The Unspoken Emotional Suffering of Chronic Conditions & What To Do About It

Hello, and a warm welcome to our live event today with myself, Ashok Gupta, the founder and CEO of the Gupta Program. And I'm very delighted that you're joining us today for our special event on the emotional suffering, the untold emotional suffering that accompanies many chronic inflammatory conditions. And the conditions that we're talking about are things like chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, long Covid mold illness, Lyme disease, and a whole host of other inflammatory conditions for which the mainstream medical profession has little answers. So today, what we're going to be looking at is what are the causes of those very deep but upsetting symptoms, and what can you actually do about it? And what does the science say about it as well? Because unless we really understand these symptoms, it's very difficult for them to be dealt with. And I'm talking from my personal experience here. So I myself suffered from me chronic fatigue syndrome in the late 90s. And I remember in my worst moments being almost suicidal, almost just not knowing where to turn, who to speak to. And I would go from doctor to doctor and they would say to me, we don't know what you have. We have no treatment for it. We don't even know what to call it. And by the way, you're on your own. Goodbye. And for a young man, that was just like a death sentence. And that triggered this lifelong quest for me to try to understand these conditions and to heal myself and heal others. And I remember at the time that I was unwell, really feeling like I was emotionally out of control. Of course there were physical symptoms, the fatigue, the exhaustion, the brain fog, the difficulty concentrating, aches and pains throughout the body. And yet what was just as awful were the emotional symptoms that I was experiencing. And of course, there's a stigma sometimes associated with talking about those emotional symptoms. Because if we talk about what we're experiencing, the fear, the anxiety, the dread, then people might think that it's in our mind that it's psychological in some way. But of course, I believe that the physical symptoms come first, and those emotional symptoms are like another layer on top. So today we're going to be looking at what exactly are these emotional symptoms? Sometimes we may not even recognize them ourselves or really understand them, and then secondly, why they are created so, the underlying brain neurology behind this. And then finally, what can we do about it? How can we support our own healing through this understanding? And I'm once again really glad that you're spending some time out of your day to join us for this very, very important topic. And I hope that you'll share this on your social media, perhaps with friends or family, and of course, other support groups, because this understanding of the layer of emotional symptoms that accompanies our physical symptoms is such an important part of our healing. So please do share this widely on the Internet. And straight after this event, we'll be having a live Zoom events. Our team will share the Zoom link in the chat. We're having a live Zoom call. And during that Zoom event, we'll actually go through a special new emotional healing meditation, which is all about the content that we're going to cover today. So I hope you'll join us for that free meditation as well. And if you do join us for the Zoom chat, straight after this live event, we'll also be giving away a Gupta program, a full one year subscription to the Gupta program. And if you stay to the end of today's live session, we'll also be giving a special discount for those of you interested in taking the full Gupta program. Now, of course, as we go through today's content, we're going to be dealing with some very difficult and heavy topics. And if at any point it feels too much or overwhelming, please do just take some time out for yourself and just breathe, relax and reground yourself. And of course, what we're covering today is not a substitute for any medical advice, any, any psychological or psychiatric advice. So if you are experiencing very deep or profound anxiety, depressive thoughts, any suicidal tendencies, it's very important that you speak to a medical practitioner, your doctor, or a licensed health professional and not rely on anything on the Internet, including this session, to support your healing if it's at that severity, okay? It's very, very important you seek out help and support. And that's something that we're going to talk about in any case today. So of course, with a lot of these conditions, inflammatory conditions, gut dysbiosis, gut issues, the physical symptoms are the things that we most associate with them. And those physical symptoms, there are many common ones like brain fog, fatigue and exhaustion post exertional malaise. Now, those common symptoms that we see, and yet the emotional dysregulation is just as important. That feeling that our nervous system is out of control, that it's overstimulated. And of course, when we're feeling those symptoms, we may not even recognize them. We may feel that something's wrong in our mind, in our brain, in our body, but we can't quite label it. What are we feeling? What is that experience? And sometimes there can be a stigma when it's fear or anger or even shame at experiencing this illness. There can be a stigma around expressing it to others because once again, people may perceive that we're saying it's all in the mind, or it's something which other people may not understand or put down to psychological reasons. So often people with these illnesses, and if this is yourself, we may hide that, that layer of the condition and just focus on the physical symptoms. And of course, there can be a lot of vulnerability in sharing our experience up and above our physical symptoms. Because there's a vulnerability. Are we being judged for not being strong in dealing with them? And yet, let's be open. These symptoms are very severe and they do exist. And what symptoms are we talking about? Well, if we're looking at some of the emotional symptoms, there can be a lot of anxiety that accompanies these conditions. There can be a feeling of panic, There can be heart palpitations, sweating. There can be excessive mood swings and a susceptibility to stress. And I want you to know, if you're experiencing any of this, it's perfectly normal. This susceptibility to stress, based on our hypothesis, is essentially