Rewiring the Brain for Healing: Ashok Gupta’s Breakthrough Approach

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Welcome back to the Synergy Podcast. Today we have an incredible guest joining us, Ashok Gupta, a visionary in the world of health tech, neuroplasticity and personal transformation. Ashok is the founder and CEO of the Gupta Program, a revolutionary brain retraining system designed to help people recover from chronic immune conditions like long Covid, ME, CFS and fibromyalgia. But his mission doesn't stop there. He's also the driving force behind irise, a powerful new platform dedicated to uplifting humanity and helping people unlock their full potential. Through over 600 courses, classes, and live events focused on personal growth, Ashok's journey is deeply personal. After battling ME&CFS chronic fatigue syndrome himself while studying at Cambridge University, he fully healed and dedicated his life to researching the mind body connection. He has since published medical papers, launched global stress management programs, and created impactful wellness initiatives like the Meaning of Life Experiment and the Coronavirus Challenge. In this episode today, we are diving into the power of neuroplasticity, stress resilience, and the mind's ability to heal the body. If you're looking for insights on transforming your health and your life, this episode you do not want to miss. Let's welcome Ashok Gupta to the Synergy podcast today. And don't forget to like and share our podcast. We want to get this information out to more people.

Welcome back. We are so thrilled today to have you listening to our podcast. Today we get to have a special guest on Ashok Gupta. He has joined us for our podcast to really dig into this concept on chronic stress and how chronic stress can can drive disease states and then also how disease states can drive chronic stress. Right, that connection. And better yet, what can we be doing? You know, what are the foundational things that we can be doing to retrain our brain's response to stress and fully recover and live the life that we want to live? So, Ashok, we are so excited to have you here.

I'm super excited. Thank you so much for the invitation.

So I wanted to start out with giving us a little bit of backstory. How did you land doing what you're doing?

Yes, well, many of us who come into this area, it all started with my own journey, my own challenges that I had to go through. So this was actually in the mid-90s when a lot of these conditions weren't really recognized or weren't really taken seriously, especially chronic fatigue syndrome or me or cfs. And so this was something where I was studying as an undergrad at Cambridge and I got some kind of virus. And that virus seemed to Kind of go away. But my health got worse and worse, you know, to the point to which I had to crawl to the bathroom. I was super exhausted all the time. It was like, I describe it like your worst day of flu times five in terms of, you know, the fatigue, the tiredness, the pain, the just overall exhaustion. Can't think, can't do anything, can't even read the words on a page. And I went from doctor to doctor and they would say, we don't know what you have, we don't know what to call it. There's no treatment for it and you might have it forever. Goodbye. And for a young man, that was just a brick wall in front of me. You know, my worst moments, I was almost suicidal. And that prompted a lifelong search to really understand what causes these conditions and how we can really heal people from this. And there was a very, an amazing day I had. There was one day when I was at a bookstore in Cambridge and I saw a little book in the self help section because obviously in those days if you had a condition or whatever, you would go to the library, you wouldn't have the benefit of the Internet, so. Right, library. And I saw this book and I thought, you know, it's just something's calling to me. And I picked that book off the shelf. And the book was called the Emotional Life of the Brain by Professor Joseph Ledoux. And he was one of the foremost experts on the amygdala and the brain at that time in the 90s. And I read that book and suddenly there were light bulbs going off, going, ah, this is what I believe causes my condition in these similar conditions. And with that knowledge, I, in an ad hoc way, retrained my brain, got myself 100% well, and then set up a clinic to treat others and published my medical hypothesis in 2002, actually online. 99. And since then we've been obviously working with hundreds of patients, published medical papers and studies, and now we're an app. So that's been, I was going to say 25 years. That's actually a 30 year, almost a 30 year journey from my own experiences to now where we are with the brain retraining.

Well, I feel like I owe a debt of gratitude to you for your work. You know, I was struggling with a chronic issue myself that was tipped off by a virus. And at the same time I was being exposed to a water damaged building and that just kind of wreaked havoc on my immune system. And I started out doing the DNRS program and it was pen, paper, Book, dvd. And it helped. It really did help. But I think six months in, my brain got used to that rhythm and the mind map, and it wasn't getting me any further. I got as far as I could go with that program. And then you had just launched in 2018, your online program. And I stumbled upon that somehow in my research, and I was like, okay, I'm going to try a different angle. And I tell you what I really appreciated about your program that was a little bit different than Annie Harper's program was. You talked a lot about pacing. And if I had to say one thing, my life prior to that illness, it was like the country music song I'm in a Hurry to Get Things Done by Alan Jackson. I think 1992, I was rushing all the time. You know, I was a runner, I ran a clinic. I was working on a second master's degree. You know, all these things at the same time. Four kids. And then all of a sudden I couldn't. And that whole, you were very calm. You know, your scenery was very calming, your voice is very calming. And you dug into pacing. So I want to talk about pacing. Like, what is pacing? Why do we need to be pacing? And in my mindset, if I could go back to the 1990s, I would have been pacing in the 1990s before I got sick, right? But I didn't know anything about pacing. I just knew, get it done.

