Sarah's Long Haul Covid Success Story Using The Gupta Program

So, Sarah, as I said, wonderful to have you. Do you want to just tell us how it all started in March 2020 for you and what exactly happened when you first got Covid?

Yeah, so my first symptoms first developed on the day lockdown started in the UK, 23 March, feeling really, really unwell, horrendous diarrhea, shivers, aches. I didn't know for definite it was Covid at that point, but I knew it was something I'd never had before. I felt worse than I'd done with any other illness that then progressed on. Didn't get any better, didn't ever really have the classic temperature and the cough and the breathing problems didn't come till later for me, but it got worse and by about four weeks, instead of recovering, my breathing was really, really bad. So much so that a doctor friend who did a FaceTime call with me came around and rushed me into A and E, because he was concerned at how fast and how shallow my breathing was and thought it was quite dangerous.

Right. So at that point, you really had some of the classic signs of COVID 19, in terms of the cough, the breathlessness. What other symptoms did you experience at that point?

It was mainly the cough and the breathlessness that was the main concern. And the cough got worse until a couple of months later. I was even, at one point, coughed up some blood and made. My doctor said it was all sorts of other different things, because Covid can have that many different effects on people's bodies and it seems to affect so many of us so differently, they can be really hard to predict how it's going to affect you. What I did, unfortunately, though, I tried to carry on and I was carrying on working even when I was so ill, I couldn't sit up and I was working from bed and I was trying to carry on as much of my normal life as I could, because at the time we didn't really know any better. Now there's a lot of learning from those of us who've had Covid and turned into long Covid, and I would certainly encourage other people to take it a lot more gently in their recovery than I did.

Right, yes, absolutely. This is the core of it. This is what we'd love to dissect a bit more. So you obviously had a confirmed clinical diagnosis from a doctor that you had COVID 19, because you had all the classic signs and at that point in time, as you say, we didn't really know much about the condition back early last year. And so you found that although you Felt quite ill. You continued to work in whatever capacity you could. Just describe how you think that might have impacted the course of the condition and what you would have done differently had you know what you know now.

Yeah, I think if I'd known that Covid was more than just a respiratory disease and that it was going to affect all of my body, I would have paced it a lot more slowly. I would have taken a decent amount of time off work. I did slow down my other activities, but nowhere near enough, in retrospect, for what I should have done, for the scale of the illness that my body was fighting. I don't think I gave my body a chance to really heal. And instead I panicked it because it thought that I was kind of going to charge back and carry on doing all my everyday activities when it was really screaming out, you're not ready for this. You can't do it.

Yeah, it's very interesting. That little voice. There's this little voice that we have in the back of our heads that says, I don't think you should be doing this. You're doing a bit too much. And traditionally in society we're taught to just push through that, especially if we're a gym junkie or an achiever. So, right, no, keep going, you'll be fine. You know, just walk it off. And actually, it's a signal from our bodies that we need to pace and we need to rest. But as you say, we didn't know any better. And for anyone out there who's got long Covid, this isn't about feeling bad about what you could or couldn't have done. We didn't know at that time what this was about. This is really for us to try and help others who are experiencing Covid to make sure that they don't go on to contract along Covid. So we're just trying to share what might be best practice and how could you feel? Because often when people think of resting, they think of just physically resting. And we here at the clinic are big advocates that resting is across all the areas of your existence. So it's physical resting, but it's also mental and emotional resting, which is just as important, if not more important, when you have COVID 19. Do you want to just speak about that?

Yeah, definitely. So I told myself that because I was working from bed and I was lying down, I was resting, but actually I was attending sort of five, six zoom meetings a day, a lot of them about COVID because that was related to my work, and it wasn't really surprising. That my body didn't really feel like it was resting.

Yes, exactly. And especially in the context of the pandemic, we're all experiencing slightly heightened anxiety and uncertainty about what's going to happen. Especially last year when it was new. I think now we've kind of surrendered and more to what's going on and accepted it. But at that time it was all very fresh. So there's that added anxiety. Plus, as you say, sitting in bed doing zoom meetings, which we know can be really stressful with all the technology. And I can imagine that. Yeah. That continuously might not allow someone's body to fully fight off the virus.

