Overcome 14 Chronic Illnesses, with Ashok Gupta @GuptaProgram

Foreign. Hello, and welcome to the Feel Freaking Amazing podcast. We have a star sighting today. Ed's with us, and we have an amazing guest who we have literally been trying to schedule for six months. So I'm so excited that he's here. Ashok Gupta is an internationally renowned speaker, filmmaker, and health practitioner who has dedicated his life to supporting people through chronic illness and achieving their potential.

Ashok, welcome.

We're so psyched you're here.

Super excited myself to be here and glad we could get this done for sure.

Yeah, we've been referring to your work for a while now, and then we.

Met you in person, and Ed was like, we met the guy who made the Gupta program, and I was like, cool. At that time, I didn't have a lot of awareness of it, so I'm really psyched to keep talking about this. So I think the first question is, how did you get into this work? And our audience doesn't actually know your work, so. So maybe you can say what you do and how you got into it.

Sure.

So, like many of us on this journey, it started with my own challenges, my own pain. Pain to purpose. So I started having crazy symptoms in the mid-90s. I suffered from ME or chronic fatigue syndrome. And in the mid-90s, these conditions weren't even necessarily taken so seriously as they are now. And so I was studying as an undergrad at Cambridge, and I was in my final year. Everything was going fine. Probably burning the candle at both ends to an extent, pushing myself a little, and I got a virus. And that virus was nothing major. It was just, you know, some stomach symptoms, general flu. And the virus seemed to go. But my symptoms got worse and worse and worse to the point at which I was exhausted all the time, had no energy. I would pick up a textbook and not be able to read the words on the page. Had to sometimes crawl to the bathroom because my body had no energy. And if people are wondering what this condition, chronic fatigue syndrome, is like, it's like your worst day of flu times five. That's what it feels like, just zero energy. It doesn't matter how much you rest or what you eat. Doesn't seem to make much difference. And I went from doctor to doctor, and they would say, we don't know what you have. We don't even really know what to call it. We have no treatment for it. We don't know what causes it, and you might have it for the rest of your life. Goodbye. And so, for a young man you can imagine, that was like a brick wall in front of Me. And that started my lifelong quest to understand what causes these types of chronic conditions. And in my worst moments, I was almost suicidal. And I said to myself, I made a contract with the universe. And I said, if I can just get myself 50% better, just leave some kind of semblance of normal life, I will dedicate the rest of my life to helping others with this condition, because I met hundreds of others who also had it. And the pivotal moment, this magical moment, was I was in a bookstore in Cambridge trying to figure out my condition. This is before we researched everything on the Internet. We went to bookstores, and I was in the self help section, the mind body section, the neurology section. And in the neurology section, there was one book just jutting off the shelf. And for some reason, it just called to me. I just had to pick up that book. And I picked it up, and it was called the Emotional Life of the Brain by Professor Joseph Ledoux. And as soon as I picked that book up and I started reading it, I thought, aha, this is the underlying reason for these conditions. So I put together a hypothesis in an ad hoc way. Retrained my brain. I got 100% better from chronic fatigue syndrome within six months. And then I set up a clinic to treat others and refine those treatments. And then we published our. The first, actually, at that time, the first neuroplasticity brain retraining program in 2007. And since then, we've done lots of clinical studies, six clinical studies now and have an app. And that's been the 30 year journey from my own challenges in the mid-90s to where we are now.

100% better. Who can say that it's a lot.

To unpack a show.

So what are the core principles that allowed you to heal? I mean, that.

You make it sound really easy, but I'm assuming it like, you're like, I just retrained my brain and only took six months. Yeah, but. But dive into that, please. Like, what were the things that. What were the patterns that you had that were not healthy or not serving you, that you needed to retrain.

