Ep. 114 - Healing the 'Unhealable': Inside Ashok Gupta's Neuroplasticity Revolution

Summer's here, the roads are packed, and accidents can happen in an instant. If you've been injured in a car accident, don't get stuck fighting the insurance companies alone. Fight back with one call to Azari Law. Call 888-828-HURT. That's 888-828-HURT. At Azari Law, we've proudly fought for the DMV community for over 15 years. I'm attorney Lauren Collecchis, born and raised right here in the DMV, and my team and I are ready to fight for you.

Injured?

Don't wait. Don't settle for less than you deserve. With offices in Maryland, DC, and Virginia, Azari Law is standing by to help accident victims get the justice and compensation they deserve. This summer, protect yourself and your family by knowing who to call when life takes an unexpected turn. Call 888-828-HURT. 888-828-HURT. And let Azari Law fight for you. Follow us on social media at Azari.Law. That's A-Z-A-R-I dot law.

And now you're back to your original self, healed, whole, healthy, wherever you were, maybe better because you're doing new work that's better for you. And thus you can hold that new place for yourself. Hello and welcome to the Fusionary Health Podcast. It's your host, Dr. Shivani Gupta, and I have a special guest in store for you today. His name is Ashok Gupta, and he's an internationally renowned speaker, filmmaker, and health practitioner who's decided to dedicate his life to supporting people through chronic illness and achieving their potential. Ashok suffered from ME, or chronic fatigue syndrome, around 25 years ago when he was studying at Cambridge University, and 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 first well-known neuroplasticity limbic training recovery program and app known as the Gupta Program in 2007. He's published several medical papers, including randomized controlled trials on Long COVID, ME/CFS, and fibromyalgia, showing that the treatment is effective. And he's continually researching these conditions. So welcome, welcome Ashok to my podcast.

Yes, thank you so much. Thank you for the invitation, and it's lovely to be with you.

Absolutely. So when we ran into each other at A4M in Vegas this last December, I walked up to you and said, I have already heard about your program because I remember seeing some emails come through from different health coaching programs and things I'm part of. And it said the Gupta program. And I was like, the Gupta? I'm Gupta. I didn't name my program Gupta program, but wow, who is this guy? I'm so curious. We share the same last name, which As we both know, Gupta is like Smith. There's probably billions of us on this planet with this last name. Oh, yes. But I was so curious about your program. And then fast forward, I have a whole functional medicine team I'm working with for my own health. I always have that going on. And my team was working with me on my hormone replacement therapy and all these things. And they said, Shivani, everything looks so great with you, but you know what? You're always in go mode. Have you ever heard of the Gupta program? And I was like, uh, You're recommending a program to me because you think I need to calm down. So interesting because they're, they're colleagues, right? When I'm working with my practitioner team, they're, they're showing me new tools that they think are relevant. And I thought, well, if my own practitioner team is recommending it, I'm curious. And so I looked into your program. I signed up for the free trial just so I could peek around in there and understand it. And what I'm so excited about is you're bringing light to an area of healing and nervous system training and brain training that maybe everyone doesn't have time for in their practices. So when I go to functional medicine, we're treating gut hormone. We're like, we're, we're working on things. We're making sure it's not mold. That's the problem. But rarely does the practitioner then have the time to kind of switch into almost therapy mode and sit there and, and teach me those tools. Nor do health coaches necessarily go in that direction. So I think you've found this area of healing that people need to understand, especially when they have these bigger chronic health issues, and they've treated the physical, but now they need to treat that other piece of the pie. So will you kick us off by sharing your story and how you got here into this? And then we'll go into what this program is and what it can bring people.

Yes, thank you, Shivani, and thank you for that lovely introduction. So I think that like all of us, we've come to this journey, we've come to support others through our own suffering, our own health challenges, physical health challenges. And for me, that started, as you mentioned in your bio, in the mid-'90s when a lot of these illnesses like chronic fatigue or fibromyalgia, they were really dismissed often by doctors. And we were told, oh, it's in your head, or it's yuppie flu, or you're just stressed out, or it's depression. And I remember, so it was in the mid-'90s and I had got some kind of virus and the virus seemed to go away, but I seemed to feel worse and worse and worse to the point at which In my worst days, I had no energy. I was fully exhausted. I couldn't do anything. I had to crawl to the bathroom and I'd go from doctor to doctor and they would say, you know, we don't know what causes this. We don't have any treatment for it. You're on your own. And by the way, you might have this for the rest of your life. And that to a young man was like almost like a death sentence, as you can imagine. And that started my lifelong quest to try and understand these conditions. And I made a contract with the universe and I said, if I can just get myself 50% well, 80% well, something, I will dedicate the rest of my life to helping others with this condition because there's so many millions of people around the world who are suffering. And there was one moment where I came across a book in a bookstore in Cambridge, in the days when we actually looked at books and researched using books. And there was a little book that was in the self-help section because I was in the self-help section trying to figure out what I do with my condition. I think actually this is the neurology section, and a book just jutted out and it just called to me, and I don't know why I picked that book off the shelf. And it was called The Emotional Life of the Brain by Professor Joseph LeDoux, and he was the foremost expert on the amygdala in the '90s. And I read that book and I thought, this makes sense. This is the answer to what I think is going on in physical conditions. And in an ad hoc way, I managed to retrain my brain and get 100% well. And then I published my hypothesis online in '99 and then in a medical journal in 2002, and then started a clinic to treat others with the condition. And obviously since then we've done lots of randomized controlled trials and published an app and various things. So yes, that's been my, the last, well, close to 30-year journey now, really through my own troubles and then supporting others.

