Why Your Nervous System May Be Keeping Chronic Lyme Stuck

Opening on stress, immunity, and the podcast mission 0:00

When the nervous system is overstimulated with that stress, it can compromise our memory, our thinking, and our concentration. So it has an impact on everything. And then secondly, the immune system gets stuck in the on position and that can cause some of the more immunotype symptoms, which can include stiff joints, pain in Swollen glands, a flu-like feeling, brain fog, all those classic symptoms that we see that typically we may feel like, oh, there must be something in my body causing these symptoms, but actually it could be our own body's reaction to the pathogen, which is causing the vast majority of symptoms.

Hi, and welcome to the Lime Bites podcast, where we shine a light on the misunderstood science of Lyme and other vector borne diseases, as well as the truths that many still miss. I'm Dr. Mariah Hinchy, naturopathic physician and fellow of the Medical Academy of Pediatric Special Needs. I specialize in treating chronic Lyme disease, as well as other complex inflammatory conditions. In this podcast, we break down what's working and what is not. We share the facts that most people miss, challenge outdated thinking, and give both patients and practitioners the tools to heal smarter.

So let's get into it and change the way we heal Lyma. Welcome to another episode of the Lime Bytes podcast, Rebuilding Immunity, Reducing Inflammation, and Redefining Recovery. I'm your host, Dr. Maria Hinchey, naturopathic physician and fellow of The Medical Academy of Pediatrics and Special Needs, as well as the International Limes and Associated Diseases Society. If you've listened to this podcast before, You know that I believe lasting recovery from Lyme and other complex chronic illnesses requires much more than simply killing pathogens.

Why nervous system dysregulation drives chronic illness 1:51

We have to restore the terrain, and that means addressing everything that chronic infection and inflammation have disrupted along the way. And one piece of that terrain that i think is incredibly important but often too overlooked is the nervous system. Many of our patients have spent years, sometimes decades, searching for answers. They've been sick without knowing why. they've being dismissed, gaslit, told their labs are normal, they look fine, or made to question whether what they're experiencing is even real.

Add that experience to the physical trauma of chronic illness itself and often to a lifetime of other physical or emotional stressors. And the brain and nervous system can become conditioned to expect danger. The body becomes incredibly good at surviving. But surviving and healing aren't necessarily the same thing. When the nervous systems remain stuck in a state of hypervigilance, constantly scanning for the next symptom, threat, infection, food reaction, or relapse, it can become another factor perpetuating this dysregulation.

And this is where neuroplasticity becomes so interesting. Because if the brain can learn patterns of threat and protection, It also has the capacity to learn new patterns of safety and regulation. Today, we're going to talk about why nervous system regulation and brain retraining can be such important pieces of restoring the terrain and why this should never mean dismissing the very real biological drivers of complex chronic illness. My guest today is Ashok Hupta. founder of the Gupta program, a neuroplasticity and brain retraining program developed from his own experience recovering from ME-CFS.

For more than two decades, Ashok has focused on the relationship between the brain's threat response systems, the nervous system, and chronic illness. The Gupta program combines brain retraining with nervous system regulation, mindfulness, meditation, somatic techniques, breath work and lifestyle strategies, and has now been studied in several clinical trials involving conditions including ME-CFS, fibromyalgia and long COVID. Welcome. Thank you so much for joining us. Yeah, delighted to be here and thank you for the invitation.

Absolutely. So let's start really basic for the listeners. For someone who's never done brain retraining and maybe doesn't even understand what we mean by it, what are we actually talking about? What are actually retrained? And what's happening in the brain and in nervous system when someone has been chronically ill for years? Yeah. So to kick off with, I mean, got involved in all of this because I went through a condition myself, as you mentioned in intro. And so For me, it's been a journey to understand exactly what you've asked there.

It's always been the question in my mind, what causes these chronic conditions? And of course, traditional medicine and even kind of the alternative arena is looking at the physicality of it. How can we get rid of bugs? How we can get the chemicals in the body, et cetera, And my focus has been on what about if it's not just about those external factors, but could be, as you've mentioned, the terrain and part of that terrain being the brain itself. If that's one of the central causes of this condition.

And so in terms of brain retraining, what we're saying is that at some point in time, The brain may learn illness. Now, of course, we've got to be very careful here because people will interpret that as, oh, are you saying it's psychological or in the mind? No, absolutely not. We're talking about a principle called neuroplasticity, where our brains are constantly learning and developing new reactions to our environment. Yeah. And to kind of start off this conversation, I always like to ask the biggest question of all, why are we here?

So we can start with a very big question. We're here because we are survival machines. So our brain, our bodies, are nervous system, or immune system are all designed to survive, to adapt to our environments and survive threats and then respond and keep us alive. And if we're kept alive, then we could procreate and pass on our genes to the next generation. So from a scientific perspective, we're here because we are brilliant at survival. And then what happens is sometimes those survival instincts that the brain and body have can overreact.

