Breaking the Vicious Cycle of Chronic Illness with Ashok Gupta

[00:24] Dr. Linda Bluestein: I am so excited to have you join me for this critically important conversation for anyone with joint hypermobility, because bendy joints are so often accompanied by one or more chronic complex conditions. 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 suffered from ME, or chronic fatigue syndrome, around 25 years ago when he was studying at Cambridge University. Through neurological research that he conducted, he managed to get himself remarkably 100% better. He then set up a clinic to treat others and published the well-known neuroplasticity limbic retraining recovery program and app known as the Gupta Program. In 2000, he has published multiple medical papers including randomized controlled trials on Long COVID, ME/CFS, and fibromyalgia showing that the treatment is effective, and he is continually researching these conditions. Welcome back, every bendy body. This is the Bendy Bodies Podcast, and I'm your host and founder, Dr. Linda Bluestein, the Hypermobility MD. This is going to be a great episode, so be sure to stick around until the very end so you don't miss any of our special hypermobility hacks. As always, this information is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for personalized medical advice. Ashok, hello and welcome to Bendy Bodies.

[01:56] Ashok Gupta: Thank you, Linda. Thank you for your introduction, and I'm super excited to be here with your audience.

[02:02] Dr. Linda Bluestein: Wonderful, wonderful. This is so, so important. Chronic conditions that you address through your programs such as Long COVID, Mast Cell Activation Syndrome or MCAS, pain syndromes, Lyme disease, mold illness, fibromyalgia, ME/CFS, dysautonomia, and so many more are so disabling and negatively affect millions of people worldwide. And they also cost the global economy trillions of dollars. So anything that we can possibly do to help people with these conditions needs to be shared as widely as possible. Can you start out by telling me what your experience of ME/CFS was like and how you discovered the treatment program that got you 100% better?

[02:43] Ashok Gupta: Yes. So it was the mid-'90s, and in those days, a lot of these conditions weren't really recognized. They were thought to be just in the mind. And I was studying as an undergrad at Cambridge University and I had got some kind of virus, and the virus seemed to go away, but I seemed to degrade further and further and further to the point at which I had to crawl to the bathroom. I was just exhausted all the time. I couldn't read words on a page, which actually was very serious because I thought, is my brain just not functioning? And I was just so debilitated. It was like I was suddenly 100 years old. And for a young man, that was just incredible. And I would go from doctor to doctor and they would say, we don't know what to call it. We don't know what you have. There's nothing we can do for you. And you might have it for the rest of your life, which is crazy.
[03:36] I'd met many other people, hundreds of other people who were suffering from it. And I thought, if I can just get myself 50% well or 30% well or something, I will just dedicate the rest of my life to helping people with these disorders, because it's at epidemic proportions. There's millions who suffer from it and they don't have anywhere to go and there's so much suffering. And so I researched brain neurology, especially the work of Professor Joseph Ledoux, and I managed to get myself 100% well and then set up a clinic to treat others. And since then I've published medical studies and an app and various other things. And here we are today.
[04:14] Like many of us, we've been through our own journeys and been able to then learn from that and hopefully share that with others. And recently, the whole concept of hypermobility has become more pronounced because in our coach team, in our coach groups, we've become aware that a lot of our clients have hypermobility, and that is definitely a risk factor for all of these types of conditions. And recently, I've discovered that — I haven't been formally diagnosed, but I'm also hypermobile myself. So it comes full circle in terms of these risk factors for these types of diseases.

[04:46] Dr. Linda Bluestein: That's really, really interesting. And it seems like — we're going to get into this more later — it seems like so many of these conditions do travel together. And we know that people can have joint hypermobility and be perfectly fine throughout their entire life, never develop chronic pain or any other problems. But it seems like sometimes that's more the exception than the rule, and that other people develop a lot of additional things including Long COVID, for example. So it's fantastic to have other things to be able to suggest to people to try, especially because we have so many side effects of medications and various different problems that we always need to consider. So in terms of brain retraining, can you talk about what that is?

[05:34] Ashok Gupta: Yeah, absolutely. To be able to answer that, I think what would be useful is if I can describe how the brain gets accidentally trained in these types of disorders and conditions, and then I can move on to how we retrain the brain out of that.

[05:48] Dr. Linda Bluestein: Yes, please.