very normal and is part of the overstimulation of our nervous system and immune system. So we believe a lot of these chronic diseases are due to those two systems, our immune system and nervous system, overreacting and continually causing the chronic symptoms in our body. And so as a. As a part of that, the emotional symptoms are a layer on top of and connects to that. Some of the emotional symptoms that many people experience are that general feeling of dread, like a dark cloud hanging over our heads. And that, once again, is perfectly normal. And if you're experiencing that, I want to normalize that as part of having a chronic inflammatory condition. Then in terms of the cognitive difficulties, many people experience difficulty with memory, difficulty thinking or concentrating with that brain fog. And now let's turn our attention to some very common symptoms that often are not talked about in the context of chronic disease. Anheda, word you may not have heard of, but anhodynia, is this idea that there's a lack of interest in things in life, a lack of ability to enjoy things or take pleasure from life's experiences. You may not want to spend time out of the house or with others or doing activities that previously made you happy. And once again, this is perfectly normal. And we're going to explain in the brain what is going on that's creating anhodynia. And what we also may find is our motivation goes down. We find it harder to feel happier to do things. We may feel emotionally numb as well to positive and negative experiences, and may not feel so loving towards others, or may not be able to accept other people's love and care. There's a lack of connection that we may experience, and this may cause challenges in our relationships. And all of these symptoms may actually magnify due to our reaction to them. Okay, so imagine we have two types of symptoms. We have our physical symptoms, and we also have these emotional symptoms. Now, we may magnify those due to our underlying emotional reaction to them and our underlying beliefs about them. And often this magnification may be similar to how. How we may have processed situations during our childhood. So if we have a background of trauma or adverse childhood experiences, we may process what's going on with us now in a similar way to the way we did as children, because that's the only coping mechanism that we may know. And there's three key ways that these emotional, cognitive, and spiritual symptoms may become magnified. The first is the catastrophizing about them. So when we have these physical symptoms and the emotional symptoms, we may catastrophize and think, this is terrible, I feel awful. And we may feel them even more and put them out of context. The second factor is what we call eternalizing the problem. So when we have these types of symptoms, we may feel like the they're never going to go away. They're going to be here forever. And that's the eternalizing of the situation. So when we have a negative emotion, the mind tends to feel like, I'm going to feel like this forever. That's a natural tendency of the mind because it wants you to do something about it. And remember, we don't want to feel annoyed at our dear beloved minds. This is all over protection. Our mind is simply becoming more anxious in an attempt to protect us. But the problem is the medicine has become the problem. We're being overprotected. So, number one, we catastrophize about our physical and emotional symptoms. Secondly, we eternalize them, thinking they're going to go on forever and there's no way out. And the third aspect of how this magnification occurs is when we feel hopeless and we feel a lack of agency. Agency just simply means, do we have the power to influence and change what is happening to us? We feel everything's hopeless. We can't change it. And these three factors, catastrophizing, eternalizing, and feeling hopeless, can magnify the emotional symptoms within our minds and can really take a toll on our system. So I'd like you to spend a moment to think about when it comes to your emotional symptoms of spiritual fatigue, the anhodynia, the numbness, the anxiety, the panic, how do you respond to those symptoms? Do you ever catastrophize about them, eternalise them, or feel hopeless? Feel like you're going to feel like that forever? And just observe that for the moment. Now, let's move on to the science behind this. Now, why are we experiencing these types of symptoms? Well, for those of you familiar with the Gupta program and the work that we do, you will know that we have a hypothesis as to what causes many of these chronic diseases. And we believe ultimately they are caused in the brain. They're not in the mind, but they're in the brain. And we believe that that nervous system response, that sympathetic nervous system response is in overdrive, that fight, flight or freeze response. And that secondly, our immune system is in overdrive as well, causing inflammation throughout the body. And they are stuck because two brain structures, the amygdala and insula, have become conditioned to overreact as an. In an attempt to protect us and keep us alive, as an overprotection. Now, the issue is, when it comes to that fight, flight or freeze response, that fight response is the anger response, the flight response is the fear response, and the freeze response is the helplessness response, where we are frozen with fear and can no longer respond effectively to the situation. And those three responses cause disruption in our brain chemicals, in our neurotransmitters and in the bodily hormones that we experience. But these are. These experiences of fight or flight are supposed to be temporary experiences, temporary fear, but they become chronic, and that's where the problems then begin. And secondly, when it comes to inflammation, inflammation is our body's attempt to get our body or rid our bodies of a virus or bacteria or toxin. But when we feel inflamed, that also has emotional effects. So as an example, when you have flu, when the average person has flu, they will experience a lack of motivation. They will experience fatigue, anxiety, maybe mild depression or depressive thoughts. Now, why is that? Because that is the brain's attempt to stop you doing things. So you will rest and lie in bed feeling sorry for yourself, but at least you're resting your nervous and immune systems. So in that threat mode, this is also what's happening. When we have a chronic inflammatory condition, the brain and the body are triggering