The AIR Neuro Immune Hypothesis with Ashok Gupta | Ep. 143

If you've heard of brain retraining, you've probably heard of Ashok Gupta. He is the founder of the AIR—that's amygdala and insula retraining neuroimmune hypothesis—which explores the root causes of our symptoms, chronic fatigue, pain, anxiety, and more, and provides a. Science-based approach to true healing. If you've ever been told that it's all in your head, that you can't heal, or that you feel like you've tried everything without the results that you so desperately seek, this is the podcast for you. You are going to learn all about amygdala and insula retraining. It's not all in your head; it's in your brain and your nervous system. And we're going to talk about how that all works. Ashok is an internationally renowned speaker. Speaker, filmmaker, and health practitioner, and he founded the Gupta Program, and he's dedicated his life to supporting people through chronic illness and achieving their potential. We're going to talk to him today. I'm so excited for you guys to hear about this. You can learn more about him by going to his website, guptaprogram.com. That's G-U-P-T-A program.com. Or you can connect with him on Instagram at Gupta Program.

This was a, a real win to, to get Ashok on this podcast. I heard him speak for the AANP, and that's our, our National Association for Naturopathic Physicians. And I was like, where has he been? He— this is amazing. And so I reached out and he was so generous and kind to come on this podcast. This conversation was amazing.

Yeah, you guys are gonna— I mean, if you like to nerd out about like brain psychology and, and all the things, neurology, all, all of that stuff, but you maybe want it to be a little bit more accessible than just like all of the, the jargon and all of the things, this is the podcast for you. He breaks all these things down in a really easy to understand way. He uses phenomenal analogies. You guys are gonna feel like you're— I mean, I don't know, this is how I felt. I was like, I feel so smart that I understand everything that he's talking about. So that's the vibe. It's very— you'll learn about the science, but you'll learn it in a way that you can actually really deeply understand. Um, and I'm super excited to try out his program. Uh, it's It sounds incredible. So we'll, we'll keep you updated on, on, uh, how we do with the program and everything as well.

And if you want to hear us do a live with him where you can actually come on and ask questions in real time, just send us a comment or a DM. And if we get enough people that want to make that happen, then we'll ask him. He was open to doing that too, if it would be valuable for y'all. So let us know.

Yay! Amazing. Let's get into the episode, shall we?

And I have a request. So for those who are listening, if you're open to it, if you love this podcast, we haven't asked you in a little while, but if you can give us a little love on the podcast app that you're using, maybe even a review, that helps to improve the algorithm so other people can see it and give us a listen. And we love words of affirmation. Who

doesn't? Yes, we read all of the reviews and we get really excited. We text them to each other and celebrate them. Totally. And so if this podcast has been helpful for you in your healing journey, please let us know. We, we really truly— like, we're real people. We want to hear from you. We want to know, like, what, what's going on. So, uh, so definitely do that if you, if you feel so called to.

Thanks everyone. All right, let's—

Now let's get into it.

Yeah. Well, so tell us a little bit about yourself, about your journey. What brought you here?

Yeah, so like many of us who've taken this journey to support patients with chronic conditions, it started with my own challenges, my own kind of suffering, and where that took me along a journey. So this started in the mid-'90s when a lot of these types of conditions, you know, chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, weren't even recognized. They were seen as, you know, dismissed by doctors. Oh, it's all in your head. There's nothing we can do for you. So I was studying as an undergrad at Cambridge, and I was, you know, in my second year, I was burning the candle at both ends, tons of energy, loads of things going on. And I got some kind of virus. It was like a stomach bug and a flu-type illness, and I didn't think much of it. And the flu seemed to go away, but I seemed to deteriorate. My body felt exhausted all the time. I couldn't think, I couldn't concentrate. At my worst moments, I had to crawl to the bathroom I had no energy. I was almost like housebound a lot of the time. And I would go from doctor to doctor saying, look, what's going on here? And they would say to me, we don't know what you have. We don't know what to call it. There's no treatment for it. You might have this forever. Goodbye. And that, for, as you can imagine, a young man, was like a brick wall in front of me. And that started like a lifelong quest to understand these conditions. And In my worst moments, I was almost suicidal thinking, this is just feeling so awful. For people who don't know what ME or chronic fatigue syndrome feels like, it's like your worst day of flu times 5. You can imagine, just not an ounce of energy no matter what you do. In that moment, I said to myself, I made a contract with the universe and I said, if I can just get myself a little better, 50% better, 70% better, I will dedicate the rest of my life to helping people with these conditions because this untold suffering with them and not many avenues that they can pursue. And the most timely moment, uh, was when I was in a bookstore in Cambridge and I saw a book in this— because I was looking for, you know, in those days you wouldn't research on the internet, you would go to a bookstore to try and figure out what on earth was going on. So I was in the self-help section, then I was in the neurology section trying to understand, and there was a book that was just jutting off the shelf And I— it just called to me, and I picked that book off the shelf, and it was called The Emotional Life of the Brain by Professor Joseph LeDoux. And he was the foremost expert in the '90s on the amygdala. And I read that book, and I thought, oh my gosh, this is what is going on. And I put, you know, lots of different pieces of brain neurology and psychology together. I came up with a hypothesis as to what was causing the condition. And then in an ad hoc way, I retrained my brain. I got myself 100% well. And then opened a clinic to treat others. And I published my medical hypothesis in 1999, and then it was in Medical Hypotheses in 2002. And since then, we've obviously published the program in 2007 as a DVD program in those days, conducted lots of medical studies. We've now got 6 or 7 medical studies under our belts, and we now have an app. So yeah, that's been the, the 30-year journey to get us where we are now.

So you were like in your prime, you were in school, you were studying, and then you got this infection. And even though the infection seemed to resolve, it's one of those never been well since experiences that many of us have.

Exactly.

