Ashok's CAM Conference Presentation To 250 Nutritionists | Ashok Gupta | Gupta Program |

We need to start with the day. I know it's very exciting upstairs. It's a really good set of companies presenting products today and the coffee was good as well. I think we're all nearly here now, so good morning everybody. Hope you're doing well. It's good to see many familiar faces and other that I haven't seen before, but I'm sure I'll get to talk to you during the day. I'd like to welcome you on behalf of camp, conferences and band to to the fifth conference of the year. So this is the fifth and final for 2015. It's gone really well this year. I'm sure you'll agree that the conferences have been actually really good this year, so I'd like to thank you all for repeating. I've seen many faces coming to all of the conferences, so thank you very much for taking the whole package and increasing your cpd. It's a good way to get loads of hours of cbd, so it's cool and we've got a really good day on Mind, Body, Nutrition and we also have the leading suppliers of the industry profession in the top floor that I'm sure you've seen. So spend some time networking and having a look at the products that are offered for you there. In terms of housekeeping, we've got a.

Busy day, so we're just about to.

Start with the first speaker and normally we allow question time at the end of the day, but Ashok, who is going to start the day, needs to go on to our workshop shortly after he finishes here. So there will be that exception. After Ashok's talk, there will be 10, 15, 20 minutes maximum of questions and then after the other two speakers, we'll just wait until the end, basically until 4 o' clock for the rest of the questions. So if you can make your questions for the following two speakers in a piece of paper ready to be handed to the organizers for the question time at 4 o', clock, that'd be great. I'll introduce Ashok Gupta. Ashok is a trained clinical hypnotherapist, NLP practitioner and meditation teacher. He spent much time researching the brain neurology of both emotional and physical conditions. His clinic has been established since 2001 and specializes in treating disorders such as ME and CFS, chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia and MCS, as well as other associated conditions. He also has a team of practitioners treating his patients all over the world. In 2007, Ashok published his therapies in the form of a DVD home study course, which has been proved very popular with patients in many countries. He's published several medical papers and initial studies on the effectiveness of the Gupta program treatment and is currently looking to raise $200,000 for a large clinical trial to take place in the United States. As I said, Ashok needs to leave to workshop after his talk.

So.

So if you have any questions, then they'll just happen on the fly. Just first come, first served. So welcome Ashok to the stage and thank you very much for your talk today.

