Tick Bite = Meat Allergy…..

[SDSue]

After a tick bite, these people can no longer eat red meat. What happens if things get really bad and they can no longer get out of bed. Are they crazy? Psychosomatic? Buying into the Chronic Lyme Disease "fraud"?

I'd like to be optimistic and hope that this story helps make Lyme legitimate in the eyes of the doubters. Time will tell. But in the meantime, I'm strangely encouraged by this story!

See full story here.

Bad bite: A tick can make you allergic to red meat

A bug can turn you into a vegetarian, or at least make you swear off red meat. Doctors across the nation are seeing a surge of sudden meat allergies in people bitten by a certain kind of tick.

This bizarre problem was only discovered a few years ago but is growing as the ticks spread from the Southwest and the East to more parts of the United States. In some cases, eating a burger or a steak has landed people in the hospital with severe allergic reactions.

Few patients seem aware of the risk, and even doctors are slow to recognize it. As one allergist who has seen 200 cases on New York's Long Island said, "Why would someone think they're allergic to meat when they've been eating it their whole life?"

The culprit is the Lone Star tick, named for Texas, a state famous for meaty barbecues. The tick is now found throughout the South and the eastern half of the United States.

Researchers think some other types of ticks also might cause meat allergies; cases have been reported in Australia, France, Germany, Sweden, Spain, Japan and Korea.

Here's how it happens: The bugs harbor a sugar that humans don't have, called alpha-gal. The sugar is also is found in red meat — beef, pork, venison, rabbit — and even some dairy products. It's usually fine when people encounter it through food that gets digested.

 

[Gingergrrl]

Wow, interesting story! I had never heard of this before. I am confused though, do these individuals now have Lyme Disease or is this a different kind of tick that just causes an allergic reaction to meat?

 

[Valentijn]

Wow, interesting story! I had never heard of this before. I am confused though, do these individuals now have Lyme Disease or is this a different kind of tick that just causes an allergic reaction to meat?

It sounds like it's transmitted independently of the Lyme bacteria, so someone could have the allergy without having Lyme disease, or Lyme disease without the meat allergy, or both at the same time.

 

[Valentijn]

Very interesting stuff ... it's showing that tick bites can likely trigger an ongoing immunity directly. One variety shown to do it is in Australia as well, where there's supposedly no Lyme disease. So that might reconcile the disagreement between "authorities" and patients there about tick bites triggering illness.

 

[Martial]

The lone star tick is a different form of infection similar to lyme, I believe its called rocky mountain spotted fever. Lyme bacteria borrelia has also been known to cause red meat allergies. I take a lot of HCL and digestive enzymes with all my foods to avoid issues, thankfully red meat hasn't been a big issue. There is too many nutrients I get from it to be able to swear it off.

 

[Valentijn]

The lone star tick is a different form of infection similar to lyme, I believe its called rocky mountain spotted fever.

No, the lone star tick is not an infection. It can carry infections. But it can also directly secrete a certain sugar into the blood of the host it's feeding on, which triggers the ongoing immune reaction.

 

[IreneF]

It's not an autoimmune reaction. The tick bite sensitizes certain people to develop an *allergy* to a component of red meat (alpha-gal) that's not present in humans. (I would guess that the tick bites an animal, and then a person, and some of the previous meal gets into the person.) Those people develop a food allergy to red meats.

There's something similar involving pork and cats.

 

[IreneF]

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha-gal_allergy

 

[Valentijn]

It's not an autoimmune reaction. The tick bite sensitizes certain people to develop an *allergy* to a component of red meat (alpha-gal) that's not present in humans.

Good point I guess I just was thinking "autoimmune" because it's triggering an odd immune reaction against something which is so normal and even necessary.

 

[IreneF]

The lone star tick doesn't carry any infections, either. Not that people are going to bother identifying what kind of tick is biting them.

 

[IreneF]

The lone star tick is a different form of infection similar to lyme, I believe its called rocky mountain spotted fever. Lyme bacteria borrelia has also been known to cause red meat allergies. I take a lot of HCL and digestive enzymes with all my foods to avoid issues, thankfully red meat hasn't been a big issue. There is too many nutrients I get from it to be able to swear it off.

Rocky mountain spotted fever is also carried by different ticks, mostly the American dog tick and the Rocky Mountain wood tick.

 

[SDSue]

The lone star tick doesn't carry any infections, either. Not that people are going to bother identifying what kind of tick is biting them.

… that we know of.