It's Not in Your Head | ME/CFS FIBROMYALGIA MCS EHS ADVICE |

Well, hello, and a warm, warm welcome to our Facebook Live where we're talking about it's not all in your head with myself, Ashok Gupta. So I'm so glad that you can join me here. And I know that we've got people from all over the world joining us and it might take a couple of minutes for people find us on the, on the stream. So what I'd love to do is just first of all say hello to people who are joining us. So wherever you are in the world, if you'd like to just let us know where you're tuning in from, then it means that we can say hello to you and give you a bit of a shout out. So you want to do that as well. And in terms of what we're going to be covering today, we're going to be covering this topic of it's not all in your head. Now, how many times do we hear that perhaps you suffer from me, chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, multiple chemical sensitivities, even electrical sensitivities, and a whole host of other conditions which are related to these particular ones. And they're not treated particularly well by the medical profession. And people just, you know, out of ignorance, they will say, oh, it's just all in your head. You just snap out of it. You know, you can just get better. Just be positive. And unfortunately, it shows a lack of understanding of what causes these conditions. That of course, if you suffer from this, you may sometimes question, is it all in my head? Because all of these people are saying it. But of course, when it comes down to the science, the reality of this, it definitely is not all in our head. And I'll be explaining more about what, why that is what the research shows and actually how there is a very obvious explanation as to what might be going on in these conditions and how people are getting better based on this explanation. Now, before we go any further, let's just see where people are tuning in from. So if you'd like to just let me know. Okay, so we've got Katie from California, hello to you. Jonelle from Yukon Territory, hello to you as well. And someone mentioning that they are suffering from POTS and also a pain syndrome. So, yeah, POTS as well is something that we treat and also pain syndromes where there's no obvious explanation. Now, obviously with all of these conditions, it's about getting a diagnosis from your doctor first where they've been able to rule out all other conditions before they actually say that perhaps you have one of these other conditions because it often is a diagnosis of exclusion. And we're trying to get that changed, obviously, and found a particular biomarker that helps people recognize what actually causes this condition. Now, let me explain a bit of background to myself and how I got involved in all of this work for the, for those of you who are new to myself and the Gupta program. So I actually suffered from ME and chronic fatigue syndrome myself at university, and I had it for a number of years. And I remember, you know, really in my darkest moments, and some of you may have experienced this, where I literally had to crawl to the bathroom. It got that bad one of those days. And I never had it as severely as some people where they're bed bound, but it was never as good as some people have it where they can still lead a normal life or somewhere in between. I just thought, you know, my life's over. Here's this brick wall. I have no understanding of what causes this condition. I'm absolutely exhausted all the time with so many different symptoms, immune symptoms, irritable bowel, a huge, deep sense of fatigue, inability to move, and a whole, you know, post exertional malaise where I couldn't actually do any activity for long periods of time. And all the other symptoms that if you, if you know about the condition, you'll be familiar, familiar with. And I didn't know what to do. And I thought, okay, well, I have to do my own research because no one's really understanding what's going on. I would go and see doctors and they would say, you know, what, with probably depression, why don't you take these antidepressants or, you know, just snap out of it, you'll be fine. You know, really quite insulting things in a lot of ways because I was never someone that would make up illness. I was never a hypochondriac. And suddenly, here's this illness that, you know, completely defied logic. And of course, you do get influenced by what people say and you think, well, maybe I am making it all up in my head. You know, it's a very, very difficult time. And I, you know, I want to empathize with you. If you're going through that right now, where people are lacking that understanding and that compassion, to understand that this really is a real condition, that it affects us in so many different ways. And then, you know, I would try and go from doctor to doctor, I would even go to alternative health practitioners and not really get any benefit. And so I started researching the brain neurology of emotion and trying to understand, well, what causes this condition, I can feel something going on in my brain that I'm observing. What exactly is this? And after many years of persistence and research, I managed to understand what I thought could cause the condition. And I gradually was able to, what I call retrain my brain out of this. So it's not all in your head, but I do believe the root cause is in the brain. And I'll come on to what the main difference is between those two statements. And I managed to get myself fully 100% better. And I then set up a clinic to help others. And I spent many years working one on one with patients, around 10 years or so. And I got to the stage where I recognized what I thought were the best treatments, the best strategies to help the majority of people. And I then published my treatment as a home study course because only a certain number of people could see me at my clinic. So I published the treatments in 2007. And since then, we've had thousands of patients all over the world who've been