Sure. And so take a step. If we take a step back to kind of what causes these conditions? And I can answer that question certainly better in terms of, well, how do you retrain? What is it that we're retraining here? Because when we think of brain retraining, we think of it as being a psychological intervention or to do with therapy in some ways. But actually, this idea of brain retraining is really exciting. Because it actually taps into unconscious processes that we know are disrupted, like the immune system, the nervous system. And if we can tap into them, we can heal a whole bunch of different conditions. So I always like to look at these questions by answering or asking the biggest question of all, why are we here? I'm sure we can have a lovely one hour philosophical conversation about why are we here? But if we answer from a scientific perspective, we're here because over millions of years of evolution, this brain, this body, this nervous system, this immune system has evolved from plant life to single celled organisms to invertebrates, to reptiles, mammals, human beings. Our DNA contains that survival strategy. For instance, we contain 40% of the same DNA as a banana, which I find a fascinating statistic. We've got all those survival adaptations. The number one priority of the brain and the nervous system is survival through the nervous and immune systems to protect us. Now, those systems, they respond appropriately to a virus, a bacteria or a toxin. The system goes into the on position to defend and goes back to the off position. But imagine if our system is compromised in some way, Then what happens is it responds to a threat, but then never quite goes back to the off position again. And if I can use an analogy which a lot of people find really useful. So imagine you are the king and queen of your kingdom, all right? So it's King Ed. Queen Wendy actually has a nice. Maybe you are already king and queen of your kingdom. So there you go.

I've been called a royal pain in the butt. That's as close as I get to royalty. Seems to be a pain in the butt.

You are my.

I know. Amazing. That's it.

So imagine you are king and queen of your kingdom, and your kingdom is your body, all right? And you have an army, which is your nervous system, and you have a navy, which is your immune system. And the army and navy defend the kingdom against invaders into the kingdom. But now imagine that there's a drought in the kingdom. So because there's a drought, the kingdom is weaker, the army and navy are weaker. There isn't enough food and resources. But now there's an invader, an invading army. And the invading army can be a virus, so it could be Covid flu, bacteria, infection, it could be a toxin, so it could be mold exposure, Lyme. It could be a whole host of different toxins, chemicals, or it could be pain, where some kind of pain has occurred in the body. Or it could indeed be some kind of other external threat. And now the army and navy, because they are compromised, or immunocompromised it takes longer for the army and navy to fight off that invader. So they're fighting valiantly, fighting valiantly to fight it off. And during that process, they become traumatized, just like soldiers we know when they go to war zones, they become traumatized in a similar way our army and Navy become traumatized. And so what then happens is they fight off the invader and they've done it successfully, but they aren't sure if they fully fought off the invader. Just to err on the side of caution, in case that virus or that infection is hiding somewhere in the tissues, hiding behind the mountains, the army and Navy keep firing off their weapons of war, their missiles, their cannonballs, their arrows. But now some of those arrows fall back into the kingdom. And that's where we get the inflammation, where the army and navy, they have good intentions, but actually they're affecting the body itself, the kingdom. And now what happens is opportunistic infections that normally are held to account by the army and navy, they start flourishing in the kingdom. So you get opportunistic viruses and bacteria such as Lyme that can flourish and mycotoxins. Then what happens is the detoxification systems shut down in the kingdom. So the people who normally are the rubbish collectors who clean out and cleanse, they get compromised as well. And the weaker and weaker the kingdom becomes, the more and more threatens the army and Navy feel. And they keep firing off more weapons of war, which then keeps the system in the imbalanced state. Now the gut gets impacted. So we know that inflammation, tightness in the gut, good and bad bacteria, balance now changes. The dysbiosis, all of this is now impacting the gut. And the gut tells the brain we are affected. And so that then keeps us in this imbalanced state. And brain retraining is this idea that when the army and Navy generals come to their weekly meeting with King Ed and Queen Wendy, the army generals say, we need all the resources. We need the wheat, the corn, the fresh water has to come to the army and Navy. You have to keep defending this kingdom. And you say to those army generals, my dear generals, you have done a wonderful job in defending the kingdom, but the war is over. You can stand out and they won't believe you the first time or the second time or the third time. But what we've discovered in the brain retraining techniques that we've developed is that through the power of neuroplasticity, through repeated little exercises, we can train our nervous and immune systems to tamp down to ramp down to get back to homeostasis, and then healing and normality returns. And so that's how we frame the cause of these chronic conditions, inflammatory conditions, autoimmune conditions, pain conditions, but then also how brain retraining actually works.

I have so many questions, Ashok, because I'm like, you know, I have. I can see the clinical applications for people who are in a chronic state of fight, flight, or freeze. That's an easy one. But then the people whose immune systems seem to be inappropriately firing. I can see that. And then people who have chronic illnesses. But. But it. Okay, can I be a little bit. I don't mean to be rude. Okay. You're extremely smart, so I'm really just. This is like a dumb question. Okay. Is this another packaged form of meditation or. Well, how does it differ from a meditative practice? When you're retraining the brain, what are you actually doing?