[05:49] Ashok Gupta: So I think a really interesting starting point is the biggest question of all: why are we here? What is the meaning of life? That's a beautiful conversation we can have at another time. But from a scientific perspective, we are here because this body, this brain, this complex system has evolved over millions of years — from plants to single-cell organisms to invertebrates, vertebrates, reptiles, mammals, human beings. And we think of our evolution as just a human being, but in fact our DNA contains the DNA of that entire lineage. Not many people are aware of that. We contain 40% of the same DNA as a banana, which I find fascinating.
[06:30] So our system is designed to survive, to procreate, and pass on our genes to the next generation. We are survival machines. And that gives us a clue to what causes these types of brain issues — our brain cares more about our survival than it does our well-being. So what generally tends to happen is when we have an illness — that could be COVID, that could be pain, that could be mold exposure — normally our body is able to adapt to that environment by creating an immune response, a nervous system response, deal with that threat, and come back to balance. That's the normal response. But imagine that sometimes the brain gets stuck in a response, out of hyper-survival, because survival matters. If we don't survive, nothing else really matters. So that's why it's such a priority.
[07:23] Let's take the example of Long COVID. Somebody gets the COVID infection and we know that 20 to 30% of patients then go on to having longer-term effects, perhaps a number of weeks. But then a few percent of people go on to having Long COVID, which is after 3 months they're still suffering the effects of COVID as if they've still got the illness within them. And so there are various theories — is the infection still in the body? Is it hiding in the tissues? But what we believe is that the brain maladapts. So instead of going back to reset, it keeps triggering the immune system and nervous system unnecessarily as part of that hyper-survival response.
[08:00] And if I can use an analogy which many people find really useful — imagine a fairy tale. Linda, you are Queen Linda of this kingdom. That has a nice ring to it. You are Queen Linda, queen of your castle and your kingdom. And you have an army, which is your nervous system, the electrical system that keeps your kingdom functioning. And you have a navy, which is your immune system, which protects from those external threats. And normally an army comes over the hill to invade your kingdom, and your army and navy are brilliant at defending the kingdom and keeping it safe.
[08:47] Now imagine there's a drought in the kingdom. That drought could be overworking, it could be stress, it could be anxiety, or in this particular case, it could actually be having a bendy body. So it could be that risk factor of having hypermobility in the system. That creates a risk factor. And then because the system is a little weaker than normal, the army and navy are affected — we know through psychoneuroimmunology that our emotions and our state of being, whether emotionally or physically, if we overtrain for instance, can affect us. That then means the army and navy are weaker than normal. So when the army comes over the hill to invade, it takes the army and navy a lot longer to defend the kingdom and fight off this incoming invader. And during that process, they become traumatized.
[09:41] So they come to their weekly meeting with you, Queen Linda, and they say, "Queen Linda, we're not sure if we got rid of the infection. We think we did, but maybe the army is still hiding in the bushes or hiding in the forest. So now we need all the resources of the kingdom." And you as the Queen think, well, that makes sense, we've got to defend the kingdom. So now all the resources — the wheat, the corn, the metal — are all channeled to the army and navy. But then the kingdom grows weaker because all the resources are going to defense spending, as it were. And they keep firing off their weapons of war at the slightest provocation. So even if there's a man on a horse coming over the hill, they fire off their arrows and their cannons. You can see there's over-inflammation in the system, and some of those arrows and cannons fall back into the kingdom, which then means we have inflammatory responses in the body and autoimmune effects as well. And now spies can proliferate in the kingdom — so opportunistic infections, opportunistic bacteria and viruses can proliferate.
[10:46] So we then have this altered state of being in the body where, with hypermobility being a risk factor, we now have these extra illnesses which we're more prone to because the system is weaker than it might normally be. This then causes a state of dysbiosis in the gut. Our gut gets affected, our mind gets affected, we feel exhausted and overinflamed. And that's why there are so many crossovers between all of these different illnesses.
[11:20] And brain retraining — so coming to your question — brain retraining is the next time you have your weekly meeting with the generals. They come to you saying, "Queen Linda, we're still in danger." And you say, "My dear generals, you've done a wonderful job defending the kingdom, but the war is over. You can stand down, let go of firing off your weapons, and we can bring the system back to balance." And that, in a nutshell, is what brain retraining is. But the generals won't believe you the first time because they're traumatized by the war. They need to be told again and again. And that is the secret of neuroplasticity — the repetition of it.
[11:57] And something else to bear in mind about this hypothesis is that there's a circular pattern. When the brain is triggering the nervous system and immune system, that causes symptoms in the physical body. Those symptoms loop back to a hypersensitive brain where the brain thinks, "Oh, that fatigue could be evidence of ongoing COVID infection. Maybe we're still in danger. Let's err on the side of caution. Let's trigger the immune system and nervous system." Which creates the symptoms, which loop back to a hypersensitive brain, which triggers the systems, and so on. And we get caught in a vicious cycle. And that's where we go from acute illness to chronic illness. That's it in a nutshell.

[12:36] Dr. Linda Bluestein: That's a great explanation because I feel like it's very challenging sometimes to have these conversations with people in a way such that they don't feel like you're dismissing their symptoms. But the brain and the body are absolutely — I don't even want to say connected because I feel like they're one and the same in a way. We shouldn't be separating mental health and physical health. Everything that happens in the brain affects the body and vice versa. So I think this is a brilliant strategy. And can you tell us then what the Gupta Program actually is and who is an ideal candidate for it?

[13:23] Ashok Gupta: So the Gupta Program is this brain retraining neuroplasticity program, and it's designed to make a patient aware of those very subtle signals at the periphery of consciousness that are these danger signals. And we have to be very careful here because we are not saying it's in the mind — absolutely not. But it's in the unconscious brain. It's beyond our conscious awareness. It's not the patient's fault they have any of this, of course. But we've found a way that we can retrain the brain.
[13:50] So we have 3 components of our brain retraining program, and they are delivered via an app and a website member area. So people can do it at home. We have weekly webinars, we have the app, we have expert coaches all over the world. But Linda, the thing that's been the real game changer has been something called Daily Gupta Size. And what that is, is daily Zoom calls where patients can come on and they can have the nervous system regulation and the brain retraining. That's been a game changer because, as we know, it is the repetition that matters. And often when we're at home by ourselves, we're demotivated, we don't feel like doing anything. But this is super easy and simple — come on a Zoom call, we'll take care of you. And that has proved the real powerful effect in terms of getting people well from these conditions.

[14:42] Dr. Linda Bluestein: Is that something that they join through the app? What does that look like — is that a set time every day for the Daily Gupta Size? I love that name, by the way.

[14:52] Ashok Gupta: Yeah, it's a daily event at 7 a.m. Pacific, 10 a.m. Eastern, and then 3 p.m. in the UK, 4 p.m. in Europe. So anywhere in the world people can join, and it happens through the app. Those are daily Zoom calls. We have about 200 to 300 people coming on each day experiencing that. And it's wonderful to heal in community as well. So often we feel isolated and alone, but if we can see hundreds of people also in our position healing each day, it's a beautiful sense of camaraderie and mutual support.

[15:25] Dr. Linda Bluestein: Yeah, I can definitely believe that. Feeling like you're alone is a really tough place to be. And like you said, we tend to — at least I did this when I was at my worst — blame myself and think that I was not trying hard enough. I'm sure lots of people have heard that: you just need to try harder. And that's frustrating.

