EPISODE SUMMARY:

In this episode, I sit down with Brendan Vermeire, also known as The Holistic Savage, for a powerful conversation on the intersection of metabolic health, mental health, and true healing. We explore why physiology and psychology cannot be separated, how inflammation, toxins, and infections can shape mood and behavior, and where mindset, trauma, and responsibility fit into the healing process. Brendan shares his personal journey, including his experience with suicide, resilience, and why fitness, intuition, and meaning matter just as much as lab work. This episode challenges the idea of chasing endless “root causes” and invites a more integrated, honest approach to healing and longevity.

ABOUT DR. JANE’S PRACTICE:

Dr. Jane is a Naturopathic Doctor and a Natural Fertility Expert. She and her team of expert practitioners help couples navigate infertility for 1+ years, get to the root cause of their struggles, heal, and bring healthy babies home.

After having a family member struggle with infertility and experiencing a miscarriage herself, Dr. Jane realized how little support and education women receive. She is on a mission to change that. Since 2020, she has dedicated her practice to fertility, where she and her practitioners work with couples 1:1, running functional lab work, customizing treatment plans and providing her couples with the support they need to get pregnant, have a stress free pregnancy and a healthy baby.

Learn more about Dr. Jane’s practice: www.drjanelevesque.com/practice

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CHAPTERS:

00:00 The Birth of the Holistic Savage

02:54 Embodiment of the Holistic Savage

05:59 Bridging Science and Spirituality

09:03 The Role of Exercise in Holistic Health

12:05 Understanding Motivation and Accountability

14:57 The Interplay of Mental and Metabolic Health

17:59 The Impact of Early Life Experiences

21:01 Environmental Influences on Health

23:52 Navigating Psychological and Physiological Challenges

26:57 The Evolution of Health Practices

36:49 Psychedelics as Catalysts for Healing

39:50 Microdosing and Its Impact

41:00 The Journey of Self-Discovery

44:48 Integration and the Challenge of Truth

50:17 The Intersection of Mental and Metabolic Health

55:08 Reflections on Life and Death

01:01:32 Intuition and the Journey Forward

TAKEAWAYS:

The name 'Holistic Savage' reflects a balance of strength and softness.

Living up to the name involves embodying authenticity and commitment.

Holistic health requires a blend of science and spirituality.

Exercise is a crucial pillar of holistic health.

Mental health and metabolic health are interconnected.

Early life experiences shape our health outcomes.

Environmental factors play a significant role in health.

Self-limiting beliefs can hinder personal growth.

Psychedelics can catalyze healing and self-discovery.

Integration of experiences is key to personal transformation.

About My Guest

Brendan Vermeire is a Mental and Metabolic Health Researcher, Functional Health Practitioner, and Educator. He is the founder of the Metabolic Solutions Institute and the Functional Mental Health Practitioner Certificate Course (FMHP™), as well as the creator of The Mental M.A.P.™ lab panel and NeuroCeuticals™ supplement line. A Board-Certified Holistic Health Practitioner and Master Nutrition Coach, Brendan began his career in fitness and nutrition at 18 after a medical discharge from Navy SEAL training. Today, he’s recognized as a leading expert in metabolic health and functional education, dedicated to changing the way the world understands mental health through research, teaching, and clinical innovation.

To learn more about Brendan, please visit:

www.metabolicsolutionsllc.com

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

Instagram: @the_holistic_savage https://www.instagram.com/the_holistic_savage/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brendan-vermeire-23754693/

ABOUT NATURAL FERTILITY:

Pregnancy is a natural process, so if it’s not happening or it’s not sticking, something is missing. Join Dr. Jane, a naturopathic doctor and a natural fertility expert, every Tuesday at 9am for insightful case studies, expert interviews and practical tips on optimizing your fertility naturally.

If you’ve struggling with infertility, pregnancy loss, women’s health issues or just want to be proactive and prepare yourself for the next big chapter in your life… this show is for you.

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Facebook - www.facebook.com/dr.janelevesque.nd

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Individualized care is essential for effective treatment of chronic fertility issues.

Hi guys, welcome to another episode of Natural Fertility with Dr. Jane. Today I'm joined by Brendan Remyer, who I've actually learned about from SelfCore, the eco presentation in 2025. And you might know him as the holistic savage. And I have some questions. How did you become the holistic savage? And when I saw you on the stage, I was like, this guy is a savage.

Oh, well, thanks, Jane. It's great to be on your show. I'm excited to have the opportunity to talk to you a little bit more. We got to meet at Eco. Those I think only my second Eco and I'll be back next year, which will be pretty fun. But, know, I always joke my friend Dr. Tina Moore, I always say she's way more of a savage than than I am. So I appreciate the recognition at least.

How did you come up with the name though? How did you? Did you do? Were you the savage at first and then you got to be the holistic savage later?

Yeah.

It's insane. Really? No, I want to know.

You

I didn't want to be perceived that way like a gym rat bro. It's like no no like I have a legitimate functional medicine career And I want that to be you know the platform is about the mission not me or my persona or projected ego But I did want to come up with some kind of moniker that embodied to me this kind of the yin and the yang the male the female the the hard the soft the holistic and esoteric and the savage and fierce and all that the testosterone so yeah holistic savage was born and I feel like

kind of encapsulated the multi-dimensional being that I am and we've been running with it ever since.

I love it. How do you live up to the name to be the Holistic Savage? and I agree, I think that name is perfect because I didn't know who you were until I saw you on the eco stage. But then when you walked out and I was like, how do I? And I couldn't find, search your name. And then the Holistic Savage shows up and I'm like, this guy is a savage. Like that's such a good name for, so how do you live up to that?

You know, I think

Sure.

Sure.

Yeah.

It's like I'm you know primarily lecturing to there's a lot of women in our industry the holistic health and functional medicine space It's a lot of a lot of women You know a lot of dr. Dutes and like the a4m crowd, but then in the more holistic space more women So I was like okay I might need to mute the like agro alpha thing a little bit and be a little bit more Poised and polished, but I think anybody that spends a little time with me and gets to know me It's like they can see the savage undertones behind the polished charisma

But I also think about like, you know, as a

You

If you came to live with me, you'd be like, that's nuts. And I'm sure that if I went and I spent a day with you, I'd be like, yeah, this guy is a savage. And that could be from the red light therapies to the castor oil to the pills that you take to the meditation techniques that you have to whatever it is to me, I think about is like just committing to something 110 % and like owning that and being there. And it's like, I'm going to do this really well as opposed to kind of being halfway in, halfway out.

Yeah.

absolutely. And I think you have to just embody your most authentic essence and energy and just put it out there, you know, kind of radically and fearlessly. Because especially with my athletic background, fitness, nutrition background and all of that, I like to bring a lot of that into the holistic space. And I always like to say I like to keep my head in the clouds, but feet on the ground in the sense that I love esotericism, esotericism and spirituality and being open to all the different concepts.

steps.

But I also like to stay rooted in objective data-driven reality. And I think especially in the functional medicine space, which can be kind of this mixture of like hard objective science and then also like soft esoteric speculation. It can get a little bit blurry. So I try to bridge that gap of like, let's talk about these esoteric. You know, the trauma is trapped in the tissue. It's like, mechanistically, physiologically, objectively, what does that mean? Like I understand symbolically and esoterically what you're

implying but for more of a hard science clinical what does that actually mean and how do we extrapolate value?