I, I honor your experience. I really resonate with that. I know a lot of our listeners do, where you go from doctor to doctor and they tell you Well, you can't get better from this. It's just the way you're gonna live. And I always want to remind people that what they're actually saying is, I don't have the tools and resources to help you get better.

Exactly.

You didn't let that brick wall stop you from doing, doing the doctoring for yourself, if you will. And you, you dug and you researched, and then the end is is this amazing story of triumph, and I really honor that. And so you were doing this research, you wrote— you read this book by Joseph Ledoux, and—

Ledoux.

Ledoux, thank you. And so it started this— this hypothesis started brewing. So tell us more about that, like what stuck out to you, what was a little different for that?

Yeah, so in that book, so the amygdala, I'm sure we've all heard of the amygdala. So the amygdala, and the 2 of them, are 2 almond-shaped structures that sit behind our eyes in the limbic system part of the brain. And it has many functions, but one of the functions is to survey our surroundings and create defensive responses. So traditionally in psychology, it's seen as emotional defensive responses, but now we know the amygdala is involved in physiological and immune responses as well. Because the brain does not differentiate between a physiological threat, an emotional threat, a biological threat. There are threats to survival and the brain comes up with a holistic response. And that's the key brain neurology that is missing, I think, from modern science. And so if I can kind of frame the whole hypothesis as to what I think causes these types of chronic illnesses. So I think— so we treat a whole bunch of different diseases that I think are explained by this hypothesis. So there are neuroimmune conditions. long COVID, fibromyalgia, ME, and chronic fatigue syndrome. Then there are pain conditions, then also autoimmune conditions, and finally sensitivity reactions, so mold, Lyme, chemical sensitivity. So I think they all come under this banner of what we call neuroimmune conditioned syndromes, and I'll explain this hypothesis. So I always like to start with the biggest question of all, Why are we here? And I know we could have a really lovely chat for the next half an hour on the philosophy and spirituality and a whole bunch of stuff, but let's stick to the science if we can. So from a scientific perspective, we are here because we are survival machines. So we contain all of the survival instincts and adaptations of so many different lineages. So from plant life to single-celled organisms to invertebrates, vertebrates, mammals, human beings, our DNA actually contains that lineage of survival. And I found this a really interesting statistic that we contain the same 40% of the same DNA as a banana, right? So it shows you that we have inherited all this great survival stuff in our DNA. And so the brain and the body is built to survive. procreate and pass on our genes to the next generation. That is its primary purpose. And if we take that as a purely scientific starting point, that means the first clue is the brain cares more about your survival than it does your well-being. And that gives us a clue to so many different chronic diseases we're seeing in the modern world. Yeah. Now fast forward to the present day. So our Immune system and nervous system are our 2 main defensive systems. So the nervous system is obviously, people know about that, that's our sympathetic or parasympathetic. So the information flows around the body. And then here is our immune system. That's the main thing we think of as defending the body against viruses, bacteria, and toxins, let's say. Now, we are now under threat. Our system is under threat way more now than it ever used to be in human history. in terms of the numbers of viruses and bacteria that are present in our system. So people don't realize this, but actually before we were isolated, so we wouldn't be exposed to so many viruses and bacteria. But now because of international travel, COVID being the classic example, we now are exposed to more of those infections. And now of course we have more toxins in our environment. So pollution, food toxins, water toxins, environmental toxins, all of these things are more in our system. So our system is more under threat. Yeah. Now, this gives us a clue to what might then cause chronic disease. So it means our system is kind of almost in the background constantly firing off. Our immune system is constantly, you know, protecting us. And that's why we often see in the modern population fatigue has increased, tiredness has increased, depression has increased, sluggishness has increased. Why is that? Because our immune system is now constantly being triggered in the background, which is draining our system of a lot of resources. And of course, you know, the great work that You guys do a lot of that then impacts on the gut as well because the immune system is then inflaming the body and inflaming the gut. Now let's take the example of long COVID because lots of people know that we all know somebody probably who has effects of COVID So COVID comes along as a virus, our immune system goes to the on position, it fights off the virus, and then goes back to the off position. Yeah, so that's how our bodies Fight off a virus. But imagine if our bodies are weaker, it goes into the on position. But then even once it's fought off the virus, the brain cares about your survival. And if it thinks that maybe the virus is still present, maybe the bacteria is still present if it was another infection, it continues staying stuck in the on position. And when our immune system gets then triggered, it starts creating a lot of symptoms in the body. And many people don't know this, but actually the vast majority of our symptoms, if not all the symptoms we have. from an infection are actually caused by our own immune system responding, and it can overrespond. So people often ask me, Ashutosh, what's the proof of this immune system overresponding causing all these chronic conditions? I say, well, look at COVID itself. The unfortunate people who passed away from COVID they did not pass away from COVID itself. They passed away because their own immune system didn't have the confidence that it could fight it off. So it surged. We had a surge of immune reaction, a cytokine storm, inflamed the lungs and stopped the airways and the breathing. And that's what actually caused people to pass away. So there is precedent for this idea that the immune system can make mistakes and overrespond. So now, because the brain and body care about survival, it errs on the side of caution and keeps triggering the immune system and nervous system, which creates symptoms in the body. And this then is the unique bit of brain neurology. Those symptoms in the body, the brain then makes a mistake. And I believe it is a mistake, but it's an honest mistake. It starts thinking, hmm, when I had the COVID infection, I also had these symptoms in my body. Maybe these symptoms in my body are a proxy for the infection still being present.

Hmm.

So therefore I must continue to stimulate the immune system and nervous system Just in case the infection is still here, right? Because survival is number one priority. So then the brain starts stimulating the immune system and nervous system, creating the symptoms in our body, which then loop back to a hypersensitive, hypervigilant brain that's stuck in a survival response. The brain says, aha, I knew we were still in danger, triggers the immune system and nervous system, creates the symptoms in our body, and around and around we go in that vicious cycle. cycle. Yeah. And I believe that that is the root cause of so many different conditions, chronic conditions that we are seeing in the modern world. And I believe it also explains even depression, even anxiety. And of course, Nicole, I know about your work with panic, and even panic, I believe, follows this similar neurological pathway as well. So that in a nutshell is the hypothesis. And if I may, I can also share— I think, Nicole, you heard this on the previous presentation I did, this fairy tale analogy, which then really brings it home to people. They can really get it and understand it.

