Healing Chronic Illness through Brain Retraining with Ashok Gupta

Welcome to The Perfect Stool: Understanding and Healing the Gut Microbiome. This is your host, Lindsey Parsons, and today I'll be speaking with Ashok Gupta, an internationally renowned speaker, filmmaker, and health practitioner who has dedicated his life to supporting people through chronic illness and achieving their potential. Ashok suffered from ME, or chronic fatigue syndrome, around 25 years ago when he was studying at Cambridge University. Through neurological research that he conducted, he managed to get himself 100% better. He then set up a clinic to treat others and published the well-known neuroplasticity limbic retraining recovery program and app known as the Gupta Program in 2007. But before our conversation, if you haven't yet followed or subscribed to the show, be sure to do so. And if you want to get transcripts of the podcast, pop over to my website, HighDesertHealthCoaching.com, and sign up for my newsletter. You'll also get my free ebooklet, Finding Your Root Cause Through Stool and organic acids testing when you sign up. And if you haven't yet done my quiz on which stool test would help you get to your root cause, you can find a link in the show notes and take that. Now on to the show. Welcome to the podcast, Asha.

Yeah, thank you so much. It's a delight to be here.

Yeah, so I understand, and I shared in the intro, how your personal story of illness and recovery led to your creation of the Gupta Program. So can you share that story?

Yes, of course. Like many of us who work in this field, we've been through our own challenges and we've healed, we've survived, and we've gone on then to help others. So my journey started in the mid-'90s when a lot of these types of illnesses, conditions, gut issues, they weren't really recognized. And I was studying as an undergrad at Cambridge University and I got some kind of virus and I wasn't sure what that was, but I didn't think much of it and I kind of healed from the virus, but my physical body just deteriorated to the point at which I would open up a textbook and I couldn't read the words on the page, or I had to crawl to the bathroom. Just really intense fatigue. And for people who don't know what chronic fatigue syndrome feels like, what ME feels like, is I would describe it like your worst day of flu times 5.

Wow.

Literally, you're just wiped out, and it doesn't matter how much you rest, doesn't seem to alleviate whatever you do. And I went from doctor to doctor, and they would say, we don't know what you have, we don't even know what to call it, we don't sometimes even think it's real, there's nothing we can give you to treat it, you might have it for the rest of your life, goodbye. And that, for a young man, you can imagine, was a death sentence. And I met hundreds of others who were suffering from it, and I just know in my worst moments, in my darkest moments, I made a contract with the universe and I said, if I can just get myself 50% better, ideally 100% better, I will dedicate the rest of my life to solving this condition and helping others with it because there's so many people who are suffering and so much untold suffering from it. And so I managed to find some amazing work on brain neurology and physiology, and I studied that.. And I came up with a hypothesis as to what causes these types of conditions. I then retrained my brain and had myself 100% well, and then set up a clinic to treat others. And then since then have obviously published medical papers and, uh, studies and published an app as well. So yes, that's been my journey over the last 25 years, 30 years.

That's awesome. So just in case people don't know, the abbreviation ME stands for?

Well, it's a, a long convoluted title. Essentially, it's seen as a more severe form of chronic fatigue syndrome, and it stands for myalgic encephalomyelitis, if I said that correctly. Okay.

So this is like inflammation of the brain?

Uh, yes. Inflammation of the brain, the body, and essentially then going on to cause fatigue.

Mm-hmm. Okay. And can you explain what the limbic system is?

