How Brain Retraining Can Resolve Your Chronic Fatigue with Ashok Gupta - #124

How Brain Retraining Can Resolve Your Chronic Fatigue with Ashok Gupta

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Hey everybody, welcome back to the EnergyMD podcast where we help you resolve your chronic fatigue, chronic fatigue syndrome, also known as ME-CFS and long COVID by helping you find and fix the real root causes, what I call the toxic five, which is a combination of heavy metals, chemicals, molds, infections, and nervous system dysfunction or trauma. So I'm really excited today because we're going to be talking to my friend Ashok Gupta.

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about the Gupta program and nervous system dysfunction and something also that he calls neuroimmune, what is it called? Neuroimmune condition syndrome, NICS, that I'm not familiar with. So stay tuned, we're gonna be learning all about that. So let's first learn about Ashok Gupta. So Ashok is an internationally renowned speaker, filmmaker, and health practitioner who has dedicated his life to supporting people through chronic illness and achieving their potential.

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Ashok suffered from ME, myalgic encephalitis or chronic fatigue syndrome, around 25 years ago when he was studying at Cambridge University. Through neurological research that he conducted, he managed to get himself 100% better. He then set up a clinic to treat others and then published the well-known neuroplasticity limbic retraining recovery program, an app known as the Gupta program in 2007.

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He has published several medical papers, including randomized controlled trials of long COVID, ME-CFS and fibromyalgia, showing that the treatment is effective and is continually researching these conditions. You can find out more information at guptaprogram.com. That's G-U- Ashok, thanks so much for joining me today. Thank you so much, Evan, for that wonderful introduction. And I'm delighted to be with you. So.

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I'm finding that when people who have chronic fatigue syndrome, ME-CFS and long COVID, that there is a huge nervous system dysfunction. I know you've done a bunch of research on the subject. Tell us about that connection that you've seen. Well, yeah, absolutely. And this connection has come from my own experience. I suffered from ME and chronic fatigue syndrome in the mid 90s. And I remember as a young man, there's a brick wall in front of me where everyone told me

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We don't know what you have. We have no treatment for it and you might have it for the rest of your life. And that started my lifelong quest to try and understand these conditions. And obviously look at the research and find treatments that really are effective. So that's how my journey started. And certainly I believe that a lot of these conditions, the fundamental aspects of why they become chronic, because surely, you know, if we have fatigue or we have some inflammatory markers, the body should come back to normal.

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Come back to balance, come back to homeostasis. But why doesn't it come back to homeostasis? That is the core of our hypothesis and what we talk about. And we always like to start that question with the biggest question of all, why are we here? Now, what is the meaning of life? Now, Evan, I'd love to have a deep philosophical and spiritual chat to you about that another time, but let's go with the science first of all. Why are we here? We're here because over millions of years of evolution, this brain, this body,

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this immune system, this nervous system, has evolved from plant life to single cell organisms to invertebrates, vertebrates, mammals, human beings. We contain that lineage of information and survival instincts. You know, I heard a recent statistic. We share 40% of the same DNA as a banana. So we really are survival machines that have learned that over millions of years. So that is the number one thing. Our bodies and our brains are survival machines.

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And this gives us a clue to chronic illness, that our brain cares less about wellness, it cares more about helping us survive. And in our modern environments with so many threats, as you mentioned some of those threats there, the toxic threats, the immunological threats, the food threats, all of these come together to then create a system which is trigger happy. And once it learns that response, it can then over trigger itself, causing then chronic illness.

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So that the more threats that we have, the more things that we face, or the more stressors that we've accumulated throughout our lives, the more likely our nervous system is to become dysfunctional. Am I understanding you correctly? Yes, and we believe that this starts even in the womb. So you might say, well, how are these factors affecting who gets a chronic illness versus who doesn't? So even the gestation period, how stressed our mothers were during gestation impacts on the factory setting of our amygdala.

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the amygdala being a kind of emotional center, a reactive sensor in the brain. And then the birth experience itself. How much trauma we experienced in the first five to 10 years of our lives, especially the first few years of our lives. Did we feel nurtured and supported and cared for, or did we feel we were in unsafe environment that also affects the brain? And then of course, how many toxins were we exposed to? Whether it be cleaning products or cosmetics or shampoos, how much pollution were we exposed to? How much mold were we exposed to?

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How many emotional threats are we exposed to? All of this is like putting all the water in the bucket. And when the bucket gets to the top and fills up, when it pours over the edge, that then goes on to causing a chronic disease. And those different factors can come from physiology, biology, and our emotions. Definitely agree with you about the accumulation of toxins and stressors in the womb.

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What do you think about generational trauma? I believe that plays a role as well. Oh, absolutely. So we traditionally think of our DNA as passing on these adaptive genes. But of course we know now that behavioral emotions, these can be potentially passed on through generations. And therefore the experiences that we are going through are influenced and affected by our ancestors and what they've been through in previous generations. And of course,

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that fact in and of itself doesn't necessarily help us in this moment, because it is what it is, it's here. And therefore, we just have to understand that wherever it came from, we here are in this moment looking to find the most powerful tools that can help us self-regulate and bring our systems back to balance. Brilliant. And you talked about some of these stressors that are accumulating over time, having an unsafe environment.

