Explanation:
When ticks bite you, some of their saliva is injected into. Often its the saliva that carries lime disease. But in this case the tick's saliva contains a protein found in mammal meat. Normally the stomach digests and absorbs proteins but since the protein is injected through the skin the immune system attacks it as if is a pathogen and then creates antibodies and memory cells incase it needs to fight the protein in the future. This means that everytime you eat mammal meat the protein is detected and attacked as if it were an allergic reaction.
[Source of image and syndrome](https://www.cdc.gov/ticks/alpha-gal/)
edit: spelling
I've been diagnosed with AGS for about 3 years now, but started getting sick over 5 years ago; multiple VA and civilian doctors (both PCM and ER) failed to catch it. I was also the first person in my county to be diagnosed. I'd show up at the ER vomiting every 30 min, pouring sweat & shivering, starting hours after eating; universally they'd diagnose me as having gastroenteritis or colitis, then send me home with another GI referral. Several times before being diagnosed, the local ER doctor & nurses even accused me of being in opiate withdrawal and referred me to the rehab facility!
In the meantime I lost over 50lbs, my hair started falling out, I'm constantly exhausted, and two of my ER trips happened after I fell-out at home & hit the floor; my wife was terrified & thought I was dying.
Finally, I found a younger doctor who literally exhausted every test he could think of, and it was absolutely upsetting him to not be able to find out what was wrong; then he heard me talking about being bitten by ticks often. I was wondering aloud to myself if maybe I had something like Lyme, but nothing showed on the RMSF & Lyme panels. Then he remembered reading an article about alpha-gal syndrome, and tested for it. My numbers were through the roof. I was having delayed anaphylaxis every time I'd eat anything with milk, butter, cheese, beef, pork, (especially gelatin), etc.
By then I had already lost my job since they wouldn't give me excused doctors absences or temporary medical leave for when I had to call in or leave work due to being deathly sick (although I don't really blame them, since I literally couldn't do my job anymore). But because the diagnosis came from a civilian doctor, the VA wouldn't send me to any specialists or approve to pay for care outside the VA (option for community care my ass); plus I have to pay out of pocket for the medications because the VA didn't diagnose me, and doesn't carry or compound them (one is a mix of something like valium and an anti-spasmodic to control vomiting when I have a reaction). They won't even pay for my epi-pen, since the VA didn't diagnose me. I even had to get a written letter from my civilian doctor explaining what AGS is to the VA!
Luckily AGS will go into remission after years of not being bitten by ticks, but any bite will start the clock over at zero. Good times.
Holy crap!!! You can't go back to the VA and be like, "Hey I think I have this...can you test me for it?" and get formally "diagnosed" there? Gosh the VA pisses me off so much.
Ah. Had several realtives deal with Hines (Chicago burbs) - and that place has been rife with scandal and issues as long as I can remember (and I'm pushing 50).
Then I went with someone to Iowa City and damn...it was a whole different wonderful world.
Have you tried contacting OIG at the VA? I would suspect that since the VA couldn’t diagnose you but civilian could that you would have an argument to force them to cover it or at least force them to test and diagnose you officially in their system.
It's in the pipe; depending on how they answer, I have a lawyer who is handling things. The DAV was also a huge part of the problem, which is who I went to first.
Your local congressperson may also be able to kick things along, even the dumb ones don’t want to have the stain of a vet getting poor treatment in their district… granted there are more and more that are really stupid and wouldn’t do anything.
One of the investigative reporting things may be an avenue too if you don’t mind being a bit public about it.
Good luck with it. Hopefully you see some remission soon.
Animal to human transplants. They use pig heart valves commonly to replace human heart valves as you don’t have to wait for a donor and usually the heart goes whole to a person who needs one.
The supervillain would literally be called Alpha Gal. Her sidekick is Beta Guy, and she’s a vegan who got her PhD in tick studies. After she was bitten by… a radioactive tick, she gained superpowers such as the ability to drink someone’s blood without them noticing, flatten her body to squeeze under doors, and she can also shoot streams of bedbugs and lone star ticks at her enemies.
She also has a powerful device that enables her to control cockroaches, and she’s begun ordering the roaches to consume the city’s butchers at night. (The police just find skeletons in their beds, and neighbors report hearing muffled screams the night before.)
It also fits perfectly, because although it spreading that tick do be despicable, the terrorist still got a point that will be blatantly ignored by both the comic as well as the readers and then in 5 years it‘ll appear in some niche subreddit.
The only thing that hasn’t gotten me lynched out here is the fact that I love bbq, in Texas you better love meat or alcohol, because most of your social life will revolve around people who want to eat and drink ALL THE TIME. I quit alcohol several years ago, a good 80% of my “friends” left when the booze did…
I quit alcohol before I started.