Have you been able to figure that out?

Well, you know, actually what popped in my mind, I'm having Dr. Amy Ape again on my podcast here, I think next week. And, you know, she just launched her new book, The Biology of Trauma. And, you know, that's kind of a thing I've heard her say. And so I'll bring it up on the podcast of what do you mean by that? And then, you know, maybe I'll add my perspective on it. Yeah.

Two cents, Yeah, I think I love that and it's important because we can get a lot of woo-woo the crystals and take this homeopathic and do these draws, but it's like, what are they actually doing or how are they impacting it? And I think that allows us to relate to the real world, if you will, you know? Because then if we can't relate to the real world, then we can't help people.

Mm-hmm.

And so you have to almost go out there, get ideas, be the antenna, see what pops up for you, meditate on it, whatever. But then you have to find some kind of data to support what you're seeing. then science is catching up, but the body is kind of driving the science. We have to keep studying the body.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Well, I love the way that you said that and I say that often of the science, you know, the nature of scientific exploration. It's always behind because we're just trying to objectively quantify and make sense of what has always been right. You know how much has human biology really changed over the past 200, 300,000 years, but we're just now, you know, learning all these things even in the span of my 16 year career so far. It's like you look at the what I love about this, especially being, you know, starting out as personal trainer nutrition coach.

know, back then it was almost like we were scolded of you're kind of just like knuckle dragging trainers don't overstep and play doctor. But what I love about 16 years later, it's like we have so much amazing evidence that proves that exercise nutritional habits are some of the strongest, most efficacious, well validated treatments for chronic disease. Right? So it's like no evidence-based medical doctor could ever say that fitness is not an evidence-based intervention in treatment. But then it's ironic cause like, it's not like a personal trainer can say.

hey, I'm treating your metabolic syndrome with my fitness services, even though it is the primary treatment, right? So this is the nature of...

It sounds silly, but hopefully it won't in a while.

I hope, I hope, because really to your point, as the evidence evolves, we have to update the nomenclature, we have to update the regulatory landscape and our terminology that we use for it, because to your point, like homeopathic or whatever, maybe that is an amazing thing, we just don't have the evidence to truly know, so it'll always kind of be that fringe stuff until we have the evidence that'll then convince, you know, the masses.

Yeah, for sure. And I don't know if you found this, so like I have a background in CrossFit. I didn't quite get used to bodybuilding, because to be honest, I loved the way that the bodybuilders looked, but I did not love the lifestyle. I was like, I cannot eat the chicken and the broccoli. Like I can't do that. So I found CrossFit and then I jumped into CrossFit and did a lot of that. And I was kind of shocked when I went into naturopathic school of how few people exercised, like how few people who are there to...

Yeah.

like be holistic providers, holistic practitioners, and they did not go to the gym ever. And maybe like they would do some yoga and some running or whatever, but it wasn't like this big pillar in their health. And I thought that that was always a little bit backwards because I see so much evidence behind, and like in my own personal life, how much my exercise routine has allowed me to, you know, create stability in many different areas of my health and my life and whether that's through.

being pregnant in childbirth or through really stressful times in like COVID where you you couldn't go and it's like that discipline created so much stability and security for me. Did you find that as well? Is that something that you feel like you're on a mission to also change that like when people are going into functional medicine of any kind, they actually are like living and breathing the exercise component of it.

Yeah, well, yeah.

versus just the supplements, know, and the detoxes, because like there's so many people who are really into that. And I'm like, have you tried lifting weights? Right? Because like that's really good, but I don't want to. And I'm like, but like you should do it. It's life changing.

Right, right, I, I, yeah.

Yeah. Well, I love the insight a hundred percent. I love that you've had that experience and you know, I mean, I always will admit my bias right away. I like, yeah, I'm biased. I've been an athlete forever. And I've always been more of a fitness person than, an athlete. wasn't like a team sports guy. was a martial artist and wrestler and boxing, MMA, that kind of stuff. But over the years, I really found like, I cared more about the pursuit of fitness than the pursuit of being the best athlete for a specific sport.

And so like after my bodybuilding, so I went from like hardcore circuit training, MMA, that kind of stuff. And then there are long story short, I went through long bodybuilding phase because I was like, you know, I was a teenager and I'm like, I just want big, pretty aesthetic muscles, right? But then obviously, you know, after doing like five, six shows, yeah, I want to do some curls for the girls, right?

Yeah, curls for the girls.

And that phase lasted 10 years.

Yeah, well, it was a good, uh, close to 10 years, close to 10 years, but you know, there for a while it was like, okay, anything more than 13 reps is cardio and it's going to hurt your gains. You're looking pretty catabolic, bro. So then I had my CrossFit phase and you know, so I'm USAW certified CrossFit certified, did all that for a long time, yoga. So now what's cool is I embody more of a hybrid, you know, style. I still do, you know, bodybuilding style training mixed with powerlifting style, functional, you

Close to a 10, yeah, pretty good.

Olympic lifting style. So I've made my strength training kind of hybrid. I still do yoga two, three days a week. I still run and do a lot of hiking and stuff. But to your point, mean, as much as I like my career tends to very much focus on biomarkers and then different interventions, whether it's peptides or psychedelics, nutraceuticals, but a hundred percent, I couldn't agree more. I get really, really tired of people lab test after lab test, after lab test protocol, after protocol pill after pill. And they're not working.

out, they're not applying themselves with exercise or nutrition or lifestyle habits and you know don't get me wrong I take like 30 supplements a day. I love supplements, love psychedelics, love peptides but if you know come on like if you're not actually applying yourself in fitness yeah.

If you're not sleeping, if you're not drinking water, you're not, why do you think people don't do it? Like, why do you think, I know this is a big conversation, here's what I'll say to, this is what I believe in. This is what I say to my practitioners, your ability to help people in the fertility space or in any space is either going to be your fertility knowledge or your ability to coach them. And so a lot of the times it's actually your ability to coach them and the type of person that's sitting in front of you and really understanding what that person needs to hear.

as opposed to like, need more knowledge, but don't get me wrong, we do need more knowledge because it's always, especially with, you know, AI now, it's like, there's just so much new information that's coming at us. But like, we have so much science, we have so much data, and then we have people like you walking around who are showing that like, look at this, and then people still don't do it. Why?

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm

Yeah. I mean, gosh, billion dollar question right there, but ultimately it's like, you know, using the, the, the, it is the eco acronym, exponential clinical outcomes are determined by environment, psychology and lifestyle behaviors over the years, over the decades. And I guess, I mean, there's a whole conversation about psychology and intrinsic motivation and discipline. there's, there is that side, which let's also, that's kind of the young, that's kind of the savage side. That's the kind of like, you know, pull yourself up by the bootstraps and like,

It's too hard.

Get to work. Put your nose through the grindstone. Maybe it's because I used to be very self-destructive and I once upon a time attempted suicide. I'll admit that, right?