[15:47] Ashok Gupta: Yeah, absolutely. And I think in these types of conditions, there's been a lot of patient blaming in the past, because when medicine doesn't understand a condition or it's not modeled appropriately to deal with it, then it can be easy to patient-blame. And that's the issue with medicine — it's very much been based on hardware problems, not software problems. So we can deal with the hardware aspect where in hypermobility, we can test the hypermobility, we can look at the connective tissue and think, ah, these are the physical abnormalities that we are noticing. But when things are a software issue, that becomes a lot harder to diagnose and deal with.
[16:23] And I believe certainly in hypermobility and a number of these different conditions, it is the rewiring of the nervous system — which is also affected by the hypermobility — which then in turn makes us prone to these types of diseases. And that means it requires a different approach to traditional medicine, which is medicines or surgery. You can't necessarily impact the electrical system doing that. And that's where brain retraining and neuroplasticity come into their own.

[16:46] Dr. Linda Bluestein: And I noticed on your website you talked about neuroimmune conditioned syndromes. Can you tell me what those are?

[16:56] Ashok Gupta: Yeah. So we believe that so many modern diseases — and as you say, we've mentioned a lot of them, but even things like Alzheimer's and autoimmune diseases, MS — are ultimately down to this idea of neuroimmune conditioned syndrome. So "neuro" is the nervous system and brain. "Immune" is that the immune system is involved, because we know that a lot of these illnesses involve over-inflammation in the body and in the brain. "Conditioned" in the sense that it's a learned response — why is it that in MS the body is targeting the brain and impacting it, or why is that happening in Alzheimer's? Because the brain itself has learned to overstimulate this protective response. "Syndrome," because there's a unique collection of symptoms that are involved in each of these different diseases.
[17:45] So we often define these diseases by the cluster of symptoms that we notice, but they all have so many crossovers — it's like the branches of a tree. You've got all these different diseases, but they share the same trunk and the same roots. And if we can get to the root causes, we can heal so many different chronic illnesses.

[18:05] Dr. Linda Bluestein: I like that analogy with sharing the same trunk, because I often talk about Venn diagrams. If you talk about mast cell activation syndrome, EDS, and POTS, for example, and you do a Venn diagram of the symptoms you can see with those three conditions, there is a lot of overlap. But I like that visual of the shared trunk even better.

[18:25] Ashok Gupta: Yeah. As I said, we always treat this as hypothesis — it's very difficult to prove these things. But certainly from our medical research and the neurological research, we're getting more and more to this idea that a lot of these illnesses are caused in the unconscious brain as protective responses. And because we live in an environment with more threats — compared to a few hundred years ago, we now don't get enough sunlight, we live in boxes most of the day, we don't exercise, we're often eating food full of toxins, we're surrounded by pollution, we're more stressed, we're on screens all day, we're comparing ourselves on social media — all of these threats mean our system is constantly more stimulated than it ever was before. And that makes it more prone to these learning effects where we learn to oversurvive in this dangerous environment. As far as the brain is concerned, we learn to oversurvive, which causes a lot of these diseases.

[19:25] Dr. Linda Bluestein: I like that.

[19:26] Ashok Gupta: Yeah, because I think we think of illness as something attacking us, something external doing this to me. But we estimate 50 to 60% of modern illnesses that you might go to see your doctor for are actually your own internal system dysfunctioning, malfunctioning because of this overprotection due to a more dangerous environment that we live in.

[19:53] Dr. Linda Bluestein: That makes a lot of sense. And just a couple of months ago, Dr. Alexandra — is it Brady?

[20:01] Ashok Gupta: That's right.

[20:01] Dr. Linda Bluestein: Brady published a paper on your training program, and the paper is titled "Neuroplasticity Intervention: Amygdala and Insula Retraining Significantly Improves Overall Health and Functioning Across Various Health Conditions." And we'll of course link that paper and any others that we discuss today in the show notes. What kind of results did she see in that study, if you're familiar enough with it to discuss it?

[20:28] Ashok Gupta: Oh yes, absolutely. So this was an independent audit done of our patients — it wasn't a randomized controlled trial. But what it showed was that just after 3 months, we had across 16 different conditions significant responses. In terms of Long COVID, for example, 84% improvement after 3 months. Lyme disease, 116% improvement. Mold illness, 67% improvement. Chemical sensitivities, 85% improvement. And these are results that happened a few years ago before we had the app and before we had Daily Gupta Size. So we think these results would be even better now.
[21:04] That study was conducted with a few hundred patients. So that was really interesting to see exactly this idea that these illnesses may feel different, but they share the same underlying cause that we can target. And we also conducted many other randomized controlled trials as well. But that one was really interesting because it's the first time we went beyond one illness to 16 different conditions.

[21:31] Dr. Linda Bluestein: Mm-hmm. Yeah, that's really interesting. And there was another one on fibromyalgia published in 2020 — named "Mindfulness-Based Program Plus Amygdala and Insula Training for the Treatment of Women with Fibromyalgia," a pilot randomized controlled trial. And I just want to read some of the results of that because I thought they were really impressive. They found a 37% reduction in fibro scores versus 0% in the control group, a 47% increase in perceived health versus 16% in the control group, a 46% reduction in pain catastrophizing versus 9% in the control group, a 45% reduction in anxiety versus 15% in the control group, and a 41% reduction in depression versus 6% in the control group. Those are really impressive figures. Do you want to add anything to that? And one of the questions I have is how durable are those effects?