Yes.

So I want you to imagine that you are the queens of your kingdom. All right? You can have a joint kingdom if you like, but let's say it's— you have your own kingdom. Okay? So you are the prefrontal cortex, the rational mind. You are the queen. of your kingdom, and the kingdom is your body. And you have an army, which is your immune— your nervous system, and you have a navy, which is your immune system. So your army and navy defend the kingdom against incoming invaders. All right? And let's now imagine there's been a drought in your kingdom. So because there's a drought, the kingdom is weaker, and of course, the army and navy are weaker. Now in comes an invading army at totally the wrong time now because it's a drought. In comes the invading army. Your army and navy now have to work twice as hard to fight off this invader. And that invader can be a virus, a bacteria, a toxin. It could be pain, like localized pain, something causing pain in your body. So your army and navy are galvanized and they fight off this invader. But because they were weak, it took them maybe twice as long to fight it off, which is why we get that long period of post-viral fatigue. And even then, the brain thinks, I don't know if we've fully fought off this virus. So the virus or the invaders might be hiding out in the forest or in another village or behind a hill. So they keep firing off their weapons of war. Yeah, your army and navy firing off the arrows, firing off the cannonballs. But some of those start falling back into the kingdom. And that's where you get the inflammatory response in the body and the gut. You start getting autoimmune effects. And now opportunistic spies start flourishing in the kingdom, if we can extend the analogy that far. So now opportunistic viruses, infections, Lyme, mycotoxins— those start flourishing in the kingdom because the army and navy aren't able to deal with those. The Secret Service is underfunded. The army and navy are now focused just purely on fighting off this invader who is long gone. And now this system stays stuck, and the weaker and weaker the kingdom becomes, the more and more nervous and anxious the army and navy generals become, the more they fire off their weapons of war, which causes more problems in the kingdom, getting it weaker, meaning they keep firing off their weapons of war. And what is brain retraining? Well, once this system is stuck in this way, It is a survival instinct. So when the army and navy generals come to their weekly meeting with Queen Nicole or Queen Hadlee— that's a nice ring to it— as they come to their weekly meetings with you, they say, dear Queen, we need all the resources. We need the water, the food, the metal. Everything must be given to us. You say to them, My dear generals, you have done a wonderful job in defending this kingdom. But you may stand down. The war is over. Hmm. Now, they won't believe you the first time you say it, because why would these survival instincts believe you? They're like, hey, we're trying to defend the kingdom. We don't believe you. But the purpose of neuroplasticity is repetition and persistence, that you keep training the brain. You can't just tell the brain, you have to train the brain. So that's that repetition that tells the brain, we are safe, we are safe, we are no longer under threat. And we do that repeatedly. Eventually the generals get the message, they stand down, and then the whole system comes back to homeostasis and balance because there was no longer a threat. It was almost feeding off itself in a vicious cycle. So that in a nutshell is the hypothesis, and then also explaining what brain retraining actually is.

Well, I love that metaphor. I am so excited about this because I have had Dr. Nicole knows. Um, I've had mold expo— like multiple mold exposures for the past 4, 5 years. Um, and, you know, I'm super excited to hear about how to retrain the brain in this way because it has absolutely done exactly what you are describing with my body. So this is amazing. Thank you so much for sharing all of that.

No, of course.

Yeah.

I wonder about the compounding nature of trauma and the relationship between this dynamic. You gave this brilliant example of a pathogenic inroad. And so it could be a virus, or it could be some sort of a disease-causing agent. And I think about the ACEs study that was done, the Adverse Childhood Events study and how we've seen that with especially early childhood trauma, but of course subsequent trauma, how that can increase the risk of chronic disease, infectious disease, and all sorts of other things. And so I'm wondering if you could speak on that, is that perhaps somebody can't really put their finger on, um, I got COVID or I got this sort of infection, but I know that my childhood was really, really difficult and really painful, and how those listeners can maybe see themselves in this vicious loop or this model.

Yes, definitely. So there's 2 really interesting points here. So the first is that compounding effect that you've mentioned. Yes, this is the key thing as to why people then get stuck in chronic disease. And I'm sure you'll see this in clinical practice that they seem to, you know, They were fine before, they get some kind of insult, you know, whether it's a virus, bacteria, and then after that, their health has never been the same. And one extra component here is the detoxification systems. So when we are fighting off a virus or bacteria, we get into that threat mode and we are obviously stimulating the immune system. That in itself starts creating more toxins in the system from inflammation. But ironically, when we're in the fight or flight, the detox systems often aren't functioning correctly and are reduced. So that then compounds the issue. And of course, that excessive inflammation in the gut means that food is then not being digested correctly. Therefore, more toxins once again are going into the system, and then heavy metal increases, mycotoxins increase. So you can see that one system, one little decision by the brain to hyper-defend, then has so many knock-on effects on the entire brain, the entire body, and the gut. And we know about the gut-brain axis, and now the gut starts communicating to the brain that we're in danger, compounding these situations. So the brain thinks it's still in danger, tells the gut we're in danger, and that's another compounding impact. But coming to your question about trauma, this is really, really key, and we've spent a lot of time linking trauma to chronic disease. We know that when you've had or someone's had a background of trauma or higher ACE scores, they are twice as likely to have a chronic disease when they're older as an adult. And this was a study done by Kaiser Permanente. And if that is the case, then why would it be? Well, we've traced what may be going on here. In the brain, our factory setting of our amygdala and insula— so amygdala being this protective fight-or-flight response and the insula part of the brain, that part of the brain is essentially the part that's monitors the body, how it's doing in terms of the immune system and nervous system and everything, your heart rate. All that information flows through the vagus nerve up through the brainstem into the insula. And the insula gathers all this data, including information from the amygdala, and says, what do we need to do to ensure homeostasis and survival? And so the insula then makes that decision and then is the master coordinator of, in my humble view, of the immune system and nervous system. Okay, now those 2 structures, I believe they get their factory setting, their starting point, even before our birth, believe it or not. So obviously we have the idea of inherited trauma, yeah, or we have that idea of generational trauma. Then secondly, how stressed our mother was when we were in the womb impacts, I believe, on the amygdala and insula. Then the birth experience itself impacts on the amygdala and insula. Then especially the first 5 years of life, pre-verbal and verbal, they impact on the factory setting. And what I mean by that is, how reactive is the amygdala to dangers in the environment? How reactive is the insula to dangers in our environment? How sensitive are they? And that then means that if we had a lot of childhood trauma or inherited trauma, those brain structures are more sensitive. So when we become an adult, this fairy tale analogy that I spoke about, that essentially means that those army and navy generals are more likely to get into this trauma response, not only to emotional threats, but physiological threats, biological threats. And that's the key piece of brain neurology. that because we've had that background, our brain generalizes that we live in a dangerous environment and therefore we must over-respond for protection. And that, I believe, is the link between trauma and then chronic disease.