Yeah, it's a very good question. Not a silly question at all, because sometimes these types of approaches get dismissed as, oh, I already do breathing techniques, or, you know, I already do meditation. I already do relaxation. That's all it is. And actually, what we do, what brain retraining is, is very, very different. And let me give you an example. Let's say you want to learn to drive a car. Now, you could sit on your first driving lesson and think, right, if it's cbt, cognitive behavioral therapy, I'm going to be super positive. I'm going to let go of any negative beliefs about learning to drive a car. Or you could sit there in the car meditating and saying, I'm super calm. Everything's going to be fine. I'm going to learn how to drive this car. But until you actually take those lessons of training your nervous system to move the steering wheel, press the gas, the gear shift, or you guys in America don't have gear shift, but the gear shift and. And the indicators and then the mirrors, and then. And you're doing it all consciously, but eventually it becomes automatic and unconscious. That is where you're training your nervous system to perform a particular task automatically. Now, in a similar way, the techniques that we have start off with calming the nervous system first. So the first. We have three hours of the program. So the first R is regulating your nervous system, because if you don't regulate your nervous system, your immune system, your nervous system, they are just dysregulated, and it's very difficult to retrain them. And the brain is not neuroplastic. So we want to calm the Nervous system. That is traditional breath work, meditation, relaxation. We find whatever works for people. Those are quite unique as well. People who say, I can't meditate, I can't relax my mind, they suddenly, miraculously are able to calm things down. But the core of it is the brain retraining. And that says, let's actually help a patient recognize on the periphery of consciousness when their immune system is about to trig or is engaged. And you think that's autonomic? How can that possibly be something we have control over? Think about when you have flu. How do you feel when you have flu? Emotionally. Exactly. Now that is a deliberate strategy from the brain that says when someone is fighting off the flu virus, this is life threatening. So we're going to make them deliberately feel depressed, down, demotivated, because then what will happen is they won't go out and run a marathon. They will rest and do nothing. And that allows the body to heal. So do you see? Every physical reaction the body has has a mental and emotional component. And we tap into those and we're able to then train the brain that we are not in a danger response. We do not need to keep triggering our defensive responses because the war is over. And so what we do is we have a special seven step process, which is what we call on a mind map. So there's a big map you put on the floor and you step through seven steps and each step helps you recognize those signals on the periphery of consciousness and send what we call safety signals to your unconscious brain repeatedly. And you might say, well, how do we tell the brain that we're safe from a virus or a bacteria? Actually we are constantly in touch with our physical bodies autonomically. It's just that we don't know it. And I give you an example of this that people love. So imagine if I were to say to you two right now, I am going to be able to cause a physiological reaction in both of you, even whilst you try to stop it and even though you know it's not real. Are you up for the challenge?

I'm already anxious, actually. I'm like, okay, what's he going to do? I'm already kind of ramped up.

It works then. Clearly it worked, right? So imagine, well, you could stop this by, by kind of putting your fingers in your ears. But imagine I take a slice of lemon, right? And I don't want you to salivate. This is the most important thing. You mustn't salivate. All right, I'm going to put that slice of lemon on your tongue, but you don't bite into that slice of lemon. It's very, very sour, very tangy. And you don't bite in. But those sour juices begin to kind of trickle into your mouth, into your saliva, and the saliva starts building up. And now you bite into that lemon. Oh, gosh. It's really sour. It's very, very sour. And the just starts churning around in your mouth as you feel there's really sour, tangy lemon juices in your mouth. Okay, let's see how successful I was. So is there any saliva in your mouth right now as a result of that?

A little bit. Little bit.

A little bit. Okay. Had I continued the. The attempt that. Okay, we would have had some more saliva, but you had a little bit of saliva. There was a. I was able to create a physiological, unconscious reaction in you that you normally don't have conscious control over. You knew that it wasn't real, and you tried to stop me from doing it. So notice if we can find the right key to the right lock, can we actually directly have impact over our immune system? Imagine if we found that key, then we could tap into that ability. So that's what we're doing in brain retraining is saying, let's recognize those signals that tell us that we're about to react or we are in a danger response, create safety responses, calm them down, and then bring the body in the brain back to its balance and its health.