Thank you. Okay, well, good morning, everyone. How are you all? Are you well? Good, good. Well, thank you to Miguel and Cam for inviting me today to address you about these topics around mind, body, nutrition. And I know you had that introduction, but a bit more of background. So I run a global E clinic treating these particular disorders where we have patients all over the world and we also help patients one on one as well. So it's not just through the Internet. And I think I'll start by telling you a story. So many years ago, I had a client come into my clinic who was complaining of anxiety. And so I went through the normal procedures of looking at the person's mental history, their emotional health, and we looked at diet, and I just couldn't figure out what was going on. And basically she said that she was actually a cleaner, and she said that she just felt really anxious and wired all day. And this is very interesting because she even physically showed me the movements that she would do while she was cleaning. She was like, yes, I'm hoovering. I'm just madly doing this, and I'm cleaning the windows and I'm madly doing this. And I just feel wired and anxious. I can't just seem to calm myself down. And this was going on every day, and she was just really suffering from that. And I just couldn't figure it out. I was thinking, I wonder what's going on here? So I questioned her further about her emotional health, what was actually going on, how she was feeling. And I said, are you having any caffeine? Are you drinking coffee? What's going on? She said, no, no, I don't have any caffeine. And I was completely. I just did not understand what was going on. So I said, there must be something that you're drinking or something that's giving you this wired effect, because I can't find anything specific in the emotional context you've given me. And I said, do you drink any tea? She goes, yeah, I have a bit of tea. I said, well, how many cups of tea do you have a day I don't know, 13 or 14. I was like, aha, I think we may have found what's actually going on here. And that was what first triggered my interest in mind body medicine, in the sense that that was an example of where something physical that we're putting into our bodies was directly affecting our mental health. So we talk about mind body medicine. It's also body mind medicine. So every mental or emotional condition has a physical aspect to it, and every physical condition has a mental or emotional aspect to it. And I think that's really interesting because in medicine we traditionally treat these obviously as separate, but as we know as nutritionists and alternative practitioners, we want to treat the mind and body holistically because there's a holistic basis to it. And in fact, a lot of recent research is showing that even anxiety and depression are highly related to our physical state of being. And the pro inflammatory bias, which is what we'll talk about a bit during my presentation. So let me start with asking the biggest question of all. Why are we here? I don't mean it from the sense of what is the meaning of life? The biggest question of all, but from a scientific point of view, why are we here? We're here because over millions of years of evolution, our nervous system and our immune system has been formed and refined and refined and refined to be able to deal with our environment, to handle our environment. And during that time, there have been different situations that we've been in different environments that we are exposed to, where once again, the nervous system, the immune system, the endocrine system gets refined so we can handle those situations as well as possible. Now our system is designed to defend us against the threats of the environment. And so traditionally in medicine, if it's an emotional threat, we go and see a psychologist or a mental therapist or a psychiatrist or a mental clinician. If we have a physical threat that we're being exposed to, then we see someone in the medical arena. But interestingly, I believe that the brain does not differentiate between whether a threat is mental, physical, an immune threat, etc. The body simply makes a decision. I need to defend this person from danger and make sure that they survive. Survival is absolutely key. So the key questions we want to ask today, what is the role of the brain in chronic diseases such as me, chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, and other kinds of conditions that you may be seeing in your clinic, which are the ones that I kind of specialize in treating. And the way that we're going to look at these conditions is actually they are conditions of an over defensive response. The body is stuck in an over defensive. From an evolutionary biology perspective, it is helping this person survive but is not good for their health. And I'll explain the mechanisms that may be going on and secondly, how can we use the mind body link to practically support healing in our clients? So the first part of this talk will be quite theoretical and then we'll get very practical in terms of what this means. And I want to give you some practical tools that you can use on day one with your clients that hopefully you'll find very useful. So I'm going to introduce two brain structures that I believe are involved in what I've been calling these defensive responses, the amygdala and the insula. So a bit of background. I actually had chronic fatigue syndrome myself. I had me when I was studying at university and I remember back it was a very difficult time for me when I got the condition. Some days I could barely move. I couldn't even. I had to crawl to the bathroom and I thought, oh my God, this is it, my life's over. I've been told that there's no cure for this. I'm never going to get better. What am I going to do now? It really was like a brick wall in front of me. And I realized that the medical profession wouldn't be able to help me, that I would have to try and figure this out for myself. So I did lots of research into the condition, couldn't really find any answers, and started studying the latest brain neurology of emotion and the brain neurology of what I now call defensive responses, but immune responses. And I discovered that there could be a mechanism that was actually occurring that was connecting the brain, connecting the body and causing such ill health in myself and other patients that I could see around me. So eventually I did the medical research. I got myself fully well and I published a couple of medical papers on the brain neurology of emotion and the brain neurology of these specific disorders. And since then, as you heard in the introduction, I've been treating patients all around the world with the conditions. So the two brain structures that I like focusing on are the amygdala and the insula. Now we have two amygdalae, as it were, behind our eyes. And the function of the amygdala is to protect us from danger that it detects in the environment. And traditionally in medicine, we've been thinking of the amygdala as defending us from emotional threats. So the amygdala is often referred to in psychological papers, psychiatric papers. But recently we've discovered that some of the software programming, as it were, of the immune system may also lie in the amygdala and in the limbic system part of the brain. So the emotional part of the brain, we're calling it the emotional brain, but actually it's our survival brain. It's the part of us that keeps us alive. So that software programming may well lie in the amygdala, other brain structures like the hippocampus and the hypothalamus around the amygdala. And secondly, we have a brain structure called the insula, which is not actually on this particular diagram. And the role of the insula is to take all this incoming data from the body and assess what's going on and relay that information to the other parts of the brain to create a survival response. So the amygdala is deciding whether something is good or bad and create a defensive response. And the insula is the part of us that takes all the incoming information, decides what is relevant, what's irrelevant, magnifies incoming signals and passes it onto the amygdala if we require a defensive response. Now, obviously these are stylized models. There are many parts of the brain involved. But I believe that the core of these conditions lies in these two particular brain structures. And as we said, they don't differentiate between threats. Emotional, physical, chemical, mental, etc. These are all the various threats that these brain structures detect. And that's why I believe that every mental and emotional condition has a physical component and vice versa. And so I guess there's two kinds of clients that we might meet. One is where someone just seems to be relatively fatigued and tired. There's a mild background anxiety or depressive thoughts and just generally low energy. And secondly, the kind of client where it's actually turned into a disorder, such as chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, mcs, irritable bowel syndrome, where it's gone on from just a mild background fatigue to an actual condition. And there seems to be an explosion of these conditions. You might think, well, why are more and more people getting these conditions? I believe that the way that we're living life these days is contributing to an inflammatory bias. So our diet has changed radically over the last hundred years or so to include lots more foods and nutrients which are likely to cause a more defensive response. So when I say pro inflammatory bias, I'm talking about the idea that our cells, the body, is always slightly erring on the side of caution and triggering those Slight background immune defense responses, which unfortunately causes the core of the problem. See, our immune system is designed to switch on, defend ourselves and then go back to balance, to re restore itself and to re energize. But if that immune system is slightly triggered in the background all the time, it can cause fatigue and all the other symptoms that a lot of our clients experience and never get back to balance where it can restore itself and rejuvenate itself. So diet, sleep. So we know that a lack of sleep causes our bodies to defend more, causes more pain. In fibromyalgia, the mind, we're living in times where there's more stress, there's more anxiety and depression and obviously pollution and chemicals that we're exposed to may mean that our defense responses are being triggered far more than they would have been in the caveman era. And something else that's contributing that is very interesting and very insidious in society. What do you think is the most addictive thing, the most addictive substance in the world? Sugar? Absolutely. So definitely sugar in the diet aspect is very important. I would say it's this, not necessarily an iPhone or an Android phone, any kind of phone. In the last few years we are seeing a massive experiment in society which is let's give people these very addictive devices. People are spending longer and longer time on them, longer and longer time on the apps, but also social media and it's affecting people's sleep because people are watching these phones, using these apps late into the evening. And there's actually some research showing that there's a direct impact on our immune systems, our sleep, our general levels of health, because we are using screens far longer than we should be. So in society, the way that we're living is causing this over defensive response. Our system is erring on the side of caution compared to the millions of years of evolution where we were living in fresh air, organic food, et cetera, et cetera. And if this becomes too extreme, if the anxiety becomes too extreme in combination with this pro inflammatory effect, I then believe that those clients who have that background, fatigue, general low health, then turn into clients who then get a condition like fibromyalgia and MCS and all the ones I've mentioned, okay, when the brain is aroused. So when the brain is anxious, it will feel vulnerable to milder threats and errs on the side of caution. It overprotects. So what I'm going to do now, I'm going to go through hypothesis that I use for some of these conditions, using this idea that when the Brain is anxious, it's more likely to defend itself against other threats. And there's many different brain structures involved. But we're going to focus on the amygdala and the insula. So the amygdala is just below the yellow circle where the thalamus is and the insula where it says insular cortex is just above in that purple blob in the middle. You can kind of see it there. So