those types of demotivation responses to exactly get you to rest and do nothing and feel like Doing nothing. All those emotions become heightened. And what are the key neurotransmitters and hormones that are being affected here? The first is dopamine. So dopamine is like the reward chemical that gives you motivation or interest and enthusiasm in life. But when we have chronic inflammation or stress, dopamine levels really drop, really go down. And that's one of the fundamental causes behind this emotional dysregulation, these depressive and anxious thoughts that may accompany our condition. And secondly, serotonin. So we know that when there's chronic stress and chronic inflammation, the levels of serotonin go down in the brain. Therefore, regulating your mood is harder. Everything feels more negative. So that's responsible for that dark cloud that seems to hang over our heads. And we have impaired receptors, impaired serotonin receptors. We may not feel like socializing or. And this may increase our levels of isolation as well. And therefore, this gives us an explanation as to what's going on in the brain. So rather than feeling a victim, are these emotional symptoms? We can say, aha. Let's put it in context. It's simply a temporary experience in the brain. Another hormone, the oxytocin, known as the cuddle hormone, now that can be dysregulated in the longer term. So it can go up or down when we're stressed, but when it becomes chronic, it can become dysregulated. And we may question whether other people actually love us because we're not feeling it. Our capacity to receive love may be reduced as a result of this chronic stress and chronic inflammation in the brain and body. And that's important because we may magnify the negativity around how other people are treating us. And secondly, we may find it harder to feel love and connection to others. Sometimes it may increase, sometimes, sometimes it may decrease because we're focused on our own situation. We're in threat mode, detection mode, and therefore our emotional bandwidth for others may be reduced. And this may affect our relationships, our capacity to receive love, our capacity to express love. And of course, this can increase the sense of isolation and I'm alone with my problems because we feel numb and disconnected to those around us. And I hope this is ringing some bells, some aha moments of, oh, this is why I feel the way I do. It's just temporary and it's natural. We may also feel emotionally vulnerable because our fear is looking for external soothing. So when we feel anxious, depressed, we feel demotivated, and we've got lower levels of these neurotransmitters and hormones. We feel more vulnerable. And therefore we are looking for external people and situations to try and soothe and calm us. And finally, if we have a background of trauma or adverse childhood experiences, we may naturally dissociate from how we're feeling. If we've been used to, as children, dissociating from difficult emotions, we also may feel numb and dissociated from what we're experiencing now. And that means we may feel separate from others and find it harder to once again feel joy, feel upliftment. And this can be part of the protection mechanism. And finally, endorphins. We know they are disrupted when we have chronic stress or chronic inflammation. And therefore we know in pain research, pain increases when we are more stressed and anxious. And this may also contribute to the magnification of both the physical symptoms and the emotional symptoms in the brain. So it all comes down to those three things. The catastrophizing, the eternalizing, and feeling hopeless. And let's move on to what we can actually do about that. Well, firstly, when it comes to the catastrophizing, now let's really be practical here. There's one simple statement that can help you. This is not real. Okay? This is not real. It's an artificial environment that's been created in our brain. And when we recognize that, we're able to not dissociate, but disidentify and say, ah, I can observe my mind with its anxiety, its depressive thoughts, its overwhelm, its hypervigilance, but I don't need to get carried away and feel all these feelings as real and negative. Yeah. So in that way we're able to be more reflective, be the witness of what is going on in our mind and not get carried away with it. Don't believe everything you think and feel. And it's just recognizing that our dear beloved mind is simply overprotecting us. And in our program we have lots of somatic tools to support our ability to tune into some of those emotions and our bodily sensations. We call this somatic retraining. And then we're able to release this pent up tightness, this pent up emotion that's within our bodies. Very important part of healing. B or the second one, eternalize. Please recognize that when your mind is thinking, I've had this for so long, I'm going to feel like this forever. I'm never going to get better. It's recognizing this is just a temporary experience. It may feel bad now, but you will get better, both with the physical symptoms and the emotional symptoms. And we see this every day in our clinic. People healing and recovering. Whether it's our program or other things that people do, people heal every day. And please do watch our recovery videos@our guptprogram.com success stories. Our team will share that in the chat and you'll see stories of hope. Hundreds of people. There's four or five hundred recovery stories on there of people healing from these illnesses that they were told were incurable. People are healing. And thirdly, that hopelessness or I've got no agency. I have no influence over what I'm experiencing. Once again, recognizing that people are healing every day and that you do have the power to gently retrain your brain and bring health back to your mind and body. And as we're focusing on the emotional symptoms today, I myself went through the real depths of negativity. And yet I'm here today feeling uplifted and positive, being here with you and giving you that inspiration that you too can heal. And thousands of our patients have also experienced that upliftment. And talking about our patients, I thought what would be really nice is whether we could actually share some of those stories. And she brings someone on who's been through this experience as well. So I'm just going to see. We've got a couple of people who are going to come on, so we're going to just for a few minutes, hear their experiences. I'm going to bring on Anna.