using the treatment, who've been getting better, full recoveries, partial recoveries. And it's been a real labor of love and a real joy to be able to help people, because that is my life's quest to really help people with these conditions who aren't being served well by the existing provision. So coming back onto what it means that it's all in your head, I don't even understand really what that statement means. But if someone says that, what they're really saying is you're either making up the symptoms, so that could be one explanation, they're actually making it up. And actually you don't feel that bad, but you're looking for sympathy, or perhaps, you know, a hypochondriac, which obviously can be very insulting for someone who's genuinely experiencing this illness. The other explanation of it's all in your head could be that people think, well, actually the symptoms aren't real, but your brain or your mind is making you think that they are real. So you're imagining the symptoms somehow in your mind, and it's all in your head. There could be so many other explanations, such as functional somatic syndromes, where people think that there's a magnification of these symptoms and the signals going up to the brain, but it's not a real illness. There can be so many different explanations. This is what was the prevalent, prevalent way of looking at it in the 80s and 90s. It even used to get called yuppie flu in the, in the 90s, which also was Very insulting for people who were genuinely experiencing it. And it was only in the kind of late 80s and the 90s that many scientists turned their attention to this condition rather than it being used or treated as a psychological condition. And they realized that, hang on, there are so many different physiological and immune observations that we can make that shows that these people are suffering from a real condition. This is not all in their heads or in their minds. This is a real physiological effect that we can measure and a real immune effect that we can measure. And so, you know, hats off to all the scientists and the researchers who really understood that there was a lot of suffering that was going on as a result of this condition. They made the effort to actually support people, and they're the real heroes who really wanted to make sure that people were understood. And in terms of what observations there are, we know that there are changes in the immune system, that there are excess cytokines in the body which are these kind of chemical messages that trigger the immune system. We know that the muscles aren't functioning correctly. We know that the hypothalamus, pituitary, adrenal gland axis is not working effectively. We know that cortisol levels are out of whack. We know the circadian sleep rhythms aren't functioning correctly. We know there's a whole host of autonomic dysfunction that's going in the body. There's a whole set of malfunctions and dysfunctions in the body that can't be explained by saying it's all in the head. Absolutely not. And so if you're experiencing this condition or there's a loved one that you're watching this on behalf of, I want you to know that I really do want you to know that this is a real condition and it's becoming more and more recognized in many countries as a real diagnosable condition. And so you may ask, well, what's the difference between it's all in the mind and it's all in the brain, really? We're talking about when it's in the brain, it's a neurological process that we don't have control over, we may not have awareness of, and is happening completely unconsciously without us having any sense of influence over it. And I call these conditions neuroimmune conditioned syndromes. And I came up with that wording because I do believe that these are real physical conditions and they start in the brain neurology, so hence neuro and then immune, because most of these conditions involve an immune response in some way or a Defensive response, conditioned. Because I believe that there is neurological learning where our brain learns to react in this way and syndrome because there is a unique set of symptoms that occurs in each particular patient that is unique to them based on their genetic vulnerability and the conditioning that has occurred in the brain. So this is a whole new way of looking at illness. And the reason that the potentially the traditional medical profession finds it difficult to understand these conditions is because if you go to a hospital or, you know, a hospital campus, you'll have a separate neurology department, a separate immune department, a separate endocrinology department. We've got this whole separation of medicine, which works very well for many different illnesses. But when it comes to these kinds of illnesses, actually there has to be an integrated approach, which is why integrated medicine is becoming more and more popular or kind of complementary medicine, because we have to treat the mind and body in a holistic way. So you might say to me, well, what is the explanation of these conditions then? How do we make sure that we can treat these conditions effectively and recognize at the same time that they are physical effects in the body? Well, I'd like to kind of give an overall explanation of what I believe causes these conditions, which will help us understand why it's in the brain, but it's not in the mind and it's not in the head. And a lot of people say to me, well, Ashok, you know, you're using these brain retraining techniques to help people reach recovery. But that means that you're saying it's not a real physical condition. And I say, no, this is where there is a misunderstanding. I've always said that it's a real physical condition with physiological effects, effects on the muscles, effects on the immune system. But what's causing the entire body to be in this altered homeostasis or altered state, in fact, is because the brain has learned, has been conditioned to be an over defensive state. And so the core conditioning lies in the brain without