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and mental, emotional challenges potentially. But these don't have to be really significant abuses, like physical abuse, sexual abuse. They can be something more mild, like you have imperfect parents and nobody's trained had a parent and you have siblings. And so there's not enough love to go around. So how do you differentiate between really significant abuse versus things like that that are potentially more mild? It's a combination of different factors.

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So for instance, we have many patients who, when we talk about trauma, they say, hey, I didn't have any trauma. I was perfectly happy. But then when we go deeper into it, they actually had exposures to certain toxins when they were younger, or they saw a parent who was coping difficulty with having difficulty with an illness when they were younger. And so there was observation of a lack of safety in somebody else. So it's multifactorial in terms of what impacts

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our amygdala's, our insula's, these parts of the brain that may be over-responding. And therefore, we've had patients who have had, as you say, just a sense of a lack of nurture right through to full-blown trauma. And anywhere along that scale can impact on how we're feeling and our propensity to get one of these illnesses. But research has shown that actually, if you've had some background in trauma or exposures to emotional challenges,

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you are two to three times more likely to develop a chronic illness when you're older. So that is really showing us that this is an important factor and dare we say a causal factor in what we're seeing. But it's a unique recipe that comes together. So it's an emotional background combined with the physical trigger and the unique circumstances of that that then go on to creating this chronic illness. And if I can share those unique triggers, that may also help frame the conversation.

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We talked about the first jigsaw piece, which was our brains care more about survival than they do our wellbeing. And the second jigsaw piece is, let's imagine we are exposed to a threat. So that threat could be a virus, a bacterial infection, mold exposure, lime, a chemical, a food, so on. These can all be threats in our environment. And normally our nervous system and immune system work together.

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to detect this threat, manage the threat, relieve the body of that threat, then go back to balance. That is how the system is supposed to work. But imagine that the system is imbalanced right from the start, yeah, before it is exposed to that pathogen. Now it's exposed to that pathogen, but the brain believes that actually it's gonna be harder for us to fight off this pathogen. So we all know that when we feel run down and suddenly we get a cold or a flu,

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Don't we notice that cold or flu often lasts longer because we were just so run down when it came along? Or certainly we were even more open to having it. And so it can take us longer to fight off that virus. So let's take the example of long COVID. We are in a weakened state, we're exposed to COVID. We are then takes us a longer to actually fight off the COVID infection. The brain then may in that moment learn something new, which is that the symptoms in the body from the COVID

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indicate that the COVID is still present. Right? So the brain is saying, are we still in danger? Are we still under threat? It detects that we still have the COVID infection in our body. So it triggers the immune system and nervous system, which creates symptoms in our body. Those symptoms in our physical body normally are irrelevant, but the brain now thinks that those symptoms in our body are representative of us still having that infection. They become what

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Pavlov's dogs and all of that. So then these symptoms in our body loop back to the brain and the brain says, aha, look, we still have symptoms in the body. That must mean the infection is still present. Let me trigger the immune system and nervous system again, which causes the symptoms in the body, which then causes the vicious cycle of chronic illness. And when it comes to external threats, the brain then thinks, oh, I was exposed to, let's say mold at one point in my life.

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and we know that mold is dangerous. So we had a reaction. But now even 5% of the original pathogen is enough for the brain to think we're under threat and create a response. Which is why somebody may have not had mold illness. They may have lived in moldy homes like many of us do and had no reaction. Their brain then learns that reaction and then it, what we call magnifies its response going forward because

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We are protective machines. We are designed to survive. So any threats are magnified. And Evan, if I can give an analogy, which many of our patients find very useful, is imagine you are king of your castle. All right, so you are King Evan of your castle. It has a nice ring to it, King Evan. And you have an army, which is your nervous system, and you have a navy, which is your immune system. And the army and navy defend your kingdom and your castle. Okay.

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So far so good. They defend your kingdom from incoming invading armies. Now imagine though, there is a drought in your kingdom. So now there's a drought. So the army and Navy are weaker. So suddenly an army comes over the hill, an invader, and your army and Navy work hard to fight off this invader. So they're firing off their weapons of war, the immune system, their arrows, their whatever, to fight off this invader. And they think they have fought it off, but they're not sure.

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think maybe the invader is hiding in the forest or maybe it's not fully eliminated. So they come to their weekly meeting with King Evan and they say, King Evan, so these are the army generals and the navy generals, they come to their weekly meeting and they say, King Evan, we now need all the resources of the kingdom. We need the wheat, the clean water, the food, because if we don't defend the kingdom and it falls, it's all over. Everyone dies.

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and you think logically, well, that's the right thing to do. Sure, have all the resources. So all the resources now get channeled to the army and navy and they start firing off their weapons of war at the slightest provocation because they're not sure. So now even a man on a horse coming over the hill, look, fire off your weapons of war. And now some of those weapons of war land back in the kingdom. So that's when we get inflammatory effects, gut dysbiosis. We get tightening of the guts.

