Why Cognitive Symptoms May Persist After Mold Exposure

Opening Hope and Podcast Introduction 0:00

Healing is possible. Like we see it every day in our clinic and we'd never give anyone false hope. We see time and time again. And now we have an independent randomized controlled trial, which is a gold standard in medicine, showing that just through brain retraining, nothing else that was changed in someone's life. They're able to have their symptoms after six months. So this is to give everyone hope that healing is. You can heal from mold. you can get your life back and leave this behind you. You've tried everything, you've changed your diet, detoxed, even moved homes, and yet you still feel sick.

Headaches, brain fog, fatigue that no one can explain. What if it's not you? What is your environment? Welcome to Mold Microtoxins and More. I'm John Bode. Each week, I sit down with experts uncovering how mold, microtuxins, environmental exposures affect your health and what real recovery looks like. Let's get into today's conversation. The information provided on the Mold Pros Podcast is for educational and informational purposes only and is not intended as medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment.

Listening to the podcast does not create a doctor-patient or professional-client relationship between you and the Podcast host, guest, and Mould Pros. The content shared should not be used as a substitute for professional medical advise, diagnoses, treatment, And always seek the medical advice of your physician or qualified healthcare provider with any questions you may have regarding the medial condition, potential mold exposure, or health concerns. Never disregard professional medical advise or delay in seeking it because of something you heard on this podcast.

And while we strive to provide accurate and up-to-date information, we make no representations or warranties of any kind, expressed or implied, about the completeness, accuracy, reliability, and suitability of all the information discussed. A guest's experience and outcomes discussed on this podcast are individual cases and should not be considered typical results. Your situation may differ significantly. As always, if you think you have a medical emergency, call your doctor or 911 immediately. By listening to the Mole Pros podcast, you acknowledge that you understood this disclosure.

Welcome to another episode of Mold Microtoxins and More, where we explore how our homes, our workplaces, and broader environments may influence chronic illness, And where bring together physicians, researchers, environmental professionals, innovative thinkers working to improve patient outcomes. I'm your host, John Bode, co-founder of The Mould Pros. Today's conversation is particularly important for people who've taken meaningful steps to address mold or other environmental exposures, but they continue to experience severe fatigue, cognitive difficulties, pain sensitivities, or others multi-system symptoms.

Our guest, Ashok Gupta, founder and CEO of the Guptah program, developed myalgic encephalomyelitis, that is a mouthful, and chronic fatigue syndrome while studying at Cambridge University.

Ashok Guptau2019s Personal ME/CFS Recovery Story 2:53

He described using his own neurological research in brain retraining techniques as part of his recovery, later developing the Gupta program as a structured neuroplasticity and nervous system regulation program. The program was released more broadly in 2007 and has since been studied with people with ME and CFS, fibromyalgia, and long COVID. Ashok, welcome to Mold Microtoxins and More. Yes, I'm delighted to be here. Thank you for the invitation, John. Well, we're certainly glad to have you. This is going to a great conversation.

We have 17 years in treating folks with environmental illness. And oftentimes there's an expectation that after their homes are successfully remediated that they immediately start filling well. So, and that's oftentimes just not the case. It takes some time. I think the conversation today is gonna be really relevant. Before we dig into it and the program, we'd like to maybe if you could share with our listeners a little bit about your personal experience that helped drive the work that you've developed.

Yes. So it all started for me. Often we call this journey pain to purpose. In the late 90s, I was studying as an undergrad at Cambridge and I suffered from a chronic health condition. I suffer from ME as you mentioned in the intro and chronic fatigue syndrome as it's sometimes known. For me, as a young man in my early 20s it was like a brick wall in front of me because All of a sudden I went from someone who was full of energy, full vitality, doing lots of things, studying hard, partying hard to somebody who suddenly felt fatigued, exhausted.

I couldn't read the words on a page, I could not go to my lectures, and I was sometimes crawling to the bathroom because I had no energy. And I go from doctor to doctor and they would say, we don't know what you've got, so we have no treatment for it, you might have it for the rest of your life, goodbye. And that started my lifelong quest to try and understand these chronic unexplained health conditions. And, you know, in my worst moments, I made a contract with the universe and I said, if I can just get well, right, 30% better, 50%, ideally 100%, I will dedicate the rest of my life to helping others with these conditions, because I'd met hundreds of others who were, huge amount of suffering that was going on.