it being in the head. It's not a psychological response, it's a protective response. And when I'm giving my explanation, I always start with the biggest question of all. Why are we here? Why are we here? Well, we can answer that question from a philosophical perspective, but we'll leave that for another time. That's a much longer explanation. But what I mean it from, is from an evolution perspective, why are we here? And you know, if we look at it from the millions of years of evolution of this nervous system which has evolved through so many different animals, we've got to the point that we are today, where our immune system and our nervous system are primed. They're primed to defend us against dangers. Because what is the number one priority of the brain and the body? It is to ensure survival so that we pass on our genes to the next generations. Yeah, survival of the fittest is often called. But the brain's priority is to ensure survival. It doesn't care whether you're necessarily healthy or happy. Survival is its number one priority. And that obviously makes sense. Now. What happens is over hundreds of years of our evolution, thousands of years of our evolution, we, we were essentially hunter gatherers, farmers, we spent a lot of time outdoors, we had good levels of vitamin D and we moved a lot. And generally we weren't suffering from the types of stress that we experience in life now. And the two brain structures that are involved in helping us defend against the dangers of the outside world are the amygdala and the insula. So the amygdala, there's two small amygdalas which are in our brains, which are behind the eyes. Their job is to defend us against physical and emotional dangers. Before, in traditional psychology, it was perceived that the amygdala was simply our defense response against emotional triggers. So the amygdala is an emotional thing, it's in psychology. But a lot of recent brain research is showing that the amygdala is involved in immune responses and physiological responses as well as. Because the brain does not differentiate between what is an emotional psychological response and what is a physiological response. It's modern medicine that makes this dichotomy between psychology and physiology. But as far as the brain is concerned, it's an integrated response. So coming back to our explanation, we've got the amygdala, which is two almond shaped structures which defend us against physiological or emotional dangers. And we also have a brain structure called the insula on both sides. And the insula is designed to take in all incoming data from the body, process it, and then create the appropriate physiological and immune response based on, once again, achieving homeostasis and protecting the body. So those two brain structures are where I believe the conditioning occurs. So coming back to our explanation in a lot of these conditions, and I'll actually just bring up a diagram here where I can kind of go through some of these explanations. If we look at this diagram here, we have, number one, some predisposing factors. So those are factors such as genetic factors, factors around our upbringing, which can keep the insula and the amygdala on high alert. So we're more prone to learning and being conditioned to have new defensive responses. And then often these conditions start when there is acute psychological or physiological trauma or stress combined with some kind of physical trigger at number three. And in the case of me and cfs, I believe that the trigger is a virus or a bacterial infection that occurs at the same time as a lot of stress. And in the case of mcs, it's exposure to chemicals or mold or paint thinner or, you name it, it can trigger the chemical sensitivity. In the case of electrical sensitivities, it's exposure to that electrical field. And in many other conditions, it could be a localized pain syndrome that generalizes and becomes fibromyalgia, or it could be pain in a particular part of the body that then becomes chronic. And so when the brain is receiving all of that incoming information, so it's already under a lot of stress and pressure, and it's getting triggered by this physiological illness because the mind and body is under stress, the effectiveness of the immune system and the nervous system goes down in its ability to defend against that virus. So I'll give you an example. You know, in my personal story, I was at university, and, yeah, I was burning the candle at both ends, unfortunately, and I was getting stressed, not getting enough sleep, partying and being really worried about my work at university, and I wasn't getting enough sleep. I was eating microwave meals. I really don't understand what possessed me to have microwave meals. I would never think of having them now. But at the time, as a student, you know, pot noodles on toast, don't know if anyone's tried that delicacy. A lovely dish. And I really wasn't looking after myself. So my immune system and my nervous system was really underperforming. And I went to India and I got some kind of very unusual bacterial infection or virus which affected my gut, my stomach, very severely. And when I came back to the uk, even though I was out of that environment and I was relaxing, I just couldn't relax. I could feel that my body was trying to defend against some kind of illness. And I was very, very sick. Even though it felt like the majority of the stomach symptoms died down, I was left with a legacy where I felt this continuous immune response, this continuous extreme fatigue. And it didn't matter what I did, it didn't seem to go away. So you may think back to when you first got the condition. You may remember a specific set of stresses that were occurring at the same time, or you may remember those particular moments when you could see that it was becoming chronic, that the illness was just continuing no matter what. And this, I believe happens because the brain goes into an altered state of defense, a conditioned state of defense where it thinks, hey, I