Wow.

That's beautiful. It's, it's true. A lot of times it's our own pain that drives us to create the solution. Once we have the solution, that happened in my case, I was so sick. Then I realized Ayurveda can heal the gut. I could have an immune system in my life. And then I just ran with it and thought if everyone just understood what Ayurveda could give us, the whole world would be different. And so it sounds like that book really just jumped into your life to show you that there was a path forward and there was a way forward. I think unfortunately fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue, a lot of these things when people are going to allopathic medicine, I know in my own case I've been called a hypochondriac or, you know, you're just making things up or we just don't have a solution for that. We don't have a surgery or a pill, so we just don't know what to tell you. That has happened to me before where I went to specialist after specialist post-college and they were like, we just don't know what's wrong with her. We're gonna call it functional hypoglycemia. Please treat yourself like a hypoglycemic, manage yourself closely, and good luck. And so that's where I think all the alternative modalities have so much power because they have such profound tools. So how did you go about after that pulling together this kind of suite of tools that you've put together and built into your program, and how did that unfold into creating the more robust, refined program that you have now?

You know, it required humility. Because in those moments when you've got better, you think, ah, I found the answer. I'm now going to heal the world and I've got this problem to everyone's issues or the solution to everyone's issues. And of course, what happens is what worked for you doesn't necessarily work in the same way for everybody else. So I did my, you know, that investment of time and energy working one-on-one with patients for around 10 years. And that's where I really refined the tools and techniques, treating lots of people with chronic diseases and saying what works for most people most of the time.

Sure.

And that's which— that actually time really helped me understand the nuances of this and how we find the right tools. And then in 2007, we published the first Brain Retraining program as a DVD program. So that was like in the time of DVDs. That was something which then meant that lots more people could benefit because I could only see a certain number of people one-on-one in my clinical practice. And I think what I really learned was that with neuroplasticity, the idea that your brain is rewirable, it's changeable. The number one thing is the investment of time and energy and repetition. Because a lot of people, we are programmed to just say, right, let me take a pill. Right. That will solve it. I have something wrong with me. Let me take a pill. But of course, in these situations, it's actually repetition that matters and doing that consistently. And all of us know if we want to, whether it's get healthy, lose weight, or go to the gym, it's about It's good habits and regularity that really makes a difference. And that we see time and time again in our patients is the real key.

Got it. So will you dive into, for my audience today, neuroplasticity and this idea of, of what's possible? Because oftentimes I think as we age, we get more stuck. We get stuck in our ways, we get stuck in our habits. And if you follow Joe Dispenza, he talks a lot about we can rewire anything. We just— we've fallen into these grooves of I wake up this way, I brush my teeth this way, and this is how I function. So is the work that you've done working with patients to really rewire so many different elements of how they do everything, and thus it rewires the system? Because when I was researching you, I saw that a lot of times when we talk about these big health issues, which maybe you can define them as well for the audience— fibromyalgia, maybe everyone doesn't understand that, chronic fatigue is kind of self-explanatory— but what is it that— because I, what I heard you say was when someone's sick those same symptoms are activating us, and then when we're activating, we're causing more symptoms. We put ourselves in these big loops. So will you dive into that as well?

Yes, of course. So I think there's lots of questions there, and I think what really helps people understand and get their head around this is to start with base principles. And I always like the biggest question of all: why are we here? Now, uh, we can have a lovely philosophical conversation about that, but let's go from a scientific perspective. We are here because over millions of years of evolution, this brain, this body, this nervous system has evolved from plant life to single-celled organisms to invertebrates, vertebrates, reptiles, human beings, mammals, and then human beings. So we contain that lineage. And it's so interesting that our DNA actually contains all of those protective elements of those previous species. So interestingly, we contain this 40% of the same DNA as a banana. Which I always just love as an incredible statistic, right?

Hilarious.

