How Neuroplasticity Can Reverse Chronic Fatigue, Pain, and Anxiety

More and more of these illnesses are proliferating in society. I think more and more people are suffering from it. And so the kinds of conditions that we're seeing more of and certainly more prevalent amongst women with perimenopause or going through that stage of life is definitely, as you say, chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, long Covid. So literally millions of people with long Covid. Then there's a sensitivity illnesses. So the mast cell activation, the chemical sensitivities, mold, illness. I mean, everyone I meet at the moment seems to have mould illness. Then there's the kind of autonomic conditions like pain conditions, anxiety, burnout, which is now epidemic now in the population. So all of these we're seeing increases of more and more and more. And I'm always trying to understand what's going on there. Why are these illnesses there in the first place? And then how is it that more and more people are experiencing that and what are the crossovers with perimenopause and menopause itself?

So today I am joined by Ashok Gupta. Hey. An internationally recognized speaker, filmmaker and health practitioner known for his work and chronic illness. He is the founder of the Gupta Program and his method brings together insights from neuroscience, psychoneuroimmunology and mindbody medicine. He has published and supported multiple peer reviewed studies and medical papers, including independent randomized clinical controlled trials exploring brain retraining for chronic conditions like fibromyalgia, long Covid and chronic fatigue. His work is guided by multidisciplinary medical advisory board and the programs now used by practitioners worldwide. And he continues to lead clinical research and train health professionals and advocate for a deeper understanding of the way our brain and nervous system and immune system work. Today we dove into the specifics around hormone changes in perimenopause and menopause and how this may affect this neuroinflammation and, and immune dysregulation and why we may experience a lot of this brain and fatigue symptoms during perimenopause and menopause. And we go really deep into this. So you're going to get not only some very good understanding of what the brain is doing and how it may control all of these different body systems and control the actual outcome of chronic diseases. But we're going to go a little deeper, especially into perimenopause and menopause. So join me today on Menopause Mastery with Ashok. Ashok, you know, over the weekend I was, you know, scrolling as we do on social media and you know, it was interesting because all that was coming up in my feed was information about trauma, stress, anxiety, depression, obviously very heavily bent towards perimenopause and menopause, because that's my community. And you have such a unique experience in that world and observation and also treatment, really. And I want you to really kind of share your story because I think so many people think that the experience of these, whatever we want to call them, you know, we like to label them with different, you know, actually diagnostic labels. But so many people experience emotional upset and, and other things, especially during the holidays. But beyond that, we almost consider it commonplace. Like, this is just part of being human and we're all going to experience that. And you have a definite experience of like, no. And there's ways around it and there's ways to improve your brain. So tell me, how did you get into this work? Like this is. This is a unique world.

It is. Thank you, Betty. Yes. I think that like all of us is that idea of pain to purpose. We've, all of us who are clinicians or experts in these particular fields have gone through our own experiences often. And so my experience with chronic illness and hormonal changes and everything started actually at university. So I was an undergrad at Cambridge. You know, I was burning the candle at both ends. So I was studying hard, but partying, getting stressed at kind of both levels. And I got some kind of virus. And I didn't think much of it. I thought, no big deal, I have a virus, had flu like symptoms and stomach issues. But over time, what happened was the virus seemed to go away, but my symptoms seemed to get worse and worse and worse until the point at which I couldn't read the words on a page right. I had to almost crawl to the bathroom. So I had no energy, completely exhausted. And obviously, eventually I got diagnosed with ME or chronic fatigue syndrome is often known. And in those days, it wasn't really well known, it wasn't really diagnosed particularly well. People thought, oh, it's all in the mind or whatever. And I would go from doctor to doctor and they would say, we don't know what you have. We have no tests for it, we have no treatment for it. You might have it for the rest of your life. Goodbye. And you can imagine for a young man, that's like a brick wall in front of him. I was like, what is going on? And at my worst moments, I was almost suicidal because for those people who know or know someone who's experienced this, it's an awful illness because no one can tell you what it is. And it's like your worst day of flu times five. So imagine your worst day of flu times five. And yet rest doesn't improve it. You just feel exhausted all the time. And I made a contract with the universe at that point and I said, look, if I can just get myself 20% better, 50% better, 80% better, whatever it is, I will dedicate the rest of my life to helping others with this condition. Because I'd met hundreds of others who had no, no hope, you know, really awful experiences. And the most poignant moment in my journey was I was in a bookstore in Cambridge. And in those days, you know, we didn't have such a developed Internet, so we actually had to read books and articles to, to know anything. And I was in the self help section and then the neurology section, and there was one book jutting off the shelf and it was called the Emotional Life of the Brain by Professor Joseph LeDoux, who at that time was the world's foremost expert on the amygdala and the insular part of the brain. And I read that book and I thought, wow, this gives us clues as to what's going on in these mysterious illnesses. And then using in an ad hoc way, I managed to retrain my brain and got myself 100%. Well. I published a medical hypothesis in 1999, which was published in a journal in 2002. And since then, as you know, we've now I worked one on one with about 12 years with patients who are experiencing mysterious conditions. And then we published the Gupt program, the first brain retraining neuroplasticity program in 2007. And since then we published seven clinical studies, an app and various live events and various things. So that's where we are. That's been my 30 year journey to get to this point.

