Heal from Chronic Health Conditions

Kristin Maxwell:

Hello, everyone, welcome to Your Superpowered Mind. I am your host, Kristin Maxwell and in this show, we explore the process of transformation and give you tools and strategies that you can use to transform your own life. Today, I am really excited to be talking to Ashok Gupta about using your brain to heal from chronic health conditions. And Ashok Gupta, while suffering from chronic fatigue syndrome, began looking into neurological conditions and research and was able ultimately to heal himself. He then dedicated his life to developing the Gupta Program, which is an online neuroplasticity recovery course, that 1000s of people have used to heal from diseases such as long-haul COVID, CFS, pain syndromes, and others. And I am really excited to be talking to them because we have a number of family members who have autoimmune conditions, including pots, and now long-haul COVID. And they free, frankly, have exhausted what Western medicine and even alternative medicine can do. So far, as far as they know, so I’m really curious to learn about this. Ashok welcome to Your Super-powered Mind.

Ashok Gupta:

Yes, thank you for inviting me lovely to be here. 

Kristin Maxwell:

Yes, and, you know, I’m gonna go, we’re going sort of in a different direction that I often do more into the physical, but, you know, as we, as you’re gonna very much also hopefully make clear to people, our body is very, very much related to our brain and the state that our brain is in and we have more control over it than we think. You know, my first question, though, is what superpower did you uncover as the result of mastering your mind?

Ashok Gupta:

Yes, of course, like many of us, we’ve been through our own struggles and our own illness issues. So I actually suffered from me and chronic fatigue syndrome while studying as an undergrad at Cambridge. So I was there burning the candles at both ends. So I was partying hard, but also studying very hard. And I went over to India and got some kind of stomach bug. And I came back to the UK and the stomach bug went but my symptoms got worse and worse and worse. To the point at which I could no longer study. I couldn’t concentrate. I had no energy at all to do anything. On my worst days. I had to crawl to the bathroom, and it really well was like a brick wall in front of the young man. And that spurred my quest to say, right, I really want to understand what’s causing my condition. And so I read a lot of brain neurology and physiology. And, you know, I kind of made a contract with the universe that if I can just get myself better, then I will dedicate the rest of my life to helping others with this condition. And I managed to figure out what I felt was happening for me, I got myself 100% better and then set up a clinic to treat others. And ever since then, I’ve been running this global neuroplasticity clinic, and we’ve published medical papers in the area. And yet, we’re supporting lots of patients now with me in chronic fatigue syndrome, but also pain syndromes, like fibromyalgia or unexplained pain, right through to long COVID. So millions of people with long COVID right now, as also autoimmune conditions, and sensitivity conditions like mold illness, and food or chemical sensitivity. So a whole broad spectrum of different illnesses. 

Kristin Maxwell:

We’re treating using neuroplasticity approaches, which is, I would think, truly groundbreaking for when you go to the traditional Western doctor, and I’m not slamming them, My husband actually is a doctor. It’s very much, at least in my own experience is looking very much for a physical cause for your physical symptoms. And the brain. I mean, other than the fact that we’re all you know, our nervous system is part of it doesn’t even come into it. So how generally because I am not very sophisticated in the brain. And I’m assuming a lot of the listeners aren’t How can these chronic conditions be caused or contributed to by abnormalities in brain function? How does that work? 

Ashok Gupta:

Sure. So let me describe the hypothesis. And that will really give everyone a good flavor of what might be going on here. So the first question that I like to ask is, why are we here? The biggest kind of what is the meaning of life? Right? So that’s the biggest question, and maybe we’ll save the philosophical discussion of that for our next podcast. But for this podcast, let’s first focus on science. So why are we here? Well, you know, the traditional belief is that we’re here because over millions of years of evolution, this body, this nervous system, this brain has evolved from plants, single-celled organisms, invertebrates, vertebrates, reptiles, mammals, human beings. Yep. And along that journey, this body is a survival machine designed to adapt to our environment, survive, reproduce, and make sure that we pass on our genes to the next generation. And the clue here is that the brain, which is the master organ for deciding so many different processes in the body, says that survival is more important than well-being. So that’s our first little clue.