Hello? Can you hear me?

Yes, we can hear you. We can hear you. Can you hear me?

Awesome. Yes, I hear you. Absolutely. Great. I'm actually in a bathroom in Stockholm at a big party, just jumping in to share my story.

Wow, great. Well, thank you, Anna, for your time. But, yes, I think, you know, when we're talking about this very important topic, we'd love to hear from people like yourselves who've really experienced the depths of those emotional symptoms and, yeah, how you were able to cope with that and did some of the things we talked about ring true for you? Yeah.

So should I just shoot?

Yeah, please, please, go ahead.

So, hi, everyone. I'm Anna Lundstrom. I'm 32 years old. I live in Sweden. I'm a psychologist, a mom and a wife, and I've been almost fully recovered for around a year now. I would say. I see myself as about 95% recovered. And I don't identify a sick person anymore. That's kind of huge. And that's mostly thanks to the Gupta program. So prior to me, cfs, I had no issues with depression or anxiety, just normal ups and Downs I retrieved me CFS like 8 and a half years ago. And by struggling with that chronic disease, I now understand I was on edge for years. I was hyper vigilant about my symptoms, and if I overdid it and I didn't think I was having any depression or anxiety. But now when I look back, I can really see I was low in mood and anxious and had a lot of fear. And I really tried upholding a positive and accepting attitude towards my new conditions. I worked really hard on that. But inside I was. I felt a heartache, in despair and hopelessness. And especially after I had my son two years ago when my body totally collapsed then, yeah, it was devastating. I didn't see way forward and I actually got PTSD from that so that I had to cope with. But yeah, Gupta program helped my emotional symptoms. It was first and foremost by inspiring hope. And as I said, I had no hope for recovery, for a better life for like seven years. So that spark of hope and trust in the process and by, you know, the first videos of the program explaining how the program works, the science behind it, it really helped me with some grounding hope and trust. And trust, I think is the opposite of fear. So that's very good start. And the two specific tools that helped my emotional, my core emotional symptom, fear, that was mostly the somatic retraining, meditation, safe haven, and of course the full seven steps. So the meditation, it got me experiencing my symptoms in a place with no fear. That's obviously helpful. Not trying to resist the symptoms, but experience them in a safe place. And the seven steps were more wholesome for me. That's quite difficult to explain in just one minute, but I've tried. So the seven steps, I think really helped me rewind my brain and talking to different parts, talking to my worry part and like calming the word part and saying, it's okay to feel that way, I understand, but yeah, you can relax. And my retraining part, that was, yeah, I talked to them in a compassionate way and it really calmed me. And visualizing health, that was groundbreaking for me. I tried the first time I visualized an old memory of health because that was like forbidden for seven years, but that was very hopeful. And yeah, so by talking to different parts and visualizing health, it helped me increase my level of activity. And by doing that mindfully, I gradually overcame fear. So by being calmer and more trustful, less scared, my body healed quicker and therefore I gained higher functioning and I reconquered more areas in life. And by doing that Less fear and more trust. So that was a very positive spiral for me. And for a time I really recovered exponentially because I also got in treatment for my PTSD and the Gupta program really helped my PTSD symptoms as well. So kind of just up and up and up.

Yeah.

And more trust, less fear.

Yeah.

So I'm kind of fully recovered. I live my life freely and of course I get life hits me sometimes and I get a symptom increase temporarily. But then I use the tools, bounce back. So I really wish everyone good luck in using all the tools.