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we get the fatigue and exhaustion. This is all as a result of our own bodies triggering those inflammatory responses and then how it impacts on the brain and the body. So opportunistic viruses and bacteria start flourishing in the kingdom. The spies start flourishing because there's no funding for anything else apart from the army and Navy. And we get autoimmune effects. So this is how autoimmune diseases may be initiated is because of the army and Navy going haywire.

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We can see how this causes a whole range of problems in the body. As we mentioned, gut dysbiosis, fatigue, exhaustion, higher inflammatory markers, lack of enzymes, nutrients being used up, and intense symptoms in the body. And this lack of homeostasis continues until something changes. And brain retraining is when the Army and Navy generals come to their weekly meeting with King Evan. You say to them, my dear generals,

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Fantastic, honourable job of defending the kingdom. But the war is over. You can stand down. We are not in a lack of safety anymore. We are safe. And the first time you say that to them, they won't believe it because they are survival machines. But the second time you say it, the third time you say it, the fourth time you say it, that is what the neuroplasticity aspect is, that we have to train the brain through repetition that we are no longer in danger. And eventually the army and navy generals get the message.

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which tones down the sympathetic response and the immune response, bringing back the kingdom to homeostasis. And that in an essence is brain retraining. Brilliant. I love that analogy. And so in summary, it's really these two parts where there is the pathogen or there is the toxin, but then there's the response to it, right? And that's really what's causing the symptoms. A lot of people don't realize that inflammation...

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the immune system's reaction to something and that's really what's causing your symptoms. And so, if you tell the immune system, hey, stand down, and if you're doing it with brain retraining, or if you're doing it with prednisone, a lot of people are taking prednisone as an anti-inflammatory or ibuprofen, that's quieting down and then you're not having the symptoms. And so potentially you can create, it seems like a better symbiosis with the pathogen. So there might be some pathogen present, but maybe it's not an issue and maybe it's not causing harm.

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And so it's created this better relationship with the immune system. Now, if it's in quantities that are too high, then there probably needs to be more of a reaction. But would you say that sometimes you can have the pathogen or the toxin present, and as long as the immune system is functioning correctly or understands that it's the human or the castle is still safe, or the kingdom is still safe, that you're not gonna have symptoms? Is that what you're saying?

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Yes, and Evan, you've picked up a really important point, which makes sometimes people put a barrier to this type of approach because they say, hang on a minute, we have mold in the house. Hang on a minute, I am surrounded by dangerous chemicals. This could be unsafe, brain retraining. And what we say is we are training your brain to have an appropriate response. We're not switching the response off. And therefore, when we have these threats in our environment, we want an appropriate response, which is...

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dealing with it safely and effectively, but not this chronic response. So as an example, on day one of a mold illness response, you may have had an actual dangerous exposure. So 100% mold exposure, which was dangerous, right? And so your body creates that response of, look, I've just been exposed to mold, have this allergic reaction, trigger the immune system, detoxify, et cetera. But once the brain has learned that,

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then sometimes just 5% of that original exposure can trigger this over-response. And ironically, the over-response of your immune system and nervous system compromises detoxification. So then the body can't detoxify effectively from the very threat that it is perceiving. So our over-response doesn't help the body deal with that trigger. And so that's what we're saying essentially that we're not...

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we are creating or getting the body back to a safe response. Yeah, that's helpful. So let's come back a little bit to the traumas, the little T traumas, the big T, the abuses, whatever. What do you think of the ACEs, the adverse childhood events questionnaire as a useful tool or not?

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I think the tool itself can be useful to bring self-awareness, first of all, to the person filling it in about what experiences they go through, and it can obviously give them a score. And I think the usefulness of that is to just frame that rather than think, oh no, look at all the events and situations I've had, and therefore, how am I going to deal with that? Or the idea that somehow I have to...

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manage and deal with all of my trauma before I can heal. And what we say to patients is, you may have been through that background, but there are times when you had that background, but you didn't have a chronic illness. So the chronic illness is a layer that sits on top of our trauma. It is not necessarily interwoven with the trauma. And where the neurology is very interesting is when the brain has gone through trauma, the amygdala is on high alert.

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and the insular part of the brain is on high alert. I don't know if I introduced those two concepts, but the amygdala essentially are two almond-shaped structures that sit behind our eyes, and their role is to essentially defend us from threats, so especially emotional threats, but now they are also linked to immunological threats and pain threats as well. And our insula is a brain structure that sits in the cortex, just between the limbic and the cortex, and its role is to take in all incoming data from the body, process that information,

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whether it's immune information or synomic information, and create the appropriate response that helps us survive. So both of those structures work together. And those structures, if they err on the side of caution too much and perceive that as a result of our past, we're in a dangerous environment, the emotional legacy of our past impacts on our physiological legacy going forward. So what it means is the brain becomes more prone to hyper-defending.