But like being a person that once upon a time hated myself, you know, lot of the drive to make myself better through the fire of fitness or whatever it was, you know, there is that like, building your body, building your mind, building your spirit, building your soul. But I don't know. It's kind of one of those like, if you're the type of person that you have put yourself through your own hell and you've made yourself suffer, you know, to, I mean, that's what look at David Goggins. Like he's been the epitome of branding that of like, how much can I

Nuts.

abuse and punish myself for the sake of being resilient, being hard to kill, cultivating that resilience. But I also think, you know, without the sort of like, just be tough and work hard. There's also like, you have to love it. You know, you're not going to consistently do any habit or discipline if you don't love it. And you might have to learn to love it, right? You know, it's like if you've never been in shape and you've never eaten well, you don't know how good you could feel. But then it's kind of like cold water plunges too. Like you sit in that

and

cold water it sucks like why do people do this but after you do it enough it's like you kind of start craving it and that's when you start coming back to it.

Yeah. And so I think for me in practice, and correct me if, or, you know, tell me if you see the same thing. I think it's helping people figure out what they love. And then it's really getting a lot of like the inflammation out of the way. Cause sometimes it's hard. I say like, is it yours or is it the bugs? Cause if you have a lot of parasites, if you have a lot of bacterial overgrowth, mold, fungus, like it's hard for you to think clearly. And then you're going to crave.

Mm-hmm.

things that your body actually it's not good for it. And then that spiral of like, well now I'm craving these sugars, I'm eating the sugars, I don't feel good, my head hurts or whatever. I'm depressed now, so like why would I go and lift the weights? And it's this like really negative spiral and then you're not sleeping well and all that jazz. So I tend to trick people by actually just improving their physiology. So then when they feel better, it's like, okay, now you have to do something with that.

Mm-hmm.

You know, like sitting on the couch is not gonna feel good anymore. That's not how you're gonna wanna relax. And don't get me wrong, I enjoy sitting on the couch, but I need like an hour, not an hour every day or 10 hours every day because life is pointless.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Well, I kind of look at is like I think of if I'm focused more on Americans 335 million Americans approximately I kind of see the two dominant phenotypes of more like your standard American metabolism Metabolically compromised and with somebody like that to me. It's more okay lifestyle foundations psychology inner work and then you layer in protocols on top of that, but then the smaller but growing Demographic is that complex product?

illness picture and yeah with those people that are more physiologically compromised and I always like to Obviously use a lot of biomarkers and lab testing to objectively qualify You know what physiological domains are screaming is that neuroinflammation gastro informally systemic all the above nothing above you know What are the physiological and biochemical levers because to your point if they are too ill if they are too compromised Or maybe psychologically unstable. Yeah, maybe we need to stabilize them with a little bit more kind of

recall clinical work and then as they get more stabilized then you reverse engineer to the holistic foundation. So it's just kind of like.

Who am I dealing with and what's going to resonate with them? What are they feeling motivated to apply themselves to? And I like how you worded it of getting to their core why, you know, the three or five whys exercises. What are you trying to accomplish? Okay, why are you trying to accomplish that? Why are you trying? You keep asking why until you get to like, what is the core motivator? And once that's identified, like I want to be alive and functional for my grandkids. That's a good core motivator. Let's bring it back to that next time you're feeling a little bit, you know, ready to disappear into the mist.

Unmotivated. It's good. Write that down. Now, chicken or an egg question. And my question to you was going to be like, how did you get metabolic health versus mental health? And so your suicide, that makes sense. I want to hear a little bit more, but like, how do you know the chicken or the egg, meaning is it mental health that causes the metabolic health or is it the metabolic health that's causing the mental health?

Yeah.

Do you see that there is a pattern or do you see that it's different for people?

Man, you're asking all these questions that are like the questions that I would almost want to generate with Chapp- GPT for somebody to ask me if I was trying to like, you know.

Those are your cloud questions, right? Those are like, you're like, I wonder what this all means.

Yeah, yeah, well, because like on my social media, I have this like brain yin yang logo thing. I'm not wearing the tank top right now because I'm trying to look professional. But that's what that brain yin yang is supposed to symbolize is kind of the physiology and the psychology. You can't really separate the two. You know, we know that our physiology and biochemistry is going to directly impact our our mood and neuroendocrine, neurocognition pathways, if you will. So our mental health will be directly

Yes.

impacted by the metabolic health and the physiology, but also vice versa, right? Like our psychology that we're choosing, leaning into cultivating which wolf are you feeding in your brain? Right? Like that's going to be the one that that's becoming more dominant. we reinforcing self-limiting beliefs? Are we cultivating neuroplasticity to dismantle those self-limiting beliefs and cultivate new neural networks associated with the direction we're trying to go in life? So even just like in the past couple of days, I put up a couple of posts on Instagram that to me were some of

the most meaningful posts I've ever put up and they didn't perform well looking at, you know, optimism can boost...

Screw that algorithm, Brendan, you keep posting them.

My guy well see that's where I'm at. That's where I'm at is like I just need to post the content that I feel that I need to post regardless of the algorithm but in a world obsessed with longevity like there's great research that shows pessimism kills longevity optimism cultivates longevity by very statistically significant margins I'm like, you know, everybody's freaking out about peptides and what's the secret elixir? I'm like, I don't know. Maybe just don't be a cynical jerk Maybe maybe practice gratitude maybe cultivate a

You just need to get that out.

you

bit of optimism, right? I think there's a lot of power in the psychology and I find, at least in my practice, there's a lot of people coming to me that have pretty substantial psychological issues and I think they're kind of avoiding doing that work and they would rather, well let me just find the root cause. It's probably a parasite. It's not a psychological trait of mine that I need to take a look at or work on. It's a root cause I just haven't identified or treated with the right protocol.

And they'll just treat parasites every three months for the rest of their life. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. When do you think it's programmed? like as a natural fertility expert, that's one of the things we'll do on our initial consult is I'm going to sit down. I'm going to try to understand how back the fertility, how far back the infertility journey started. And every couple is like pouring their hearts out. This is what happened in the first three years. Like this is our infertility journey. And I'm like,

Yeah, yeah, that'll make your borderline personality disorder go away, I'm sure.

Yeah, but let me ask you about your 20s and then like birth control and traumas and like work life balance stresses. And then let's talk about your teenage years and then let's talk about zero to seven. And then let's talk about what mom was like when she was pregnant with you. And let's talk about all of that. And then they go, my God, like this has been leading up to this point for so long. I'm curious, like, what do you think? When does the psychology get programmed? Where does the metabolic stuff get programmed? Because

I'll see babies with Coca-Cola bottles and like that breaks my heart. You know, cause it's like your setting, that's it. You're programming that metabolism. So do you like, what, what is your sense? When does that all start? And what is the power of it for us to actually reverse it?

Yeah.

Yeah, when you start getting into the preconception planning, I mean, I think the earlier the better. I mean, it's like, you gotta take it all the way back and then depending on kind of the mechanisms you're talking about, I mean, then you're starting to go into like generational trauma and how that's impacting epigenetics through the generations.

Sure, yeah. That's all the woo-woo stuff, but then where's the signs? Show me the signs.