When they start over reacting, We can also get just as many problems as if it's underreacting. Let's take the example of a Lyme infection. So we start off with that infection, And if, for whatever reason, the brain decides that it needs to overreact, over-defend against that particular threat, what it can learn to do is it could learn over trigger the nervous system and overtrigger the immune system because it thinks, I really need to get rid of this bacteria. And so it does that, it's overreacting.

And even once it has fought off, let's say the vast majority of that infection, if not all of it, sometimes what may happen in certain patients is that

How brain retraining works in Lyme and complex illness 7:24

the immune and nervous system gets stuck. It thinks, I need to keep responding to this. And it keeps responding, to otherwise irrelevant stimuli. Things that aren't actually the bacteria itself, but other things that remind it that perhaps the infection is still around. and then what happens is the brain keeps reacting, keeps, responding keeps stimulating the nervous immune system. Which then creates the very symptoms in the body that the, brain may detect as representing the threat still being present.

As we get stuck in a loop. And then secondly, if there is opportunistic bacteria, viruses in the body, our immune system is now not responding effectively to those opportunist type infections, which means that then ironically, the chronic Lyme infection could potentially still remain in body despite the immune systems overreacting. And so that means the brain's got stuck. And our program is all about retraining the brain to calm down the nervous and immune systems so that they operate at their optimal functionality so the body itself can fight off these opportunistic infections, which it is designed to do, versus trying to get external help.

So in a very small nutshell, that's the kind of principle behind brain retrainer. Right. And this goes far beyond telling people to just relax, think positive, manage your stress. This is a pretty intense program that is developed off of the basics of neuroplasticity and how to actually use that to your advantage instead of your detriment. Yes. I mean, I think it's something which it depends on the capacity of the client to put it into practice. So we have clients who are bed bound, right? Who can't even get out of bed with chronic fatigue syndrome or pain or long COVID.

We also have anything on inspection where people are working part-time or full- time. And so in terms of the intensity of a program, we say wherever you are on that spectrum, you can still use the program to heal. We use a mantra, do your best, leave the rest. So there is an intensity to the programming in the sense of retraining, but at the same time, whenever someone's capacity, they've been able to put it into practice. So really it boils down to no matter what is going on around you, whether it's the internal environment, the external environment being able to create safety inside of the nervous system.

Because I know, you know I'm sure a lot of these people who are bed bound, they're bedbound, but their nervous is literally like in a state equivocal to if they were being chased by a tiger. Yes, that's the idea of this nervous system being stuck in a threat response, we call it a maladaptive stress response. And so normally our threat systems are designed to go into the on position, deal with the threats, go in the off position. But imagine if this switch gets stuck. Now, what then happens is, as you say, in terms of the nervous system, it is overstimulating cortisol, adrenaline, noradrenaline, keeping the muscles tight, Keeping the guts tight.

And that gut then causes digestion issues, can cause detoxification issues. So our bodies aren't detoxifying correctly and a whole host of downstream effects. and so on, and cognitive difficulties. When the nervous system is overstimulated with that stress, it can compromise our memory, our thinking, or concentration. So it has an impact on everything. And then secondly, the immune system gets stuck in the on position as well. That can cause some of the more immunotype symptoms, which can include stiff joints, pain in muscles, swollen glands, a fluid-like feeling, brain fog.

All those classic symptoms that we see that typically we may feel like, oh, there must be something in my body causing these symptoms, but actually it could be our own body's reaction to the pathogen, which is causing the vast majority of symptoms. And in fact, when we have flu, most of the symptoms if not all the systems of flu are pretty much coming from the immune and nervous system response itself. That's the main source of those symptoms Right. You know, it's funny because for a lot of my patients, and I had this conversation yesterday with two different patients.

It was like, I can't even take vitamin D without this woman calls it flying. Like her nervous system just goes completely into fight or flight. Or I have another woman yesterday tell me I did a gentle yoga class, And I felt amazing for like the rest of the day. And I don't think this was like a post-exertional malaise thing because it was an extremely gentle yoga class. But it like the next day she had all of these crazy symptoms. And we had this talk where it seems to be the typical event with a complex chronic illness patient where they are so on high alert and hypervigilance where every supplement, every food, everything activity, anything in their life they are constantly trying to link to whether they're, you know, bad symptom that they experienced.

Like it had to have been related to something. And I had a breakthrough with this woman yesterday because I explained to her, look, like the cycle of Lyme, typically you're going to like these flares roughly every three weeks. With Babesia, it's every five to six days. with Bartonella, It's like once a day. obsessed, unfortunately that's the correct word, obsessed with the cause and effect of every little component of your life when the reality is is you were going to feel how you are going feel at that time of that day no matter what you did leading up to the event because of the cyclic nature of these infections and and how they move around the body.