Thank you, Anna. You know, it's such an inspiration to hear stories like this for people who are perhaps just been diagnosed or in the depths of the challenges they're going through. And so to hear your story of inspiration that you can feel so low with such a low mood and yet it is possible to bounce back, get your physical health back, but also your emotional health back. So feel centered and calm and stable and I think that's real hope that you're giving people today. So thank you so much. Really appreciate it. Thank you. Coming on. Thank you so much, Hannah.

Thank you. Good luck. I'll go back to my party now then.

Go back to your party? Yes, absolutely.

Have a great night, everyone. Bye.

Thank you. And we've just got someone else who'd like to share their story. So we'll go to Bethany.

Hello, can you hear me?

Hi there, Bethany. Yes, we can hear you. Thank you so much for taking some time out to share. Once again, based on what we've talked about, the emotional symptoms and how you've been able to deal with those. So is there anything you'd like to share, Bethany?

Yes, unfortunately, I am not at a party, but I am sitting in the gym at my work. Emotionally, I've kind of struggled throughout my life just with anxiety and depression and some trauma as a child. And then recently with COVID I got Long Covid. So I was introduced to the Gupta program with Long Covid to kind of help with that, but it ended up helping kind of with everything that I had been dealing with kind of since childhood with the I've been told recently my nervous system is overactive and hypersensitive and nothing really medication wise or anything was helping. So when I turned to the Gupta program, it was nice to kind of find something that one wasn't a medication that I could use, but also something that really made sense to me too with the as Anna had talked about the kind of first couple videos talking about just the science behind everything really helped Me kind of understand what was happening with my body, that my nervous system and immune system were kind of going back and forth and that. So the other piece I would say is just the tools of the Gupta program. Like Anna had said, the seven step core process help me just not judge my symptoms. A lot of times when I would get a symptom, I would kind of freak out. Oh no, here we go again. This is happening again. What's happening? What's going on with my body? And it was a way that I could just kind of stop and talk to that worried part and just kind of say like, hey, this is, this is happening, but we're going to acknowledge it and kind of go on with the day and move on. And it was a way for me to kind of acknowledge but not focus and be hyper vigilant about all my symptoms, which really helped me be able to return to work and be successful and kind of go about my day as a physical therapist, as a wife, family member, friend, etc. And as Anna had said as well, the meditations, the safe sensations and this huff and flow also really helped me just kind of calm my symptoms throughout the day. So I was having a lot of symptoms and activated, just taking a few moments even and just meditating. And that was a way to kind of calm my anxiety and my body down to where I could continue to function and do what I needed throughout the day as well as just kind of the parts work that is later in the series just was a nice way with all the kind of depression, anxiety and kind of overachiever parts that I have and kind of people pleasing parts. Just it was a way of addressing kind of all that in a form that made sense and I could understand and apply to life. And then after I would say now I'm probably about 85 to 90% where I'm at, which given kind of the chronic things that I've had throughout my life, in some ways I feel like I'm doing better than I kind of ever have emotionally just because I feel that I worked through a lot of things and I'm not as judgmental of my symptoms or feelings as I used to be. And I attribute a lot of that to the Gupta program and just the awareness and non judgmental kind of methodology that you kind of come into with the program. And the only other thing that I would say is it's a wonderful program to kind of take, take at your own pace and just and learn about your body and acknowledge that this is happening. But you can work through it. And the hope that Anna talked about is definitely there that you can. You can regain what you know your life and want your life to be.

