Joe was 27 years old when he signed up for Quantify, after struggling for years with debilitating fatigue, and not getting anywhere with conventional medicine.
His primary care doctor had ordered a complete blood count (CBC), comprehensive metabolic panel (CMP), and thyroid-stimulating hormone (TSH) to investigate what was going on, but when his test results came back normal, he didn’t have any ideas, other than the possibility that Joe was “just stressed.”
An account executive at an enterprise software company, Joe recognized that his 80-hour workweeks could certainly have an effect on his health, but he was also understandably reluctant to accept his doctor’s suggestion that stress alone was causing his fatigue, without any test results to back this up.
What’s more, his fatigue was severe—unlike anything he’d ever experienced.
At the extreme, he would call in sick, citing a cold or flu or some other malady that prevented him from going to the office, to spend the entire day sleeping.
More often, he would nod off at his desk in between sales calls, seemingly unaffected by his nearly constant consumption of coffee.
Feeling that his job was at stake, Joe decided to pursue a more data-driven approach.
In his first appointment at Quantify, Joe’s health coach recommended a metabolic panel, hormone panel, and food sensitivity test, to evaluate his metabolic health, blood sugar regulation, insulin resistance, hormonal health, and immune reactivity to commonly consumed foods.
Test results
His first time conducting a comprehensive evaluation of his health, Joe’s metabolic panel showed elevated 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 he had followed for years, and which commonly contributes to fatigue, brain fog, depression, and other chronic symptoms.
Providing an additional clue as to what was going on, Joe’s hormone panel showed abnormally low testosterone—shockingly on par with that of a typical eighty year-old—which was likely also caused by his diet.
Completing the puzzle, his food sensitivity test showed a significant sensitivity to both gluten (a protein in wheat, barley, and rye) and whey (a protein in milk), which together had been the foundation of his diet for his entire life.
Recovery
It was a lot to take in, having never been confronted with test results that would require him to make significant changes, but Joe was committed to doing whatever he had to do to recover his health.
Working closely with his health coach, he eliminated processed foods, sugar, grains, and dairy from his diet, increased consumption of fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, beef, chicken, fish, and eggs, started drinking at least 64 ounces of water per day, and took certain supplements, such as berberine, cinnamon, and saw palmetto.
Within a month, not only did his energy start to improve, but he also reported feeling more motivated at work, an encouraging indication that his testosterone was coming back online.
Within six months, his fatigue had completely resolved, he was back to hitting his sales targets, and a follow-up metabolic panel and hormone panel showed no abnormalities, further validating the work he had done to address the factors that had caused his fatigue.