So the million-dollar question that follows is, well, what do we do about it?

Yes. Okay. Well, the good news is that why— like, if you think about all of these different conditions, We've mentioned a bunch of them. So there's neuroimmune conditions, autoimmune conditions, pain conditions, environmental conditions. If you look at the range of those conditions, there have hardly been any pharmacological agents that have shown improvement for any of those diseases. And even if we look at anxiety and depression and panic, apart from massively just shutting down the brain with beta blockers or whatever, there has been shown no particular agent that is successful at treating those conditions. It can manage the symptoms. And the reason is because I believe all of these conditions are not hardware problems, they're software problems, to use the IT analogy. Yeah. So modern medicine is set up to treat hardware problems. But if the software of the brain and the body is over-responding, it will cause a whole cascade of problems in the body that we will do our best to fix and we should do, supplements, diet changes, lifestyle changes, those can make a big impact. But ultimately, we've got to go to the core programming in the brain. And so the good news is that now I believe that as we've done more of this research, as we're getting deeper into the brain and understanding the brain more, we're opening up the brain that used to be a black box and discovering that actually a lot of these modern diseases are caused in the brain and their fix is in the brain. And this doesn't mean they're in the mind. Very, very different. It's not in the mind, but it's in the brain. And we spend a lot of time trying to explain to our patients the difference there. So how do we change this? Well, this is the process of neuroplasticity and brain retraining. And I think the area where this is most developed is in the pain industry or the pain field of medicine, where actually people are understanding that a lot of chronic pain We can't just keep chucking opioids and the whole opioid crisis behind that and painkillers. We have to start realizing that the pain networks and pain systems themselves are malfunctioning and need to be retrained. And therefore, even things like hypnotherapy or other types of approaches are proving very popular. So how do we deal with this? So the way to think about this is the brain, it has created a neural pathway in a field. So imagine a field and a river running through the field. So the brain's pathway is, the stimulus is, I can detect symptoms in my body or threats. The interpretation is, this is highly dangerous and life-threatening. The response is, create an over-the-top immune and nervous system response. So that's the, like, almost a neuronal pathway in connection. That's the river flowing along the left-hand part. But we now want to divert the river onto the right-hand path. The right-hand path says, yes, I can detect threats in my environment or threats in my body. The interpretation is that is not an issue, that is not a threat to me anymore. So the response is a benign response. That is a new pathway we want to dig now. But the issue is that ground is frozen, so that river keeps flowing because the ground is frozen. It's not going to change. And we can dig a new pathway, but if the ground is frozen, it's going to take a long time and be very difficult. So our first stepping stone, or the first step to healing, is calming down the nervous system, regulating the nervous system, which then loosens up the soil of the brain and makes it more neuroplastic and rewirable. So the first thing we do in the program is, how can we regulate our nervous system? And I'm sure you see this in clinical practice, that the people who have these chronic conditions, often they are hyper-aroused in the sense of their nervous system. So that involves breathwork, that might be meditation, that might be visualization, that could be a massage. You know, it's whatever helps that person regulate. And that's where we focus. That's the first step of the program, the first level. And until people have done that, their brain is not necessarily ready for the core, which is the retraining. Now, once they've regulated to some extent, then the second level of the program is retraining the brain. And that's where we first of all use somatic techniques, what we call somatic retraining, to train the brain through awareness of the body itself. So that's our second stage. And then the core of it is something we call the 7-step brain retraining, where we train a patient to recognize the unconscious danger signals. This is on the periphery of consciousness that we have no control over normally. We train a patient to recognize that and to reroute the river, reroute the river again and again and again. And eventually we dig a new pathway so the brain gets the message, oh, we're not in danger along the left-hand pathway. We are actually safe on the right-hand pathway, that we no longer need to elicit this defensive immune and nervous system response. And of course, people might say, well, hang on, that sounds like it's psychological because you're not using drugs, you're not using surgery. You know, how are you doing this? You're not using, let's say, brain stimulators, so it's all non-invasive. You're not using vagus nerve stimulators. So how, how are you doing this? The way to think about this is, let's say someone's had a stroke. Unfortunate, right? And when someone has a stroke, they may lose control of an arm or a limb, a leg, or their speech. What's happened is that the stroke itself, or the brain bleed, has caused damage to the neurons. So then they imagine moving that arm and that leg. Yeah, it's a beautiful process, and they have to do it regularly. And as they keep doing it, eventually they form new neural pathways that reconnect their arm to their brain so they can move their arm again. Now, isn't that incredible? That is the power of neuroplasticity and brain rewiring. But we would never insult that patient by saying, oh, it's all in your mind, it's all psychological. Of course not. It's— this is neurology in action. It's brain neurology. So in a similar way, we've worked out over many years how we can train the brain to dampen down those immune responses. So literally safety neurons from the prefrontal cortex down to the amygdala, down to the insula, to train it to no longer respond in this hyperactive way. And then over time, eventually the brain is retrained. But of course, a person then becomes complacent, and this is the biggest issue we have, where they think, I've done it. I'm feeling better. My brain is no longer responding in threat mode. Right, let me go and work 10 hours a day and go and deal with all this stress. And of course, when you do that, your brain generalizes all the stress and thinks, oh no, we're back into the same situation again, and starts stimulating the immune system and nervous system. And that's where the final stage of the program is what we call re-engaging with joy. And what that means is we teach a patient to recognize their stress triggers their stress patterns and their stress parts. We use a lot of parts coaching. And through that, they're able to regulate their nervous system in the longer term. And connected to that, they're able to understand why did this condition come to me in the first place. So we believe a lot of these conditions are actually what we define as spiritual course correctors, where they are informing you about something in the way you were living or your personality that needed course correcting and shifting and changing. And Sometimes that can be an illness. Sometimes that can be a divorce. Sometimes that can be a change of job. All of these come as opportunities for these dark nights of the soul that eventually are a cathartic moment of transformation into something new and something different. And when patients understand that, then everything shifts and they completely look at their bodies in a different way. Yeah, so that's the, the process of healing.