Yeah. Well, I mean, that's kind of what's crazy. It's like, you know, we see that adverse childhood events and early life stress and trauma can change the DNA methylation patterns and alter neuroendocrine tone and neuroimmune development and maturation. So, you know, in my mind, like if we have a mother to be or a, you know, a couple planning on getting pregnant, literally the earlier that you can start optimizing that the better. Like I personally was a C-section hypoxic baby. I came out purple.

Which, you know, maybe that explains the ADHD or something, I don't know. you know, seriously, it's the metabolic stature, the immunological stature of both the mother and the father. And I've covered this with a lot of different Instagram posts of, you know, the sperm quality, the egg quality, the inflammatory status, how all of this is going to be programming the epigenetics and the cellular dynamics of the child to be very early on.

You, Jim.

And so is, but then like, obviously there is environmental effects that make it either better or worse because, you know, we look at you now and you've come a long way from like your teenage years, being a child, all of that stuff. So how much do you find that the environment is working and like how much can actually be reversed?

Well, you know what's interesting about that? I will say I feel like I see too many...

people, at least that kind of come to me in my practice, that I think they're a little bit too much self-victimization, a little bit too much victim mentality, a little too much, let me lean on kind of a little bit like theoretical emerging research to try to like blame those theoretical mechanisms that I don't have to take ownership of my own choices in life, right? Because you you can't say like, sure, like if let's say your parents were both obese,

And there's the nature, there's the nurture, you know, from a physiological, you're, you might have some genetic propensity towards being obese or metabolically compromised. Sure. We all have that genetic predisposition, but at the same time, like, what do you choose to do about that? I do think we all have sort of our, gosh, what would you even call that? Almost like a epigenetic set point. You know, I think we, kind of are who we are at the core. Like, you know, if we're talking about CrossFit or, you know, bodybuilding.

There is the genetic aspect you could have two athletes. They both work just as hard in a mr. Olympia stage But that guy has better genetic shape, right? So there are going to be the genetic advantages and disadvantages and propensities, but we can't like use that You know as an excuse for not taking some

accountability and cultivating our own sovereignty. Cause I do think it's how do we maximize and optimize our epigenetic potential through modulating the environment, the lifestyle, and of course the psychology. I was just talking to my podcast producer the other day and we've been doing a lot of mold stuff lately. And so I joked on a podcast about how like I'm convinced that the Salem witch trials was basically just mold illness and ergot, you know, contamination poisoning that

caused them to stone all these women and hang all of them and you know do all that because like I think you know they were in the northeast and everything kind of early colon colonization days I think it was very much an environmental driven psychotic episode that caused the Salem witch trials so to your point the environmental aspect and I think that's where you know we're in pretty troubling times especially when we're thinking about fertility birth rates the environmental toxic burden let alone like

the sociological stress of our crazy world that we're living in.

Yeah, and I mean, we were talking about like, you're not seeing a lot of kiddos, but you're seeing a lot of moms with kiddos who have, whether it's neurological issues or I'm assuming eczema, allergies, even autoimmune conditions, know, like kiddos. Like that's hard.

Yeah, it is. know, like obviously I don't directly can, I mean, sometimes the child or teenager might be in the, in the zoom room with us, but it's primarily consulting with the mother of how can I consult with you to provide the best care for your child and support them up for success. And I get a pretty big spectrum of, course, like there's the, you know, five to 10 year olds with autism or ADHD and how do we.

Optimize their function and quality of life but a lot of teenagers with a lot of depression a lot of anxiety a lot of OCD and even like failure to launch because then with AI taking over and you know Diminishing the the job marketplace and everything. So now I'm getting parents coming to me of like my child is, know doom-scrolling They're apathetic. They're self-medicating, you know, they're 25 and they don't want to leave the home because you know, they're like, what's the point? I'm not gonna have a job like the AI is gonna take all the jobs. So

Yeah.

That's where that Professor Galloway guy, he's talking a lot about men that are struggling to be economically and socially viable and not dating, not getting jobs, not seeking gainful employment. there's this whole spectrum of, and we can't really parse it apart, what's environmental, what's nature, what's nurture, what's physiological, what's psychological, what's sociological or economic. So I think it's a pretty layered problem we're facing.

Yeah, how long did you say you were in practice? 16 years?

Professionally, I've been doing all this stuff for 16 years. The first like seven, eight was primarily nutrition, fitness, metabolic coaching, and then the back half has been more functional medicine focused.

Yeah, I'm curious, like, what are you seeing now versus what did you see when you first started? I always like to ask my vets that.

Yeah, it's a fair question. mean, obviously since I started out in the big box gym situation, lifetime, lifetime fitness previously. and so obviously I kind of missed those days because it's like, well, for one thing that was, you know, its own socio-demographic of people that could afford that expensive membership and come to the nice health club. But you know, that was just like middle, upper middle class, middle aged people trying to lose some pounds and get in shape. Right. So.

totally different demographic of service and countless weight loss journeys and optimizing strength and all that good stuff. you know, here with what I deal with these days professionally, I kind of miss those days. It was more simple. It was more straightforward. It was more focused on the workout, maybe a little bit of nutrition, maybe do some metrics here and there. Whereas these days, because my platform is so, you know, root cause functional mental health focused. Now I'm getting a lot of actually, I mean, a lot of psychiatric issues, sure.

a lot of, personality disorders, which then makes it hard because they want, you know, root cause stuff. And it's like, but are you doing psychotherapy? Do you have a clinical psychologist that you're working with? Because, know, something that you actually were, at least I see a lot and say you have somebody with like crippling anxiety and they might kind of tune into the functional medicine world. And so they start thinking, well, what's the root cause of the anxiety? Like is a parasite causing the anxiety is a toxin causing the anxiety.

And there could be and I know those mechanism that's my job is to know those mechanisms So like I know how to parse that apart but like what if they actually just need treatment for the anxiety They don't need to treat root cause they need proper psychological treatment and psychiatric treatment for the anxiety itself, right? I don't think there's any amount of like bugs or root cause protocols that could fully erase that So my job is to parse that apart of well how much of these symptoms are being driven by these root causes versus no, this is

Personality disorder this is psychiatric disorder that needs to be treated as such

Yeah, I tend to think of it as like I do I want to recognize the personality disorder, but my brain always goes like Why like why did that happen? You know because if the body is really smart and then I go into like the conception and preconception and there's a lot of people Like some of my couples are you know, they'll come on and be like I need this because I was like a pretty angry kid Or I was it and then it's just like why were you so angry?

Yeah.

You know, like, can we have that conversation? And then of course there's trauma and I really, I think we need the medicine, but my brain always goes to like, but why, what is it? And I don't know if you've seen this, but one couple that I'm thinking of right now, when I first met them, like I couldn't even talk to him because he was so, like you could see he couldn't make connections in his brain and he couldn't articulate himself. And then we test and sure enough, like he has an insane amount of lead in his body and he's 30 years old, you know? So it's like, that's a-

Mm-hmm.

lead levels of a 60 year old and someone who's been working in the mine. So like, where is that really coming from? And you could see his light, like light turned on and make connections. His wife was like, I don't have to make lists for him anymore. Like it's crazy. She was just like, I got this new husband and it was cool to watch how getting the lead out changed his personality and changed his entire world. And so I tend to try to think, I think we need the medicine, but then I go like, why, you know, what's happening there.

