In this episode of Functional Medicine Research, I interview Ashok Gupta about his limbic system retraining program. Trauma of any kind can change the brain and nervous system in a way that prevents one from getting well. Many people never get well because they don't address the underlying trauma that has triggered or contributed to their health challenges.
If you've tried eating right, exercising, sleeping well, taken the best supplements, and managed your stress, but you still aren't feeling well, your brain and nervous system may be out of balance. The Gupta Program is designed to change the neuroplasticity of your brain and nervous system so you can heal and feel well again.
We discuss a new and exciting published paper that validates this method of limbic system retraining.
Full Transcript on Limbic System Retraining Interview
Dr. Hedberg: Well, welcome everyone to "Functional Medicine Research." I'm Dr. Hedberg, and I'm very excited today to talk to Ashok Gupta about limbic system retraining. And Ashok is an internationally renowned speaker, filmmaker, and health practitioner who has dedicated his life to supporting people through chronic illness and achieving their potential. Ashok suffered from myalgic encephalomyelitis or chronic fatigue syndrome about 25 years ago when he was studying at Cambridge University, and through neurological research that he conducted, he managed to get himself 100% better. He then set up a clinic to treat others and then published the well-known recovery program known as "The Gupta Program" in 2007. He's published several medical papers and he's continually researching these conditions. You can find out more information at guptaprogram.com. Ashok, thanks for coming on the program.Ashok: Thank you so much for inviting me. Very excited to be here.
Dr. Hedberg: Yeah. So, the limbic system is something that I've been interested in since I started practicing 17 years ago, and you know, I have a variety of recommendations that I give to patients for that. You know, things like meditation, mindfulness training, therapy, or just a number of things, but your particular limbic system-intensive program, I heard about it recently and became very interested in it. And why don't we begin by talking about just the limbic system itself? Can you give people kind of an overview of what the limbic system does and why it's important?
Ashok: Yes. So, there are many different ways of describing the limbic system. I think primarily if we start with this idea of it being a defensive system to ensure survival, right? So, most people would associate the limbic system with our emotional responses and medicine often separates the kind of psychology and the emotional responses from defense responses as if they're something different, you know, physiological defense responses versus emotional defense responses. But I see the limbic system as the automatic survival systems that we've inherited over generations of different animals and whatever that actually create responses that ensure survival. And so, a fight or flight response, a fear response, an anger response, a memory of a previous experience, all of these things are designed to ensure survival. So, that is for me the primary motive or motivation of that limbic system. And within that limbic system, there are different structures that play specific roles. And a lot of our research focuses on the amygdala, which are two almond-shaped structures that sit behind our eyes that essentially are taking all the incoming information from the outer world and the inner world, process it according to the previous experiences we've had in life, our memories, and then creates a coordinated response across the brain to ensure survival, yeah? And one way to look at this Dr. Hedberg, which I find fascinating is to ask the biggest question of all, you know, why are we here? And we can answer that question from a philosophical perspective, but from a scientific perspective, we're here because over so many generations over millions of years, this nervous system that we've inherited, this immune system has adapted to the environment to ensure survival, which is ultimately culminated in this nervous system, this brain, and this limbic system that knows how to identify threats and ensure survival so we pass on our genes to the next generation.
Dr. Hedberg: Right. And let's talk a little bit about how that gets out of balance. I've done a few podcasts talking to guests about adverse childhood experiences and how to overcome trauma and things like that. So, it just seems like, I mean, pretty much any kind of trauma input into the system, whether you're young or an adult could potentially cause imbalances in the limbic system. So, can you talk about all the potential things that can happen to someone that can cause an imbalance in their limbic system?
Ashok: Yes. It's fascinating. And it's great that you're incorporating that as part of your integrative approach because it's so important. The way we look at it is the combination of nurture and nature. So, we know that there can be, and it's a fascinating area, inherited trauma that can actually be passed on through our genes, and then even experiences within the womb can impact on how reactive our amygdalas are, right? So, research has shown that if a mother is having a particularly stressful pregnancy, that can impact on the stress of the child moving forward. The actual experience of childbirth can impact on the limbic system, and then obviously, adverse childhood experiences. So, that might be bullying, abuse, physical or emotional abuse, even sexual abuse, all of these things impact on what we call the factory setting of the amygdala. So, we have the factory setting when we're born and then it keeps adapting and changing according to those adverse childhood experiences. And then even during teenage years, that can be impacted. Then during our adult lives, we have that genetic and nurture inheritance that then impacts on our reactivity to the world around us. And that is why those adverse childhood experiences can impact on our mental, physical, and emotional health. Now, I think it's well-documented that our emotional health can be impacted, but the processes on how our physical health is impacted is what we focus here on in terms of our research. And as I said earlier, if we go back to this idea that our brains don't differentiate between emotional, physical, chemical, or biological threats, the brain simply asks the question, "How do I survive?" So, if we've had adverse childhood experiences, which make our brains more defensive, then when we then are exposed to physical dangers, the brain becomes hyper-reactive and hyper-responsive, which then can lead on to so many different chronic illnesses that we experience, you know, in the surgery.
Dr. Hedberg: Right. Right. And one of the things that we'll see, and I'm sure you see as well is the people who they seem to be doing everything right. You know, they're sleeping well, exercise, eating well. They're just doing a lot of the things that one would expect to achieve good health, but they're just still not feeling well. And so, I think this is one of the areas that is just really the sticking point for a lot of people with chronic illness, the limbic system is out of balance and it's just not able to recover. So, what are some of the symptoms or conditions that would make someone think they potentially have an imbalanced limbic system?
Ashok: Yes. We collectively call these conditions neuroimmune condition syndromes or NICs. And generally, as you say, someone's resting, they're having a good lifestyle, but still, there seems to be, you know, a low level of functioning or continuing background illness or severe illness. And we believe, yes, it's an imbalance not only in the limbic system, but also, especially in the insular. Now, the insular cortex kind of sits between the kind of limbic system and the cortex. So, it's more a part of the cortex than the limbic system. And the insular is where we also believe a lot of the imbalances lie. So, it's not purely in the limbic system in our research. And if I can just describe to you an overview of the hypothesis and that will help then your listeners to kind of understand how it impacts on chronic illness. So, let's take the example of flu virus or, in fact, even COVID-19, which are obviously in the news right now. If somebody has, let's say a lot of ACEs or a lot of adverse childhood experiences or is going through a lot of stress, we know that stress reduces the effectiveness of the immune system. And then let's say they have the flu virus, the brain is prioritizing survival. So, it thinks, okay, we've got to now overcome this flu virus. This is potentially life-threatening or COVID-19. And the brain and the nervous system and the immune system coordinate to facilitate that, to overcome this virus and rid it from the body. But if there is a compromised immune system, then that whole system takes a lot longer to fight off that virus. And there comes a point at which the brain becomes traumatized. The amygdala, the insular, the anterior cingulate become traumatized in this response, like a physiological traumatic response where the body says, actually, we don't seem to be fully and effectively fighting off this virus. We must now go into an overdrive as it were and keep stimulating the nervous system and the immune system to anything that reminds us of the original sensitizing event.
So, the brain keeps overstimulating immune responses and nervous system responses, and it learns that. So, that's a neurological conditioning in the brain. And even once someone recovers from flu or COVID-19, it's left a legacy in the brain. The brain has now learned that anything that reminds it of the original infection indicates danger and potentially death. So, even once the virus is gone,