Wow, I'm— this is amazing, and you're so good at breaking it down in such an easy-to-digest way. Uh, your analogies are— Dr. Cain is really good at analogies, but I feel like you're giving her a run for her money. They're so good. So I'm really curious about the, um, the somatic retraining and the brain retraining. What kinds of— are they practices or, um, What are you doing in that phase of it?

They are practices, yes. They are specialized neural techniques. And neural can mean so many different things. But I'll give you a very silly example, right, that can really bring this home for people because I think, you know, that's the number one question we get, like, what is it? What is it that you're doing? So let's take the example of a physiological reaction. So I'm going to now create a physiological reaction in you. And I want you to do your best to stop it, okay? The best that you can do to stop it, knowing that it's not real. All right, so I want you to imagine that I'm going to take a slice of lemon, and I'm going to place that slice of lemon on your tongue, but I don't want you to salivate. Really important, okay? So you've got that slice of lemon on your tongue. Oh, it's really sharp and tangy. Oh, you can feel those very, very tangy juices on your tongue, but you don't bite into the lemon yet. Don't bite into the lemon. Don't salivate. And then you bite into the lemon. Imagine biting into the lemon. Oh gosh, even more sour in your mouth. Okay, but you, you know, don't salivate. Okay, so what's happening now? Is there any extra saliva in your mouth?

I just have to swallow.

Yep.

Now let's just take a step back to think about that. I was able to create a physiological reaction in your body Even though you knew it wasn't real, and even though you tried to stop it, even though these physiological responses are normally what we call autonomous—we don't normally have control over our saliva glands or any of these kind of physio—and we don't normally don't have control over our immune system. It's automatic. But imagine, just like that silly example there, if we were able to now regain control over the immune system and nervous system using these specialized. Restructures. So what we do is with the somatic technique, first of all, is we train a patient to recognize those danger signals in the physical body, the physical sensations of danger. And normally we have a resistance to that. So we train a patient to recognize their resistance to those physical sensations and to retrain them. So that's some of the somatic retraining, some very specialist ways of doing that that are very unique to this approach. And then the 7-step process We have a big Twister board that you put on the floor. And what you do there is you— once again, we train patients to recognize those danger signals. And each time they come, each time your immune system is about to trigger, about to respond, causes inflammation, you are able to go through these 7 steps, which involve self-talk, breathwork, safety signaling, relaxation, self-coaching, physical movement, a whole bunch of different things to train your brain in a different direction, in a different way. And remember, these have to be very powerful because we are retraining a survival instinct. So it's almost like you put your hand on a hot plate. I always do this. I don't know if you have this. When you go to a restaurant, when the waiter says, excuse me, sir, the plate is very hot, my first instinct is, oh, come on, how hot can it be? And put my hand on the hot plate to see how hot it is. I don't know if you have that. Thing, right? Yeah, you do that. Oh yeah, exactly. It's just one of those temptations. How hot is it really? Don't tell me what to do. I'm gonna, you know, do it. So in a similar way, if you imagine you put your hand on a hot plate, what happens? Your hand instantly goes off. It's auto— it's automatic. But imagine you had to train your hand that that plate feels hot, it feels dangerous, but actually it's cold. Your brain would take a lot of persuading and a lot of training to come out of that protective response. And so that is the power of neuroplasticity. It's intensity of the persuasion, the emotion that's put into the persuasion, the amount of imagination that goes into it, but most importantly, repetition again and again and not being complacent about it. And that's a very important point because most people in our modern world, you have an illness, you want to pop a pill or a supplement and say, that's it, that's my investment. This does require a little bit of time each day to practice, to create those new neural pathways. Just like learning a musical instrument, if you just practice, you know, once a week, you're not really going to create those new neural pathways. It requires more regular practice.

That was me when I played piano. I practiced like right before my lesson. Didn't really make a lot of progress.

I'm wondering about if so many of us who deal with either pain or anxiety or depression, the conventional treatments have involved medication, and so they're treating issues at the hardware. So if people are wanting to do this brain retraining, and let's say that they're on a benzodiazepine like Xanax or Valium, and their access to tasting the saliva or the lemon or whatever it would be going into the feeling, if that's dulled, is it going to be less effective? And do people need to take less medication so they're more reactive? Or like, how would you navigate that?