A hundred percent. know, my, my whole career for at least the past eight years, everything that I do really centers around neuroimmunology and specifically the glial system of the brain. know, every, every lecture that I was, my talk at eco last year was, you brain on fire. Every talk that I give, everything I produce is all focusing on all the different root cause factors that are disturbing the glial system of the brain, the immune system of the brain, because to your point, so actually like

I could, I have a number of clients right now that come to mind of, you know, different psychiatric diagnoses and personality disorder traits and all of that. But to your point, well, what's the disturbed physiology that may be exacerbating and contributing to that and what disturbed the physiology in the first place? Right. So, you know, we do, we have to rewind back of like, well, what was, you know, what was your parents' health like when they got pregnant with you and what was the delivery like and were you breastfed and did you have a vaginal birth and what was your child?

like did you have adverse childhood events and early life stress and you know living in Yeah

Were you on antibiotics for like seven years of your life straight because you were always sick?

Yeah. And your, your, your room was full lead paint and mycotoxins, right? And so that to me is that's where we can validate a lot of the chronic struggles people have is, you know, the, lab panel that I developed the mental map, you know, if, if I see on paper objective quantifiable neuroinflammation, neuroimmune activation, to me, it does somewhat invalidate like the psychiatric label because it's like, would they be behaving that way and expressing those symptoms if their brain wasn't on fire or if

their methylation was optimized because to your point if you remove some of those noxious input signals and you restore adequate you know neurotrophic activity, fight off the neuroinflammation, seal the blood-brain barrier, decrease excitotoxicity or you know do all the things right modulate all the pathways yet the lights can come back on pretty quickly or you just think about like

I mean, I measure histamine very regularly and it's like so many people have raging histamine, know, optimal would be like 40 to 60. And I see a lot of people 130, 150, 180. And it's like, I mean, I just, I've been fighting off a head cold the past few days. I can tell you when you're, know, histamine and mast cells are super provocated. It's like, you can't think straight. You're not feeling good. You're not acting like yourself. So that to me is the most interesting part is from a functional mental health perspective. Well, you know, the psychiatrist is just writing you off as, you

general anxiety disorder, bipolar, whatever it is, but what's going on physiologically? That's what I like to focus on.

Yeah, I do think it also comes down to because of the thing that we're going to tell people to do is going to be way harder than any other doctor, right? Like the doctors are just going say, here's a pill, do this, or there's nothing you can do about it versus we are going to be like, you're going to have to like flip your whole life upside down and you're probably going to have to move because your house is filled with mold and lead paint and you know, all this stuff and you're going to have to spend thousands of dollars on this water filtration and...

air filtration and all that jazz. I do think that there's a component and tell me if you find this as well, where people don't actually want to do that. Like you want that for them because you know how much, but they like, it's almost like too big of a jump generationally or something. You know, like if my parents were obese, there's no way I could be this bodybuilder. Like I could just can't do it because it's too big of a stretch and there's too much that has been programmed in. don't.

Yeah.

And I don't want to believe that because I'm such a proponent, but I've had people, I was a personal trainer as well for a long time. And you could just see it where people just don't believe in themselves enough. And then because they don't believe in themselves. And this is where I'm always, that's my time where I think about it. Is it because they have the lead and I haven't identified or it's because they have some other metal or toxin and that's what's really weighing them down. Because I'll say like human cells are happy cells.

They don't want, like you wanna be a good person. You wanna do good things. You wanna be, and that doesn't mean you never feel sad or whatever, but when you have a lot of, like lead is heavy, you know? You'll feel really heavy and toxic. And even just like talking to the person, I remember being like, God, like I cannot imagine being him, you know?

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, I mean it makes me think one of my previous Instagram posts where I said something to the effect if you won't fully reap the benefits of psychotherapy if you have neuroinflammation, right? Like if your glial system is activated and you literally have elevated inflammation, neuronal damage and neurotransmitter dysregulation and stuff going on in your central nervous system, you can't talk your way out of that. Talking to a therapist isn't really going to do a whole lot there. And with sort of like the self-healing movement,

I see people they tend to go down one of two paths. They either like okay I'm gonna approach my healing from the more esoteric inner work, know EMDR craniosacral psychotherapy introspective work Maybe some psychedelics if they're open to it so on and so forth and it's all the nerve system regulation It's the polyvagal it's all that stuff or they go the other way, you know, it's the bugs It's the toxins. It's the you know root cause cleanses and whatnot and really like we need some combination of both right because even like

back in the early days as a fitness trainer, back then and still today in my functional medicine career, I still always feel like I want more for them than they want for themselves, which is always really sad. know, even fitness clients, it's like, you know, I clients that lost over a hundred pounds and all the cool things. but then, you know, they relapse, right? And so this is why the deeper I get into my life and my career, so much of what I do, almost like my angle is I really almost care more about the belief systems and the psychology, but I

approach it through the physiology because it feels less threatening to their their ego that's a little bit fragmented and insecure as soon as you start questioning or poking at their sense of identity they're gonna get reactive and kind of run away. Nobody wants that mirror of self-reflection shoved in their face so you have to approach it very tactfully and so sometimes it feels less threatening and triggering to the nervous system and ego of why don't we talk about your physiological biomarkers and you you motivational interview them through it.

of like, okay, so what are going to do about this or how do you feel about it? Because you do, you have to really break down their self-limiting beliefs, break them down to the core of who they are. And this is why I'm so passionate about psychedelic medicine. It's such a catalyst for truth and self-exploration and introspection. Plus then it's, it's also, you know, both from a mechanism of action, pharmacology perspective, psychedelics have amazing mechanisms of action that can really modulate some

physiological and biochemical pathways that can catalyze healing on a physical level and also the spiritual Esoteric nature of it themselves, which is why so my talk at eco next year's can be more psychedelic focused Yeah

That's awesome. Do you prep people for that? I mean, obviously you do, but I wonder, is there a psychedelic that you prefer or is there, yeah, like what is the pathway? This is something that I have very little experience with myself, but I have had also recommended it to patients. And of course, I think it's how to change your mind by Michael Pollan, like all the documentary is on the stuff that are now coming out or have been out in the last five years. It's been really powerful, I think for the...

you know, for the holistic community, but obviously for the kind of mental health community.

Yeah, I think I would love like if I had my dream career right this second, I think I would purely dedicate my career to essentially psychedelic research, but focused on the neuroimmune component. Like what I'm most interested in is how can we use psychedelics to help people heal, but more specifically and mechanistically, how did the psychedelics positively modulate and calibrate the immune system of the brain and essentially boost neuro longevity and neurotrophic activity and stuff like that.

And it's funny because when I set up my research foundation maybe like five, six years ago, you know, you have to write a letter of intent to the IRS and my lawyer, you know, she saw this clause about psychedelic research and she's like...

There's still a class one, like you can't have that in your IRS proposal. So I had to remove that, that clause. And I would go, I mean, this is a bold statement, but I'll say it anyways, of like, would go as far as saying the fact that, you know, psilocybin and other classic psychedelics are not decriminalized in all 50 states right now, to me, just reeks of corruption. You know, they're gatekeeping this, they're focusing a lot of work on synthetic, you know, synthetic psilocybin for pharmaceutical research. I think.