So the point is that our system is designed to survive, uh, procreate, and pass on our genes to the next generation. So we are like survival machines passing on our genes, and therefore that process is the most important process as far as the brain is concerned. And then what happens is, because survival is more important, sometimes wellness doesn't matter so much to the brain. Survival is more important. And that is the clue to so many different chronic diseases. And so let's take the example of a very common chronic disease. So let's say, take the example of Long COVID. So many people are suffering, especially in the US, from Long COVID, where they've got ongoing symptoms following COVID. So let's imagine that someone gets COVID. Now, normally their immune system, which is our protective system, and our nervous system, They click into the on position to say, "Hey, there's a threat now. Let's fight off this infection." And we fight it off. And then once we've successfully fought off COVID-19, our system goes back into the standby position. The switch goes back off. But imagine if the system feels vulnerable for some reason or under threat. It may go into a hyperactive state where it goes into the on position fights off the virus, but then gets stuck, right? I dunno if you ever have a light switch sometimes and it gets stuck in the on position and it doesn't matter how many times you press it, you can't seem to switch it back. So the system gets stuck and once it gets stuck, what will happen? It will then continuously trigger our nervous system and immune system. And this I believe is the secret to so many different modern diseases. Actually, maybe 60 to 70% of the things that someone goes to see a doctor for could be explained by this particular overprotective system. And that then means that once it gets stuck in the on position, you know, autoimmune conditions could be explained by this situation, inflammatory disease and chronic diseases like long COVID, fibromyalgia, and chronic fatigue syndrome. Then sensitivity reactions, so mold illness, Lyme, chemical sensitivities, mast cell activation could be explained by this hypothesis. And then pain, also is in fact involved in inflammatory processes. So the system gets stuck in processing pain rather than letting go of that defensive response. So we can see that it makes to me perfect sense that our systems are designed for survival. We have a threat, but our system responds in an abnormal way, causing a lot of these symptoms and conditions. And if I can explain it in a way that really brings it alive. So we call this the fairy tale analogy. So imagine you are the queen of your castle, okay? The Gupta Kingdom. There we go. The Gupta Kingdom. And you are Queen Shivani of the empire that I run.

And I run the fortress. So, yeah, the analogy works well.

Let's not stop at kingdom. Let's go for empire. Yes. So you are Queen Shivani of the Gupta Empire, and you have your castle and your kingdom, and you have an army, which is your nervous system that protects the kingdom. And you have your navy, which is your immune system that protects the kingdom.

Yeah.

So, so far so good. You have your army and your navy. Then there's a drought in the kingdom. So of course the kingdom is weaker than it would be normally. So your army and navy are weaker as well. Now imagine an invader comes over the hill. So that invader could be a virus, a bacteria, could be mold exposure, could be a chemical exposure. It could be toxin, comes over the hill as an invading army. Now normally, your army and navy can fight it off very successfully. But because they're weaker, they now spend a lot longer needing to fight off this invading army, it takes them longer. And even once they fought it off, because they're in a weakened state, and they know it, they wonder, is the invading army still hiding in the forest? Is it still hiding in the jungle? Is it behind that hill, we should still keep firing off our weapons of war, those inflammatory processes, to defend the kingdom. And so they come to their weekly meeting with, uh, Queen Shivani, and they say, Queen Shivani, we need all the resources. We need the, the food, the wheat, clean water. Everything should be channeled to us, because if we don't successfully fight off that invader, the whole kingdom will fall and it will all be over. So you think, well, that's logical. All right, they get all the resources. So now all resources get channeled to the army and navy. And suddenly now the kingdom's even weaker because it doesn't have the resources for just day-to-day processes and energy and movement. It's all about army and navy. It's all about immune system and nervous system defending. But now some of those arrows and cannonballs start falling back into the kingdom itself, which is when we start getting inflammatory overload in the body. Autoimmune effects in the body, and all of those things start magnifying in the system. And once that happens, then of course those symptoms themselves means the kingdom gets weaker, and that indicates the army and navy that we are weaker. So they start firing off their weapons of war even more, which makes the kingdom even weaker, and we get stuck in that cycle. And for me, especially if people have a background in science or physics, we know that a system can only become chronic if there's a feedback loop, that there must be a feedback loop which is keeping the system in this altered state. And so in a nutshell, that is our hypothesis. And neuroplasticity is this idea that when the army and navy come to their weekly meeting with Queen Shivani and say, hey, we need all the resources, we're under threat, you say to them, my dear generals, you've done a wonderful job at defending the kingdom, but the war is over. You can now stand down. And neuroplasticity is the idea that they won't believe you the first time or the second time or the third time, but the brain is neuroplastic. You've got to repeat it again and again and again and again until the system gets it that we are no longer under threat and can then ratchet down those defensive responses. And that, in a nutshell, is both the hypothesis and then how brain retraining works.

I love that analogy. Thank you. It makes so much sense. You know, so many women post-COVID have, even the women around me have generated or their bodies have created autoimmune conditions and it's appalling. It's shocking to me because I feel so powerless sometimes as the practitioner. I'm like, well, out of Ayurveda, let's heal the gut. Let's do this. I mean, we are always gut first in Ayurveda. Let's heal the inflammation. I've got the tools, the sleeps. I mean, I have a lot of ways to heal inflammation in the system. But you're right, part of what I'm trying to accomplish as a practitioner is showing them, which I have not indoctrinated it into a program like you have, but showing them how to shift their understanding to the fact that they can intuitively manage themselves better each and every day. But I love the example you gave because it really helps illustrate, like, you're putting— you are not consciously, but you're getting into a loop, and to unwind out of that loop is going to take a different level of understanding. And neuroplasticity work, I think people are coming at it from a lot of angles. They're like, I need more healing, let me go to an energy healer. I need more healing, let me go to, um, somatic work. I need more healing. And it's that seeking. And so when you created the program, I logged in last night to look at it before I was going to interview you, and I saw so many modules. And I saw— as soon as I thought— saw it, I thought, I am not doing this. This is a lot of work. I have no real health issue to do this work. And but I thought if I did, I would certainly go through module after module. So when you created this program, do people like taking— like, how long does it take someone to do this work before they start seeing a difference? And what led you to putting— like, there's so much in there. So do people ever finish the whole thing, or how does that work? I'm curious because I saw it and thought, okay, that's a lot, that's a commitment.

