Ashok Gupta explains how a background of trauma makes the nervous and immune systems "more trigger happy," allowing the brain—particularly the insula—to become conditioned to perceive ongoing immune threats. Even after an infection (e.g., COVID-19) is cleared, the insula may keep driving immune activation, leaving the immune system stuck "on" and causing chronic inflammation, mitochondrial dysfunction, gut dysbiosis and a range of symptoms (fatigue, headaches, sore throats, extreme exhaustion, lethargy). Gupta uses a "fairy tale" analogy: the prefrontal cortex is the kingdom's ruler while the immune system is the army/navy that, weakened by a drought (trauma), becomes over-reactive and continues firing, producing autoimmune-like damage.
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When we have had a background of trauma, our nervous and immune systems are more trigger happy. And it also means that our brain, specifically a brain structure called the insula, it is more prone to learning new immune threats. Now, what I mean by that is let's say you have a virus or a bacteria, your immune system kicks in to defend you against that virus or bacteria. Let's say it's COVID 19 and then your immune system goes back to normal. But if your immune system isn't sure if it's fought off that virus completely, hasn't fought off COVID 19 completely, it can learn to be conditioned. Now, what that means is it keeps firing off itself, the insula keeps firing off the immune system, even though the invader has been fought off. And this is where immune system gets stuck in the on position. All right? And that can then cause ongoing effects in the body over inflammation and cause effects all around every limb, every cell, any, every muscle, and in fact also impacts on the mitochondria in your body, making them less effective and less efficient. So having a background in trauma means that we believe it's a risk factor for a lot of the chronic diseases that we treat, simply because the brain is easier for it to become conditioned to these new threats. It thinks that something else is going on. And I think many of you may have heard the analogy that I give, which is called the fairy tale analogy, that imagine you are the prefrontal cortex. So you are the king or queen of your kingdom, and your kingdom is your body, and you have your army and navy which are defending your kingdom. All right? And unfortunately, there's now a drought in the kingdom. So because there's a drought, the kingdom is weaker, your army and navy are weaker. And because they're weaker, when the invading army comes over the hill, which, which could be a virus, a bacteria, they have to work doubly hard to defend against that virus and bacteria. That's the army and navy. And as they do so, they become traumatized by that war experience. And even though they fought off COVID 19, bacteria mold, they wonder if it's still present, if the threat is still present. So they go into an overdrive mode where they keep firing off their weapons of war, their arrows, their cannonballs, they keep firing it off. And in doing so, some of those arrows and cannonballs fall back into the kingdom, which then causes some of those autoimmune effects. Yeah. So the inflammation in the body itself, and then opportunistic viruses and bacteria flourish. Your gut bacteria, there's gut dysbiosis. You have less good gut bacteria and more bad back gut bacteria. So there's effects in the gut. And the whole system is now inflamed. The brain can become inflamed as well. And that gives us all the classic symptoms of fatigue, headaches, extreme exhaustion, difficulty doing any kind of activities, complete lethargy. And we might get sore throats from the immunity, the immune system kicking in, and a whole suite of other symptoms that relate to a lot of these chronic diseases. Okay. And that's as a result of trauma. It's more likely that the army generals and the navy generals can learn to become more reactive.