I think what it is is that with different programs, it's about not just getting well, but staying well. And that means going deeper into the underlying reasons as to why our condition came in the first place. And that's obviously something that is additional that we cover in our program, which is that it's not just, oh, I need to get better from this condition, and then forget about it and move on with my life. The condition itself has life lessons for us. Just like many things in life, whether it's a divorce or a change of job or change of country, these all teach us a lot about ourselves and can increase stress, but actually gives the opportunity to shift and change. And so pacing really is about realizing that many of us are living life at 100 miles an hour. We're not really taking care of our own health and our own self care. And we think we are, but actually we're not, because we get used to it. We get into that treadmill. And that's really one of the fundamental lessons of these types of conditions is take care of your health, realize what's important in life versus being driven by our unconscious. Parts. So in our program we talk a lot about parts and parts coaching and we use different puppets to represent the different parts. And one of them is Leo the lion, which represents our achiever. So we in inside of all of us, we have an achiever and it's good to achieve. Who doesn't want to achieve things? Of course, but is that a healthy achiever or an unhealthy achiever? And an unhealthy achiever is the one that doesn't listen to our body, just wants to keep going. And our very sense of self, our self esteem, our sense of who we are is all dependent on achievement. And when that happens, then of course we don't pace ourselves, we push ourselves too hard. So that's an example of. Yes. How we look at pacing as being. It's not about pacing, it's actually what's stopping us from pacing are these parts of us that are very driven that can then compromise our health.

I love that. I think that's going to resonate with a lot of people. Right. What's driving us to achieve and keeping us from setting some boundaries around healthy lifestyle behaviors that could be helping us to achieve. Right. Because if we're well, we can achieve much, much more. So the other thing I wanted to get into was kind of that connection between our amygdala, our limbic system.

Right.

I think most people don't even understand our limbic system and how that controls our stress response and how oftentimes that is running in the background creating a lot of ongoing stress signals that our body's really having to deal with. How would you describe that to a person?

What it's really telling us about our immune system, our nervous system and all of these different systems is a really fundamental truth. And I think if I may kind of start with this to kind of explain why we get stuck in these different conditions. The number one priority of our brain and body, in terms of, I call it the biggest question of all, why are we here? We could talk about it from a philosophical perspective, but from a scientific perspective, we're here because our bodies choose to survive. They prioritize survival over everything else. Survival is more important to your brain and body than is your well being. And that gives us our first clue as to what causes stress, what causes panic and then what causes all these inflammatory diseases. Ultimately, it's that one fundamental principle. And so if our systems always prioritize survival, what that means is that when we have a threat in our environment and you might have emotional threats, so these emotional threats Might be suddenly some kind of traumatic event, or it could be someone criticizing you or putting you down, or physical violence, anything like that could be a physical or emotional threat. But then we also have biological threats. So viruses, bacteria, mold, exposures, etc. They're like biological threats. And then we might have chemical threats, you know, toxins in our environment, pollution, certain foods. And so all of these things. Normally our body says this is a threat, it deals with the threat, and then the system comes back to its normal state. So that's what should happen in our systems. But what actually happens is that sometimes if our system is a little weaker than normal, we deal with that acute illness. So that's the virus, the bacteria, the toxin, the mold. But then even once that original insult has gone, our system is still responding as if it's still here. That's the key. That's what the legacy in the brain is. So that's when an acute illness turns into a chronic illness. That's when stress, short term stress, turns into long term anxiety. That's when short term sadness, which is a day to day experience for all of us, turns into depression or clinical depression. And that's where a mold exposure and very normal in our environment then turns into mold illness and so on and so on. And Covid exposure, COVID 19 virus turns into long Covid and that's hopefully what we've cracked in our hypothesis and in our program is understanding why does that happen. Why do we go from these normal experiences in life, viruses, stress, et cetera, and they turn into chronic long term problems in the brain and body. And that's what I believe we are, we are really looking at, which is.

A tipping point, right? Because it is, you know, that whole body keeps the score. So exposure, exposure, exposure, fight, fight, fight, tipping point. And inability for the body to recover from that. Which is where you landed, right?