All right, so how do you distinguish. You were talking about mold, Lyme flu, Covid. How do you know the person's actually not suffering from that versus brain inflammation, or does it not matter when you retrain the brain?

So there are. Yeah, absolutely. Great question. And this is about when an acute illness turns into a chronic illness. Initially, we have an exposure which the brain detects as a threat. An initial mold exposure, initial Lyme exposure, initial flu, Covid, whatever it is. And it might take a number of weeks to overcome that particular virus fully. What we're talking about is when that acute illness turns into a chronic illness, where actually now, even though it's three months later, the brain is now still responding to mold excessively. It's still now in an inflammatory state which mimics the reaction to Covid. What has happened there, we believe, is a shift in the conditioning of the brain. The brain has gone from saying, this is something we can handle, to all out panic, and now chronically stimulating the nervous system and immune system. And we believe the brain structures involved are the amygdala and insular parts. Of the brain, which I'm sure we'll talk about a little later. At that point in time, let's take the example of mold, because obviously a lot of people are suffering from mold these days. There might be an initial exposure to mold when the body's in a vulnerable state. 100% mold exposure creates 100% reaction. But because the brain is efficient, then in the future, just a 5% exposure to mold can create 100% reaction, which is why someone who never had a mold allergy or sensitivity can have that one exposure and then suddenly after that, they are constantly getting chronically reacting to mold. Similarly with Lyme, the way we look at Lyme is that we believe that the initial reaction to Lyme, if it then becomes chronic and the body is constantly stimulating those responses, that means that lyme can flourish as an opportunistic infection. It's never been fully fought off by the immune system because the immune system and nervous system are dysregulated continuously. And with COVID once again, people ask, but where's the precedent for this? Actually we see this all the time in the COVID scenario. What was it that people passed away from during the COVID pandemic? It wasn't the COVID infection, it was the cytokine storm where our own immune system over responded, created, then challenges in the lungs, tightens up the airways, and people passed away. Unfortunately, there's precedent for this in chronic illness. And all we're doing is taking those same principles that our system, if it's vulnerable and weak, will over respond in a chronic way and then cause chronic long term symptoms. And of course the gut is involved. So this is an integrative, holistic way of looking at things that when the brain goes into this panic state, the first vulnerability that is exploited or is caused is in the gut. Now the gut becomes more likely to be inflamed, leaky gut, ibs, inflammatory bowel disease, and then the gut feeds back to the brain that it's in danger. So that causes another vicious cycle. So of course, supplements and diets and medications are important to attempt to rebalance the system. And sometimes those can be enough to get on a virtuous cycle. But ultimately what we're saying is if we also look at the brain piece and the body piece together in harmony, we magnify the effects of this type of treatment.

Interesting.

So you mentioned amygdala insula. Talk to us about what is that?