And for some reason, you know, I had said that to her before, but in this instant, it stuck and she was like, Oh, my God, You're right. She was, like I spend my entire day looking for cause and effect with every thought, every action, Every supplement, And I think that illustrates kind of exactly what we're talking about, right? Like where in a negative way through neuroplasticity, we are like searching and surveilling our environment for these negative danger responses, but they are literally what can then spiral that sympathetic response and you know, like the imbalance in the dysautonomia that changes the physiology for the worse.

Yes. And as you say, we call this detective work. So all of us, when we have these chronic conditions, We as human beings in general are always looking for patterns. We're pattern recognition creatures. so we're always Looking for cause and effect. What caused this? What cause that? But ironically, the more that we engage in that, The more we are keeping our nervous system on high alert. Because we telling our brains, there's something wrong. There's Something badly wrong, I need to fix this. And in doing so, by overstimulating the nervous system, we are compromising our immune system.

And so it goes on and on in a circle. And therefore it's recognizing, as you've correctly said, that there can be ebbs and flows to these conditions, ups and downs. And if we analyze it too much or try to find those patterns too, much, what we may be doing is just causing ourselves more stress and more anxiety. and that's why often with mold illness, with Lyme disease, there are practitioners now who say, actually, we need to start off with nervous system regulation and brain retraining, because the system is too sensitive to handle some of the other interventions, whether it's supplements, binders, medications, et cetera.

The system's very sensitive. And therefore, unless we calm the systems down, some other of interventions may not have such a powerful effect. So that's where I think there's a complementarity to the brain re-training and then the intervention. Absolutely. It's one of the pillars. I developed something called the 10B program for recovering from Lyme and other vector borne diseases. And one those 10 bases is basically creating safety in the body, rebalancing the nervous system, getting out of that dysautonomia and or fight or flight, cell danger response.

That is a very, very real piece of all of this. Talk to us more about what does it mean physiologically for the nervous system to get into the safe space? Sure. In terms of, yes, there's two aspects. There's the brain retraining and there is a nervous-system regulation. So let me describe it actually in a way, I use a metaphor which a lot of patients find really useful in understanding how this all works. So what we imagine is, imagine you are Queen Mariah of your kingdom. All right, so you're the queen of you kingdom, has a nice ring to it, Queen Maria.

And imagine to defend that kingdom You know, already you're loving the analogy. And your body is the kingdom. All right. In that kingdom, to defend the Kingdom, there is an army and a navy.

The Gupta program structure, tools, and clinical studies 16:48

The army is your nervous system, and the navy is you immune system. So you have the army, the Navy defending the King. But imagine that now there's a drought in that Kingdom. So what that means is, the kingdom is now weaker because there's a drought, and the army and navy are weaker. Now, normally the Army and Navy, they're very confident in their ability to manage any invaders coming over the hill, invading the Kingdom. But now, because they are weak, are a bit more concerned. Now, let's imagine an invader does come over the hill, an invasion army.

Now that invading army could be a virus, in this case, a bacterial infection. It could mold, it could toxins, could chemicals, anything that invade the body. Imagine your army and navy, they are concerned because they're weak, because of the drought in the kingdom. So they now recruit more and more people from the Kingdom to fight the war. because they need more resources. And therefore they start fighting off, let's say in this case, the internal invading army. They try and fight off the invader army and as they're doing so, they work valiantly and they think they've fought off invaders army, but they are not sure.

and the think the invasion army may well be inside the forest, it might be behind the mountain, could be anywhere. they aren't sure and then what happens is They come to you, Queen Moriah, and they say, queen Moria, we need all the resources of the kingdom. We need the wheat and the corn and everything to be funneled to us so that we have all of resources. And you obviously say well, that's fine. Yes, you should have the all resources to fight off the invading Lyme threat, the bacteria. All of the resources of body go towards the army and navy.

And even once the initial infection is fought off, they are still firing off their weapons of war. But what does that do? That makes the kingdom weaker and weaker with all the symptoms that are occurring. And then this is the irony. Because they keep focusing on this war over here, the opportunistic infections, what we call the spies, just to extend the analogy. The spies that infiltrate the kingdom, they start being able to get in. So this, once again, opportunist aspects of the bacteria, can then flourish in the Kingdom despite the army and navy firing off their weapons.

And in doing so, we then get stuck in this state where the body thinks it's doing what it thinks is correct, which is firing of the weapons, but in so the immune system is not as efficient, and therefore opportunistic infections are flourishing in the bodies, causing more symptoms, around and around we go. And that we believe is the one of the roots of then chronic line. And as you've said, when the army and Navy are firing off their weapons of war, we get the cell danger response. So our mitochondria not functioning correctly.

The cells are not function correctly, the gut is not functional correctly the detox systems are functioning, correctly all because the Army and navy generals have got traumatized by the experience of. War. and they keep firing their. weapons and brain retraining is next time they come to their meeting with Queen Mariah. They say to you, hey, we need all the resources of the kingdom. And you as Queen Moriah say, my dear generals, you have done a wonderful job at defending the Kingdom, but the war is over.