Absolutely. And it's the idea of those neurons getting deeper and deeper and deeper. So if we have one, and that's often the background of trauma as well. So if we have one, one experience that may not be enough to actually cause a long term trauma in the brain. But there are two fundamental factors that cause it. One is the intensity of the emotional intensity of the experience. So even one emotionally intense experience can cause trauma. But then secondly and more importantly probably is repetition. So if that experience is repeated again and again and again and again, then that can cause these deep neuronal pathways that are difficult to then change. They're not impossible. And of course that's the promise of neuroplasticity is once we've been through an experience, we can rewire the brain and get ourselves back to health. And in terms of illnesses. So let's take the example of COVID because obviously we know lots of people who have long Covid. Now, unfortunately, someone has the COVID infection and the immune system goes to the on position. But then even once the COVID has been fought off, the system stays stuck in the opposition with all the inflammation in the body, inflammation in the brain, and all the other symptoms that come with an inflamed body, that's your immune system. The system goes into that alternate state because it detects a weakness in the body. So actually, let me give you, I'd like to share this analogy, which really brings it home as to what causes chronic stress, anxiety, what causes all of these different illnesses. Imagine you are queens of your kingdom. So you are the prefrontal cortex, the, the rational, intelligent mind, all right? And you have a body, which is your kingdom. So you are the king, you are the queen of your kingdom. And you have an army, which is your nervous system. And you have a navy, which is your immune system. And your army and navy, that's your nervous system and immune system work together to defend your kingdom, which is your body. Now we imagine there's a drought in the kingdom. So because there's a drought, what that means is that there isn't enough energy in the system, right? There's not enough resources. So your army and navy are weaker than they would normally be. Now, in comes an invading army over the hill. So imagine that invading army could be a virus, could be a bacteria, could be toxin, could be mold. The invader comes over the hill, and your army and navy fight valiantly to defend your kingdom. And we don't realize this because we take it for granted, but even a flu can potentially be life threatening to a human being. And that's why very many elderly people pass away from flu, unfortunately, because these things are all life threatening. So your army and navy are galvanized. They say, this is a war, we've got to defend the kingdom. And they fight off, they fight off, they fight off. But because they're weaker, it takes them longer to fight off the invading army. And that's when often we get a, a longer period of post viral fatigue. So if someone feels weaker, it will take them longer to fight off a virus or bacteria. And then what happens is the army and navy, they think they fought off the invader, but they're like, I'm not sure if it's fully gone away. What happens if the army is hiding in the forest or behind the hill or over there? We can't see it. Let's keep firing off our weapons of war, which is the inflammation, the sympathetic nervous system arousal. Let's keep firing. Let's keep firing because we've got to. Survival is the number one priority. Now what then happens is because the army and navy keep firing off their weapons of war, some of those arrows fall back into the kingdom, some of those cannonballs fall back into the kingdom. That's causing challenges in our own bodies in terms of more waste products, more inflammation, the long term problems with inflammation. And then opportunistic spies flourish in the kingdom. So that means opportunistic infections, opportunistic bacteria, Lyme infections, all these types of things start flourishing in the body because the immune system and the nervous system are fighting a war over here. And therefore they don't have the resources to keep everything else in check. Then they come to you and they say, my dear queens, we need all the resources of the kingdom, so we still need the water, the food, everything has to be channeled to us because we have to defend the kingdom. And of course you think that's the right thing to do. So now the army and navy are taking all the resources, which means the kingdom is weak and all this inflammation is going on. But the more inflammation, the weaker the kingdom gets from the inflammation. The more the army and navy fire off more weapons of war, thinking we're weak. And so we get into that vicious cycle. And so you can see that whether it's anxiety, whether it's stress, whether it's a virus, a bacteria, this model actually explains about 70% of the illnesses that we go to a doctor to treat, which are often these types of over responses of our defensive systems because we live in a pro inflammatory environment. And brain retraining is that next meeting you have with your generals, your army and navy generals, you say to them, my dear generals, you've done a wonderful job at defending the kingdom, but you can stand down, the war is over, but they won't believe you the first time or the second time or the third time. That is the power of neuroplasticity. It has to be done repeatedly and with that kind of emotional intensity or persuasion. And that's obviously what we do here at the Gupta program.

Yeah, it's an amazing, amazing analogy that really helps people understand what is probably one of the hardest concepts for Kelly and I in treating people regularly with the key ingredients of living. Well Eating right, drinking right, moving right, doing all the things right. And that few, that. That subset of individuals that are doing a lot of right things that aren't feeling the results of those right things. And to have a conversation with them about this is one of the hardest conversations to have because they think, what's wrong with me? It becomes a mental issue, which I've heard you describe before. That's not the truth in the matter. That's a. That's the way our bodies are wired.

