MCS, EHS, Mold Illness & Food Sensitivities Amygdala & Insula Hypothesis | Gupta Program |

So what I'd like to do is just briefly go through a hypothesis as to what we believe causes these types of conditions, and we call them neuroimmune conditioned syndromes. Nics, neuroimmune conditioned syndromes, and that includes the ones that you're here with, but also fibromyalgia, MECFs, pots, and a variety of other connected conditions which the mainstream profession doesn't really have an answer. And the reason I believe they don't have an answer is because there is a separation between physical conditions and mental and emotional conditions or neurological conditions. There's almost this kind of barrier between those two different branches of medicine. But the body doesn't make that differentiation. So the body doesn't say, am I under threat? Is it emotional threat? Is it a physical threat? Is it a chemical threat? Is it an immune threat? It simply says, I need to orchestrate a defensive reaction to protect this individual and to survive. There is always that physiological survival instinct that incorporates all aspects of our physiology, our emotional state of mind, and also our neurology. All the nerves running through our body, it's a coordinated response. The brain doesn't differentiate between the different types of responses. And that's where we have some challenges in trying to treat this using conventional medicine, because conventional medicine is very good at treating the body like a car. Something's gone wrong with the engine over here, right? We go and fix that. Something's gone wrong with a wheel over here, right? We go and fix that very much. Treating the body like a car. And the medical profession is very, very at that. And so in the example of coronavirus, which is something that obviously everyone's talking about at the moment, the medical profession is very good at understanding that an external invader is coming into the body and degrading the cells in the throat and the nose and then traveling into the lungs. We recognize that we are then able to make a copy of that particular virus and then train the body to defend against it with a vaccine. Medical profession has done incredible wonders for the world, but there are many conditions now for which that mainstream model doesn't work. And that's what I call software conditions, not hardware conditions. So rather than seeing the body like a car or like a computer, when something goes wrong, is it a hardware problem or is it a software problem? The medical profession is very good at seeing as a hardware problem. So for those of you who have laptops and mobile phones, which is just about everybody, sometimes something goes wrong and you're not sure, do I need to take this Phone or this computer to a repair shop to repair the physical aspect of the computer, or do I need to call up IT support and is it a software problem and do I need to fix the software? Okay, so we look at these conditions as software challenges where there is a bug in the software which is causing a vicious cycle. And let me just describe that. Okay, so hopefully you can see my screen there. So in terms of these types of sensitivity reactions, so we're talking about multiple chemical sensitivities, mold reactivity, electrical sensitivities, certain food sensitivities. We're not talking about allergies. And if you have a very strong allergy or a very strong reaction, please see your doctor and work with mainstream treatments first. Before you look at this, what we're talking here about is things that you've been to your doctor for. They've done whatever they can, but they've told you that there's nothing else that they can do. And then it's most likely that this is a software problem rather than a hardware problem. So if we look at the precipitating factors for these types of conditions, there are three precipitating factors or background factors that may cause this process or this illness to occur. So the first one, there is a chemical exposure. So at some point in our lives, perhaps we were feeling very vulnerable physically, emotionally, mentally. We may have been under a lot of stress, or we may have actually been under a lot of physiological stress. But many people describe a period of acute or chronic stress at the beginning where they then were exposed to chemical or mould or electrical field or some kind of food poisoning. And it may well be that there's some genetic vulnerability that you may have experienced. So we know that, for instance, in mcs, not in everybody, but in a large proportion of people with mcs, there are certain genes that. Or genetic changes or genetic differences that have been noted in medical studies. And those genetic vulnerabilities are around detoxification or processing of certain chemicals in the body. And finally, that genetic vulnerability, as we said, may have compromised the ability of the body to detoxify and created more of a vulnerability to getting this kind of condition or more of a defensive position that the body takes. And why are we here? The biggest question of all, why are we here? Well, not from the philosophical perspective, but from the, I suppose, survival perspective. We're here because our genes have been passed over from so many different animals right through to us to handle the environment and protect us from the environment. So we are survival machines. And that is the number one priority of the brain, survival over everything else. So we've had exposure to this chemical or this mold or whatever it may be. And in that process, at that particular time, that vulnerability means that the brain will create a response or a reaction to that chemical that perhaps other people wouldn't necessarily react to. So at that point in time, the brain makes a decision that this chemical or this mold at this point in time is dangerous for me because I know I have this genetic vulnerability, perhaps I won't be able to detoxify this chemical from my system. Or even if there isn't the genetic vulnerability, the body and the brain just make that decision that this chemical is very, very, very dangerous. And there are two brain structures where I believe that the software change occurs, and that