[22:37] Ashok Gupta: Sure. So that particular study was an 8-week study. We're generally a 3 to 6-month program, so 8 weeks is great to get those types of results. But they also found that at a follow-up 6 months later, those improvements were maintained. There were slight differences, but they were generally maintained because people continued with the treatment when they see those positive impacts.
[22:57] And secondly, that particular study looked at objective markers as well. In fibromyalgia, we know there's something called BDNF, which is a brain chemical that is elevated, and they found that in the active Gupta Program group, that was also reduced back to normalized population levels, but not so in the control group. So that's one of the first times that this type of program has been tested objectively, and we can see some objective markers. In future studies, we definitely want to include more objective markers. The challenge we have is that in a lot of these diseases, it's very difficult to find that smoking gun or that objective marker that we can say is the reason for these conditions. But nevertheless, the research is so important to make this a mainstream approach.

[23:40] Dr. Linda Bluestein: And it's really good to know that they did look at what happened 6 months later. And I know another study I came across was about Long COVID — a Long COVID randomized controlled trial — and in that one, they looked after 12 weeks and found that there was 4 times more effectiveness at reducing fatigue, 2 times more effectiveness at increasing energy, and overall a 97% increase in energy levels compared to the control group. In that case, the control group underwent a more standard wellness program, correct?

[24:15] Ashok Gupta: Yeah. So I think this was really comparing apples to apples because each patient had a similar amount of time with a practitioner and a similar amount of engagement with the tools. And in the control group, they had diet, supplements, sleep, holistic living — all those kinds of good things that we know can improve these types of conditions. And to show a 400% result compared to a control group is unheard of in these types of studies. It was a small set, about 45 patients, but it showed that we can impact Long COVID patients when not much else is helping them.
[24:52] For us now, we want to do Phase 2 and Phase 3 trials to finally show that Long COVID can be supported and healed. And it's really important because they estimate between 10 to 20 million people in the US are suffering from Long COVID, and it's the number one cause of absenteeism. But because everyone's fed up with talking about COVID, we don't really hear about it anymore. And yet the suffering is immense, and these patients don't really have any avenues to pursue. So can we get this out there to more and more people and relieve the suffering that they're going through?

[25:25] Dr. Linda Bluestein: Yeah, and that's so important. I was watching the news the other day and they were talking about Long COVID as if it was not a real entity — like complete denial about it. That was kind of a shocking thing for me to see, because I have a lot of patients who maybe had some symptoms before they got COVID, but they definitely got significantly worse after having it. That's very common.

[25:51] Ashok Gupta: Oh yes, exactly. And that speaks to some of the research we've done as to what is the connection between hypermobility, EDS, and these types of conditions. There's definitely a massive risk factor there, and therefore there's a greater preponderance to getting these types of conditions, especially with COVID, because COVID is one of those conditions that impacts the cardiovascular system and the nervous system in various ways, and that's why there are so many patients who have aftereffects. I myself had COVID and it took a couple of weeks to really clear it from my system, whereas normally flus and colds can go pretty quickly for me. So there's something unusual about that illness. And we can see that if there is a risk factor of hypermobility and the associated effects in the brain and the neurology of that, how it could then mean lasting effects.

[26:46] Dr. Linda Bluestein: Yeah. And a friend of mine who's now been on the podcast twice, Dr. Jessica Eccles, she just recently published a paper looking at Long COVID and found that people with joint hypermobility did have a higher incidence of having Long COVID as compared to the comparison group. So definitely something for this population to be very aware of.

[27:10] Ashok Gupta: And at the same time, I think what's so important with all of these conditions is not to pre-program our brain for that to happen. It's that real delicate balancing act of being aware but also not expecting it and therefore being super cautious and anxious that it could happen. So it's one of those things that we are aware of, but we don't focus on too much as well.

[27:32] Dr. Linda Bluestein: Yes, I think that's a very good point. What are some of the most common myths about brain retraining?

[27:39] Ashok Gupta: I think the most common one is that we're saying it's in the mind, and we have to work really, really hard to help people understand the difference — the mind versus the brain. With "the mind," we're talking about our subjective conscious experience. But "the brain" — we're talking about an objective organ that is malfunctioning, that is beyond conscious awareness. And therefore, it's not saying it's in the mind. It's not saying that we've made it up. It's not saying that we're at fault. It's saying that this has happened in the brain, but we have figured out some techniques where we can influence that response.
[28:15] I'll give you an example. We might think we have no control over some aspects of our physiology. But let's take the example of a lemon. Imagine we place a slice of lemon on your tongue and you don't bite into it yet — but it's super tangy, super sharp. And then you bite into that lemon and it tastes really sharp and sweet and sour at the same time, just really juicy, and saliva is flowing in your mouth. Now, I don't know if you've got excessive saliva in your mouth right now as a result of that. Most people do if we do that exercise. And isn't that fascinating? You know something isn't real and you can't ordinarily stimulate this physiological response — your salivary glands — but just through the power of imagination, we're able to trigger a physiological response. So that's an example of something that's beyond our conscious control, but actually we can find little ways to influence it. In a similar way, we've discovered ways that we can influence our immune system responses and calm them down and bring the brain and body back to safety.
[29:28] And I think another common myth is that somehow we're beyond help because a doctor has physically diagnosed something in our bodies and therefore brain retraining isn't going to work. But that's the reductionist model — the idea that different things are disconnected in our bodies. We are one system, one holistic system. So of course, if one system is overresponding, it will have a domino effect on the rest of our body, including our physiology and physical things we can measure. Just because we have a physical diagnosis of something, or something's clearly out of whack, that is often a downstream effect of this underlying cause. And helping people understand that is super important.

[30:10] Dr. Linda Bluestein: I really like how you explain things. Your analogies are really rich and really help people understand what they can potentially do to help themselves if they're suffering from a chronic condition. And especially for people who have been to multiple different doctors and kind of feel like they're running out of options — it's really valuable for them to realize that there are potentially more things that they can try. Some of the questions that I got from my followers: one of them was, how much time do you need to dedicate to the program in order to see results?