You can stand down and they won't believe you the first time or the second time, or third time. They'll think it's a trick. But through the power of neuroplasticity and repetition and the emotional intensity of that repetition, eventually the army and navy and rest of the brain get the message. They switch off these over-defensive responses, the body comes back to homeostasis. Even that is not the healing state because once it comes to back homeo stasis, then the parasympathetic nervous system needs to kick in.

So all the people in the kingdom who normally clean everything up, the cleaners, that the, people who build the buildings, who restore the Kingdom, they need to come in for a while and restore everything. Get rid of all their sewage, which is collected in a system. That's a detoxification systems, getting rid off the sewages, get everything back to normal. And that takes some time, but that's when then energy and health return is once the system has come back. That is a beautiful analogy and such a great way for, I think, anyone to understand such complex interaction in such simplistic way.

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No, it's an analogy that a lot of clients just find, now I get it. Because there's 25 years of complex neurology that we've had to research to get to this stage, and therefore people will just glaze over if it is not their thing. Whereas this analogy, I think, just really helps everyone understand it just your own protective systems, over-responding, if we can get them back to normal, your body knows how to heal. You've got to get it into the right state to be able to do it. Yep. I couldn't agree more.

So I want to hear more about your studies, and I wanted to talk about the Gupta program logistically and everything else involving it, so which would you like to start with? Yeah, we could talk what is brain retraining, because it's quite an amorphous idea and people think, well, what exactly is it? So there are three Rs to the program. So the first is we've got to train our brain out of these, what we call conditioned responses, these responses it's learnt, it is hyperactive defense responses. And you imagine it, like a field and in that field, you've gotta river flowing through that fields and that river represents the brain's response.

It's just got stuck, a neuronal response, the river just keeps flowing no matter what. And we want to redirect that river in a different direction. Now in order to re direct that River, we've got to dig a new river channel to get the river to go in different directions. But the problem is the ground is frozen. Change is not possible. And so to make the brain more neuroplastic, the first R of the program is what we call relax or regulating the nervous system, relaxing the nerve system. and that's where we use breathing techniques, meditation techniques.

We also use something called somatic retraining. to get a person to, get deeper into the relaxation state. And what that's equivalent of is it loosens up the soil, makes the brain more neuroplastic, ready for change. The second stage is then what we call retraining the. brain. and that where we're digging that channel again and again, and, again different river channel. So the river can divert from the left-hand path to the right- hand path. And through repetition, eventually the river starts flowing down that right-hand path and the old river gets covered up with soil and grass.

And as that happens, great, the brain tells the body that we are in the healing state, systems start coming back to normal. But of course, there's a third art, which we call re-engaging with joy. Because if we then get stuck into stress patterns, pushing ourselves too hard, then what happens is the body can go back into that protective response again. And we can start going down a left-hand path. I'm sure you find with your clients that stress itself or going through challenging times can bring back symptoms.

Now, why is that? The brain starts thinking alert, danger. What did I do last time we were in danger? I triggered the immune system and nervous system. So it starts learning that pattern again. So we teach a patient to recognize our own stress patterns and how we can regulate our nervous system for the rest of our lives and we connect to joy, we reconnect to our inner joy as part of experience of life. And there we do a lot of what we call parts coaching to help people become aware of their own personality traits and they can influence their stress and anxiety levels.

So those are the three R's of the program. The program is delivered through an app, so we have an App called the Bicta program and it's online as well. And in there there's lots of videos and audios and its a structured program. So one of the programs we had which patients love now is a 90 day program because when you've got brain fog and you're feeling unwell it can be difficult to figure out what to do. So the 90-day program says, right, day one, here's a few things to do. Day two, do this. day three, Do this, so it's nice and structured and easy to follow now.

And we have weekly webinars with myself, but what has become the game changer has been we've got daily live sessions on Zoom with a couple of hundred people joining. the nervous system regulation and brain retraining, what we call daily gutter size. And that has really made the difference because people get accountability, the daily motivation, they see their friends on there, and it gives them that sense of accountability that, okay, I'm showing up every day, doing the tools and techniques. That has been a game changer for many people's recoveries.

And then we have an AI version of me, which is there 24 hours a day. So people can ask me questions and get their responses and how they can use the program. It's a whole integrated community. And that's what we say. it's not just about healing on your own. What we call social healing. The social-healing platform is community healing and yeah, so that how the Gupta program kind of works. For us, it is about the science because there was a lot of things out there. You can go onto Instagram and Facebook and find all these people telling you they could heal you.

But for us it was about science. So we've now published seven clinical studies. So I think compared to anything else that's out there in this domain, we're the only ones that have got the kind of evidence base behind it. generally what those studies are showing is that we are getting people well from things like fibromyalgia, long COVID, chronic fatigue syndrome, and a whole host of different conditions. And five of those are randomized controlled trials, which are kind of the gold standard in medicine.

I'll give you some of these highlights. So with fibro malgia we compared Gupta program to pregablon, the standard treatment, also known as Lyrica in the US.

