Medical Research on Brain Retraining

Hello and a warm, warm welcome to our Facebook Live event today. My name is Ashok Gupta, and I'm the director of the Gupta Program. And in today's presentation, what we're going to be talking about is a lot of chronic conditions that many people face in the population and the types of research that we've been conducting here at the clinic and our opportunities for future research and the fundraising that we're doing, because we know that with a lot of these chronic conditions, it really is about getting the scientific basis behind it solid so that people can feel more informed and more confident about taking on neuroplasticity and brain retraining. So a bit of background to myself. I myself suffered from a chronic illness many, many years ago when I was at university. And I managed to heal myself and get myself 100% better by researching the brain neurology of me and chronic fatigue syndrome, and then set up a clinic and published various medical papers to really help people understand the neurological basis, the brain basis of these conditions. And so today, what I'm going to be helping you understand is more about the landscape of these conditions and how it really is a public health emergency. We really need to start conducting more scientific research into these types of conditions. I'm just going to share some slides here. So just to let you know, today is actually National Philanthropy Day. Philanthropy Day. And it's a great honor to be presenting this on this particular auspicious day. So, as I said, my name is Ashok Gupta, and we also would have on board on our team Dr. Alex Bratty, PhD. She's actually a researcher who's conducting most of our clinical research and preparing the grounds for future research as well. So how many people around the world actually suffer from chronic conditions? Well, it is estimated, as we said, this is a public health emergency. And often it's seen as an invisible illness and seen as incurable. So there are millions who suffer from this. And actually it's not prioritized in terms of investments and research since simply because it's not seen as potentially increasing mortality, although that's debatable. So it's seen as something that creates a lot of suffering, but actually it doesn't shorten people's life necessarily, and therefore there's not a prioritisation of funding. It is estimated that Potentially there are 5 to 9 million people in the U.S. nearly 25 million people worldwide who may be suffering just from ME and chronic fatigue syndrome in terms of fibromyalgia, maybe about 4 million Americans, maybe 3% of the worldwide population. And in terms of long Covid, which is a recent addition to these groups of chronic conditions, it is estimated, believe it or not, that there are 15.7 million Americans who are continuing to experience symptoms after three months of experiencing Covid, which we now term long Covid, and that's around 7% of the US population. And that's not including then many other chronic conditions such as mould illness, Lyme disease, mast cell activation, multiple chemical sensitivities, and electrical sensitivities. Sibo, chronic inflammatory response syndrome. A lot of these conditions which the traditional medical profession finds it challenging to treat because they are functional, where the actual function of the immune system itself is probably where the issue lies. Now, just a brief introduction to brain retraining. So brain retraining and neuroplasticity is this new approach to these types of conditions. And certainly it's not saying that these conditions are in the mind, but saying that these conditions are in the brain or certainly the unconscious brain. Specifically two brain structures that we identify, the amygdala and the insula. And these two brain structures, we believe are where the core conditioning lies in terms of the immune system. And that has been shown in animal studies repeatedly, fairly recently. So it's very exciting to be researching this area of medicine. And in our hypothesis, we believe that a lot of these conditions are caused by a situation where there may be some genetic backdrop or some genetic risk factors. But it's often when people are experiencing some type of chronic stress, and that could be emotional stress, but also physical stress or mental stress combined with exposure to some kind of trigger. So in the case of me and chronic fatigue syndrome, that tends to be some type of virus or bacterial infection. The case of fibromyalgia, that may be some kind of accident or some kind of physical injury in Covid. Obviously that's exposure to the COVID infection, then creating long Covid, and then the other conditions, mold, it's exposure to mold, Lyme disease, exposure to the borrelia, bacterial infection, and so on. A combination of those factors then creates a conditioning event in the brain where even once the original insult has been dealt with, the brain continues to believe that the infection is present or the toxin isn't present. And the brain then starts over responding to even mild evidence that the infection may still be there or the toxin may still be there. So the brain keeps chronically over responding, creating an overstimulation of the nervous system and an overstimulation of the immune system, or certainly dysfunction of the immune system. And we see this continually in A lot of these conditions. So that's our core hypothesis. And the traditional medical profession doesn't necessarily treat this condition in this particular way, but certainly a lot of functional medicine, doctors, integrative doctors, are now taking this approach on board and integrating it as part of their overall package of support for patients. And so it is gaining popularity the idea that although we detect lots of symptoms downstream, actually this may be a core conditioning event in the brain itself. And actually we can retrain the brain. If we can enable the brain to realize that we are no longer in the