You know, it's, it's so unfortunate that a, that we have to go through these major trials and tribulations to, you know, understand our own body first and then to create, you know, the environment to help people get well. I'd love for you to go back because you kind of explained it, you know, flu times five. But for the people that may not have ever experienced chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, you know, I would put mass cell and all those other things into this kind of category of particularly conventional medicines. Kind of like, we don't know what to do with that, explain some of the more deep symptoms because I think, I think a lot of people are going through those and they're not aware that a, that's the label and. But that we actually know a lot more about it today and particularly that it is kind of a rewiring of the brain that's necessary.

Yes, exactly. And I think, as you say, more and more of these illnesses are proliferating in society. I think more and more people are suffering from it. And so the kinds of conditions that we're seeing more of and certainly more prevalent amongst I think women with perimenopause or going through that stage of life is definitely, as you say, chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, long Covid. So literally millions of people with long Covid. Then there's a sensitivity illnesses. So the muscle activation, the chemical sensitivities, mold illness. I mean everyone I meet at the moment seems to have mold illness. Then there's the kind of autonomic conditions like pain conditions, anxiety, burnout, which is now epidemic now I think in the population. So all of these we're seeing increases of more and more and more and more. I'm always trying to understand what's going on there. Why are these illnesses there in the first place? And then how is it that more and more people are experiencing that and what are the crossovers of perimenopause and menopause itself. And I've been doing 20, 30 years of research into all of those links and how they kind of fit together. And so I think the common symptoms that we often see in these conditions, and that's why I actually label them under one area, which is neuroimmune conditioned syndromes. So neuro, because I think the brain and the nervous system is involved, immune system because I think the immune system's overreacting. Conditioned, because I think there's a conditioning effect where the brain learns to over respond and syndrome because there's a kind of unique cluster of symptoms. And so the common symptoms that we see in these mysterious illnesses are things like poor sleep, pain, fatigue and exhaustion. Immune symptoms such as swollen glands, fluid type feeling, temperature fluctuations and then in terms of physical, other physical ailments, we see post exertional malaise where people try and do activity but feel much worse afterwards or exhausted. And then the mental capabilities in terms of memory loss, cognitive function reducing, et cetera. And you see a lot of these symptoms across these conditions, which to us is symptomatic of an immune system and nervous system which is fluctuating wildly inappropriately. And I'm sure our listeners will, will understand if they have perimeter pals or menopause, they'll see, oh actually I have some of Those symptoms, because they also cross over, obviously, with this stage in life. And I. And I think that we. Getting a better and better understanding as to what may be kind of going on there.

Absolutely. Because all of these syndromes, you know, you're kind of unique in this, in that you are a male that went through these syndromes, because the vast majority of people diagnosed. Not that men don't get it, but the vast majority of people that are diagnosed diagnosed are women.

Exactly. I think 80, 85% of our clients are women. And generally, I would say between the ages of 35 and 60 seems to be the kind of common time, or 35 to 55. And the onset starts. Yeah, yeah.

I mean, I remember. I remember before I opened my clinic 20. Well, now, 21 years ago, part of my foray while I was in my program, my master's and my nutrition program was I was. I was very much like that. And the place I went to was the Chronic Fatigue and Fibromyalgia center in Dallas, because they were like, we don't know what that is, but here's your problem. You know, and at that time, it was like, you know, you threw pills at it and you threw, you know, thyroid medication and just hope that you rub the system enough that somebody could get out of bed. And there's just so much more that we know today, and particularly you research. So I'd love for you to talk a little bit about the areas of research where you sort of taken that, because, you know, a lot of conventional medicine likes to kind of say, well, there's no evidence for that. I'm like, well, actually, there is.

Yes, exactly. And that's the thing. You see, we've done now seven clinical studies, which has been, in our view, in our humble view, actually a miracle, because to get funding, to get universities interested and to do independent studies, as you know, it's very tricky when it's not the conventional pharmaceutical route. And actually, recently we did a study where. Which was very interesting, up against pregablin. So pregabalin, or Lyrica, as is often prescribed, is a foremost drug, often for some of these conditions, especially fibromyalgia. And we went up against that, thinking, well, let's see what happens. You know, this was an independent randomized control trial. In the Lyrica group, there was a 9% improvement in symptomatology in terms of fibromyalgia after three months. In the Gupta program group, it was 54% improvement, a 54% reduction in fibromyalgia after three months. 9% with Lyrica. So we were six times more effective than, than Lyrica pregabalin. And, and someone said to me, if your studies was for a pharmaceutical, there would be literally millions, tens of millions of dollars being thrown at this right now.

Oh yeah, that you would be on every headline. But is there a single doctor out there that meets, that meets a patient that describes those symptoms that says, I'm going to give you the Gupta program for the next 90 days? No, no, it's mind boggling. There's just such a, there's such a grip that pharma and just, you know, pharma, big medicine interests, you know, basically block the release of information in any big way when, when it doesn't fit the narrative. And that doesn't fit the narrative. Right.