Sure. Yeah. So some of these treatments and therapies have sometimes got put into this pigeonhole of limbic retraining or the limbic system, which isn't quite accurate. But I can describe what to people what the limbic system is. So we have different areas of our brain, and the limbic system part of the brain is more known as the mammalian brain, which includes certain brain structures that are responsible for our emotions. And emotions themselves are defensive. So it also includes defensive reactions. And it used to be believed that the limbic system was just in control of our emotional reactivity, but actually our physiology, our immune system, the systems that keep our body functioning are also mediated through the limbic system part of the brain. And that includes structures such as the hippocampus, which is our short-term memory retrieval, the thalamus, which is a part of the brain that accumulates all sensory data from our body, and especially the amygdala, which is the core part of what we retrain, which are two almond-shaped structures which sit behind the eyes. And their role is to defend us from dangers. And traditionally, the amygdala has been implicated in PTSD and anxiety disorders. But actually, they've now found the amygdala is involved in sensitivity reactions and also in immune reactions and causing immune, um, storage in the brain or immune reactivity in the brain. And so let's say you go to a hospital and there's a separate immunology department, separate physiology department, separate neurology department., but the brain does not separate between physical, emotional, biological. It simply says, what is the danger or the threat and what reaction do I need to perform? So essentially that's what the limbic system does is it defends us from all kinds of threats that compromise survival.

Okay. So I saw scanning the Gupta Program website that it has been used and studied in gut health conditions like SIBO and IBS and food intolerances. So can you tell me more about that? 'Cause that's obviously what my audience is most interested in. And I'm also particularly interested because I have autoimmune SIBO, which means it just keeps coming back. And of course, I have lots of clients with a wide range of gut health issues and food sensitivities.

Yes. So in our hypothesis, we believe that a lot of the gut challenges that people face are essentially as a result of a dysregulated nervous system and a dysregulated immune system, which as a knock-on effect causes massive imbalances in the gut in terms of obviously dysbiosis, tightening of the gut, imperfect absorption of nutri— nutrients, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And so a lot of our studies have been more focused on the main illnesses we treat, such as chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, long COVID, mold illness. But we recently conducted a clinical audit of our patients. About 400 patients were involved in this clinical audit, and we found that actually many patients were seeing significant benefit for food sensitivities, SIBO, irritable bowel syndrome. And of course, those symptoms are very prevalent in a lot of the other conditions that we treat as well. So for instance, in IBS, after just 3 months on our program, uh, patients reported 64% improvement in IBS symptoms. They reported 56% improvement in food sensitivity. So we have many patients who now, as a result of exclusion diets or whatever, have gone down to 3 foods.

I have those clients.

Exactly. And, and obviously it's a maze to try and understand what's going on. And we believe that brain retraining is a core component of this because actually we can train the brain that these foods are safe. We can actually bypass the need or certainly work in tandem with some of the more downstream treatments for food sensitivities. And in a combination, we can train the brain to no longer react. So that 56% improvement in food sensitivities, 46% improvement in SIBO. After 3 months of using, uh, brain retraining. So I think it's a really promising treatment for gut health issues in combination with obviously the, the great work that you do as well.

So I know that people might feel, and I, there might be this perception that in some way you're suggesting that their issues are all in their head. Can you correct that misinterpretation of what brain retraining is about?

Yes, of course. And we get this time and time again, and we say it's not all in the mind, but it— we believe it's all in the brain, and it's separating and differentiating those between those two things. So the way to think about our brain is imagine that you look at a car, yeah? And traditionally medicine would look at our body like a car. So if something went wrong with the door, you would fix the door. Something goes wrong in this part of the engine, you fix the engine.. But in modern cars, what tends to go wrong is the electrical system. And the electrical system of the car is like the electrical system of our body, the nervous system, and the central processing computer in the car. That's the equivalent of our brain. That's the most intensive collection of neurons in the entire body. And that's where, as a kind of central processing unit. And so when we have these types of conditions. We're not saying that it's in our conscious mind. We're not saying that we're consciously aware or that we're choosing these conditions, but we're saying that in this processing unit of the brain, these electrical systems, they sometimes maladapt to our environment. They sometimes over-defend, over-survive. Because if you think about it, the number one priority of our brain is survival. It's not wellness, funny enough. We think, oh, I'm sure my brain wants me to be well. Actually, it's survival. And so when we realize that, our brain then errs on the side of caution. And therefore, it's not something that we choose. It's not something that we want. It's happening unconsciously without our awareness. And what brain retraining is, is actually we can influence what the brain does. Even though it wasn't cognitive in the first place, there are specialized techniques that can potentially reverse some of these effects and get us back to health.