And I managed to then do some research into brain neurology, neuroscience, and in an ad hoc way, I found some brain retraining things in my own. experience that helped. And then I retrained my brain, got 100% better, and then set up a clinic to treat others. Since then, we've been on a real 25-year journey to get to the point where we have now got seven clinical studies. We have an app, a whole infrastructure for people. Of course, now we're working a lot with mold patients, which we'll talk about.

That's been my 25 year journey from that pain that I experienced to now my life purpose. Wow. So there are a relatively healthy college student, university, and all of a sudden develop these chronic symptoms. Was there a particular illness or infection or stressor that actually triggered the condition? It definitely was a combination of overdoing it, so mentally, physically, emotionally pushing myself too hard, and then a virus coming along. And I'm sure many people can relate to that, that often these types of chronic conditions follow a viral, a bacterial infection, or indeed a mold, exposure to severe mold at some point as the initial trigger, but then it's like there's a long tail of the illness and it then just

How Mold, Stress, and the Nervous System Interact 6:32

continues and continues. So for me, it was quite intense virus. Got it, got it. A lot of folks that are exposed in these moldy buildings, they get these multi-symptom type of situations where they're not feeling well and it kind of kicks off a lot the symptoms that they have. Can you explain how the brain and the nervous system kind fits into all that picture of that chronic illness and really why some people may remain chronically unwell even after that exposure has been eliminated. And perhaps even what we hear frequently too, a third question, some folks in the home are typically fine.

So maybe the spouse or the children and perhaps the husband doesn't experience the same things. Can you touch on those three items? Yeah, absolutely. Some big questions. We'll jump into these deep questions here. I don't shy away from these kind of harder concepts because we have quite an interesting hypothesis that I'd love for people to experience. So to explain all of this, I like to start with the biggest question of all, why are we here? Now, that can be a big philosophical discussion, but let's look at the science.

So from a scientific perspective, we're here because our brain, our bodies, or nervous system, they have evolved to help us survive. So we are survival machines. From a perspective of evolutionary biology, We are here to adapt to our environment, survive, pass on our genes to the next generation, and so on. And sometimes what happens in that process is that our system can err on the side of caution and prioritize survival over wellness. That's the key principle here is survival is more important than wellness to our brain.

And our brains makes all of these decisions about how we respond to the environment. So now taking that as a starting point. Imagine that, as you say, in a home, there could be a family, five or six people, and nobody at that point is responding to any of the mould in the house or the environment. Now, it could mean that then one person has an intense exposure to mold. Now it could be in the home, it can be outside the house, and often we find, I don't know if you see this John, but it's often combined with a period of intensity in their lives.

It could stress, life events, unresolved emotions, everyone's stressed to some extent these days with modern life. So it is some kind of stressor. What then happens is The brain at that point in time is responding normally to the mold, which is there will be that reactivity to mold and that's perfectly normal. But then what happens is if our system is under threat, our body can make a decision or our brain can a make decision that right, mold is not only just something to respond to at very high levels, I'm going to response to it at every level.

So initially, a hundred percent exposure creates a 100% reaction. But imagine, because the brain is efficient, 10% exposure can create 100 percent reaction, 5% percent explosion can 100 reaction So it's not that We're saying it's either in the body and real or it all in their minds. There's a third way of looking at this, which is our nervous system can become programmed to try to protect us from mold, but it can take that job almost too seriously and then start responding to very micro amounts of mold that other people's bodies wouldn't respond to.

And that's the idea that there is a conditioning event in the brain, a learning event, in a brain where the, brain is never the same again. It's now learned something new, which is to be hypersensitive to any aspects of mold or any environmental reminders of molds. Anything in environment that reminds it that maybe mold is present, it will respond to. And a way to think about this, and we use this analogy called the fairy tale analogy, uh, Which I think really lands for some of the people. So let me, let, me describe it using this analysis.

Imagine you are king or queen of your kingdom. In this case, you'd be King John, as a nice ring to it, King Jon of you kingdom, all right? And your body is your Kingdom. And you have two defenders of that Kingdom, the army and the Navy, just like every country does. So your army is you nervous system, and that's all the information flows in the instructional system of the body. Secondly, have your immune system which is the navy. Yeah. So nervous and immune systems, the two main systems to defend.

But now imagine in your kingdom, there's been a drought. Yeah, so because of the droughts, The army is weaker. The Navy is weak. Uh, and in that weakened state, army and Navy generals are a bit concerned. They think if an invading army comes now, we may not survive because we've, We're in a draft. This is a difficult situation. Now imagine an invading army does come over the hill, and in this case, it would be mold, the mold toxins, right? they come over the hill as an invading army. And your army and navy, your information system and the navy which is all the different cells and chemicals that defend your system, they start firing off their weapons of war to fight off the mould.