Trauma, hypervigilance, and why the work matters 28:30

And we found that we had a 54% reduction in fibromyalgia scores after three months using the GUPS program, but only 9% in that group. So we were six times more effective than the standards treatment and a halving of pain, halting of depression, et cetera. That's a published independent randomized controlled trial. With long COVID, we compared Gupta program to diet, supplements, sleep, et cetera, in an equivalent structured program. And we found the Gupt program is four times more effective at reducing fatigue and exhaustion compared to those standard treatments.

We then did a clinical audit of our patients and we looked at 14 different conditions. And we found that on those 14 conditions, the GUPS program reduced, improved health and functioning anywhere between 60 to 120%. And the highest improvement in health was actually with Lyme. With Lyne patients, chronic Lyre, which is really interesting. So people might ask, how can you get more than 100% improvement? So just to clarify this, if someone rated their health at the beginning of the study at 30%, And at the end of the study, they rated their health and functioning at 60%, then that would be 100% improvement.

So what that meant was that in terms of health, and function, Lyme patients had the largest improvement in their Health and Function, 116% improvements in the health of functioning after three months of using the program. And that's a published independent study as well that people can take a look. And we're very excited to share with you, hot off the press, so it's not published yet, we've just done a study on mould illness, and I can bring up some of the initial findings on that mould-illness study.

And what we found with mould sickness is that using a symptom questionnaire called Mould IQ, that after three months, there was a 33% reduction in mold scores and after six months close to a 50% percent reduction. So we're halving mold after 6 months of using the program. And when it came to fatigue, depression, anxiety, pain, mainly around a 30% decrease in most of those other types of symptoms. But when it came to mold, a halving of the mold scores, and that's an independent randomized controlled trial, which should be published soon.

And once that gets published, that will hopefully once again improve the awareness of these types of approaches and start proving it to the medical as well. So we're very excited by that kind of study. That's a quick glimpse of the studies that we've published. Yeah, that's amazing. I'm so glad that you're doing those studies. Thank you for doing them because like I had said earlier, doing this work is an integral part of healing for almost all patients. And when it's being ignored and not addressed, it can literally be like the roadblock that stops people from being able to achieve lasting healing.

Yes, absolutely. And our hope is that as we do more and more of these studies, this then becomes a mainstream type of idea, because we think actually 50% of the illnesses that you go to see your doctor for are probably, at the core of it, neuroplasticity issues, which is incredible. And of course, just to emphasise here, we are not a substitute for all the other great work that people like yourself do in terms of the functional side, the medical side and the nutritional side. That's all just as important.

So I think that in science, we tend to have either or approach, but it's a both and approach that actually looking at the supplements, changing the diet, looking, at medications, Looking at lifestyle. All of those things are complimentary to the neuroplasticity approach because we want to approach it and attack it from all angles. And my hope is as we do more and more of these studies, they're more functional and integrative doctors. naturopaths will bring it on within their protocols. And it's something that we want to work in partnership with, with so many different clinicians.

I think that also when it comes to, I guess, long COVID fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome, which are, you know, even more pervasive in the population, helping people realize that this approach actually does work and we've got the science behind it. is so important because otherwise it can sound woo-woo because it sounds like it just doesn't make sense because doesn' t fit into a traditional medical category. Doesn't fit in to psychology, doesn t into classic immunology. It's something very, very different.

And yet I think it's fundamental to how the brain and the body works. Right. Well, it' s psycho-neuro-immunology, the blend of all three branches. Exactly right. Yeah, I'm so glad that you're doing this. So, this is something that I talk with my patients about a lot. I am constantly giving the Gupta program along with another program as essential pieces of the healing puzzle. And if nothing else, I'm trying to get patients to either do breathing techniques, do vagus nerve toning, to guided visualizations, like do anything to bring them out of their heads and into their bodies and trying increase heart coherence.

What I love is how you have the app and you sort of autopilot. Just go on, do it for 90 days, just get on there every single day and do the agenda that's already listed out so that you don't even have to think about it, you just have do do. Because so many of these patients, I mean literally, can't think of what to do next if you don't give exact step-by-step instructions. I think that's exactly right. So with the brain fog and all these different things, I mean, there are certain things out there that rely on you to put it into practice yourself, but you didn't have that mental bandwidth.

You just need someone sometimes just to tell you what should I do now. And so we have that within the 90-day structured program, but also the daily Gupta size. Even if you did nothing else in the program but just turned up live every day on the Zoom calls or whenever you can, that would still give you 80% of the progress. And therefore, we've tried to make it as easy to use as possible. Of course, people will have their doubts and people may feel like a risk financially and whatever, But we also offer a one-year money-back guarantee.

So we say until we get the large-scale thousand people trials, we say, try this. And if it doesn't work, you get your money back, no questions asked. Right? So this is hopefully reducing those barriers and those resistances that people have to trying this type. Awesome. So for listeners who don't think that they have experienced any big trauma in their life, I am the first one to advocate and say, look, searching for a diagnosis for years, being dismissed, told it's all in your head, gaslit, having your spouse, your parents, children, best friend, not think that you're suffering as much as you say you are.

