true. We are born at birth, toxic and it’s only getting worse. That’s weird too, a lot of these chemicals are damaging our DNA. They form these quinone and these toxic compounds that directly destroy our DNA, which then starts causing all of these mutagenic effects with our DNA and susceptibility to disease. It’s nasty. I honestly hate to say it, but the more awoke you get with all this stuff, the more it’s like we’re all kind of fucked and we need to de-fuck ourselves. Kendra Perry: I love that!Christine H.: [inaudible]Brendan V.: There’s no other way to put it. People need to wake up and realize we are on a trajectory of destroying our species, destroying our planet. I was just having this conversation yesterday. In reality, we are all pretty self interested organisms. Like if an organism didn’t have the inherent desire, if you want to use the word desire, that instinct to propel us into the future to continue. Nothing would exist. The number one inherent desire of any organism, that we want to continue, we want to evolve, we want to reproduce. The health crisis, some of us are going to do what’s needed to stay healthy and survive. Meanwhile the planet, the rock, that we’re all just walking on is just being destroyed underneath our feet. It’s honestly a pretty bleak outlook but that’s where we just gotta keep talking about it. People need to stop looking at their phone and realize what’s going on. Kendra Perry: It is cool to see, I do feel like there is a lot of organizations coming up. I do feel like there are certain things about this that are coming to the mainstream. I see certain mainstream comedies joking about being gluten free, for example. You start to see these things coming to the mainstream and maybe they’re making the way into comedy, but it’s a thing right? It’s a movement. I think you just helped me come up with my new tagline. “Kendra Perry Nutrition, How to De-Fuck yourself.” Brendan V.: Yeah, how to unfuck your life. Kendra Perry: I love that. Can we talk a little bit about, some of the mindset things you need to work with, when you’re working with clients with autoimmune conditions. Some of the emotional stuff that is going on with these types of people. Brendan V.: That’s something I’m honestly kind of trying to navigate a better solution for, with my business motto. I feel like I need to start offering some serious psychological, spiritual based coaching because a lot of times…I look at health like a yin yang, if you got the psychology and physiology, where they are swirling together, they drastically influence one another. The physiology is off it messes up your psychology, your psychology is off, it messed up your physiology. At the same time, if you’re trying to fix all of it, it gets so overwhelming. When you’re dealing with clients, patients, that are really jacked up, physiologically, but also kind of psychologically you have to pick your battle, create some separation. [inaudible]. You’re exactly right the mindset is huge. That’s where I think it is the responsibility of the coach, the practitioner, whatever, you got to be trained in habit based coaching and behavioral modification and neurolinguistics programing. You got to be able to navigate the fragility of the ego and navigate the fragility of their psychology. That’s some hard shit. Meanwhile you’re trying to fix all the complicated metabolic shit. It’s damn near impossible sometimes. Christine H.: I just call it resilience, it’s one of those hip words right now. I just say we’re going to coach up your resilience. Basically it’s jut tearing down their shit. Kendra Perry: I think people tell themselves a lot of stories. I’m always like what’s the story you’re telling yourself about your health. I mean I’ve done it to, because I’ve had my own health journey. It’s just like my energy is never good, I’m just really sick, I’m just never going to get there, it’s never going to happen for me. You have to really try and unwind those stories that people are telling themselves. Also try and get people in a place of personal responsibility. I think that’s the biggest thing. People need to be responsible for their own health. As coaches we are here to guide people and tell them what to do, but ultimately their health is not my responsibility, it’s theirs. I think that’s hard shift for some people to make. We definitely in a current medical system, there is no personal responsibility. Christine H.: It’s like here’s your pill, we take care of you. Then you have people who are like, please help me, I will pay you a shit load, but I’m not prepared to not eat gluten. Brendan V.: That’s the thing, people need to realize, you manifest your own reality, through the projection of your own beliefs. Then you got to get into your own belief system. What is your belief system? I love that. What is the story that you’re telling yourself. There’s a crisis of victim mentality in today’s society. It’s not that everybody wants to be a victim