Latest Neuroscience of Chronic Conditions | Ashok Gupta | Gupta Program |

Well, hello there and a warm welcome to our Facebook Live with myself, Ashok Gupta, on the neuroscience of chronic conditions. And I'm really glad that you're here with me today. And you've made this time for us to talk about this very, very important subject. And before we start, just want to give you a bit of background to what, what we're going to be covering in today's session. So, firstly, we're going to be looking at our hypothesis as to what causes these types of chronic conditions, such as long Covid main chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, and other chronic conditions like mold illness. And today we're going to be doing something different because many of you already know the hypothesis, if you've already following the Gupta program, but we're going to be diving deeper into some of the brain neurology around it, looking at some of the evidence that supports this hypothesis around what causes these conditions. And finally, we'll be finishing off looking at how retraining fits in with this neurological hypothesis. So we'll be spending half an hour or so going through this particular content, and then we'll end this Facebook Live and we'll go on to another Facebook Live for a Q and A where you'll be able to ask me questions about the hypothesis and about your condition. So, just to give you a bit of background, to myself. So my name is Ashok Gupta, and I'm the founder of the Gupta Program. And I suffered from ME and chronic fatigue syndrome many, many years ago. And I remember in that moment thinking, right, if I can just get better from this condition, I will spend the rest of my life trying to help others, because it's such an awful experience to go through something like this. And then I set up a clinic to treat others. I published several medical papers, one of which was published in the journal Medical Hypotheses. And since then, it's been a quest and a journey to try and understand what causes these conditions and to try and help as many people as possible. So, as I said, we're going to be covering the main hypothesis and going deeper into some of the neurology about what might be going on here. And I think this is a really, really exciting area of medicine, a third branch of medicine. So traditionally, we've thought of medicine as being split into psychology and anything to do with the mind and consciousness as one area, and then physiology as being very separate. But this idea of neuroplasticity, the idea that the brain is rewirable and flexible and that actually many chronic conditions may be Caused in the brain rather, in, rather than in the periphery of our bodies is really, really exciting. And how many conditions, how many people could we help if we're able to investigate this further? Good. So I'm going to be sharing some slides here as well, and we'll be looking at some of the, as I said, the aspects of this hypothesis. I really love this quote I was reminded of by our clinical research Director, Alex Bratty. Dr. Alex Bratty. In fact, a small body of determined spirits fired up by an unquenchable faith in their mission can alter the course of human history. There are so many great researchers and clinicians out there who right now are looking at trying to understand what causes these conditions and how we can actually deal with these particular conditions as well. And the first concept that I want to share with you is this idea that the map is not the territory. Yeah, the map is not the territory. Now what, what exactly does that mean? What it means is that our brain makes a representation of the world around us. So the world around us is a certain way the brain interprets it and makes an internal map. So we are never seeing the world outside the way it is, or our bodies the way that it is. We are always seeing a representation of our bodies, a representation of our minds and the world that's external to that. And this is important because it's this idea that the brain can sometimes make mistakes in its perception of, of the world around us. And how does that impact on our health and well being? So I guess the big question I want to ask ourselves the biggest question of all. Why are we here? So many philosophers and writers have tried to understand this from the dawn of time. Why are we here? The biggest question, and today we're going to answer that from an evolutionary perspective. We're here because our bodies are designed to protect us against a harmful environment and to adapt to the environment so that we can pass on our genes to the next generation. This idea of the selfish gene wanting to replicate itself. And so the brain and the body's priority is health, sorry, is not health and well being, but is in fact survival. And that starts giving us clues to why some of these conditions, like Long, Covid and me, chronic fatigue syndrome, actually start in the body and start manifesting and perpetuating in the brain. And so if we ask that biggest question of all, why are we here? Then we start realizing that actually some of these conditions are completely logical for the brain to create. And let me explain why we're going to go through the hypothesis and actually look at long Covid or COVID 19 infection. That then might lead on to long Covid. So our hypothesis predicts there are three major perpetuating factors that can cause these types of chronic illnesses. The first factor could be a predisposing factor. So there could be a genetic factor, something related to our upbringing that may predispose us to getting these types of chronic illnesses. And there's some evidence for that, which I'll show you. Secondly, any