Healing With Brain Retraining in Harmony With Your Existing Treatments

Hello, and a warm welcome to our live session today with myself, Ashok Gupta. And I'm delighted that you're joining me here for our Facebook session, our YouTube session, where we're going to be talking about how we deal with multiple treatments simultaneously. Now, as many of you know, we here run a brain retraining neuroplasticity clinic treating lots of chronic diseases such as long Covid, fibromyalgia, me, cfs, mold illness, pots, a whole range of different conditions, even Lyme, that traditional medicine finds it challenging to treat. And when people come onto our program, they often ask us, I'm actually on this supplement or I'm on this medication, or I'm trying some other treatments as well. Is it okay to do the Gupta program at the same time? Or perhaps some people already try the brain retraining, and then their doctor says, actually, you need to go on to this treatment or that treatment as well. And it can be difficult to actually juggle those different types of treatments and decide whether it's a good thing, whether it's a bad thing, whether it may interfere with brain retraining. So we're here today to dispel all of those myths and really help you understand more about how you can have multiple treatments going on at the same time. But what ultimately is a mindset shift that we're going to talk about. So I think it's really valuable information whether you're on the Gupta program, if you're on another program or you're engaging with brain retraining, how you can manage this way of thinking. And just to let you know straight after today's live session, I'll be doing a Q and A on Zoom for those who don't have the Gupta program. So if you're thinking about brain retraining, you haven't bought the program and you want to have a Q and A with me. It's called Ask Ashok Anything. Well, almost. Then please do join us on the live Q and A on Zoom. And our team will put the Zoom link inside the comments section for this video. And you can also find it if you go to our website, guptoprogram.com and sign up for the free trial. Or indeed, you download our free app. You can search Gupta Program on App Store or Play Store. You can download the app and then you will see the live Q and A right on the homepage. So that's another way you can access it. Otherwise, you can access the Zoom link that our team will share with you. And now's a great time to Start the Gupta program because actually we have a new webinar series starting on Monday, 12 February. So that's 12 weeks of webinars with myself, where I walk you step by step through the brain retraining, what you need to do so you never feel on your own with the program. Now let's jump into our topic and understand what some of the challenges are that many of our retrainers face in terms of looking at multiple treatments. And of course, these days, many nutritionists, naturopaths, integrative and functional medicine doctors are recommending the Gupta Program as part of their package of treatments. And indeed, some are recommending it right at the beginning. Some people are recommending it in parallel to their treatments. Other people, they see how their treatments are working and then they recommend the Gupta Program at the end. And so it can happen anywhere along that journey. And I know that for many of you, you've been around the block, so you've tried lots of different treatments. Perhaps you recommended the program by someone you know or your doctor or a practitioner, and you're wondering, should I be keeping my existing protocols and treatments or should I let those go? And those could be medications, they could be supplements, they could be other things that you're doing, and will that interfere with the retraining? And does the Gupta program expect me to stop all other treatments? And of course, what we will say, first of all is, what's important is you have all of your symptoms checked out by your doctor. So before you try any type of brain retraining, it's important that you have those tests, you make sure that you're ruling out other causes of the condition. But if you get to a stage where your doctor says, well, there's not much else I can do for you, then generally we know that we would put this under the category of a neuroimmune condition syndrome, A nix. And therefore, it comes under the category of the types of conditions that we treat, where we believe that actually what causes these conditions is maladaptation in the unconscious brain. And through brain retraining, we can reset the system. So we reset the nervous system and immune system and get health back into the body. That's what we're here to do. And of course, if any new symptoms come along as you're engaging with retraining, once you do start, then those also need to be checked out by a doctor. So we're always making sure that we've got that there so that we're ruling out other causes. And of course, if Other treatments are making you feel worse, then we wouldn't recommend that you start the Gupta program. We would recommend that you finish off those treatment packages before starting. Because if something else is making you feel worse, then that compromises your ability to engage with the Gupta program. Now, the