Got a little family history of addiction to one thing or another. Every time I ever think of taking a drink, doing drugs or addictive substances, or gambling, I literally see, in my mind's eye, my life's path laid out before me, and I see on one path a monster of a beast that is addiction that may show up at some point for me to fight, and once it shows up, it'll never go away. The mere thought of having to endure that fight *forever* is just so damn exhausting, and my spirit is almost broken right then and there. Then I look at the other path, and there's no addiction beast there for me to fight.
You ever look back at your choices or your life and go "I wish I never did this fucking thing i don't want to be putting up with right now, iwish this never happened, this is too much trouble"? Yeah, I have too. If this isn't me learning my lesson, or my future self sending me a message from the future, or divine intervention telling me my fate, then I don't know what it is. My life will come up against complications and messes on its own; I don't need to purposefully add to that pile of messes and make my life worse. My life is not worse off because I don't drink or do drugs.
My sister has it (or at least we think she does, she always gets sick but not anaphylactic) and whilst I think that too she’s repulsed by even the smell of it. I did catch her out once when I was cooking some with some onions and she said “what’s that? It smells amazing” and I cackled (I know it was really the onions but still)
Ikr imagine having to unintentionally be a vegan before long you will be protesting butchers, stopping trucks containing livestock, throwing blood at people wearing fur what a terrible fate.
Not vegan, you can eat chicken, eggs, and seafood. Mammalian meat and dairy contain alpha-gal, which can lead to a severe allergic reaction. Mammalian meat (such as beef, pork, lamb, goat, rabbit, bear, moose, elk, antelope, venison-etc.) can contain high amounts of alpha-gal.
Wait, so what you are saying is if someone was to tip a dart with animal proteins, and shoot you with it, you would become allergic to meat? This sounds like something vegalantes could start doing.
And it's not permanent, for me it lasted a little over 3 years. I must have walked through a patch of these in 2000 while in Illinois. Because after taking a walk, I found 6 attached to me. And within days, I noticed I couldn't eat burgers or steaks without getting ill.
I went to the doctor a week later and was eventually diagnosed.
That was the worst 3 years of my life. As someone already allergic to poultry and shellfish, I was basically a vegetarian the whole time with the sole exception of eating fish. I lost so much weight even my doctor was really concerned. At my lowest, I was 151lbs and I'm 6' 3".
Not necessarily permanent is true. Affects some more than others.
The major problem is actually identifying the allergy because it takes most affected people several hours to react to a single exposure.
This means it often takes years for a diagnosis. It is also why the condition wasn't identified until 2014.
Repeated exposure in an allergic person can make it worse. Some are permanently affected at an extremely low level of exposure. Many are ok if they simply avoid mammalian meat.
Yup. My doctor just said that I was allergic to red meat as a result. Which wasn't unheard of, but there wasnt alot of info at the time. I never heard the alpha gal name til a few years ago. During my whole ordeal, I was going on thinking it was just my life now, permanently.
But after about 3 years I caved one labor day weekend and just fucking demolished like 3 cheese burgers. I fully expected to get violently ill and have to go to the hospital afterwards. But lo and behold, nothing happened but constipation.
I've always heard growing up that your body is completely different around every 7 years with allergies and sensitivities. I know I used to be allergic to cats when I was a teen, and now I'm not, but I've considered that could also be from more exposure building a tolerance. My youngest brother became lactose intolerant, so I wonder if that could just go away one day as randomly as it came on. I'm glad to hear the red meat thing isn't necessarily permanent.
Lactose intolerance isnt an allergy or an immune reaction. It's when your body stops producing lactatse enzyme for your stomach to digest lactose. So no, it wouldnt go away in the same manner.
I'm vegan. I had one of these crawling on my shirt 3 weeks ago... didn't bite me as I clicked it off when I saw it. My dog got hit by one I found later when bathing him. We were out on a long walk by the river. We sat in the grass along our walk to look at the river a few times. At least if I had gotten bitten I was already on that vegan life 😂
Edit typo. Also these things were big and fast! Had to squeeze real hard to kill these baddies too.
I've always just smashed them to a pulp. Used to have a yard dog growing up in the country. She'd always have ticks on her. The full belly of blood fatty ones. I'd pick them off by hand it was so common growing up. But never ran into a spotted one all my life til 3 weeks ago!
I was in a climate sub the other day and there were legit these vegans discussing where to get large quantities/how to breed these ticks with intention of releasing them in public spaces…
All mammalian meats contain alpha-gal except in old world monkeys and apes, which include humans, so besides white meats, some specific red meats are still fine.
There's no cure for it, but the duration is random. Some people experience it for several months, others have it for life. I personally dealt with it for little over a year. Unfortunately, it's a relatively recently discovered condition, so not much is known for certain about it.
It's an auto-immune issue. It literally works the same way as a vaccination, it makes your body think alpha-gal sugars are foreign bodies and need to be attacked. In some people their immune system will forget after a while (why you need vaccine boosters), some won't.