So you asked about our research and so I'm very excited actually to share very briefly our hypothesis because then if I explain the hypothesis, it will then help us understand the research. So in terms of hypothesis, what, what do we think causes a lot of these conditions? Well, you mentioned actually trauma and anxiety and stress. So we believe that as a predisposing factor to a lot of these types of conditions. And also what can make perimenopause worse is this idea that our system is designed to survive. So the number one priority of our brain, our nervous system, our immune system is survival. So let's take that as a first principle because I believe that there's a logical reason for all of these illnesses and also actually perimenopause and why that can get worse with some of these backgrounds. So let's say that number one principle, evolutionary biology. We're here to survive, to procreate, pass on our genes, the next generation. And we have developed the adaptations of all the different animals and plant life. So many people don't realize this, but actually plants, single celled organisms, invertebrates, vertebrates, mammals, human beings, our DNA contains the lineage of all the adaptations to survive and thrive and procreate. So I love this statistic. We contain 40% of the same DNA as a banana. Isn't that incredible? So what that means is we are survival machines. But actually, if we look at how we're living now, we're not living according to our genetic inheritance. So for millions, well, I'd say hundreds of thousands of years, human beings were living in small groups, in small tribes. Fresh air, out in the sunlight, moving a lot, eating, you know, organic foods essentially. And the only thing they didn't have was healthcare. But apart from that, they were leading lives much more According to their DNA. Fast forward to today. We now live inside boxes, don't have exposure to light as much as we need, or sunlight. We're stressed, we're sedentary, sitting down, staring at screens, comparing ourselves to everyone else on the planet through social media that.

Is our existence, and then getting triggered by it. Because the algorithm is designed to trigger the crap out of you, to just make all of that worse.

Exactly. So to basically make you feel insecure or angry, that's pretty much to be two of the kind of most toxic aspects of social media. And so you can see that that then means that of course, more of these illnesses are going to come because the system now thinks it's under threat more often than it needs to be. But what's interesting is what causes or what turns a acute illness into a chronic illness. And that's what's really fascinating. So what turns Covid into long Covid? What turns pain, short term pain into fibromyalgia? What turns mold exposure into mold illness? What turns fear or worry into anxiety? And we believe that there's a rational hypothesis in the brain that might be causing this. So we believe that there's a predisposition in terms of trauma. So if someone's been through trauma in their background, they're more likely for some of these conditioning effects to occur in the brain. Now, that can be a predisposing factor. And then also there might be genetic effects. And these things come together combined with then a trigger. So that can be a virus, a bacteria, mold, exposure, pain, et cetera. And these things come together. And normally our immune and nervous system kicks in, deals with the threat, then comes back to baseline. But in these illnesses, what tends to happen is we have that acute phase of illness, but then something chronic seems to occur where then the nervous and immune system seem to over respond continually even though the threat has passed. So in long Covid, I'm sure everyone knows someone who's got long Covid. The COVID is gone, but the body is still responding as if Covid is still present. And to kind of bring this analogy alive, or rather bring this quite complex neurology alive, I'd like to share what we call the Game of Thrones hypothesis. But then we had to change it to the fairy tale hypothesis because a lot of our anxiety patients didn't like the word Game of Thrones. They thought it was too violent as a drama, so they wanted us to change it. So we call it the fairy tale analogy. Now. So imagine you are Queen Betty of your kingdom. So you are the prefrontal cortex, the master controller. And you have a kingdom, which is your body. Yep. And to defend your kingdom, you have an army and a navy. The army is your nervous system, the information flows. And your navy is your immune system, which we all know about. And the system responds to threats, any invading army threatening your kingdom. But now imagine there's a drought in the kingdom. So because of the drought, the kingdom is weaker, there's less resources, and the army and navy are weaker. So that becomes the predisposition. And Betty, I don't know if you notice this in clinical practice, but when someone does get some kind of chronic illness, it often there tends to be chronic stress in the one or two years in run up to getting the condition. And you see this in cancer, you see this in heart disease, you see this in inflammatory conditions, that one or two years beforehand there tends to be kind of an intensive chronic stress period. So that's the equivalent of the drought in your, in your kingdom. This, there's stress in the kingdom. But now imagine an invader comes over the hill. Now that invader could be a virus, a bacteria, mold, toxin, pain, something that invades the body, as it were. And imagine, let's say it's Covid, because we all, you know, that's a common one. So Covid comes over the hill, it invades your kingdom and your army and navy fight it off. And they think, come on, we're going to fight off this invading army. They manage to fight it off, but they become traumatized by the experience of war. So they think, I don't know, if we fought off the virus, maybe it's still here. Maybe the virus is hanging out behind the hill or in the tissues or over here or over here. So the system thinks, let's keep firing off our weapons of war, our weapon, our arrows, our cannonballs, et cetera. And so the army and navy keep fighting even though the war is over. And some of those arrows and cannonballs start landing back in the kingdom. So that's when we get the inflammatory effects in the body where our own system is over responding, causing widespread brain inflammation, body inflammation, the blood vessels, everything is getting inflamed, the heart's getting inflamed, which weakens the kingdom even more. And of course, the more and more that the army and navy think the kingdom's getting weaker, the more and more they keep firing off more and more weapons, which causes those almost autoimmune type effects. And autoimmune conditions may also follow this hypothesis till eventually the whole System is weaker and weaker and weaker. And the weaker it gets, the more the army and Navy fire off their weapons of war. And so when we say weapons of war, they're triggering the immune system and nervous system. So that is causing emotional symptoms of stress, anxiety, panic. It's causing the immune symptoms of basically exhaustion, fatigue, foggy head, swollen glands, fluid type feelings. Then the physical symptoms of pain, joint pain, post exertion malaise, and then the mental symptoms of difficulty thinking and concentrating, memory problems. This is all that the immune and nervous system is over responding. And then opportunistic infections start flourishing in the system, detoxification systems start shutting down. So we get retoxification of the system and most importantly, the guts. The gut becomes dysregulated, so it becomes tight and it becomes there's dysbiosis. So there's not a good balance of good and bad bacteria. So the whole system is now feels very different to homeostasis. And what is brain retraining? Brain retraining is in their next meeting with you, Queen Betty, the Army and Navy generals will come to their meeting and they'll say, queen Betty, the kingdom's under threat. We need all the resources. We need all the corn and the wheat and the water and everything. And you say to them, my dear generals, you have done a wonderful job in defending the kingdom, but the war is over. You can stand down now. They won't believe you the first time or the second time or the third time. That's where neuroplasticity and brain retraining comes in, which is the power of repetition, creating new neural pathways. So through repetition, you have to keep telling your army and Navy generals that we are safe, we're not in war zone anymore. The war is over. And through that repetition, eventually the army and Navy generals get the point and they finally start standing down. And how this, and just to finish off how this relates to perimenopause, in our view, our hypothesis, perimenopause is like the idea of a drought suddenly infecting the kingdom in the sense that it becomes a risk factor, because obviously perimenopause there and menopause itself is massive kind of hormone fluctuations. What that does is that sensitizes the nervous system, because now the nervous system's not sure whether it can be safe, because there are these new fluctuations which have been introduced, these new weaknesses potentially. And so the army and Navy are once again trigger happy. They're far more likely to fire off weapons of war at the slightest provocation because they believe that we are in an unsafe environment because there's a drought in the kingdom, as it were, and that's what can then cause an overstimulation of the nervous and immune systems in perimenopause as that risk factor. So brain retraining could potentially work in tandem with obviously, all the medications and supplements to support people in going through that phase of life, training the brain to not be so sensitive to the environment and. And those fluctuations.