first point here about should we continue with our other treatments, how should we think about this? Is looking at the upstream versus the downstream symptoms. Okay. And by the way, what I would encourage you to do is I would encourage you to please share this on the your social. So please share this on your Facebook, your YouTube, perhaps share it amongst anyone else that you know. What's really great is if you can share this amongst the support groups that you may be a member of, I'm sure they would love to find out more and more about this information and it can support them in their healing. So please do share this video far and wide. We really want to get the word out there about what we're doing. So when we're talking about upstream versus downstream symptoms, we're talking about this idea that a lot of mainstream medicine is looking at treating the symptoms versus the cause of your condition. And we hear this quite often. And this is down to something called the reductionist philosophy. Now, what on earth does that mean? Well, scientific reductionism is this idea that it's penetrated a lot of science, that when we boil things down to the smallest nth degree, then that is the most accurate way of describing the situation or the world around us. Okay? So rather than treating the whole person as an individual, most of medicine looks at it in a microcosm. So we look at, right, what's going on in the cells, what chemical exchanges are going on that may be compromised. Right? So we look at the nth degree, which is why your doctor will do a whole battery of tests which looks at the chemical changes in your body. And this is also penetrating the alternative health fields as well in terms of integrated functional medicine, naturopathic and nutritional. And that, at some level is absolutely right. That we look at what tests are there that can help us determine what's going on in the body. And at the same time, lots of these great practitioners also treat it from a holistic perspective. Now, the way to think of upstream and downstream is to imagine that you're standing on a bridge and there's a river below you, and you're looking down in the water and there's somebody drowning. So you jump in the river, you manage to save that person valiantly, and you think, great, I've done a great job. I'VE saved that person for drowning, and then you see there's another person drowning. So you jump in the river, save that person, pull them out of the water, think, gosh, I did a great job there, and so on and so on. You keep saving people who are drowning. You think that that's a great job and a great role. And then what happens is that you suddenly realize, hang on a minute, who's throwing these people into the river in the first place? Right? So we need to go upstream, we need to walk up the stream to get to the root cause. And then you find out someone's throwing these people in the water. Actually, you don't need to save people downstream necessarily, if you're able to get to the root cause and the source of what is going on. And as many of you may know on our website on the research page, I just like to share this particular diagram where we look at, you know, the root causes of these types of things. Okay, So you will see here that we have this diagram. So we talk about how there are predisposing factors to getting this type of condition. So there can be genetic factors, and it's often some kind of acute psychological or physiological stress combined with a virus, a bacteria or other type of trigger. And those things combine to cause what we believe is an effect in the unconscious brain, in the amygdala and insular parts of the brain. And hopefully many of you have seen this full diagram, which is on our website@guptaprogram.com research that we then have dysfunction at number four in the amygdala and insular parts of the brain, which then impact in the prefrontal cortex. This then causes chronic sympathetic arousal in the body, which can also result in the freeze states, which can be parasympathetic arousal at the same time, immune reactivity and dysfunction, HPA abnormalities, and oxidative stress, which then cause these downstream symptoms at number six. And they can also cause some of these secondary illness cycles at number seven, which are mitochondrial dysfunction, adrenal exhaustion, nitric oxide issues, latent virus reactivation, which means we can have high viral titers and various things, and an increase in allergies and sensitivities, which contribute to then the symptoms at number six. And it's recognizing here that medicine looks to then treat those symptoms and try to understand, well, where are these symptoms coming from and how can we offset them? And what we're going to get to a conclusion here is it's okay to do that in parallel. So, of course, if there are ways in which your gut is being impacted, and there's a disruption of your gut biome. Then inevitably, looking at various supplements and various foods is a positive thing anyway. These symptoms then curl back to the brain. At number eight, the brain is hypersensitive. These symptoms come back into the brain, and the brain thinks we're in danger. We need to trigger the immune system and nervous system, and we get caught in this