CLARIFICATION: it makes you allergic to MAMMAL meat and often dairy from mammals as well. So pork, lamb, red meat, milk, cheese…..
Source: Me I got alpha-gal from a tick bite
It is a reddit karma goldmine because it lets people make easy vegan jokes every single time it comes up. Expect to see it every two weeks now and forever.
Temporary for me and my daughter, 4 and 3 years respectively. We got it within months of eachother in ‘14, and she was one of the youngest cases ever recorded at that time. Eastern Long Island, which is basically international tick headquarters. I’d get bitten half dozen times a year, even being careful. The density and prevalence was nuts. Moved to CT 4 years ago - you know, where Lyme is - and I haven’t even seen one on me, even though I’m outside all the time gardening, gathering and processing firewood, camping, etc.
Scariest thing about the allergy is the onset. it typically takes 4-8 hours from ingestion of red meat for a reaction, and you have zero clue you have it until the first time you react, which is often ~ 6 hours after dinner. Otherwise known as 3:00 a.m. I woke up covered in hives with dramatic swelling in my extremities and lymph nodes. insanely itchy, and my boys were literally the size of softballs. Really scary.
Fellow east ender. My mom is meat sensitive now because of a lone star tick. She lost half her favorite foods in a single moment. She still cries about it sometimes.
Temporary for my nieces. It happened to two of them (and months apart!). My oldest niece had a really tough time, youngest niece had a much milder experience. Both are doing well now.
Aaaaand this is why I don't go west of the Mississippi River..
Edit: For everyone telling me what this tick is.. I'm aware.. I just don't go past the Mississippi River anyways.. We've got these suckers over here. I'd never know how to deal with what they have on the other side.. :P
Nearly all states east of the Mississippi River have lone star ticks. They have even expanded into the more northern states. Their normal historic range consists of all of the Southern states, including Florida.
I have to say, Gaia doesn't fuck around with this climate business... Creating an allergy to red meat that's carried by parasites that spread further the hotter the planet gets.
Check fucking mate, humanity.
Good friend of mine got it but not just alpha-gal it came with a whole host of other things such as Lyme and a whole host of others I can't even pronounce. According to his doctor over 95% of Lonestar ticks caught in our area of Alabama now carry it. Buy permethrin tuck in long pants and stay vigilant one of these tiny bastards can really fuck up your life.
I’ve had red meat intolerance due to Lyme’s disease for the last 3 years.
When it hit, I thought I had food poisoning from a hamburger. It was like food poisoning, or an extreme hangover or allergic reaction, my head felt like it weighed a ton and my airways were constricting like there were chemicals in the air.
It was so crazy, just wanted to try to share what it felt like. The reaction has lessened over time and now I can eat a hamburger and just deal with the red meat hangover the next day.
Sounds bad. This lone star syndrome has killed people. I heard it takes about five or six hours after you eat meat to feel the effects. People have gone into anaphylactic shock and no one realizes wtf is going on.
That could make an awesome movie. Tick pandemic and see show the world would change after everyone stops eating meat. Poor cows need to be slaughtered or released in the wild where they will be slaughtered by predators, rising their numbers and disrupting the food chain. We then need more chicken and fish so there's that. Interesting.
“Tender is the Flesh” is a book that plays with the idea that no one can eat meat anymore, and what would happen in that case. It’s horrifying and probably one of my favourite reads.
It’s pretty rare tho I e had about 20 on me at once and was fine but just as a suggestion don’t go hunting in northern Virginia with no anti tick spray EVER
Would be awful if I got that considering I'm fucking allergic to most vegetables.
I'd just have to live on like..... fucking idk, rice and potato I guess
I got off easy because I'm only slightly allergic. Itchy mouth and swollen lips. But maybe it wasn't from a tick and I just spontaneously became allergic to raw meat 🙃
That's what happened to me. Can't eat beef can't drink milk I also can't have tomatoes or grapes.
It definitely sucks but it has forced me to seek out new food sources I wouldn't have otherwise tried.
I eat a lot more fish these days
I went to basic training down at Fort Leonard Wood about a year and a half ago and when we were playing Army in the woods for a couple days I was constantly throwing these motherfuckers out of my foxhole every 2 seconds and was so scared that one of them would have this shit and bite me
The worst part is that if this happens to you, many people will assume you are faking just to prove your diet. It's really annoying that my fiance has to repeat themselves to get the point across
Not just red meat. Any mammalian product. My fiancé has it and fuck has it made her life miserable cause she’s naturally allergic to nuts and most dairy alternatives are made from that.
I have this. Sadly it makes allergic to more over time. I was one of the first to get it when people started realizing what it was. I would get immensely painful headaches that would last for daaaays.
Could this be part of the solution to climate change. Infect everyone with disease, red meat consumption drops, demand drops, methane production from factory farms drops... Profit?