Oh, you. I mean, I think you're spot on. You know, if we look at some of the brain research just in the last few years looking at, you know, estrogen loss on the function of the brain, so we now know that, that when we start to lose the function of estrogen, our brain builds more receptors for it, not less.

Right.

And that it actually, it actually works on the cannabinoid system. I don't know if you know that, but estrogen has an effect on the cannabinoid system, which is kind of a natural analgesic part of the brain and many other things. But even just the prefrontal cortex, we have studies showing the loss of estrogen affects mitochondrial action in cells in the brain that affects, you know, the executive function of the brain. And so the idea that we have this sort of wild, you know, fluctuation and it not affecting immune system and inflammatory response is just, you know, obviously it's affecting it. And so I believe you're probably right because, you know, if I look at my. So when I was growing up, my grandmother lived with us, right? So my grandma lived with us, and she passed away at 90 years old when I was 16, going on 17. So she was much, much, I mean, just much, much older, you know, was born in the late to 1800s. And I remember, you know, talking to her about things and, you know, if there was mold on her bread, she just would have like, scraped it off, right? She like, she like that, you know, she was like, it's just got a little mold. It's fine. Like, you know, like just, just her immune system resilience comparatively to our collective immune system, you know, and so we have to look at all the insults that have happened with our, you know, greater expanding toxicity and, and, you know, everything else, the technology and all these other things, decision making, all these things that. That are impacting us. Our ancestors had the same exposures in many cases, except for the new things, the toxins and technologies. Right. But their immune systems are totally resilient. My grand. My grandmother put stuff in her mouth and lived and stuff. I mean, I remember going to her basement and that basement was so moldy as a kid. I hated being in the. It freaked me out too. But it was moldy, there was no question about it. And it was a wood house. She was living above it. She was in a moldy environment. Does it affect her at all? No. Right. And so we look at all these modern day sort of illnesses and I agree, I think you're right, that our body would be able to handle these if it was able to control that. That neurological aspect of controlling the immune system and the nervous system.

Exactly right. So when there is those vulnerabilities, whether they be genetic, environmental, toxin vulnerabilities, the system then comes back to that one principle. Then survival is the number one priority. So survival is the number one priority. The brain would rather trigger your immune and nervous systems wildly just to protect you, to err on the side of caution, than it would bring you back to balance and allow energy and normality to return. It always will defend. And that's where I think, yeah, these kind of two worlds of perimenopause and then the nervous system regulation come together. It's definitely not saying that it's, you know, it's in the mind or anything like that, but it's saying that those extra sensitivities in the nervous immune system need to be moderated during that stage of life in order to then have less symptoms.