there's different roles that these two brain structures have, but given time, I don't want to spend too long on that. And I've already mentioned some of those. So how do people get these conditions? How do our clients get these kinds of conditions? Well, I believe that there are some predisposing factors. So there may be some genetic factors that mean that a person's immune system or their emotional system is more likely to have a defensive bias. And often people get these kinds of conditions like irritable bowel syndrome, chronic fatigue syndrome, after a period of acute or chronic stress. And often that acute or chronic stress is combined with some kind of physical stressor. So in the case of ME and chronic fatigue syndrome, about 70 to 80% of patients report having some kind of flu virus, some kind of stomach bug in the run up to getting the condition combined with acute or chronic stress. In the case of fibromyalgia, we, we often find that patients had a localized pain syndrome in one part of their body, sometimes after an accident, so often a vehicle accident that then generalizes to the entire body. So then they get pain throughout the body in multiple chemical sensitivities. They're going through a period of intense stress and they become exposed to a chemical and that might be painted petrol fumes, mould, et cetera. And a combination of these three effects then causes what we call a conditioning effect or a traumatic conditioning effect in the amygdala and the insula, the two brain structures that I spoke about. And interestingly, at number one, one of the predisposing factors that we're learning more about in chronic fatigue syndrome and me is actually that a lot of patients have hypermobility syndrome. If you have hypermobility syndrome where you're double jointed and a lot of your joints aren't so stable, you're more likely to get me and chronic fatigue syndrome. And that's very interesting. And I believe there is a link when we have that there are more signals coming from the body. If someone's got hypermobility syndrome, there are more signals going through the body to the brain to determine balance and how someone should walk and keep that balance. And those signals are being magnified by the insula, because the insula takes all that incoming information. And in the same way, in this condition, there may be a magnification of the pain signals in the body, a magnification of the immune signals from the body, which then causes that magnified perception of how ill the body is feeling. So we have that conditioning effect in the amygdala and the insula at number four. Now, what do we mean by a conditioning effect? Essentially, as we'd mentioned, the immune system, the nervous system, our anxiety system, the fight or flight system, all of these systems are designed to be switched on, deal with the threat and be switched off. But what happens if when they're switched on, the anxiety is so high that actually that switch on becomes permanent and the system cannot switch itself back to homeostasis anymore? Then we will get a condition of over defensive response, which then causes secondary problems in the body. So at number four, we have that conditioning effect. And see, I'll give you an example. I have a lot of patients who at the beginning of their me, they were working long hours and they were real achievers. So they want to push hard, they want to work hard, and they're not aware of their own health, and they're prepared to push beyond their boundaries. And they don't take the rest. Their nervous system never calms down. And so at the beginning of the condition, they may get a flu virus, but they try to push it away or ignore it and keep working beyond their limits. Or even if they do rest, the anxiety is so high that the immune system can't fight off the infection fully. Then the immune system goes into an altered state where it thinks, you know what, actually this person could die from this particular flu virus. And we know that many people with weak immune systems do die from flu and other very minor conditions every year. And so the immune system does something that from an evolutionary point of view, is something that's the right thing to do, which is have a bias towards constantly defending just to make this person survive. That makes sense, right? It would do that. The issue is that once it gets conditioned to constantly overstimulate the immune system and defensive responses, it's very difficult to switch it back to its norm. It's almost like we have emotional trauma like PTSD for the mind after someone's been in a war zone. In the same way, these conditions are a form of PTSD of the immune system, where the immune system now believes that even now it's out of the war zone. The war is still going on. Once the amygdala and the insulate have been conditioned to keep stimulating the nervous system, then we get this cycle that I'll talk about here. So at number five, we get chronic stimulation of the sympathetic nervous system, the fight or flight response. And you'll notice maybe in a lot of your clients, in the fight or flight response, the fight response is the anger and irritation response. The flight response is the fear response. So fight or flight? Fear and anger are two of those responses. We get dysfunction in the immune system, where now the immune system may be fighting off something that doesn't exist anymore or maybe very background, we get abnormalities in the HPA axis. So the hypothalamus, pituitary, adrenal axis, where the HPA axis can no longer give that person the energy that they need. Sometimes it's diagnosed as adrenal fatigue. And there can be excessive oxidative stress in the body. Basically, the body is in this altered state that is supposed to be very temporary, but now has been conditioned to be in that state almost permanently. And at number six, that then causes the symptoms. As we know, when we get flu, the vast majority of the symptoms of flu are caused by our own defensive responses to fighting off the virus. But often in a client's mind or a patient's mind, they think the symptoms are coming from the virus itself. So at number six, we get the muscle dysfunction and pain because now that the nervous system is tight, all the muscles are being held in a state of tone and tight, so that we get build up of lactic acid in the muscles regularly, which is causing the pain in the muscles. We get a lot of cognitive difficulties. So we know that when we have excessive stimulation of the nervous system, the memory centers don't work as efficiently, the recall doesn't work as efficiently. And at the top of the diagram, you'll see hippocampus dysfunction. So the hippocampus is a part of the brain which is involved in memory. And when we have overstimulation of our stress system, the hippocampus can actually get damaged and shrink and we can no longer remember things as well. I'm sure we've all had that experience right day to day stress, a stressful day, we start forgetting things. Difficult to remember. It's because our hippocampus is not in a good state at that particular point in time. Especially after chronic stress, patients experience a lot of cognitive difficulties of focus and concentration, sleep issues. So at number six, people Find that their circadian rhythms are out of whack. They're just not sleeping well. They're often not getting the good deep delta wave sleep that they require for rejuvenation. The whole autonomic system is dysfunctional, so you'll get heat problems, temperature problems. Post exertional malaise. So often patients certainly with chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia find that if they exercise, they feel much, much worse. And the reason is because the battery is being drained. This condition is like a battery where the positive and negative terminal have been connected. So every time the brain is. So every time the battery is charged up, the energy just leaks out because the system is using energy inefficiently to trigger defensive responses. Irritable bowel syndrome. So we know that when there's chronic stress, there's tightening obviously of the gut, there's an imbalance of bacteria. I'm sure that's something that you all work with every day. Glands can get swollen, indicating that aspects of the immune system are being triggered. What's very interesting is that then at number seven, we get secondary illness cycles which often become diagnoses in themselves. So adrenal exhaustion. We know that the mitochondria aren't functioning as efficiently as they should. There's a buildup of nitric oxide in the system. We might get latent virus reactivation. So some patients find that their viral titers are high. So there seems to be an excess of background infections. And this physician says, aha, We've now figured out what's causing your ME or chronic fatigue or fibromyalgia. It's because we've detected these particular viral loads in your system. But I believe that they are not the cause. But they are yet another symptom of an immune system that is not functioning correctly. And finally, allergies and sensitivities. So because the whole brain and the body are in this hyper defensive mode to protect the person, they become more sensitive and more likely to pick up other allergies and sensitivities. I'm sure if you've worked with some of these patients, they'll tell you that they become sensitive to light, sensitive to noise, sensitive to difficult foods, and they have to be very careful what they expose themselves to. Even sensitive to new medicines that they're prescribed. Now that would be fine if it wasn't for this cycle at number eight, that feeds back to the brain. That's the thing, that's the pathway that makes this into a chronic disease, which is that those very symptoms that are being triggered by over defensive responses at number five. Then the signals of feeling ill are magnified by the insula. So all the signals coming into the brain, the brain magnifies those signals, tells the person that they're in danger, and triggers more defensive response at number five. Then we get caught in this cycle of the very symptoms. The very defensive response that the body is initiating produces the very symptoms that the brain perceives as threats. And that's how we get that cycle. And once someone's in that cycle, it's very difficult to break because the brain, as we said, thinks it's doing the right thing. So I'll give you a chance just to reflect on that cycle. Now, once that cycle is in place, the different levels of stimulation and the different aspects of the conditioning effect will determine the mix of symptoms that someone gets. So you may get someone who is bed bound chronically ill, can hardly move right through to somebody who actually can work full time, but he's generally very exhausted and fatigued and finding it just living on the edge, as it were. And the reason you get this spread is because the level of symptomatology depends on how vicious this particular cycle is, how fast it's going around and around and around. And also the mix of symptoms that each client will get will be unique, depending on the symptoms that they had at number three. So whatever were the symptoms at the start will create a unique mix of reactions at number five to create a unique mix of symptoms, which is why they call these conditions syndromes. It's very difficult to have a fixed diagnostic criteria for it. They all vary. Each patient seems to have a different set of symptoms because each person is actually experiencing a different condition. And traditionally these have been called functional somatic syndromes, various other syndromes, But I call these neuroimmune conditioned syndromes. So neuro in the sense that these are the conditioning lies in the brain immune, because they are conditioning of the immune system. C for conditioning and then S for syndrome in the sense that there's a complex set of symptoms that these guys are experiencing. And I think we're in a very exciting time in medicine because traditionally, medicine has treated the body like a car. Something's gone wrong in the tire, we fix the tire. Something's gone wrong in the engine, we fix the engine. Whereas now, with this latest brain neurology, I think we're at the cusp of discovering why we're getting so many more of these new conditions, modern illnesses, modern western illnesses, in fact, and what we can do to treat them. So I think we're at a very exciting time. And all of you in the work that you're doing in your clinics, you are also on the cusp of this new medicine. And it's a very, very exciting time. Okay. Now there have been some animal studies done that have shown that actually.

