Posted on 06/13/2023 10:52:15 AM PDT by nickcarraway
He became an involuntary vegan. A New Jersey man is now allergic to red meat after getting bitten by an invasive species of tick — which has left him unable to consume steak, pork or even dairy products without suffering a serious reaction.
“It just flipped everything — turned my life upside down completely,” Craig Smith, 62, told NJ.com of his unwilling conversion to vegetarianism. “You get so frustrated. Food becomes an enemy to you.”
The Cream Ridge retiree specifically suffers from Alpha-gal syndrome, a potentially life-threatening allergy that triggers an immune reaction to a sugar molecule (carbohydrate galactose-alpha-1,3-galactose) found in meat, per the National Institutes of Health.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
Alpha-gal broke out years ago in western Kentucky and north west of Sydney, Australia. I wonder how that happened without human influence. Anyway, all of my extended family in Kentucky has this and they live on fish and fowl. The delayed anaphylactic shock symptoms develop hours after consuming any mammal protein but babies can still nurse. It has since spread anywhere deer ticks thrive.
We’re having a bad year with ticks here in NH. Mr mm and I have found many on us, even from a brief walk in areas not typically tick habitat. So here’s some information we have been collecting about tick protection.
I have discovered that ticks almost always crawl up so tucking in pants into boots and shirts into pants helps a lot. However, they can still end up on your neck and head and we always check our hairline. We have found several just inside the hair line at the back of our necks over the last couple years. We also check our ears.
There are homemade tick repellent recipes using essential oils that can be found online.
Interesting articles about Alpha-gal.
10 New and Surprising Facts About Alpha-Gal Syndrome
https://www.thermofisher.com/allergy/wo/en/living-with-allergies/food-allergies/10-new-and-surprising-facts-about-alpha-gal-syndrome.html
Alpha-gal syndrome
https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/alpha-gal-syndrome/symptoms-causes/syc-20428608
.
Tick resistant clothing.
Rynoskin - https://rynoskin.com/
Insect Shield - https://www.insectshield.com/
.
Tick removers.
Ticked Off - https://www.tickedoff.com/
.
Sawyer Insect spray - https://www.sawyer.com/product-categories/insect-repellent
And of course, the old standby of DEET.
.
Tick Tubes. These provide treated nesting material for mice to use that kills the ticks from the start.
DIY Tick Tubes: Why They Work & How to Make Them
https://grassrootsfunctionalmedicine.com/blog/tick-tubes/
Getting rid of mice helps. Either mouse traps or this stuff.
https://diypestcontrol.com/jt-eaton-top-gun-rodent-bait-750-blocks
We are also planning on aggressively fighting them using insect granules for the lawn. They are made with pyrmethrin and so last a few months. We hope that by being aggressive about it for a couple years, we can at least reduce the tick presence right up by the house.
Not been checked, but the doctor has suggested it.
How does one test for it?
I have tried probiotics and react to even those.
I have been praying for a long time for a Red Sea sized miracle for healing from this. I think there’s something more than leaky gut as I’ve had issues to varying degrees literally since birth, but once I hit 40, it took a turn for the worst and now has reached a point where my ability to eat a nutritionally adequate diet has been severely compromised.
I’ve hear and I’m sorry to know that.
We do tick checks every time we’ve been outside, even with all the spraying our clothes and other preventative measures we have been taking. Sometimes even twice a day. There have been times we do a tick check and later in the evening, still find one working it’s way up our body. It’s very frustrating.
I haven’t seen a tick since I let my chickens roam the yard. The girls are happy to help.
“ It’s a slooooow recovery.”
Yes, my 11 year old grandson has had for two years and the effects are starting to fade. But for now it is still poultry and fish.
Interesting. Sorry to hear that.
Ironically, the opposite happened to me (long story, if I hadn’t shared it prior, but weighs heavily on my former state of severe systemic inflammation), but now I believe I’m suffering the effects of damage the virus wrought on my pancreas. I’m mad as hell about it because I’ve maintained since the beginning that the virus may go latent, and I was unable to procure Ivermectin when I wanted it.
I’m about 45 days into a regimen which includes omission of all dairy, red meat and generally all fats with few exceptions.
Sucks big time, but the pains have abated. At 90 days I test with pizza and my favorite ice cream; we shall see.
I like my prognosis better having diagnosed/treated myself, but the gravity of the situation dictates a few realities, including planning for the worst. Thus far, the only symptom expressed had been pain, but I grasp the realities of pancreatic disease.
How is your thyroid? My low point, healthwise, was when I realized that I was suffering from severe iodine deficiency; I’ve been taking the equivalent of 1700% RDA of iodine (2700 mcg) in the form of Icelandic Kelp for nearly 10 years and have NEVER experienced any of the symptoms promoted by orthodox medicine described as ‘iodine toxicity’ or ‘iodine overload’.
[Full disclosure: I harbor a dim view of MDs, predating the virus]
I thought the same. It took me a year to clear the parasite I had and another year of continued, very specific/restrictive diet to repair my gut.
In all the outreach I performed for my book, I never once encountered a single person who was able to recover their health despite expressing all the symptoms of leaky gut (back when it was still just an internet buzz term). Likewise, nary a soul expressed the willingness to engage any regimen longer than a month. It was about that time I gave up and almost trashed the whole project.
The condition of ‘leaky gut’ is slowly being recognized by orthodox medicine but treating it - and living the reality of a long-term plan - is not to be taken lightly, and I doubt that most people could find a doctor who harbors the knowledge to help treat it.
My thyroid is a tad low, but I react to iodine, alone with anything else in that chemical family, chlorine, fluoride, etc.
The low thyroid runs in the family and I suspect it’s more a symptom than a cause.
That does sound like it could be genetic. I do hope you have a good doctor - md or ND - and that things mellow out for you.
My new PCP is a functional medicine doctor, and she suggested leaky gut but everything people typically do for it I can’t.
I have tried.
This has only progressively gotten worse. I need a miracle. God needs to heal this because NOTHING else I have tried is working. And I have heard it all and tried most of it.
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