I think out of all the psychedelics, think microdosing psilocybin is going to be the safest, easiest, of lowest barrier to entry. I think that's a great starting point. Anybody that wants to kind of dabble with psychedelics, but you know, as a functional medicine consultant and not a licensed healthcare practitioner, you know, I obviously can't, you know, prescribe psychedelics that are illegal anyways. I can't be facilitating drug transactions. So, you know, I just educate in nature, right?

Mm-hmm.

You

educate and work work around the edges a little bit. I might know a guy but well it's kind of the same with with peptides too you know like with peptides it's like where are you sourcing those you know some sketchy website coming from India or China like

We can't facilitate, but we'll tell you where to facilitate it.

i might know a guy like how am i doing this still 20 years later? yum

Yeah, yeah, please don't inject yourself with this. And then they come to you with like a one eye blown up and you're like, God, like, what do we do now? Yeah, it's been really powerful. I actually I do think the microdosing I remember I had a patient and he was so like stuck in that fight or flight, you know, trying to get to the CEO level, director level working in oil and gas. And it's she had a hard time connecting with him.

Yeah, yeah. Right. Exactly.

obviously, because her cortisol is through the roof because they're all feeding it. And he did some microdosing. And I remember on one of their appointments, he's like, I think I'm noticing something. He's like, the other day I was working on my computer and I just look outside and go, huh, those trees are nice. There you go, buddy. Like, there's a whole life out there. You know, like you should go and check it out once in a while.

Yeah.

a hundred percent. mean, my first psychedelic experience is probably like mid twenties and it was LSD. you know, I took the first tab, waited like maybe two hours. I was like, well, I kind of feel a little something, something, but you know, let's do another tab. And it was one of the most beautiful, meaningful experiences of my whole life. And I've kind of been, you know, hooked on psychedelics ever since in a non addictive way. They're, not addictive.

Yeah, because you're not going to do that every day to yourself. You don't want to, yeah.

No, you wouldn't want to. mean, like when you're in the middle, like when you're peaking, it doesn't even matter what the substance is, MDMA or ketamine or any of them. I mean, when you're in the peak of it, it's amazing, but you would not want to do that every day. it's almost like, especially with LSD, which has a half life of like 12 to 16 hours, psilocybin is like five or six hours. So like you can do some psilocybin and still like, yeah.

You

Yeah. Eight hours later, you're like, how much more do I have of this shit? I'm done. Yeah.

It does, it does. You know, the best analogy I could use would be like, it literally is like you're living a whole lifetime in a day.

And so then when the day is over and you wake up the next day, it's like back to mundane reality. you're like, it's like if you went into an alternate dimension and lived a long, meaningful life and you grow old and you eventually die, and then you're reborn in your 30 something year old body of like, how do I integrate that into this mundane reality that I'm living? But it completely shatters all of our monkey mind delusions that we cultivate from a young age.

you

And the integration is the hardest part, I think, and probably the most important, because I do see people not doing that properly or not knowing how to come back to that 30, 35 year old, however old you're our body and go, who am I? You know, like, I don't want to live this life I created that's from trauma and stress and all of this. Like, I don't want to go to work and work 12 hour days anymore.

Yeah, well I think that yeah, that's kind of the big challenge psychedelics can obviously be be misused and like, you know, the people that identify as Psychonauts were literally it's like, I'm a site, which then it's ironic because it's like

What is that? I don't think I've heard of that. What is a psychopath?

Yeah, so this idea of a psychonaut is basically somebody that has chosen to identify as like, I'm going to explore the frontiers of human consciousness. I'm going to use all the psychedelics, do the highest dose as possible because I want to see how far I can push my consciousness. You know, they want to push that edge of the frontier. But if I've learned anything in my use of psychedelics, which I think have done amazing things for my health and my life, I'm glad that I started on the younger.

Sure.

side as opposed to like an 80 year old dying of cancer that then has that experience. It's like you have that eye-opening experience at the end. I know you could have had such a you could have lived a much more meaningful life had you you know kind of expanded your consciousness a little bit earlier. Yeah but 100 % but these psychonauts that are trying to push it for me I always tell people more is not better right like when I'm using psychedelics

You lived 80 years. Yeah.

Less regrets, right? Like that's the biggest thing. People have so many regrets.

That sounds like a self-destructive behavior to be honest. That sounds like it's, you know, there's a little bit of trauma there.

Yeah.

reality.

you gotta be respectful of the medicine, but...

Yes.

That is the integration is the hard thing. You want to kind of go to that psychedelic realm. The way I describe it actually, it's kind of like, you know, I think the sober monkey mind with all of its delusions and conditioned self-limiting beliefs, that's a plane of reality. And then there's the plane of reality that's truth. And I think truth and love are kind of the same frequency if we're talking esoterically. So for me, the way I describe it is psychedelics will plunge you into the realm of nothing but truth. Now, whether you're

ready or willing to face yourself and face your truth, that's where bad trips come from. Personally, I don't really believe in the idea of a bad trip. Now there is a risk for psychosis in some susceptible individuals and that needs to be acknowledged, but outside of that small demographic, I don't believe in bad trips. It's only people that are not ready to fully face themselves and fully face the truth of their own soul. Like actually I was at the Vibrant Longevity Summit and Peter Atiyah was

You

one of the keynotes and he made a comment about psychedelics of basically like, you know, I had a psychedelic experience. It was good. I tried to have another one. It wasn't so good. Now Peter Atiyah strikes me as the kind of guy that has some, some demons, you know, internally, just what I see from an aura. Right. And so, you know, he was kind of like, if you have a good experience, good for you, don't go back to it. And I'm like, that sounds like somebody that's avoiding facing their own truth. Candidly, you have to embrace the truth fully. have to, it's a lot of lessons to surrender. And then you have to learn how to integrate those.

Sure. Who doesn't?

Yeah, for sure.

lessons into your not so enchanting day-to-day life, but there's a lot of beauty in that journey.

Yeah, you got to like the, that's the ego. And I think I love that you brought that up because, you know, I, I've listened to him mostly through Joe Rogan, but Joe Rogan will obviously have a lot of experts. And I remember, I think it was Gary Becker. I can't remember, but he was just like talking only about nutrition and like, this is it. And that's the root cause and the genetics and this.

And I was like, there's this whole other side over here, you know? And I think it's important for us, the holistic practitioners to start talking about it, not because Gary Brekka isn't right or he doesn't have a great mind or a great, you know, but because there's multiple levels of truth and different, and it's not going to work for everybody. And we have to be able to see it, see the ego and go, maybe I don't know everything. Maybe there is something to this component that this person is saying.

You know, like maybe there is something to parasites. And then on the flip side, it's not just about parasites. Like if you're only treating parasites, you're completely missing the whole point of like the bacterial microbiome, the mold, the fungus, the viruses, and how they're orchestrating the parasites, but then the mental and emotional wiring component of it too, that's keeping the parasites there and all of that, you know? It's like, we just need to start talking about the whole picture. Cause I hate it when people say natural medicine didn't work. Like that's really why I do.