Yeah. So we, first of all, you're absolutely right. We want people to do this in a very slow, gentle paced way. And that's why it's split into levels. So you do a level first and for some people they'll do one level and that's enough to heal them. They don't need to do the whole program. And we tell people, you don't have to do the whole Gupta program. You do the pieces that fit for you. So that's the first piece.

Okay.

And so there are four levels and some people don't even get to the third or fourth level because the first two levels are enough for them. To be able to heal. So that's why we've chunked it down so you don't feel overwhelmed, that you feel like you have to do everything. And generally people can notice differences within days. So we often get people saying, hey, I did the first few modules and I'm already feeling the difference. I'm already feeling better. My nervous system already feels regulated. So even with the first few sessions, people can notice those differences. But as we know, and it's a horrible word in science, in medicine we call compliance. I hate that word.. But essentially it is keeping on going with the protocols. And this is so important because someone often heals. And this is the biggest problem we have. Someone gets better, they feel better, they think, yes, I'm healed. But then what they do is they let go of the good habits and they think that it's going to last forever. And then they have a dip and then they think, oh no, what do I do now? And we say, no, you need to keep coming back to the brain retraining because the brain constantly leaves that reinforcement. So just like, let's say you're learning a musical instrument, you can learn a musical instrument and you can learn a tune very well, but then if you don't play that tune for a year, your brain loses that wiring and that memory. So in a similar way, I'm not saying people have to do our program for the rest of their lives, but certainly they need to have the top-ups regularly just to make sure that they're keeping up with it. So yeah, we try to make the program simple and easy to use. And By the time this podcast comes out, actually, we are launching something called the 90-day program, which means that step by step, every day, people will just get a little bit of information that they need to consume each day. So it's nice and paced and they don't need to feel overwhelmed by the whole program. They just get the piece they need on that particular day. So that's making it easier for people to use. But yeah, generally we call this a 3 to 6 month program. So we want a minimum commitment of 3 months to be able to really see changes. And to come back to your question, actually, about how we're using— you know, we're coming at it different ways. We definitely see this as a holistic approach, which is why we work with practitioners like yourself to say when it comes to health, it's a holistic approach. So we've got to deal with the brain, but we've also got to deal with the guts. We've got to deal with mitochondria. We've got to deal with the muscles. All of these things work together to create, you know, good health. And of course, if somebody shifts diet or reduces their inflammation at a physiological level in the gut, that sends messages back to the brain that we are no longer in danger. So even that supports the standing down of the army and navy. So we can see how all of these things link together.

Hi, I'm Dr. Shivani Gupta, and I created Fusionary Formulas because I believe everyone deserves a natural way to support their body's health. If you struggle with joint discomfort or stiffness, Artumeric Gold delivers powerful curcumin in a form your body can truly absorb. It's science-backed with the highest quality ingredients and designed to support your body's natural inflammatory response. Take the next step in your health and wellness journey today. Visit FusionaryFormulas.com and use code FusionaryHealth for 15% off. Fusionary Formulas—ancient wisdom, modern science, maximum impact. And when you created these different modules in there, because I saw some things called Core Program, Some was called somatic. How did you bring these different modules together? Did you go and study? Was it through that patient base who came to you who said, look, this is working for me, this isn't? And have you seen certain modalities help certain groups better than others? Because I took my mom to Hippocrates Health Institute here in West Palm Beach in 2018. And whenever I, I look at my mom and I'm not happy with her health, I take her to a big detox center. So previously we've lived in India and done panchakarma for 3 weeks to fully detox. And that really helped reverse her diabetes. And then this time I thought, I can't get her to do that way, I'll try this way. And at Hippocrates, we put her diabetes almost into remission. She went from 14 units of insulin to 4. And there we did a lot of this type of work that you're talking about, but coming at it from different angles. But what I thought was fascinating was so many people at Hippocrates were there because they had cancer, they had fibromyalgia, they had these chronic diseases that you're talking about. Autoimmune, and no one could solve it. But living the Hippocrates way, significantly reducing inflammation and all those things helped. And then there were a lot of different types of health practitioners there. And what, what I thought was interesting was they required therapy for everyone. Like, it was given to you so that you could actually dig deeper and excavate what the issues are. And those therapists had a lot of tools like EMDR and were able to expose you to other tools that could go way deeper in terms of what you're actually there to heal. You're not just there to eat sprouts and drink, you know, wheatgrass juice and all the other things they have you do there. So when it comes to your, your process to come to this, what have you seen with these types of patients? Because someone listening today might have a loved one with an autoimmune condition or fibromyalgia. So what are some of those stories or results that you've seen?