vicious cycle where the inputs and the outputs of the system become linked. And what we are doing here when we're looking at brain retraining is we're going to the root cause of this, which is at number four in the brain. And in addition, looking at how your body handles the symptoms. So we certainly emphasize pacing, we look at various supplements that can support your body, and we look at a generally healthy diet. The issue we have is that many of our retrainers then get obsessed by some of the treatments that look to offset the symptoms at number six, especially if they're supplements or medications or food exclusions. And they think, I can only get better if I'm excluding these foods. I can only get better if I am taking that supplement religiously. I can only get better if I do all of these binders, Otherwise there's no way I can heal. And what we try to help people understand is they may support and alleviate some of the symptoms. And at the same time, brain retraining is really the core of it, because that is, in our view, going to the root cause. Now you might say, Ashok, why do some people heal just through treatments that look at the symptoms downstream? Well, if in the brain, those conditionings, those learnings in the brain are not so deep and heavy, then someone may have a light conditioning. So that means the grooves in the brain aren't so deep. You know, like you get grooves in the record in the old vinyl records we used to have in the 70s and 80s, although they're making a comeback now, as we know, so those grooves aren't so deep. So when someone looks at alleviating the symptoms through various downstream treatments, that's enough of an alleviation that the vicious cycle then stops and doesn't reoccur. But in other people, what many practitioners tell me, and this is intuitive functional medicine, doctors, nutritionists, they tell me, look, we do some great work with people. We do heal them, we do get them better. But then the moment that another stress comes in their lives, everything comes flooding back in terms of the symptoms. And then we look to then readjust to see what we can do, because ultimately, the dysfunction is in the brain and that's what we're looking to target. All right, So the first point we want to make here is it's looking at the downstream effects versus the upstream effects. And some of the ways that people can get sidetracked is, ah, my doctors told me that my mitochondria aren't functioning correctly. It doesn't matter what I do in the brain, the mitochondria aren't functioning. And of course all of these things are linked. So we know that if there is excessive stress and stimulation of the stress system, the nervous system, the emergency responses, then we can get a cell danger response in the downstream effect in the cells themselves, which then means the mitochondria don't function correctly. As an example, some people have said, oh, well, I've got Epstein Barr antibodies and they are elevated and therefore that's the root cause. And no amount of brain retraining is going to impact on that. Well, actually, did you know 90% of the population have elevated Epstein Barr antibodies or certainly Epstein Bart antibodies of some level. And they can become elevated when our immune system becomes dysfunctional, when it's no longer optimized. And therefore these can become opportunistic viruses. But that doesn't mean that they are the root cause. The same with HHV6. 100% of people have HHV6 in their bodies. And after decades and decades of research, there is no one test or one supplement that has been consistently shown to heal these types of conditions. So we can become obsessive about diet, about this, about that. And ultimately what we encourage you to do is to really recognize that brain retraining and then other treatments, they can go side by side because ultimately they are targeting different aspects of the vicious cycle that is going on now. That leads me to my next point, which is mindset. It's not what you do, it's the way that you do it. That very famous song by bananarama from the 80s. And therefore people say, well, should I continue these treatments whilst I'm on the Gupta program? Can you continue the other treatments with a positive mindset and a focus on brain retraining? And what I mean by that is it's not what you do, it's not whether you take other treatments at the same time, but it's the mindset. Are you being swayed by these other treatments and are you believing that you can only get better if you do these other treatments? Because in that case then your focus is not on the brain retraining and realizing, look, these Treatments are helping my body cope with the downstream symptoms, but now I'm also doing brain retraining to get to the root cause. So it's being able to have that balanced mindset, focused mindset on brain retraining. And therefore it's okay if you're taking other supplements and vitamins, but it's about all food exclusion, but not becoming obsessive by that or obsessed by that instead of focusing on brain retraining. And then the third step is having the right mindset, which is faith and belief in your recovery through brain retraining. If you are brain retraining and at the same time your brain is saying, oh, but this