And then what’s happened is that, over centuries, we’ve started living differently according to our genetic inheritance. So we now live in boxes with century we don’t get as out as much as we used to. And we eat foods that have toxins in them and lots of processed foods. And so our body is continually on the edge is what we call experiencing pro-inflammatory bias. So the immune system is always just triggered slightly in the background. So that’s our second clue. And let’s take the example of the COVID infection, right, so the COVID infection comes along. And our body may already be in a stressed or compromised state. And then suddenly, the brain realizes that COVID-19 is potentially life-threatening. And so it stimulates the nervous system and the immune system to fight off the COVID-19 infection. And for 80 to 90% of people, fight off the infection, the immune system switches back off, and we get on with our lives. But in about five to 10% of cases, what we’re seeing is that even though the COVID infection has been fought off, it left a legacy where the body is still triggering the immune system and the nervous system unnecessarily. And the reason it’s doing this is that it is on the side of caution. And just to put this in context, so then what happens is as a result of stimulating the immune system nervous system that creates the symptoms in the body, which then loops back to a hypersensitive brain, which then triggers more immune reactions. Going back to a hypersensitive brain, we go around in a circle, almost as if the brain and buddy, you’re playing a game of tennis against each other. And I know this can seem a little complex. I’m gonna kind of describe it with an analogy. So Kristen, are you? Are you a fan of Game of Thrones by any chance? 

Kristin Maxwell:

Yes, yes.

Ashok Gupta:

Well, even if our listeners aren’t, this can be any fairy tale. So imagine you are Queen Kristen, and you’re head of the kingdom. Now, you have an army and a navy. So the army is your nervous system. And the Navy is your immune system. And your kingdom has experienced a drought. So the kingdoms were a bit weak castles weak, and the Army and Navy are a little weak as a result of the drought. Now suddenly, an invading army comes over the hill called COVID-19. And your army and navy, are recruited. So they are firing off their weapons, their arrows trying to fight off this invading army. And they just about managed to defend the castle and the kingdom. And they fight off the defending Army or the approaching army. So everything’s good. But it’s really left them traumatized and in a weakened state. And they come in wanting to you Queen Kristen, and the generals of the army in the Navy, they say, Listen, Queen Kristen, we only just managed to fight off the invaders. That one was close, we nearly lost the kingdom.

And we’re pretty weak right now because of the drought. So we’re going to need all of the resources of the castle. We’re going to need all the wheat, the corn, the metal, everything has to be channeled to the army and navy. Because if not, the Kingdom will fall. So you think okay, fine. That’s the right thing to do. And so now the army and navy, your survival specialists, they are taking all the resources of the body, or the resources of the kingdom and castle. And now even if they see a man on a horse just coming over the hill completely, innocently, they fire off the arrows and their defense mechanisms, just in case it is an invading army. But by doing so, in this hyper-vigilant state, they continue to use all the energy and resources of the castle. And the weaker the castle gets, the more and more they keep firing off their defense mechanisms. Keeping the body in this altered state and in autoimmune conditions, not only that, they start firing arrows into the Kingdom itself thinking there are invaders within the kingdom as well, which describes how autoimmune conditions start and how the body starts attacking itself. The Army and Navy start attacking their own kingdom through those processes. So that’s how these different conditions we believe start in the body. 

Kristin Maxwell:

Wow, that makes so much sense. And as you sort of you mentioned earlier, our bodies now in our current life are already on edge because there are things like mold and infections and food sensitivities, and heavy metals and publish that around time. Yeah. Oh, that’s crazy. Okay, I can see how this is okay, I completely forgot to take a break. Let me tell everybody, we were going to take a break really quickly. You can find information about Ashok and this program at GuptaProgram.com. I will put this in the show notes, you will definitely want to check it out. You can also head over to Your SuperPowered Mind and look at some of the programs and communities we have going on there. And in the meantime, hang on we’ll be right back and talk more about how to use your brain to Heal from Chronic Health Conditions.

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