Ben was 28 years old when he signed up for Quantify, after struggling for a year with an inexplicable melancholy that had developed seemingly out of nowhere.
His primary care doctor had diagnosed him with depression a few months after his symptoms started, speculating that Ben probably had a serotonin deficiency, and had prescribed a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) to treat the condition.
A self-described “data nerd,” Ben wasn’t thrilled about starting a medication that would artificially modulate his neurotransmitters without running any tests to determine that this was the best approach, but he was desperate for something that might work, so he decided to take the SSRI anyway.
Within a month of starting the medication, however, Ben was feeling worse.
He wondered whether the SSRI was the right medication for him, so he turned to PubMed—the world’s largest library of peer-reviewed biomedical research—to learn more about depression and its causes, and soon discovered that the serotonin deficiency theory of depression had long since been debunked, and that depression is actually much more complicated than a deficiency of a single neurotransmitter.
Shocked that he was prescribed a medication to treat a neurotransmitter deficiency he likely didn’t have, Ben ultimately threw in the towel on the SSRI, explaining to his doctor that he was going to try a more natural approach.
In his first appointment at Quantify, Ben’s health coach recommended a hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) stress profile, to evaluate the health of his HPA axis, the system that regulates the body’s response to acute and chronic stress.
Test results
His first time conducting a comprehensive evaluation of his health, Ben’s HPA stress profile showed an abnormally shallow diurnal cortisol pattern, indicating HPA axis dysregulation, or the condition of having an exhausted stress response, which commonly causes depression, anxiety, fatigue, and other chronic symptoms.
Having worked as a software engineer at a venture-backed startup since graduating from college, Ben had been indoctrinated into the culture of spending nearly every waking hour at the office—often working 80 hours or more per week—so the primary cause of his HPA axis dysregulation, and thus depression, was likely the extreme physical and mental stress that he had been under for years.
Recovery
To learn that his 80-hour workweeks had caused his HPA axis dysregulation wasn’t surprising to Ben, but that didn’t necessarily make it easy to hear.
He knew that working extreme hours could have an effect on his health, but had somehow neglected to consider that depression could be a manifestation of exhaustion.
Thrilled to finally get answers, Ben started following his health plan closely, checking in with his health coach regularly to help him stay on track.
He eliminated processed foods, sugar, and grains from his diet, increased consumption of fruits and vegetables, took certain supplements, such as magnesium malate, glycine, and Rhodiola rosea, and started getting to bed on a consistent schedule.
He also started reaching out to recruiters, stipulating that he was specifically interested in working at a company with a more normal work schedule.
Within a month, he had landed a remote job at a company that clearly prioritized the health of their employees, rarely requiring them to work more than 40 hours.
Six months later, having acclimated to the more relaxed work culture, Ben was feeling great.
His depression had lifted, and he felt a lightness that he hadn’t felt in years, now on the other side of an intensely stressful experience that had unknowingly compromised his health.