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because it perceives our environment as more threatening. And the difference is here in medicine and traditional medicine, you go to a hospital and there's a separate immunological department over here, a separate psychology department over here. The brain does not differentiate. The same brain structures are involved in immune responses as well as PTSD responses. It's a coordinated response. And therefore, if we've had more emotional trauma in our past, the brain is more prone to learning

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these conditioned responses, these over responses to physiological threats. And that is a connection in the neurology. So essentially it can be any stressor that can trigger it. So whether it's mental, emotional, or physical or spiritual. Yes, and therefore we've had patients who didn't have an emotional trauma, but let's say had a repeated level of infections when they were younger. Or there's always, when you really go drill down, there's always something

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that impacted their neurology as a child that then made them more prone to these neurological effects as an adult. And so what terminology do you like to use? Trauma kind of gets thrown around, nervous system dysfunction. I wanna talk in a second about the NICS, which I'm not that familiar with. And so the neuroimmune condition syndromes. And so how do you like to describe it? Because essentially we're just talking about

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feeling unsafe or these stressors that have made the human feel unsafe. Is that accurate to say? Yes. And another key piece of this is, as a child, that patient may have felt unsafe. So as an adult, the brain perceives danger not only at an emotional level, but at a physiological level. It feels it's under attack, which then explains the kingdom analogy that we over respond to threats.

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But an interesting part of this is also how we dissociate from emotions. So as a child, if we've had uncomfortable memories or emotions, the brain becomes very used to dissociating from that because it doesn't have the resources to process that information. So the brain comes up with a clever idea, which is, let's repress these emotions and memories so that when we are older and have more resources, we can then process this and think it through and have support.

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What happens then as an adult, that same brain, when we have physical symptoms, the brain learns to dissociate from those as well because it sees those as a threat in a similar way to it did as a child. And that also contributes to why people have those ACEs as a background and are more likely to have chronic conditions when they're older. But you see, the most important thing here is that when, in terms of the kind of

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I suppose, terminology that we use, it's really recognizing that this nervous system regulation or dysregulation itself is a symptom, not a cause. The dysregulation is a symptom of a combination of our background, but also once the brain has got stuck in this chronic response, it itself is dysregulating the nervous system deliberately, because it wants to be in that defense mode, right? So it's a bit like if you're running away from a wild tiger,

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not going to question your nervous system dysregulated in that moment. It's dysregulated because it is in a defense response that it thinks is appropriate. And therefore we have to get to those root causes, which is train the brain that we are no longer in that same danger. You know, as I do more mindfulness on my own personal journey of health and discovery, I find that the brain is more and more like a child every day.

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that oftentimes needs to be disciplined. And so, getting stuck in those loops and thinking a number of those thoughts, when you take a step back and you actually look at what's happening, you're able to kind of witness it and be like, hey, that's not really serving me, right? And then, you do your program and you make those changes. And that's the neuroplasticity that you talk about, is that correct? That's correct. So just picking up on firstly, something you mentioned about

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these different patterns that we have that become chronic in our mind, right? Like, so as an example, someone says some bad words to us, right? And isn't it amazing that the mature part of us has said, so what, let it go. But hey, the inner child within us, what happens? It repeats it in the mind, sometimes hundreds of times a day, right? So even though that person called us an idiot once, that person is calling us an idiot a hundred times because we keep repeating it in our minds again and again. And that's the idea of parts.

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that rather than assuming we are one personality and one mind, actually we're made up of lots of disparate parts of us, some of them childlike parts that haven't grown up since childhood because of the trauma that they went through. And so those parts keep bringing up these emotions. And a lot of the work that we do is to help patients recognize those parts so they can get well through the brain retraining, but also stay well and be able to emotionally regulate in the longer term to maintain.

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So I think that's a super important part of this. And sorry, I forgot the second part of your question there. I think you answered it. Yeah, I said it. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, I think this is like the most important work that we do here on the planet is humans. You know, I believe that really, you know, I've been thinking more and more about the meaning of life. I know we said we weren't going to go there, but, you know, I do feel like it is about personal evolution. You know, like

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becoming better every day. So many people that we see as they get older, they are not as good or as vibrant or as healthy or as safe or as intellectual or whatever, as they were potentially when they were younger, in their prime, as we say. And so I feel like that's one thing that I really wanna do. And such a big part of that is our mental and emotional health. Not only is it going to help us with

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with our health conditions, but it really is a spiritual practice, would you say? Yes. And, you know, obviously, as we present ourselves as a scientific program, so we've done lots of medical research, that's one layer that we are operating on. And medicine is operating, or traditional medicine is operating at the level of the physiology, the physical level, that we know that in healing, there are so many layers. There's an emotional healing piece, which is super important. There's a mental healing piece, which is if we don't control

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the hundreds of negative thoughts that run through our minds, how do we expect our nervous system to be regulated or our immune system to be regulated? Do we have to work at the mental level? And of course, at the spiritual level, if we lack a purpose or a meaning to our lives, then we can go down those cheeseless tunnels of depression and self whatever, loathing or self awareness that becomes self-criticism. And that doesn't help us and that doesn't help our nervous system either.

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So healing occurs at many different levels, even the energetic level. And that's what we like to do at the Gupta Programme is, we work at all of those different levels with a number of different techniques, and we use the belief systems that people have. So if somebody has a religious belief system, they can incorporate that into their brain retraining and into their sense of safety. So it's a programme that, I suppose, leverages all our own healing facets

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to get us to be in charge of our healing, to coach ourselves. Yeah, because that is more deeper and long lasting. Yeah, so let's go into that because I do know that I've had some people say, well, I'm not comfortable doing that because I'm of this religious denomination or how do you navigate that? You've kind of spoken a little bit about it. Is there anything else you'd like to touch on? Yeah, our program is definitely a neutral program in the sense that whatever your...

