Apparently the ticks aren’t bad in Tx or Maine.
LYNCHBURG, Va. (WSET) — A shocking number of people are living with an allergy that’s potentially deadly.
The tick that latched on to you during a walk in the woods or gardening in your backyard is behind it. It’s not Lyme Disease or Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, but something called alpha-gal and doctors say the number of cases are surging.
Rick Leeming’s life changed dramatically when a tick bit him eight years ago.
The alpha-gal allergy is a growing problem for people in the Southeast, particularly in your backyard, according to allergist Dr. Joey Lane.
“About 20 percent of the population in this area — Central Virginia — has a positive blood test to alpha-gal,” Lane explained.
Not all of those people will have an allergic response. Lane said it’s all kind of a mystery, but they have been able to trace alpha-gal to the bite of a Lone Star tick.
Here”s how it works: humans don’t have the carbohydrate alpha-gal in their bodies, but all other four-legged mammals do. When a tick bites, say a deer, and then bites you it can transmit alpha-gal. Your blood sees alpha-gal as a threat, so it develops antibodies that are stored in your body.
It could take days or weeks to manifest but when you eat meat again it sets off the allergic reaction.
Symptoms of an alpha-gal allergy commonly appear three-six hours after eating meat (e.g., beef, lamb, pork, venison, and rabbit) or exposure to products containing alpha-gal, which for a long time made diagnosing it difficult.
Lane said it’s so prevalent now, so doctors know what to look for early on.
“There are about 5,000 patients in the world who have it and we believe that about 10 percent, 500 or more, are here in the central Virginia area,” Lane said.
Lane sees the patient population dealing with typical allergic responses (hives, anaphylaxis). Gastroenterologist Dr. Bikram Bal is diagnosing people with alpha-gal who complain of nausea, vomiting, bloating, and diarrhea.
“We were almost diagnosing four to five patients a week in my office,” Bal said.
Both doctors said a rainy spring kick-started the surge in alpha-gal victims.
With many of you getting out and enjoying the outdoors this fall, doctors expect more new cases.
You can grow out of it— however, doctors don’t know how long that can take. In the meantime, you have to stop eating things like pork, beef, and lamb.
But that’s not always easy since cross-contamination can set patients off.
Living with alpha-gal has changed the way Leeming serves up family-style dinner at his own restaurant, The Spring House.
“We do everything we can to eliminate those things in the cooking process,” Leeming said. “For instance, we used to cook with ham hocks or bacon for our green beans. We use chicken broth now.”
While he’d love to have a steak again, Leeming has embraced his new diet because it’s just not worth the consequences.
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NIKK..part of the article....I know several people with this ..not just family.
Very interesting, thanks for the info.
I hope my grand-daughter, who is the dog gal and lived in VA for the past year, didn’t get a tick bite.
She’s back home in UT now.
And here all along I thought an alpha-gal was .....