Elizabeth was 34 years old when she signed up for Quantify, after years of waking up at night, struggling to breathe, and not getting anywhere with conventional medicine.
Her primary care doctor had diagnosed her with sleep apnea soon after her symptoms started, but he didn’t have anything to offer, other than a continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) machine—a mask to pump air into her lungs—to ensure she gets enough oxygen at night.
Unwilling to accept her doctor’s insistence that she would have to wear the CPAP machine for the rest of her life, and that there was nothing she could do to reverse the condition, Elizabeth decided to look elsewhere for answers.
In her first appointment at Quantify, Elizabeth’s health coach recommended a metabolic panel, cardiovascular panel, and food sensitivity test, to evaluate her metabolic health, blood sugar regulation, insulin resistance, cardiovascular health, inflammation, and immune reactivity to commonly consumed foods.
Test results
Her first time conducting such a comprehensive evaluation of her health, Elizabeth’s metabolic panel showed elevated glucose and hemoglobin A1c, indicating blood sugar dysregulation, or the condition of having abnormally fluctuating blood sugar, which was likely caused by the high-carbohydrate diet that she had followed for years, and which often contributes to the development of sleep apnea.
Elizabeth’s cardiovascular panel showed elevated high-sensitivity C-reactive protein (hs-CRP), indicating systemic inflammation, which was also likely caused by her diet.
Completing the puzzle, her food sensitivity test showed a significant IgG immune reaction to gluten (a protein in wheat, barley, and rye), further validating that the standard American diet wasn’t working for her.
Recovery
Feeling misled by the conventional narrative—that your diet should be mostly bread, pasta, cereal, crackers, and other high-carbohydrate foods—Elizabeth started following her health plan closely, checking in with her health coach regularly to help her stay on track.
She eliminated processed foods, sugar, grains, and dairy from her diet, increased consumption of fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, beef, chicken, fish, and eggs, took certain supplements, such as magnesium malate, vitamin D3, and vitamin K2, and started exercising every day.
Within a month, she started breathing better at night.
Within a year, Elizabeth had no symptoms of sleep apnea, her metabolic panel and cardiovascular panel had both completely normalized, and she was no longer using her CPAP machine, with her doctor’s approval.