types of acute or chronic stress, and I've obviously put psychological stress there, but it doesn't have to actually be psychological stress. It could in fact be some kind of other physiological stress combined with at number three, a virus or a bacterial infection. Or in this particular case, the example we're giving would be COVID 19 infection. And the combination of these three things then may create what we call a conditioning effect. Now what on earth do we mean by conditioning? So many of you may have heard of Pavlov, Professor Pavlov and his dogs. The idea that a dog would be sitting there and be fed some food. And when they're fed the food, their mouths salivate as they eat the food. And Pavlov noticed that when a bell was rung, the dog's mouths would salivate even when there was no food present, because the bell would represent something. And that bell would what we called a conditioned stimulus. We've created a conditioned stimulus, a learnt stimulus. So the brain in that dog's body says even though there's no food here, this bell represents something to me. It represents a situation, it has a meaning. And therefore I must salivate whenever I hear the bell in anticipation of, of the food arriving. So Pavlovian conditioning. And so in the same way, what I believe is happening here in the brain when we have these types of chronic illnesses or even autoimmune conditions, is that the brain learns something new and something which was a very innocent stimulus, then starts creating ongoing immune responses. And there's precedent for this. So if we look at COVID 19 infection, the reason people are unfortunately passing away from COVID 19 is not in fact the virus per se, but it is the overreaction of our immune systems to the virus which is causing massive inflammation in the lungs. And this over response then leading to breathing difficulties and all kinds of challenges, which then means unfortunately our mortality is increased. And therefore there is precedent of this idea that our own immune system starts overreacting not just in acute phase in COVID 19, but in a chronic phase, going on to, leading to long Covid and Long symptoms well after the initial infection. Now, this learning effect, this conditioning effect, we believe happens in two brain structures, the amygdala and the insula. The amygdala, there are two of them. In fact, they're almond shaped structures that sit behind our eyes. They're in the kind of mammalian brain. And these brain structures are designed to protect us from dangers. And traditionally, medicine have thought of these structures as protecting us from psychological dangers. So the amygdala is identified in trauma and ptsd. But in fact, there's a lot of evidence now that the amygdala is involved in immune responses as well. And the insula is a small structure which sits between the limbic system and the cortex, is in fact part of the cortex. And the insulin's job is to take in all incoming data and stimuli from the body, assess it in terms of whether it meets certain conditions to monitor those signals, and then create the correct autonomic response. So both the amygdala and the insula are involved in our autonomic responses, sympathetic and parasympathetic responses, immune responses, and other things that ensure survival and homeostasis. Okay, so coming back to these three factors, the predisposing factors, some kind of ongoing stress and a physical trigger go on to leading us to this vicious cycle, which I'll talk through now. First of all, before we do that, in terms of the genetic susceptibility to these types of chronic conditions, there's been quite a lot of research showing that after an active cytokine response which has our immune response, this may sensitize the brain's pathways. And here's one of these citations here. Some of these polymorphisms, kind of genetic changes which may predispose us to having this type of reaction occurring in the brain leading to this vicious cycle. So at number four, there has been some kind of trauma or reconditioning event in the amygdala and insula, leading at number five, to chronic stimulation of the sympathetic nervous system, chronic stimulation of the immune system, abnormalities in the hypothalamic, pituitary, adrenal axis, and excessive oxidative stress, which then causes the symptoms at number six of many of these conditions. So fatigue and exhaustion being a primary one, muscle dysfunction, pain, cognitive difficulties, sleep issues, autonomic dysfunction in general, post exertional malaise, which is a very useful unique characteristics of long Covid and main chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia, which essentially means that any kind of exertion or challenge goes on to cause excessive symptoms and exhaustion and of course, irritable bowel. So many people with long Covid talk about bowel challenges, which is also seen in many other conditions. And there may be secondary illness cycles at number seven which contribute to these symptoms. And then these symptoms, we believe, circle back to a hyper stimulated, hypersensitive brain. So these signals are magnified which go back into the brain. The brain recognizes these stimuli as conditioned stimuli. And I'll explain more about that in a moment. The brain then thinks, okay, we are still in that dangerous episode. We're still in the middle of a COVID 19 infection. We must re stimulate the immune system and nervous system at number four and number five, which then creates the symptoms which double back to a hypersensitive brain. And round and round we go, and it comes a loop, a closed circuit, which essentially means that the output and the input of the system are connected, meaning