Can you give me some examples of the kinds of things people do within the Gupta Program, just because, so people can understand a little bit what it's about?

Uh, yes, absolutely. So the Gupta Program essentially has been developed over the last 20 years or so, 25 years, and it involves a whole suite of different techniques that I can only call brain retraining, neuroplasticity techniques, but they've been drawn from a number of different areas of therapy, coaching, et cetera. And unique twists put on them, or, you know, reinvented. And so we first of all teach patients to recognize some of those danger signals. So as we said at the beginning, the brain is highlighting dangers and overemphasizing dangers, and therefore the body and the brain reacts and creates these defensive responses which cause all the downstream effects. So we teach a patient to recognize those signals and instead of just letting them go, to actually retrain the brain, to tell the brain that we are safe. Now, of course, the brain isn't going to listen to just a cognitive thing. Like, you can't say to your brain, okay, you know what, I want you to cause my saliva glands to salivate right now. Your brain will say, no, I'm not going to do that because I don't take instructions in that way. But if I was to take a slice of lemon and imagine I was to place that slice of lemon on your tongue and, oh, really tangy lemon, and the juices are flowing in your mouth and your saliva glands are stimulated now, and now you bite into that lemon. Now, I don't know, Lindsey, but do you have any excessive saliva in your mouth right now?

I do have some saliva.

You do have some saliva. So isn't that incredible? I managed to trigger a physiological process in you even though you knew it wasn't real. Now, so it's, it's sometimes we gloss over how monumental that idea is, that actually we can influence our physiology when we're able to train our brain that a certain experience is going on. Yeah. Now, of course, brain retraining is far more than visualization, but that's just an example of a technique. Where we can access your limbic system, access your unconscious brain, and cause physiological responses. So in a similar way, if your brain has learned to overstimulate your nervous system and immune system unnecessarily, imagine if we could find the right key to the right lock and actually calm down those systems and bring us back to homeostasis. And so that's some examples of how brain retraining works. And it has 3 components. The first is the, the 3 Rs of the program. The first R is relaxing the nervous system. So our brain is not very neuroplastic in its normal state when it's aroused, but if we calm it down, that makes our brain more neuroplastic and easier to rewire. The second R of the program is retraining the brain, and that's the core techniques. That's what's unique about the program. And the final R is what we call re-engaging with joy. So that is saying, actually, we need to understand more about our stress responses in life and why we respond in a certain way, because there's no point getting well and then having some incident in life and all the symptoms come flooding back. So we teach a patient to recognize when they become dysregulated and find coping mechanisms or retraining certain parts. So we use a lot of parts therapy, which we find very powerful, and a whole suite of different tools and techniques to enable a patient to stay well for the rest of their lives.

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As you're talking, it made me think, well, this seems like, uh, something that would be really useful for anxiety. Is that something it's been used in?

Absolutely. So we have many patients that come to us with chronic anxiety where they've been down so many pathways, tried so many things, and they just haven't been able to heal. And they've come onto our program. And in fact, so in our clinical audits, in terms of anxiety, 68% improvement in anxiety after 3 months. And that's a documented published study. And we've actually had some studies internationally which haven't been published yet, which have showed very large effect sizes for depression. Now, of course, we don't formally recommend our program for depression because that requires much more specialist attention versus someone using a self-guided program. But we can see the potential of a program like this, which is that a lot of these illnesses are essentially the wiring of our brain at the core of it. And if that's the case, it opens up a whole world of healing to previously difficult-to-treat conditions. And I'm sure Lindsey, in your practice, we, we will see patients who initially do really well on these types of protocols, whether it be supplements or diet changes, etc. But then a stressful event comes in their lives or some change happens, and it's so easy for all of the symptoms to come flooding back. And then there's a whole pathway of new diagnosis and new treatments that we try at that moment in time. And That is once again, because I believe that a dysregulated brain is gonna cause a dysregulated nervous system, immune system, and gut. And then that gut through the gut-brain axis feeds back to the brain that we're in danger, there's something wrong, which then causes effects at an emotional level, at a cognitive level, but also in the brain, which then causes these feedback loops. And then we've gotta break those loops and get people back to health.