may not be able to fight off this flu virus or this stomach bug. And you know, loads of people die every year from flu. We take flu for granted. If our immune system is compromised, then we can die of flu. So you can see that as far as a survival instinct occurs, the brain says I must over defend against anything that reminds me of this flu virus or the original situation. And so the brain goes into this altered state and keeps defending the body and the mind against those threats. So then the brain learns that anything that reminds me of that original situation, I must overstimulate the nervous system and the immune system. And in the case of chemical sensitivities and electrical sensitivities, the brain decides any chemicals now which I even vaguely think could threaten homeostasis and threaten me. I must overstimulate the nervous system and the immune system. And the same with electrical sensitivities as well. And with chronic fatigue syndrome, M.E. fibromyalgia, chronic pain syndromes, POTS, the brain thinks any symptoms I detect in my internal world, so my body, when those signals get detected in my brain, then I must overstimulate the nervous system and the immune system, so that becomes a protective response. Again, you may say, well, Asha, what's the proof that it's in the amygdala and the insula? Well, interestingly, I wrote my paper in 2001 when it was published, my first medical paper, and I took a punt, that it was the amygdala, it was the most obvious choice. And neurological studies are now showing, having been published in the last five years or so, they're showing that the conditioning occurs in the amygdala and in the insula. So they do animal studies where they give some rats some sweet water together with an immunosuppressant and they do this four or five times and the rats immune system obviously goes down, so it's suppressed. Then they give the rats just sweet water and guess what happens? Even though there's no immunosuppressant in that sweet water, the brain has been conditioned to under stimulate the immune system the because that's what it thinks is a protective response. And so the immune system gets lowered in these rats even though they're just drinking a placebo or in this case a nocebo. So isn't that incredible? And when they dissect the brains of these rats, they find that the core conditioning has occurred in the insula. So the core conditioning for immune responses or learnt immune responses is in the insula. And when it comes to nervous system responses based on fight or flight, the core conditioning occurs in the amygdala. And that was the work of Professor Joseph LeDoux. So it's fascinating that the brain neurology is now catching up with observations that we've had with patients for many years. And we know in fibromyalgia and CFS that the insula seems to be a brain structure that is malfunctioning in these conditions. So the jigsaw pieces are gradually coming together that it makes sense that if our brains can be traumatized as a result of an emotionally traumatizing event where we were in danger, the brain can also become conditioned to over defend us against a situation where we were in physical danger as well. Does that make sense? So in some ways these conditions are as a result of a traumatic physiological event that created a legacy in the brain to keep over defending against anything that might vaguely imitate what we had at the beginning of the condition. That's really, really fascinating how these explanations can occur. And I'm not going to go through this explanation now because it's on our website, but if you just look at then the rest of this diagram, we know that the amygdala, the insula, a lot of the other parts of the brain then overstimulates sympathetic nervous system, the vagus nerve, immune system, which then create the symptoms at 6 and then those symptoms at 6 loop back into a highly sensitized brain that there must be something wrong with the body, we must trigger survival mode and those symptoms double back to the brain. The brain detects those symptoms or those chemicals from the outside world and thinks I'm still in danger, something's wrong. It then overstimulates the immune system and nervous system which then creates the symptoms which double back and we get caught in a vicious cycle. And the reason there are differences between the symptomatology of different patients is because some patients have this loop going on very slowly and some patients have it so viciously that it actually can mean they become bed bound. Or in the case of mcs, it can be that it's so vicious that, that even a minor exposure to any kind of chemical that the brain doesn't like, or exposure to a food that the brain may be sensitive to, the brain errs on the side of caution and overstimulates these protective responses. So in my view These illnesses are perfectly normal for the brain to enact. It goes through a situation where survival's under threat. It makes a decision that we must overstimulate and overprotect. And it will keep doing that because it keeps thinking it's in that survival mode and must keep doing that. And an example of so many other illnesses that follow this particular pattern, we take the case of hay fever or asthma, let's say hay fever. There's many hay fever sufferers who can remember a particular event when they first got the illness. So in a room full of 100 people, perhaps 10 people or 20 people might have hay fever in reaction to the pollen, and the other 70 or 80 people wouldn't have a reaction. Now, why is that? It's because at some point in their lives, they may have had a lot of pollen going into the nose. And suddenly in that moment, the brain made a decision. I think pollen is dangerous. And then from then on, that conditioning has occurred in the brain, probably in the amygdala and the insula, that any further exposure to pollen is dangerous. And therefore we must overstimulate the immune system and the nervous system in response to pollen. So we know that many illnesses follow