So we always encourage our patients to keep everything the same because if you're— as we all know, if you're coming off benzos or SSRIs or all kinds of different things, that's going to have impacts on your body. So then you you don't know what's working. So we keep everything the same and we go through first regulating the nervous system, then retraining the brain. And as people improve, then very slowly they can start coming off the medications. And yes, you know, you say, well, people might be more numbed because they're taking these types of medications, but we have to start somewhere. So people have still been able to retrain despite being on these medications. And in fact, there are whole benzo forums where they're using the Gupta program to come off benzos very gently, and they need our program as a combination. And we'd love to do actually studies on this to, to look at benzo withdrawal, which a lot of people are using the program for. And I think the key thing here is, um, that the process is very slow and gentle. So some people just think, I'm feeling better, I just want to come off it completely, because it's a big scandal. All of these drugs are really big scandals because they are addictive and they have that addictive quality, whether it's painkillers, whether it's benzos, the beta blockers. Your brain thinks you're in danger, it creates a danger response. Now, if you at a physiological level start putting in biochemical agents that tell your brain to shut down, what do you think the brain is going to do? It's going to start creating more danger response to offset the fact that you've numbed it and shut it down. And that's why a lot of these drugs are addictive, because you're offsetting the very thing your brain is wanting you to become aware of. Just like pain, the brain says there's something wrong and giving you these signals of pain, you numb the pain, the brain says, what are you doing? You're not listening to me. So it's creating more pain. So there is this adaptation in the brain. And this is a really interesting area, like for instance, vagus nerve stimulators. So there are people people using vagus nerve stimulators. And we'd love to see the research in the longer term because just like with these other agents, if you stimulate the vagus nerve artificially, so your brain is saying danger, danger, danger, you then stimulate the vagus nerve to say parasympathetic safety, safety, safety, you're opposing what your brain is doing. And I don't know if you've had this experience, but our patients tell us that they've started using these vagus nerve stimulators and initially they had a response. And they felt that their nervous system was calmer. But over time, the effect actually went away. And this is anecdotal, and I'd love to see longer-term studies on the effects of this. But that would make sense because once again, anything artificial you do to the body to try to offset what it's trying to tell you, it can then ratchet up that response. And that, I think, is an intriguing area of research as well.

I really appreciate that. We've been talking here on this podcast about vagus nerve stimulation, so I really value and appreciate that. In terms of people ask me, well, is this addictive? Is that addictive? Is melatonin addictive? And I think similar to what you're describing is that anything that we exogenously bring into our body, whether it's a pill, a supplement, a medication, or even vagus nerve stimulation, is that it's, it's almost like the law of physics. Like if the body is pushing in one direction and we're trying to push it in another direction. Mm-hmm. That, that at one point one or the other is going to give out. And so we're in a constant state of adaptation. And so if that root cause hasn't been addressed and that pattern hasn't been reprocessed or reprogrammed, then eventually, yes, your melatonin supplement, you won't be able to sleep without it because your body is adjusting and adapting to that. And so the insight that you're providing, the hypothesis about vagus nerve stimulation, is interesting. I think the one thing that I'm wondering about, and I actually would love to learn more about this, maybe get into some studies, is that the, the theory is that maybe someone's vagus nerve is undertoned and underactive, and that through tonification, through stimulation of that, that, that can help. But the, the person that we did interview said if you stop using it, then the effects will go away. So that kind of then circles back to what you were saying, is you're not— Yeah. actually changing that stress response. You're just stimulating it for a while.

Exactly. And I think the, you know, the system essentially says, are we in danger or are we safe? And it is constantly balancing between those two. And so if it is telling you you're in danger and it's artificially being stimulated, it's— yeah, I can't say. I mean, we don't know. We don't know what the longer-term effects of that are. But what we like to say is Let's get to the root cause, because the brain is telling you that you are in danger for a reason. And it may have got overprogrammed to do that, but let's get to that root cause and let's train it that what you are telling me is no longer required or needed. So it's really kind of understanding that even symptoms of depression or anxiety or panic, all of these symptoms are informing us of something within us that actually needs to shift at a more fundamental level. So rather than numbing it, let's take those signs and signals. So as an example, if we are having anxious or panicky feeling in certain situations, yes, the brain has, has learned to do that. So therefore, what is it telling us about our sense of safety in the world around us? What is it telling us about our perception of certain situations? Now, how can we train it that we are safe in those situations, we no longer require that defensive reaction? And if we can do that, that in itself helps us as human beings because we now are programming and strengthening our prefrontal cortex to regain control over these anxious reactions to our environment. So there's a strengthening in that that then longer term helps us to become more mature beings when it comes to other threats that our brain may perceive. So all of these things are strengtheners if we choose to treat them like that.

That's so vitalistic. I love that.

Yeah. I'm also curious. So these practices that you do for brain retraining, somatic retraining, all of that kind of thing, are those something that you then maintain for the long term? Is it something that you have to keep doing every single day, or is it like once you're done, it's like every week or whatever? I'm curious what the maintenance looks like after the fact.

It requires just the top-ups and just the awareness. So what happens is you've dug the right-hand path, so the river is now flowing along the right-hand path. Now what happens in your brain is the brain is very efficient, so if you don't use it, you lose it, as we say. So now the left-hand path starts— the soil starts filling in that left-hand path. riverway. This grass starts growing, right? But we know, well, they do scans of river valleys from millions of years ago, and you can still see the river valley. It's still there if you take the right scan. So the pathway is still there because the brain, once it learns a new defensive pathway that is a survival response, it never truly erases that imprint in your brain. And that— we don't have absolute proof of that, but from animal studies, we know that it's still there. So therefore, if the river's running along the right-hand path, happy days. But of course, if some stress comes along which moves the ground around and some of that water starts going along the left-hand path and you start becoming more aware of more symptoms in your body and there may be a threat going on or a new virus comes along, a lot of people, they get healthy from these chronic conditions, but a virus comes along and knocks them back on the left-hand path, then it's super important that a person goes back to the tools to Reorient them, take themselves back to the correct path. So there's once people have dug it, they don't need to keep doing the program for the rest of their lives. But is that awareness and maintenance is still required? And so therefore, we encourage people to continue with the regulation of their nervous system, awareness of stress levels for the rest of their life because they will need that because that is the the reason the condition has come is to inform them. that they have this sensitive response and that is causing them stress, and therefore to regulate themselves better and indulge in self-care.