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religious background, spiritual background, you're an atheist, we have people from all walks of life who use our program. So it's very neutral. And what we talk about is your representation of love. So that can be anything. If you are religious, that could be Jesus, or it could be another representation. If you are spiritual, that could be the universe or a sense of love. If you're an atheist, that could be love from your partner or your child or your pet. Love is that universal concept or idea that we all share. And so

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lot of the tools and techniques we use are very neutral and the vast majority of people don't have an issue with it. Some people have to say, oh, meditation is from the East, so I don't want to do that. But actually, that's untrue. Meditation has been something which has been practiced in both the East and the West across Christianity, across a number of different religions. And if you look at monks from all traditions, they were traditionally meditative. They've done breath work, they've done inner silence, self-awareness.

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These are human concepts, not religious concepts. And therefore, people should really not feel any sense of barrier to engaging with these talks.

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So let's dive into NICS. Can you tell us what that is? Yes, it stands for neuroimmune conditioned syndromes. And what we say is that a lot of these different conditions, so let's say we start with a neuroimmune. So neuro means brain and the nervous system. Immune is obviously our immune system. So this is conditioning, learning in the brain that is causing the immune system to overreact. Conditioning essentially means learning. The brain learns to over-respond.

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And syndrome means rather than saying there's a distinct response here in the body with a distinct symptom, a syndrome says there can be a whole collection of symptoms that these patients experience. And that is because imagine a branch, imagine a tree. We can have neuroimmune conditions as one branch, which is, you know, fibromyalgia, emmy and chronic fatigue syndrome, long COVID. And we could have another branch, which is

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sensitivity reactions, environmental illness, mold illness, chemical sensitivities. We can have another branch which is pain syndromes, fibromyalgia and explained pain. We can have another branch which is autoimmune conditions and even degenerative diseases, MS. And they all look very, very different. But actually we believe they are branches of the same tree with the same roots. And the roots of these illnesses, we believe, are conditioning effects in the insula and amygdala.

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And that is obviously a hypothesis, not proven, but we're getting more and more evidence supporting this. And therefore syndrome is showing that a whole collection of symptoms are very similar. And Evan, I don't know if you notice this in clinical practice, but sometimes a patient comes to you and says, I have chronic fatigue and I also have Lyme. So does someone have Lyme disease with chronic fatigue? Or have they got ME and chronic fatigue with some Lyme? Why are these often co-occurring conditions? Because ultimately the branch is

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come into the same trunk on the same roots, we believe. And therefore, you're gonna have multiple different diagnoses depending on the unique signature of the immune system. So hence neuroimmune conditioned syndromes. And we believe rather than, and we work in partnership with obviously many people like yourselves where it's absolutely the right thing to do to look at medications, detoxification, supplements, diet changes, et cetera. And an important piece of the jigsaw is getting the brain in the right state to be able to support.

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that healing. So operating at all the different levels is so powerful. Yeah, I couldn't agree more. It really is that combination of addressing the mental, the emotional, the physical, the spiritual in a way that the body can tolerate and making those making those shifts. Brilliant. So what do you think the prevalence is right now of

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around 40 to 50% of the population are suffering from a condition that we would put under the banner of a neuroimmune conditioned response. So if you're going to include things like, you know, generalizing consistent anxiety, panic attacks, we know those are rampant now in the population. And then if we look at obviously long COVID, for instance, they estimate 5% of the US population are experiencing lingering effects from COVID infections, right, which is millions of people once again. So,

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this really is a health emergency for us. I mean, I don't know if you noticed this, Evan, in your practice, but I'm just seeing more and more people suffering from this. And even friends of mine who don't even know about my work, you talk to them and say, yes, actually, I'm having this experience, that experience. And you think that's a condition response. Your brain is creating these immune responses. And that's because we live in a more threatening environment than we did 20 or 30 years ago. We are now bombarded with pollution,

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toxins in our food, as well as elevated levels of stress. So since we had social media on our phones, we know that levels of anxiety and depression have skyrocketed, mental health problems have skyrocketed. So these all become risk factors for then these conditioning effects occurring in the brain. And our hope is that the brain was this black box. So medicine was all about what could be measured. And we didn't look at the brain. So we said, okay, what's going on in the body? Well, we can measure the guts, we can measure enzymes, we can measure blood work.

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Let's try and fix those things at the downstream level. But now that we've opened up the brain, could we now see that actually at the root cause of these illnesses, it's not those peripheral issues, it's the brain itself that is the causal mechanism. And it's as a result of this over-survival response. And if that is the case, the hope is that we could switch off these responses. Imagine if we could switch it off in MS or Alzheimer's or-

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chronic fatigue or long COVID. And actually it's the same mechanism that's occurring that's causing all of these illnesses. And I know, obviously we're saying it's a hypothesis, but imagine if we could do that. We would get to the bottom root cause of so many of our modern maladies. You know, one of the ways that I like to speak about your program and nervous system retraining is that sometimes it's 10% of the issue, you know, with physical causes and toxins being the other 90%.