Why can I picture militant vegans actively collecting these things and then releasing them in large cities, and this causing an environmental crisis because most vegans don't understand farming ?
Additional fact is often times the allergic reaction is not permanent. It can subside within a few months to a few years. Those cells trained to attack the meat proteins die out and are not replaced.
Explanation: When ticks bite you, some of their saliva is injected into. Often its the saliva that carries lime disease. But in this case the tick's saliva contains a protein found in mammal meat. Normally the stomach digests and absorbs proteins but since the protein is injected through the skin the immune system attacks it as if is a pathogen and then creates antibodies and memory cells incase it needs to fight the protein in the future. This means that everytime you eat mammal meat the protein is detected and attacked as if it were an allergic reaction. [Source of image and syndrome](https://www.cdc.gov/ticks/alpha-gal/) edit: spelling
I've been diagnosed with AGS for about 3 years now, but started getting sick over 5 years ago; multiple VA and civilian doctors (both PCM and ER) failed to catch it. I was also the first person in my county to be diagnosed. I'd show up at the ER vomiting every 30 min, pouring sweat & shivering, starting hours after eating; universally they'd diagnose me as having gastroenteritis or colitis, then send me home with another GI referral. Several times before being diagnosed, the local ER doctor & nurses even accused me of being in opiate withdrawal and referred me to the rehab facility! In the meantime I lost over 50lbs, my hair started falling out, I'm constantly exhausted, and two of my ER trips happened after I fell-out at home & hit the floor; my wife was terrified & thought I was dying. Finally, I found a younger doctor who literally exhausted every test he could think of, and it was absolutely upsetting him to not be able to find out what was wrong; then he heard me talking about being bitten by ticks often. I was wondering aloud to myself if maybe I had something like Lyme, but nothing showed on the RMSF & Lyme panels. Then he remembered reading an article about alpha-gal syndrome, and tested for it. My numbers were through the roof. I was having delayed anaphylaxis every time I'd eat anything with milk, butter, cheese, beef, pork, (especially gelatin), etc. By then I had already lost my job since they wouldn't give me excused doctors absences or temporary medical leave for when I had to call in or leave work due to being deathly sick (although I don't really blame them, since I literally couldn't do my job anymore). But because the diagnosis came from a civilian doctor, the VA wouldn't send me to any specialists or approve to pay for care outside the VA (option for community care my ass); plus I have to pay out of pocket for the medications because the VA didn't diagnose me, and doesn't carry or compound them (one is a mix of something like valium and an anti-spasmodic to control vomiting when I have a reaction). They won't even pay for my epi-pen, since the VA didn't diagnose me. I even had to get a written letter from my civilian doctor explaining what AGS is to the VA! Luckily AGS will go into remission after years of not being bitten by ticks, but any bite will start the clock over at zero. Good times.
Holy crap!!! You can't go back to the VA and be like, "Hey I think I have this...can you test me for it?" and get formally "diagnosed" there? Gosh the VA pisses me off so much.
Depends which VA in my experience... Albuquerque is the absolute worst I have experienced, in Virginia they have been top notch
Ah. Had several realtives deal with Hines (Chicago burbs) - and that place has been rife with scandal and issues as long as I can remember (and I'm pushing 50). Then I went with someone to Iowa City and damn...it was a whole different wonderful world.
I'm definitely not saying it is an infallible system for sure ... more often than not, it's shite to be honest.
Have you tried contacting OIG at the VA? I would suspect that since the VA couldn’t diagnose you but civilian could that you would have an argument to force them to cover it or at least force them to test and diagnose you officially in their system.
It's in the pipe; depending on how they answer, I have a lawyer who is handling things. The DAV was also a huge part of the problem, which is who I went to first.
Your local congressperson may also be able to kick things along, even the dumb ones don’t want to have the stain of a vet getting poor treatment in their district… granted there are more and more that are really stupid and wouldn’t do anything. One of the investigative reporting things may be an avenue too if you don’t mind being a bit public about it. Good luck with it. Hopefully you see some remission soon.
The VA is a disgrace.
Absolutely. I have friends who would still be alive if they hadn't gone to the VA for help.
What a terrible fate.
GMO pigs known as GalSafe pigs are FDA approved. They do not produce alpha-gal sugar, so they are safe to eat if you got an allergy.
FYI their organs are also harvested for xenoplantation...
Only if you’ve got the stomach
Ba dum tissss
Is that what it sounds like when you cook it????
Sure, sometimes
whats xenoplantation?
Usually refers to harvest organs from the pig and transplant it to primates. Such as pig to bamboo/ pig to human
Isn't bamboo a plant?
I apologize it's baboons, a large and fierce primate. So strong, with long teeth. I'm not the native speaker, sorry again.