Yes, the amygdala. We have two of them. They're the two almond shaped structures that sit in the limbic system part of the brain. They sit behind the eyes. They have many roles, but the amygdala's main role is threat detection and response. It's what they call a quick and dirty pathway. It's the response we first have before we even consciously aware of the dangers around us. The amygdala, essentially, in our view, when it responds to psychological threats, it has a certain set of pathways. And that's what we traditionally think of as the amygdala involved in anxiety, PTSD type responses. But now we know the brain doesn't differentiate. The amygdala is also involved in pain responses, also involved in immune responses as well, because the brain is just like, what's the threat? How do I respond? Now, the insular part of the brain, that's not strictly in the limbic system, because sometimes these treatments get referred to as limbic retraining. But actually that's inaccurate because we believe the core retraining is happening in the insula. The insular cortex is this brain structure that sits between the limbic system and the cortex, part of the cortex. Its job is to take in all incoming data from the body, including from the vagus nerve, interpret that data in terms of immune data, autonomic data, heart rate, blood pressure, and then create the appropriate response to ensure survival and homeostasis. Those two brain structures work together to detect threats. We believe that conditioning lies in both of those brain structures. That's where both of those brain structures then learn after the chronic phase of an illness that we're still in danger. Sorry, in acute phase. In the acute phase of illness, those two brain structures learn that we are vulnerable and in danger. They create decisions, keep responding, and then they keep overstimulating nervous and immune system responses, which then causes those chronic symptoms. And I'd love to share with you my fate. I'm a bit of geek when it comes to this brain neurology piece. When it comes to the insula. So we know the amygdala is involved, we know the insulin is involved with these amazing, amazing experiments that have been done. So in the 80s and 90s, a guy called Professor Ada, he did these experiments with rats. So they gave rats sweet water combined with an immunosuppressant, and they repeated this several times. And then they just gave the rats sweet water without the immunosuppressant. Guess what happened? The rat's immune system got suppressed even though they were just having sweet water. That's an example of conditioning. When they examined the root cause of this, they found that it was the amygdala and the insula, the two brain structures where the conditioning actually was stored. And Dr. Pacquiao Lopez from Italy, he's done, I think Spain or Italy, has done a lot of experiments in this area and proven this time and time again that conditioning can occur in our immune systems. And then just a couple of years ago, Dr. Asia Rawls did some studies which were groundbreaking. And they took rats and gave the rats an irritant which gave them inflammatory bowel disease, measured the electrical signature in the insular part of the brain. Then they brought the rats back to baseline. They didn't have inflammatory bowel disease anymore. Then they just stimulated a very tiny electrical signature, the same one in the insular part of the brain. And guess what happened? The rats had the same inflammatory bowel disease in their guts. It's the first time on the planet that someone has proven that when we have a peripheral immune reaction in the body, that information that intelligence transports back to the brain into the insula so that it's ready and efficient, that the next time that thing comes along, we know exactly how to respond and we can be ahead of the curve. This shows us that conditioning can occur in the insula. In terms of immunity, then if we take that hypothesis, it means that autoimmune conditions, Alzheimer's, MS, chronic inflammatory diseases, neuroimmune diseases, pain, could all be stored in the insula as these condition responses that then malfunction. And that's what causes so many of the modern diseases that we see in life. That's the hypothesis.

Where do we get that little implant? So we could just have the off button.

Program?

Yes.

All right.

And I would say that's exactly the question, is that right now we are trying to solve software problems using hardware. So most modern medicine is set up. And don't get me wrong, I'm not against modern medicine. I think modern medicine is brilliant for treating certain types of conditions, which are what we call hardware conditions. But when the software goes wrong, it's more of a functional issue. And therefore, the traditional approaches don't necessarily work. And that's where we have to retrain the software to then fix the hardware.

So this is getting to kind of where I, I've been talking about. People talk about the mind body connection, and I've recently been. And I yeah, okay. Mind body connection, great. I've really been talking to people. There is no mind body connection because there's no. There is no disconnection. Mind body connection means that there's some kind of connection? Like, no, what happens in the body happens in the mind and the other way around, from my point of view. So that being said, would it make sense if. If something is happening in the brain, part of what you're doing is retraining the brain, but it's also retraining the body because we hold a lot of tension and a lot of emotional responses in the body. So we have to retrain our. That's, I think, one of the. I love therapy. I think it's amazing. And it's not enough because it doesn't work on the body in addition to the brain.

So, yes, I think it's a great way of framing it. So the way we can think of the brain, when we're really talking about the brain, we're talking about the entire nervous system, because we have a brain in the heart, we have a brain in the gut, the enteric brain. And therefore the entire nervous system is like an information flow, instructional flow, of which the brain is simply the head. It's simply the head of, as you say, this nervous system that tells the cells, tell. These are the organs, what to do, the intelligence in the entire body. So there is no separation at all. In fact, even from a physical perspective, when we are retraining the brain, what we are really saying is we are regulating that entire nervous system because we believe that those two brain structures have now been conditioned to overreact, to over respond, and that will impact on the rest of the body. But ultimately, we're playing with consciousness. So when we're saying retraining, we somehow think that that's just some kind of physiological process happening in the brain. Ultimately, we are impacting on the way our consciousness functions, which is a very subjective experience, which then, as a secondary effect, impacts on the brain, which then impacts on the organs and the cells of the body. So there are several kind of tiers of ways that it's running through our entire system. But I agree with you. It's one system that we are impacting upon.

Yeah, it's interesting. And I will say, in Western culture, we say the brain is the organ that leads. In a lot of other cultures, it's the heart, and that's where the actual things are coming from. And the brain is a servant of the heart, not the other way around. So.

