Laura was 31 years old when she started struggling to fall asleep at night, regardless of how tired she was.
Like most people, she had always taken sleep for granted, knowing that it was important, but never really thinking about it, or putting much intention into it.
She would typically fall asleep just a few minutes after her head hit the pillow, and wake up feeling rested, often before her alarm.
But when it started taking her hours to get to sleep, even despite an exhausting day at the startup she worked at, Laura knew this wasn’t just stress.
At the extreme, she wouldn’t sleep at all, and would somehow will herself out of bed in the morning to get to work and push through the meetings she had to run or interviews she had to conduct.
More often, she would stare at the ceiling mindlessly until finally dozing off as the sun began to rise, for maybe a few precious hours of shut-eye.
Trial and error
Increasingly desperate for something that might work, yet reluctant to take sleep medication, Laura started experimenting with melatonin, L-theanine, 5-HTP, and other supplements that she learned about on the internet.
When supplements didn’t work, she tried cutting down on caffeine, ultimately getting to zero, but that didn’t seem to have any effect either.
Still averaging only a few hours of sleep per night, and not getting anywhere with her experiments, Laura eventually gave up trying to address her insomnia naturally, and asked her doctor for a prescription for sleep medication.
She couldn’t do this anymore—she couldn’t keep operating on almost no sleep—so if she had to take sleep medication to get her life back, despite the long list of side effects, then so be it, because apparently nothing else was working.
No free lunch
Within a week of starting her medication, Laura started to fall asleep easier.
It wasn’t a miracle drug, in that she was still struggling to get to sleep to some degree, but the artificially-induced drowsiness certainly made it easier to drift off into unconsciousness.
While she would still wake up feeling unrested, she was no longer staring at the ceiling all night anymore, and, as a result, no longer dreaded going to bed.
Cautiously optimistic, Laura continued taking her medication for a few months without issue, until, at some point, she started experiencing a scary side effect.
Forgetting a coworker’s name who she had worked with for years was the first sign that something was wrong.
Getting lost on her way to work was the next, and more concerning, indication that her memory was being affected by her medication.
Enter Quantify
Recognizing that it was likely only a matter of time until things got worse, Laura discovered Quantify in a Google search for at-home tests, and saw that the company helps people with mystery symptoms to identify and address the causes.
After getting matched with a certified health coach, completing a health questionnaire, and meeting with her health coach over video chat, a quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) stool analysis was ordered for Laura, to test for parasites, bacteria, fungi, and viruses, and evaluate intestinal permeability, inflammation, and the health of her microbiome.
Blastocystis hominis
A few weeks later, she received her test results, and her health coach explained that her qPCR stool analysis was positive for Blastocystis hominis, an intestinal parasite that can cause insomnia and innumerable other chronic symptoms.
Her health coach added that Blastocystis hominis is almost always contracted by consuming contaminated food or water, which is more likely during international travel, but also surprisingly not uncommon in countries with modern infrastructure, like the United States.
To address Blastocystis hominis, her health coach continued, Laura would need to optimize her immune function, by eliminating processed foods, grains, and dairy from her diet and increasing consumption of fruits and vegetables, while targeting the parasite specifically, by taking certain supplements, such as black walnut hull, clove, and olive leaf.
Recovery
Laura hadn’t left the country in years, so she was shocked to learn that a parasite was causing her insomnia, having assumed that parasites are only something to be concerned about when you’re off the beaten path, consuming food and water that might be compromised.
She hoped her stool test would provide answers, but she certainly didn’t expect to discover that an intestinal parasite was the culprit, and particularly given that she didn’t have any digestive symptoms.
Quickly getting over her unease, she started making the dietary changes and taking the supplements her health coach recommended.
After a month, she started falling asleep more easily, and opted to stop taking her medication, now no longer critical.
After six months, she had completely resolved her insomnia, and a follow-up qPCR stool analysis was negative for Blastocystis hominis, validating the work she had done to address the parasite that she had unknowingly contracted.