Ladies, if you're noticing more fine lines and wrinkles, it's not just about aging, it's about the loss of estrogen. And that affects our skin structure, making it drier, thinner, less firm. But here's the great news. I've created Biased Mastery Cream to help. This luxurious bioidentical estrogen cream supports your natural hydration and elasticity. It's packed with nourishing oils like olive jojoba, aloe and coconut. So it feels amazing and helps soften those lines and bring back that healthy glow. I've been using it and let me tell you, my skin has never looked or felt better. It's smoother, more radiant, and those little cracks and creases are way less noticeable. If you're ready to give your skin some extra love, check out by EST mastery on the metabolic blueprint website. And that's metabolicblueprint.com biestmastery that's B I E S T Mastery M A S T E R Y and your face will thank you.

I think it's important you just said something that it's important it's happening in the brain, but it is not in the mind. It is not a psychological somatic somatization. It's none of that, because I know medicine for a long time was like, oh, it's just one of those somatization diseases or things like that. But it really is. It's more about the regulatory capacity of your nervous system. I'd love for you to step back and explain how neuroplasticity really works, because that may be new to some of my listeners to hear that word. You know, I think some people think that the brain is kind of established and it sort of does its thing and you can't really retrain it, but you can.

Yes, absolutely. Actually, on the. On the last point, I was. It was so funny. I was at a conference in Australia once, and there was a group of women talking about perimenopause. And I joined in the conversation in the. In the conference, and I was very cautious of not mansplaining. Right.

It's smart. Smart. You know, to a perimenopausal woman, that's dangerous. We might hurt you.

Very dangerous. Very dangerous ground. Exactly. So I always make sure that I, you know, been very respectful in terms of, you know, people's experience. And I haven't experienced and won't experience it, but I have, you know, 80, 85% of our audience are women. So we have a lot of experience in that area. But what was really funny in that conference, the lady there, I actually said to her, to the group, look, I apologize if I'm mansplaining. So everyone laughed. And then one of the ladies said, what's mine? What's mansplaining? So then I had to mansplain mansplaining, which was. Which was just a very unusual experience. Experience. So, anyway, coming back to. I've lost a question now. I think you were asking about neuroplasticity and how.

That's right, how that really works, because that may be very new concept for my listeners.

Yeah. So neuroplasticity is this idea that previously in the 20th century, we believed that the brain was fixed. You know, it changed, perhaps during the first few years of life, but essentially, once the brain was fixed, fully developed, it was the same for the rest of your life. You can't change your personality, you can't change your genetic. The kind of program triggers. You are fixed. And then actually we realize that the brain's not fixed, the body is not fixed. It's constantly changing. The. The brain is constantly changing and evolving. And therefore, we are not a slave to our genes. We're not a slave to our past, we're not a slave to our personalities. And even with genes in corresponding way, we used to think that, oh, 80% of illnesses, now genes, now we know it's about 20%, in fact. So 80% is things we control, lifestyle, etc. In the vast majority of the illnesses. So that's great. Very empowering, because it means that actually we can shift and rewire the brain in order to heal ourselves from mental, physical and emotional conditions and vulnerabilities. And the principle behind neuroplasticity that we harness is that the brain learns through repetition and intensity. So if we think about things that we've learned, that our brain has learned, we'll realize that actually it's from repetition. Like if we think of our past memories, things we can remember from childhood, it'll either be something really fearful or negative, or it'll be something really, really positive. So those emotions then encode memories much deeper in the brain. Then if we take the example of learning something, let's say something we've all done, learning to drive a car. Let's say neuroplasticity is different to CBT or cognitive approaches. So CBT might say, okay, you're there at the first lesson, you're positive, you're going to learn to drive it. Everything's great. But neuroplasticity is saying you. But you still need to learn to train your nervous system in that way. So you move the steering wheel, you, you, if you have a gear shift you use, you change that, you press the gas, you press the indicators, you check your mirrors, that you all have to do consciously. But eventually, 20, 30 lessons later, you can be eating a sandwich, listening to radio, and you can do all of that automatically. So it's become trained into your nervous system. And so neuroplasticity is the idea. Through repetition and intensity, we can train our brain in the direction that we want it to go, rather than it being us being a slave to how it has responded in the past.

That's awesome. That's such a great analogy. You know, it's. And I think I'm going to bring this home for everybody. So most of my listeners, if they've heard me before, my mom had a heart attack that brought on a catastrophic stroke two, almost two and a half years ago. She's in an assisted living facility on hospice care. She's a full assist, right? So she went from living on her own, doing her own ta, you know, like handling her own investments, everything, to a full assist overnight. And what's really interesting to me, she was married to my father for almost 58 years. You know, she remembers who I am. But. But if you were to ask her basic stuff, like how many children she has, you might get a variable answer. But when she. She doesn't speak that much anymore. But after the injury, when she would speak about things, it was almost always primary experiences from childhood. Right. It was things about her mom and dad, things about growing up on a farm. Nothing about the 58 years she spent with my husband. Not that she doesn't remember him, but most of those memories, I think, are gone. And it was. I was talking to the hospice care provider and she said, betty, I. You know, you've got to think about where those are stored. Right. A lot of our primary memories, a lot of the experiences we have as kids, are stored both emotionally, mentally, everything else. But a lot of them fuse into the amygdala, right? There, there are, they are primary survival mechanisms when you are very much at risk of not surviving. And I was like, oh. Because, you know, I was kind of disturbed by the fact that she didn't remember anything. Like, didn't never spoke about my dad. I'm like, why is that? And I was like, oh, I get it. She's going back to stories and experiences that she had as a very small child. And it kind of speaks to what you said. Those things have been repetitively put in the brain and reinforced again and again and again.