That's right. We spend a lot of time saying to our patients and support groups, we never say it's in the mind. We say it's in the brain. And those are two very different concepts. And it's in the unconscious brain. Like, we don't normally have control over our immune system or automated control over our nervous system. These are automatic unconscious survival reactions. And therefore, it's about rewiring. And then, as you say, people say, but hang on, are we saying it's in the mind? Am I making it up? The best example I find is when people have a stroke. So let's imagine someone has a stroke. They may lose control of an arm or a leg or speech. And what happens? What do they do? They don't think. No one ever would dare say to them, oh, it's all in your mind. Of course they would never. That's a real thing. But what they do is they go to rehabilitation. So every week, they imagine moving their arm, moving their leg, creating new neural pathways, reinvigorating those neural pathways until eventually they can walk again, which is a miracle, really. But what's happening there, that is the power of neuroplasticity. They're creating new neural pathways. No one would ever say that psychological in the mind, but that it's a whole new area of medicine really, in terms of neuroplasticity. And what we've discovered is the way that we can actually create new neural pathways to control the amygdala and insular parts of the brain, which we'll perhaps come on to later. But essentially, these brain structures that get stuck after an infection and keep triggering the nervous system and immune system. And if we can control them, we could heal a whole bunch of autoimmune diseases, pain diseases, inflammatory illnesses, environmental and sensitivity reactions. All of these are basically, in our view, rooted in the brain. So I think it's very, very exciting that we can heal these.

And that's what we want people to hear today, that it is possible to hear those things, to. To heal those things. Right? And and, and in fact. But they have to do the work. They have to be willing to do the work. And that's what I hear you saying, is that it's not one time, it has to be repetitive. So tell us about how all of that happens and what I got. I kind of want to go back first real quick to kind of listing a set of symptoms because I heard you kind of mention it. Chemical sensitivities. Like what are some of the signs and symptoms when a person is stuck?

Yes, well, there are lots of commonalities. So if we look at these different categories of illnesses, so for example, what we call neuroimmune diseases, so those are long Covid, chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, those are essentially a collection of symptoms. They're not defined by the root cause, it's just a collection of symptoms. So we believe the underlying cause is the same. Then if you look at mold illness, environmental sensitivities, sensitivities to chemicals, toxins, once again, those illnesses also share commonalities. And the commonalities tend to be the fatigue and exhaustion. They tend to be a difficulty in relaxing in terms of the nervous system, because the nervous system's in the fight or flight mode, it's in that defense mode. Right. Another commonality tends to be what we call post exertional malaise, where if people do too much activity, which we're often taught to do to heal from fatigue, actually it can make them feel much worse. So that's another common symptom. And cognitive difficulties are difficulties thinking and then general sensitivity. So once the brain is in this hyper vigilant state, we become more sensitive to people situations, temperature changes, sound. Everything becomes much more of a trigger for our nervous system because it's on edge. So those are some of the kind of common symptoms that we see.

I don't. Kelly, they don't sound familiar to you, do they?

They sound very familiar to me. You know, I would push crash. You know, I got to a certain point where I was better, but I had a very narrow window of capacity before I would crash myself out again. And that was extremely frustrating when you're trying to live life and be engaged with your family and friends and all the things that you want to do. And so I can definitely resonate with what you're saying about the chronic fatigue portion of this. So I think that people don't understand, and I'm so glad that you went into this in such detail, how the limbic system is tied to the immune system. Right. It's dictating what your immune system is deciding to focus on. And, you know, things like chronic viruses. You mentioned your tipping point was a virus, and I think my tipping point was actually a virus, too. Combined with that exposure. Oftentimes that limit, that limbic system just fires that immune system. And that immune system's working as hard as it can. It's not that your body is doing anything wrong. It's just misguided. Those grooves for what it's deciding to attach itself to and focus on are a little misguided. So walk us through the program, because, like I said, I mentioned the calmness and the pacing part of the program that I thought was really, really helpful for me to grasp. You talked a little bit about parts, and I think we should get into that more because we all have parts, and we need to honor those parts. That's one thing that I learned from your program. We've got to give them space and honor them and nurture them. Right. We don't want to go put them in the corner and tell them they're bad. We need those parts to help us out in our healing journey. So talk a little bit more about that.

