A first-person YouTube testimonial from Sal describing a long illness trajectory beginning shortly after high school with acute Lyme disease and later recurring infections and chronic fatigue. Sal recounts many treatments (antibiotics, homeopathy, naturopathy, elimination diet, acupuncture) with partial improvements but persistent fatigue and brain fog. After joining the Gupta Program (about 1.5 years), Sal reports substantial improvements—especially in the last six months—including greater resilience to stressors (travel, conferences), reduced post-exertional crashes, and increased confidence to pursue illustration work. The narrative emphasizes regained functional recovery and psychological trust in the program rather than a claim of complete cure.
Questions this video answers
About 1.5 years ("I've been doing the program for about a year and a half").
In the last six months ("in the last six months especially, I have felt...exponentially more at ease").
Graduated valedictorian of their class.
Chapters
So I'm Sal, and I became unwell shortly after high school was when I got my first virus. Before that, I was a perfectionist. I graduated valedictorian of my class at the expense of some of my social life. I was working during high school, doing a lot of babysitting and working for business in my town and also playing sports after school. And so I was just constantly doing and helping and helping my family. I never found a tick, but I did get Lyme disease shortly after graduating high school. And my doctors, when they tested me, said that it was acute Lyme rather than chronic. And they gave me the medication and told me I'd recovered. And while I had Lyme, I was pretty bedbound, but I never really regrained, regained the like vitality and oomph in life that I'd had before. And then in my junior year of college, I studied abroad and got a series of tropical illnesses, another tick bite and a few other things, and came back and proceeded to, even after treatment, just get sick constantly with anything that was going around. I was sleeping 10 hours a day and falling asleep in class. Still, I couldn't really have a social life. I was barely getting through with my homework and my work study job. I had really bad brain fog and really bad fatigue, had a really hard time concentrating. So then I started seeing a homeopathic doctor. And I pretty quickly realized that western medicine wouldn't help me. I'd heard a lot of stories of people who got very sick and were gaslit by the medical system or just weren't treated in the way that they had hoped. And so I took homeopathic medicine for a while and I saw a naturopath and went on an elimination diet and did acupuncture, just did a bunch of other healing methods. And that helped me recover from some of the symptoms that I had been experiencing. But I still had the chronic fatigue and various chronic symptoms. I still felt like I was pushing all of the time. And I did have some windows into wellness, but then it was usually when I would go somewhere else, be on vacation, and then I'd come back and be sick again. I've been doing the program for about a year and a half and I think I've seen the most changes in the last six months. Actually, I did, over the course of the first year, see some pretty radical differences. But in the last six months especially, I have felt like exponentially more at ease and less worried about my condition. I think going into the program I thought that I would experience just like total health and happiness. But I think the, the major outcome has been more of a sense of resilience and ability to recover from stressful events. So I've traveled a few times in the last year and a half and historically I might have traveled and then just completely gotten wiped out from the process of traveling. And I think the biggest win in the last couple of months was that I went to a conference and almost pulled an all nighter. And the next morning had to. After having a full day of exercising and running around and socializing and a full week of that, then drive five hours home over the course of two days, I was able to break it up. But the next day or a couple days later, after having this, like, big week and really big day and night, just reverted back to where I'd been before that week. Moments like that where I. My system is stressed from some event, social or emotional or otherwise. I notice I'm able to recover a lot more fully and that I think that more than anything else has helped build my trust in the program and be able to feel more at ease that, like, you know, I'm hearing Ashok's voice in my head, like, whatever happens, I can handle it. I'm looking forward to seeing what's in store for me. And right now I'm pursuing a career in illustration. And like I said, I have been able to do a couple gigs, but the Gupta program has definitely allowed me to take myself more seriously and be able to, like, think about more of the details rather than feel like a total imposter because I don't feel able or capable of to be a working adult. So, yeah, really looking forward to, like, moving into the fullness of what I can create.