Yeah, so many interesting points you've mentioned there. And I think for me, the starting point here is what is health? Like, what is healing? And for us, we talk about holistic health, and that often means, you know, dealing with stress and dealing with the gut. And actually, it's so many different levels because it's physical level, it's emotional level, it's the mental level in terms of your thoughts and the spiritual level. And at a deeper, you know, Ayurvedic, you know, you're an expert in this area. At a deeper Ayurvedic level, what they used to say was it was actually the shifts and vibrations in consciousness that then caused the physical abnormalities in the physical body. So everything starts with some kind of abnormal thought process or emotional blockage caused by the situations and events of our lives that then go on, if they're not processed, to then cause physical issues in the body.. And I'm sure you've seen this with your clients, especially the ones that don't seem to heal. Actually underlying it are emotional challenges or situations or emotions that they haven't resolved or dealt with. And so, yeah, as you say, the Hippocrates Institute, it's great that they are looking at that holistic model and approach. And that's where I think it comes down to is looking at all avenues together as a true model versus the mainstream model of reductionism and saying there's a biomedical issue, let's treat everything at the smallest possible biomedical level, which is not really fit for purpose for most conditions. So I think in terms of the results that we then see when people invest time in the program and are regular with it, then we will see— I mean, we'll talk about the studies in a little while, but generally we see studies have shown about 90% of patients improve on our program and about two-thirds of patients reach a full recovery., and we've, you know, we've got published data on that as well. As an example, Long COVID, we find that, um, on average people get about 85% improvement in health and functioning after 3 months of using our program. Fibromyalgia, I think the statistic's about 78% or something. So we're seeing similar, about 80, 80, 90% on average improvement in health and functioning after 3 months. And then obviously the more they use the program, the better and better health outcomes that they can get. And this is independent data on our clients. So yeah, that's the kind of things that we see.

That's amazing. You know, I have seen people in the health and wellness space, they're functional medicine practitioners or, or practitioners of some sort who've had Long COVID, and I watch their journey and it's so painful because when you're obsessed with your health, you're used to feeling phenomenal and you usually know which levers to pull to feel great. So I know sleep, my workout, how I eat, when I eat, the different teas I use. I know a lot of things that I do, the circadian walks in nature. Like, I have, I have quite a toolkit and I'm constantly calibrating to, okay, it's a work day today, I'm on camera 4 hours. Okay. So I knew what I had to do before to show up joyful and whole and healthy. And I also know after what I'm gonna have to do to recuperate from it. So when I see those big journeys, people seem to be investing a lot into every single thing they can do to kind of detox and clear and move through. It's fascinating to me that you're saying the program has helped 80, 90% of, of what they're dealing with so that they can come out of it recovered. I think that's a really big deal because so often with these chronic diseases, people aren't getting any good answers. They're on their own just excavating and searching and, and trying to find solutions. So when it comes to some of these bigger chronic health issues, what is the main reason that people are getting their support? Is it inflammation? Is it a neuroplasticity retraining? Is it limbic training? Is it the training to get out of your parasympathetic and into your parasympathetic? So what are those aspects that are most effective to help heal this person?

Yes, and I think the starting point, as you say, is people are looking for answers and they've been from pillar to post trying to figure this out. And the reason this is hard for mainstream medicine to solve is because it's a software problem, not a hardware problem. Sure. So what's happening is the brain has decided to hyper-defend, and therefore you can subtly, indirectly persuade the brain that we're no longer in danger through anti-inflammatories and good diet and things. And that can certainly help, and that can sometimes be enough to get people well. But if the brain still believes we're in danger, it will continue its overactive nervous and immune system responses, which is why people get stuck. And they'll say, you know, people come to us after 20 years of searching for solutions and, and then suddenly heal on our program and think, how did that even happen? Because in our view, we're getting to the root cause of the condition. And all of us in the functional space are What is root cause medicine? What is the root cause of this? And therefore, if we do that in combination with the diet and supplements, we get a much more powerful effect and a much more powerful outcome. And yes, you know, some people do the diet supplements in combination with what we do and they heal, and others just do our program by itself and that's enough. And once again, it's like there is a defined point at which someone gets the illness. So they may be completely fine and well going about their business. They get a virus, and then after that, their system is never the same. So what we say is, your body knows how to be healthy and well. It did it before you got that virus. The virus has just left a legacy in your brain and is now causing all of these downstream effects in your body in terms of gut dysbiosis and mitochondria dysfunction. If we can go to the root source and train your brain out of it, the rest of the body will actually heal itself. And you mentioned a few things that are super important. So you've mentioned, is it about sympathetic to parasympathetic? That is one part of it in the sense that regulating our nervous system makes our brain more neuroplastic. Yeah. And so, yes, we use breathwork, meditation, somatic work, a whole bunch of tools, and people can find the ones that work for them to help calm the nervous system. So that's the first starting point. But then the second one is retraining the brain. So once the brain is calmer, it's more flexible and rewirable. And that's when some of these other tools and techniques come in, which are very unique to the program, which is a 7-step process where we train a patient to recognize those danger signals on the periphery of consciousness that make us think we're under threat, and then to retrain them again and again and again throughout the day. So that's the second part, is the retraining the brain. And that incorporates something we've defined as somatic retraining, which is training your brain through a conscious awareness of your physical body. And the third aspect is what we call re-engaging with joy, which is that if your brain is in that danger threat mode, what can help it heal is actually engaging with uplifting, joyful activities that used to be part of our collective species civilization and history, such as singing, music, dancing, gardening. Things that uplift your spirit can also support and heal your brain as well. But the most important is the retraining part.

