Andrew was 39 years old when he signed up for Quantify, after a year 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.
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 receiving test results that he could actually do something about, 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.
By following a pescatarian diet for years, Andrew 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
Shocked that his presumably healthy diet had caused his headaches, but also thrilled to finally get answers, Andrew started following his health coach’s recommendations closely.
He stopped eating tuna, bass, swordfish, and other seafood typically high in mercury 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, taking certain supplements, such as activated charcoal, milk thistle, and NAC, and using a sauna at least once per week.
Within a few months, his headaches started to subside, and within a year, they had completely resolved, with a follow-up metals test showing an almost undetectable level of mercury, further validating the work that he had done to rid his body of the toxic metal that had unknowingly accumulated.