disease environment, the brain can actually switch off these chronic responses and reset itself and go back to homeostasis, therefore bringing back energy or normality to the body and the brain. And so, in terms of our previous research, my first hypothesis was published in 2002, based on many years of research and also my own recovery, indicating that the amygdala and insula may well be where the core conditioning lies. And then we conducted a clinical audit in 2010. We tracked many patients over a year and we found that two thirds of patients reached an 80 to 100% functioning within one year. And 92% of participants reported some improvement in their health. And now that didn't have a control group. We then conducted a very small randomised control trial in 2012 which showed that the Gupta program group did in fact experienced significant improvement. But that was a very, very small study. And then the main study, the main randomised controlled trial that we published in 2020, compared the Gupta program to a control group. And we will talk about that in a moment. So, in terms of the clinical audit, as I've mentioned, there was 2/3 of patients reaching 80 to 100% recovery. And in terms of mean self assessment scores after one year, 41.5% initially, up to 77% functioning after one year of treatments. And then this is the main study that was published in 2020, it was on fibromyalgia. And we noticed that after just two months of the intervention, there was a 50% increase in perceived health, a 40% reduction in fibro scores, almost a halving of pain, depression and anxiety. And that was a published study published in the Journal of Clinical Medicine. And that study has actually spurred on further interest from the mainstream medical institutions to conduct further research into neuroplasticity. You can see scores there. And that study is in fact available on our website as well. And in terms of future research, this is what we're really excited about because this kind of condition really requires a lot of in depth research. Across the conditions and also multiple studies to build up that body of evidence. And I love this quote from Mahatma Gandhi. A small body of determined spirits fired up by an unquenchable faith in their mission can alter the course of human history. And there are so many great researchers out there who are realizing that, that the mainstream medical model for treating chronic illness isn't fit for purpose. Where we're seeing a doctor for, let's say, seven minutes, we are prescribed pills and off we go. And yet these conditions are multifactorial in terms of both their cause and in both in terms of the downstream symptoms that are caused. And therefore, it requires a more integrated approach and a holistic approach. And there are many great researchers and clinics who are working towards that vision. And why do we want to conduct research? Well, as we've said, we want, first of all, these conditions to be taken more seriously. So often because of a lack of medical training or education, certain people believe that these are psychosomatic or all in the head. And therefore, sometimes medical research is not prioritized. And as we said, it's also because it doesn't necessarily increase mortality. And we really want these conditions to be taken more seriously, and we want to build that body of evidence, as we've said. And also for patients, it's a very difficult journey for patients. So many times they've gone down many avenues. They've spent thousands, if not tens of thousands of dollars on various treatments. And a lot of these treatments don't have an evidence base behind them. And we truly want to provide a safe and viable treatment for people who suffer these types of conditions. And also we want to improve our treatment. So we are continually improving it, changing it, to see what's working for most people most of the time. And so conducting research enables us to actually get better outcomes. And finally, our ultimate vision is that once we provide this larger evidence base, that eventually, rather than someone taking 10 years or 20 years to come to neuroplasticity and brain retraining, actually that this treatment is offered at a primary care level. And the reason this is important is because when a patient first comes and sees their doctor and complains of fatigue or complains of an inflammatory response to mould, let's say, if we can get patients to engage in neuroplasticity right at the beginning, we believe that that can be even easier to use the program and retrain the brain. And so how amazing would it be if we have this evidence base and we can really relieve the suffering of so many millions of people that we mentioned earlier. So just through those stats that we displayed on the screen, we're talking about potentially up to 100 million people suffering from chronic conditions at any point in time around the world. And that's probably an underestimate. And why are we fundraising? Because, as we've said, existing funding sources don't necessarily prioritize this type of research. And randomized controlled trials are the gold standard, but they are also expensive to run, and we certainly have applied or would look to apply in partnership with other institutions. But it takes sometimes years to actually gain existing funding sources. And we want to build that body of evidence, as we've mentioned. And so our current fundraising objectives are we've just launched something called the Chronic Conditions Research Fund, which we're very excited about. And this research fund is 501c compliant. Now, for those of you in America who are watching, you'll know what that means, which means that it's actually tax deductible whether you're a company or an individual. So if you donate to this research fund, you'll be able to claim some of the tax back on that. You have a target of raising $250,000 within the next six months or so. And just to show you where we are right now, we've already raised $22,000 through