Yeah. In hindsight, that's how it feels that I didn't really give it. I mean, there's no saying that it might have happened anyway, but I think I would have given myself a better chance of not having had the last nine, 10 months now of illness had I taken it more gently at the start and been more gentle with myself.

Yeah. So this is really crucial information because no one's done any research on this as yet and it's quite anecdotal. It's quite tricky to do research on whether someone overdoes it at the beginning of the condition. Do they rest enough? Because you're talking about different layers, mental, physical and emotional. So this anecdotal information is incredibly important. So if you are out there and you have COVID 19 or you know, someone who's got COVID 19, certainly Sarah's experience and other people that we're treating right now, it really is about as soon as you, you know, you've got COVID 19, please take that deep. Rest mentally, physically, emotionally. Drop everything. Don't feel guilty about, oh, I'm not at work, oh, I'm missing out on this meeting, or, you know, work will think I'm a, you know, a lazy person for not doing this, that and the other shirker. No, it is really about listening to your bodies, just like when we have a flu and deeply resting. Be as lazy as you want, let go and say I love myself. I'm going to take that self care to really get better from this condition. And I think that the next step, and we'll come on to that, Sarah, is even once you feel that you've got over the condition, take your time getting back to work or getting back to a busy social life or looking after the family, can you tell your employer to give you some more time? Can you tell your family to take on more responsibilities? You know, these are all kind of important things. So, Sarah, coming back to your experiences, so I guess you then at that point realized that this has gone from just having COVID 19 to then long haul Covid, where it was lasting for many weeks and months. At what point was there any particular point you realized, okay, this is what's going on, or was it just a gentle carry on?

I think it was a slide. But by July, I realized that it definitely wasn't going away. I took a week off work thinking that, you know, a week of rest would be really, really good, but tried to do a little bit of walking and I set myself back quite badly. And from then it was a slide downhill until September. I had to give up work completely. I needed to move in with family for care, and I was pretty much bedbound, just about able to get to the toilet. So at that point it was clear it wasn't an ongoing infection that had long since gone. But there was definitely something my body was trying to tell me it wasn't going to recover if I carried on with the way I was going.

Right. And just so that, I mean, obviously you're aware now, because you're on the Gupta program, you're aware of our hypothesis, but people always hear it so many times from me. But in terms of your interpretation of our hypothesis as to what we believe causes me chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, long Covid, how do you interpret our hypothesis in terms of what may have happened to you?

For me, it felt very much that my body was triggered into like a fight flight, freeze mode. My heart rate was very, very fast, especially whenever I wasn't lying down, with symptoms that are very similar condition called pots, which a lot of people with long Covid have been experiencing. That then makes you feel more and more unwell and it makes you not want to stand up because you know that when you do, you're going to feel ill. And it becomes like a vicious cycle. The body starts saying, well, if I do that, I'm going to feel worse. And in the end, it's almost like it stops you from doing it as a protection device is what it feels like. I was mentally really, really calm, longstanding meditation habit. And my mind was quite calm through the process, which I feel quite grateful for. But my body was still in that panic mode. It felt that my body was stuck in that mode, not necessarily my head. It wasn't a mental thing particularly. It was just there was something that my body needed to heal. And a lot of us have been doing things like meditation and yoga and things to try and improve the. The parasympathetic response, the things that are built into the program anyway. But it felt that kind of there was more needed. There was that built on top of a program of rest and a kind program of dealing with it, rather than just kind of ad hoc things.

Yes, I agree, I agree. And obviously, Sarah, I think many of us have been seasoned meditators at the same time. Even when we've got a very calm mind, when we are working, it still is an activation of our nervous system, even when we're calm, isn't it? So just working, just having so many meetings can still rev up our system and impact on our immune system and.

A system that's been under attack from what is a really, really powerful virus that affects every part of your body. It would be amazing, really, if our bodies didn't kind of want to kind of fight back and defend us and protect us in some way from that.