To first of all respond to it, detoxify your body from the mold. That's what your bodies essentially trying to do and your brain's trying do is trying mitigate the effects of the molds, which are toxic to the body. Now it does that, but imagine it becomes traumatized by that experience of war. Just like war veterans who come back from a war zone, if they were really under threat and thought they we're going to lose the battle, they come to civilian life, But they are still very tense in the body.

They're still reactive to things. Yeah. And we see that in day-to-day life. So now even our brain and our nervous system and immune system can become traumatised by the experience, of trying to fight off the mold, invasion as it were. Then what happens is those army and Navy generals think, hmm, I wonder if the mold spores are hiding behind the forest or hiding by in that hill or hide in over there. They could still be present in the body. What we need to do is keep firing off our weapons of war.

The missiles, the arrows, so on, and so. And so now the nervous system and immune system gets hyper triggered. And that's what we see in clients is that we notice that the nervous system is overtriggered. So people have heart palpitations, they have temperature changes, anxiety that often accompanies the condition, difficulty in relaxing and regulating the system. But secondly, we have all the immune systems that accompany. having mould reactivity, the classic science, right? And the system gets stuck in that approach.

And then what happens is those arrows and missiles start falling back into the kingdom. So the Kingdom itself starts experiencing inflammation. build up of toxins. So the detoxification system, in this case, the sewage system of the kingdom stops working. This starts being accumulation of heavy metals, of mycotoxins, et cetera, start building up, building, up building in the system because the sewerage systems is not working, and then opportunistic spies start flourishing. We keep extending the analogy, but imagine opportunistically Spies start flourishing, so then opportunistic infections that can include Lyme, that could include HHV, bacteria start to flourish in the Kingdom because now there's no funding for the Secret Service to get rid of spies in Kingdom.

And the more weak that our kingdom becomes, the More the army and Navy start firing off more weapons of war, more Weapons of War. And so do you see we go from an acute illness, which is just that initial exposure to now because those army Navy generals become traumatized, they start over triggering the nervous system and immune system, creating the very symptoms that they keep responding to. and now what happens is the Army and navy generals, if a horse by itself comes over the hill they think aha this could be mold again quick fire off the weapons of war so now the system becomes hypersensitive to any little thing that comes out of the Hill even if it's not actually a threat to the kingdom but they've just learned that and then they come to their weekly meeting with King John and they say King The kingdom's under threat.

Keep supplying us all the resources of the kingdom, so the metal, the corn, and the clean drinking water. That needs to be channeled to the army and navy because we've got to defend the Kingdom. If we fall, The Kingdom falls and we're all lost. And you as King John think, well, that makes sense. All the resources need to go to the army and navy. And that's where the body starts becoming weaker and weaker. We see in mold illness, you then start having energy deficits. You can't think clearly, cognitive difficulties, memory problems, sluggishness in the system, gut issues.

The gut's now not functioning correctly. It can digest the food, right? And so on and so, inflammation throughout the brain and the This is where the system then gets stuck in that state because the brain says, this is the right thing to do. We've got to defend the kingdom because number one is survival. The kingdom has to survive. But obviously we can see from this setup that that is not optimal. It's just because our system is over-defending. And so when the weekly meeting happens with your generals, your army and navy generals they say, King John, the kingdoms under threat.

brain retraining and neuroplasticity is saying to them, my dear generals, you have done a wonderful job in defending the kingdom,

Neuroplasticity and the Three Ru2019s of Brain Retraining 16:58

but the war is over. You can stand out. And they won't believe you the first time or the second time, or third time. Because what they'll say to you, King John, is You need to stop these invaders from coming over the hill. We need reduce the toxins in our environment. Reduce the mold in the environment is what they're thinking. And that is true. So both things are true, we want to reduce toxins coming into the kingdom, as in threats coming in. But I think more importantly, we want to get the army and Navy, the immune system and nervous system to stand down so everything can come back to normal.

And brain retraining is when those army, Navy generals finally get that message. They won't believe you the first time or the second time, or third time. But the purpose of neuroplasticity is that repetition. So eventually the Army and the Navy Generals, they get their message, They stand out and realize that we are safe. There's no threat from the mold anymore. The detoxification systems start kicking in, the sewage is now released from the system. The body comes back to normal and health and energy return.

