Can this man cure ME?

It has been dismissed as "yuppie flu", a shirker's charter, which many doctors believe is all in the mind. But for 150,000 people in Britain, myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME), or chronic fatigue syndrome, is a devastating and debilitating illness causing overwhelming fatigue, muscle pain and memory loss for years at a time.

Yet few medics agree on what causes it or on how to treat it. Some even dispute its existence, claiming that sufferers - such as model Mandy Smith, actress Joanna Taylor and author Claire Francis - are victims of overwork and stress.

For Ashok Gupta, however, the illness transformed him from a lively economics student at Cambridge University to an emotionally drained, bewildered man who embarked on a six-year quest to discover precisely what was wrong with him.

The 27-year-old, who has cured himself, has devoted himself to researching the functions of the brain, and has developed an exciting new theory about what causes ME. He claims his work could help thousands of sufferers overcome the illness.

When Gupta first became ill with a virus during the summer holidays, he thought nothing of it. He was looking forward to his third year studying economics at Robinson College, Cambridge, partying with his friends, playing football and DJing in his spare time. His health had always been good but he simply couldn't shake off the flu-like symptoms.

"There was a time when I didn't know if the suffering I was experiencing due to ME was ever going to end. It was like having severe flu all the time: my temperature went up and down, my limbs ached, I couldn't sleep and I felt deeply dispirited.

"At least when you have flu, you know that however dreadful you feel, it will soon pass, but this felt as if I wasn't going to recover. I couldn't play football, but I made myself go out with friends, pretending to be all right, because they just didn't understand what was wrong. But invariably, I'd feel dreadful, and wish I'd stayed in."

The disease began to affect his studies, too. "There were days when I felt as if I couldn't get out of bed. I would force myself to get up and go to lectures, but I could not concentrate, and would often fall asleep in the lecture hall. I was 21, and suddenly this illness was standing in my way. My mother, who is a teacher and my father, who is a retired electrical retailer, were sympathetic, but they didn't understand and so couldn't help. I went from doctor to doctor, both in Cambridge and at home in Nottingham, and met with different responses. Some didn't believe ME existed - one even gave me antidepressants, which made things worse."

For six months Gupta struggled on, aching and exhausted, until the real blow came.

"I was well behind with my college work when I realised that I wasn't going to catch up. My tutors were sympathetic, and agreed that I could do the third year again. It was a very personal blow, as I have always been used to getting top marks - but now I was finding it very hard to concentrate enough to write essays.

"Everything I tried, such as exercise, only made the symptoms worse. As the doctors weren't helping me I decided to do some research for myself. I didn't have a medical background but I began collecting information - in libraries, through patient organisations and on the internet - while still studying economics."

The controversy surrounding ME has always been about whether it is a physical or psychological illness. Gupta claims that ME involves a unique continuous interaction between real physical symptoms and an unconscious reaction to them, perpetuating a vicious circle of chronic illness. The patient isn't to blame, they simply may be unaware of what is going on in their brain.

"The main process seems to occur in the brain in the limbic area, which is responsible for emotional reactions," says Gupta. "This means that the illness has physical as well as psychological aspects which a patient may not be

conscious of. It is as if the unconscious brain learns an incorrect reaction whenever it senses physical symptoms such as fatigue, and this learning tends to occur during a stressful period in someone's life, especially when they are experiencing a viral infection at the same time. When ME has set in, their entire body is in emergency mode to a non-present threat. And from that, secondary illnesses can come along, which makes the puzzle of ME even more complicated.

"Because I was experiencing the disease, I could look at the science of it, and apply it to my own mind, and experiment with different thought processes. I realised that on some days I felt better, and some worse, and I could pinpoint, in relation to the neurology, what was going on."

Gradually, Gupta began to recover, aided by his discoveries and a mixture of his own cognitive techniques, improved nutrition, and self-hypnosis that allowed him to pursue his degree course again. After his finals he got a job as a management consultant but spent every spare moment researching ME, and talking to sufferers and patient organisations about the disease. He realised that his theory chimed with others' experiences.

"It was great when the puzzle fitted together in my mind, and I could explain all my symptoms. The final recovery for me was when I discovered clinical hypnosis, which can be used to break the vicious circle. I trained as a hypnotherapist and studied neurolinguistic programming (a process for teaching the brain how to think differently). Eighteen months ago I left my job to establish my own clinic in Harley Street."

Gupta's theory has been published in Medical Hypotheses, a peer-reviewed medical journal, to a mixed reception. "It's an interesting hypothesis, but it's not labtested," says a spokesperson for patient support group Action for ME. "We would like to see more scientists pulling together to research the condition and take hypotheses like this further."

The only treatments shown to have a proven effect on ME are cognitive behavioural therapy, which works to change negative thought patterns, and graded exercise, which takes care to keep patients within their own limits.

Gupta says the first step is to lower the overall levels of symptoms, to which end he employs a nutritionist. "Next, I use hypnotherapy and neuro-linguistic programming to persuade the subconscious to release its grip. ME is a malfunction of the programming of the brain in response to acute stress. It's almost a message to our lifestyles, saying that we need to change the way we live our lives and manage stress.

"Now I can see that my motivation to work so hard may have caused me to not relax enough. Once I had recovered from ME I had to make a lot of lifestyle changes myself in order to stay healthy.

"Today I enjoy life much more than I did before. I eat well, I exercise regularly, but the most important thing is allowing my mind to relax every day, through breathing and meditation. And I have a full social life, typical of a single Londoner in his mid-twenties - I see friends and go clubbing at weekends."

The next step for Gupta is to publish his theory more widely, and to write a book about his methods. "I know I have not got all the answers," he says. "Helping people with ME is an ongoing process, but I know I'm on the right road."

Ashok Gupta, Harley Street Stress Management Clinic, 1 Harley Street, W1 (www.harleystressclinic.com). Action for ME (01749 670799; www.afme.org.uk).