Absolutely. And so this, the sand of the mind, is more impressionable in the first five to ten years of life. That's when we often learn our very kind of core responses, mentally, physically, emotionally to our environment and then the rest of our lives. We're often then coping with that or looking to shift and moderate it. If it's been something that's non conducive to our life. And I think that what we also notice in these types of conditions is that people who have a background of trauma are probably more likely to have some of these fluctuations because if they've had background of trauma, and that can start even in the womb. Something fascinating that I learned was that even the stress, how stressed the man was a father was during conception, impacts on the stress levels and the amygdala levels of the child, which, you know, is fascinating. And then the mother's experience during gestation or pregnancy, and then the birthing experience, the first five years of life, the first 15 years of life, they all impact on the factory setting of our amygdala and our insular parts. Of the brain. And, and they decide how we're going to respond to our environment going forward. And that's what we are essentially retraining those two brain structures. We are retraining through this program.

Yeah. Which is, which is great because I think again, you know, now everybody that might be going through these things has an avenue in which to affect it. That's also not covering up symptoms or drugging yourself beyond belief where you can't function anymore because you're taking a drug, to take a drug, to take a drug. Right. Not that people may not need some things like that, but the reality is, is these kind of conditions particularly that are, you know, more syndromes, the medication management on that is piss poor at best.

Absolutely. And I think that's the key thing is that when a system is malfunctioning in traditional medicine, we think of it from a very biomedical reductionist perspective, which is, ah, there are symptoms, something is going wrong. Let's go down to the cellular level, to the biomedical level. And if we fix that, then everything will magically cascade upwards and heal the person overall. And that's a very kind of, that kind of reductionist, Carthesian kind of western mindset. Whereas the more holistic model is saying actually we need to treat the whole person rather than just the biomedical level. And I think that's what's going on in a lot of these conditions, especially perimenopause, is that this is a kind of systems biology type approach where there's multiple systems involved that are all kind of not at the homeostatic level. And how do we treat the whole person? And that will include of course, medications and supplements and diet changes, but also the kind of the holistic side as well. The, the brain retraining, the emotional side as well.

Yeah, I think you can't, you can't really do one without the other. You might, you know, it's always like, you know, to what degree can you get? Well, I think it's to what degree you do a multifaceted approach. You know, like I, I have people ask, well, you know, what peptides should be on? I'm like, have you dialed in everything else? Like, are you sleeping well, you exercising, you eating right, taking care of your lifestyle, remapping your brain, like doing all of those things. Because shooting a peptide is probably not going to make a big difference if you haven't addressed those things other than costing you a lot of money, you know, because we're always looking for that magic whatever. But you know, what you showed in your studies Your seven different studies is that you can retrain the brain and often overcome symptomology that we use to describe these conditions within 90 days. Like that is a performance that's by far greater than medications. And so it's. To me, it's like, well, this should all be part of. Part of what we do to help somebody navigate, you know, whether it's perimenopause or whatever. But just for longevity. Like this should be built into longevity programs.

Absolutely, yes. So we work in tandem with a lot of functional and integrated doctors, nutritionists, naturopaths, general physicians, where they will take care of the. The more physiological parts in terms of getting to get the gut biome correct, supplements, medications, diet, and we will take care of the other piece. And when we put the things together, we actually notice a three to four times better response than we might if only those particular things were done by them on their own. So as an example, we did a study on long Covid independent randomized controlled trial. So they compared the Gupta program approach to sleep advice, diet advice, supplements, activity levels, all those good things, and they compared them. After three months, the Gupta program was four times more effective at reducing fatigue and exhaustion than that control group. So you can see that if we were to combine them together, we get three to four times better outcomes, which is really exciting. And I think that that's where it's really all of us recognizing that the model that we are trying to treat is a hardware model, not a software model. We're trying to treat a hardware model where we think the body. There's something wrong, physically wrong with the computer, and we need to fix the computer when it goes wrong. But nine times out of 10, when something goes wrong with your computer, it tends to be a software problem. It could be a virus, it could be a bug or something's crashed and you need to go and take it to someone who fixes the software, not the hardware. I'm a bit of an IT geek, so I love that.

You know, I was in it for. For 11 years before this. Yeah.

Oh, wow. Okay.

So I was joking with somebody the other day. I got hired to my role way back when in the 90s to prepare the company for Y2K, right. On my side on a particular division, I was, I was responsible for all the hardware and software that went into this company's retail store chains. And I had to make sure that it was Y2K prepared two years in advance. So, yeah, so I. I am very nerdy in that way because it's an Easy way to understand because people say, oh, my computer broke. It's usually not the hard drive, the power, the chips or anything else like that. It's somewhere sitting on top of it.