And that's what we see time and time again with our clients. So that in a nutshell, how we, see the hypothesis and, and why people, one person in the family might react to mold, but the others don't. You've cleaned, repainted and replaced filters and still you're not getting better. Headache, fatigue, brain fog. The doctors can't explain it, but your environment can. At The Mold Pros, we specialize in uncovering what's hidden in plain sight. Our environmental testing looks beyond surface mold, identifying bacteria, volatile organic compounds, and even micro toxins in the air that you breathe.

Then we correlate those results with your clinical data, showing how your space may be affecting your health. Next, we use our patented remediation process to safely remove toxins, restore balance, and prevent them from returning. It's more than just a cleanup. it's a science-based system designed to help your body heal by healing the environment first. If you're ready to breathe freely again, visit TheMoldPros.com and schedule your free consultation. Because wellness doesn't start in the doctor's office, it starts where you live.

That is a great analogy, so it really drives it home. So essentially our bodies, we get stuck in this fight or flight natural response. And, um, it's, what's helped us, you know, to get to where we're at today as a, uh, as species, right? Uh, but it, the brain gets, gets stuck there. Oftentimes we hear, well, almost daily, I'm the canary in the coal mine, So I can pick up. you know, any moldy building, we hear that from our clients all the time. And so what you're talking about certainly makes sense of why that is the case.

For those who don't, on this point, I just, just what, you said there is really fascinating because I think some of the barriers that people come up against when they think about the work that we're doing here in brain retraining and neuroplasticity, their first responses quite a resistance that, oh, you're saying it's in my mind. You're, saying, it is not real. That's not fair. And you are encouraging me to be in moldy environments. that's, not right. you, are putting me under threat. and what we like to do is say that that is, that not really actually what were saying at all.

When they are saying that it not in the mind, what was saying is a real physical reaction that your body is experiencing. Right. But, and this is the big but. A lot of that has been learned as an overprotection mechanism. So yes, if you could 100% emulate mold from your entire environment, probably your system wouldn't react. But that's not practically possible in the world. You know, we live in climates, unless you go and live a caravan in Arizona, which is not the solution, because then you're teaching your brain to be even more defensive.

We have to live practically in a world, and therefore if we can teach your to normalize a normal level of mold in your environment that your other family members are also experiencing but not reacting to, then that can be a better state of being. And some people will come back to us and say, ah, but we've tested positive for this detoxification gene that says our bodies don't detoxify correctly or so on. Once again, these are risk factors. but not determining factors, because we know that people who have that same gene that doesn't detoxify don't necessarily go on to having mold illness.

So the point here is, it's a both end approach. Reduce the environmental stimuli, but at the same time, also realize that your brain can be trained to go back to a normal level of reactivity. And it takes us a long time to get people to kind of get their heads around that because they're told time and time again, mold is a problem. Get it out of your environment. Otherwise there's no way you can heal. and here actually there is third way through. Yeah. No, that's fantastic. For those that are listening, we keep talking about neuroplasticity.

Could you explain that perhaps in layman's terms so that everyone could understand? Sure. Yeah, so medicine over the last couple of hundred years is all about what we can measure. So measurement is what it's based upon. We can the levels of enzymes in your body. how your gut responds, we can measure chemicals in the cells, right? So that's what it can measured. And that is why we call it, for me medicine is treating the hardware, but the brain is the software, the Brain and the nervous system. But until recently, The brain was a black box.

So to some extent medicine thought, well, We know that there is a system that Is controlling all of this, But we aren't necessarily beholden to that, we don't have the systems to really understand that. So we're going to just not have that in the equation. Then along came brain scans over the last 20 to 30 years, and we were able to look into the brain and realize there's a huge amount going on in their brain. And the. Brain is not fixed. It's constantly changing, constantly rewiring itself. and that is the idea of neuroplasticity.

so neuro is, the neurons, a nervous system, plasticity is this idea that it's. Constantly changing and plastic. And therefore, what that means is that we used to think perhaps our personality is fixed after childhood or our physiology or the way that will respond to our environment. The neuroplasticity says, no, you are constantly changing, constantly rewiring. And if we can take advantage of that, we then change aspects of our personalities that choose to change. We can change the aspects about physiology and our reactivity to the environment and so that's the promise of neuro-plastics.

Very good. Yeah. I think there's, there is a large population or percentage of folks that are going through this, this journey of environmental illness that they're told, Hey, it's all in your head. You're crazy. We hear that frequently as well. And it, and this helps address some of that. That's not, that's necessarily the case. The brain actually, if someone walks into a room where maybe they had an exposure. So even though that exposure could be gone, but they walk into the room or a building or.

some sort of smell that could actually trigger the brain again to get into that fight or flight type of condition. So that's what's happening. Exactly. So it's really important something you mentioned that it can either be the mold or the toxin itself, or it could be characteristics that tell the brain that might be present. It could the smell of it alone that can then trigger the response. And to give an example of this, they've done studies on, for instance, hay fever. We believe hay has a similar process that's going on in the brain, a learnt condition response.