Let.

Me describe the study. They take a group of rats and they give them an immunosuppressant and combine with some sweet water and obviously the rat's immune system is reduced. They then repeat that process about three or four times. Then they give the rats just sweet water without the immunosuppressant. And guess what happens with just the sweet water? The immune system actually reduces. And that's fascinating. And they believe the same things are happening in us as human beings, that when our immune systems are triggered in certain environments, our immune systems, to protect us, learn the kinds of environments that are dangerous and will trigger the immune system if it has any clue that we're in a similar environment. So if someone has a certain food that they're allergic to, if the immune system is in this over defensive response, it will then start defending itself against similar foods, just to err on the side of caution, just to make sure this person remains healthy. And when they've then looked at which parts of the brain are involved, they, they found that the core conditioning, the software of the immune system conditioning, certainly in rats, is in the insula. And the conditioning would not occur without the amygdala. So once again, it's an exciting time that we're actually discovering which parts of the brain are involved in these conditioning effects. So it's very exciting in terms of time. I don't want to spend too long on this. But there is quite a complex interplay between various parts of the brain. So the symptoms go directly into the amygdala, but also go through the periaqueductal gray, through the thalamus, into the insula, into the anterior cingulate, into the hippocampus. So I don't want to spend too long on this, but suffice to say, there are many brain structures that are involved in the production of these symptoms. And something that's quite interesting is that the anterior cingulate is involved in pain perception and deciding what we should pay attention to. And in me and fibromyalgia, we know that actually there's some abnormalities in that part of the brain where it may be fixating our mind's attention on what we think is most dangerous, which is the body. And if You've worked with those patients. You'll notice that they speak. They find it very difficult to take attention away from their bodies because of the way the brain's functioning, making sure that we're focusing on the danger. And then at the top, there's a part of the brain which is the prefrontal cortex and the orbitofrontal cortex as well. Now, let me describe how I think this process works. So we can very, I suppose, stylistically say there are two parts of our brain. There's the prefrontal cortex, which is the front part of the brain here, which is involved in rational thinking and rational thought, we might call it the intellect. And that's the part of us that they believe is current conscious perception, the part of us that is currently aware that helps us think. Then there's another part of the brain which would involve the insula, the amygdala, the limbic system, which you might call the unconscious brain, the survival brain. So you've got the prefrontal cortex and let's say, the amygdala, for argument's sake, representing all the other parts. And what happens is these guys are an interplay. This part of the brain says, right, we need to defend against the danger. And it presses the accelerator. It presses the accelerator like on a car, makes us go faster, so revs the immune system, revs the fight or flight response. That's the part of us that gets revved when we feel worried or anxious. So that part's doing that. And it sends signals up to the prefrontal cortex to say, I'm triggering this defensive response. Is that the right thing to do? And the prefrontal cortex, in association with anterior cingulate as well, thinks, okay, is this an appropriate danger or not? Actually, it's not. And it sends messages back to the amygdala and the other brain structure saying, stop. So it presses the brake to say, stop. That defensive response. So as an example, do you know what the biggest fear amongst the population is? Death. So actually, someone said, so traditionally, we think the biggest fear in the population is death. Actually, in surveys, what ranks above death is doing exactly what I'm doing right now, which is public speaking. You wouldn't believe it. In surveys, people are absolutely in dread when they have to address an audience. Their amygdalas are firing off saying, danger, danger, danger. And then this part of the brain thinks, oh, my gosh, it is dangerous. What will all these people think of me? And so the prefrontal cortex gets what we call hijacked. It can no longer press the brake and say, stop, stop. This is not a dangerous situation. The prefrontal cortex, our conscious rational mind, thinks we are in danger, right? We're in danger. And then it starts sending confirmation messages back to the amygdala, say, yep, keep going, keep stimulating the nervous system, Keep getting us into fight or flight because we are in danger. And once that happens, there's no brake mechanism anymore. And that's when we can get into a cycle of anxiety or anticipatory fear because our brake mechanisms aren't working anymore. So what do we do in that situation? If suddenly we're getting all these signals of anxiety and worry, what would we do in that situation? Sorry, go to bed. I'm off to bed then. Fine, that's my solution. Anyone else mindful? So something that we might do is then say, okay, I'm up here by my conscious prefrontal cortex. I can feel all these signals, but rather than getting carried away with them, let me maintain that observer witnessing space where the signals are coming, but I'm not going to be affected by them anymore. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. But what we'll also do is use positive self talk. So we'll say to ourselves, it's okay, I've done this before, I know what I'm talking about. They're not all going to be judging me and saying, it's horrible. I can calm everything down. So we'll send messages back to our limbic system to say, hey, we can switch off our defensive responses, calm everything down. And even in brain neurology, they know that that's how the system's working in our brains. So here the brake mechanism is our prefrontal cortex, the orbitofrontal cortex, and the anterior cingulate. That can stop us from overstimulating our nervous system and focusing too much on how our body's feeling. I could spend the rest of the next half hour explaining this really fun diagram, but I won't. I'm going to let you off. Okay, so there are some studies and initial evidence on these particular processes and these kinds of illnesses. If you're interested, you can kind of look that up down the line. The interesting one is actually the Stanford one. They've recently done some studies on patients with chronic fatigue syndrome, and they found that the prefrontal cortex anterior cingulate are performing, or in the EEG experiments that they've done, the frequency of those parts of the brain are operating as though they're in delta wave sleep. Literally. These patients brains are acting as though they are asleep even though they're awake. And the conclusion of that is that the prefrontal cortex doesn't have the power or the energy to put a brake on those defensive responses. It's been completely hijacked. So that Stanford study to me is a real confirmation that this may be what's going on in the brains of patients. It's fascinating. Still hasn't been published yet. The way to think of it is like a smoke alarm. So you know when your smoke alarm goes off when you're making toast and it goes beep, beep, beep, beep. So annoying. And you get out that tea towel and you start madly waving that tea towel. Get the smoke away in the same way. Is this smoke without fire? Yeah, I guess you can have smoke without fire in the same way. Our parts of our brain, the amygdala, are over defending against a non present danger. That's part of the pro inflammatory bias. And this is a very poignant picture. This is one of the last Japanese soldiers decommissioned, taken off duty at the end of the Second World War. Now you'd think, okay, the Second World War ended in 1945, so maybe he was taken off duty in the late 40s, early 50s. Does anyone know when this guy was actually taken off duty? The last soldier? It was actually 1984, I think. He had been defending his island. He'd been given instructions in the 40s, he'd been defending his island. He was absolutely sure that he had to defend the island. And he would be told by his seniors that the war is over, there's nothing to worry about. But he was so traumatized by the war that he kept defending. He kept defending. He kept defending. And he did not believe anything that anyone told him. It was only when his senior officers who had actually retired came to the island to tell him the war was over, did he finally decide that, okay, I believe you now the war's over, Okay, I won't fight anymore. I won't defend this island. And in the same way, the work that we're doing at our clinic is to train the brain, retrain the brain, that we are no longer in a dangerous situation. And part of that process is obviously shifting the diet from the pro inflammatory bias so that that gives the brain the optimal healing state from which it can decide that we're no longer in danger. But the most important part of our treatment is training the brain to not respond like this. And this is relevant not only for clients that we might see with those particular conditions, like ibs. And chronic fatigue, fatigue syndrome, fibro. But also patients that we see who generally are low energy, bad health, mild anxiety and depression. In the same way, their bodies and their minds are in a mild defensive response. And those are easier to switch off than someone who's actually got a full blown condition. I hope you're finding this interesting in terms of a completely new way of looking at how these conditions form and the background to them. The good news, the brain becomes conditioned to react to signals, but the brain is inherently rewirable. And I'm sure some of you looked at this whole idea of neuroplasticity. We used to think the brain was fixed, but now we know that the brain can be rewired. And that's the really good and positive news about this. We believe that this involves producing safety neurons from the prefrontal cortex, the brake system, to the amygdala and the insula. And we know that that's the system that works in animal studies. And we believe that that would be the similar system in humans as well, the brake system. We know that in some of these conditions, especially chronic fatigue syndrome, the volume of the prefrontal cortex is reduced by often 10 to 15%. So there's 10 to 15% less gray matter volume in this part of the brain. So no wonder it cannot control this defensive response. So we did a small Sail study in 2010 where we took around 33 patients. There was no control in this particular one, but it was an initial clinical audit. And we found that after a year of treatment, 92% of patients improved and 2/3 of patients reached 80 to 100% recovery, many of them going back to full time work. So overall kind of functioning assessment in that kind of area, which was an excellent result. And that study was published. And we're actually, we also did a study with the Mayo Clinic in the US where we found that there was a good positive result. Although they didn't use our clinicians, they tried to deliver the treatment themselves. So the result was not as good as we wanted. But I think when we use clinicians, which we've trained directly, the results would be good. But still it was a highly significant study. And on the back of these studies, we're trying to actually, as mentioned, raise $200,000 for an initial clinical trial, a large scale clinical trial, either in the UK or the US looking at treating about 50 to 100 patients. But we believe that with this treatment we can show that it's far more powerful than any existing treatment and will show a good result. So we're looking for that at the moment. So we've got a trial going on in Spain at the moment and Salt Lake City. That's where we're trying to raise the. The money. Now you might say, well, how do you retrain? How do you retrain the brain? Well, within our treatments, one of the treatments, one aspect, a supportive treatment, is meditation. And we know that regular meditation reduces stress and anxiety, has direct effects on the brain, that actually alters gene expression and the immune system directly. And we know in some very recent studies that actually reduces inflammation as well. And there's even a study showing it reduces heart attacks and strokes by 66%. There was a study done in the US many years ago that actually followed meditators for about 10 years compared to a control group. And even when they control for diet and exercise and all the other things, they found that the regular meditators had half the usage of medical facilities compared to those who didn't meditate. Let's just pause for a moment on that thought that we could halve the NHS budget, which is probably what we need to do right now with actually getting people to regularly meditate. It has that much of an effect on our overall general health. I mean, there's about 400 or 500 studies on meditation. There's many more in the pipeline which is showing how powerful it actually is. It's a miracle drug, and obviously part of mindfulness as well. We're talking about meditation here, but mindfulness as well has a lot of research around it which incorporates meditation as well. So that's part of our supportive treatment. But the main treatment we have is actually a. A brain retraining process that retrains the brain out of these defensive responses by persuading the brain that we're not in danger. And it's a unique set of tools and techniques that involve mindfulness, that involve nlp, so neuro, linguistic programming, breathing, visualization, all of them have to be combined together in some processes that help people retrain these biases.