So.

Thank you, Bethany. Once again, an inspiration to everybody that once again, even if we've had perhaps anxiety and depression throughout our lives, perhaps it's something that got magnified by this condition. Actually, there is a way through, and we can retrain our brains not only to heal physically, but also to support ourselves mentally and emotionally. And as you say, many people then, once they recovered and they're going back to normal life, they feel like they've learned a whole new toolkit, a whole new way of handling the minds that will be with them forever. And I think that's what we want. We want people to get well, but also to stay well and have coping mechanism for the rest of their lives.

Yes. Yes. It's something that I still do daily on my. My half an hour drive into work, just mentally, you know, doing the seven step process just to get myself in a solid mental state to kind of do what I need to do at work. And it's a wonderful, wonderful tool. I'm so glad that I found the Gupta program and I appreciate all that you guys do to kind of help everyone get the word out.

Bethany, thank you so much for your time. I know you're at work, so I really, really appreciate that you took some time out to. To share that with us and wish you all the best with your future healing as well.

Yeah, thank you.

Thank you, Bethany. So the reason we brought those on is because what's really important is recognizing that whatever you're experiencing, the physical symptoms, but also what we're focusing on today, the emotional symptoms, however bad it feels, it's not real. So we'll repeat those three things that we spoke about. It's not real, it's temporary. And I have the power to retrain it. Just that mantra. So each time you experience that anxiety, that dread, that hypervigilance, that feeling of overwhelming emotions and negativity, remember these three phrases. It's not real, it's temporary, and I have the power to retrain it. And by repeating that to yourself when you. What happens is you give yourself hope. You open up a window of opportunity to not allow yourself to be dragged down with these emotions, not buying into them and recognizing that they are just a temporary result of your neurotransmitters and hormones being out of whack, dysregulated, your nervous system and immune system being dysregulated. And these emotions are A natural consequence of that. There's nothing wrong with you. It's simply this temporary situation in your brain. Okay? And it's very important that if you are experiencing very severe emotional symptoms, that you once again do reach out to your doctor, perhaps one of our coaches or somebody that can support you. And that's an important part of healing. And in our program, we want to give you hope. So there's plenty of free resources. So if you never wanted to actually take the full Gupta program, please do take our free trial. There is free breath work, free meditation, free explanatory videos, even daily Gupta Sai. So our daily zoom calls where we take you through nervous system regulation. And that at the moment is completely free to everybody on the planet. So we want you to come onto our app. Please go to guptoprogram.com Sign up for the free trial, or indeed you may download the free app from App Store or Play Store and just start retraining your brain today. Lots of free resources there. And we know that people often dysregulated. So there's a 90 day program that can really help and support that structure. And something else I want to share with everybody is sometimes it can feel like, well, this is already, this is theoretical. Where's the evidence behind this? Where's the science behind this? And we really want to make sure that this is all science backed. So something I want to share with you are some of the studies that we've done emphasizing the emotional symptoms that we've been able to improve in these clinical studies. So these clinical studies I'm going to share with you are randomized controlled trials, which are the gold standard in medicine. And these were independent. So we didn't run these trials. We simply provided our treatments compared to a control group. And I'm sure many of you have seen this, but actually, let's have a look at some of the emotional symptoms that we were able to improve. So we look at this study that was a randomized controlled trial on fibromyalgia after just eight weeks. Of course, there were big reductions in fibromyalgia. But look at the HADS B and HADS A, which is anxiety and depression scores. We saw a 41% reduction in depression after eight weeks and a 45% reduction in anxiety after eight weeks and very small results in the control group. So once again, this is showing that through retraining, we can actually improve these very severe emotional