So there can be times when someone doesn't have hay fever, and then all of a sudden, one summer, for no obvious reason, someone can develop a resistance to pollen, sensitivity to pollens, right, with hayfever. Now, why is that? Because Once again, something which is normal, it's now made a decision to be sensitive and to react to. So this is something that we can see in a number of different types of allergic type responses. Interesting.

Research Results on Mold, Lyme, and Long COVID 25:48

And I think it is important to call out. This is not voluntary. The individual isn't doing this for sympathy. No one would want to experience these symptoms because they certainly choose to, right? This says, this was the brain. telling the body, here's, what we're going to do. So I think that's just an important call out for folks. That's perfectly clear for everyone. As we talk about the brain retraining, it sounds a little theoretical, right? Until people understand exactly what the steps are.

Can you share a bit about, the program, and what it tells? Yeah, so brain re-training we say there are three R's of the programs. Now, the first R of the program is what we call regulating the nervous system. And the way this works is, imagine your brain is like a field. Yeah. In that field, there is a river running through that fields. That river is the channel which has decided, keep reacting to mold, even small microscopic amounts of mold. Keep reacting. To mold and that river, we now need to re-divert.

We need to divert it into a different direction, which is, I am safe. There is no threat. We've got to redirect that river. But now imagine that that field, the ground is frozen. It's hard. Now, we're not going to be able to re-direct the river if the the grounds frozen, and the groundbreaking frozen represents the brain not being neuroplastic enough. And that's where the idea of regulating our nervous system comes in, because if our system is stressed and tight, it will stop us from rewiring the brain.

So the first is we use different techniques that suit each person to be able to calm the nervous systems down. That's the 1st R. Then the 2nd R is, we need to dig a new channel along the right-hand path. And, that is the Brain Retraining. The way that we do that is we've got a number of different techniques. So we incorporate somatic retraining. How do we somatically train the brain using the body to go on the right-hand path? Then we have a more cognitive type aspect, which is how do you train your brain to keep digging that right hand path and imagine that it's safe and well, even if there is small amounts of the stimuli present.

And through doing that, eventually we dig the right-hand path again and again. So now the water starts flowing down the left- hand path. And eventually the left hand path grows soil over it and flowers, and then the brain has learned a new neural pathway. Just like learning a musical instrument or learning to drive, right? It's something that isn't cognitive. You don't sit there on your first driving lesson thinking, Right, if I'm really positive, I want to learn to You have to practice. So it's using the steering wheel, pressing the gas, the brake, checking your mirrors.

And initially you're doing it deliberately, but eventually it becomes automatic. That's when your brain learns a conditioned response, an automatic response. It is with this that through repetition, you are able to train new neural pathways that enable your brains to then learn that it is safe in those types of exposures and environments. But now here's the crucial thing, the third R of the program which is often missed. We call re-engaging with joy. Now what that means is we need to now learn how to keep our nervous system calm.

And this is where we go deeper into supporting people with recognizing their stress triggers, recognizing which aspects of their personality may make them more anxious or stressed than perhaps the average person or perhaps compared to who they choose to be. And recognizing that because we want people to get well, but stay well. And people find that a really powerful part because then they're able to make sure that when stress comes, they can recognize it. They can keep their nervous system calm for the rest of their lives so that the sensitivity doesn't come back.

And that's really important because it can become easy to become complacent. And then your brain can start going down the left hand path again, the water can stop flowing that way. And we want to keep it on the right hand paths. That's where that third R of the program comes in. So those are the three R's. The way it's presented is in an app. We have an Apple, it is done online. It's all about community because we think people heal in community. There are weekly webinars with myself when we go through the content.

There's daily live sessions. This has been the game changer. So live on Zoom every day, one of our coaches goes on and goes through the brain retraining and the nervous system regulations. You have the variety, the accountability, and a sense of community. We have a couple of hundred people going on a day. And then we have videos and audios and all the exercises people need. It's all beautifully set out in an app. That's how the process works of how people can go forward with their healing. Yeah, I enjoyed I visited your website probably a month or so ago and enjoyed watching.