I also imagine this is really useful for people who are just super sensitive to everything. Like there's no supplement you can give them that they don't have a reaction and they just sort of like, I can't do that, I can't do that, I can't do that. And I can barely eat anything. And you're kinda like, uh, I'm not sure there's anything left. In fact, I did, I did suggest it recently to a, to a client who's very much in that sort of situation.

Yes.

And it fascinating for us because we work with a lot of functional and integrative doctors. Nutritionists, naturopathic doctors. And now a lot of them are prescribing our program first because what they say is that actually once the patient has calmed down their nervous system, then whether it's binders, whether it's supplements, whether it's enzymes, those are then more effective because the system is now in a better state to handle something new. Because when we're in a sensitized state, the system is now in shutdown mode. Believes that everything in the environment is a threat. Anything new is a threat. Any new food, any new supplement is a threat. And that's why people have reactions to what would be otherwise neutral pharmaceuticals or supplements. And therefore we work in combination with many practitioners to create that balance and work from both wedges. So we're both from the, the gut's health and the downstream effect, and then also the upstream Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

So you mentioned, well, obviously we've talked about ME/CFS. We've talked about anxiety and gut health issues. You mentioned mold illness. What other types of situations might, or conditions might the GOTO program be good for?

Well, we've found it very powerful for pain. And in fact, we published a randomized controlled trial on fibromyalgia, which is the most common widespread pain. Condition. And that was published in the Journal of Clinical Medicine. And that study found that after just 8 weeks, which is a very short intervention, the Gupta program reduced fibromyalgia scores by 40%. And there was a zero effect in the control group, which was relaxation and self-awareness and that kind of thing. And there was a halving of anxiety, a halving of depression, halving of pain, and a doubling of functional capacity after 8 weeks. And those Effects were continued for 6 months. And so pain is one area that we also treat. And recently we found a lot of people with autoimmune conditions getting benefit from the program, even reversing symptoms. And we are looking at even conditions like MS and Alzheimer's where once again, it's not saying that this is going to be the core treatment necessarily, but can really impact. Practitioners are anecdotally telling us that they've reversed Alzheimer's using this approach. In certain patients. So I think the future is very exciting for this type of approach. So in summary, there are sensitivity reactions, so mold illness, food sensitivities, gut sensitivities. Then there's what we call neuroimmune conditions. So that would be your long COVID, which is huge right now. And I think we know, all know somebody who's still got lingering COVID effects. And then chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia. And then we've got pain syndromes and you've got autoimmune conditions. And What is the root? So these are all branches of a tree, but we believe they all share the same root, which is that because of the way we live in the modern world, and you'll, you'll obviously be an expert in that, we are creating too many threats for this system. There's too much of an allostatic load on the system, and therefore when it gets pushed over the edge, it goes into survival mode, which is then hyperstimulating the nervous system and immune system to protect us. And that then causes a complete dysregulation of our bodies. Everything will go wrong because the nervous system and immune system connects to every cell, every organ of our bodies. And that to me is the root cause of all of these branches of the tree, all these different types of conditions.

And so you've mentioned 2 and 3 months. What is the typical length of time that somebody needs to do the Gupta program before seeing results?

Generally, people find results within 2 to 3 months, sometimes within weeks, sometimes within days. People can notice the difference. And we always want patients to not be complacent. So our mantra is always minimum 6 months, because of course you can use the program, retrain your brain quite fast and think, hey, I'm feeling amazingly better. But then if you go back to the old habits and go back to a 60, 70-hour week or some crazy stress that you're experiencing, of course, then the symptoms will come back. So it's pacing yourself slowly back into normal life. And the nervous system is sensitive for a while. So if you've had a dysregulated system, your nervous system has got overstimulated and has got used to being in that state. It's habitual as a protective mechanism. Therefore, even once you've healed, the system can be sensitive. So it still takes time. And that's our number one challenge is patients wanting to too quickly go back to normal life when they're still dysregulated.