necessarily, but everybody wants affirmation, everybody wants attention. We need that, we are social creatures, so we need a certain amount of societal attention and affirmation, even if it’s negative like, I have this disease, I’m a victim, me to, I’m a victim. It’s like are you owning your shit and are you doing something. Where as, in the clinical world, I can hold up a piece of paper, a lab test that says this is what’s wrong with you physiologically. Where as, psychologically I just need to hold up a mirror and say What do you see. Let’s get raw, let’s get honest what to you see. Kendra Perry: I love that you bring up victim mode, because it’s such a disease. I see it a lot. Definitely when I’m screening people, when determining whether to work with them or not. If I see they’re in victim mode I won’t work with them because I can’t help them. They have other work to do. I recently just kicked a woman out of my group membership program, because she was just severe victim mode, no responsibility, shutting down everything anyone said. Just totally toxic, like a virus. It doesn’t feel good to kick someone out, especially when you know they need help. Sometimes you are not the person to help them, they need to deep emotional healing right?Brendan V.: That’s the thing, those of us in this work are generally impavs and very empathetic, we have big heart for people. We want to help everybody, we want to save everybody. Sometimes Darwinism needs to play out. That sounds pretty brutal. The people that choose to drown in two feet of water, because they refuse to stand up, that’s Darwinism. That is going to due off, that’s going to fade out and those that actually choose to evolve. I’m a pretty spiritual dude and I love to kind of combine spirituality. It’s just like the Frank Stark Reality of Evaluation. We’re just a bunch of meat coated skeletons, walking around on a rock, falling through infinite. You gotta own your own shit, You gotta take responsibility for your reality because that’s all there is. All there is. Christine H.: I love it! How did that happen, from going to [inaudible] to falling through holes and stuff. Kendra Perry: It’s so cool though. Own your own shit. The truth is you form your own reality. I see a lot of people who don’t realize that. I see those people, who I call them sols, because they just suck at life, and everything just keeps happening to them. When you actually take a deep look, you realize that they are bringing all that drama into their lives. Maybe they thrive on it, maybe it makes them feel important, maybe it gives them something to complain about or something to distract them from something else hat is going on. I feel like when I made that shift, I feel like I used to be a sol back in the day and I read a few books and started to see, I form and create my own reality. I could totally manifest a better life for myself and when I made that shift, my life got intimately better. Brendan V.: Step 1 is self awareness, become aware yourself. Then you just start observing. It’s kind of the scientific method, You watch, you observe, you make inferences, you conduct experiences. That’s all it is to be successful in life. You have to study the situation, see what works, see what doesn’t work, of course correct. How do I get from point A to point B. You have to start with staring at yourself in a mirror and getting pretty brutally honest. Don’t assume anything, don’t assume you are right about anything. You have to question everything. We live in a world today, we all have an ego. I think the ego is a very primordial, primal, had wired instinct. The ego is a mechanism of self interested that propels us onwards to propel us to be self interested so that we can survive and evolve. But in today’s world abundance and seductive marketing the ego has just been seduced and it takes over. People are asleep at the wheel and the ego is driving. And they don’t know that, they don’t recognize it. Kendra Perry: That’s awesome! Coming back around to autoimmunity, do you think that it’s possible to reverse autoimmunity. Have you seen that happen?Brendan V.: Absolutely, what I love about working with autoimmunity is there is [inaudible] No functional [inaudible] approach. That’s what is kind of beautiful about that, there is no other way, you have to do it the right way. That’s what I love. You track those antibodies. When I’m working with an autoimmune client, I know our work is not done until we get the antibodies completely negative and then we have to figure out what level of compliance does it take to sustain that. Anybody with an autoimmune condition, they should be doing the antibody testing at least annually for the rest of their life. Just to make sure, How’d I do this year, I was kind of lazy with my diet and lifestyle and self care this year, Oh crap my antibodies are up. You’re always going to be susceptible . You don’t cure it, you just put it in remission and you keep it there. Kendra