Excerpts from Prevention Magazine Article by Alisa Hrustic May 21, 2019
While not technically classified as a disease, a bite from a lone star tick can cause an allergic reaction to red meat. How? These critters transfer a sugar called alpha-gal into your system, which is found in red meat—like beef, pork, and lamb—but not in humans. Because the sugar travels through your blood, your immune system goes haywire and releases antibodies. Once you try to eat red meat again, your body pumps out histamine in reaction to the sugar, spurring an allergic reaction.
Symptoms: If you have the alpha-gal allergy, you will experience symptoms similar to other severe food allergies, like itching, swelling of the throat, lips, and tongue, weakness, nausea, vomiting, headaches, skin rash, and even passing out due to anaphylaxis (difficulty breathing). Unlike typical allergic reactions to food, which tend to be immediate, symptoms may take hours to appear, according to the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology (AAAAI).
How common it is: It’s hard to tell, since meat allergies themselves aren’t very common. However, one preliminary study presented at the 2018 AAAAI and World Allergy Organization Joint Congress found that 40 percent of 222 anaphylaxis cases had a definitive trigger—and the most common was alpha-gal.
Conclusion on what to do for tick born symptoms is by Dr. Demetrios Kydonieus, Chiropractic Nutritionist.
Nutritional therapy for tick bite diseases and the red meat allergy are based on supporting a normal healthy response of the immune system. This type of treatment is not a cure or a direct assault on the condition like medicine but works very well. In the current scientific research literature there are many studies that show a stronger response to “natural therapies” than conventional medical or drug based ones. Alpha-gal is an allergy most likely related to a weak immune system from leaky gut issues that has been going on way before the tick bite. This is compounded by generations of people eating processed, high sugar, low fiber, high inflammatory fatty (Omega-6) foods. As people eat more of these inflammatory and autoimmune triggering foods their genetics become “weakened” and they pass this onto successive generations (their children). Now weak children eat the same poor diets and they pass on even more weakened genes to their kids and this continues until the poor diet is stopped. So this is one theory as to why we are seeing more diseases and reactions to the environment (allergies) that we have not seen before in such high numbers. These “weak” people are more reactive to environmental stresses like tick bites and pollutants than their grandparents.
The good news is that this can be overcome with targeted nutritional support and knowledge of what you are sensitive to in the environment. Nutrition Response Testing is just one nutritional technique that can accurately help the body become stronger and more healthy, many times overcoming autoimmune and allergy challenges. My definition of Health is, “A normal functioning body(and all systems) with no lasting reactions from environmental challenges expressing itself in a vibrant and active manor for a lifetime.”
So if you are suffering from any tick born disease, like Lyme’s, Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, Alpha-gal, etc. Nutrition Response Testing may be able to help you feel better by making you stronger enabling your body to use your innate immune responses to overcome your condition. We do not cure or treat any specific disease or condition but work to strengthen and normalize biochemical reactions within your body by restoring normal nerve function and physiology. We teach you how to become “healthier”.