Exactly right. And so modern medicine is quite, is very good at actually dealing with the hardware. When the physical hardware goes wrong, your leg breaks, you go there. But when it comes to these types of software conditions, which I believe are about 50% of the illnesses that someone goes to see a doctor for, those software problems, medications are not the appropriate response. They're part of a package of responses. But actually it is the diet, the supplements and the brain retraining that it can actually get people well. And our vision is that in five to 10 years time, as we do these larger scale studies, that actually eventually this will become part of a prescription for a physician. So if you come in and you've got long Covid or you've got pain or you've got fatigue, actually brain retraining combined with these other aspects is the most effective way to be healed versus people being on a lifetime of pain medications, a lifetime of anti inflammatories, a lifetime of anti depressants or anti anxiety drugs which, you know, we know don't have a long term impact.

Now if anything, I would say they, the side effects are almost equally bad as the assumed improvements that you get, you know, so I would agree. So this brings me to our, you know, how we've known each other for a while, but your next study, which I think is super valuable because we're participating both at the clinical level and also with our telemedicine company, but you have specifically a perimenopause and menopause study that you are getting ready to embark on, embark in on 2026.

Absolutely. So we are super excited about this study that is kicking off in 2026. And I think that really it's, I think the first time probably that anyone has studied perimenopause in terms of brain, you know, retraining. And so this particular study will take two groups and we will take one group which will be a wait list group, and then another group which will be the active group who will take the Gupta program. And then we will run this study for three months and then we will compare how the groups respond in terms of a menopause rating scale is what's the, one of the things that we'll look at. We'll also look at general quality of life scales and look at wearables data as well to see can we improve that. And we believe that actually if we can stabilize the nervous and immune systems while someone is on or going through that stage, then we could improve the overall lifestyle, the overall energy levels, the overall symptomatology of perimenopause. And so I think that's, that's really exciting. So, yes, we're recruiting for that, for that study right now.

Yeah, I mean, I look at it and I'm excited because I was like, you know, I've gotten past my trauma from my PhD dissertation. I was like, yes, I get to be a part as it went, as the investigator. But I think the other thing is I, I look at it and I'm like, adding this to what we do makes the clinical application of hormone replacement in the right way for the right woman at the right levels. That's predictive, proactive, and preventative. Makes it so much better because we're actually affecting the entire body system. And so I, yeah, I am very excited to kick off that, that study and, and allow you to kind of, you know, do the due diligence here, because right now you, if you look in the United States, I don't know about the UK, but United States, less than 1% of all research dollars go to the study of menopause. 100% of women go through it. It's almost 50 million women in the United States. 6,000 women a day go into menopause. And we're just like, we don't know, we don't care. You know, So I think this is enormous, right?

No, absolutely. I think it's a, you know, it's an unseen condition and it's seen as, oh, well, it's just part of life. So just deal with it. Versus actually, this is a really difficult stage that, as you say, tens of millions of women go through, and there doesn't seem to be enough research, enough ideas as what can support people through that stage of life. And there's a lot of untold suffering that people experience. So it's such an important thing to study.

Absolutely, absolutely. I'm so very excited about it. So, so in our show notes, everybody, we will have a link to where you can actually join the study. You know, there'll be some inclusion and exclusion requirements, but you can find out about that and, and, and be able to join it. So I, you know, give your, give your brain to science in this way because you actually help when you participate. You know, I had an entire conversation about research, and the reason why it's sometimes missing is a lot of times it just doesn't get funded Right. It's. Or. Or you can't recruit. Right. So. So if a study doesn't reach the recruitment requirements, A, funding's the first part, hardest thing to do, particularly for women. But B, if you can't get their recruits, you can't complete the study and at some point that gets cut off and the money goes back into the pot and then the study never gets done. So we need people from all different walks of life and experiences to do the study and participate.

Yeah, absolutely. We'd encourage people, if they. Yeah. If they want to come along and participate, be very welcome.

Yeah. So where do you see the Gupta program going in the next few years? I. I mean, I'm so excited about what you've already been able to accomplish because again, it's very hard to get these kind of studies funded.

I think for us, as I mentioned earlier, we want this to become part of mainstream medicine and so we're pushing against a system here that doesn't really welcome what we do. But so therefore clinical studies is the main avenue to larger and larger scale clinical studies. But as you know, funding is the main issue. So we've had some amazing collaborators like yourself who've come forward who are really excited by this approach. And we have a fund in the U.S. it's called CCRF Chronic Conditions Research Fund, which is a 501c fund. And we've been able to raise some funds for that. But I think the main thing is we need to fundraise to get more money into this kind of research and then do larger scale studies. So if we now do studies with hundreds and hundreds of patients, then the mainstream medical profession can't deny that type of research. It'd be unethical for them to do that. So eventually we want our this type of approach to be available on insurance, to be available in your gp, because they've seen the evidence based. So that is our vision and our aim and also expanding it to more conditions. So in terms of the physical conditions and these inflammatory conditions that we've already got quite a lot of research on and we want to do large scale studies, but we. That's our bread and butter. We see people improving every day on these mysterious conditions, but expanding it to things like perimenopause, but also other conditions. So autoimmune conditions. So we've seen people improve on early onset dementia if they've been able to put some of these Principles into practice, Ms. so we're currently writing up a study on Ms. Other autoimmune conditions, I think could probably benefit. And then even things like OCD or, or conditions like eating disorders where the brain is really stuck, it's really fixed, and yet can we retrain it? So what we say is our treatment is agnostic in the sense it doesn't care what you're trying to change, it just accelerates that change. And if you can retrain a survival response, which essentially that's what we're doing, a survival response of overstimulating our immune system and nervous system in response to threats or perceived threats, if you can retrain that, then you can pretty much retrain anything because survival is the number one priority. If you can persuade the brain when it thinks we're in danger that it's not in danger, other things are much simpler. And essentially that's what the brain is constantly doing. It's constantly assessing our environment, are we in danger and creating responses. And that is responsible for a lot of the inflammatory conditions and kind of mental health conditions that we see on the planet. Oh, you're.