All of these things that I think almost every chronic illness patient experiences. For those listeners that are like, well, I never really had a big trauma. It's like just the experience of living with a complex chronic illness and being dismissed. Those things alone. And I just want to hear you say it and I want the listeners to here your response. That's trauma enough. Are you suffering from Lyme disease or another complex, chronic, illness, and aren't sure who to trust when it comes to herbal supplements?

Hi. I'm Dr. Mariah Hinchey, founder of Lime Core Botanicals. As a naturopathic physician specializing in complex, chronic, infection-driven illnesses like Lyme disease, I needed herbal medicine I could truly trust. That's why I formulated LIME Core botanicles. where our herbal tinctures are handcrafted in small batches right here in Connecticut. We use the whole herb, never isolates, to preserve the full spectrum of medicinal compounds. Every single step from sourcing to extraction is done with precision to ensure maximum purity, potency, and consistency.

Daily practice, expectations, and recovery timelines 36:48

These are the same herbal formulas I used to heal myself and have used for years to help my patients and family members heal too. And now I'm making them available to practitioners and patients everywhere. Lymecore Botanicals, herbal medicine you can trust from a doctor who lives this work. Learn more at LymencoreBotanicles.com Yes, exactly right. Traditionally, when we think of trauma, we thing of something outside of ourselves, which has impact on us emotionally. But actually some of the biggest threats that we face are not necessarily things from outside ourselves but how the brain perceives what's going on viscerally within the body itself in terms of viruses and bacteria and so on.

And having an ongoing illness with all the symptoms that come with it, itself, as you say, can be traumatic and can get the brain into this hyper defensive mode. What I will also add is that many of us may not necessarily think that we've been through trauma because it may be within our conscious awareness. This is a very, very important piece here because actually the factory setting of our amygdala, right? So our, the two almond-shaped structures in our brain and the limbic system, they are impacted by things that are beyond our conscious awareness in terms of how stimulated and reactive they can be.

So as an example, this is, I mean, it's fascinating, the stress levels of our mother and father at conception can impact on our own nervous system. The gestation period itself, so pregnancy and how stressed the mother was during pregnancy can affect our stress system, The birth experience itself can have an impact in our nervous systems. Pre-verbal years that we don't remember the first few years of life heavily impact our system and our amygdala can cause trauma that were not aware of. than the first five to 10 years of life in terms of our perception of safety and nurturing and impact on the brain, then even events after that can build.

So even if we think we consciously don't have trauma, we may do, at the same time, you don' have to have a diagnosis of trauma to one of these chronic conditions. That is the point. The brain can decide to over respond in a defensive way for many different reasons, not just trauma. There can be a whole host of other potential triggers that cause it. All we can say is from our experience, someone who has a background of trauma is probably more likely to have this conditioning event occur in the brain, but it's not an absolute necessity that past trauma exists.

So, you know, I would say this work is important for everybody, especially with a complex chronic illness. So where would you like to go with this now? Do you want to talk deeper? And I'm going to edit us talking right now out of this, but do you wanna talk it deeper about what the Gupta program is and what people should expect? Or like, do feel like you covered that when you were talking about the 90 day program and the app? Do you want to talk about what the actual retraining exercises are and how much time they're committing on a daily basis and like that sort of thing?

Okay. Okay, so let's dive into some of the specifics about the actual Gupta program. Start by walking us through, you know, what are some the actually retraining exercises? How much time are we committing to every day? Like what would this look like for someone that signed up tomorrow? Great question. And a lot of people ask us that. They say, what exactly is brain retreating? What exactly do you do? They think that we're going to stick electrodes in their brain or do something crazy. We're like, no, this is completely safe.

It's a very natural way of our bodies healing. In fact, it mimics how our body's heal naturally from different conditions. Right. And so as we mentioned earlier, if we take the analogy of the two rivers, right? We're trying to redirect the river, train the brain out of its response. So we get the terrain ready through the breathing, the meditation techniques. and if people don't find those useful, we have so many different exercises that people can do to calm and regulate their nervous system. so that's the first starting point.

as I said, We have those live on zoom every day as well. And then once people have mastered that, then we go into something called somatic retraining. So as we know, this idea of sometic techniques, somactic tracking, someatic retraining, these are all becoming more and more popular amongst people, amongst influencers. And it's important because what it does is it says, often we dissociate from our bodies because we don't like feeling what we're feeling. And that can be emotions or it can physical sensations.

So the ability to get back into our body and feel is an important way in which we can release and heal. You've got to feel to heal, as they say. This is where the sematic retraining is the next stage and once people have mastered that, then we go into something called the seven step process. And what we do is we give people, it's like a big twister board that you put on the floor that get in your package. And you learn about your left pen path and your right hand path. You learn, about, your old condition response and you're new condition, response, and, you physically step through the steps to train your nervous system to do something.