isn't going to work because I need to have dealt with these viral titers, I need to have dealt with these low enzymes, I need to have dealt with the mold binders, otherwise I can't get. Well, then what you're doing is you're once again shifting your attention and focus to the downstream effects rather than the upstream effects. The core reason that this is happening and therefore what I encourage you to do is once again have that detached mindset when it comes to other treatments. Yes, I'm doing those things and that's okay, but I'm not thinking about them all the time or worrying about them or trying to have detective work as to whether they're working. Instead, I focus on the brain retraining and that's why we talk about a three to six month commitment. That commitment is compromised if you think something else is at the root cause of your condition. And so many times, I don't know if you've had this. We have many people who heal and recover. You know, on our website under Success Stories, you can find any 500 stories of people healing and recovery and people, yet still. Tell me, Ashok, I've healed from brain retraining. I've got my life back, I'm getting on with my life. But then I had a little dip and symptoms came back and that little worried part in my brain started thinking, oh, maybe the brain retraining didn't work. Maybe it is down to something else. And they start going onto Google and researching lots of different things and trying to find out why they're feeling this way. They start going down these rabbit holes and of course they try lots of things, but they ultimately come back to the Gupta program again. And therefore we also suggest to no longer engage in further research whilst you're on the program. And even once you heal, once you've healed, that should be your proof. Hey, I'VE healed using brain retraining. And if I have a dip, that's not because there's something new or different that has occurred. It's simply that our brains have got a little further excited again. They've got a little overstimulated, okay? And therefore a little more brain retraining is required. And the way to think about this is imagine you have a field, and in this field there is a river. And this river represents the training of your brain, what it's learned to do. The river has learnt to go along this little pathway in the field. And brain retraining is digging another path for the water. So when it rains, instead of the river flowing along this path, it now flows along a different path. So we have to dig a new pathway through repetition. And eventually the water gets diverted until the old pathway gets filled and you can't see the riverbed anymore. However, if we're getting really stressed in life or we aren't dealing with certain emotions, then, yeah, occasionally there could be a chance that the left path opens up again. And when that happens, that doesn't mean that the brain retraining hasn't worked or you need to look at something else. You simply need to redivert the pathway of the water, grow the grass and the soil over the left hand riverbed, divert the water and have a new riverbed, a deep riverbed. And therefore, in doing it that way, we no longer have to keep researching and thinking about different things. And if we're a member of a support group, it can be very disheartening when you're on retraining, that every day you're seeing all these messages, oh, I think it could be this. Oh, this research study has just come out and just shown this. There can be a whole host of different things that come out which can then distract you, deter you from your retraining. And as I've said to our retrainers many times, if suddenly a miracle pill comes along that will heal you from chronic illness, we'll be the first to tell you, right? We're not dogmatic or invested in brain retraining. We want to help you heal and get better. Therefore, we will let you know if some new piece of research says that this particular drug is effective. We're constantly researching, our whole team is, and we will even incorporate it into our protocols if it's shown to be effective. So, therefore, you can let go of research, let go of any influences from support groups and just focus on your own health and well being. So just summarising what we're essentially getting at here is first of all, recognize that brain retraining versus other treatments, they are handling different aspects of that vicious cycle. Other treatments, supplements, food exclusions, medications, they're dealing with the downstream effects and they're helping your body deal with this dysfunction or this lack of homeostasis in the body. Whereas brain retraining is going upstream to the root cause and both of them can occur in parallel. As long as, number two, your mindset is very clear, you are not attached to those other treatments that you're doing. You just let them happen. You take your supplements, but you're not investing too much energy in that. And your focus is on the brain retraining. And finally that then helps you have a belief and a faith that you can heal. Because in brain retraining, we are training our brain that we are no longer in that unsafe situation when we first got the condition and first got the illness. And we want to create that sense