Jackie, a former active person, developed POTS and experienced dizziness, heart rate spikes, non-restful sleep, noise sensitivity, and functional decline (wheelchair use, difficulty holding utensils). After trying many conventional and alternative treatments, a functional medicine doctor recommended the Gupta Program (neural retraining and meditations). Jackie reports two years on the program and about 75% improvement, regaining significant function and reduced fight-or-flight responses.
Chapters
So my name is Jackie, and I was always a get up and go type of person. So I would wake up in the morning, my alarm would go off. I wouldn't need multiple alarms. I would just jump up, get out of bed, and always had something on my mind, something to do. And I always wanted to be active. So my favorite thing to do was get up and go to the beach or go to the park and just be in nature. And that was prior to becoming ill. I can't really pinpoint the exact time or incident that happened, but I just remember where it was almost harder to get out of bed in the morning. And I noticed that I wasn't getting restful sleep. So I would sleep a ton of hours, and I wasn't getting that rest where I would wake up and feel like, oh, wow, I'm refreshed. You know, I had a good night's rest. I wasn't getting that anymore. And I started getting these symptoms where sometimes I would get up and I would get dizzy. And that made it so that I was less active because I would do something simple, like just sitting up or like, maybe showering, and I would have, like, the spike in my heart rate. I went to various doctors. It took a while, and I ended up getting diagnosed with pots, which is postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome. So it was one of those things where it's like, hey, you have pots. But we don't really know what to do. Just wear some compression tights and eat lots of salt. That's what they told me. Before becoming ill, I like to travel. And I remember I'm from Long island, so I like to go back every year or two. And I remember the last time I went, it was very strange because just standing on the subway platform of the city, it was almost like the noise was so intense. I was getting dizzy, the smells were making me nauseous, like, the hustle and bustle. I was like. My heart was racing. I was sweating. And I'm thinking, this is so strange, because I used to live here. You know, I went to the university there, and it was. It was my natural habitat. So for me to be standing in that habitat and feeling, like, uncomfortable and unwell was very scary to me. So that was one of the ways that I started to notice that things were changing for me where going on vacation, like, you know, being in the airport, like, just was a lot of noise. And I started getting headaches and noise sensitivity. I started wanting to stay home more. It was just quieter for me in My house. I could adjust the lighting. I could adjust the noise level. And I started to notice that it was even hard for me to talk on the phone. Like, some days I would sit on the phone, and when I was done with the phone call, I'd be drenched in sweat. And I was like, wow, this is so different. I tried the compression sites. I tried a ton of different supplements. I tried going to different practitioners. I tried going to the chiropractor. I tried changing my diet. I tried being gluten free. I tried being a pescatarian, and it didn't do an ounce of difference. It was so frustrating. So one of my doctors, she's more of, I would say, like, a functional medicine doctor. She was like, you know, she's like, there are some neural retraining things that you can do. And she suggested the Gupta program. What I started to notice was that by doing the meditations, that my fight or flight was actually calming, and I was waking up more comfortable, like, okay, well, even If I'm not 100% healed, at least I can deal with today. At least I'm safe. That's what I started to notice was happening. So the retraining, I realized, was making me aware. I guess it would make me deal with things that I didn't want to deal with. So I realized that a lot of the issues that we have are stem from trauma. And I think that our brains don't really want to deal with that trauma. So it, like, pushes it to the back, but we're still affected by it. And so by confronting those thoughts that the negative thoughts I was having, it was like telling my brain, okay, listen, like, I understand you've been protecting me all this time, but unfortunately, we ended up with this illness. And if we can just not be so worried and just trust, then we can start to get better. So I noticed that by, I guess it would be like daydreaming. Like, daydreaming about me being well and, like, how my life used to be and how I wanted it to be. The visualization. Then I knew it was possible. And then I started actually, like, wanting to do more, and I started having more energy. So I've been doing the program now for two years, and. And I would say I'm, like, 75% better, which is incredible because I was to the point where I was bedbound. I had a nurse who would come and help me bathe. I was, like, in a wheelchair. Like, I couldn't even hold my cup. I couldn't hold my spoon. I couldn't I could practically not even hold my neck up. There was a moment in time where I had, like, a neck brace. Like, it was terrifying. So when I think about how I was back then, I'm like, oh, my goodness. Like, I'm so thankful. Like, it makes me emotional. But it's incredible how these types of things, they work. Like, the Gupta program really works.