You have some really great videos from folks who have been through the program and how impactful the Program has been on their lives. It's it's and we'll make sure we get those links for everybody so they can do the same thing. We were talking a little bit earlier before we started hearing you have a study that you've undertaken. Can you share a little bit about that? Yeah, definitely. So we've now, you know, in this area, as you can imagine, because we're not a pharmaceutical. Yeah. The medical system is set up to test pharmaceuticals.

It's very difficult to get the funding, the process and everything to getting studies published. But somehow through the grace of the universe, we managed to publish now seven studies. And we have done studies on fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome, long COVID and various other conditions. And we were very interested in studying mold because mold is something that seems to be increasing in the population and more and people experiencing it. And so with the support of two big names in this area, so Dr.

Jill Krister, Dr Neil Nathan, who are obviously very well known and respected in the field. With their support, we launched an independent randomized control trial on mold patients. And this was no small study. So this is actually around 130 patients, which is a very large sample size, actually. I think it's probably going to end up being one of the largest mold studies ever conducted. And we took those two groups and one group, we gave them treatment as usual. And the second group we give them the Gupta program on top for three months.

We have been really astounded at the results that we found. So what we've found is that after three-months of using the program, there was a 33% reduction in mold scores. This is using a new questionnaire called the mold IQ questionnaire that's been developed by Dr. Jill Christa. And after six months, we saw close to a 50% reduction in mold symptom scores. which in a randomized controlled trial, you know, cause there'll be a lot of people who aren't really engaged or aren t really using treatment.

So to get a halving across on average across the board was a very, very good result. Imagine after six months, halting of mold symptomatology. And also in that study, we saw after three months or 33% improvement in quality of life. 30% reduction in depression and anxiety and so on. But I think the key headline figure is there is close to a harbinger of mold scores after six months of using this approach. And it's complimentary to the approach that people might be taking in terms of diets and binders and various other interventions.

Great people like Dr. Neil Nathan, they actually say that the nervous system regulation and brain retraining needs to come first. unless we do that piece, the system is dysregulated and it can't find its equilibrium and the body will react to medications and supplements. So that was a brand new study. We've just done a mold. That study has now been sent for publication or is in the process of being sent to publication at the time of this recording. And then we hope to have that published and then hopefully that will generate a lot more interest in this approach because, of course, people will be sceptical because of what we've been traditionally told about mould and this is putting on its head and saying we have the power to actually heal ourselves and I think this also related to lime.

disease. So why do we often get mold and Lyme disease associated? What's going on there? And I think one can be the trigger for the other potentially. But in our model, Lyne disease can become an opportunistic infection. Remember, we said that if the army and navy are fighting a war over here, All of the resources are getting channeled over here, but imagine there's another army over in a different part of a kingdom that's slowly allowing people into the kingdom and therefore it's like an opportunistic infection that keeps proliferating that isn't being dealt with fully and that can also contribute to symptoms, which is why so many mold patients and Lyme patients, why there is so much crossover is because one can potentially be fueling the other.

Yeah, there are studies that have been published that show that those, I don't know if it's chicken and an egg thing, if the mold, the microtoxins suppress the immune system enough to where individuals were more susceptible to the tick bite. But yeah, often those two things do go hand in hand. Dr. Bill Nathan, we've had him on recordings before. In fact, go to our website, he has an endorsement for our enzyme process for removing mold from a structure. But it's not always just mole, right? In going through, you've also had some experiences with this with long COVID, which is becoming an increasingly kind of hot topic to talk about.

We did a lot of medical conferences and we just got back from two the last three weeks, actually, and long Covid is being spoken of quite a bit. Can you share a little bit about that as well? Yes. So what's for us is so interesting is that we have one program But it works for long COVID and fibromyalgia and mold if administered in a very similar way, which shows us that all of these conditions are a cluster of symptoms, but the underlying pathology, the underline issue we believe is the same in the brain where the braindeads learn something new.

So it is with long Covid. Imagine a similar thing. The army and Navy are there. the kingdom is weak. Covid infection comes over the hill. Covid-19 comes in, it invades the body. but the soldiers are weak and they do their best to valiantly fight off the COVID infection. But even once it's gone or 90% gone, or close to a hundred percent gone. Or maybe it has gone completely. They are still fighting as if it is present. So they keep triggering the nervous system and immune system, which then creates the very inflammation and the various symptoms that are characteristic of potentially long COVID and around and round and we go.

Once again, it was a similar process that it can feel like, well, perhaps the COVID infection is still in my body. It may or may not be. Yeah, I think the jury's out on that. But the point is the majority of symptoms are being created by our own nervous and immune system hyper-activated. And that's what then causes the symptoms of long COVID in our humble view.