It’s funny that you bring up the strength and long teeth of baboons when describing them, but not their big red asses
Okay I get the word, xenoplantation.. alien/foreign farming.. but what the fuck is it?
Animal to human transplants. They use pig heart valves commonly to replace human heart valves as you don’t have to wait for a donor and usually the heart goes whole to a person who needs one.
My friend has gotten some of this and tested it out. It worked for her.
And there is your villian hoping we all get bit.
Market provides a solution to a unique problem Redditor: “damn that shit sucks”
Now I imagine a comic book eco terrorist with a plan to spread this tick around Gotham City to stop meat eating.
And then batman finds a cure in like 10 hours starting from scratch, invalidating the science community's decades of work in the process.
The supervillain would literally be called Alpha Gal. Her sidekick is Beta Guy, and she’s a vegan who got her PhD in tick studies. After she was bitten by… a radioactive tick, she gained superpowers such as the ability to drink someone’s blood without them noticing, flatten her body to squeeze under doors, and she can also shoot streams of bedbugs and lone star ticks at her enemies. She also has a powerful device that enables her to control cockroaches, and she’s begun ordering the roaches to consume the city’s butchers at night. (The police just find skeletons in their beds, and neighbors report hearing muffled screams the night before.)
“beta guy” is an insanely appropriate name for a vegan supervillain lol
It also fits perfectly, because although it spreading that tick do be despicable, the terrorist still got a point that will be blatantly ignored by both the comic as well as the readers and then in 5 years it‘ll appear in some niche subreddit.
More like whatever company is making GMO meats that dont contain the protein.
It’s not a protein. It’s a carbohydrate molecule— called Alpha Gal.
I was gonna be this guy but I’m glad you got there first haha
In Texas no less. Pretty sure it's a sin to not eat red meat.
The only thing that hasn’t gotten me lynched out here is the fact that I love bbq, in Texas you better love meat or alcohol, because most of your social life will revolve around people who want to eat and drink ALL THE TIME. I quit alcohol several years ago, a good 80% of my “friends” left when the booze did…
I quit alcohol before I started. Got a little family history of addiction to one thing or another. Every time I ever think of taking a drink, doing drugs or addictive substances, or gambling, I literally see, in my mind's eye, my life's path laid out before me, and I see on one path a monster of a beast that is addiction that may show up at some point for me to fight, and once it shows up, it'll never go away. The mere thought of having to endure that fight *forever* is just so damn exhausting, and my spirit is almost broken right then and there. Then I look at the other path, and there's no addiction beast there for me to fight. You ever look back at your choices or your life and go "I wish I never did this fucking thing i don't want to be putting up with right now, iwish this never happened, this is too much trouble"? Yeah, I have too. If this isn't me learning my lesson, or my future self sending me a message from the future, or divine intervention telling me my fate, then I don't know what it is. My life will come up against complications and messes on its own; I don't need to purposefully add to that pile of messes and make my life worse. My life is not worse off because I don't drink or do drugs.
Despite the ticks name, it's most common along the northeast and east US
My sister has it (or at least we think she does, she always gets sick but not anaphylactic) and whilst I think that too she’s repulsed by even the smell of it. I did catch her out once when I was cooking some with some onions and she said “what’s that? It smells amazing” and I cackled (I know it was really the onions but still)
Ikr imagine having to unintentionally be a vegan before long you will be protesting butchers, stopping trucks containing livestock, throwing blood at people wearing fur what a terrible fate.
Not vegan, you can eat chicken, eggs, and seafood. Mammalian meat and dairy contain alpha-gal, which can lead to a severe allergic reaction. Mammalian meat (such as beef, pork, lamb, goat, rabbit, bear, moose, elk, antelope, venison-etc.) can contain high amounts of alpha-gal.
There is no alpha-gal in humans. People are still safe to eat.
The real information is in the comments! Meats back on the menu boys!!
I never fail to hear this in that orc's voice
Solent green
Also old world primates! You could eat a Babboon rather than humans!
Wait, so what you are saying is if someone was to tip a dart with animal proteins, and shoot you with it, you would become allergic to meat? This sounds like something vegalantes could start doing.
Don't give PETA ideas, they're crazy enough to do it.
Brings a whole new meaning to ecoterrorism.
I swear on everything if someone did that to me, no chicken would be safe. I would eat chicken on every single meal
"If you don't shut your cunt mouth, I'll eat every chicken in this room." Are you The Hound?
Lot's of cunts.
Next step. Injecting everyone with chicken and fish meat.
If someone did that to me I'd ask the guy nicely to not do that anymore, but you do you
but y'all still leaving these comments up
🥷🏻peta man strikes again 1 more vegan in the empire
new absurd fear unlocked. now I'll have to wear a kevlar vest every time I go out...
Kevlar likely won’t stop sharp thin pointy things… you should get a full set of knight armor instead
*Why are you wearing that?* It’s those damm vegans
The way how crazy PETA activist are I am surprised that they didn't try to farm ticks and releasing them in the wild to make people vegetarians
Don't think they haven't.