And in functional medicine, it's the gutters.

Have our favorite target. And. And actually, what I would say is the dream of true integrative medicine. This is actually, as you describe, Ed. So in our program, we talk a Lot about somatic work as well. What we call somatic retraining, that not only are we dealing at the cognitive level or consciousness level, we're also dealing at the physiological level. So we incorporate a lot of somatic techniques. Somatic awareness, where we're tuning into the physical body and we believe. And this now comes down to integration of western and eastern medicine. So in Eastern medicine, when we have a reaction to our environment, it could be an emotional reaction or a physical reaction. But let's take an emotional reaction. Those reactions are stored in the energy centers of the body. So when we feel anxiety or fear, where do we feel it? Right. People generally say the chest and the stomach area. So this is an energy center that stores up emotions which are not processed. Which is why people who experience a lot of fear and anxiety will get generally gut problems and challenges. People who experience more anger, they will tend to get more headaches and cerebral type symptoms because the anger energy center is around this area and therefore tuning into our physical bodies, getting a better relationship with our physical bodies and observing these stuck energies is part of healing as well. So a lot of modern trauma therapy talks a lot about somatic techniques, but it's like people go too far, say, oh no, cognitive doesn't work. You have to do somatic. It's a combination of all of these things together at the same time that we find has the most powerful effect.

Yeah, yeah, agreed, 100%. All right. A controversial subject, which maybe you'll be comfortable with talking about, maybe you won't. So we'll see psychedelic medicine. Where does that fit into this? Because there's been a lot of studies with mdma. Ketamine has been producing great results. They all work on neuroplasticity. How does that combine with this work that you're doing?

We are very open. So we want to do what works for patients and gets people well. That's our vision. And so when it comes to psychedelics, our hypothesis is that somehow it increases neuroplasticity. So when we're anxious, when we're stressed, the brain is much more fixed, it's not so flexible. And so people are taking psychedelics as a way of opening up possibilities, creating a temporary state of increased neuroplasticity where more open opportunities are available. Now, we know that's a double edged sword because what the reason in psychedelic research is important to have supervision and therapy, et cetera, is because the brain doesn't make a judgment as to what you choose to be open about. So if you suddenly open up your brain and expose it to a horror movie, you're going to have some pretty horrendous effects on that brain because it's suddenly been open and more open to having new neuronal connections. But actually if you open it up to healing and to love and to camaraderie, those type of positive experiences can then have a lasting effect on the brain. So that's why I think with psychedelic research we have to be very, very careful that people who already have a chronic disease are already highly anxious. How are they going to respond to something like this? Could it actually magnify these effects? So when it comes to psychedelics, we're hearing lots of great reports. I'm also, I don't know if you are, but I'm also hearing of people who are having quite difficult experiences and negative experiences as well. So it all depends on the level of supervision and how they're framed. So we are open to that and we'd love to do studies where we combine our brain retraining with microdosing very small amounts of psychedelics to see does that improve the patient outcomes. Because we're trying to do exactly that. We're trying to retrain the brain and if the brain is a bit more neuroplastic, it could accelerate the process. So we are very open to looking at that type of research. But as you know, certainly in the current environment, getting money and getting resources for research is very tricky in this area. But I think that it could be something that is, that is possible.

And I will say the one thing, as you said, the brain opens up and then what's stored in there can open up also. So it's super important to have a professional work with you because you may not know what's stored in your brain that will open up and things come out, which is long term, a good thing, as long as it's dealt with properly and professionally. So it's definitely not something to be taken lightly. Yeah.

And many people who choose to go along that pathway may have had a background of trauma with a small T, right through to trauma with a big T. And we can't predict when we open up neuroplasticity, what could actually occur, what's going to come out and how you deal with that. Because it's almost like actually the reason for why trauma work or trauma therapy works quite well as a step by step process is because there's a, a slow pendulation, a gentle exposure, step by step. If things open up and something comes out, how do we then help a person through that.

Ashoka, I have a question. I'm just trying to map on things I already know. And how does this work? So when you talk about neuroplasticity, when I'm mapping it on to how do I understand it, I'm thinking of it kind of like heart rate variability, but in the brain, that the heart rate is variable, it's flexible, it's responsive, and that the brain is flexible and responsive, but appropriately so, as opposed to inappropriately so. Have I mapped it on properly or improperly?