Perry: I think that’s a very good point.Christine H.: I love this, I’m thinking of what else you could teach our audience, but I think we pretty much covered what autoimmunity is, what Brendan’s first steps are, the testing, mindset is a huge one. [inaudible] I think that’s huge. Right? Kendra Perry: Obviously it requires a lot of work, but if people are up for it, I think there’s a lot of hope right?Brendan V.: Absolutely. It’s easy to get caught up on the physiology the hard science, but ultimately you can’t heal without really addressing your own psychology, your own beliefs, owning your own story, choosing to do something about it. That’s something I do see a lot. You work with people who are really physically ill and obviously that has hade a huge impact on their mental health, but sometimes it is almost easier, the body is extremely complex, but believe it or not sometimes, it’s easier to fix the body and the mind starts following. Even the most physically ill people, their body is usually more resilient than their minds. I hate to say it, but their mind is extremely fragile, extremely weak. I don’t say that to pic on people, because we’re all born into this world, a blank slate. Our brain is the soft, wet piece of clay that is going to be malleable and molded by nature, nurture and that forms your neuro networks, your neuroplasticity, your belief system. We are not born, and we don’t choose our belief system. Our belief system is ingrained into us, from day one, from parents and society. That’s what makes becoming an adult, which I’ve gone through in the past decade, of High I’m a child and now I’m not, what the fuck is going on. Let me revaluate everything I think I know. Unfortunately I don’t think that everybody goes through that. I think some people are consumed with, this is my reality, this is my belief system and they are closed off. They don’t realize how much more there is. They don’t realize that they’ve been confused by the smoke. That’s where the book “4 Agreements”, have you ever read that? Kendra Perry: I’ve heard of it. I think I own it. I should look it up. Brendan V.: Everybody should read that book.Kendra Perry: That was actually going to be my next question, what are your favorite mindset books. What would be your go to books for practitioners who maybe want to learn a little bit more about autoimmune conditions?Brendan V.: For autoimmunity? I’m looking at my book collection. The Hashimoto’s Protocol from Isabella Wentz. Obviously, New York Times Best Seller. That’s a great example right there. She is a Doctor of Pharmacy turns Integrative Functional whatever, but that’s a fantastic book. Anybody with a thyroid condition should read that. It’s basically lik a blueprint of all the stuff we do professionally. No I don’t think anybody should try and navigate their autoimmunity without professional help. But absolutely should be empowered. The other ones would be Dr. Tom O’Brien, is the shit. His “You can fix your Brain” and “Autoimmune Solution”. Great books! My stepmom is a great example. She can’t just hear it from me, it doesn’t work if it’s coming from the son, what do I know. But they gave her that book and she’s like “Oh my gosh”, I need to show my doctor this. I’m like, you can, they’re not going to give a fuck, but you can. Kendra Perry: That’s awesome! Brendan, where can people find out more about you? Where can they connect with you? Brendan V.: I’m all over. I got my Metabolic Solutions, LLC. Instagram page, Holistic salvage Instagram page, Metabolic Solutions Facebook page and then of course my website, Metabolicsolutions.com. Those would be the main places, good starting point. Linkedin, I’m all over the place. Kendra Perry: Awesome! Thank you for being here with us and having this very interesting conversation that took a few turns I was not expecting. Brendan V.: I really enjoyed it. I’m happy to be here. I like to have good authentic, real conversations and I really think our society craves that. There is so much fake noise, that just bombards our senses all the time. So people rave that, they crave, like let’s get real. I think this was a goo convo. I really enjoyed it and thanks for having me. Christine H.: Well so did we!Kendra Perry: Awesome, I’ll see you guys again in two weeks for another awesome episode of the 360 Health Biz Podcast. Thanks Brendan and thank you to my unbelievably sexy cohost. Christine H.: [inaudible] My internet sucks, I’m going to get a grip on that for next time. But if you learned one thing during this episode that you didn’t know, just one thing, then please go to Itunes and leave us a 5 star review. Super, Super Stoked. Go over to our website, you get all the links in there, the show notes and you can also watch our video if you are just listening to us and you want to see how amazing and beautiful we all look, then you can do that too. Kendra Perry: Okay thanks everyone! Talk to you soon!Brendan V.: Thank you! Bye.Christine H.: Bye!