Yeah, that's a mic drop moment. Because it really is, it really is just that, right? Oh, this is great. So if you were to give my listeners like one or two thoughts, like here's something to think of, you know, over the next several months, go sign up for the study, I'm going to go ahead and say that. So that's, that's a given, that's a requirement. What would you say if they were sitting here thinking, gosh, you know, maybe I know somebody or myself that might need this help, you know, what would you tell them to do? Because obviously some of them may not fall, you know, they might have a kid that has trouble in this area that they feel like their inflammatory conditions. How else can they find you? Because we're going to have the study information too.

Sure. So if people want to come to our website, which is gupta program.com so gupta program.com there they can see lots of free information, lots of videos, etc. Or they can download our app. So we have a free app. Go to App Store or Play Store, type in Gupta Program Brain Retraining. And there in that app or in the website, you'll be able to, as I said, watch lots of free videos. There's some free guided self regulation, so things that can regulate your nervous system. And then if people think, actually, you know, I'm quite enjoying this, I think it could benefit, then they can take the whole program, which is a one year subscription. And on that subscription we offer a one year money back guarantee. And so until we get large scale trials with, you know, thousands of patients. We say to people, give this a go, and if you have no improvement, you can return it, get your money back, no questions asked, and use that money for something else. So people have nothing to lose by. By giving this a go. And I think the idea of neuroplasticity is repetition. That's the most important thing. So something Betty, that's been a real game changer for our patients that we do uniquely is initially we would give people the app, and there's lots of videos and exercises that they need to do every day, but they weren't doing it because we, as human beings, we often have inertia. We find other things to do. Habit formation is challenging. So we started creating daily Zoom calls, daily training events. So we have like 2 to 300 patients a day coming on live on Zoom, and one of our clinicians takes them through the nervous system regulation, which of course is very important in perimenopause, and then the brain retraining aspect as well, every day. And that has been a game changer for so many of our patients because now they don't have to think about it, about what they're supposed to do. They don't need to make a decision. They just need to turn up and we take care of them. And that, I think has been a real game changer is the importance of healing in community as well. I think is incredibly valuable. And that's what we'd encourage people to do, is to realize that in this package of support, it's not just about, here's some videos. It's actually a whole community, a whole sanctuary, a whole ecosystem that is required. You know, they say it takes a village to. What was the phrase? It takes a village to heal someone. I think there's a phrase.

To raise a child. Yeah, raise a child.

Village. To raise a child. It takes a village to heal as well. So I'm going to extend the analogy, the clause there. So I think that is where something like this is hugely important, because often we're at home by ourselves. We've got these symptoms, we don't know what's happening. We feel very alone with it. So coming into a supportive and loving community that is many similar people to yourselves who are going through these symptoms, I think that is incredibly valuable.

Yeah. And I think, you know, to a good point, you know, a lot of times we will, we will honor the thing we put on our schedule. Right. Especially if it's for someone else. We show up to work well, you know, all those other things. But it's harder for us as humans to honor ourselves. And even put, like, if they put the Gupta program every morning on their schedule meant they might do it. But it's a lot of times, like the boy who cried wolf, it's like, oh, I won't do it right now. But I think when you add the community aspect of that call, what it also does is there's others there. So it almost gives that secondary, like, I need to show up because I'm showing up for others, too, which is part of kind of the weird human condition that we'll do something for somebody else before we'll do it for ourselves.

Yes, exactly. There's something really. It's a very deep psychology in that, in terms of that kind of habit formation. And I think it does come down to if we. We know that if people are doing it on their own and if they feel that there are barriers, we'll, I mean, think it through too much. We'll put those barriers there. So setting a regular habit, same time every day, putting your diary. So there's no thought required. It's just there often is the way that we create habits.

Yeah, yeah. And I think especially as women, that would be kind of some hard wiring that we have to work around. So, yeah, I. What you do for people is amazing, and your program is amazing, and I'm happy to contribute to making sure that research gets out there. And so, everybody, if you're listening to this, you better go to the link. Sign up to participate if you're in that inclusion criteria, which is pretty straightforward and pretty, pretty easy criteria, you'll. You'll be helping science, but more so even helping yourself.

Absolutely. Yes. We welcome everybody to be part of the study and, yeah, let's see what results we can. We can get. And maybe this can be a whole new avenue for people who don't know where to turn.

Absolutely. Ashok, thank you so much for joining me on Menopause Mastery.

Thank you so much for the invitation. I've loved it.

Okay, everybody, you know your marching orders. Get to the link in the show notes, go ahead and sign up for the study, and then I'll be back with you next week.