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And sometimes it's 90% of the issue. And in your case, it was 100%, right? Are you seeing that same thing? What do you see? Yes, and once again, we're not dogmatic. We encourage patients to seek out whatever is going to help them get well, because that's why we're all here. We're all here because we're passionate about healing patients. And what we do say is that these things are cumulative. So let's say in your, as you're describing there, 10% is the brain and 90% is the toxins in the body.

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But if that 10% is nurtured and someone is able to calm down the nervous system, guess what? Then the detoxification systems of the body, the natural systems start improving. So the other 90% now becomes easier to deal with. Those supplements will become more effective. Those dietary changes will become more effective because now the body isn't holding itself back from the very detoxification that is required. So these things become very cumulative. And the same with the guts. We know that the gut-brain axis.

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which comes first, the chicken or the egg? So we believe humbly that the initial trigger is in the brain. But once the brain gets triggered and learns that as a conditioned response, guess what? It now tightens up the gut, causes dysbiosis, causes lack of enzymes, causes all those downstream effects that you specialize in. And of course, we can deal with the brain stuff. But if we don't deal with these downstream effects, they start lingering as well. So

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supplements, the anti-inflammatory diets, etc. are super important, which then improves the signaling back to the brain, which improves the signaling back to the gut, and that gut brain axis can also heal by doing both things at the same time. And so we find that the sum of the parts is greater than the whole, or rather the other way around. The whole is greater than the sum of the parts. So you start putting these tools together, and as they work together, they train the body and brain that we are safe, and we can come back to homeostasis. Yeah.

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And I think there are some patients, yeah, who do very well on our program. Of course, like any treatment, there are some patients who need more time. But we say to patients, keep going, keep going. We've had patients who've healed within weeks. They're back to 80, 90, 95%. We've had patients, it takes at least six to nine months to show improvement. Now, why is that? Because you are training your brain out of a survival response. Yeah, so imagine, Evan, I don't know if you find this, but when I go to a restaurant and the waiter

37:10

gives the plate to you. And the waiter will say, careful, sir, the plate is very hot. My number one instinct is to put my hand on that plate. I wanna know, why is this guy telling me what to do? I wanna know how hot this plate really is, right? So you'll put your hand on that hot plate, right? So imagine your hand then moves off very quickly. That is a survival instinct trained into our nervous system to save us from danger.

37:39

Now imagine you had to train your brain that although that plate feels very hot, actually is not a threat to us. How hard would that be? It would be very hard because your hand is going, hey, it's burning. It's really hot. This is dangerous. And you're telling your hand, no, it's completely safe, et cetera. Your brain doesn't get the message the first time, the second time, the third time. Neuroplasticity is that repetition. You're creating new neural networks.

38:09

And the analogy would be after someone has a stroke. So after someone has a stroke, there's damage in the brain, and they no longer have control over a limb, for instance. So they have to go for rehabilitation, where they are training their brain and body to move in coherence so that new neural pathways are made so eventually the brain can regain control over a limb. That takes time and repetition. And in a similar way with the brain, it is that repetition that finally

38:37

the brain gets the message that we are safe and can switch off these defensive responses. And an analogy that people find very useful is the idea of a field. So imagine you have a field and there's a river running through that field. And that river represents a neuronal pathway, which is that survival response that has got entrenched. And that ground is frozen. So that river is just flowing through that ground continuously.

39:04

And we want to reroute the river to a different response. So that river represents stimulus interpretation response. The stimulus being symptoms in our body, interpretation is we're still in danger from that threat. The response is triggering the immune system and nervous system. We want to rewire it to a new pathway. The ground is frozen. Now, the first R of our program is relaxing and regulating the nervous system. So that is thawing the ground.

39:32

So we know that the brain is not very neuroplastic or rewirable when we're stressed. Therefore, through breath work, visualization, meditation, mindfulness, we look to calm the mind down and that unfreezes the ground. Then the second R of the program is retraining the brain. So that's digging the new neuronal pathway on the right-hand path. And when you dig a pathway, the water starts now running down the right-hand pathway. So when it rains, it starts going down the right-hand pathway.

40:01

But if you just dig it once, guess what? After a couple of days, all the water starts going down the old pathway, the left hand path, because that was the old river channel. So what it requires is repetitive digging of that right hand path, all the water going on there. So eventually, now the brain has learned something new and it can no longer go along the left hand path. Now guess what? As you retrain, if you get super stressed from something external or internal, guess what? The water goes down the left hand pathway because that's its familiar.

40:31

way of doing things. So complacency sometimes happens with our patients. It is repetition. So you might get well once, but if you become complacent, the brain will go down those old pathways. So you have to retrain again. And some people think on brain retraining, oh, I got well, I got 90% well, I got 100% well. And then three months later, the illness comes back and they think, oh no, it didn't work. What do I do now? You do the same thing again to retrain the brain

41:00

Nothing has changed, right? It's just repeating the program. And that's very hard for people because people sometimes become disillusioned thinking why hasn't brain retraining worked? It has worked. It's just that the old river path is still there and it requires you to retrain again. And that's when people are committed and keep going, that's when we see the best results. I've been thinking about this lately about what is the recipe for success? And it really is that persistence

41:30

and that patience and that curiosity and that practice, creating that habit and doing it. Are you seeing that same recipe? Yes, so when we've done studies on our patients, we found that people who get the best results are the people who continue with the program for at least six months in terms of the best outcomes. And secondly, those who use the tools at least five or six times a week.