[30:46] Ashok Gupta: It's a common question. And I think in modern medicine, we're very used to the idea that we go and see a doctor for 5 or 10 minutes, they give us a pill, we take that pill, and hopefully we're going to be fine. And the issue with this type of work is that when you're retraining the software, not the hardware, that does require inevitably some investment of time. But it's so worth it — it's not wasted time, because you're helping calm your whole nervous system, and that helps you feel happier and calmer.
[31:14] So we recommend at least 20 to 30 minutes a day in one sitting, and then short little exercises throughout the day. But it's perfectly manageable in terms of fitting into someone's lifestyle. And of course, like anything, the more investment you put into it, the better the benefits you're going to get. Like going to the gym — if you go once a week for 20 minutes, that's not going to have the effect of going a few times a week and investing that time and energy. And so it is with our brains as well. That repetition and consistency is important, which is why the Daily Gupta Sizes prove so powerful — that regularity and motivation to come on every day is super useful.

[31:49] Dr. Linda Bluestein: And are there different ways that people can engage with the program? You mentioned the Gupta Size, but are there other things — if I were to sign up today, what would that look like? Can you go into a little bit more detail about the different interactions with the app, for example?

[32:12] Ashok Gupta: Sure. So for some people, they're quite self-directed. We have videos and audios that they can watch and listen to and integrate the program into their lives. And then we also have weekly webinars with myself, so if people need that guidance, tuning in each week enables them to understand the tools at a deeper level and be supported over a 3-month period. We also have one-on-one sessions with coaches — we have 20 to 30 coaches around the world who can do one-on-one sessions with patients who need that more personal touch. And of course, then we have the Daily Gupta Size support, which are these daily sessions. So there's so much support that people can get and interact with the program in the way that suits them.
[32:53] But really, the app is the fundamental core of it. So working through the videos, understanding the tools and techniques, and then listening to them. And part of this is also the somatic work. We integrate a lot of somatic retraining into our program, which is retraining the brain out of these resistances to how the body is feeling. And in hypermobility specifically, we believe that there is more interoception — the brain is more hyper-aware of what the body is doing because of the hypermobility. And because of that, there can be hypervigilance. Some of those systems in the brain then feel the body is more vulnerable to perhaps a fall or perhaps overbending or overstretching in some way. And therefore, there's more excessive information going into the brain, and it's being processed for danger.
[33:41] That is also about retraining ourselves to feel more safe in our physical body, feeling more safe around anxiety. And we do a lot of work on the amygdala and insula, which are the two brain structures we believe are being retrained in this type of approach. We know that people with hypermobility have larger amygdalas and more processing of negative events in the amygdala, which I think supports this hypothesis that this excessive anxiety, excessive interoception, and focus on the body may then fuel these types of conditioning events in the brain, which causes these chronic illnesses.

[34:18] Dr. Linda Bluestein: Yeah, that definitely fits with my clinical experience and my personal experience as someone who's hypermobile and has struggled with various different things over the years — doing well now, but definitely having had chronic pain in the past and that kind of thing. In terms of how clinicians can recommend brain retraining to their patients, do you have a suggestion for how we can do that in a way that is least likely to sound like gaslighting?

[34:46] Ashok Gupta: Yes, very good question. And we now have about 5,000 practitioners around the world, especially in the US, who are now recommending the program to their patients. We find the best way here is to be very clear that we're not saying it's in the mind, but that it's in the brain — and that the brain is triggering the immune system and nervous system, which is contributing to the symptoms.
[35:09] An example would be: when we have the flu, we might think, oh, look at this horrible flu virus, look at what it's doing to my body, it's making me feel sick. But the flu virus isn't the thing that's doing that — it's our own immune response to fight off the flu virus that causes the symptoms. And in a similar way, could it be that our own immune system is triggering overstimulated responses, causing these symptoms? When people understand that concept, it becomes easier to help them realize, okay, it's not something psychological, it's not in my mind, my brain is over-defending me. And that makes more sense.

[35:43] Dr. Linda Bluestein: And that turns out to become part of the problem. So if we just keep addressing the hardware issues and we're not addressing the software issues, we're just not going to get as good results.

[35:56] Ashok Gupta: Exactly. And we need to ask — who's throwing these people into the river in the first place? And to do that, we need to get away from the hardware paradigm and walk further upstream to understand the software issue: why are these people falling into the river? The nervous system is primed to over-defend itself and get into these conditioned responses. Right. Now that we understand that, we can retrain that and calm the whole nervous system down and get the system back to balance.
[36:30] And we're not dogmatic — we don't say only deal with the brain. It's perfectly possible, as many of our practitioners do, and many nutritionists and functional medicine doctors do, to integrate it as part of an overall protocol. So yes, we do the medications, the supplements, the binders, etc. But let's also have this brain retraining component in there. And many clinicians find that when they do that, it magnifies the positive impact of their existing protocols. And many practitioners notice that when the nervous system is calmer and a person's in a better place physically and emotionally, the medications are then more effective because the person isn't reacting to the medications, and the medications can do the work that they need to.

[37:16] Dr. Linda Bluestein: I would totally agree with that. And are there people who are not good candidates for the program?

[37:20] Ashok Gupta: Good question. I think if somebody is very tied to the pure reductionist medical model — where it's like, my cells are not functioning correctly and the only way to fix that is through medications — if that's very much their belief system, then of course it's difficult for them to embrace this whole new way of doing it. So we work a lot on helping people understand the hypothesis and really suspend their disbelief if they can, to really go for it. You have to really believe in this approach for it to work. I think that's important. And then as we mentioned, being able to have the "both and" approach — yes, I have physical symptoms in my body, and they're being caused by an upstream response. I think if someone has got severe anxiety and depression, it can be a little tricky. So they can just focus on the first parts of our program — regulating the nervous system — before they're ready to retrain their brain.

