Ally Ahern was on the verge of multiple organ failure. The 24-year-old musician from Illinois had Lyme disease she contracted from a tick bite as a 9-year-old. Her doctor at the time brushed it off as an ordinary rash. Then she dealt with years of chronic illness symptoms — fibromyalgia, increased heart rate and immune system overreaction — due to what was untreated Lyme.
“Being told nothing’s really a big deal, you kind of learn ‘I probably shouldn’t ask for help,’” Ahern said. Every year, some 30,000 cases of Lyme disease — a bacterial disease caused by a tick bite — are reported to the Centers for Disease Control.
After 12 years, several misdiagnoses and multiple doctors, she realized she had Lyme disease. But by that time — it was almost too late.
“The more that I was treated, the more my symptoms flared, and I would end up in the emergency room because I would have cardiac episodes,” Ahern said.
The disease completely turned life for the young songwriter upside down. “It was very hard for me to go about my regular life — work, friends, my relationships were suffering,” she said.
After being told she was at the beginning of multiple organ failure and needed heart surgery, she heard about a hospital in Germany that had cured people of Lyme disease.
Hoping for a miracle, Ahern went to St. George Hospital in Germany for a treatment that paired antibiotics with hyperthermia — where they heat the body to 106 degrees, so antibiotics can actually kill the bacteria causing Lyme disease, according to the hospital’s website.
After five weeks, the treatment cured Ahern of Lyme. The now 26-year-old took a few months to recover from the treatment and continues to test negative for Lyme.
“I just still feel so lucky every day,” she said.
But despite her renewed zest for life, she said she feels especially frustrated about the American healthcare system and how it seems to keep people in what she calls a “loop of being chronically ill.” According to the CDC, 129 million people in the United States have at least one chronic disease — more than one in every three Americans.
Ahern said her experience with what is called “medical tourism” made her consider moving abroad, along with other things, like a difference in food quality. “The food just feels better, fresher,” she said. “I was looking at some of the ingredient lists just to see how short they were.”
Richelle Gamlam, known as the Move Abroad Coach on Instagram, helps Americans leave the U.S. and hears stories of people looking for miracle treatments like Ahern’s all the time. “Some of my clients are worried that if they stay in the U.S., they could die,” she said.
Gamlam originally moved to China in 2013 and has lived in countries including Tanzania, Vietnam and now Georgia — a country at the intersection of Europe and Asia. While abroad, she met her husband and gave birth to their daughter. She had an unplanned C-section and stayed in the hospital for five days, which she said cost less than $1,800 without insurance. The average C-section in the U.S. costs $22,646, according to the Peterson KFF-Health System Tracker.
Gamlam says the longer she’s lived abroad, the less she wants to live in the U.S. “I don’t really have any desire to go back,” she said.
She’s also noticed improvements in her health due to food quality since moving abroad. “I can’t eat dairy when I’m in the U.S. It’s gotten worse and worse over the years,” she said, and also noted she’s not able to eat American bread without feeling sick. “I feel like a chipmunk, like my cheeks have puffed up.”
According to the Boston’s Children Hospital, 30 to 50 million people in the U.S. report experiencing lactose intolerance. In the country of Georgia, known for its wine, bread and cheese, Gamlam said her food allergies disappeared.
“I can eat as much cheese as I want. I can drink as much milk as I want,” Gamlam said.
But in the U.S., the Food and Drug Administration suspended its quality control program for milk and other dairy products, according to an internal email seen by Reuters. The Trump administration has also terminated the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Advisory Committee on Microbiological Criteria for Foods, which gave the USDA science-based recommendations on food safety, along with the National Advisory Committee on Meat and Poultry Inspection.
The deregulation of food safety protections means that the food-related health problems people like Gamlam face from American food products could get worse. In 2024, the number of hospitalizations related to food-borne illnesses doubled, according to the U.S. Public Interest Research Group Education Fund.
Frida Hovik, a registered dietitian at USC’s Keck School of Medicine, said a key reason why Americans can enjoy certain foods abroad that they can’t here are because of the chemicals allowed in U.S. food — over 10,000 — compared to the European Union, which only permits around 300.
When the New York Post compared American peanut butter, a McDonald’s Big Mac, baked beans and tomato sauce to their U.K. counterparts, every single U.S. product had more carbs, fat and sugars. However, when it came to sodium, the U.K.’s baked beans and Big Mac exceeded the U.S. version of those products.
Before coming to the U.S., Hovik had never considered herself especially healthy. But when she visited the U.S. as an exchange student at 15 years old, she realized she and everyone back home in Norway were the picture of health compared to her American host family.
Her biggest shock was their choice for Sunday breakfast — a pizza restaurant. “I didn’t want to go because I was so uncomfortable,” she said. “And then not just the pizza, we had the dessert pizza pie too.”
Hovik said it was the first time she saw people eating greasy, processed foods almost all the time in large portions. Both of her host parents had to get bypass surgery while she was there — a consequence of long term high cholesterol. In turn, her host family was surprised by her eating habits. This culture shock was part of what inspired her to become a registered dietitian and move to the U.S. to help people with their nutrition decisions.
Social media is flooded with posts about what’s wrong to eat from registered dietitians like Hovik and from ordinary people — one day, oat milk is healthy and then the next day, it is not. Hovik said this information overload is the most common struggle her clients have.
In the U.S., 53 million people live in low-income areas with limited access to supermarkets, according to the USDA. Christina Case, an Indiana native who moved to Thailand to teach English, said that fresh, whole foods are in abundance there — and affordable too.
“I can get a big bundle of bananas for a dollar or a little bag of pre-cut pineapple for 20 cents,” Case said. “It’s on every corner that you can get fresh food, fresh fruits, fresh vegetables, fresh meats. It’s just everywhere.”
Shawna Lum, who moved to Spain from Los Angeles, said it is not just the increased access to fresh, whole foods that changed her health — but eliminating a sedentary lifestyle.
“I honestly don’t really go to the gym much anymore since I moved to Europe,” she said. “You’re walking 15,000 steps a day, you’re taking the train, you’re sweating.”
Lum started her own coaching company, Move Overseas Now, to give Americans the information they need to move to Europe or Latin America.
Richelle Gamlam has already noticed a growing trend among her clients looking to move abroad permanently.
“I’ve worked with some clients who have difficulties with allergies and eating food in the US and their hope is that by moving abroad, that will get better.”
For Gamlam’s clients and others, leaving the U.S. is one way to finally feel well after living in a country that makes it too hard.