that it becomes vicious, it becomes chronic. And that's why people can have these conditions for many months, if not years, because once the input and the output of the system are connected, it's like a short circuit in the brain. And one way of looking at this particular condition, to make it easier to understand, is an analogy I use which many people find very useful, which is the idea of. It's actually from Game of Thrones. If you're a Game of Thrones fan, hopefully this will resonate. Imagine you are the king or queen of the castle. So you are the conscious mind, you're the prefrontal cortex. And the castle has an army and a navy. The, the army being the nervous system, the navy being the immune system. And the army and navy are there to protect the body, which is the castle and the kingdom. Now imagine there's been a drought in that particular kingdom. And many people who report getting chronic conditions remember back to actually being under a lot of pressure at the time they got the condition, which is analogous to the drought or famine in this particular kingdom. And so the resources are depleted in that kingdom, and suddenly an invading army comes over the hill. And the army and navy are galvanized to fight off this invading army. And as they fight off the army, they find that because they are depleted, they only just manage to fight off that incoming invader. And it has traumatized the army and navy. And now what happens is anything which happened to be another stimulus that was there at the time, another event or neutral stimulus, then seems to impact on the army and navy. And they stay in a state of readiness, ready to fight off the next invader coming over the hill. So now Just a child walking over that hill they interpret as an army coming over the hill because they're so traumatized. And they get battle ready again. And the army and navy, being continuously battle ready, Keeps using up the resources of the castle. So all the food, the metal, all the resources of the kingdom are now funneled to the army and navy. And that's the same as your immune system continuing to overstimulate itself unnecessarily. And there's plenty of studies showing that in long Covid, in that initial phase, There tends to be a plethora of markers for an overactive immune system. It's as if the virus is still present, even though there's no evidence of it being present. And that then means that the resources are used up, causing all of these downstream symptoms. And many of us don't realize this, but when we have even flu, the symptoms are not being caused by the influenza virus. They're being caused by our own immune system responding to that virus, causing the fatigue, the headaches, and all the other symptoms that go along with the flu. Okay, so let's go back to our diagrams and just finish. Actually just finishing off that analogy. And so once the army and navy are in that severe state of readiness continuously, you, as the king or queen of the castle, don't have the direct ability to control their army and navy because they're traumatized. They just want to defend the castle no matter what happens. And so the skill, or the. What we call neuroplasticity or the brain retraining is for the king or the queen of the castle, the prefrontal cortex, to keep informing the army or navy that the danger is over. We can now go back to homeostasis. We can now go back to balance. There is peace in the kingdom. But the army and navy don't believe you because they're traumatized by that war, that war of overcoming the COVID 19 infection or whatever stimulus triggered this initial event. And this brain neurology is also relevant to things like mold, illness, chemical sensitivities, electrical sensitivities. They all fall under the same bracket, which is a hypersensitive brain responding to a previously neutral stimulus As a result of overexposure to that stimulus. So that stimulus can be internal in terms of our own bodies, Signals of lack of health. And they can also be external in the case of chemical or food sensitivities and a whole plethora of sensitivities that people experience. Okay, so let's go back to our diagram here. Now, I want to go deeper into some of the brain neurology as to why this process actually happens and what we can do about it. And I'm continuously conducting research, so is our team. As I said, our clinical research director, Alex, is also constantly researching, you know, some of the ways that we can work with research partners to try and understand the hypothesis and also conduct clinical trials. So at the moment, we want to conduct further clinical trials. So if you're interested or, you know, universities or academic departments who want to conduct further trials on these types of treatments, neuroplasticity treatments, we are very open to that. Now, this diagram, don't worry. I know it looks very complicated. I'm going to spend the next half an hour describing what's going on here. But what we want to really look at is what is going on in the brain in these chronic conditions. And here we take from the pain literature that, as you can see, when there is pain detected on the right hand side, and that pain, those pain signals from wherever they are in the body, come through our spinal cord into the brain via the parabrachial nucleus and the periaqueductal grade. They go straight into the brain. And there's a complex interplay of a number of different brain structures to decide, is this stimulus bad or good? If it's bad, what do we do about it? What response do we create? What automatic response? Okay. And as you can see, it's very difficult to peer into the brain and try and understand what is going on and what is causing