[38:15] Dr. Linda Bluestein: And actually, I was just going to add something.

[38:18] Ashok Gupta: If somebody — we treat a lot of people with mold and Lyme and those types of conditions. And once again, if someone is believing purely that X plus Y equals Z — I have mold around me, that's causing my illness — some reframing is useful. So what we say to patients is, yes, absolutely, at some point in your life you were exposed 100% to mold, which created a 100% protective response, which is this allergic response. But now your brain, if there's 5% or 10% mold present, is creating a 100% response. So there's what we call differential activation in the brain. The brain is now hyper-defending against small amounts of something.
[38:58] And that's the same with food allergies. Why is it that one day we can eat all foods and a year later, suddenly a microscopic amount of it causes our brain to overrespond? Because once again, the brain has learned to overprotect. Even peanut allergies — all these different allergies are essentially our brain overdefending and overprotecting us to keep us safe. And therefore, if someone has got that pure medical model — this thing is causing my illness — then some work has to be done on reframing that.

[39:29] Dr. Linda Bluestein: Okay. And that leads me to another question about the duration of the program. Do some people do it for 4 months, 6 months, and other people continue on for a year or longer?

[39:43] Ashok Gupta: We call it a minimum 6-month program. And why do we say that? Many people do heal and recover within months, within weeks. Others, it takes longer — it can take a year. And this is because it's an art, not a science. Each of us are individuals. Our brains are individual. Our physiology is individual. The illness we got is individual. And therefore it's very difficult to put a timeline on it.
[40:07] But what we do know is a minimum 6 months represents that commitment and motivation to keep going, because some people only see the first improvements after 5 or 6 months. And yes, there are other people who are on our program for over a year, because what happens is they heal, but then they need to use the program to keep their stress levels under control. Because if you heal and then you're put back into stressful environments, the system will overrespond again. So therefore our third R of the program — we have relaxing the nervous system, retraining the brain, and the third one is re-engaging with joy. Learning to understand our stress triggers and re-engage with joy is an important part of healing.

[40:43] Dr. Linda Bluestein: And has there been some people that actually got worse while they were doing the program? And if so, what happens then?

[40:53] Ashok Gupta: Of course, like with any condition or any medication, there's always a small percentage of people who start feeling a little worse. And often this is because the attitude with which you approach the program is supremely important. We notice in these conditions there tends to be more of a preponderance towards overachieving, conscientiousness, wanting to do a good job. So sometimes people grab our program and think, right, I'm going to do this 100%, fully, every day. And they push themselves too hard rather than taking it in a very light way. So that can be one way in which people can get overstressed — because they're doing something new and really wanting it to work, and that isn't going to help.
[41:36] And secondly, sometimes with meditation and breathing, if we've got unresolved emotions from our childhood or past traumas, when we meditate and breathe, suddenly those emotions can come to the surface and be very difficult to deal with, which can make us feel worse in the short term. But once again, with help and support from our practitioners and shifting our approach, people can calm down those initial responses and then get positive results.

[42:08] Dr. Linda Bluestein: Okay. And did I miss any questions, or did you have any final thoughts?

[42:10] Ashok Gupta: I think the hope that I want to give to people is that healing and recovery is possible. And no matter the diagnoses that you've had — even hypermobility or whatever it may be — your genes are not your destiny. Health and wellness is your birthright. And this is a whole new area of medicine, a whole new paradigm for medicine. I think it's just as important as traditional medicine. So never give up hope that you can heal and recover from your condition.
[42:41] Don't buy into this pure medical model where there's something detected that's wrong in your body and therefore, until we correct that, you cannot get well. No — get upstream. Realize that the brain is the most powerful organ of your body. And when that is operating correctly and coordinating the body correctly, healing is possible. Just like a conductor — let's say there's an orchestra playing a song. If there are some instruments that are out of tune or aren't playing at the right rhythm, then it sounds awful. And we think, right, we've got to go to that musician and tell him, don't do this, don't do that. But actually, it's the conductor. If you go upstream to the conductor, and that conductor is conducting the orchestra correctly and they're all in sync and all in tune, our whole bodies are in harmony, and the music sounds pretty beautiful. So in a similar way, let's not focus on the individual instrument. Let's focus on the conductor and then we can be in health.

[43:45] Dr. Linda Bluestein: I love that analogy so much because I feel like oftentimes people feel like, I have this wrong with my neurologic system, I have this wrong with my immunologic system, I have this wrong with my musculoskeletal system. And they feel like they're playing whack-a-mole — they just have to keep knocking out each of these individual things. Whereas if you go upstream to the conductor — for me personally, my health is so much better than it used to be even though I'm a decade older. I can do more than I could a decade ago. But most of the things that I had going on in my body — it's not like they've gone away, I've just learned to manage with them in a different capacity.

[44:28] Ashok Gupta: Yeah. And I love your whack-a-mole analogy. Whack-a-mole is absolutely what's happening in modern medicine and even in functional medicine. What's happened is the mainstream medical model hasn't been working for these types of conditions. So people are going to more alternative and complementary and functional medicine, but often, inadvertently, those models are also being reductionist — right, we've done these tests on the enzymes, we've done this test on this particular vitamin, and it's low, and that's the cause of your condition, and until we fix that, you cannot get well — not realizing you always want to go upstream. Why is the body in this dysfunctional state or lack of homeostasis? If we can get to the root causes, then a lot of these downstream, more reductionist effects will naturally resolve themselves. And that's the hope of neuroplasticity.

[45:17] Dr. Linda Bluestein: And neuroplasticity is such a beautiful thing. And didn't we used to think this was only for children — that only children could actually change their brains? But now we know that we can do it all throughout our lives.