generous donations from many people. So thank you if you have donated already. And so we're well on our way now towards our goal. It's certainly a good start. And today's presentation is really to help you understand more about the research, more about our funding opportunities and what we're actually going to use this money for. So in terms of what this money will be used for, we are going to prioritise Maine and chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, long Covid and mold illness. But certainly there are other conditions that in parallel, we may be able to kick start research upon, even conditions like Alzheimer's, which is also an inflammatory condition, and Ms. And we've even had a lot of interest from breast implant injury. So there's many people who have breast implants and then suffer injury as results and have found the brain retraining effective for that. But these are the ones that we're currently looking at prioritizing, as the funds are initially used for the hiring of a principal investigator and a research team. So generally this might be a research team from a university or private clinic that can be the independent research team who will investigate, obviously, the Gupta program and brain retraining. Then there's the design of the study and the registration of the study with an IRB and also with ClinicalTrials.gov and then patient recruitment is one of the biggest costs. So we have to make sure that when we're recruiting patients for these studies that they are actually what we call clean patients in the sense that they aren't suffering from multiple conditions or there could be other reasons why they're experiencing their symptoms, that they are definitely experiencing chronic fatigue syndrome or fibromyalgia. So that filtering takes quite a long time and often you have to go out to many different sources to get hundreds of patients. And then from those hundreds of patients, you may be able to find a filtered source of 50 to 100 patients. And then there's obviously the cost of the implementation of the active and control group within the study and patient monitoring and safety. So there's a team of people that can support the patients through their journey. Then there's the statistical analysis and finally the, the publication of the paper itself. So in terms of next steps, we'd love for you to be involved. If you've been, you know, open to the idea that chronic conditions may well be caused by abnormalities in the brain and that there is now a growing evidence base in terms of theoretically and also practically that actually brain retraining and neuroplasticity could be effective to treat these conditions. I'd love for you to be involved in any way that you'd like to be involved. So firstly, you can donate to an independent third party organization called the Good Nation foundation, which as we said, is 501C3 compliant. It's a non profit organization that facilitates philanthropic donations and as we say, it's National Philanthropy Day, so an auspicious day to kick off our fundraising. So that donation is provided to that independent third party organization and they make sure that your contribution is only going towards research and is not used for anything else. Please do share this information with anyone else that you think maybe you'd like to contribute. So if you can't contribute yourself, perhaps there are family, friends or people are suffering from the condition itself who are looking for research and looking to support research. In fact, you may have somebody that you know that could contribute. And if they'd like to find out more about the Gupta program as part of their contribution, then certainly please do put them in touch with us. And if just a thousand people donated $250, we would hit our goal very, very easily. So if you're thinking about donating, perhaps if you donated $250, we were able to get many people to donate, we would hit our goal, be able to raise that $250,000 and then kick off potentially multiple research studies. And once we publish those, we then give hope to the millions around the world who are suffering from these conditions. And if you'd like to donate a larger amount, let's say $5,000 or more, please do contact our clinical research consultant, that's Dr. Alex Bratty@alexguptaprogram.com and then she can give you further information about our fundraising. And if you'd like to donate yourself, this is the link. So it's guptaprogram.com and there you'll find out more information about the chronic research funds, chronic conditions research funds, and how you can donate what your money will be used for and how you can make it 501c3 compliant as well. There's lots of great information on that particular page. And so all is left for me to do is to really encourage you, if you are suffering from the condition itself, to give you that hope that although certain support groups or certain researchers say there's no cure or it's incurable, actually many, many people do heal and recover from these conditions. And that's the hope that I want to give you. And if you'd like to be involved in this vision of our research supporting millions around the world, please do get in touch, Please do check out our website and you can find out more information. As I said, the Gupta program is an overall brain retraining neuroplasticity program, which is all presented online. And that's also something, if you're suffering from the condition and you'd like to find out more, you can take a 28 day free trial and there you can see how we can support you with your condition. So thank you so much for watching. We hope that this has been useful for you to be able to decide whether something you'd like to contribute towards. Our aim is to develop this scientific, the scientific base of knowledge to really support the idea that brain retraining is probably the most effective treatment for these conditions. And yeah, thank you so much for watching and we will see you next time. Thank you.