And so how much time per day do you spend doing this?

We recommend to patients a minimum of 30 minutes a day. And of course, like any investment, the more time you invest, the better your results will be. But we think that everyone can invest at least 30 minutes a day in their health. And something which has been an absolute game changer is a treatment called Daily Gupta Sides. Now what this is, is we know that a lot of our patients are quite lonely and they're isolated, and it can feel quite demotivating to think, I've gotta try and put this program into practice and figure it out. So we created Daily Gupta Sides, which are daily Zoom calls that our patients can come on. That are hosted by our trained practitioners, where the trained practitioners take them through the nervous system regulation. So that's somatic work, breathing, meditation, and then the daily brain retraining. And that has been an absolute game changer. Like, we only started it in September, but it's been a game changer for our patients where suddenly within weeks they're noting differences because now they're committed. They're just tuning in every day. They have like 20, 25 minutes of Nervous system regulation, 20-25 minutes of brain retraining. And it's in a group and we have 200 to 300 people a day joining live. And it's been fantastic. And of course, we can't underestimate the powerful effects of healing in community and meditating in community. It magnifies the depth and power of how much we can regulate ourselves.

And are these offered at different times of the day for your time zone or?

Uh, we, at the moment we've just got a one-time slot each day, which covers our US and European friends. So that is 7:00 AM Pacific, which is 10:00 AM Eastern, 3:00 PM UK, 4:00 PM Europe. So we, we cover, you know, most of the globe where our patients are. Uh, but of course in the future we'd love to have multiple time zones.

So is the conventional medical community embracing this at all, or is it pretty much stuck in the, in the functional medicine area at the moment?

I would say we're making inroads. Absolutely. It's taking time. And originally, you know, 10, 15 years ago, we were the only treatment out there of this kind. And it was seen as very woo woo, whereas now there are other programs, there are functional and integrative doctors. We have like about 5,000 practitioners recommending our program now on our database and it's gaining traction. And for us, it's about the science. So the only way we can finally prove this is to do these randomized controlled trials. So we've done 2 or 3 randomized controlled trials. We've done clinical audits. Now we're looking at large-scale trials. And that is what I think will eventually persuade the mainstream medical community. And actually, even the mainstream community, they recognize that their existing treatments have been absolutely ineffective in the longer term. I mean, I went to a chronic fatigue syndrome conference. And one of the leaders there said, you know, it's great that we've been meeting for 30, 40 years. We've had these yearly conferences. It's great. But over that period of time, we've not found a single biomedical treatment showing any consistent effect over all of that time, you know, which is shocking, really. And for me, what that means is that we've got this kind of great future ahead of us where this type of treatment approach will become more mainstream. And my hope is in 5 to 10 years' time, if you have one of these dysregulated systems, you'll see someone for brain retraining, or you have a brain retraining approach, and you'll also have someone who will look at your holistic health support. So that's the diet, the supplements, et cetera. And you'll have that coordinated approach. And that would be my hope.

Yeah. So I actually, a couple of years ago, someone had the DNRS, which is a similar type of program, I guess, Dynamic Neural Retraining System. And, but it was on a bunch of CDs and my only, or DVDs, my only DVD player was in like my guest house. And it was very inconvenient. Convenient to try and do it. I imagine it's gone online too at this point, but are you, are you pretty similar to them or do you know?

Oh yes. So we, we were the first program to publish in 2007. And let's just say there have been other programs that have come along after that. And so we are aware of their work, but we, we have a very different approach to them. So of course we've got a similar outcome, which is to retrain the brain, but we believe in a kind of different approach and therefore there's a, there's a lot more deviation in how we work. And now we're also an app because I think having an app is super important because people are busy, they want instant access, they want to log into a screen. So with the app, that has also been a game changer for our patients.

That does make a difference. I could think about like just if I'm sitting next to my bed and I'm ready to spend 30 minutes doing something, I'm not going to go upstairs to get my computer, bring it down, hook it up. Like all that's not going to happen. So an app does make a difference. So can you give a story of some client who maybe had a gut health issue or some constellation of issues that might've included gut health that you can share?