There are some very interesting analogies with heart rate variability in the sense of when the brain is in a stimulated state, in a danger response, it is firing off continuously. So that's what is causing the fatigue, the exhaustion, the immune symptoms, and therefore it's not open to new ways of thinking. So as an example, the example I always give is, let's say a husband and wife or two partners are coming home after a hard day's work, they're both stressed out. Now they come home after work and they decide to have a discussion about something important. Is that a good time to have that discussion? When you're both triggered, you're both stimulated, you're both stressed out, you're not going to be open and flexible to each other's point of view. So you then look to calm everything down, relax, do some meditations and relaxation, and then your brain is more open because it's less stimulated. So, yes, similarly is heart rate variability, rather than it being fixed and firing, you're relaxing your nervous system and immune system, you're relaxing your brain, so it's more open to different points of view and therefore not so fixed. And what we want to go from is go from survival mode to thriving mode. The brain in a lot of these conditions is in survival mode because it thinks it's under threat because of what it's been through. And we want to calm it down, we want to retrain it that we are safe, and then it can then thrive, be more neuroplastic, more flexible, and ultimately be healthy.

So you said you've done studies. What kind of studies? And what are the outcomes? What have you seen?

We've now done six clinical studies, five of which were completely independent by independent universities. And we've done four randomized controlled trials. So I'll give you some highlights of some of these RCTs. The first one, we did a study, I say we. It was a university, they did a study on fibromyalgia and they compared our treatments to relaxation and meditation and relaxation response program over eight weeks. And they found after just eight weeks, there was close to a 40% reduction in fibromyalgia scores in the active Gupta program group, 0% in the control. And we had a halving of depression, halving anxiety, a halving of pain and a 50% increase in functional capacity. And that was way before we had our app and our daily events and various things. And so that was obviously a great result, a groundbreaking result, actually. We did a study on Long Covid and we compared our program to a wellness program. So this wellness program had diet changes, supplements, sleep advice, pacing, exercise, the full gamut. After three months, the Gupta program was four times more effective at reducing fatigue and exhaustion. And it's very rare in a clinical study you get a 400% result. So this is a published study, people can read it. And a lot of those patients were able to go back to work. A lot of them were 60% better, some 80% better, some 100% better. But it was four times more effective than the traditional things we might prescribe. And then we just did a clinical audit, an independent clinical audit of our patients on about 300 patients. And we found that the Gupta program was effective and significant for 14 different conditions, like Lyme mold, burnouts, anxiety, Long Covid. And we measured the percentage improvement after three months of using the Gupta program. So as an example, Long Covid, There was an 84% increase in functional health. So health capacity, chronic fatigue syndrome, I think was a 76% improvement in functioning mold. There was a 67% improvement. And that was before we had the app and before we have our daily events daily, something we call daily gupticise. These are daily zoom calls where we know that patients are stressed out, they're isolated, they're not feeling motivated. So we say, if you can't follow the program, just come on to our daily zoom calls. So we have 40, 50 coaches around, 40 coaches around the world, and they present these daily gupticized events at live zoom calls, taking people through nervous system regulation and the brain retraining Monday to Friday, every day. That's been a game changer. It really has increased people's speed in which they are healing. These studies were done before we had those components. We're doing further studies now. We're just completing a study on Long Covid. We also did objective markers because one of the critiques of this program or this approach can be, well, what happens if it's just a subjective impact? People just feeling better because they're in community, et cetera, said no, we believe it's objective. We measured heart rate variability and we measured crp, and we have found that we have doubled heart rate variability almost, so a massive improvement compared to the control group. And then secondly with crp, we've almost halved crp. So we know there are inflammatory reductions in the body compared to the control group and autonomic symptoms. So we're tracking these objective data and future studies will have objective parameters within them as well.

So the one thing I will say, the one thing listeners I think should know is that this, this reprogram requires work. Right. It's not just come hang out or take a pill and you're done. You actually have to work, work the program. And it takes time. So can you talk about the time requirement or commitment or what, what it takes to actually win with your program?