I love that. I really love that. It makes sense though, because, I mean, one big reason I fight so hard to never get sick is because I know what I feel like when I'm sick and I'm a different human. When I'm well, I can change the whole world. The minute I'm sick, I'm like, I'm so self-focused. I just want to get better. I'm almost depressed when I get a cold because I'm like, I just have no energy. Because I have no energy, I can't do anything, why do I even work so hard? You know, all these thoughts come through that are ridiculous for me. And I think, okay, I just, I just need to fight sickness. So in my home, 2 people just had a stomach bug. 2 of us didn't get it because I worked really hard that the autoimmune patient, which is my daughter, and myself, who previously had leaky gut, that we defend ourselves. And so that's so interesting cuz the point you made is pre the virus. So let's say for a lot of people it was 2020. A lot of people got COVID, um, or they got the shot, and whoever had that experience, whether it worked for them or didn't, I know so many women who are autoimmune post-COVID. And so really what you're saying is, can we help you reverse out of what happened? Because you're having a virus legacy. I love that word. You're having this legacy from this thing you had, and we're just going to reverse you back to previous. And your body knew exactly how to be healthy and whole. So we're just getting it back to there and teaching it to remember holding that state. Let go of this virus legacy. Let's just delete that, that period of history. And you'll, you'll have to keep doing the work though to hold your body there because it learned a virus legacy for a period of time until you found a way out of it. And now you're back to your original self, healed, whole, healthy, wherever you were, maybe better because you're doing new work that's better for you. And thus you can hold that new place for yourself. So I love that. I, I think that's so important because oftentimes when people go to rheumatology and they're told you have an autoimmune condition, they're also told, here's two drugs, neither is great, and good luck to you. And I've only met very few rheumatologists who have the time in their practice to teach, hey, this is lifestyle. You can really put this into remission. Which I even think remission is an interesting word. I don't want something to be in remission. I want it gone, blasted out of my life. I don't want something even thought— I don't want the thought form of something sitting dormant that could even try to come back. To your point, if we keep thinking that the invader's beyond the hill, we're going to keep thinking it's possible for him or her to come back in and cause damage and harm. And so when you've done these clinical trials, have they been done on your existing patient base and what are some of the other things that you've seen and noticed as outcomes?

Yeah. By the way, you gave a fantastic explanation there, which is what's empowering to patients is you were well before this virus came along or this mold exposure came along or whatever it was. Your body knows how to get well. We just got to get it back to that state. And that's where we feel that brain retraining and neuroplasticity is actually the vital piece because that's where the action is. That's where the memory conditioned memory, we believe, gets stored, and that's where it needs to be retrained. So in our clinical studies, for us, the objective science is super important because a lot of these types of treatments get criticism because they think we're saying it's in the mind, and we're saying, no, it's not in the mind, it's in the brain. That is a completely different way of looking at it. And so that's why it's super important to have the objective data. So we've now published 4 randomized controlled trials and 2 clinical audits. One of those clinical audits also independent. And for example, we did a study on fibromyalgia, and we found that after 8 weeks of using our program, which is a relatively short amount of time, we had a 37% reduction in fibromyalgia scores in the active group and 0% in the control group, which was also getting a therapy. And we had a halving of pain, a halving of depression, halving of anxiety, 50% increase in functional capacity. And, you know, we call ourselves a 3 to 6 month program, so those patients we believe they continued, would, would improve. Then we did a study on long COVID, and we compared our program to a wellness program. So this was really comparing apples and apples. And that wellness program had diet and supplements and sleep and all these good things. And we followed patients for 3 months, and the Gupta program was 4 times more effective at reducing fatigue and exhaustion, twice as effective at increasing levels of energy. And we had close to a 97% improvement in energy levels in the active group. And that's an independent, uh, published RCT, um, you know, which is for us a great result. And this is why we're looking for funding for larger-scale studies, because there's nothing out there that what we consider is showing these types of results. And then a recent clinical audit, similarly as I mentioned earlier, we looked at 16 different conditions, and this was an audit of our patients, so this was different. And we found that out of 16 conditions, 14 conditions were significant in terms of improvements and on average between a 60 to 100% improvement in, in health and functioning. And we've got more studies that are out there right now. So we're looking at MS, we're looking at more long COVID studies and fibromyalgia studies. And what we're hearing is that actually this approach is relevant for so many different conditions. So even depression, we're now seeing some improvements in depression. So a recent RCT just published showed that when they combine our program with some physical activity, there was a 37% improvement in depression, reduction in depression, and a 56% improvement in sleep. So what we're finding is so many new conditions are coming along and people are using our treatment, using in RCTs and seeing that improvement. So it's very exciting. And we think that pain conditions, neuroimmune conditions, autoimmune conditions, if we can find the right keys, the right lock, we could potentially heal so many different illnesses out there through the power of neuroplasticity.