Hey, this is Lindsey here, just letting you know that if you're tired of dealing with digestive issues like bloating, indigestion, soft stool, diarrhea, constipation, reflux, IBS, IBD, or the numerous health conditions that come about when your gut is off, like brain fog, weight gain, UTIs, fatigue, mental health issues, or complex conditions like fibromyalgia and ME/CFS, that's my specialty. With my 3 or 5 session gut health coaching packages, we'll discuss different stool and functional medicine tests to find out the root cause of your symptoms. I'll interpret the results and provide clear explanations, empowering you to make informed choices for your gut and overall health. And together, we'll develop a customized action plan based on your test results so you can find relief and regain your health and vitality. I come from a functional medicine perspective, trying to incorporate the latest peer-reviewed research and educating you on protocols used by functional medicine practitioners, but devoting lots of time and support to my clients the way a doctor simply can't. If you're interested in a 3 or 5 session coaching package, you can sign up for complimentary 30-minute breakthrough session. Or if you can only afford one appointment at a time, you can book an initial 60-minute consultation. Links for those are in the show notes. Now back to the show.

Absolutely. So my favorite story I like to share is we had a client in New Zealand, and he was in his early 80s. And I used to think, well, someone in their early 80s, very difficult to figure out, you know, what is dysregulated in their systems versus what is a natural product of being at that age. And he had fibromyalgia, he had gut system dysregulation, he had chronic fatigue, he had a whole suite of different problems. And He'd had it for 30 years, so almost half his life, adult life, he'd spent in this state. And I said to him, okay, look, I'd like you to try the program, give it your best shot. But I wasn't sure what results he would get. And within 3 months, he'd got up to 80%, 90% recovery. His gut system had been restored. His fatigue was much lower. He was just feeling much, much better. And I said to him, what are you going to do with your life now? I mean, it's incredible that you are now having this opportunity. And he said, oh, I'm going to travel the world. I'm gonna do all of the things that I've always wished that I could have done, and now is my chance. And I thought to myself, isn't that incredible that if someone at that age can first of all have the motivation to put this program into practice, secondly, enough of a neuroplastic brain to actually shift some of these responses, and then have the joy to want to go and travel the world, then all of us can do this. All of us have the ability to, to retrain. And, and that was a really inspiring story for me. And of course, we have many, many people. I think most of our— I say the vast majority of our patients have gut issues in some shape or form because that is just a natural consequence of this dysregulation. And I had a client who had long COVID and had been floored by long COVID. He was a marathon runner, right? And so he was super fit. So we can't say that somehow his system wasn't ready for COVID, yet he had a mild case of COVID but then was just floored. He was on his sofa, he was lying on the sofa for a year, couldn't do anything. And he came onto our program and within 3 months he was back to running half marathons at least and cycling 100 kilometers a day. And once again, he had very dysregulated gut. And, you know, most of our patients have this kind of IBS oscillation between constipation and diarrhea. Not good-formed stools, and they have tightness in the gut. They have the wrong absorption of nutrients. They feel more exhausted after a meal. All of those classic signs of hyper dysregulation. And a lot of people find that with brain retraining, you know, they've, they've done a lot of the other stuff. They've now, they're on a good diet, they're eating the good supplements, they've done a lot of that work themselves. And this final missing piece of the jigsaw is so important.

For that.

And, you know, we know it in the average population. If someone suddenly has a surge of anxiety, has a panic, what do we know? We know the gut instantly gets dysregulated, but normally they can then bring themselves to balance. But if the system doesn't come back to balance, there will be then chronic dysregulation of all systems.

Yeah, I know that, that obviously, while a good portion of IBS is SIBO and it's a distinct dysbiosis, that there's a good portion of it as well that's not explained by that. I think the recent numbers are something like 60% of IBS is SIBO, but the rest can certainly be something going on that's dysregulating them.

Absolutely. And even with the SIBO, see, in functional medicine, we always go back to that question, don't we? But what's the cause? Yeah, but what's the cause?