Yes. So we describe it as, as we mentioned earlier, learning to drive a car or learning a musical instrument. You'll get as much out, as you put it, in terms of creating those new neural pathways. So if you drive a car for two lessons, you'll be able to drive it, but pretty badly. Right. And it's not going to have lasting effects. So in a similar way, we advise patients have a minimum of 20 to 30 minutes a day. Now, of course, the people who have a chronic illness, for them, it's overwhelmed their lives, so they're prepared to put that investment of time in. And the more time that people put in, the better the consequences, the better the effects they're going to have. So we say a minimum 20, 30 minutes a day and little exercises throughout the day, which are very simple to incorporate into daily life. And generally patients find that within weeks or notice differences. And of course, it's, it's not a linear line of improvement. It tends to be an up and down. And we say minimum three months, a minimum commitment of three months, 20 to 30 minutes a day, and you'll see the improvements. And people say, oh, that seems like a lot of investment, but actually improves the efficiency of your day. So not only are you going to overcome your chronic condition, but your brain is going to be calmer, you're going to feel happier, you're going to feel more in charge of your day. So it pays itself back, inefficiency, savings in the way that you conduct your life.

In any case, I just have one question, because this is largely geared for people with some type of chronic issue. Have you seen it all? People who. I don't experience myself as having a big history of trauma, and right now I Feel good. I was sick all of last year, but now I feel good. And I was thinking, okay, I feel pretty good energy. And how do people who don't have major complaints, I'm assuming they're not motivated to do the program, but it seems like it would be beneficial for people in terms of brain plasticity, neuroplasticity, to prevent chronic disease and memory loss and brain dysfunction. It seems like this would be a good practice. Do you have any data on that? Like people who just do it because they want to be better?

We do. So we've just completed a study on older adults who were essentially experiencing, let's say mild depression, memory loss, suite of different symptoms that older adults in their 50s and 60s may experience. And in that particular study, and I'll just actually bring up the results and give you the accurate results on that. So it was comparing once again the GUPS program to a control group. What we actually found was there were significant improvements in depression and in memory. There was a 37% decrease in depression, 56% improvement in sleep, 26% improvement in working memory there we're actually having active effects on working memory and a 37% decrease in emotional dysregulation. And that was a 12 week randomized controlled trial. We believe that the tools in this program can benefit anybody because it's a toolkit. And so for instance, I mean anxiety is something that is now so pervasive in our population, sometimes we're not even aware that we're anxious, that our nervous system is revved up. We know that breath, work and meditation on its own is very beneficial because it improves neuroplasticity, it calms the brain, it can improve executive function and of course reduce inflammation and improve memory. But combined with then the brain retraining, where you're able to be more in control of the patterns of your brain. So most of us to some extent are reactive. If some situation happens in our life, we're reactive to that situation. We don't have control over how our brain is responding with the thoughts, the emotions, the intensity. This program enables you to gain more of a perspective, more of a control over it. And therefore I think many people can benefit. And I don't know if you're finding this, but what I'm finding, certainly amongst our patients, but in life in general amongst people, because of various screens, social media, so many people are far more on the edge in terms of their nervous systems. They're far more just on the edge of burnout, just on the edge of I'm Coping, but just about managing. And something like this, investing in their own health, investing in their mental well being is. And learning the skill set, I think is paramount in our civilization.

Beautiful.

How can people find you?

And we'll put this in the show.

Notes, by the way, because this is.

Amazing work and this amazing program. How do people find you? What's the best way to connect to you or your program?

Yes, well, of course in your show notes you'll put a link to our website, guptoprogram.com obviously, go through your link and there you'll find lots of information and people can join the free trial. So there's lots of videos, lots of audios that people use. They never buy a program. They just go ahead and get a huge amount of benefit just for the free content that we provide. So we'd love for people to enjoy that content. Or people can go to the App Store or Play store and download the app and start retraining their brain straight away and learning more about their condition. So that's how they can find us. And in our Daily Gupta size at the moment, the first part of Daily Gupta size, which is the nervous system regulation we offer for free to the planet, so anybody can join and be guided each day with a different regulation exercise. Great.

Thank you.

All right, we'll put that in the show notes. Ashok, thank you for being here. This is awesome. Thanks for spending the time and for the listeners, thanks for listening to this episode of the Feel Freakin Amazing podcast. We hope this was valuable for you. And Ashok, thank you so much for educating us on this because this is great.

Thank you so much. It's been been a pleasure. Thank you.

Likewise, Sam.