[45:31] Ashok Gupta: Yes, that's exactly right. We used to think the brain was pretty fixed once we get to our late teenage years, but we realize now our brain is constantly rewiring itself. And not only that, we should be encouraging it to rewire itself, because that keeps the brain supple and flexible, and learning new things is super important. Therefore, if we can harness the power of the brain and find the right key to the right lock to retrain it, we can potentially heal so many different illnesses. We have people with MS and Alzheimer's now coming to us and healing, and this is incredible. So that is the hope for this type of approach.

[46:11] Dr. Linda Bluestein: That's amazing. Pain catastrophizing — when I learned about that, I was an anesthesiologist and I'd been working in the operating room for over 20 years, but I was suffering from my own chronic pain. And when I learned about pain catastrophizing, I realized that if I can change what I'm doing inside my mind, that may help change how my body feels. And I felt like that was a really helpful thing to understand. And I know something that you study.

[46:41] Ashok Gupta: Yeah, absolutely. So we treat a lot of people with pain and fibromyalgia, and it's really about understanding that pain itself is not objective in the sense that pain is a subjective signal, a subjective experience in the brain. And therefore it's a warning signal. I remember when I was younger, I used to play football a lot. And I would play football and I would fall on the floor and scrape my elbows. But I was so excited in the game that I would continue. And only after the game would I realize that I'd scraped my elbow and it was bleeding. And suddenly a rush of pain came to my brain. I thought, that's so interesting — how did I not notice the pain during that entire time?
[47:25] And so it is with our pain networks — they will send signals when they believe that we're in danger. But if we're fully enjoying something and happy, those danger signals don't get through, because the brain thinks, well, how can this person be happy and joyful and there actually be something wrong at the same time?
[47:40] Now, of course, we've got to be very careful, because pain signals are also very important to indicate when something is wrong at an acute level. The issue is when acute pain becomes chronic pain. That's where the pain networks themselves are now overstimulated, overdefending, creating too many pain signals. Because our brain is a survival machine — it always prioritizes survival. Our brain has a negative bias. It doesn't care about whether you're happy. That's why anxiety and depression are things that we see so much of in the population, because the brain itself is wired for defense and survival. Therefore, it will err on the side of caution. If you have 99 compliments and 1 criticism, what is your brain going to remember? It will remember the 1 criticism. Because it's hardwired to defend us and protect us. And that's the secret to these different conditions.

[48:36] Dr. Linda Bluestein: And that makes me feel a little bit better, because I feel like I definitely do that — but that's a hardwiring thing, it's not something I should feel guilty about. I've definitely noticed that about myself.

[48:52] Ashok Gupta: Oh yeah, I think for most people in the population, that's exactly what they experience. There's a negative bias in the brain towards things that hurt. And it's also to do with our own experiences. All of us are on a scale of self-love and self-esteem. So what happens is, whether it's 0 to 100%, anywhere along that scale, if someone criticizes us or puts us down or something doesn't happen the way we hoped, immediately it triggers unresolved pain from our past or unresolved criticism from our past that we experienced — which then feels anxiety-provoking, and depressive feelings come. There's a grief as well about the sudden loss of the state that we had before and the sudden new state. Therefore, this negative bias is endemic in the population. It's very, very normal.

[49:44] Dr. Linda Bluestein: Okay. And what would be a hypermobility hack that you could share with the listeners? I like to end every episode with a hypermobility hack.

[49:53] Ashok Gupta: Make friends with your body. Realize that when you are hypermobile, don't look at it as a bad thing or a good thing — it is just an attribute. And actually, people who have more bendy bodies also tend to be more sensitive, more empathic with the world around them. And therefore, it's a gift. And when we make friends with our body and the way that it is, and we use some of these brain retraining techniques, we actually get closer to our bodies and no longer see it as this annoying thing that we're trying to heal, or think there's something wrong with my body. Always see your body as doing the best it can and that it actually is healthy — it's just that it's overprotecting. When you do it in that way, then your whole perspective on your body shifts and you get into more of a frame set and a mindset of, I am healthy, I am healing.

[50:45] Dr. Linda Bluestein: Okay. And where can people find more about you and your programs online? And also please include any social media accounts — I think you have a Facebook page, so if you could let us know where we should be looking.

[50:56] Ashok Gupta: So the starting point — I'd love for people to experience a lot of what we're doing through our free trial. We have a 28-day free trial where people can download our free app or go to our website. So you go to GuptaProgram.com. And on our website, you can take the free trial. You can also see our success stories and our research. You can go to the App Store or Play Store and type in "Gupta Program Brain Retraining" and download the free app. I'd love for people to see the free videos we've got — we've got hours and hours of free videos, audios, and even some of the Daily Gupta Size is free as well.
[51:36] And then if people decide they want to become a premium member, they can take a membership — a 1-year membership — which gives them access to all of the content within the program in the app and the website. They also get the Daily Gupta Size. And until we have larger scale Phase 3 trials, we offer a 1-year money-back guarantee on the program. So people have got nothing to lose. If it doesn't work, no questions asked — you can return it, get your money back, and use that money for another treatment.
And you can also follow us on Instagram and Facebook. Our handle is Gupta Program — very simple to remember. There you can see a lot of our success stories. People are finding, especially on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube — our channels, which are all Gupta Program — that just watching the success stories of people really inspires us to recognize that we can heal, when you hear from real people and real stories.

[52:35] Dr. Linda Bluestein: Yeah, and that's amazing that you offer a free 28-day trial, but then also your money-back guarantee within that first year. People really can try this in a way that is — for lack of a better word — a really safe investment.