is the amygdala and the insula. So the amygdala are two round, little almond shaped structures behind our eyes. And the insula is a brain structure that kind of sits just between the kind of limbic area and the cortex. It's more a kind of cortical region. And those two brain structures work together to defend us from things that could potentially be very dangerous or catastrophic for the body. And within those two brain structures, I believe chemical or neurological learning occurs, which essentially means that either as a result of that chemical exposure, even that chemical may itself cause a massive inflammatory response, or that chemical may indeed affect the brain directly. Although it's difficult to prove that the amygdala and insulia make a decision, wow, that chemical is dangerous or that mold is incredibly dangerous. And because we are in a vulnerable position emotionally, mentally, physiologically, we are weak. Because we are feeling weak, we must over defend against this particular chemical now and in the future, which then leads us on to this vicious cycle. So I believe the trauma occurs in the amygdala and the insula. There's dysfunction in the hippocampus and the anterior cingulate, which is another brain structure which decides on what we focus on, where that spotlight of attention is. The anterior cingulate also becomes trained to now train all of the brain's resources to direct them against potential dangers in the environment, so that it becomes hypervigilance on what could be dangerous externally and inside the body. Now this causes a massive sympathetic arousal here at number five on the right hand side, and dysfunction in the immune system. So short term there are over responses, over immune responses in order to try and protect from that particular chemical or mold, whatever it may be, at number five, which then leads to the symptoms of those chemical sensitivities so it's not necessarily that the chemicals themselves are causing the symptoms, but it is the arousal of our own immunological and nervous system response that causes the vast majority of those symptoms. And so it is with even flu, virus, or whatever kind of challenge we face. The symptoms we experience are generally our own nervous system and our own immune system responding to that threat. And then there can be secondary illness cycles at number seven, where our adrenals can become exhausted, our mitochondria may not function correctly, there may be latent viruses and bacterial infections which may get reactivated. And once again, allergies and sensitivities may generalize. So often people find that they have a response to one chemical or mould, but it then seems to really bizarrely generalize to so many different chemicals. So it may have started with a mould illness, but then people find they also are sensitive to perfumes or household chemicals that before they weren't sensitive to this whole process leads to a chronic sensitization in the olfactory bulb. So the olfactory bulb is the part of the brain that takes in all information from our nose. All the smells and the tastes go into our olfactory bulb, which then feeds the thalamus. And the thalamus is part of the brain that takes all incoming stimuli and then potentially magnifies it. So all these symptoms we experience inside our bodies and all the external threats we may face become magnified in the system, which then leads to a magnification of all of these signals going back into the brain. The brain then detects those responses, so its own responses in terms of those immune responses and the symptoms that are caused by that, as well as magnifying its sensitivity to the chemical or a whole range of different things which then the amygdala, insula, trigger, together with the hypothalamus and the whole brain itself, trigger this massive chronic sympathetic arousal and immune responses, which then cause the physical symptoms, which then tell the brain that we are in danger. Because look at the physical symptoms that we are experiencing, the inflammation, the pain, the fatigue, that must mean we are in danger and the world is a threatening place, triggering more of that response, creating this vicious cycle. And, you know, the brain is able to detect things that we can't consciously be aware of. So a lot of this is happening unconsciously, without our conscious awareness. This vicious cycle. So then this vicious cycle just keeps going, and a person can remain ill until something shifts or changes. And many people spend thousands of pounds on thousands of dollars on supplements. Seeing this doctor, that doctor trying to break what essentially is a software program where the inputs and the outputs of the system have become locked together. And so that triggering of the nervous system and the immune system unnecessarily then creates the symptoms which can then get detected back in the brain. Now, the number one challenge that I know you'll be thinking about and coming back at me with is, no, but Ashok, you don't understand. These chemicals are dangerous. Mold is dangerous. Electrical fields are dangerous. Okay? And let me just say that there is no doubt that these things which are recent introductions into our lifestyle, over the last hundred years or so, we have been exposed to so many more chemicals than we ever were exposed to in our past, in our evolution. And therefore this has created a low level continual inflammation in the body. The body is continually inflamed, continually responding to the amount of pollution that we are exposed to. Therefore, the brain then has this overreaction because it errs on the side of caution. All of these things are absolutely true. These chemicals are. We're in an environment where there are too many chemicals. That is, that is a given. However, this short term over response is a learnt response by the brain to over respond because it still thinks it's in danger and it still thinks it's back at that original time when you were vulnerable and you were exposed to perhaps quite a lot of that chemical or mould. So what we're saying is that original exposure, what we call the ist, or the initial sensitizing event. That initial sensitizing event at that point in time, yes. There may well have