Our program, as said, we developed this. We were the first to develop a kind of neuroplasticity program when we launched in 2007, which at that time, once again, there was nothing. There was nothing like this. People weren't really thinking in this way. So we were kind of trying to push the boundaries at that time. And it was a time when people pushed back a lot because they said, oh, you're saying it's all in the mind. And it's, you know, as we said, it took a long time to overcome that. And really the starting point for us is how do we retrain the brain? How do we rewire the brain? And the first step is to calm the nervous system. Because if your brain is on high alert, it's not very neuroplastic. It's not open to new ways of thinking, new ways of being. So the first port of call is to use, whether it's breath work, meditation, relaxation techniques, we do a whole bunch of different things that people can do to calm that nervous system. And you mentioned the limbic system. Now, the limbic system is what they call the mammalian brain. So all mammals have that limbic system, and it contains a number of brain structures like the amygdala, the hippocampus, the thalamus. And it's seen as the more ancient brain. And then the human beings developed a bigger cortex that sits on top of that mammalian brain and the brain structure that we focus on, one of them is the amygdala, which sits in that limbic system. And its job has traditionally in psychology looked at stress reactions, anxiety reactions, ptsd. But of course, that's how modern science separates things. That, okay, this is a emotional issue over here, this is a biological issue over here. But the brain doesn't differentiate. So it uses the same brain structures to detect threats and to respond to them. So if something's an emotional threat or a biological threat, it's the same brain structures that deal with it. And that's the whole reason that, you know, that kind of reductionist philosophy isn't helping with these types of. These types of illnesses. And so people talk a lot about the limbic system, but interestingly, there's another brain structure called the insula. Now, the insula isn't part of the limbic system. It's actually called part of the cortex. It's called the insular cortex. And that, I believe, is the brain structure where the real action is happening. As well as the amygdala and the insula, its job is to take in all the incoming information from the body, so heart rate. It takes in information about the immune system, the nervous system, and also the environment and the threats internally and externally assess all of that information and then create the appropriate response that ensures survival and homeostasis. And it takes input from the amygdala as well. So the amygdala is more the kind of anxious part that saying, hey, we're in trouble, we're in trouble. More extreme part. But it's the insula that takes in all the data to make the appropriate decisions. And I believe that's where the conditioning has occurred. So what I mean by conditioning is that's the part of the brain that decides we're in continual danger. We must keep triggering the immune system aspect. And the amygdala is more in charge of the nervous system aspect, or overstimulation. And both of them work together for our survival. And so once that system's set up, our first port of call is let's calm everything down to make the brain more neuroplastic. And then let's retrain the brain. Left hand path represents the. The old way of reacting.

And when you're talking about the path, you're talking about the mind mapping or the. What do you call it in the program? Is it the brain mapping? Mind mapping. How do you say it?

You call it the mind, we call it the mind's Map.

Yes, the mind's map. Okay. So we're in the mind's map and we're on the left hand path. Okay?

Yeah. And imagine it's like a river. So imagine there's a river flowing through the soil on the left hand path. And that river represents neurons in your brain that said, oh, we can detect symptoms in the body. That means we're still in danger from the bacterial virus or mold. Let's trigger the immune system and nervous system. So that's like a pathway, like a left hand path and it's dug into the soil, but we've got to shift the, the pathway onto the right hand path, which says even though I can detect symptoms and signals, we are not in danger, we are safe and therefore don't trigger the immune system and nervous system. But imagine that ground is frozen, so the river is just flowing through, but it's not, the soil is frozen, so we can't change the flow of the river. So calming the nervous system is the first step to make the soil loose so that we can rewire and dig a new pathway. That's digging the new pathway on the right hand path. That is the brain retraining that second step. So we have a seven step process which combines a whole bunch of different therapeutic techniques to train the brain through repetition that we are safe, no longer in danger, and we can imagine good health and neuroplasticity is constantly digging the right hand path and allowing the old path and the left hand path to be covered in soil and plants and then there's no river there anymore. And that is the power of the brain we train is the repetition. And of course the biggest challenge we have is people not becoming complacent because people heal. And they say, right, I'm going to go off and work 10 hours a day and drain myself. But they don't realize the moment they do that, their brain starts thinking, oh, I think I'm in danger again. Maybe we need to be on the left hand path. And it flips back. So we have to keep consolidating and deepening the right hand path. And the third step of recovery, which is the real important bits, not just getting well, but staying well, is looking at our stress reaction. So that's the parts coaching, that's the re engaging with joy about making sure that for the rest of our lives we are able to recognize our stress levels, calm them down and just be more mindful of ourselves and our environment and our stresses to stay well. So that's really the process of the three Rs the regulating your nervous system, retraining your brain, re engaging with joy.

And that first step that you talk about are things that have historically been talked about for a long time, right? Meditation, relaxation, breath work. And so I think a lot of people think I'm doing all of that, right? I'm doing all of that, but I'm not getting better. And what I hear you saying today is that's the first step, but you gotta go to the next step to really heal.