of safety, that sense of belief. But if you do that when you're retraining and then another part of your brain says, oh, but what about this? Oh, but what about this? What if. Then you've compromised your brain retraining, therefore let everything else go and focus just on this. Great. Now I'm just having a look at any questions that we may have that I can, that I can answer and just looking through. So thank you to everybody for your comments. I know I think people, a couple of people having a frozen screen, but hopefully that was able to resolve itself because some people are able to hear me clearly. So thank you for your comments there. The detective part. Yes, Barbara, saying the detective part was very active for me. The brain starts getting fixated, why am I feeling like this? And you become an amateur sleuth. Going on to Google and researching so much stuff. Do you know how many theories there are on what causes these conditions? You can keep researching and researching. And the way I look at it is, you know, I go to chronic fatigue syndrome conferences and in those conferences, every single aspect of medicine, every single department in medicine is represented right now. How could that be possible? How can one illness have every single department saying, hey, we think we found the root cause, we think the root cause is this or we found this abnormality. It's because ultimately, of course, you're going to find abnormalities in the body if the centralized system is over triggered, you're going to find so many downstream effects and every organ, every cell of your body is affected by this. So therefore there has to be a centralized system that we are targeting. Okay, so just looking at a few more questions and as a reminder, once again, we'll be having our live Q and A for those people who don't have the Gupta program. That will be at 1.45pm Eastern Time and 6.45pm UK, 7.45pm Europe. And our team will share the zoom link in the comments here. So if our team can just share that zoom link if you want to join us for that. Once again, that's just for people who don't have the program. Of course, our coaches and volunteers can can join as well. Irini saying, how can you saying, I love your program and I've gotten a lot of change in me over the last year. How can brain retraining help even when there might be deeper trauma? Well, many of us who have these types of conditions have a background in trauma or have had trauma with a small T, trauma with a big T, or perhaps a lack of nurture, perceived nurture when we were younger. And remember that that background simply is a risk factor for your brain learning these new types of responses. But it's not at the root cause of these responses. So many people use brain retraining. They heal and recover and then they have the energy, the awareness to then start working on their trauma with a therapist. And many of our coaches are also trained in supporting you through trauma. Yes. And now a question that comes up. What about a mouldy environment? Should we use the GUPS program where if we know that there's mould around us. And so once again, it is about leading a normal life. And many people have mold or various other conditions. They sometimes say, I need to remove myself from all other potential sources of triggers. But what do you think that tells your brain? It tells your brain at an even deeper level, wow, these things really are dangerous because now you're saying that we have to remove ourselves completely. And some people go and live in a caravan in Arizona thinking, that's the only way that I can actually heal. And what we're doing in brain retraining is saying we want to be able to live a normal life. And therefore, of course, if you know that you have a moldy environment that you live in, you may choose to look for remediation. But once you've done that, now you know that ultimately it's down to the unconscious brain overreacting. And let me explain, why is it that we don't all react to mold? You might have a household where one person reacts to it and the other people don't if everybody reacted to mold, the entire family, then we know that objectively it's the mould. Now, of course, people will say, well, there's compromised detoxification because we know there are certain genetic factors that may contribute to the ability of somebody to detoxify from mold. Now, the way we look at it is at some point in your life, if you have a mold exposure, that mold exposure may have been an extreme mold exposure combined with severe stress in the brain. And when the brain is stressed, it's very prone to learning new condition responses or these learned responses. And therefore, what can happen is 100% trigger. So 100% mold can give 100% reaction in the brain. Okay. 100% allergic reaction. But then the brain becomes efficient and the brain says, well, I know that mold is dangerous. So instead of 100% exposure triggering 100% reaction, I'm going to be efficient and I'm going to say that even 5% exposure, 10% exposure of the original exposure is enough to threaten our survival. So therefore, I will trigger my responses. And then there's an over response. So a 5% exposure can create 100% response. Okay? And therefore, and I think other someone has just shared