Megan was 29 years old when she signed up for Quantify, after struggling for years with anxiety, and not getting anywhere with conventional medicine.
A psychiatrist had diagnosed her with generalized anxiety disorder when she described feeling an inexplicable anxiousness—as if she was being “chased by a tiger”—despite not having anything in her life to be particularly anxious about.
Desperate for relief, Megan started taking the anxiolytic (anti-anxiety) medication her doctor had prescribed, but the medication turned out to be only slightly effective at ameliorating the nearly constant anxiety that was increasingly affecting every aspect of her life.
What’s more, when she asked her doctor if there were any tests he could order to investigate the causes of her anxiety, he dismissed the question, insisting that there weren’t any tests, that she probably had a “neurotransmitter imbalance,” and that medication was her only option.
Frustrated by her doctor’s obvious bias, Megan decided to pursue a more data-driven approach.
In her first appointment at Quantify, Megan’s health coach recommended a tick-borne infections panel, to test for the most common infections transmitted via the bite of a tick: Borrelia burgdorferi, Babesia microti, Bartonella henselae, Anaplasma phagocytophilum, and Ehrlichia chaffeensis.
Test results
Her first time testing for chronic infections, Megan’s tick-borne infections panel showed significantly elevated IgM and IgG antibodies to Borrelia burgdorferi, Babesia microti, and Bartonella henselae, indicating Lyme disease, babesiosis, and bartonellosis, the notoriously underdiagnosed tick-borne infections that often cause anxiety, depression, fatigue, joint pain, and other chronic symptoms.
Not just a lucky guess, her health coach had suspected tick-borne infections after learning that Megan was an avid hiker, and that her anxiety had started soon after an epic week-long trek in the wilderness.
While she hadn’t noticed any tick bites or experienced any weird symptoms at the time, Megan had likely been bitten during her trip, exposing her to the infections that would ultimately cause her anxiety.
Recovery
Megan had been bitten by a number of ticks over the years on previous hikes, so she knew to do “tick checks” and watch out for the acute symptoms of Lyme disease—bull’s eye rash, nausea, and fever—that typically warrant treatment with antibiotics.
What she didn’t know, however, was that tick-borne infections don’t always cause acute symptoms—that you don’t always get an indication of exposure—and that chronic symptoms, like anxiety, are more likely to develop when you don’t catch the infection early.
Thrilled to finally get answers, Megan started following her health plan closely, checking in with her health coach regularly to help her stay on track.
She eliminated processed foods, sugar, and grains from her diet, increased consumption of fruits and vegetables, started drinking at least 64 ounces of water per day, and took certain supplements, such as Japanese knotweed, cat’s claw, and astragalus.
Within a few months, the unrelenting anxiety that she had lived with for years started to improve, an encouraging indication that her immune system was coming back online.
Within a year, her anxiety had completely resolved, she reported feeling like she had gotten her life back, and a follow-up tick-borne infections panel was negative for Lyme disease, babesiosis, and bartonellosis, further validating the work she had done to address the infections that had unknowingly compromised her health.