That's exactly right. And a lot of people think, well, I'm doing my daily meditation, so I've done my personal development for the day. What personal, what meditation and breath work does is it creates insights. So it allows you to observe what your mind is doing and then creates insights. But if you then allow your brain to continue with the same patterns it's always been running, then the meditation hasn't provided that next stage of self awareness and change, which is, I have insights to how my mind thinks, how I react in my environment. Now do I choose to continue that way or is this something that I want to moderate or change? And that's where brain retraining comes in. Obviously at this level, we're talking about survival responses, but it's relevant for anything that we do in life. It's that next stage of self awareness.

I feel like I can make the parallel to some of the teachings that Kelly and I do with our patients. Right? We're constantly teaching them the what, right. The what they need to do, you know, eat better, choose organic foods, do all of those things, like make those choices. But there's a, there's a disconnect between knowledge and application, Right? And that application takes practice, it takes repetition, it takes coaching, it takes accountability. It sounds like a lot, though. So I just have to ask the question because I know I, you know, I haven't gone through the program just yet, and I know a lot of our consumers and those that are listening to that are hearing this and going, how much time is that going to take? I don't have the bandwidth. I already feel tired and fatigued and wasted and my mind isn't working. So kind of walk us through what is the time commitment and what is the expectation to get the outcomes that people are wanting to achieve and needing to achieve?

This is where the pacing comes in. That is a step by step program. So we have four levels of the program and what we say is, don't think. I've got to learn and understand the entire program and only then I can get well, because that's not the case. So level one starts with regulating the nervous system. And we've actually had people that just with that first step they've been able to heal. And if that's where as far as they choose to go in the program, that's okay. But really it's definitely the second step where most people get their healing, which is the retraining of the brain in relation to these reactivities in the unconscious brain. So that's the second step. So everything is gentle, step by step, we hold people's hand through it. And for some people that's where they choose to stop and say, right, okay, I've done the retraining, I've healed. Then that third step looks at the lifestyle changes and also some more advanced brain retraining techniques and re engaging with joy. And then level four is when we start looking at, well, our stress reactions and our parts and how we can maintain that equilibrium in our nervous system. So it's done step by step, gentle. And our program, we say, is a minimum three month program. And so it is, you know, a lot of people are used to saying, well, let me pop some pills, right? That's going to cure everything. You know, something goes wrong with the body, we pop some pills. That's the way it's done. Whether it's supplements or you know, medications. But this really is an investment into your own health of a minimum of 30 minutes a day. And I say to people, you know, if we can't invest 30 minutes in our self care each day, then we have got lost in the world, we've got lost in the doing. But we are not human doings. We are human beings. We be, we are an, we are a noun, we, you know, we live with a being. And therefore we are going to have to look at this preventative health care. We are going to have to look at regular techniques because we know if we lose our health, nothing else matters anyway.

Right? Right.

They say we spend the first half of our lives spending our health to earn our wealth and the latter half of our lives spending our wealth to gain back our health. So that half a day, half an hour commitment each day is not really a commitment, it's a given. And really as human beings something we should be doing each day anyway.

So I've heard you say, you know, we live in an inflammatory environment and I think that we underestimate that. Oftentimes as Americans especially, we don't realize all of the stressors that our body does encounter in any given day. So Having these strategies even I would say for the person that's not sick, right? The person that's well and they want to maintain health and wellness over time. I think there's extreme value. If I could go back to my younger self and say do one thing, it would have been really to focus on pacing and to focus on keeping my nervous system calm. You can't remove all stressors. You know, we can't live in a bubble. We're going to travel, we're going to eat out, we're going to do all the things that we do and we will be exposed to those things like viruses and bacterias and mold exposure. I mean there's just not a way to not be exposed. But our biggest defense is an offense and really how we take care of ourselves and how we recognize. I think the other thing that you said today was holding space for processing, right? Through meditation you get insights, right? If we don't have space for that in our lives, if we haven't carved out time for that in our lives, then we don't get the insights to even make the change or to be aware that change needs to be made. So I think those are power, powerful, powerful tools and words that we can speak into our listeners.