Sure. I mean, there's over 100 autoimmune conditions out there, right? And there's quite a range. And a lot of times when people find me, they have one autoimmune condition and then they have a stack up on top of it. And I'm like, okay, this is complex to get into. Two more questions I have for you. And then I'd love for you to share what's new that you're excited about coming along for you. One is trauma. And one is brain bleed and stroke. So I have multiple people who I know, one who's a super fan of this podcast, who has had an experience right now of an, a parent or an elder having stroke or brain bleed. And then, so does this help with that is the first question. And then we know that some horrible percentage, some large percentage of people have had some form of trauma in their life, whether big or little or in between. And so how can this support that group as well?

Sure. So when it comes to strokes, even cancer, heart disease, we don't prescribe our program for those conditions because we don't have the evidence base. But what we can say is our program puts your body and mind in the optimal healing state where your immune system is as good as it can be. Your, your healing system is as good as it can be. And therefore we have had people even with cancer who've feel that our program has supported them in their recovery or remission from cancer. And certainly with strokes, the only similarity we can show is TBI. So traumatic brain injury. We know that we've had people with concussion and TBI who've put their improvements down to our program, and that's been anecdotal versus researched. So certainly I think that people who've had those types of brain bleeds or strokes, just simply the nervous system regulation and calming down the nervous system could facilitate repair because we know from psychoneuroimmunology, the calmer your nervous system, the more accurate and focused your immune system is. So I think that's definitely something that people can benefit from. And in terms of trauma, I'd say most of our patients can relate to the experience of having trauma in their past. And we know from studies— Kaiser Permanente did this study— that if you have had trauma in your life, you're twice as likely to get a chronic condition. Okay. And for us, the connection here is when your brain is in this hypersensitive state from trauma in your past, you're more protective against threats. Now, in traditional psychology, we would say that the brain is more protective against emotional threats, psychological threats. But imagine if the brain generalizes and it also becomes more sensitive to physiological threats, which could be bacteria, it could be food, it could be viruses, it could be toxins, whatever., and once it has that threat, it abnormally responds to those threats because it hyper-response. Just like a trauma response is a hyper-response, the bodily response is a hyper-response. And a typical example that, Siobhan, you'll see in clinical practice is we see patients, the gut is tight, it's responding as if we're in fight or flight. Digestion gets shut down, we get leaky gut, we get gut dysbiosis, we're getting bad bacteria, we're getting all of these different things. Because the gut now is responding as if it's in this danger threat mode from some kind of food almost continuously. Right. So similarly, that's what we think is happening. And that's the connection between trauma and chronic illness.

It's interesting. I have a practitioner who I'm working with and she's an entrepreneur. She owns a supplement company and she's a functional medicine practitioner. And I was talking with her over messages because we ran into each other at A4M as well.. And she's like, you know, you're just like me. I need you to read this book. A coach of mine gave it to me and I think you need it too. And it's a book called Driven. And so I'm listening to this book in my car and it talks about how if you're a driven person, like I am very driven in what I do, you have a tendency to be in your sympathetic because you, you can, I can, I know I do this. I can get on a high from being in my own sympathetic nervous system and just go, and I enjoy being in go mode. And so it was so enlightening to hear that, because then as a health practitioner, you're like, I better have an off switch because that's not healthy if you're gonna— and, and I can do that a lot. I have seasons where I'll work all day, get the kids home and fed, and then I'll just go back into the work because the work is so exciting to me. And so have you seen that when people do that, like, there's a whole category called high achiever driven people if you don't retrain your own self to drop into your parasympathetic consistently, you might just stay in the on mode. And then that has a long-term repercussion. You're going to cause damage to the whole system.

I would say that's close to 100% of our patients. Yes. And I would say the vast majority of people who get chronic diseases such as the one we've mentioned, it's not that it's— once again, we're not saying it's psychological, but their system is responding to the fact that they never rest or find it difficult to rest. So if your system doesn't get into parasympathetic mode, then the system never heals, never repairs itself, and therefore has to force itself into downtime through this overstimulation of the nervous system and immune system. And we have identified even these subtypes. So one is what we call the hyperachiever. So always feeling like our sense of self rests on achievement. Sometimes we call it the insecure overachiever, which is My sense of self is based upon my achievements and my successes. Another one is the approval seeker or people pleaser, where we are so nervous about the people around us approving of us and loving us that we are in this tense state continually just trying to get approval. A third kind of archetype is the helper or rescuer, where we've been taught as children that we're only good enough if we are constantly attending to the needs of others.. And if we don't, we feel stressed. So that means people are in go mode all the time. Perfectionists, they're in go mode all the time. People with hyper inner critics, they're on go mode all the time, right? So there's so many archetypes, but essentially it is somebody who finds it difficult to rest because psychologically they see it as a loss of sense of self, and their self is connected to achievement, conscientious approval of the people around them, all those types of different qualities.

I am so happy you broke that down. I think I, I'm half of those things. I was laughing here like, oh God, how does he know? Yeah, all of those. I don't know, but most, yes.

