Ashok Gupta explains how a physical trigger like COVID or injury can cause your brain to keep your immune system in overdrive long after the threat is gone, trapping you in a cycle of feeling tired but wired and hypervigilant. He describes how positive activity can briefly suppress these threat responses and warns against chasing alternative research instead of focusing on his program.
Experiencing that condition. So for long Covid, that may well have been when you first had a COVID 19 infection, or it may have been when you had a flu or some kind of stomach bug that may have triggered chronic fatigue syndrome or ME glandular fever, or in the case of fibromyalgia, it may have been once again an infection or some kind of physical accident or localized pain syndrome. In the case of mold, it may have been exposure to mold and a whole host of other conditions that people are using the program for. Whatever that initial event was, the brain decided at that point in time, maybe correctly, that you needed to trigger your immune system and over trigger a response. And now the danger, or the threat at least, is no longer there, or no longer there. The severity it was at the beginning. But our system, our nervous system and immune system is still responding as if the danger is still present. And in some of these conditions, the brain is not only responding to these external factors, but is also responding to our own internal symptoms, creating this vicious cycle. And on page 39 of your manual, as you know, it's this particular diagram here. And so that particular diagram is the one that shows us how the brain and body are reacting to each other, Also shows us the influence of the conscious and unconscious mind. And so with that diagram in mind, we are now aware that somewhere we've got to stop this particular diagram. We've got to interrupt this vicious eight cycle that we've identified on page 39. And we then talk about certain anecdotal observations that people may have this tired but wired feeling. You may say, well, if I'm so exhausted, why doesn't the system naturally wind down? Why am I feeling overstimulated and tired? How can that be possible? At the same time, what's going on? And there can be a very simple explanation for this. When you're in danger, this danger response is designed for short periods of time. And we call that the fight or flight response in terms of the nervous system. But secondly, even with the immune system, the immune system is meant to be triggered for short periods of time until the threat is abated, or certainly at that extreme level. But in this particular situation, if the brain thinks that you're continuously and constantly in danger, what do you think it will do? It will continue to trigger that immune response, especially if it thinks the very symptoms in your body are dangerous. So it's triggering the immune response, the nervous system response which creates that wired feeling, especially the nervous system aspect of that. It creates this wired feeling, this feeling of what we Call ants in your pants type of feeling, that even though you're, is it restless, there's an agitation and at the same time there's exhaustion. Because the nervous system once again, short periods of time, short bursts of energy when it's triggered in the fight or flight response. But if it's triggered continuously, it will use up resources, right? So it will reuse up the hormones, the neurotransmitters, all of those things that are designed to enable us to face short term dangers. And in using that all up, it then means that your body is no longer responsive. Which is why even though we talk about sympathetic response and sympathetic arousal, when they do tests on many patients, especially in chronic fatigue syndrome, they find that the body can't trigger enough cortisol. And then people think, so it can't trigger enough cortisol in response to a trigger like exercise for instance. And so people think, well, maybe the immune, maybe the nervous system is under stimulated. Well no, what's happening is it's been overstimulated and therefore it can no longer respond effectively to the needs of the body. It's used its energy and resources up, and therefore you can have that tired but wired feeling, overstimulate, use up resources, then feel exhausted. And sometimes we can even oscillate between the two. We can sometimes feel really quite wired and sometimes very, very exhausted, where we just can't feel wired anymore. So sometimes they can be opposite, sometimes they can occur. And then that second anecdotal observation, hyper vigilance, where almost our brain's resources are being used up to try and figure out a solution. Who notices that? Do you want to just raise your hand? Who notices that? Where your brain is constantly thinking, how do I get out of this? How do I solve this? Because the brain thinks it's in danger. So when it's in danger, all of the brain, so I see people have raised the actual physical hand there. That's okay, you can lower those now. Thanks. So the brain thinks I am in a state of hypervigilance because I'm trying to solve this threat. How do I solve this threat? Of course that's the logical thing for the brain to focus on and that's the hypervigilance. So it'd be hypervigilant on how you're feeling, hyper vigilance on ways to solve it. So you'll go onto the Internet, obsessively, be reading about your condition. What are the options? How have other people done that? And so therefore it's recognizing that hypervigilance is a very normal thing for the brain to be engaging in, but to observe it and not take it too seriously. And that's where we do talk about. Let's focus on the Gupta program. Now. It can be very tempting to go and research lots of other things, but we're here now. Let's focus on the Gupta program. And obviously, if any new symptoms come up, you get those checked out by your doctor. Any suggestions they have, that's okay. But for the moment, we just focus on this so that our brain isn't wandering, trying to find out solutions here, there and everywhere. And finally, this idea of glimpsing health. And this third aspect is not necessarily everybody, but some people experience this where you start. Just little glimpses of what it feels like to feel normal can occur in different situations. And we'll talk more about that another time. But often it's when we're fully engaged in an activity, when the brain is fully engaged, the prefrontal cortex and all aspects of the brain are fully engaged in something very positive and uplifting. Temporarily, the negative, unconscious threat patterns are no longer getting through. And the brain then makes a logical decision. We can no longer be in danger. If I can't actually gain this person's attention, and therefore, temporarily, it may switch off those danger responses. When I say danger, nervous system and the immune system.