been dangerous levels because of the vulnerability and the weakness of your body, but now your body is responding continually as if the same thing is happening. An analogy often give is, you know, do you know when the last soldier was taken off duty at the end of the Second World War? Yeah. You think it's what Second World War ended in? 1945. So was that soldier taken off 1946, 1947? Believe it or not, the last soldier from the Second World War was taken off duty in 1974, 30 years later, because that soldier was diligently doing his job on the island, a Japanese island, defending the island no matter what. And people would say, look, there's no danger anymore. But he said, no, I have been told that I need to defend this island and I will do that no matter what. Because that soldier had become traumatized to the experience of war and the vulnerability that he felt. And the same way our brains are doing the evolutionary correct thing to do, which is to prioritize Survival and over defend any little thing which may remind it of the original trauma or the original exposure that it had. That is the right thing for the brain to do. The challenge is that now the world has moved on. Yes, we're still around these chemicals, but why should the brain keep responding to small amounts of these chemicals around us? That is the difference. And if you say, well, no, but these chemicals are dangerous, if they really were dangerous for everybody, then everybody would be having the same reaction. But what is it that's different about you compared to the average person? The only difference can be that your brain has decided that this chemical is dangerous. I must defend against it against all costs. I must inform this person to move away from that chemical by creating this reaction. And I'm not saying fill your house full of chemicals, absolutely not. Live a chemical free life, that's absolutely fine, or live a life free from mold, that's fine. But what I'm asking you to do is to retrain the brain out of these over responses. And that is something that we've helped hundreds of people work through and get better. And that is the good news that it is possible. And many people have done this. Okay, so what happens when we retrain the brain? We retrain the amygdala and the insular parts of the brain to recognize that these signals from the external world, the chemicals, the mold, are no longer dangerous for us. Sure, we want to avoid them, that's absolutely fine, but they aren't dangerous and they don't justify this over response. And that's where we use brain retraining, because it can't be done consciously. You can't just tell your brain, look, there's no actual danger. The reaction doesn't justify what I'm being exposed to. But through brain retraining, the brain can unlearn its over defensive behavior and come back to a normal level of response to those chemicals or mold or whatever it may be. Now the reason this is not an overnight process is because we are retraining a deeply entrenched survival instinct. The brain thinks this is the right thing to do to ensure survival. And as we said, survival is the brain's number one priority. So I'm just seeing if there's anything else that I want to. We may come back to this particular diagram. One thing I will say is that if we look at some studies, you might say, well, why is it the amygdala and the insula? Well, animal studies, especially the ones conducted by Dr. Pachero Lopez, they seem to support the idea that actually conditioning of the immune system and conditioning specifically around immunological threats occurs in the amygdala and the insula. And the insula is the part of the brain that memorizes previous reactions and then decides what are the appropriate reactions going forward. And that is incredible research. So now we're incorporating that research into what we're doing and calling this retraining amygdala and insular retraining. We're retraining those two parts of the brain where the core learning has occurred. And for those of you interested, there's quite a complicated model that I've come up with in terms of what exactly happens. I won't go through it now because it's quite takes quite a bit of time, but you've got chemical signals going into the olfactory bulb or actually can be other sensory organs in the body and the brain. And there's a lot of communication between the hippocampus, the amygdala, the insula, the anterior cingulate, a lack of inhibition back to some of these sensory organs. So there's quite a complex model behind this, and a lot of it is based on some of the studies around pain signals. So as you can see, the brain has a very complex way of processing signals internally and externally. And that's what we spent many years working. Good, okay. So we'll come back. Away from that. Good. Okay. So that is the one of the explanations of this condition. And as I said, we have a brain retraining program called the Gupta program. We spent 20 years refining it and refining it and refining it. And just last year we published the new version of this Gupta program, 5.0. And it is a program which is online now. It's not DVDs. Our old program used to be DVD based, but now this is online. And it is a program, step by step program on how you can retrain your brain out of these responses. And there are 15 interactive video sessions, a ton of audio exercises, as well as supportive Facebook community. So there's a private Facebook group where people discuss their achievements, what they've managed to improve, or ask questions. It's a very healing, supportive environment that you have access to. And we have 30 trained coaches around the world who can also work with you one on one. And the great thing about this program is I know many of you have spent thousands of dollars working with many different doctors and different treatments trying to get better. But with our program, the program comes with a one year money back guarantee, no questions asked. So if you use the program if you have no benefit, you can simply return the program and get your money back. So you've got nothing to lose by really going for it and giving this program an opportunity to really show you its power, that you deserve to heal from this condition.