Tim was 35 years old when he signed up for Quantify, after struggling for years to fall asleep at night, regardless of how tired he was.
Initially reluctant to take the sleep medication that his primary care doctor had offered to prescribe, Tim first experimented with melatonin, L-theanine, 5-HTP, and other supplements that people in insomnia Facebook Groups had reported benefit from.
When supplements didn’t work, he tried cutting down on caffeine, but that didn’t seem to have any effect either.
Increasingly desperate, Tim ultimately decided to try the medication, and while the artificially-induced drowsiness certainly made it easier to drift off into unconsciousness, when he started experiencing scary side effects—brain fog, vertigo, and depression—he realized it was probably only a matter of time until things got worse.
Unwilling to continue playing the guessing game, Tim decided to pursue a more data-driven approach.
In his first appointment at Quantify, Tim’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, Tim’s HPA stress profile showed an abnormally elevated diurnal cortisol pattern, indicating HPA axis dysregulation, or the condition of having a hyperactivated stress response, which commonly causes insomnia, anxiety, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), and other chronic symptoms.
Not just a lucky guess, his health coach had suspected HPA axis dysregulation after learning that Tim had clocked 80-hour workweeks for years as a product manager at a startup infamous for its extreme work culture, and had likely been under more physical and mental stress than his body had the capacity to handle, resulting in the gradual breakdown and, ultimately, dysregulation of one of the most important systems in the body.
Recovery
To learn that his 80-hour workweeks had caused his HPA axis dysregulation wasn’t surprising to Tim, 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 insomnia, or feeling “tired and wired” at night, could be a manifestation of cortisol overproduction.
Recognizing that this was both a moment of reckoning, but also an opportunity to take control of his health, Tim 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 ashwagandha, 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 few months, he had landed a 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, Tim was feeling great.
His insomnia had resolved, 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.