Mm-hmm.

the that I do, because when you say natural medicine doesn't work, you're basically saying that the body is faulty. That's what I think. You know, and it's like, why is it faulty though? Like in the space that I'm in, when people are like, I can't get pregnant and this is the thing that I'm supposed to be able to do. And it's like, yeah, but let's unpack that. When was the last time you spent more than an hour outside? It was like.

Mm-hmm.

20 years ago, okay, well like maybe that's the problem. know, when was the last time you got eight hours of sleep? When was the last time you like looked at the trees and noticed them that they're around or took a supplement, you know?

Mm-hmm.

my gosh.

100 % you know, I like with it with the psychedelic Stuff, you know, I'm not using them super regularly like I think my ideal cadence that all that all disclosed I think my ideal cadence would be like, you know a gram of silica a gram of mushrooms Like once a month, you know and for me, you know normal day-to-day reality like for example, you know, you and I leverage social media to propagate our business model and spread our message and

and help people, right? But even like, I hate social media. I hate it. I think it's...

I'm like, you do that, I just go there for memes. I'm joking.

Well, there's some great means on there and what's so funny like so many of the psychedelics have these ego dissolution properties that can really powerfully help somebody gain awareness of their ego and learn to tame it and harness it and work with it, you know, and there's there's some book I've never read it but it's called like ego is the enemy and I disagree wholeheartedly ego is not your enemy. It's your greatest asset to get stuff done in this reality. You have to learn how to work with it and what's so ironic

You the psychonauts that are trying to push the frontiers of consciousness. That ego that wants to push the edges of consciousness. There's a funny meme to your point about memes that I saw. It this guy and it said, you know, I finally killed my ego by using psychedelics now and better than everybody else. Yeah, yeah, it was so perfect, you know.

That guy gets it. That's good. Yeah. I do want to, I know I want to be conscious of time, but I'd love to, cause I've seen people specialize in metabolic health and I've seen people specialize in mental health, but I've never seen somebody put it together so well and so beautifully. Like tell me what's the force. Like how did you, did you start with one or the other? How did you end up putting it together and why is it important to keep those together?

Man, this is like the best interview I think I've ever done. You're just asking such good intuitive perceptive questions. you know, when I, when I was 18 years old, like when I was in high school, was, I wanted to either be a UFC fighter or a Navy seal. And for some reason at that point in my life, Navy seal actually seemed more practical.

good!

Now that you can reflect back and have a good laugh at it, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, Hindsight 2020, honestly, I kind of wish that I had stuck with the martial arts because, you know, there wasn't the same path to the UFC that there is today. It's evolved lot. But anyways, I read the book Lone Survivor.

Both savage pathways though, both completely savage.

Yeah, both very... Yeah, was a, you as a kid I was like, you know, I grew up on like Dragon Ball Z and Lord of the Rings and, you know, whatever. So the whole like superhero, you know, modern day samurai is what I was going for. And I'm like, well, what does that mean? Like UFC champion, Navy SEAL, but the book Lone Survivor is what influenced me.

The holistic savage, that's what it means, Brendan, now.

Well, yeah, that's what it's become, which, you know, I think it all worked out, but after high school, I signed a six year Navy seal contract, but then I was medically discharged from bootcamp because they found a, a hernia and they're like, well, you're injured. need surgery. You're out. It was preexisting. So it's not our problem. You're gone. And so it was kind of like my life dream ripped away from me. And so then I was in this weird limbo and I'm working at, as a janitor at the gym, my dad is pushing me to go to college and be a college kid on their

They would have loved for me to go to medical school or computer engineering or whatever. I didn't like school You know, maybe it's the ADHD but like that's not how I learn effectively. I'm not into Anyways, so I was at this crossroads and you know, obviously I like lived at the gym So the personal training manager was like well, hey, you know get your NASM CPT get certified and I'll give you a shot So I jumped in and then I actually went back to school while working full-time Because I felt like I needed to advance my education to advance my career

And it was during that time going to school full-time working full-time. I got so depressed So burnout and then I did triggering event and tried to kill myself But that that's kind of the arc that then became I was already a personal trainer nutrition coach metabolic technician So my job was helping people reach their health goals through fitness nutrition lifestyle, but very data-driven You know, I ran lab testing I ran blood work We did body fat body fat composition where they're like 12 sites

skinfold testing, kind of polyquin style, or the bioelectrical impedance testing on the in-bodies, VO2 testing, resting metabolic rate testing. And I love, I wanted to specifically share those points because now, in a world obsessed with longevity, like strength and max VO2 are like the strongest metrics of longevity, right? And it's back to the beginning of my career. But I also liked...

Yep.

It doesn't, isn't it funny how it comes full circle?

Well, it's very satisfying for me, but where my ego gets a little triggered is when I see a white coat doctor getting on stage that maybe clearly has never been really about the gym life themselves. And then they're saying, oh, turns out we have this cutting edge novel intervention that's called move your body and lift weights. when I see doctors...

You

And there you are in your suit with your traps popping and the quads, like, right? It's so hard to find a suit when you're fit. It's like, I need to make the waist is smaller. The quads are, yeah. But I do think times are changing, like social media, thanks to social media, as much as, you know, we can, it's a love hate relationship.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Oh, hundred percent. It has come full circle though. And so with that sort of metabolic medicine background and based on science, I feel safe calling it that it's metabolic medicine, no matter how you want to look at it or nitpick it. But then even though I was very metabolically fit and healthy, but I wasn't mentally healthy. Right. And so what's really cool is, you know, the mental health crisis, there is a very heavy metabolic component, but there's still in the absence, like both myself and my ex

fiance who ended up killing herself later down the road. We both were about the fitness nutrition lifestyle. We were both very metabolically healthy, but we were both mentally compromised. I attempted suicide, she accomplished suicide. So there definitely is this, yes, metabolic illness can drive mental illness. And even if you're metabolically fit, doesn't mean you're mentally healthy. And so it was, you my own attempted suicide and her suicide.

that's what motivated me to then kind of rebrand of functional medicine for mental health with a very heavy metabolic layer. So that's kind of the full package.

Yeah, that's heavy. Tell me, have you had thought, and feel free not to share this, but do you know why you stayed and she didn't? Did you have that reflection?

As far as like who died who didn't or

Yeah, like why did your soul decide to stay?

You know, that's an interesting question because, you know, I had actually one of my parents, I'm fortunate enough that I have four parents and two sets and one of them had made a comment of like, this was a number of years ago. And I thought it was a pretty callous comment in general of like, I don't think you're trying to kill yourself. And it's like, are you seeking to understand my experience? Are you telling me like, invasively telling me? Yeah.

Yeah, that's a triggering thing to say. Yeah. They don't, you know, they don't mean anything by it, but it's like,

Yeah, that caused a fight for sure. You know, because essentially I felt like I was being accused by one of my own parents that I was just doing a cry for help by way of an intentional overdose, right? Because, you you could argue if somebody's literally wanting to die, they're not going to swallow a bottle of pills. They're going to do something a little bit more definitive.