this. So many animal studies have actually given us a huge amount of information on this. And there are, as I said, there are a number of different brain structures. Prefrontal cortex, anterior cingulate, hypothalamus and the hippocampus, which are all involved in this type of condition. But at the core of it, we're going to talk about the amygdala and the insula as being where the core conditioning lies. And in fact, our treatment is called amygdala and insular retraining, or the air treatment. Now, I'm going to go through this model at a deeper level in terms of the specific brain structures involved in our hypothesis and how they interrelate and connect together. And you may see at the top there, nics, the NICS neurological model. NICS is neuroimmune condition syndromes. And that's the name that we give to these types of illnesses, as I said, the kind of internally generated illnesses where the signals from the body themselves create this vicious cycle. So that are long Covid main chronic fatigue syndrome and pain syndrome, such as fibromyalgia, but also to include conditions where there is an external stimulus, like mold illness, chemical sensitivities, et cetera. So we put them under that banner of neuroimmune condition syndromes. Neuro because they involve the nervous system in the brain, immuno because they often involve immune responses that are historical conditions because they've been learnt, and syndromes because they involve a plethora of different symptoms. So it all starts with the symptoms that we detect. If we're talking about internally generated conditions, that may be fatigue, it might be pain and the other symptoms of these types of conditions, these are now the conditioned stimuli. And what we mean by that is that previously these symptoms were neutral in the body. But as a result of the COVID 19 infection, there are a huge amount of physical symptoms that were created. And the brain that interpreted that if there are physical symptoms in my body, because they were there when the COVID 19 infection was present, that now means that from a classical conditioning perspective, those symptoms represent ongoing evidence that the infection is still present. Right. Does that make sense? So the symptoms in the body become the bell, like the bell that you ring, which tells the dog's brain that food is about to come. So in the same way, the symptoms in our bodies represent evidence to the brain of ongoing infection, those symptoms then go up to two brain structures, the periaqueductal gray and the peribrachial nucleus. And the periaqueductal gray is in the brain stem and the ancient part of the brain, or the reptilian brain. And those signals start coming up, but they are magnified. The periaqueductal gray is able to magnify those signals coming in as well as the paribrachial nucleus. So almost in that reptilian brain part, they are saying, we are going to act independently of the rest of the brain and the higher centers. We're going to magnify the symptoms because we know that something's wrong here and we need the brain to do something about it. And these signals are often going into the brain to different brain structures and congregate in the thalamus, which then feeds that information to the rest of the brain. These signals also go directly into the amygdala, because the amygdala is your quick and dirty response. You know, if a wild tiger is chasing you, you haven't got time to process that consciously. There are signals that go directly into amygdala and the amygdala then creates the appropriate response to save you, you know, sending blood flow and resources to your muscles, for instance. So the amygdala says we're in danger, something needs to be done about this. So the next tier up is the mammalian brain. So there is this idea in science of what we call the triune brain brain that we have our ancient reptilian brain, which is our instinctive response. Then we have another area of our brains which built on top of that called the mammalian brain, which involves more emotional responses. And then sitting on top of that we have the neocortex, which represents our more logical thinking processes that we have as human beings. Many animals don't. Now, a lot of the triune brain hypothesis has actually been negated, but the overall principle I believe holds true. These signals can often be inhibited by the amygdala. So one of the roles of the amygdala is not only to detect what might be dangerous, but also to inhibit that signaling and stop the periaciductal gray and the peribrachial nucleus from magnifying all these signals. And if you've had these conditions, you may notice that you feel bombarded by how your body is feeling. And the amygdala communicates with our prefrontal cortex. This is this front part of the brain which we associate with the rational thinking part of our minds, the highest thinking order. And the reason I believe that these conditions perpetuate and persist is because we've got three layers of our brain, all trying to ensure survival, all processing the signals, but having their own point of view of what is dangerous and what is not dangerous. The periaqueductal gray and peribrachial nucleus are magnifying signals because they believe we're in danger. The amygdala is another level of processing in the emotional brain that is detecting that signaling and creating its own processing and trying to inhibit this over response, but is unable to because it also has been conditioned to fear that we are in danger. And the higher thinking centers just become overwhelmed with this signaling. And the prefrontal cortex, and the prefrontal cortex itself can't inhibit some of those lower brain structures. And