here, in fact, which is Barbara says, I had mold toxicity, I ran away from mold, I took binders, etc for 7 years and never noticed any improvement until I started the Gupta program. Yeah, and we have stories like that, you know, all the time in terms of how we can do what we can do practically in our environment, but it shouldn't be so desperate that we, we can't live a normal life. Okay, good. Okay, well, I want to thank you for joining us on this live event. And I hope that's answered a lot of questions in terms of how do I handle parallel treatments. And so as we've discussed, number one, we want to realize that there's a difference between treating upstream symptoms and downstream symptoms. And therefore, these two approaches are handling two different aspects of the vicious cycle. And if you really want to do both at the same time, that's okay. I mean, we have practitioners who are very well known practitioners who say, actually people need to do brain retraining before we could even give them any binders or any other tools, treatments because their system is so sensitive. So the, number one, realize the difference between upstream and downstream getting to the root cause versus treating the downstream effects on the body. Number two, based on that, then the mindset is even though I'm doing some of these other treatments, perhaps you are, perhaps you aren't, but if I am, let me do them very neutrally and non attached way and instead focus on my mindset, on belief and focus on this program alone, the brain retraining. And then thirdly, with that mindset, I have faith and belief in what I'm doing. I'm going to let go of other explanations and other things saying that oh, it's down to this organic cause or that organic cause because nothing over the last 30, 40 years has been clearly shown to be the root cause. And therefore I focus on brain retraining and then I'm going to get the best outcomes possible. And it's so tempting. That little worried part will keep saying, what about this? What about this? Research this and it's now having discipline with our mind. Say no, let me focus on this, this is what I've been told and in six months time I'll do all the research that I want. But at this six months of doing the program, let me focus on this alone. Good. So once again I want to really thank you for your time. Thank you for coming onto this. And we're now going to go on to our live event on Zoom. And for those of you who are brand new to the Gupta program, if you come onto that live Zoom event, we'll also be sharing a special discount code for those of you who don't have the Gupta program. So if our team can just share the Zoom link on the the Facebook comments and also the YouTube comments sections as well, then we can make sure that people can join us. And if you can't find the link, then what you can do is you can simply go to our app store or Play store and you can download the app and there you can find on the homepage you will see a lot of the information that tells you about this particular event. And once again, some of you may also be thinking, well, hang on a minute, how do I know that this is the right thing for me? How do I know that? Lots of people can say so many different things about things they, they say can help them. But what I would say to you is we are the only program so far that have got independent randomized control trials showing effectiveness. So we recently did a study on fibromyalgia which showed that just after an eight week intervention there was a 40% drop in fibromyalgia scores, a reduction in halving of pain, halving anxiety, halving of depression. That was just after eight weeks and very low scores in the control group. And we recently conducted a study on Long Covid and that found that after three months, the GUPS program compared to a wellness program which did diet, supplements, sleep, you know, all the good stuff we know that's really good for us and can help our health. Compared to a wellness program, the GUPS program was four times more effective at increasing or the reducing fatigue and exhaustion and twice as effective at increasing levels of energy with 100% increase in energy. And you can read all of this on our website. There's published studies and therefore, hopefully that will also help with your mindset and belief that I'm in the right place. And something that's been a game changer for many retrainers is our daily Gupta size. So I'll just finish off letting you know that not only do we have weekly webinars, which are starting in a couple of weeks, that now is a great time to join the Gupta program, but we also have daily sessions Monday to Friday with our lovely coaches. And people have described it like a warm hug where every day our team will take you through the nervous system regulation and they'll also take you through the brain retraining. So even if you find the program a little difficult to follow or you find it, you don't have the time or the energy to do it. Come on, Zoom. Lovely, loving coaches will take care of you, hold your hand every step of the way. So I'll leave you with that inspiration. You can heal. You're in the right place. So thank you for watching and we will see you on the Zoom. All right, see you then. Bye, everyone.