So I'd give an example of this. If someone asks you to drive, to learn to, drive a car, but you have to it all in your head, right? You'd be like, okay, let me imagine I'm turning the steering wheel. I am turning, the gear shift. And pressing the gas, pressing, they break. But imagine you have to do that without ever sitting in a car, right? It would all be theoretical. But then to learn to drive a care, to train your nervous system, you to sit in the car move the steering wheel, look at the mirror.

Check your, you know, your break, et cetera. You're doing all of those things, which train your nervous system in a new condition pathway. you learn something new, like learning a musical instrument. And that's what we do is get your body involved in the learning of this new system. So that where we train and deepen this right hand river path until your brain gets it and realizes that it's no longer in danger and it can switch off those old responses. Then the third area, and by the way, we also look at lifestyle as well in terms of diet, sleep, activity levels, but not at a deep level that you might put, more at an overall surface level to make sure people are, you know.

doing the right thing. Then we go into the parts coaching, which people find some of the most important work which is helping them understand their stress responses, their sub-personalities. And they find that once they understand and master that, it becomes a lot easier to do through those final stages of healing. Those last 20, 25% of heeling is a little easier. Our program is not just at a surface level in the sense that we believe healing happens at many levels. So there's a physical level of There's the emotional level of healing with the parts.

There is a mental level, which is with seven step retraining. And then there's a spiritual level where it's actually understanding, not that anyone would want this type of condition to come, but is there a deeper spiritual teaching behind me having this illness or this condition? Is there reason? Yeah. And sometimes there may not be, but often when people connect, this illness is teaching me something about myself and the person I used to be. That also becomes a very important part of healing. And for some people it can be repressed emotions, for others it could be protection mechanisms, or awareness of our sub-personalities and stress responses.

And so in all of these cases, uncovering an unpicking vet is an extra layer of healing. And it's different for each person. So for some people, the neuroplasticity is enough. Others, and you've probably seen this in your clinic, just doing the diet supplements and lifestyle things can be enough to go on to heal. For others, it is actually the parts coaching. We put all these components there, so whatever component it that people need to It's there for them. So that's a kind of initial walkthrough.

That's wonderful. And can you tell our listeners where they can go if they want to learn more about the Gupta program and sign up? Yeah, definitely. I'd love for people to go to our website or the app store. You can just go on the web, you can type in Guptaprogram or it's GuptyProgram.com. go to program.com and there I advise people sign up for the free trial. So we have a 14 day free trail where you can go in sample some of our videos and audios. And there's a whole wealth of free information that's within the program that you just have for free and see if this is right for you.

And what we're going to do is that for everyone who comes from Limebytes who's listening to this podcast, we'll give a 10% discount. So you can use a discount code LIMEBYTES10 and then you will have a, a ten percent discount and you go through obviously your link as well. and that then means that people can have that extra reason to go. That still includes the one year money back guarantee with the program as Or you can go to the app store or play store, maybe go up to program, download the App and stop training your brain straight away.

That's great. Thank you so much. Yeah. So how does one know if the program is working? How do you gauge? Like, what do start to know first? Do you notice just an overall decrease in anxiety, enhanced feelings of well-being? do You start sleeping better? Are you less emotionally charged? What would people expect to feel and how quick of any sort of change can people expect to experience? It very much is any of the above in terms of what you described, and it's different for each patient. And so therefore, some people notice differences within days, sometimes it takes weeks.

For a minority, it can actually take months before they notice a difference. So what we always say to people is, let go of all expectations. Because as you're brain retraining, if you train your brain and then you say, it's not working, come on, I want it faster. You're actually sending a signal back to your. That we're still in danger and things are really bad. So you, so at one moment you've training your, and in the flip side, you'll, your D, D training the brain from the good work that you were trying to do.

so we encourage people to say let go of expectations. work through the program and just see how things go. Because the most important thing is there can be a delay between the retraining and the results, right? It's like going to the gym.

Hope, healing, and closing takeaways 47:48

You might train now, but you don't do one gym session, think, come on, why aren't my muscles bigger now? Right? You know, it's a step-by-step training of your nervous system. Or the very first day you go to your driving lesson, you think right, I've had a driving lessons. Why can't I drive yet? It is the repetition again and again, and, again that trains into our nervous system. So for some patients, they notice some of the first changes might be they feel more calm. They feel a more centered. they're able to have more of a reflective position versus a panicky feeling.

For others, their sleep improves. for others they noticed the energy start coming back pretty quickly. So it's different for each patient. And that's why we say, don't compare yourself to anybody else. You're on your own journey, stay in your lane and just keep going no matter what. Because in the very rare occasion, we've actually had people where they've only noticed the difference after three to four months. Now that's a huge amount of commitment to say, right, I'm going to keep going no matter what for three to four months.