I appreciate some of this. For those of you who are new to this type of hypothesis, it may be a little heavy going. So I'm going to make this very simple after I've just been through this diagram, so please do bear with me. The hippocampus is where our short term memory processing occurs. And we know there can be damage in the hippocampus. It can no longer restrain our nervous system and stress system response. And the hippocampus is communicating with the amygdala to say, well, the last time that you had this particular type of symptom in the body, this was when we had the COVID 19 infection. So the short term memory centers are also communicating to tell us that we're in danger. And the brain structure I really want to focus on today is the insula. This brain structure essentially sits in the higher order spectrum of the brain, which is coordinating these conditioned immune responses and maybe magnifying these signals. So the insulin's job once again is to take in these incoming signals, whether they be pain in fibromyalgia, fatigue and exhaustion and breathlessness in long Covid taking these incoming signals, assess them, assess the danger and create the appropriate response. But I believe as a result of the conditioning effect, the insula attempts to dampen down the signals in the brain, but has been conditioned to over respond. And finally, a brain structure called the anterior cingulate, it determines where we keep our attention. And because it's being overwhelmed with signaling, it can no longer create that response and it can no longer control the hypervigilance that the brain has and what it perceives as danger. So all of these structures are communicating with each other. And I believe the core conditioning in the amygdala and insula is causing the rest of the brain to be hyper aroused, hyper vigilant. And although there's an attempt to dampen down signals, is not able to inhibit the overstimulation. This uses up all the dopamine, serotonin, and all the feel good chemicals and leaving the brain unable to create motivation, unable to really feel good, and creates a sense of continual overwhelm. Once again, the prefrontal cortex may have the ability to inhibit some of those signals from the amygdala and inhibit some of those signaling from the insula as well. That's what we're doing in neuroplasticity or brain retraining at the Gupta program is to use the prefrontal cortex in its ability to restrain the some of these unconscious brain structures. Now, that doesn't mean that this is any kind of psychological treatment. This is what we call neuroplasticity or brain retraining. And it's analogous to when people come back from war zones with amputations. It's called phantom limb pain. And many of these veterans come back complaining of pain in parts of their body which don't exist. Anymore. And using some novel rehabilitation and neuroplasticity approaches, they're able to train the brain out of these responses to no longer believe that there is a limb there that could be in pain. So in the same way, at the Gupta program, we teach a patient to recognize this unconscious signaling and to give different signals back to the amygdala, back to the insula, back to the periaqueductal, gray and parabracial nucleus to restrain the signaling, teach the brain that we are no longer in danger. And because these are survival responses, it requires consistent and persistent retraining and repetition, as well as supportive techniques to do this. Good. So I hope, I just wanted to go today deeper into the brain neurology of what's going on and just also share with you some of the research behind this. So Dr. Pacheco Lopez has done a huge amount of work on the amygdala and insula and the immune conditioning effects. Now, what they did is they gave rats sweet water combined with an immunosuppressant, and they repeated this process four or five times. And guess what? When they gave the immunosuppressant, the rat's immune system reduced. They repeated this four or five times. And then they found that when they gave the rats just sweet water without the immunosuppressants, guess what? The rat's immune system actually lowered and decreased. And when they then dissected the brain, they found that the core conditioning was in the amygdala, but more specifically in the insula. And these studies come back from down from 2005, 2010. So for many, many years, this was the kind of hypothesis and we had kind of alluded to this, and it was great to see some of this research coming out that confirms the idea of core conditioning in the amygdala and the insula. And it makes sense, because why would our immune system operate in a vacuum at the peripheral level in our body? It makes sense that our brain is a central processing unit that receives information about what immune system responses have occurred and then is able to have that intelligence to make sure that there is a return path back to the immune system. And indeed, further studies, some of you may have heard of the study by Dr. Asia Rawls in Israel. They actually were able to create an immune response in rats through inflammatory bowel disease. And then they stimulated the, sorry, the insula and found that the same inflammation occurred downstream, the same immune response, which was fascinating even themselves. And read out this quote, have said they've begun devising clinical trials to treat chronic gut inflammation. Based on the team's findings, essentially, they were able to alleviate colitis in mice by simply decreasing activation in the insula. If we could put human beings in functional FMRI scan machines and we could teach them to try and reduce the stimulation in that part of the brain, we