Right. Cool. At the end of the day, there's dysmotility.

Yeah, exactly. So then we have to say, well, what's the cause of dysmotility? And I'm sure, you know, there's multiple— it's multifactorial. So I'm not saying I'm not dogmatic in that sense. So of course it's how much— how many toxins are we exposed to, how much pollution is there, what foods are we eating, all of these different wedges in. And that key component of our emotional state of being is also a really big factor, if not the biggest factor, into that bucket of the allostatic load, all of these different threats that our system is perceiving, which then once again can tighten up the gut. Stop our gut from being able to absorb and process food. So yeah, absolutely all of these things are interconnected. And I think, you know, I always remember, so I remember when my gut wasn't great, you know, many, many years ago, I used to notice that when I went on holiday, so when I'm in a busy clinic, there's lots of things going on. I have to be very careful about what I eat and make sure I exercise and meditate and all those good things.. But I go on holiday and I'm sitting on a beach for 2 weeks, right? I can eat all kinds of nonsense, all kinds of rubbish, right? That I wouldn't dream of eating. Have late nights, you know, and my gut's completely fine. I'm thinking, what is going on there? You know? And that gives us a clue to it's, it's really the overall load. And what's hopefully gonna come out of this research is that for all practitioners, everywhere, working at that holistic level, at the mind, body, spirit, physiology, all of those different levels is super important.

Yeah, no, I have had that exact same experience where, and I kept thinking, is it something? Because I often was at my parents' house when I, when I would have just really good periods where I had no struggles with my SIBO and I was eating a lot more gluten and dairy and yeah, I took my pills to digest it and stuff, but I was like, is it the water there?

Because they don't filter their water.

Maybe I'm getting more calcium in their water. Like, what is going on? I just thought, what could be happening? Because I'm eating less, quote, healthy food for my body and doing better. And yeah, I'm sure the stress question plays into it enormously. And people have this theory, oh, I, I go to Europe and I can eat all the pasta and I can eat all the bread and there's no problem at all. It must be the American wheat. And I mean, maybe that's, part of it, but I'm sure the bigger part is you're on vacation, you're on holiday, you're on holiday.

And we see it time and time again. And what it is, is often our patients think, oh, stress. So they feel like it's a word that's judgmental to them, or that they've caused the stress. And actually, it's just about your nervous system regulation. So what happens is we can actually be encountering quite mild stress, but if our system has a background of, let's say, trauma, for instance, or dysregulation, it can very easily become dysregulated even by small amounts of stress, which then means that it has knock-on effects on our digestion. And therefore it's about, even if we think that we're not stressed, it's just our day-to-day busy lifestyles can impact on the gut, and therefore going to a deeper and deeper level of relaxation can really impact.

So is what you do when you do the Gupta program different by what your condition is or just what's in your head going to be different based on your condition?

We do give people adaptations of how they use the program for different types of conditions. So neuroimmune versus sensitivity reactions, you know, versus pain, but essentially it's used in a very, very similar way because we believe it's the same brain networks. I'm sure Lindsey, you have this kind of observation where you'll have a chronic fatigue patient and they're far more likely to have mold and also have placebo. And so there's a collection of symptoms which just vary amongst patient to patient. I always ask, is it someone with mold who's got fatigue or is it fatigue with mold? You know, what is the core issue here? And so in a similar way, these particular treatments are very similar because they're getting to regulate our overall systems. And you might ask, well, why is our system dysregulated? And of course, we're not living according to our genetic inheritance. So rewind 300, 400 years ago. The vast majority of human civilization lived in small farming communities or small fishing villages, apart from those living in the city, but the vast majority lived in villages. We were outdoors, we were getting fresh air, we were eating organic food, we were exposed to sun and red light. We were living in community. We had much lower levels of stress actually than they anticipate in the past. And therefore our guts were at a better absorption rate and better regulated. Fast forward to the modern world. We put ourselves in boxes for 90, 95% of the day. We sit in front of a screen in a sedentary lifestyle. We expose ourselves to food toxins and pollution. We stress ourselves out by comparing ourselves to everyone else on the planet through social media. We spend most of our time looking at a screen and never resting our nervous system. We don't sleep according to the rhythms of nature and the sun. And then we expect to be healthy. The way we're living modern life, it's a recipe for our nervous system and immune system to be in threat survival mode and to therefore cause us exhaustion and fatigue and depression and anxiety. We're breeding people for these conditions, unfortunately.