Okay.

And we also obviously look at general healthy lifestyle as well. So we look at pacing, we look at diet, we look at nutrients, et cetera. And many of our patients are already seeing nutritionists. But what we say is that an important part of the mix, for us, the most important part of the mix is retraining. The very core, the very cause of why the system's imbalance, why the gut bacteria are in imbalance. For us, it's the chronic stress, and the other symptoms are the downstream effects, and those downstream Effects, as we know, the body affects the mind, those downstream effects go back and affect the mind as well. So that's another cycle between the brain and the gut as well. And so I said I'd try to make this really practical for everyone. So when a client comes into your clinic and maybe they just have that mild fatigue, we know that they're, maybe their systems are over responding or they have a full blown condition. Here's a little technique that I want to share with you. So if you take your dominant hand and really stretch it, stretch it as high as you can. As high as you can. As high as you can. Don't sue me. If you pull a muscle and now reach down for your mobile phone, it's called the mobile phone reach and you get your mobile phone out. Now, normally during seminars we don't encourage people to use their phones, but on this one we're just going to do this just for a minute. So you grab your mobile phone. Do you all have signals? All right, so there's no signal here. Okay, never mind. We can't do it live then. But we have just created a free app. So it's a non commercial app, which is a meditation app, which has loads of tools and techniques. It explains meditation, There are videos on it and it's completely free and I'd love you to share them. Well, try it yourself first. And it's something that you can share with your clients and it can really, I believe, help them in the process of recovery of whatever they're coming to see you about. And so a lot of patients will say, well, I don't know how to meditate. Do I have to go to a class? Do I have to do this or that? Oh, I've tried meditation, it doesn't work. My mind's too busy for meditation. They'll give all these different reasons and maybe we've experienced that as well. But meditation is a training course for the mind that with persistence becomes very powerful. And if someone has lots of thoughts and can't meditate, it's even more important for them to develop it and learn it. So the free app is called Meaning of Life Experiment. So at the moment it's our test app. And There are about 30 meditations, free meditations on there, guided meditations. There are also about 14 videos on meditation, mindfulness, etc. All in a timeline. And the feedback we've got so far off the test app has been fantastic. And people who never thought they'd meditate are starting to meditate. We had people who said Oh, I tried to get my teenage kids into meditation. I just thought, that's ridiculous. No way. But actually, because it's a cool, funky app, they've really got into meditation from this app. So I'd love you to download it, have a play with it, and if it's something you think would be useful, it's something very easy to give to your clients on day one and I think helps the therapeutic process as you go along and you'll see the benefits. I think there'll be an acceleration in the healing just from that process. I'll take questions just once I've finished. Anything about this.

Yes, I wondered if it was on.

Android or only on Apple. It's on both. It's on both. So you go to App Store or Play Store, type in meaning of life experiment, and the full app, which will have even more features, will be ready in January. So our full launch will be in January. And it's designed to help people with happiness, meaning and purpose. So there's meditations on there, there's happiness exercises, there's exercises about discovering your life purpose. And the great thing is it's all completely free. So hopefully that's something practically useful that you can use. And on top of that, we also look at how we can encourage people to maintain a good sleep regime as well. And that's a very important part of the mix. As I said, with modern technology now, we're finding that more and more of our clients are spending a lot of time feeling very wired on social media, on the Internet, on their PCs, on tablets, and we don't believe it's a relaxing experience. And people are doing it late into the night as well, having bad quality sleep. I'm sure we've all heard about how blue light is impacting our health at night and stopping us from having the deeper sleep. Some interesting clinical studies on that. We know that the longer someone spends on Facebook, the more depression they actually experience. It's fascinating. This was a study done, I think it was just a few months ago, and they found that when you go on social media, you see the best 1% of someone's life and you compare the best sanitized 1% of their life to all the problems you're facing in your life, and unconsciously, you then feel actually lower about yourself. In fact, all of social media, Facebook, etc. Has lots of positive benefits, but it's actually a playground for the ego of comparison. And unfortunately, it's having a big effect on our mental health. We know that anorexia is Increasing because young girls are finding themselves comparing themselves constantly on Instagram and Facebook, et cetera. We're conducting a big social experiment at the moment and we don't know what the consequences of it are going to be. And we're hoping that if there's some positive apps, maybe at least people can get addicted to some positive apps instead of things which actually might increase their levels of anxiety and depression. So coming back to this, I think maintaining good sleep cycles is incredibly important. And we know there's effects on the brain, we know there's an anti inflammatory effect and obviously where appropriate, physical exercise and the brain retraining as well. And in terms of brain retraining, part of what can help anyone that comes into your clinic is obviously the meditation, as we've mentioned, and also the mindfulness, the self awareness, the awareness of what kinds of negativities and beliefs are going on in the mind. So just the key points, just to recap what we've been talking about here. So our modern diet, our stress, our lifestyle may increase this pro inflammatory bias. And so everyone in the population really could benefit from having a low inflammatory diet and also doing some kind of relaxation every day, ideally meditation, which helps us to reduce that bias. And I know there seems to be a big trend around instead of meditating saying, well, we're doing mindfulness and we're going for a mindful walk or we're washing up mindfully. All great stuff, right? But in my mind, after teaching meditation for so many years, nothing beats the sitting down, doing nothing and meditating. Mindful walking, mindful washing up, etc. For me are not substitutes for actually spending some time going deep into that state. And once you develop that state, yes, you then develop a more meditative mind that helps you in all the activities of the day. But that deep meditation where you do nothing and you're sitting there listening to the meditation is preparing the mind to be more mindful during the day. This is a very important part of it. The amygdala and the insular conditioning could be creating this vicious cycle of illness. And changes to our diet and supplements may help us to reduce those external sources of inflammation. And the brain retraining could reduce this illness cycle which is actually going to the source of what might be causing this. And as we mentioned, regular meditation as well. So there are my contact details and if you have clients that you think could benefit from our treatment program, obviously you can let them know about our website. And at the moment, until we get a full clinical trial, a full definitive I suppose statement that we can say we've now got proof, final proof, that this is the most effective treatment. We offer a complete money back guarantee on our treatment. So if someone uses our treatment as the home study course or attends one of our webinar series, if they don't get any benefits, they can return the treatment and have a full refund. So you can't stay fairer than that.