And I think about the complementary systems, and, you know, so somebody may go down that old pathway, and that old pathway involves coping mechanisms like eating sugar or staying up late or doom scrolling. And so I, I like the incorporation of the holistic approach and that sort of trauma-informed approach of, well, and Hadley talks a lot about this, and her whole shtick is healthy, happy Hadley and all the healthy habits. And, you know, am I staying up late? Am I using a screen? Am I eating sugar? You know, all those different things in addition to that. And so I think that's really— Really wonderful. A question that's coming to mind is, is what about somebody who doesn't necessarily have, uh, like they have a pre-verbal inroad? So maybe they had a difficult birth. So I'm thinking about a client I had years ago where when she was born, it was a really traumatic birth experience, and then she didn't get skin to skin. They had to helicopter her to a specialty hospital. And ever since then, she's had a lot of difficulties, tons of emotional symptoms. But then also, it's interesting, you talk about the neuroimmune hypothesis. It's all immune system and it's all psychological, like behavior and emotions. And so when we think about that origin target, are you then looking at the symptomatic data that the body's giving us? Like, We know that you get a rash when you get stressed, or if you get too hot, you get angry. Tell me more about that.

Our genes are not our destiny. Our childhood is not our destiny. The events that occurred in our lives are not our destiny. It is all the legacy that is left in the brain. And the promise of neuroplasticity is Whatever your past was, whatever your inheritance was genetically, there is this idea of the epigenetic factors. So the lifestyle factors, the stress we put ourselves under, whether we meditate, whether we breathe, all of these things can dampen down that inheritance, but not only dampen it down, it can actually rewire it. And we see this in many of our patients. They'll come to us and say, before I did the program, I was constantly anxious, constantly hypervigilant. I had 7 different conditions I was seeing a nutritionist for and a naturopath, and I was doing all of these different things. But now, after regulating myself, I now feel completely different, like I'm a different human being in the sense that I'm more aware of my triggers, I'm able to keep myself more regulated, and therefore a lot of these downstream effects have reduced. And of course, it's not an either-or. Like, we of course want people to take good diet, good supplements, deal with toxins. All of those things are complementary and super important as well. And when people do this piece as well, they find it has a deeper, longer-term impact. And therefore, that's what I would say is that if we learn the right tools and techniques, we don't have to live that genetic legacy or inheritance that we think is our past. And of course, even in trauma work or therapy work, we have to work— we have to be careful that we are acknowledging what has happened and the pain of that, but also not going into too deep a story that I can't do anything about it because look what happened to me, because that's disempowering. So that's why I would say our genes and our past are not our destiny. They can be retrained. All that's happened, all that exists right now that has ever existed is this present moment. Everything that ever happened no longer exists, just the present moment. So in this present moment, it's simply that legacy And that is under our influence and eventually our control to change.

It's such a story of hope, and, and I almost feel like wrapping with that story of hope because I could probably ask you questions for days, and yet it's so easy to over-intellectualize. And instead, I almost want to stop at that story of hope. But before we do that, is, is there anything else that someone who's listening to this conversation that is like, oh my gosh, my genes aren't my destiny, my trauma isn't my destiny, anything else you want to make sure that they hear?

Yes. Well, at the, at the, uh, the risk of going left brain, uh, I did want to also share, which I think is very important, the science behind it and the studies that we've done. Because what happens is There's a million and one cures on Instagram, right? You can go onto Instagram, you can go onto now social media, and everyone's touting, we can help you with this, we can help you with that. And what really matters is the objective data and the studies. And so for us, what's really important is verifying all of this with studies. And so I thought I'd just share a bit of data that I think is very fascinating. So we've done now 4 randomized controlled trials, which have all been independent, and 2 clinical audits. And in the clinical trials, the RCTs, for instance, in fibromyalgia, we compared this Gupta program to relaxation, structurally equivalent program. And we found after just 8 weeks in the Gupta program group, there was a 37% drop in fibromyalgia scores and 0% in the control group. There was a halving of pain, halving of anxiety, and halving of depression. With very small numbers in the control group. And we did a study on long COVID, and we compared long COVID Gupta program to a wellness program. So this wellness program had diet supplements, activity levels, you know, the whole holistic gamut of support. And it was structurally equivalent once again. And after 3 months in the Gupta program group, the Gupta program group, there was 4 times more effective at reducing fatigue and exhaustion twice as effective at increasing levels of energy. I mean, a 97% improvement in energy levels in the active group. So once again, yeah, that was independent study. And we've just done a study on 16 different conditions, and the Gupta program was significant for 14 of those conditions in terms of improving health and wellness. So on average, between 60 to 120% improvement in health and functioning after 3 months. So all of these studies people can read on our site, and the vast majority are independent, run by universities. And I think that gives people that extra belief that this isn't just hokey, you know, this isn't just something just saying they can do this, but actually has a science behind it. And our focus is to do larger and larger scale trials so we can get this as a mainstream treatment so that doctors can prescribe it, insurance companies can prescribe it. And secondly, I just wanted to add that what's really interesting is the biggest game changer has been something we introduced just a year ago before a lot of these studies, which is something called Daily Gupta Size. Now, what this is, is a lot of patients are on their own, they're isolated, they don't have the motivation to go through the app and try and figure out what they're supposed to do today. So we created this idea of daily Zoom calls with our coaches, and we have like 30 to 40 coaches around the world. And so Daily Gut Sizes, you come onto a Zoom call, and every day we take you through the nervous system regulation, fresh and new every day, and every day we take you through the brain retraining. So if you're not the kind of person who can sit down and follow a program, you just come on those Zoom calls, and we take care of you. And so many patients have said that has been the game changer because they don't need to think about it. And it's that regularity, sense of community. You know, we have hundreds of people coming on every day. And that, I think, has for us has been something we've, you know, we wish we did years ago and has been really made the difference.

