Andrew was 39 years old when he signed up for Quantify, after years of suffering from debilitatingly painful headaches that would last for hours, and sometimes days.
While the headaches themselves were excruciating, often requiring that he wait out the storm in bed with the lights off and curtains drawn, their seeming randomness made them even more life-disrupting.
Further aggravating his pain and frustration, Andrew had been intensely focused on his health for years—he ate a pescatarian diet, didn’t drink, took supplements, and exercised regularly—so he didn’t exactly fit the description of someone who was prone to developing chronic conditions.
What’s more, painkillers didn’t help, all of his test results were normal, and the four neurologists he had dragged himself to didn’t have any ideas.
Things were not looking good.
Desperate for answers, Andrew ultimately decided he needed more data about his health, in case his headaches were caused by something that his doctors hadn’t thought to test for.
In his first appointment at Quantify, Andrew’s health coach recommended a metals test, to evaluate metal toxicity and mineral imbalance.
Test results
His first time testing for toxic metals, Andrew’s metals test showed significantly elevated mercury, indicating mercury toxicity, or the condition of having too much mercury in the body, which can cause headaches, brain fog, fatigue, and innumerable other chronic symptoms, ranging from mild to severe.
Not just a lucky guess, his health coach had suspected mercury toxicity after learning that Andrew had followed a pescatarian diet for years, and had likely been consuming more mercury than his body had the capacity to detoxify, resulting in the gradual accumulation and, ultimately, toxicity of one of the most harmful heavy metals.
Recovery
Andrew had started following a pescatarian diet after learning that eating fish regularly decreases your risk for cardiovascular disease and neurodegenerative disease, which is mostly attributed to the high levels of eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) in fish that most people otherwise don’t get enough of.
While he wasn’t wrong to increase consumption of foods high in EPA and DHA, Andrew’s propensity to “do everything to the extreme” unfortunately led him to overdo it, prioritizing larger fish (which are typically high in mercury), such as tuna, bass, and swordfish, over smaller fish, such as salmon, sardines, and anchovies, in order to maximize protein intake.
Shocked that his presumably healthy diet had caused his headaches, but also thrilled to finally get answers, Andrew started following his health plan closely, checking in with his health coach regularly to help him stay on track.
He stopped eating tuna, bass, swordfish, and other larger fish that he had grown so accustomed to as his primary source of protein.
To support detoxification, he started drinking at least 64 ounces of water per day, took certain supplements, such as activated charcoal, milk thistle, and NAC, and used a sauna at least once per week.
Within a few months, not only did his headaches start to subside, but he also reported feeling less tired after workouts, an encouraging indication that his overall health was also improving.
Within a year, his headaches had completely resolved, he was back to peak performance, and a follow-up metals test showed an almost undetectable level of mercury, further validating the work he had done to rid his body of the toxic metal that had unknowingly accumulated.