symptoms, almost a halving of anxiety and depression after eight weeks. So this is on objective science, showing exactly what we're talking about. Then let's look at this next one on Long Covid. So this was a study on Long Covid that we conducted, comparing our program to a wellness program. And you can see these improvements in health and energy. Then if we look at a clinical audit, an independent audit of our patients, which are conducted by an independent company, and you'll see that after 12 weeks, of course, the traditional conditions that we treat, like Long Covid, fibromyalgia, mould and Lyme. But look at some of these other conditions, like anxiety. We saw a 68% improvement in anxiety, 100% improvements in panic, 76% improvement in burnout. So once again, this is so interesting that brain retraining and neuroplasticity not only improves these chronic inflammatory conditions, but also common emotional conditions or mental health conditions that we see time and time again in the population. This is another study on older adults, and we saw a 37% decrease in depressive symptoms and actually a 37% decrease in emotional dysregulation. And finally, a recent study we've just published comparing the Gupta program against pregabalin. Now, pregabalin, sometimes known as Lyrica, is the only standard treatment really for fibromyalgia. And we compared the Gupta program to pregabalin after three months, these are results we saw. And you can see 54% reduction in fibromyalgia and only 9% in the control. But what's really interesting is the depression score. So a halving of depression after three months. So really, we're looking not only to improve people's physical states, their energy, their health, but also their emotional states. And we're seeing this in our clinical studies as well. You can see there are 63% reduction in sleep disturbances as well. So sleep being a very important part of our mental health. So, as we said, we're now going to go on to our live event on Zoom. So our team will just share the Zoom link. If you haven't received it via email, you will see it in the chat. Whichever platform you're watching this on, please do join us. For our live event, we'll go through a short meditation to help support us when we're feeling deeply emotionally dysregulated by what we're experiencing. So that's a new free meditation, a new experience for everybody. And if you are thinking about improving your physical and mental health, you have one of these conditions. I really encourage you to take our free trial. And we actually have something called the 90 day program now, which is included in the premium membership, which if you've got brain fog, you've got the severe emotional symptoms. Having a structure every day, 90 days can be really beneficial. And now's a good time to start because we have our next webinar series starting on Monday 9th June, so coming up very soon. And that's where I every week will take you through the tools, hold your hand through the whole journey. And of course you're supported by the daily sessions on Zoom with our clinicians. So you've got a whole support sanctuary there for you. And right now we also have a $50 discount which our team will share. So if you'd like to take advantage of our $50 discount, our team will share it in the chat. So all it's left for me to do is, is really to give you that hope and encouragement that whatever anxious symptoms, panic symptoms, depressive symptoms, that feeling of overwhelm, sometimes you may experience suicidal feelings. All of this, as bad as it feels, is just temporary. A temporary state caused by your nervous system and immune system overreacting as a protection response, causing then overprotective emotions. Because even anxiety and depression, they are our brains, attempt to protect us from something and therefore the body is just doing what it thinks is best. The brain is doing what it thinks is best to protect you. But through gentle retraining, we can retrain not only our physical symptoms, but also these emotional symptoms, bring our brain back to balance and feel like we can regain control, feel more centered, feel more calm and feel more like ourselves and be able to enjoy life, engage socially and feel that love and connection in our relationships with people around us that is possible. You can do this. So thank you so much for watching. I wish you all the best with your healing and recovery and hopefully we'll see you on our live Zoom event, which someone will share right now. And we'll start in just a few minutes time, that live Zoom event where we'll take you through a short meditation and we will also answer any questions that you may have. Thank you so much for watching and we look forward to seeing you next time. Thank you and goodbye everybody.