How can someone get into that?

Yeah, so they can come to our website. So it's guptaprogram.com, and there they can take a free trial. And that free trial, you get to watch lots of videos and audios and really get a sense of the hypothesis and go deeper and see if this is right for you. And people can also download the app from the App Store or Play Store and start retraining their, their brain straight away.

I'm downloading that app. I'm downloading that app yesterday. Yeah.

Yeah, me too. I'm so excited. So thank you so much for being here with us. This has been incredible. I'm so excited for our listeners to be able to To hear this. And, uh, yeah, it's just been— it's been very enlightening, and I'm excited to go do it.

Yeah, same. Yeah, so we'll make sure to share all of your information in the show notes, and people can find you on social media. We'll send them to your website. And I'm just so grateful for the work that you're doing and how you alchemized something that was really painful and really difficult into something that's changing people's lives. I, I honor you, and I'm so grateful for that.

Thank you so much. I appreciate that. Thank you.

Yeah. Awesome. Everyone, thanks for listening to The Holistic Inner Balance. It's been an absolute joy to have Ashok Gupta here, and definitely check out his information. We'll see you next time.

Bye, everyone.

All right, that's a wrap. That's for our video editor.

Oh, I see.

Okay.

Yeah, right.

We need a— thank you.

I am— I'm so interested. I'm so excited. I want to learn more.

Um, yeah. So what I'd like to first of all do is give both of you, uh, complete complimentary access to the program. So the app and the physical product that comes in the post. So what I'll do is, um, afterwards I'll— if you just send me both your email addresses and your physical address, then our team will take care of you, set you up with an online account, and you'll get some package in the post which will have the big Twister board and various things. And yeah, I'd love for you to, you know, give it a go, and, and, and, and that gives you a sense of, you know, what this program is about and what it actually does. And then you can join the Daily Gupta Size as well. And we also have an affiliate program as well, so if you have any patients that you think could benefit, then we have that.

Yeah, I'm definitely really excited.

Wow, that's so generous. Thank you so much.

Thank you. And I, I'm interested in, in research, so I'll be— I'll look at your research, and it might be kind of interesting to look specifically at— so I help people with benzo tapering, and it might be really

interesting.

Yeah, yeah. And, and in Panic Proof, I have sort of a similar organization, and you're just— my brain is exploding with information. It's so good. It might be really fun to look more into that, what you have with benzo tapering, that kind of panic, anxiety, and insomnia that I see coming up for people. So I would love to stay in touch.

Absolutely. Well, actually, something I just want to quickly share with you, if you've got a couple of minutes.

Yes.

Is interestingly, so I'll just send the request to share screen. So on our research page, I'll show you, these are our studies, and we want to do more studies. So yes, definitely benzo tapering, we'd love to do a study on that and see if we can help your patients. But in terms of the timeline, we just— the clinical audit that we did was an independent audit. We looked at the percentage improvements in health and functioning after 3 months. And look, we had 100% improvement in panic with N equals 34. So we are having very good results with panic and benzo tapering as well. Yeah.

That's incredible. So many people are just Ashton purists, and I think that it's pretty amazing that you have people doing the Gupta in the forums, those benzo forums. Like, they're a tight-knit group and it's hard to get in with them. And so It's such a testimony to how much this helps that you're seeing that in your studies and that they're in there with you.

Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, if you have patients, there could be a way that— because we have a whole team conducting our research, it could be that there's several ways of setting it up. It could be people do your treatment first and then they do ours sequentially, and then we see if we are able to help your patients up and above the work that you're doing. Or it can be a parallel one that we, you know, we become each other's control group and we see what's improving. Or it could be they do your program and they do your program plus our program, so then we can see what percentage improvement we have up and above the work that you're doing. So there's many different ways of setting up, you know, a clinical trial like that. Or we could just treat your waitlist people. But I think that would be really exciting. And we know with panic, we get a really good response.

That's great. That's awesome. Yeah. So I'll reach out. I'll kind of noodle on that and I'll reach out to you. I believe that we just emailed this morning, so I have your contact information. I'm grateful for, for the time that you had for us today. And thanks again for your grace with the technology.

Oh yeah, totally fine. I think I just have to now tell my executive assistant that always check the link. in because she— I don't think she's checking. So then I suddenly have a minute to spare, like, oh no, there's no link. So I'm sure that I'll have a link next time. Um, and I, and, and I saw your, your Instagram because I think you've got quite a large Instagram following as well, haven't you? So if at any point, you know, you can digest on there, so you can obviously have the program. If at any point your Instagram followers would like to do a Q&A where, you know, we can talk about what's, you know, your experiences of using the program even, and then there could be a Q&A. I'm, you know, really open to that because I think it's great to engage people on, on those platforms.

Yeah, we could do an Instagram Live. That would be great.

Yeah, that would be awesome. And I have a membership of people who are already investing in their health, and I think that they would— it's like a good warm audience, like a good top of funnel for adding value to them. So let's for sure do that. Um, yeah, thank you for your generosity with the program. I'm really excited to dive in. I have, I have issues sleeping. And so that will be my target.

Right. Right. Yeah. I think we actually have sleep exercises that you can listen to that people just say completely knocks them down to sleep. And there's a whole video on sleep as well. And so, yeah, enjoy it.

Amazing. Thank you, sir. You rock. I appreciate you.

Yes.

Thank you so much. Yeah. Take care, guys.

See you later. Bye.