The Gupta Programme

I have been reading a blog by another ME patient (vivaciadreamsofnome) and have written this post in response to her starting the Gupta Programme, just like I did over six months ago. It is a difficult thing to take on a recovery programme of any kind. It takes faith and putting your full trust in someone who you've never met, who you have had to pay and who you have promised to devote your life to for the next six months is quite a scary thing.
Having gone through the turmoil of trying to work out why I got sick and whether these new treatments think I made myself get sick, I want to reassure you with how I worked it out.
Most of us with ME went through some kind of trauma before the illness took hold. Usually it is a physical stress that causes the illness to take hold. In some cases it is three or four emotional stresses coming very close together without nearby support to keep you going. The physical body cant cope. Our doctors batter the body with antibiotics, tests, scans, drips, goodness knows what. It was what the doctors had been taught to do and how they had previously helped people recover. The bodies natural defences start working, just as they have over many generations, throughout history. But we keep trying. Most people can get over meningitis, mumps, a couple of blood infections or glandular fever, but some people can't. Centuries ago that would have been accepted, we would have been "the ill one" in the family, but now we have to keep fighting, we are encouraged to do so from all sides, to keep up with society and the body keeps fighting back.
Because of this our physiology changes and unconsciously learns that even doctors are a threat, antibiotics and the tiniest cold or soar throat can have us in bed for weeks, so fight, flight or freeze, the natural defences are the new learned response to absolutely anything.
Getting too cold when out for a short walk might give me excessive shivers, but then my body would react excessively on top of that, I would be in bed for weeks and have a fever and migraines. That simple example shows that nothing could be done to change the body's new over-reactive defences.
That is what the new understanding of ME has proven. To find recovery these unconscious patterns of physical behaviour are challenged and slowly and surely the patterns change. It is amazing but quite simple too. There are a lot of physiological problems still with the body, toxins have built up with the lack of movement, energy channels are blocked (proven by scans of the neck to cause brain fog) and it takes time, depending on how long you have been ill and depending on how severe the illness has become, to recover to full health. This is where 'pacing' is still important.
Imagine changing the fact that you put on your socks before your shoes and you started wearing you socks over your shoes. It would take a few weeks, possibly months to change the automatic response when you were getting dressed, you would have to consciously decide and sometimes reverse what had automatically happened to make yourself do it. But before long it would be a natural response, quite uncomfortable non-the-less, but you wouldn't have to think twice about it. The same thing is asked with the Gupta Programme, (and many other recovery programmes out there) that we retrain our brains to respond differently to the stimuli that make our bodies react in a way that makes us ill. Depending on how long the illness has been in control and how severe the symptoms have become, it will take different amounts of time and more or less perseverance  to find better health. But it is a possibility, recovery is out there to be found.
Be assured you didn't make yourself ill in the first place, you didn't consciously encourage your body to continue being ill and if anything it was the body's natural defences that encouraged the illness to continue. Patients with ME are some of the most determined patients doctors ever come across- who wants to lie in bed without being able to read a book, watch TV or listen to the radio, not be able to enjoy a nice meal or slice of birthday cake? ME patients can stand very little stimulation and are constantly asked to bear some of the most uncomfortable symptoms. And those who seek help and want a way out are the bravest. It takes courage to believe in yourself and take on such a challenge as the Gupta Programme. If you have done this I commend you.