could reduce their dependence on medication. But of course, that's something that we've been doing for years here, which is this idea that maybe there is a way that we can train the brain out of these responses, not just maybe. We believe there absolutely is a way. So just finishing off here, there's plenty of other things that I could go through, but I just want to really talk about these neuroplasticity approaches and how they work. So, in terms of our research, there are three Rs of recovery. So one being the retraining of the brain, which is the core novel techniques that we use of the Gupta program. Secondly is relaxing the nervous system. So these are breathing techniques, meditation techniques, techniques that also calm down the vagus nerve. And we know that when the brain is calmer, the brain is more rewirable, neuroplasticity is increased. So that's why relaxing the nervous system is incredibly important to prepare the brain for the retraining. And the third, are there re Engaging with Joy. So this often is a part of medicine which is missed out, which is if we can get people to engage in mindfulness and relaxation and upliftment of spirit, that can also support neuroplasticity and get people back to health. And just a little plug for something we're doing this Friday as part of Re Engaging with Joy for the Gupta program is we have an 80s party this Friday on the IRISE platform. A new platform that we have for lots of different mental, physical, emotional courses, over 600 courses and classes that can support you mentally across all the different spectrum of personal development and transformation. And you can find out more@iriseapp.com so at the Gupta program, we incorporate these three Rs to actually gets a patient back to good health. And in terms of a clinical audit we published in 2010, it was published in the Journal of Complementary and alternative medicine. After one year, we found that people's functioning in ME CFS went down from 41% up to 77%. And as many of you know, a year and a half ago, we published the first randomized control trial that we think has ever been published on a neuroplasticity program for fibromyalgia. And it found that in the Gupta program, group, there was close to a 40% reduction in fibro scores within eight weeks and a 50% increase in perceived health status. So you can see some of the summary results there. And it showed that compared to a control group disengaging relaxation, there are far stronger health benefits of taking the Gupta program combined with mindfulness, which is now part of the Gupta program as well. So where do we go from here in terms of future research? We're looking to fundraise and raise further funds for larger Phase 3 trials in long Covid, fibromyalgia and ME and chronic fatigue syndrome. So if you're, you know, as I said, institutions, doctors, researchers who'd be interested in collaborating on this, please do get in touch with our clinical research director, alexuptaprogram.com and you can find out more information on our website, www.guptaprogram.com. so, finally, I'd just like to say a big thank you to all of you for joining me on this presentation today. I hope it's been useful and eye opening in terms of going into, first of all, our overall hypothesis and secondly, going deeper into the brain neurology of what might be occurring in these chronic conditions. And the hope that I want to give you is that there is so much more research now coming up supporting this idea that many chronic conditions are in the brain. And the brain has traditionally been this black box that we haven't been able to peer into and understand. But we're getting to more and more and I really implore and urge those who are researching this area to look at brain retraining and neuroplasticity as an exciting new area and to fund more projects in this area so we can get more people well and reduce the suffering that so many people are going through with these chronic conditions. Now we ourselves are looking to conduct further trials in long Covid, which is obviously affecting a huge number of people right now. And if you want to find out more information, if you want to take our 28 day free trial, you can visit guptoprogram.com and watch lots of free videos about your condition. And should you choose to take the Gupta program, it involves home study course, online videos, a support group, weekly webinars with myself, and it comes with a one year money back guarantee. So until we get the large scale phase 3 trials, we offer that to everybody so you can take the treatment, see if it works for you, and if it's not something for you, you get your money back and use that money for something else. And we have our next webinar series starting on Monday, 31st January. So now would be a great time for you to get involved and see if this treatment can really support your journey to health and happiness. Great. So all that's left for me to do is to thank you for watching and give you that hope that recovery is possible. So many people do get better from these types of conditions and I wish you the best with your recovery. And please do share this video on your social media feed or with other people that you know are suffering from chronic conditions, because we can then be part of this mission to get the world better, to heal the suffering that's endemic with these types of conditions. So now we will go on to another Facebook Live so you can join me on this same page. Just give a minute or so refresh the page and we're doing a live Q and A where I'll answer your questions about the neuroscience that we've been through. So thank you for watching and we'll see you next time. Thank you and goodbye.