Getting Started with the Gupta Program 37:38

We're not saying absolutely, but in a hypothesis. That for us is most obvious explanation. Yes, for some COVID patients, there may be scarring in the lungs. There may inflammation in the blood vessels. We know that that is the case, but that's still a characteristic of our own immune system getting over-triggered because a lot of the inflammation comes from that source versus necessarily directly from the COVID itself. If we think back to the days when the Covid infection was around, the people who died from COVID, unfortunately, Often, they died from the own excessive inflammation in the system where there was a cytokine storm, where the immune system got hyperactive, over-triggered cytocines across the body, inflamed the lungs so much that the lung's then tightened and someone couldn't breathe and they needed oxygen and so on.

So we can see it's a both and situation. It's not COVID causes these symptoms. COVID plus our own reaction to the COVID then creates a response in the body. And that response itself can be hyperactive if the buddy thinks it can't cope. Yeah. Interesting. You know, we talk a lot about mass cell activation, right? With these exposures. So I think this actually helps put that into a little bit better framework. You talked about your work. No, we have a lot of patients with mast cell activation. That's been their diagnosis.

And once again, depending on which doctor you go to and who you speak to in which country you're in, you could get a diagnosis of chronic fatigue syndrome or mold illness or mastel activation, or it could be something else. All of these things are describing a different aspect of the condition. So the mast cells essentially are those cells which are defending essentially the kingdom. And so if someone gets diagnosed in mast cell activation, it's essentially a description of what are the mediators of the process, which is the mast cells being hyper-activated.

And then mold illness would be then a discussion of, what the original trigger is and then cluster of symptoms that result and so on. So we're just using different words to describe aspects of process. Just different labels. That makes sense. So this is so complimentary, I think. It's not in competition at all with someone going through, you know, traditional or any other sort of treatment for these environmental exposures. This is a compliment to that. So for someone who's listening, how do they actually, if you can share, How do we find out more about the Gupta program?

Is it, are you partnering with healthcare providers like Dr. Jill Christa, Dr Bill Nathan? Can they reach out to you directly? What's the best pathway forward for them? Yeah, so people can come directly to us. So they can, come to our website, which is GuptaProgram.com, G-U-P-T-A, Guptaprogram dot com. They can go to the app store or play store and download the free app. And we've got loads of free resources on there. There's a free trial. You can on watch lots of videos, get lots information. If you ever never want to take the program, that's okay.

We just want help you understand what may be causing your condition. And if at any point people find that they want to go then ahead with the full program, the four three months program. then they can purchase our program, which gives you a one-year subscription. Because we think it's not about just people thinking, right, I need to get in there and do it quickly. Sometimes it takes people time to retrain the brain. And so you get a full one year subscription to the program. Until we get the final big phase three trials with thousands of patients, we offer a 1-Year Money Back Guarantee.

So someone can buy the programme, use it. If they get no benefit, no questions asked, you can get your money back. and use that for another treatment. So that's our promise to people is that they have a one year money back guarantee. And also, I think what's really important here is people recognize that It's designed for whatever level you're at. So for some people, they may be really home-bound, there's not much they can do, right through to people who work in full time. Whatever level your at, the program can be taken at your own pace, step-by-step, to help retrain the brain at a level that's obviously right for somebody.

And what we'll do for your audience as a special gift is we will give a 10% discount to all your audiences. If they use John 10, So John and then the numerals 10, then they will get a 10% discount on the program as well and the one year money guarantee. So hopefully that can support people in making this decision because we want to make it as risk free as possible. We want as many people to try this as possibly. And yeah, we hope people go onto our website and experience all the free stuff that is there.

Perfect. You cannot beat that. When should they actually start? So if someone has, for example, is it after they've received treatment from their doctor, after the have the mold remediate from your home? What have you found to be the most successful time to begin the process? Yeah, it's interesting. In the past, we used to the default. So people had done all the other things first. not found their healing and then come to us as a final resort. And we actually say if you bring this forward in your timeline and do it as early as possible when you first get the symptoms or first diagnosed or have that inclination, that's good and this can happen in parallel to the other things that somebody does.

Now of course, if your doing other thing in it may be difficult to know what's worked, but it doesn't matter because you just want to get we just wanna get you well and help you get well. So a lot of people, and as I said, there are many doctors, including doctors on A3 say, look, we've got to regulate the nervous system first, before we do the binders before, supplements and the treatments because the system is too dysregulated. It's not going to take it on board. So I feel like actually doing it first could be really beneficial than seeing what else you need to do.