So.

So I hope you found today's talk useful and practical. I hope you've found things that you can use with your clients on day one. So thank you for coming and good luck with your clients who have these kinds of conditions. Thank you. So I'm actually presenting a weekend workshop for patients which starts at 1 o'. Clock. So I'm going to. Unfortunately I can't spend the rest of the day with you all, but if you have any questions in this last 10 minutes or so, then I'm happy to take some questions.

Just a very quick one. What did you mean by the pacing, the PACE exercise program, or something different?

When I'm talking about pacing, what I'm referring to is patients often push themselves beyond their limits. So it's making sure that they don't push their boundaries out too far. Basically. Yeah. Hi. Oh, we've got one up there. Thank you.

Do you use EFT at all to.

Help train the amygdala to bring down or dampen down the over responses? We do so many of our practitioners, we have about 50, 15 to 20 practitioners around the world and some of them use EFT to calm things down. But we have other techniques within the treatment program as well that do a similar thing. Eft, for those of you who don't know, is Emotional Freedom Technique is the tapping. And it's quite a quick and easy tool to use with clients and it's fun as well.

Can you tell us what the mechanism of action is in meditation in the brain that has that calming effect that you've just discussed?

Sure. So some of the neurological studies, what they seem to point to is potentially this mechanism. Remember we talked about the conscious prefrontal cortex and the amygdala. So the amygdala is where we might experience emotions. It's the emotional center of the brain. The prefrontal cortex is the intellect, so the, the conscious rational thoughts. And so when we're meditating during normal life, there's constantly an interaction between these two and we're developing a stream of consciousness, a stream of thoughts and emotions. But when we meditate, what we're looking to do is to be the space within which thoughts and emotions occur, rather than being the thoughts and emotions themselves. So these two are interacting, but we maintain our observer position where we observe some thoughts in our mind. We don't get carried away with them, we let them go. We observe some more thoughts, we let them go. And what they find is through that process, the reactivity of the amygdala decreases, so the amygdala becomes less reactive. We become less emotionally reactive to the world around us. We know that the volume of the prefrontal cortex increases, so our ability to break and calm down our defensive responses becomes stronger. So the prefrontal cortex actually increases in volume. And there are other beneficial neurological effects as well on the brain. The brain also is faster, it gets into flow state quicker, where left and right hemispheres of the brain are synchronized and we're in flow state or the zone, so increases concentration and our ability to be creative and problem solve. Ok, we've got one over here.

You talked about the link between chronic fatigue and me and hypermobility.

Do you have any specific advice for.

People who are hypermobile?

This is a relatively new area, so for people who are hypermobile, we don't have any specific advice apart from retraining the brain. So the way we look at it is, throughout their lives, the body has had to take far more incoming signals to keep them stable. And because of that, that same part of the brain now is magnifying other signals. So it's just a risk factor rather than anything actively they can do about it, as far as we know.

So.

Just wonder if you would have any.

Examples when people, via rewiring the brain, actually managed to reduce or totally get rid of this vicious cycle where you said about this, including secondary symptoms like reactivation of viruses or immune system, that practice collapsed.

Yes, immediately. Yes. So most of our patients who recover actually do tell us informally, anecdotally, that then their viral titers have gone back to normal. The other problems that the physical things that had been wrong, like adrenal fatigue, have also come back to normal. And what we're looking to do as part of a study is to not only study their subjective benefit, but also the physical benefit, to assess at the physical level what's actually going on. So definitely through this process, they find their physical symptoms, their physical diagnosis changes as a result. Yeah, we had a question up there.

Yes.

You talked about the flight and fight.

Flight and fight response and how that affects the brain. Some people then go also into a freeze response. Can you talk about that?

Yes, you're absolutely right. It's actually the fight flight or freeze. The freeze response is designed that when an animal is in danger, it freezes so that it's not detected by the other animal, as well as giving it space and time to decide what to do. And certainly that freeze response occurs in human beings as well as part of the trauma response. So it's part of that mix. The freeze response sometimes happens initially and then they decide whether to fight or to fly flight. We've got a question here. I'm concerned about my grandchildren and the.

Amount of time they spend on their phones and iPads, etc. Is there any limit you can put?

Yeah, well, this is a new area at the moment. There's no official limits, government warranted limits on how much we should use social media, how much we should use phones and tablets. I believe if there's a balance and people are spending time outdoors, in nature, in fresh air, in social situations, and if that is a big part of their lives, then there doesn't need to necessarily be limits on how much time they're spending on the screen. The problem is when the screen is substituting for being in nature, being outdoors, being in social situations. And we know that some recent studies have shown that, that actually walking in nature, in green nature, specifically for half an hour to an hour a day, is far more effective for depression than antidepressants. It's free, it's healthy, but yet we want to take pills. And so getting that serotonin boost by walking in green nature every day is incredibly important. And if we do that, then that offsets any of the negative effects of being on a screen. But certainly I would say when it comes to, you see, TV is different to social media and tablets. TV is a lean back experience where the nervous system is kept relatively calm, depending on what you watch. If it's a horror movie, then obviously not. But Internet, mobile phones, tablets are a lean forward experience where you're engaging your mind, engaging your nervous system because you've got an end point you'd like to get to. So it's just like working essentially and therefore limiting that type of interaction is very important. I think we had a question from the back of the lady over there. She's had a hand up. Oh, you've got one here. Okay, we'll come to you next because I know you've had your hand up for a while.

Do you use CBT and what do you think of cbt?

Our treatment is different to cbt. It may incorporate some aspects of CB and certainly Some patients do benefit from cbt and the way we look at it is cbt. It's like when you're learning to drive. If you sat on day one in the car and said, right, I'm going to be really positive about learning to drive and I really believe that I can drive and I'm going to reduce all my negative thoughts about driving. That may well benefit you, but it doesn't mean that you're suddenly going to be able to drive better. But our treatment takes it a step further and says not only do we want to be positive about being able to drive, we actually want those 10 lessons of pressing the accelerator, driving the car, eating with a sandwich whilst you're driving, all those different skills that we learn unconsciously. It's actually training the nervous system to not react that rather than just being positive about the nervous system. So they're two separate things, but linked. Yes. The lady over there.

Yeah. I just like to have found your talk fascinating and what I'd like to ask you, do you have any experience of your program with people with Lyme disease?