So at a certain level, we can actually say that at a spiritual level, these conditions come to us, and it might be a condition, or it might be a divorce, or it might be a loss of a job, or moving country, all of these big challenges come to force our awareness on that which is unconscious within us, an unconscious fear within us. So illness often forces us to reflect on how we're living life, how we're thinking about life, and adapt and reassess those patterns. And so if we look at it that way, then we don't get so stressed and upset by illness, but we can see it as a course corrector in life to bring that awareness.

I love that. I, I think it's so true. A lot of times when you get sick, it's your body saying, stop, assess, look at what's happening here. You're not going in the right direction. And, and I noticed that when I raise my hand and I, I call on functional medicine and I'm like, something's wrong. The first thing they do is a stool test and they're like, look, you were stressed out. If you pretend you're not stressed, but we can see you're in overdrive. We can see it in your own gut dysbiosis. You caused this cuz we know how great your gut looked a year ago.. And so if we could all have those reality checks with ourselves, maybe we wouldn't cause the level of disease that you're talking about, which is pretty serious. I know I've asked you so many questions today. Are there any topics we didn't cover that you would like to share about?

No, I think we, as you say, covered a wide variety of different topics. And I think the key thing that I would say to people is whatever you've learned, whatever groups have told you or practitioners have told you, healing is possible. We see it every day in our clinic, and I'm sure you do in your clinic as well. So it's really just keeping that hope that whatever happens, you will find a way to heal from your condition.

Absolutely. Absolutely. There's always hope. There's always a way. I'm 100% believer of the fact that this body was built to be healthy and whole. And as you said, in alignment, body, mind, spirit in complete alignment. And it's just about figuring out what is the toolkits that we need to add on board because like you also said, we're living in kind of a chemical soup here in life. So there, there is this likeliness that we're gonna create a, that the body will create this health struggle that we might go through, or virus, or whatever's gonna come our way. And how do we just reverse back to where we were healthiest and whole? So Ashok, it was so good to have you on the podcast today. Will you share, will you share your website where people can find you? And then in the show notes, I'll be sharing a link to his program as well if you wanna check it out. And it was so great talking to you today.

Yes, thank you so much, Shivani. Yes. So people can find us and do a free trial at guptaprogram.com. Obviously, they'll know how to spell Gupta because they know you very well. So guptaprogram.com, or you can even go to the App Store or Play Store, download the free app and start retraining your brain straight away. There's lots of free resources on there. And if people choose to take our full program, a year's program, then we offer a 1-year money-back guarantee. So until we get large-scale phase 3 trials, we offer that guarantee. And finally, something I forgot to add earlier is that the game changer for a lot of patients has been something called Daily Gupta Sise, which I'm sure you'll laugh at with the same surname. It's Daily Gupta Sise. So many patients feel alone with their condition and find it hard to put things into practice. So we say every day we have Zoom calls Monday to Friday with our trained practitioners, which take them through the nervous system regulation and the brain retraining.. And that has been an absolute game changer because now patients have motivation, they have a sense of community, they know there's a timed event happening every day, and that has really got people well and created that horrible word compliance that we talked about. And so Daily Gut to Size, those daily events, has been such a game changer, and I think that makes it just so much easier to heal.

I love that. I love that. Creating community, bringing people together, accountability to do the good that we know we need to do for our health, and, and really a community space, because a lot of times when it comes to big chronic issues that people are suffering with, they do feel alone. And so how can we create that space of healing together? I love that, Ashok. Thank you so much for coming onto the podcast. For everyone listening or watching today, thank you for joining the Fusionary Health Podcast. For more information on this podcast, all my incredible guests, and my programs, visit my website, drshivanigupta.com. And you can learn more there. And we'll see you on the next episode. See you guys next week. Thanks for joining me for this episode. Check out our sponsor, Fusionary Formulas, the potent turmeric supplement used by doctors around the US for patients with pain and inflammation. Www.fusionaryformulas.com. I'm your host, Dr. Shivani Gupta. For more, visit ShivaniGupta.com. Subscribe to this podcast in Spotify or Apple Podcasts. Click the follow button or subscribe in any of the apps that you use. That's all I've got for you on the Fusionary Health Podcast this week. You have the power to transform your health and achieve vibrant health starting today.

Summer's here, the roads are packed, and accidents can happen in an instant. If you've been injured in a car accident, don't get stuck fighting the insurance companies alone. Fight back with one call to Azari Law. Call 888-828-HURT. That's 888-828-HURT. At Azari Law, we've proudly fought for the DMV community for over 15 years. I'm Attorney Lauren Collecchis, born and raised right here in the DMV, and my team and I are ready to fight for you. Injured? Don't wait. Don't settle for less than you deserve. With offices in Maryland, DC, and Virginia, Azari Law is standing by to help accident victims get the justice and compensation they deserve. This summer, protect yourself and your family by knowing who to call when life takes an unexpected turn. Call 888-ASHOK-ATTORNEY. 828-HURT. 888-828-HURT. And let Azari Law fight for you. Follow us on social media at Azari.Law. That's A-Z-A-R-I.LAW.