And in parallel, you can obviously have the remediation of the home. I think there's three aspects. There's environmental remediation. Sure, we encourage people to go ahead with that. Secondly, there's the bodily aspects in terms of the supplements, the diets, treatments, medical treatments you might have with a functional doctor or naturopath. And then thirdly, is the brain retraining. And I think all three could be, or certainly the environmental remediation combined with the brain retraining might be a good start.

And then once you've got to a certain level, then your body is ready to have the supplements and look at what is missing out on. Very good. So we always like to offer some hope. You know, when folks are going down this journey and like I mentioned, we watch the videos so we know that there's been some great testimonials. Is there one particular case, obviously without naming names or that sort of thing, but a particular, um, case that, uh, or individual that you work with, you could, spotlight to give hope to others.

Yeah, absolutely. There's so many, I'm trying to think of one in particular that summarises what we've spoken about. I think there was a lady I remember who had had the complete suite of different conditions. So she'd had chronic fatigue syndrome combined with mold illness combined, with chronic Lyme. And it had it for about, I think, 17 years and had been from Pillar to Pose trying to figure out what's going on, et cetera. It had kind of just given up and was very skeptical when she started our program, but just did it out of sheer desperation.

For her, she had a real resistance to doing our program, which was, hang on, you're saying it's in my mind. That's not fair. It's my physical environment. There's mold. I need to get rid of the mold, but we encouraged her to say, okay, just put your skepticism to one side and just engage with the program. And she did the program for a number of months and she was absolutely amazed and almost couldn't believe it because there's a kind of cognitive dissonance because you've had this belief system for all of your life that I have to get rid of mold.

Mold is the danger, mold is a threat. And suddenly she's improving. She got up to, after I think three months, she got to about 80 to 85% healing and recovery where she now only had a trace level of symptoms, could now tolerate most environments and was just like living life normally. It was such a beautiful story because this was like for us, somebody who had that skepticism didn't believe in it. And yet even with that, skepticism was able to heal. You know, and I think that's the point is that it doesn't matter what your belief system is.

Brain retraining neuroplasticity is very agnostic. It doesn' care. what your belief system is necessarily, what it cares about is saying, if you wish to change this, this is how you can change it. And then we'll give you this set of tools to be able to do that. So for us, that was a really beautiful story to see her kind of going back into normal life and being able live a normal and we said to her, What's important is you don't go back to that old belief mold is everywhere, it's a threat, and then getting to that siege mentality that there's nothing I can do, I'm under bombardment by this.

If you get into that state, you're going to tell your brain you are in danger, It's going then start responding to everything. So you now need to get to the confident state of no matter my environment, my body has the ability to detoxify itself. And when we're in fight or flight, or nervous system dysregulation or over inflammation, our own detoxification systems don't function correctly. right? Which then creates a self-fulfilling prophecy. So when we get our system balanced, it's our own best detoxifier and it can rid us of these things which are building up in the system.

I really appreciate you carving out time today. Again, I know this has been on the calendar for a while. I think it's a great conversation. It's going to shed light for folks that have been down this journey that've struggled. So I appreciate your carving time for this interview or this episode. We'll make sure that we get everything posted up, all the socials, and we'll post links to where folks can get in contact with you. So any closing comments, anything you'd like to leave our folks with? Yeah.

Look, what I want to give people that hope is no matter what the support groups have said, no manner what your doctor has said. No matter. You've been told. Healing is possible. Like we see it every day in our clinic and we'd never give anyone false hope. We see time and time again. And now we have an independent randomized controlled trial, which is a gold standard in medicine, showing that just through brain retraining, nothing else that was changed in someone's life, they were able to have their symptoms after six months.

So this is to give everyone hope that healing is. You can heal from mold. you can get your life back and leave this behind you. Absolutely. All right. Well, really appreciate it. And for those listening, thank you for listening from old micro toxins and more. Please subscribe to the podcast or more importantly, share it with someone that you think may benefit someone who's. going through this journey and may not, hope is not readily on the horizon for them. Maybe this can make a positive impact.

Your support really helps us out. So give us a thumbs up, refer us to your healthcare providers. You'll find all this information on our website. We'll make sure we get everything posted. I'm your co-founder of The Mold Pros and the host of Bold Microtoxins and More, John Bodhi. Until next time, remember, creating healthier life may require both a healthier environment and a body that can recognize that it can heal, once again, safely. Appreciate it. We'll talk to you soon. You've been listening to mold, mycotoxins and more with John Bodie.

If you're ready to take the next step towards a healthier home, follow the show and visit TheMoldPros.com for your free consultation. Because clean air is the first step to true healing.