Yes, you're absolutely right. It is something which is super important for the way that we live in our modern world. So in previous generations, before phones came along, before the Internet came along, we would have time and space. So if we're in a supermarket queue, right, we would have time to just reflect because we didn't have our devices. Whereas now, as soon as we have uncomfortable feelings or challenges or emotions, we just reach for our phones as a way of distracting ourselves from those difficult emotions. So we aren't processing our emotions and our daily activities and that's building up into stresses in the mind and body. And yes, we live in a more inflammatory state now. So until recently, in the last few hundred years, we were pretty much living in villages around the world and we would not have international travel or not much international travel. So we weren't exposed to all the bugs. Whereas Now, I mean, COVID 19 is a classic example, we are exposed to far more bugs than we ever were in previous generations. And we are exposed to more toxins in our food and our pollution in our cleaning products, everywhere mold. And so therefore this system is constantly being bombarded and therefore it's even more important for current generations to fine tune the immune system because people might be listening saying oh well, isn't it a good thing that my Immune system's firing off and defending my body. No, it's not. It needs to be finely tuned, like a finely tuned army that knows where to fight. But if the army is just going everywhere, fighting everything everywhere, anywhere, it's. It will actually be less effective. So in a similar way, it's. I think the number one skill we all need to learn as human beings is refining that nervous system, refining that immune system, so we can deal with modern life. And that is investment of time every day.

And, you know, and what I hear you saying is that investment, which is not uncommon for the conversation that Kelly and I have repetitively with our patients, is that if you want to live well, it takes you intentionally doing these things on a daily basis, and it is an investment. We do have it all wrong. I think, you know, your analogy of the first half of our lives versus the second half, I think that that was just perfect. You know, our. Our investment into that health needs to take place at an early stage. I'm with Kelly, like, if I went back to my. My previous self, my younger self, there's a lot of things that I feel like I would have wished to have known, but we didn't know. And so I think one of the things I would like to ask as practitioners, having these conversations with patients and getting them to really understand the value of doing this work is the timing of it. I actually hear you saying this would be really good in the early stages of working with them rather than waiting later. I'm sure it would be good anytime. But would you say that, you know, is there a better time than another to start doing this work?

All of us as practitioners, we've come into this field, whether it's functional, integrative, nutritional, because we knew that the traditional medical approach wasn't working, and so we wanted to work in a more integrative way. And yet, what I noticed, and I want to say this in a very humble way, a lot of functional medicine practitioners tell me, they say, I feel that we have become just as reductionist as mainstream medicine. Sometimes not saying all, but some practitioners.

That is absolutely risk. Yeah. That is absolutely the potential risk.

Yeah. That we go in and we say, right, here's a bunch of tests, right? The tests are showing that this is low, this is high, this is an issue. Right? Here's a bunch of medications or supplements or diet changes that are going to fix that. And don't get me wrong, very, very important work. However, what it's not necessarily doing is saying, well, why is the system in this imbalanced state. And I go back to this idea that actually 99.9% of us at a genetic level are absolutely identical. We're all pretty much twins. If you look at our DNA and what it does and what it functions. However, the difference between all of us is our personalities. Those are the things that really differ massively versus our physical being. And therefore the integrative approach of saying let's do the tests, the diet, the supplements, et cetera. And in parallel, the brain stuff, the mind stuff is just as important. And therefore doing it in parallel is great. And you know, we actually have people who, doctors, clinicians, for instance, Dr. Neil Nathan, he now wants patients to take brain retraining first before they start with the binders and the medications because they find so many patients, bodies are so sensitive, they can't even handle the medications and various things. So therefore they need to calm everything down for the body to be less sensitive. So we should, you know, obviously we don't want to overwhelm a patient either.

I think it really comes to the conversation with the patient and their clinician, like, when is it the right time? I don't think there's ever necessarily a wrong time. We definitely just don't want there to be overwhelm. But I'm like you and similar to kind of Neil Nathan in that sometimes I'll have patients that their reactions to things that we're implementing are not normal, they're not common, they're an exaggerated response. And that's the patient where I'm typically sitting with them and saying, this is a limbic system issue that we need to really address head on in order for us to be able to progress your plan of care. And this work will definitely pay off in calming the limbic system. And they're usually my type A personalities that are still trying to push, push, push as they're getting well, and they've made a good bit of progress in making some changes and seeing some improvement, but they are still having unusual responses to things that should be getting them better.

And what I hear you saying too is that maybe the conversation isn't just the limbic system anymore. Right.

So.

So how do we actually change that terminology? Because I hear you saying, as we discussed earlier, it might be more than the limbic system, correct?

Yes, that's the thing. So the limbic idea. The limbic system idea kind of gained traction over the last 10 years or so as the root cause, but actually it's the entire brain and specifically it's the amygdala and insular parts of the brain. And that's why we even call our treatments when we do medical research, amygdala and insular retraining, because we believe those two brain structures is where it kind of gets stuck. And obviously there is in the limbic system. And I think it is really helping a patient realize that this is the. The dream of holistic care. This is the ultimate vision of holistic care, of integrative care, of addressing multiple things simultaneously. And therefore, the. The sum of the parts is the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. So doing those things all together will have much better outcomes. And trying to piecemeal doing well, let's do this piece. Oh, that hasn't worked. Let's do this piece. Doing it all together is so powerful. And if we think about ancient traditions, ancient cultures, when someone would. Was ill, they would go off to a place which would be a retreat center to rehabilitate everything. So they would eat well, they would detox, they would get massages, they would do meditation. Because in those ancient times, they knew that for people to heal, they needed the holistic approach.