Yeah. And as you've described, it almost feels like a kind of fight or flight. And we describe the condition as a physiological traumatic response. So the body says, right, let me fight off this virus, but if there isn't enough resources or energy in the system, we've got a busy life, we're stressed, or whatever it may be, the body goes into this traumatic condition response to say, right, I am going to call the cavalry every time I notice anything that might mimic this condition. So even once it thinks it's fought off the COVID 19 or it has successfully done so, the body stays in the on position, which is stimulate the nervous system, stimulate the immune system, keep defending all those cytokines going around the body, which keep the body in this altered state of what feels like illness. But actually it's our own immune system causing all the symptoms and our own nervous system. And then it goes. It stays stuck in that mode, creating ongoing symptoms as you described. So that kind of got to its worst in September, and then I think at that point, is that when you then got the Gupta program?

Yeah, that's when I started re engaging with it properly. I'd used it in the past, many years ago, so I had confidence it was going to be the thing that was going to help me. But yet, once I'd stopped work and I was resting, I had this time and space to engage with the programme properly and that's when I started to recover.

Fantastic. And so you've been working with the program. What aspects of it do you think were most powerful for you?

For me personally, it's been the emphasis on the different parts and kind of understanding what drives me. So the fact that I carried on working from bedbound shows I've got a real strong, active kind of achiever type. I want to get things done. I also really hate letting people down. So it's kind of seeing those different parts within how I respond to situations, trying to get all of the discipline aspects of how I work to function together on board for my recovery. And I just thought it was kind of something that.

So go ahead, Sarah.

That really helped.

That really helped. Okay.

No, that feels like it's really helped, and it feels like an ongoing focus.

Great. And I want to really emphasize there, Sarah, that, you know, obviously what we're. If anyone's watching this and coming to the Gupta program new, obviously, we're not saying that these conditions are in the mind. They're definitely real physical conditions in the body. But what we're trying to help people understand is there are certain unconscious patterns that we have, certain reactions that the brain has to the body that can keep this body in this altered state. And sometimes we have to go deeper and see this condition as a, I suppose, a learning experience to help us understand more about ourselves that can gradually get those final steps towards recovery.

Yeah, No, I definitely wouldn't want anyone to think that it was your mental health disposition that led anyone to this, because a lot of people have been getting that from some health professionals and understanding people react against it because this feels. And it is a very, very physical condition. But it feels like we need to harness all the possible tools and all the possible resources that we have at our disposal to give ourselves the best chance of recovery.

Yes. And that's why a holistic approach is most powerful. So we advocate the brain retraining and the limbic retraining, which is the core of the Gupta program, using neuroplasticity techniques, which obviously we're using, as well as supporting techniques like meditation and diet and sleep and all the other things that kind of bring our systems back to balance. So I'd love to understand more, Sarah, about the contrast between, obviously, in September, you being pretty much bedbound, as you say, you moved in with family, they had to kind of look after you. And. And now, once you've. Now you've been on the Gupta program for a while, what are you able to do now? How would you describe your health now?

On average, it's vastly, vastly improved. I can do a daily walk. I've been out on my bike several times. I used to be a recycling addict, and I can't go as far or as fast, but I can use it again. I'm sitting up in a chair. I mean, for months the idea of sitting up in a chair for more than a minute or so would have been unbelievable. I started back at work this week on a phased return and I'm pasting it and taking it gently. But after from in September, I couldn't look at a screen. I had to have my eyes closed. I couldn't cope with any sound. So to get to a point now where I can quite confidently arrange meetings knowing I'm going to be well enough to attend them just feels kind of life changing, really. It's like I'm getting my life back again.

Yes. That must just be an incredible liberation. Especially because we didn't know what this virus is about, what effects it could have. I mean, we don't want to scare people, but must just feel such a relief to have that fear behind you about that.

Yeah. And I don't mind if it takes me a little while to get back completely to how I was, because every week I can see progress. Every week there's something new I can do that I couldn't do the week before.