And why is that? Because if you've been ill for five years, 10 years. Sometimes we treat people 20 or 30 years they've being ill. Just be patient. Your body knows how to be well, but it also will require that patience of you just continuing, continuing continuing until it learns it. Just like if you have a piece of music and you're learning an instrument, you know that eventually you'll learn it, but you gonna have to be patient and your make mistakes but your get there eventually. I have a lot of patients who have been researching, researching and researching.

They find me or they find another great practitioner that can help them, but they won't let go of that research piece because they feel like no one else can find the answer but them because, they were the only one that found the answers to begin with. you know, what you're saying kind of like reminds me of that because I have this talk with patients where I'm like, look, if it's not me, you are going to have to find someone else that you resonate with and that trust and you just going have finally like just go on autopilot and just do the work and kind let the rest of it fall away.

And it is just working the program day after day and letting time pass while you doing it. And then all of a sudden, the results are there. I totally agree. The most important thing we actually say to people is, let go of the research. Right? Because the research is just your anxiety pushing you to try and find a solution and an answer. And I say to people, if magically an answered comes up, let's say tomorrow, they find this magical pill that cures Lyme or mold or everything. I'm not dogmatic. If they come up with it, I am going to be the first person to tell you.

We have a whole team of researchers that are looking at this. We will tell you the answer if the answers comes up. If we have to close the Gupta program because the magical pill comes along, we will do it. So don't you worry. Let go of your research and just focus on the program. And secondly, and I don' mean this in any disrespect, sometimes I think people also need to let go what they might be hearing from support groups. Because I thinks support group are fantastic and they're great and it's a place for people to get that support.

But sometimes if they have a particular agenda, which is look, you know, none of these things work, we don't have a solution yet, so you just have to kind of manage the symptoms. They can also then have an negative approach, whereas actually people are healing from these conditions every day. We see it and they go off the radar because no one's tracking it, but people do heal. So we want to get out of the mindset that all I can do is manage my symptoms to actually I am on a road and a pathway of healing and healing is possible.

And that is something that I counsel to please stay out of the chat groups because a lot of them become very negative and to your point, like the people who are staying in them are the People that aren't getting better a Lot of times and that diminishes hope and you know, hope is everything. Absolutely. So if you're a part of it, as you said there, if your part as a support group, the, people are going to be most vocal and be there most often are coming to ones who haven't had the improvements. And the ones who do get well think, well, I'm out of here.

I want to go and live my life. So there's a selective bias, a selection bias there. And therefore being in your own space, just with a program, healing and focused on your healing with that full positive intention is the most important thing and letting go of other voices and other viewpoints. And yeah, we see that the people who have the best recoveries on the Gupta program are the ones who dedicate themselves, who keep going no matter what, without expectations and let go of the research. And they get to those recoverys.

In a recent study, We actually found 92% of our patients have improved. There's a 92%, in terms of improvement levels. and then we generally find about two thirds of patients get an 80 to 100% recovery after six months. So if we know if you stick to the program, two thirds of you will go on to having the recovery that you want. Yeah, that's amazing. Those are amazing statistics. And I have to tell you the patients, and I mean some very, very sick bed bound patients. The patients that do this piece of the work, they have such a fuller and a lot of times more swift recovery in the long run than the people that are not willing to even kind of acknowledge this peace of work.

But before we wrap up, Are there any final pieces of advice that you would like to give our listeners? I think the most important bit here is you can heal. This is the important piece that whatever your belief system is that may have been programmed by what you've read online and what others have told you, whatever you're belief is, I ask you to suspend that for the moment and just have this belief that your body can hear. That is your birthright. It knows how to heal from these conditions. It's got to be put into the right space and having that belief that you can heal is the first starting point to then moving forward with your healing.

And it's also, you know, it can feel like a very mysterious condition and it could feel, like, what's going on? Why am I feeling like this? And in the traditional scientific model, there must be something attacking my body. This bacteria is in my, body that is attacking, my and I'm just a passive victim of it. But I want us to completely turn that on its head and realize actually as our own defensive system over responding, which could be the core issue, and that we have control over. And that's the empowerment that I wanted to give to every person who's got these types of conditions.

It's within your power to heal. Your own system is part of the issue and can be retrained and get back to. health and wellness. Absolutely. That is the best, most beautiful message. And I sincerely hope that everyone listening takes that to heart because it's the truth. So thank you Ashok so much for being here with us today. It's an honor to have you with and thank everyone at home for joining us for another episode of the Lime Bites podcast. If you found today's conversation helpful, please subscribe and leave a review or share this episode with someone you love.

Together, we can change the conversation around Lyme disease and other complex chronic illnesses and what true lasting healing really looks like. And if you want to dive even deeper into these topics with world-renowned experts, be sure to join us at the Lymbite Symposium November 13th and 14th on Pompano Beach in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. And until next time, remember, together, we all heal stronger. Take care. If this episode gave you an answer, brought you new insight, or made you think differently, subscribe to the Line Bites podcast and share with someone who's ready to take control of their healing journey.