Yes. In fact, I just ran a workshop with our practitioners and there was a lady who actually had a formal diagnosis of Lyme, had lots of chronic problems for years, and by using the treatment, she was no longer diagnosed with Lyme anymore. Because I believe that Lyme is a similar opportunistic infection that what happens is most of us may fight off the Lyme. Some patients, because their immune system is compromised, they don't fully fight it off. And then the symptoms that they're experiencing feedback to actually keep them in a chronic state of hyper arousal and stimulation, which prevents their immune system from fully fighting off the Lyme. So the Lyme becomes an opportunistic infection. So the Lyme itself triggers me and chronic fatigue syndrome and lies as a background dormant, not dormant. It could potentially be active. But once we retrain, once we bring our nervous system back to normal, bring our minds and bodies to the optimal healing state, then our bodies are the best mechanism by which we can fight off the line. But I'm sure there are other therapies that can help as well.

What happens to the brain when people can cope with a very hard, difficult situation, but in a very simple situation, they go to the panic and anxiety and they can't cope with it.

So just repeat the first, first part of your question, please.

What happens to the brain when someone can cope with a very difficult, you know, scary situation, but when it comes to a very simple situation, they can't cope with it and they go to the panic or anxiety mood.

Right? Okay, back to normal. Bring our minds and bodies to the optimal healing state, then our bodies are the best mechanism by which we can function fight off the line. But I'm sure there are other therapies that can help as well.

What happens to the brain when people can cope with a very hard, difficult situation? But in a very.

So there are specific situations where the brain can learn to over respond. What you're describing there is they've conditioned their brain to over respond to a particular situation situation. It's very situation specific. There are two ways of handling that we can lower the overall triggering of the nervous system, the fight or flight through meditation and mindfulness. And then specifically with that particular situation, we would do a form of brain retraining. So as an example, in nlp, in that situation, if they have any anticipatory negative thoughts about that event or situation, they would try and stop those thoughts or redirect the energy of those thoughts. They might visualize themselves in that situation responding in a very relaxed way. So you'd get them to visualize simple situation.

They go to the panic and anxiety and they can't cope with it.

So just repeat the first part of your question, please.

What happens to the brain when someone can cope with the very difficult, you know, scary situation. Situation, but when it comes to a very simple situation, they can't cope with.

Walking through that experience without having any anxiety. So that would be a form of brain retraining. Very specific about that. But certainly NLP and hypnotherapy can help.

And they go to the panic or anxiety mood.

Right. Okay. With those specific condition responses.

Can it.

Be because the body taxes the brain over situation that you calm yourself down?

I think it's about coping mechanisms. So there are specific situations where the brain can learn to over respond. It may be that someone. When it's a really big problem, it's. It's so overwhelming that what you're describing there is they've conditioned their brain to over respond to a particular situation. It's very situation specific. There's no point getting anxious about it. They just handle it in whatever way they can. But I've had people exactly like this where it's the small little situations that seem to get them stressed, but the big situations, they just seem to be able to handle it. We just have different responses to different situations that have been conditioned. How that happens and why that happens is an unknown in my mind. Ways of handling that we can lower the overall triggering of the nervous system. We've got a question here.

Given the importance of therapeutic flight through.

Meditation and mindfulness, and then specifically with that particular situation, we would do a form of brain retraining. So as an example, in nlp, in that situation, if they have any anticipatory negative thoughts about that event or situation.

Sleep, do you have any recommendations? I mean there's various programs out there, Theta sleep, Theta Alpha, whatever. Do you have any opinion on them, whether they help or do you have your own program?

Within the Meaning of Life app, there is actually specifically a get back to sleep exercise, meditation for 20 minutes that helps people get back to sleep. And people have found it very useful. Generally meditation can help if something they would try and stop those thoughts or redirect the energy of those thoughts, they might visualize themselves when one finds it difficult to get to sleep or stay asleep. And I think it's about good sleep regimes in terms of these other programs, I'm yet to see any independent in that situation receiving, responding in a very relaxed way. So you'd get them to visualize walking through that experience without having any anxiety. So that would be a form of brain retraining. Very specific about that. But certainly NLP and hypnotherapy can help. Studies that have shown that having all these various brain retraining things with different frequencies actually has an impact. I've seen some studies, but they're not really definitive studies. But I think having a good sleep regime in the evening is very important. So for a lot of people who have overreactive fight or flight mechanisms the last two or three hours before they go to sleep, instead of engaging their minds through social media, tablets, etc. It's useful to have lean back at those specific conditioned responses. Activities which might be reading a book, chatting to friends, socializing and relaxing. TV is okay, but anything which is a lean forward activity would then stop them from being able to get the sleep. We want to reduce the amount of blue light that they're experiencing. I think it's about coping mechanisms at night. So any screen which is close to their eyes and in terms of yes, there's many different things that can help with having a good sleep regime. Relaxing the mind before they go to sleep is incredibly important. Keeping the room cool, maybe having eye patches so that they don't have the light coming in in the morning. And having a good sleep regime just means that they get longer and deeper sleep. And a lot of, I believe a lot of may be that someone when it's a really big Problem, it's so overwhelming there's no point getting anxious about it. They just handle it in whatever way they can. But I've had people exactly like this where it's the small little situations that seem to get them stressed but the big situations they just seem to be able to handle it. We just have different responses to different symptoms that we're experiencing in modern life are due to bad nutrition and a lack of good decent. If we get those two right, can help us in a broad range of conditions.

Can't they change the color of screens to give them a more ready orientation?

You can, you can. So on Apple and Android now you can download an app that removes the blue light spectrum from the app so that when you're from the screen so when you're using it it doesn't have that effect of waking up the brain before you go to that have been conditioned. How that happens and why that happens is an unknown in my mind. Sleep. I don't know what the app is called now so it's called F Lux. F Lux. We've got a question here.

Given the importance of therapeutic deep.

Alright, so just so that you sleep.

Do you have any recommendations? I mean there's various programs out there. Theta sleep, Theta alpha, whatever. Do you have any opinion on them? Whether they help or do you have your own.

Sometimes you have to jailbreak the iPhone to make it work just to confuse you. Now you have to unlock the phone to be able to access the different color parts of the of the phone. Yeah, I don't know if you can do it on a computer screen. I don't know. Got a question.

Hi. So when you go into flight or fight response, I'm very interested in how the different parts of the brain communicate. So if your amygdala is firing within.

The Meaning of Life app, there is actually specifically a get back to sleep exercise meditation for 20 minutes say because.

You'Re up there standing doing public speaking. Say it's your first time, you're terrified and something's conditioned minutes that helps people.

Get back to sleep and people have found it very useful. Generally meditation can help if someone finds it difficult to get to sleep or stay asleep. And I think it's about good sleep.

Regime to see that as a threat. So your amygdala is firing off. Now usually we think that means the prefrontal cortex rational mind will shut down and you will lose your ability. But sometimes some people can use that to actually channel their, you know and actually do a really good talk. So can you explain what's going on there in terms of different parts of the brain communicating why that might be.