We'd got to connect more and have deeper conversations and more conversations, because this is all just good stuff. I feel like we could have gone a million different directions, But I definitely don't want to end without giving our listener the ability to know where to go, where to go if this is the right timing for them, if their clinician has recommended or sometimes our listeners are not in a position that they actually have a clinician that they're working with right now. Where do they go to learn more about your program? How do they get signed up? Is that something they do online? What's that look like?

Sure. We want to make it super easy for people, so the first way they can get involved is simply going to our website. And I know you'll have it in the show notes as well. So they can go to our website through your link, and then they can sign up for our free trial. So first of all, on the website, there's all the access to our clinical studies, which I can also talk about. And then there's lots of videos of other people who've healed from a whole variety of different conditions so you can see their experiences and then join the free trial. And there's no credit card required, so people can get a whole bunch of content. So there's free meditations, free breath work, there's videos on what causes your condition. So this for a lot of people, that's a lot of great information. Straight away, and it's all free. And if people choose to take our one year subscription, what they will get included in that are weekly webinars with myself. So we hold your hand through the program. So you get weekly webinars, you get lots of videos and audios, you get a complete structured program about how you heal. And something that's so powerful, which we love, is called Daily Gupta Size. And this has been a game changer. These are daily Zoom calls with our clinicians and coaches where they take you through the nervous system, regulation and the brain retraining every day, Monday to Friday on Zoom. And this has been a game changer because a lot of the time, you know, we know people are unwell, they've got brain fog, they're at home, isolated. And so it can be difficult to have that motivation to do the program. But if you now know, well, I've learned the program, but all I have to do is now is jump on Zoom every day and I'm taken care of. It's super simple. So you have hundreds of people coming on every day and you get the sense of community, motivation, connection. And that has been, you know, real game changer. So all of that's included as well as a pack in the post as well to support you. So there's a whole ecosystem of support that can help people. So people can either go to our website or they can go to the App Store or Play Store, type in Gupta program, Brain retraining, just a program. You should find it there and then you can download the app and start retraining your brain straight away.

I think it's pretty phenomenal and it speaks volumes that, that you do give basically the program with a, with the potential of a refund, should it not work for a person? That just speaks volumes in my opinion. And I think that is, it just speaks a lot about, about you. And I can only imagine if we always tell people, you get out what you put in, right? You get out what you put in. So. And you're giving them everything they need to be successful. You're giving them that community, you're giving them those daily touch points, you're giving them that visual learning, that auditory learning. And it sounds like your success rates are very, very high.

Absolutely. You want to make it super easy for people. So that's why we spend a lot of time refining it to make it easy to use. And you know, as you say, we have that money, one year money back guarantee, so people have nothing to lose by giving it a go. And of course what's important to us is also the science behind it. So there are many people, you can go onto Instagram and found 1001 people who say they're gonna be able to cure you of your illness. But ultimate comes down to the research and the science. And so we've done now six clinical studies, so four randomized controlled trials, and these are all independent and two clinical audits. And generally we find that within, after doing the program for about three months, we see anything between a 60 to 100% improvements in health and functioning after using the program. And people can read through the studies on our site and that's. And that's across 14 different conditions. So anxiety, long Covid, fibromyalgia, really, really good recovery rate. So we're very excited to do more research and finally make this a mainstream program.

Well, thank you so much for your dedication to your work. For the number of years that you've put in as pioneers in our field, we feel like, right, we have been in this space cumulatively between Kelly and I, a long time. We won't age ourselves.

We've all been talking about the 90s, haven't we?

So, yeah, we kind of have, but we really do. Your dedication to your work and using your story to change other lives, that's, you know, that's, you know, where most of us in functional medicine or integrative medicine or in this space have our own stories where traditional medicine didn't offer us an option or the ability to heal. And so I just want to thank you for all your work and for being a pioneer and thank you for the difference you have made in my best friend and colleague and peers life. And I honestly can't wait to continually share this, use this myself and share this with numerous clients because I think it's going to be a game changer.

Yeah, I do too.

The Synergy Podcast is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute the practice of medicine, nursing or other professional health care services, including the giving of medical advice, and no doctor patient relationship is formed. The content of this podcast is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Users should not disregard or delay in obtaining medical advice for any medical condition they may have and should seek the assistance of their healthcare professionals for any such conditions.

Sam.