[52:55] Ashok Gupta: Yeah, absolutely. And our program is priced at $400 for a year subscription, so it's about, on average, about a dollar a day. And for that dollar a day, you're getting 15 hours of videos, about 30 to 40 audio exercises and brain retraining exercises, you're getting access to a community, but most importantly, you're getting the Daily Gupta Size. So every day you're getting sessions. We pay $10, $20, $30 for a yoga class, but here you're getting nervous system regulation and brain retraining every day included in that dollar a day. For us, it's incredible value, and we keep it at a low level because many people have been through chronic illness for years, haven't worked, and spend so much money. So we try to keep the cost at something that's appropriate and reasonable for most people.

[53:42] Dr. Linda Bluestein: And that leads me to a follow-up question, which I should have thought to ask earlier. Is there a certain period of time after which — if someone's had chronic illness for 10 years, 20 years, 30 years — this kind of program is not very likely to be successful? Or have you seen success even in people who've been ill for a really long time?

[54:06] Ashok Gupta: So this is where we get entrenched in illness and we become identified with our illness if we've had it 5, 10, 20 years. And the great thing about neuroplasticity is that our brains are always neuroplastic. People in their 70s and 80s can learn to dance and rewire their brain. And it reminds me of a case study I remember — a guy in New Zealand. He was 82. He had fibromyalgia, pain, and Lyme for about 30 years. And he decided to try our program. He did it and got 80 to 90% well.

[54:41] Dr. Linda Bluestein: Wow.

[54:42] Ashok Gupta: What are you going to do with your life now? I mean, obviously when you're 82 or 83, there's only so much energy you're going to have. But he said, well, I'm going to travel the world. I'm going to do all the things I've always wanted to do in life. And I thought, wow — if a person in his early 80s can heal and rewire his brain, we can all do it. Our brains have that capacity. And that is the promise of this.

[54:58] Dr. Linda Bluestein: Yeah, that's really, really amazing. And I often try to help people find scams — I often say if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. But here we're talking about something that requires a certain amount of effort on your part. This is not something where you wave a magic wand and everything's going to be better. It really does seem like an absolutely incredible way for people to improve their health in a way that addresses those root problems and is more sustained and gives them tools that they can use throughout the rest of their life.

[56:51] Ashok Gupta: Yeah. And that is the thing about this — we don't want people to become complacent. So once they heal, we encourage people to use these tools and techniques for the rest of their life to keep their nervous system calm. And that is the idea of holistic living. It's not a sickness industry where we get ill, take a pill, and we're back to normal. This is an investment in our mental, physical, and emotional health. And dare I say, spiritual health as well, because within our program, whatever our belief systems are — whether we're religious, spiritual, or atheist — connecting with our spiritual nature, our representation of love, a higher power, all of these things can be very useful in being able to make us feel safe in a crazy world.

[56:51] Dr. Linda Bluestein: Yeah, most definitely. And with that fee that you mentioned, so somebody could do that for a year — could they do it for a year and a half, could they do it for 2 years, or do they have to pay for the second year?

[56:51] Ashok Gupta: Yeah, so it's a 1-year subscription. After a year, there would then be a renewal fee for the following year. But included within that, they get 3 webinar series, they get the Daily Gupta Size, and access to all the content and community. So yeah, that's how it works.

[56:53] Dr. Linda Bluestein: Okay. Well, that's amazing. And that is a pretty minimal fee for the incredible amount of things that you get, and given how much people are already spending on their health. If you can avoid a copay for a surgery or something like that, especially if you haven't met your deductible, it's going to be a lot more than that.

[57:18] Ashok Gupta: Oh yeah. I mean, this is essentially often the price of one consultation with an expert — $300 to $400. So you're getting that and an entire year of support with clinical evidence. But yeah, you're almost persuading me to charge more now. No, that is the point — we've kept it low because we know people don't have a lot of funds and we just want to focus on getting people well.

[57:43] Dr. Linda Bluestein: You're trying to make it as accessible as possible, which is great. And especially — I want to point out again about the 28-day free trial and the 1-year money-back guarantee. That's why I make the podcast free, because I want it to be accessible to everyone, and I know that not everyone can afford to come see me one-on-one. But again, you have the 1-year money-back guarantee. So even if people are saying, gosh, I don't know if I can even afford that — if you can figure out how to pay for the program and it doesn't work, then you can ask for your money back. That's an amazing thing that you offer.

[58:20] Ashok Gupta: Yeah, thank you.

[58:22] Dr. Linda Bluestein: Okay. Well, you have been listening to the Bendy Bodies with the Hypermobility MD Podcast, and your guest today was Ashok Gupta. Thank you so very much for coming on the Bendy Bodies Podcast today and sharing your vast knowledge and wisdom with the audience. I think a lot of people are really going to benefit from this conversation.

[58:40] Ashok Gupta: Thank you so much. It's been an absolute pleasure.

[58:40] Dr. Linda Bluestein: Thank you for listening to this week's episode of the Bendy Bodies with the Hypermobility MD Podcast. Visit our new website at bendybodiespodcast.com where you can now view guest profiles and show notes with links to products and journal articles. Leave me a comment, sign up for updates, leave a review or a voicemail, and access the podcast on your favorite player, all directly from our website. You may hear your voicemail in a future episode where we answer your question or dive into your gracious feedback. Follow us on Instagram at bendy_buddies. We love seeing your posts and stories, so be a buddy and engage our community by using the hashtag bendy buddy. That's hashtag B-E-N-D-Y B-U-D-D-Y. You can also find me, Dr. Linda Bluestein, on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn @HypermobilityMD. Visit hypermobilitymd.com for information about medical services and one-on-one coaching. This podcast is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute the practice of medicine or other professional healthcare services, including the giving of medical advice. No doctor-patient relationship is formed. Do not disregard or delay obtaining medical advice for any medical condition you have. Opinions shared are that of the guest and do not necessarily represent the views of the host or any particular organization. Sponsorship of the podcast does not necessarily mean an endorsement. Thank you for being a part of our community, and we'll catch you next time on the Bendy Bodies Podcast.