Yeah, just a little one.

for whatever reason, when I had the triggering event, I was already having suicidal ideations and in therapy and I was on medication, but then I had a massive triggering event that was actually related to the fiance. so I swallowed bottle well buterin. That was my, my dopamine agonist antidepressant. and I was later taken to the ER by, by a colleague, but I was completely gone by the time I was in the emergency room. I was hallucinating. I couldn't really form coherent.

I have these like blurry memories of...

being hospitalized and they put me in a medically induced coma for like 48 hours, pumped my stomach, flushed my body. I later found some blood work that they had run when I was in the ICU and my liver enzymes were in the thousands from liver poisoning. And when I woke up a couple of days later and they brought me out of the coma, know, the nurse in the room was like, we thought we were going to lose you. And she also told me like it took like six security guards to bring me down because I was apparently like really violent. So there's the savage

You were savage.

I again, I guess it comes out with a bottle of wellbutrin. But, you know, I don't know. I feel fortunate to still be here because it sounds like I very much was close to dying.

It just comes out.

But I think the way that she chose to leave this world and leave behind her children, which is kind of the worst part of all of it, you know, I think she was more definitive of what she was trying to accomplish and trying to send a signal to those that she left behind in sort of a horrible way. Whereas I think for me, I was just having a crisis that I didn't know how to work through. But yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. No, thank you for sharing. The reason I asked, was actually in this mentorship a while back and there was a cardiologist there and he, he said a very interesting thing besides the fact that he actually just does sauna instead of cardio. I was like, okay, bro, but you should still do some cardio because it's, you know, slightly different thing, but he's like, I can tell if someone is going to make it up the table versus not. And it's like the person that has

Yeah.

Hmm.

something to live for, they fight. And the person that doesn't, you can just see their soul leave. It's like the soul is tired. And it just gave me chills because I was like, damn, like this is a cardiologist, like coming from, you know, big hospital looking and then bringing in this boo-boo science of like, if they had a family, if he had a family or she or whatever, there was something like definitive that person would stay.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

versus, you know, leave. And sometimes obviously they would have a family, but they just didn't want to be here anymore. And that event was, you know, the deciding factor.

Mm-hmm.

So yeah, you know, it's a fascinating, thank you for sharing that. I know that's, I never know where these questions are gonna go. I just ask.

I'm an open book and what you just shared, that sounds like something Zach Bush would say 100%. I've heard him say similar things. I will say my whole life, I've always had this fire burning in me. I've always been very motivated, very disciplined. So I do feel like I'm a man on a mission. I'm still defining that mission through my work and through my life expression. But maybe that was the reason I came back or maybe I'm just assigning value to it.

talking about psychedelics and...

Or maybe that's your next psilocybin trip, know, the intention to find out why, you know? Like that's what we did when I've done psilocybin, it's like it's really important to set an intention. It's like, what are you supposed to get out of this? You know, and let the medicine guide you, because it's really powerful.

Yeah, who knows, you know?

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Well, it's like, you know, DMT is typically considered to be the most powerful psychedelic and I've never done DMT. not sure if I even want to because it's. Ooh, I mean, it's very short. DMT is like a 10 to 15 minute experience, but it's a much more intense experience. Yeah. Yeah.

What's the high fly for DMT?

Yeah, I'm like, it's... Yeah. But it is a lifetime. It is a lifetime in the 10 to 20 minutes.

Yeah, it's like, you know, if I do, if I do like two tabs of acid, I'm going to have a long, beautiful introspective day in nature and in my psyche. to my end, I've never experienced EMT, but like that is, you know, full ego dissolution. Like you dissolve into particles that are woven into the fabric of the universe. there's no sense of myself or language. I haven't experienced that, but you know, they always say that DMT is, is released in your brain.

You

I am.

when you're born and when you die, right? And the theory is kind of like, well, maybe this molecule, this endogenous molecule eases us into the world and eases us out of the world. So then if you use it as a psychedelic drug, you know, you're almost like mimicking the entry and exit of life itself. But like when I was in the ICU in a medically induced coma, there was nothing like there was nothing. It was my my last memory was I was being interviewed in the emergency room. And the next thing I know, it's like,

two, three days later and there was nothing in between that. It was just complete void. But you know, I don't know what they had me on, ketamine or something.

I wonder if you could get there with a psychedelic experience. I wonder if you could get that memory back, you know?

Yeah, yeah, I don't know. Like is it, you know, suppressed? Is it, you know, dematerialized because of whatever the anesthetic was? Like I have no idea. Yeah.

Sure, No idea, yeah. Yeah, questions to think about and to ask. Yes, another dimension. no, I thank you for sharing all of the things. It's been so amazing to chat with you. And you are, in fact, in my eyes, always the holistic savage. And I think you should keep living. I wouldn't change that name. I'm like, please don't. Because there is...

Yeah

And here's the like full circle moment. I think there's a lot of times where I come across things and I think my younger self because I'm like, it's crazy because I remember zero intention behind what I was doing. But I look at it now and go, there was zero intention, but I still did it because that something told me to, and there was some kind of a gut reaction to, you know, to do that, to follow that. And even when I think about like how I met my husband and how we got married, I'm like,

That's nuts, you know? But there was something that tells you. And so I love those reflective moments because it brings me into that really great place of gratitude where you just get teary-eyed thinking about my 18-year-old self who had zero brain development and was just making the worst judgments, still did this thing that actually brought me over here today. And how cool is that?

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. I definitely think there I say often like there's no amount of science that can replace intuition and I think intuition is something we can cultivate and tap into and it it guides us at the subconscious level as you're alluding to and I think you know, I think if we can act upon the intuition without fully understanding it because we'll create the narrative later in hindsight, you know We create the story that we tell ourselves to justify the intuition but that's just

a story that we used to justify at the end of day it's just that kind of soul inkling of like I feel like I need to do this and I think if you act upon that with integrity and authenticity like you'll end up wherever you're supposed to end up.

Yep. And well, the science will catch up and we'll show you. And we'll be on the forefront of that, because I think that gives credibility to natural medicine. And I do think it's a blend of that. know, can't just, to your point, it's like there is no amount of, I was one of my clients, I'm like, there's no amount of Tadka that I can give you that's going to like help you deal with your anger about your mom or dad or whoever. Like we just need to start sorting through that now. You know, there's no more pushing of the liver.

Yeah, exactly, exactly.

Yeah.

100%. Yeah, as much as I love Tudka and how it can modulate the brain, but even still, not enough of that in the world.

I know.

100%. Yeah, let's say. Brandon, tell everybody where they can find you, where they can listen to you and consume some of your content.

Yeah, thank you so much. It's, you know, I think we've, we've drilled the holistic savage down everybody's throat. yeah, you, the one and only, not, not hard to find the websites, metabolic solutions, lc.com, but, what a lovely conversation. You know, I wasn't sure what, what to expect with this been an amazing talk and I can't wait to get you on my podcast so we can continue the conversation. The holistic savage podcast.

The holistic salad of savage everybody.

Woof!

What is your podcast name so we can tell people as well? Is it the Holistic Savage? my God. Yes, you're doing it. You understand brand building. That's good. Awesome. Well, thank you, Brandon. So good to connect. And I appreciate your vulnerability and honesty and your brain wisdom, all of it.

Yep. I do. I have a knack for branding for sure.

Thank you, Jane. was an absolute pleasure.