this neuroimmune condition syndrome hypothesis. But what we're doing here is now applying this particular hypothesis to internal states and internal symptoms as well as external chemicals. So for a full explanation of this condition, there are lots of videos, obviously on our Facebook page, and if you go to our website, which is guptprogram.com research, I go through a full explanation of this diagram and how it explains a lot of the symptoms that we might experience. Okay, good. So I know, I'm sure there are a thousand and one questions that obviously everyone may have. And what I'm going to do is I'm going to wrap up this particular live stream, and then what we'll do is we'll actually start a new live stream. We will actually do a Q and A. And that means that we'll just keep this video nice and nice and short. So in terms of what the next steps are, it's not in your head, but I do believe it's in the unconscious brain. You're not at fault for having this condition. And you know that if people say hurtful things that, oh, it's all in your head, or perhaps try some CBT or, you know, just be positive you'll get better, or maybe it's a depression. You know, it doesn't help you to get angry and upset by what they've said, just forgive them because they don't, they're not aware of this condition, they don't understand it. And perhaps if you were in their shoes, you might say a similar thing. So we don't want to get caught up in getting angry at our family, our friends, our doctors, because only we suffer. And also when we get angry at what they're saying, we start looking to justify the condition and we start getting into advocacy groups and making sure that people understand it's really a physical condition. But then we compromise our own healing journey because we're so invested in making people realize that it is real. I know it's real. You know it's real and that's what matters. And so, you know, certainly there can be a lot of people who get involved in patient groups and patient forums and they're so invested in making sure everyone realizes that it's real and that's great work that they've stopped really thinking about how they can heal themselves. And certainly in chemical sensitivities, we start getting people saying, you need to live in Nevada, in the middle of nowhere with no exposure to chemicals. It's just not realistic. You're just reinforcing to the brain that these chemicals and these electrical fields are dangerous. Whereas actually we can retrain the brain out of these responses so that, you know, it's not. We're not saying that we want to flood ourselves with chemicals, but at least we can lead a normal life whilst we also minimize our exposure to chemicals. So if you want to find out more about the Gupta program, our website is Gupta program.com and you can sign up for some free videos which give you more explanation of our hypothesis. And there's lots of information about success stories. So hundreds of people who've recovered from fibromyalgia, me, cfs, MCS, and a whole host of related conditions. You can read their stories and watch their videos. And if you're interested in the program, we are starting a three month webinar series. So the way the program works is you receive a home study course with videos and a book and a mind map, and you also join a three month webinar series where you, you tune in each week, I take you through some of the treatments and then you can ask questions. So I hold your hand through that journey and you also become part of our forum and you can have buddies that can support your healing. And on top of that, we also have 20 practitioners that I've personally trained around the world who can work with you one on one to help you towards your recovery. And as you may know, we've done a few small scale studies which have shown very positive results which are on our website. And we're currently raising $200,000 for a large scale trial. And until we get that large scale randomized trial which shows definitively that this is an effective treatment for these conditions, we are offering a full one year money back guarantee. So you can use the program, use it for a minimum of six months or up to a year, and if you don't have any improvement, you can return it, no questions asked, and get your money back. And we're doing that because until we get that independent study, we feel that that's the ethical thing to do. So you've got nothing to lose by trying this program and getting your health back. And you know, so many people tell you there's nothing you can do until someone finds a pill or a surgery. You're just left with it. Don't let them feed you that because there are hundreds, thousands of people who are getting better from lots of different ways, not just my program, but many different ways. And they do heal and they do reach a recovery, but you don't hear about them because they leave the communities because they're fed up of the negativity. And so in the communities, you're left with the people who've had the condition for the longest, who are also the most negative about it. So it's a self selecting sample. But many people do get better and there's many avenues that you can pursue to make sure that happens. So I hope that you'll give the Gupta program a go. As I said, we're starting next Monday with a three month coaching series where I'm going to guide you, help you understand what's causing this condition and what the route to recovery actually is. And so you can go to our website, guptaprogram.com to find out more. There's lots of other videos on our Facebook page that you can watch. And we're going to be starting another Facebook Live now. So I'm going to end this Facebook Live stream and if you want to ask me questions, just keep refreshing the Gupta Program Facebook page once we finish here and a new stream will start and then we'll go to a Q and A. So listen, thank you so much for watching today. I really appreciate your time and good luck with your recovery and see you soon. Thanks and goodbye.