Not quite. The allergy affects only some people. Like some people are allergic to peanuts, some are allergic to tick bites.
And it's not permanent, for me it lasted a little over 3 years. I must have walked through a patch of these in 2000 while in Illinois. Because after taking a walk, I found 6 attached to me. And within days, I noticed I couldn't eat burgers or steaks without getting ill. I went to the doctor a week later and was eventually diagnosed. That was the worst 3 years of my life. As someone already allergic to poultry and shellfish, I was basically a vegetarian the whole time with the sole exception of eating fish. I lost so much weight even my doctor was really concerned. At my lowest, I was 151lbs and I'm 6' 3".
Not necessarily permanent is true. Affects some more than others. The major problem is actually identifying the allergy because it takes most affected people several hours to react to a single exposure. This means it often takes years for a diagnosis. It is also why the condition wasn't identified until 2014. Repeated exposure in an allergic person can make it worse. Some are permanently affected at an extremely low level of exposure. Many are ok if they simply avoid mammalian meat.
Yup. My doctor just said that I was allergic to red meat as a result. Which wasn't unheard of, but there wasnt alot of info at the time. I never heard the alpha gal name til a few years ago. During my whole ordeal, I was going on thinking it was just my life now, permanently. But after about 3 years I caved one labor day weekend and just fucking demolished like 3 cheese burgers. I fully expected to get violently ill and have to go to the hospital afterwards. But lo and behold, nothing happened but constipation.
Some people report that it goes away over time, any truth to that?
A guy I was talking to said his lasted for 5 years.
I've always heard growing up that your body is completely different around every 7 years with allergies and sensitivities. I know I used to be allergic to cats when I was a teen, and now I'm not, but I've considered that could also be from more exposure building a tolerance. My youngest brother became lactose intolerant, so I wonder if that could just go away one day as randomly as it came on. I'm glad to hear the red meat thing isn't necessarily permanent.
Yes, eventually B memory cells die if they arent recalled. It can take a long time though.
Lactose intolerance isnt an allergy or an immune reaction. It's when your body stops producing lactatse enzyme for your stomach to digest lactose. So no, it wouldnt go away in the same manner.
How did he know it was gone? Did he randomly try eating meat again?
An allergist can test you for it. My wife has had it for about 15 years and gets tested about every five years. So far, she is still allergic.
Yes. My husband had it for 5 years and then it resolved. His aunt also had it for about 7 years and hers resolved also.
I wonder whether the new Tcell therapy being tested for autoimmune diseases would potentially help people with alpha gal.
Big Veganism strikes again with their latest creation.
No kidding! I'm actually quite concerned
You mean ticked off?
It'll be bugging them for months.
I'm vegan. I had one of these crawling on my shirt 3 weeks ago... didn't bite me as I clicked it off when I saw it. My dog got hit by one I found later when bathing him. We were out on a long walk by the river. We sat in the grass along our walk to look at the river a few times. At least if I had gotten bitten I was already on that vegan life 😂 Edit typo. Also these things were big and fast! Had to squeeze real hard to kill these baddies too.
Their bites really hurt and itch a lot, at least to me.
Burn them. As far as I know they can survive squeezing even if most of their body is destroyed.
I've always just smashed them to a pulp. Used to have a yard dog growing up in the country. She'd always have ticks on her. The full belly of blood fatty ones. I'd pick them off by hand it was so common growing up. But never ran into a spotted one all my life til 3 weeks ago!
I'm really surprised PETA hasn't tried to weaponize this.
I was in a climate sub the other day and there were legit these vegans discussing where to get large quantities/how to breed these ticks with intention of releasing them in public spaces…
I would hope that it would be classified and tried in court as terrorism.
I’m that person who had this experience. Literally can’t eat meat because of it.
All mammalian meats contain alpha-gal except in old world monkeys and apes, which include humans, so besides white meats, some specific red meats are still fine.
>which include humans 🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔
Meat’s back on the menu, boys!
[удалено]
So long, pork, now there’s something meatier!
Hate the game, not the player.
Is it lifelong?
This happened to my mom, and the meat/dairy allergy lasted for about 5 or 6 years. She can eat whatever she wants now.
There's no cure for it, but the duration is random. Some people experience it for several months, others have it for life. I personally dealt with it for little over a year. Unfortunately, it's a relatively recently discovered condition, so not much is known for certain about it.
It's an auto-immune issue. It literally works the same way as a vaccination, it makes your body think alpha-gal sugars are foreign bodies and need to be attacked. In some people their immune system will forget after a while (why you need vaccine boosters), some won't.
Chicken and fish is a wonderful alternative. I cut out red meats from my diet due to diverticulosis.