41:59

And that makes sense because it's a bit like, you can do, let's say, a yoga class or a meditation once a week. That's gonna be useful, but do you think that's really gonna regulate your nervous system? No, it is the daily practice that reinforces to the brain its new way of being, because our old habits are very easy to come by. It's a bit like going on a diet, right? If you say to yourself, I'm gonna actively diet for one day, right? Is that gonna make the effect? No, it is something which is,

42:28

going to require persistence and consistency and commitment and repetition. So eventually the brain gets the message and the body then responds. And therefore something we found incredibly useful is what we call daily Guptasize. And this has been a game changer on the app. Instead of people having to do this at home and trying to figure it all out, we say, look, if the program's tricky for you or you don't have that incentive, come on our Zoom calls every day for nervous system regulation and brain retraining, we'll take care of you.

42:58

So our coaches come on in every day and do a different practice. We have like 200 people coming on a day. And for many patients, that has meant that they're motivated. They have that sense of community because they see their friends and their other fellow retrainers on the call. And of course we can't deny the fact that when you meditate on your own, it's a very different experience to that collective intention of 200 people meditating together for their collective healing. And people are surprised going, I did that.

43:26

together and I feel healed and I don't understand why that is. Right. So that's where the more woo woo element kind of comes in. And so that daily consistent practice is what gets people well. And we say our program is a minimum 30 minutes a day. And that's something we're investing in ourselves, in our minds and our brains. And that's what gets then getting people back to health. I couldn't agree more. So then.

43:52

When we convey this to people and they say, okay, I'm gonna make this commitment, and they fall off, what's happening? Why is it hard for people to practice, to have those daily habits? It can be like any habit that we know something is good for us, but there are unconscious reasons, excuses that our brain makes not to do those things. Some of it can actually be a fear of failure.

44:21

I'm putting all this investment and effort into something, but what happens if it doesn't work? So better to not do it and not have the sense of disappointment and failure. So that can be an unconscious pattern that people may have. Another pattern that people may have is, look, life is so busy these days. And sometimes this type of approach is the last thing we do. We say, well, let me get the washing done. Let me pick the kids up from school. Let me do all of these different things. And then if I have time, I'll do this work.

44:50

And actually we advise our clients to do this first, that when you engage with these practices, the rest of your day will become much easier because you would have already regulated yourself and retrained your brain. So it really is something where people have to, well not have to, it's useful to commit and have a regularity around the practice that really will get those results. And of course people heal, they get sometimes 60, 70% better and they're like, right, I've cracked it, I've done it.

45:17

Let me throw myself back into my old habits of working too hard and pushing myself. And then they have a dip. And then they come back to us and say, what do I do now? Say nothing changes. Methodically get back to your brain retraining, train your brain, you're safe, and it will give you back that energy. But if your brain thinks you're just gonna go off and suddenly become super stressed and work 100 hour weeks, what do you think is gonna happen? There's gonna be a dip in your health again. So...

45:43

Something which is super important from a spiritual perspective is understanding the deeper meaning behind these conditions. Why do these conditions come to us? Are we just random machines being affected by random errors of these illnesses, or actually is there a deeper meaning? And when we look at that, we understand that actually these illnesses come as messages, where they inform us of something we're doing in our lives at an emotional level, at a behavioral

46:13

that isn't good for our long-term health and wellbeing. Or indeed, sometimes in the case of pain, it can be an indicator that there's some unresolved emotion within us that is looking to be released. And there's quite a lot of support and evidence for that now. So once we investigate that, we do a lot of tools on this, investigate what's the deeper reason behind this? Those aha moments open us up to using our own illness as a tool and a vehicle for self-awareness and growth.

46:43

we see people having longer term benefits and longer term health.

46:49

Yeah, it was beautifully said. I couldn't agree more. Oftentimes people come through our program doing the work that we talk about and the work that you do. And they say that chronic fatigue syndrome saved my life because it forced me to work on these things and look at these things that I didn't want to look at, that I didn't have to look at. And otherwise, you wouldn't be... Once you get through it, then you're in a place that you would never have been able to achieve potentially. If you had...

47:18

if things were going well for you, right? You know, we need that. I heard somebody give an analogy the other day is that it's the pressure that provides the growth. It's kind of like creating a diamond from coal, right? It requires pressure. And that's the same thing with stressors. If you see them as a gift in your life and you see the illnesses that you have as a gift in your life, you can then use it to facilitate growth and become a better human for it.

47:48

Yes, I love that analogy of the diamonds. The analogy we use is very similar, which is rice. So when you first have rice, it's hard, it's brittle, but you cook that rice at high heat, you boil it, and guess what? It becomes soft and fragrant and nutritious. And so in a similar way, it's a painful experience we go through, but ultimately we're better for a lot of these experiences. Now that isn't to romanticize suffering. We don't have to romanticize that.