Yeah.

Can you tell me a little bit about the clinical studies you've done?

Sure. So the fibromyalgia one I already mentioned, we also just did a study on long COVID, and that was a published RCT, so randomized controlled trials. First of all, so we compared the Gupta program to a wellness program because we wanted to compare something which was equivalent because people would always say, well, of course people are going to do better on the active treatment versus a waiting list. So we compared our program to a wellness program that included sleep, diet, supplements, you know, all the good stuff that a holistic therapist may support people with. And we compared them over 3 months. So after 3 months, the Gupta program was 4 times more effective at reducing fatigue and exhaustion in chronic fatigue COVID patients, and twice as effective at increasing levels of energy. Which was an incredible result. I mean, whenever in a medical study do you get a 400% result compared to a control? So that was a published study and that's obviously then gone on to breed more studies. So we did more studies on long COVID. Some of those results have been really good as well. So that's what we're doing in that area. And of course we had that recent clinical audit, which I mentioned earlier, and we found that across 14 different conditions, the Gupta program was significant. At increasing health and functional capacity, anywhere between 60-70% improvement to 116% improvement in the case of Lyme disease. So Lyme disease is another one that we have great results with. And just, just after 3 months, 116% improvement in health, which was fantastic. So those are some of the studies and we've got more studies in the pipeline as well.

Awesome. So I know I've got a link for the Gupta program that's an affiliate link so that folks are interested in trying it out, they can follow that link and support the podcast. And if your podcast app doesn't work with links, you can find the link from my show notes page on my website, highdeserthealthcoaching.com for episode 128. Anything else you would like to mention or share?

Uh, yes. So one of the clinical audit we did, chronic fatigue syndrome and fibro patients that showed that, so 92% of patients improved and two-thirds of patients went on to make a full recovery. Now we define a full recovery as 80 to 100% of pre-illness levels. Uh, so that's also a published study people can read on our website. So at our website, forward slash research, there's a whole summary page of all the different research studies and a timeline, and people can read all the, the published studies there.

Awesome. Well, thank you so much for being with us. This is, this is a really interesting new direction. I think that will help a lot of my listeners and a lot of my clients.

Yeah, absolutely. Thank you for having me on. And we'd also like to mention that we give a lot of free resources as well. So we'd love for people to come on to our app or the— in the show notes, the links you put. And even if you don't take our program, at least watch some of the free videos and the free things on there because they really learn so much. People have healed just by watching our videos, the free ones, because they suddenly realize, ah, now I understand what's going on in my body. So I really encourage people to take the free trial. And with our program, until we get large-scale Phase 2 and Phase 3 trials, we're one of the only programs that offers a 1-year money-back guarantee, which for us really makes it low risk for people to try this type of approach out because it can seem very strange or unusual. But actually it's, you know, quite logical in our minds.

Great.

Well, I'm sure people will be checking it out. Thank you so much.

Thank you so much.

I'm actually quite excited to try the Gupta program myself and have started recommending it to my clients. So do check out the link in the show notes if you're interested in trying it out. With the money-back guarantee, you really don't have much to lose. If you'd like to support the podcast, you can buy supplements at a discount from my FullScript Dispensary, order tests at a discount from my Rupa Health Lab store, or use my affiliate links to iHerb, which is available worldwide, Bulk Supplements, or Amazon. If you'd like to connect with me online, you can follow my High Desert Health Facebook page, join my Gut Healing Facebook group, or join my newsletter list at highdeserthealthcoaching.com, as well as follow me on X, Instagram, TikTok, and Pinterest. Links for those are in the show notes. Thanks for joining me today. Here's wishing you all the perfect stool.