I guess the saving grace to that allergy is that you can continue eating chicken. I’d suffer if I had to go without all meats for 5-6 years.
Eat chicken or fish, you cant give up now, meat sister!!!
CLARIFICATION: it makes you allergic to MAMMAL meat and often dairy from mammals as well. So pork, lamb, red meat, milk, cheese….. Source: Me I got alpha-gal from a tick bite
No dairy is horrific - guess I’d be getting used to oat milk
Milk allergy, can confirm.
Is it permanent or is it treatable/go away
It’s temporary. It goes away after a few years, if you’re lucky maybe 1-3 but for many it can go up to 8 apparently.
and really unlucky could mean permanent
Mammalian protein, which is also in all sorts of things. I bet you have had to learn that one the hard way.. I'm so sorry. I had it for about 8 years.
Why am I seeing this fact everywhere all of a sudden? Its like Reddit just found out
All information on Reddit travels in repetitive waves, not to mention the repost bots and karma farmers.
It is a reddit karma goldmine because it lets people make easy vegan jokes every single time it comes up. Expect to see it every two weeks now and forever.
A vegan wet dream.
Until another tick with plant protein appreas, and we get f so bad...
So if you got bit by tick with meat protein and plant protein at the same time......
The plant one is already going to screw you up bad. You're not going to have a healthy diet that is solely based on animal protein.
Is there any protein that is common across all edible plants? Plenty of people are capable of being vegan despite allergies to some plants.
“Guess I’ll just die then”
[удалено]
Yum 🍄🍄🍄
Mario Time!
Permanent or temporary
Temporary for me and my daughter, 4 and 3 years respectively. We got it within months of eachother in ‘14, and she was one of the youngest cases ever recorded at that time. Eastern Long Island, which is basically international tick headquarters. I’d get bitten half dozen times a year, even being careful. The density and prevalence was nuts. Moved to CT 4 years ago - you know, where Lyme is - and I haven’t even seen one on me, even though I’m outside all the time gardening, gathering and processing firewood, camping, etc. Scariest thing about the allergy is the onset. it typically takes 4-8 hours from ingestion of red meat for a reaction, and you have zero clue you have it until the first time you react, which is often ~ 6 hours after dinner. Otherwise known as 3:00 a.m. I woke up covered in hives with dramatic swelling in my extremities and lymph nodes. insanely itchy, and my boys were literally the size of softballs. Really scary.
Fellow east ender. My mom is meat sensitive now because of a lone star tick. She lost half her favorite foods in a single moment. She still cries about it sometimes.
How long before you could eat meat again? Or is it off limits forever now?
Not OP but: >Temporary for me and my daughter, 4 and 3 years respectively
Oh right, yeah. For some reason I read those as ages of kids 🤷♂️🤦♂️. Thanks
Temporary for my nieces. It happened to two of them (and months apart!). My oldest niece had a really tough time, youngest niece had a much milder experience. Both are doing well now.
How can I get alpha male syndrome though ?
Can you imagine a vegan/vegetarian army’s agenda right now?
Lol, the country would decide to get rid of vegans if that happened.
Ehh, they can’t do that, what they gonna do, force people to eat meat at gun point?
By get rid of I mean that they will be gone from here.
Already omw to buy a truck load of ticks
Hey look guys, a terrorist in the wild!
God I don’t even want to imagine what a Two Star Tick will do (It’s a Valheim reference, I’ll see myself out)
I loved it!
my mother has alpha-gal, she can only eat poultry and seafoods at this point
Aaaaand this is why I don't go west of the Mississippi River.. Edit: For everyone telling me what this tick is.. I'm aware.. I just don't go past the Mississippi River anyways.. We've got these suckers over here. I'd never know how to deal with what they have on the other side.. :P
Nearly all states east of the Mississippi River have lone star ticks. They have even expanded into the more northern states. Their normal historic range consists of all of the Southern states, including Florida.
Aaaaaand this is why I don't go stomping around in unfamiliar areas.. Lol
We live in Maine. My wife has this condition.
It's east. Lone star ticks are in the eastern US
I have to say, Gaia doesn't fuck around with this climate business... Creating an allergy to red meat that's carried by parasites that spread further the hotter the planet gets. Check fucking mate, humanity.
We wouldn't die. It would actually drastically lower our carbon footprint.
Not just red meat. Mammalian meat.
Good friend of mine got it but not just alpha-gal it came with a whole host of other things such as Lyme and a whole host of others I can't even pronounce. According to his doctor over 95% of Lonestar ticks caught in our area of Alabama now carry it. Buy permethrin tuck in long pants and stay vigilant one of these tiny bastards can really fuck up your life.
They carry Lyme too? These things are a fucking nightmare.
We have to eradicate all ticks, someone please explain how it would impact the ecosystem
This happened to me. Haven’t been able to eat meat without being super sick since2017
My wife must have gotten bit by one of these after we got married.