I have to be brief about it, but let me come back to the. Back to the slide. Yeah, okay. So you're in that situation. The amygdala sees all these 200 people in front of you, starts sending. In terms of these other programs, I'm yet to see any independent studies that have shown that having all these various brain retraining things with different frequencies actually has sending signals and neurotransmitters up to the prefrontal cortex. And actually the overall impacts. I've seen some studies, but they're not really definitive studies. But I think cortex to say that we are in danger when it sends those signals. Having a good sleep regime in the evening is very important. So for a lot of people who have overreactive fight or flight, prefrontal cortex can become emotionally hijacked. It doesn't necessarily shut down. It can actually accelerate the process. So it actually magnifies the signals and thinks yes, we are in danger and becomes high hyperactive. If it becomes hyperactive, it then sends confirmation messages back to the amygdala. As I said, the amygdala is kind of around here. Mechanisms the last two or three hours before they go to sleep. Instead of engaging their minds through social media, tablets, etc. It's useful to have lean back activities which might be reading a book, chatting to friends, social and continues the stimulation of the hormones and neuroblazing and relaxing. TV is okay, but anything which is a lean forward activity transmitters. Now what happens is anxiety is anticipatory. So once the person actually starts speaking, those mechanisms generally tend to shut down. Because once you've started the talk, it's too late to be anxious, right? You're already in it. And the mind and the prefrontal cortex start focusing on the content of your talk and the content of your delivery and therefore anticipatory thoughts go into the background. Then the amygdala thinks, well we clearly activity would then stop them from being able to get the sleep. We want to reduce the amount of blue light that they're experiencing at night. So any screen which is close to their eyes and can't be in such a dangerous situation because the prefrontal cortex is now no longer focusing on the dangers, therefore we're not in danger anymore. In terms of. Yes, there's many different things that can help with having a good sleep regime. Relaxing the mind before they go to sleep is incredibly important. Keeping the room cool maybe and then it shuts down. So when we so and I'm sure we've all, we've all done this with children, sometimes if they're suddenly really frightened or they're about to kind of explode in some anticipatory fear about something, we sometimes try and distract them with something else. When we distract the prefrontal cortex, it no longer sends those confirmation messages back. On the flip side, we don't want to use distraction as a way to get away from core emotions that we are repressing and not experiencing. So it's a very quick short term technique. Rather than eyepatches saying so that they don't have the lights coming in in the morning. And having a good sleep regime just means that they get longer and deeper sleep. And I believe a lot of symptoms that we're experiencing in modern life are due to bad nutrition and a lack of good, decent deep sleep, if we get those two right, can help us in a broad range of conditions and permanent distraction. And some would say that actually often in our lives busyness is a way of distracting ourselves from those core emotions stuck in the amygdala that we're not actually facing. A question here.

Two things. One is the Efflux app. You can also get it through computer, there's a link so you can put it on your desktop or whatever.

Okay, great.

My question was your app, do you have to be online to use it.

Or can you just I change the color of screens to give them an order?

You can, you can. So on Apple and Android now you.

Can download, download, and then you've got it on your phone.

We're currently finalizing that feature. So at the moment the meditations are streamed, so you need to have a WI fi connection download an app that removes the blue light spectrum from the app so that when you're from the screen, so when you're using it, it doesn't have that effect of waking up the brain before you go to tune or an Internet connection to stream the meditations. But we're developing a functionality in the app that you can download them if you are offline as well. And we're also developing a feature on the app which will be called the how are you feeling? Feature. So you click on the how are you feeling? It then comes up with a list of common moods. So I'm feeling angry, I'm feeling stressed, I'm feeling tired. The list of 20 or 30 moods. And when you click on that mood, it gives you a set of solutions and a selection of exercises, meditations, mental Things that you can do to help you come out of that particular mood or situation. We have a question over there. Sleep. I don't know what the app is called. No, so it's called F Lux. Alright, so just to let you know, sometimes you have to jailbreak the iPhone to make it work. Just to confuse you now. Oh, we're finishing. Ok. So I want to thank once again, Cam, for inviting me today and I hope you've enjoyed today's talk and good luck with this kind of work. Thank you. Thank you so much.

Thank you very much, Ashok for that talk. And now we have a little break, so you're welcome to pop upstairs and grab a drink. And.

You have to unlock the phone to be able to access the different colour parts of the phone. Yeah, I don't know if you can do it on a computer screen. I don't know. Got a question.

Hi. So when you go into Flight or.

Fight Network and when we come back, what time would we come back? Half past, I think so half past. Then we've got Dr. Barry Sears. So looking forward to that. Thank you.

Sponse. I'm very interested in how the different parts of the brain communicate. So if your amygdala is firing off, say because you're up there standing, doing public speaking, say it's your first time, you're terrified and something's conditioning you to see that as a threat. So your amygdala is firing off. Now, usually we think that means the prefrontal cortex rational mind will shut down and you will lose your ability. But sometimes some people can use that to actually channel their, you know, and actually do a really good talk. So can you explain what's going on there in terms of different parts of the brain communicating? Why that might be.

I'll have to be brief about it, but let me come back to the. Back to the slide. Yeah. Okay. So you're in that situation. The amygdala sees all these 200 people in front of you, starts sending signals and neurotransmitters up to the prefrontal cortex and actually the overall cortex to say that we are in danger. When it sends those signals, the prefrontal cortex can become emotionally hijacked. It doesn't necessarily shut down, it can actually accelerate the process. So. So it actually magnifies the signals and thinks, yes, we are in danger and becomes hyperactive. If it becomes hyperactive, it then sends confirmation messages back to the amygdala. As I said, the amygdala is kind of around here and continues the Stimulation of the hormones and neurotransmitters. Now what happens is anxiety is anticipatory. So once the person actually starts stimul speaking, those mechanisms generally tend to shut down. Because once you've started the talk, it's too late to be anxious, right? You're already in it. And the mind and the prefrontal cortex start focusing on the content of your talk and the content of your delivery, and therefore anticipatory thoughts go into the background. Then the amygdala thinks, well, we clearly can't be in such a dangerous situation because the prefrontal cortex is now no longer focusing on the dangers, therefore we're not in danger anymore. And then it shuts down. And I'm sure we've all done this with children. Sometimes if they're suddenly really frightened or they're about to kind of explode in some anticipatory fear about something, we sometimes try and distract them with something else. When we distract the prefrontal cortex, it, it no longer sends those confirmation messages back. On the flip side, we don't want to use distraction as a way to get away from core emotions that we are repressing and not experiencing. So it's a very quick, short term technique rather than permanent distraction. And some would say that actually often in our lives, busyness is a way of distracting ourselves from those core emotions stuck in the amygdala that we're not actually facing. Facing question here.

Two things. One is the Flux app. You can also get it through a computer. There's a link so you can put it on your desktop or whatever.

Okay, great.

My question was your app, do you have to be online to use it or can you just click download and then you've got it on your phone?

We're currently finalizing that feature. So at the moment the meditations are streamed. So you need to have a wi fi connection or an Internet connection to be able to stream the meditations. But we're developing a functionality in the app that you can download them if you are offline as well. And we're also developing a feature on the app which will be called the how are you feeling? Feature. So you click on the how are you feeling? It then comes up with a list of common moods. So I'm feeling angry, I'm feeling stressed, I'm feeling tired. The list of 20 or 30 moods. And when you click on that mood, it gives you a set of solutions and a selection of exercises, meditations, mental things that you can do to help you come out of that particular mood or situation. We have a question over there. Oh, we're finishing. Okay. So I want to thank once again, Cam, for inviting me today and hope you've enjoy today's talk and good luck with this kind of work. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Ashok, for that talk. And now we have a little break, so you're welcome to pop upstairs and grab a drink and network. And when we come back. What time do we come back? Half past, I think so. Half past. Then we've got Dr. Barisias. So looking forward to that. Thank you.