48:15

But at the same time, if things have come into our lives that are challenging, if we reframe it as an opportunity for to go to the next highest level of our growth and evolution, then we no longer obsessed with what's going wrong, but we look at it as a vehicle for growth. And I think when our patients really click with that, they let go of their anxiety and their worry about what's going on and they heal even faster.

48:41

So we've talked about.

48:45

know, why people end up getting sick, you know, and the people who are listening to this are going to have chronic fatigue, chronic fatigue syndrome, long COVID, right? And so, and then, so the reality is, is that everybody who has those syndromes, I believe need to do a nervous system retraining program. Hopefully we've convinced them today. It's very important for you to do. So the question is why the Gupta program? How does it compare with some of these other ones? Tell me. Sure. So there are obviously lots of

49:14

great programs out there. And the first thing is that we were the first in this particular field. So we first published our program in 2007 when this type of work was not really talked about or unheard of. So we've accumulated a lot of data and a lot of expertise on what's working for most patients most of the time. So we certainly have that kind of background and that kind of legacy. And then secondly, our approach is much more compassionate than we've seen in perhaps some other programs out there. In terms of

49:41

isn't a boot camp where you do one thing and if you're not doing it right, it's not going to work for you, is a more compassionate approach, a gentler approach. Because you can't, it's a bit like, you know, if you go to the supermarket and you see a child crying there, sometimes you'll see these parents who will then tell off their child even more, scold their child even more, which isn't going to help, right? So we want to be compassionate with our brains and our mental health. So that's the second difference, I think, in ours. And thirdly, we deliver our

50:11

our program through an app. So now the ability to have an app we find is super practical and useful for patients. And that daily gut size we talked about, so having daily sessions, I think we were the only program out there that has timed daily sessions, which is super useful for people. But most importantly, as I understand it, we're the only program that is science-backed in the sense that we have independent, randomized control trials, which are showing efficacy. And that's super important to make sure that we have that belief system

50:40

do this and we can engage with this. So we've conducted a number of trials on fibromyalgia, on long COVID, on chronic fatigue syndrome, and shown that our program is far more effective than a control group or placebo. So for instance, we did a study on long COVID and we compared our program to a structurally equivalent wellness program. So that wellness program had diet, supplements, sleep, activity, had weekly webinars, et cetera, similar to our program.

51:10

So we compared both programs and after three months in this independent RCT, it found that our program is four times more effective at reducing fatigue and exhaustion and twice as effective at increasing levels of energy in patients. And we're hoping to have close to a 97% increase in energy levels. So that's a published study. We also looked at fibromyalgia. We had a 40% reduction in fibro scores after eight weeks in the active GUPT program group and 0% in the control group. So these are really...

51:39

big differences there. And we're conducting more of these types of studies as well. And we do believe in the holistic approach. So we do look at a number of different brain retraining tools. We also look at the somatic work and the somatic brain retraining. We do look at general anti-inflammatory advice, whether it's diet supplements to support patients as well. And we look at the parts work because we want people to get well, but stay well for the rest of their lives. So understanding our stress triggers and why we are the way we are.

52:09

and the opportunities of growth at that deeper spiritual level enables us to look at this, not just as an intervention to get as well, but a whole lifestyle and kind of transformation in who we are to enable long-term health. Brilliant. And I also know that you are now starting to integrate with programs like ours. We're gonna be doing this relatively soon, which is I think gonna really facilitate things a lot better.

52:38

I also really think that your price point is structured so that it's really accessible to a lot of people. And I know that you're constantly looking to evolve and improve the model and the care that you're offering and to meet people where they're at and to figure out what they need so that they can get the support that they need to move forward. So thank you for all that wonderful work. So- Yeah, and also thank you for your great work as well in this particular field in terms of helping people with-

53:06

fatigue and we're all here because we're passionate about helping people. All of us here at the GUPS program and when we pick our team leaders and the work they do, it's all like, are you passionate about this work? No one should be doing this, certainly in our clinic, for the money because we're doing this because we're passionate, we want to heal people, there's millions out there who are suffering, and we will do whatever it takes to get to that end. Yeah. Yeah, I feel like that's, you know, when you were talking about purpose and what gets you out of bed in the morning, it seems like that's...

53:34

That's your purpose and that's mine as well. How can I get people better, faster, safer, happier, utilizing the tools that are available and what's new? That sort of thing and incorporating everything possible. So brilliant. Yeah, absolutely. So we're gonna drop all the links below in the show notes. Anything you wanna share about where people can find you or any other information that you feel like we haven't spoken about yet today.

54:05

Sure, yeah. So they can come to the Guptcha program, obviously, through your link in the show notes there. And now it's super easy with the app. So people can go to the app store or play store, download the free app. And we have a 28-day free trial. So people can watch loads of videos, get lots of practical information and see if the program is right for them. That's what is important for us. And until we get the large-scale phase two and phase three trials, we offer a one-year money-back guarantee on our treatment. So people can use it.

54:33

delve deep into it. If they don't show any improvement, they can return the program, get their money back, no questions asked and use that for something else. So that also reduces the risk for patients as they embark on this journey. Brilliant. Ashok, thank you so much for joining me today. I so appreciate the work that you're doing in the world. Yeah, thank you so much, Evan. It's been a delight.