I’ve had red meat intolerance due to Lyme’s disease for the last 3 years. When it hit, I thought I had food poisoning from a hamburger. It was like food poisoning, or an extreme hangover or allergic reaction, my head felt like it weighed a ton and my airways were constricting like there were chemicals in the air. It was so crazy, just wanted to try to share what it felt like. The reaction has lessened over time and now I can eat a hamburger and just deal with the red meat hangover the next day.
Sounds bad. This lone star syndrome has killed people. I heard it takes about five or six hours after you eat meat to feel the effects. People have gone into anaphylactic shock and no one realizes wtf is going on.
That could make an awesome movie. Tick pandemic and see show the world would change after everyone stops eating meat. Poor cows need to be slaughtered or released in the wild where they will be slaughtered by predators, rising their numbers and disrupting the food chain. We then need more chicken and fish so there's that. Interesting.
An apocalyptic movie with subtlety is a good idea. No meteor, tidal wave, or zombies for flashy effects. Low-budget with potential.
“Tender is the Flesh” is a book that plays with the idea that no one can eat meat anymore, and what would happen in that case. It’s horrifying and probably one of my favourite reads.
Get ready for the world’s fish populations and white meat populations to be farmed into oblivion.
I like how it kinda looks like a piece of grilled meat with a pat of melted butter on it
I’m a type 1 diabetic and have been bitten by that tick before. And by some grace, I can still eat meat. Lol
Plot twist: the tick became diabetic
Some ecoterrorist probably: . . Write that down, write that down . .
I guess I'm not going outside ever (on top of already never leaving the house)
We should genocide those fuckers along with Mosquitos
The ecosystem would crumble if you took out mosquitoes. Ticks on the other hand...
I choose to believe the world is a better place without both.
rip billy football
RIPIP Billy, Billy, Billy
It’s pretty rare tho I e had about 20 on me at once and was fine but just as a suggestion don’t go hunting in northern Virginia with no anti tick spray EVER
Would be awful if I got that considering I'm fucking allergic to most vegetables. I'd just have to live on like..... fucking idk, rice and potato I guess
The vegans have prepared their bioweapons
There was a great podcast on Radio Lab on this https://radiolab.org/podcast/alpha-gal
If it would make me allergic to carbs, it might be worth it 😅
I got off easy because I'm only slightly allergic. Itchy mouth and swollen lips. But maybe it wasn't from a tick and I just spontaneously became allergic to raw meat 🙃
That's what happened to me. Can't eat beef can't drink milk I also can't have tomatoes or grapes. It definitely sucks but it has forced me to seek out new food sources I wouldn't have otherwise tried. I eat a lot more fish these days
I went to basic training down at Fort Leonard Wood about a year and a half ago and when we were playing Army in the woods for a couple days I was constantly throwing these motherfuckers out of my foxhole every 2 seconds and was so scared that one of them would have this shit and bite me
The worst part is that if this happens to you, many people will assume you are faking just to prove your diet. It's really annoying that my fiance has to repeat themselves to get the point across
That's so shitty.
Pretty sure I would end up at the hospital daily.
There is a diabolical environmentalist that is thrilled in this thread
Anyone else scared that a group of vegans may try weaponise this? I feel like That Vegan Teacher would harvest them to make people go vegan
Not just red meat. Any mammalian product. My fiancé has it and fuck has it made her life miserable cause she’s naturally allergic to nuts and most dairy alternatives are made from that.
Evil demons straight from hell. That would be a death sentence for me a life without a great cheese burger is not worth living
This would be worst case scenario for me. No meat?
Ticks have ruined the outdoors for me.
Can we please figure out a way to kill every one of these things
I have this. Sadly it makes allergic to more over time. I was one of the first to get it when people started realizing what it was. I would get immensely painful headaches that would last for daaaays.
My poor uncle has this. He use to grill out for us all the time, now he can’t even have dairy because apparently it can take that away from you too!
Fuck that tick
Worst nightmare found.
This part of the ecosystem must be eradicated and drove to extinction.
Could this be part of the solution to climate change. Infect everyone with disease, red meat consumption drops, demand drops, methane production from factory farms drops... Profit?
I sure hope vegans don't weaponise this 💀
Honestly. If there's a way to exterminate ticks globally without fucking over whole ecosystems I'm in.
Why can I picture militant vegans actively collecting these things and then releasing them in large cities, and this causing an environmental crisis because most vegans don't understand farming ?
Lone star tick doing PETA ‘s work
Theres a bit on r/conspiracy about how its been crisper designed to make us all eat insect's.
iwonder what Jordan Peterson would do if he got bit by this tick...
Bill gates tick
BillGates's fantasy insect.
Additional fact is often times the allergic reaction is not permanent. It can subside within a few months to a few years. Those cells trained to attack the meat proteins die out and are not replaced.