Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of iHeart Radio Hey
Speaker 1: brain Stuff Lauren Bogelbaum. Here the food allergies are a bummer,
Speaker 1: but for meat lovers, Alpha gal syndrome, also called mammalian
Speaker 1: meat allergy, is something of a tragedy. Alpha gal is
Speaker 1: the name of a sugar molecule found in most mammals,
Speaker 1: but not in humans and not in fish, birds, or reptiles.
Speaker 1: The scientists in the United States first began seeing allergic
Speaker 1: reactions to red meat in the nineteen nineties, which they
Speaker 1: traced specifically to alpha gal. By two thousand six, cases
Speaker 1: have been confirmed in thirty nine States, and we're also
Speaker 1: popping up in Australia. Alpha gal syndrome causes a mild
Speaker 1: too severe allergy to the meat of mammals such as cows, pigs, sheep, rabbits, deer,
Speaker 1: and others, as well as mammal products like gelatine and dairy.
Speaker 1: Its symptoms include a lot of the usual allergy symptoms, hives, running, nose,
Speaker 1: nausea and vomiting, a swelling of the eyelids, lips, throat,
Speaker 1: and tongue, shortness of breath, and possibly anaphylaxis, which is
Speaker 1: a severe body wide allergic reaction. But people don't just
Speaker 1: come down with alpha gal syndrome for no reason. It's
Speaker 1: just the most recently discovered in dignity, brought on by
Speaker 1: the arachnid that seems to ruin everything it touches, the tick.
Speaker 1: It took scientists a few years to discover how exactly
Speaker 1: people were becoming allergic to meet but by two thousand
Speaker 1: nine they've narrowed the cause down to the bite of
Speaker 1: the lone startick, discovered by a scientist who noticed that
Speaker 1: the map of the cases of alpha gal allergy overlapped
Speaker 1: almost perfectly with the distribution of the tick, which lives
Speaker 1: in much of the eastern US and Mexico. A lone
Speaker 1: star ticks look very much like any other North American tick,
Speaker 1: except the females have a white spot is sometimes shaped
Speaker 1: a bit like a star on their backs. In Australia,
Speaker 1: alpha GL sensitivity has been linked to the hard bodied
Speaker 1: paralysis tick. Both ticks probably pick up the alpha gal
Speaker 1: when they consume the blood of those other mammals that
Speaker 1: have it, like cows or sheep. In order to develop
Speaker 1: a sensitivity to alpha gal, a tick must attach to
Speaker 1: you only long enough to leave a bite mark and
Speaker 1: inject alpha gal into the skin. After that, your immune
Speaker 1: system takes over and destroys the invasive sugar molecules, which
Speaker 1: is all well and good, except that your immune system
Speaker 1: then remembers those molecules as being potentially harmful invaders. So
Speaker 1: the next time that you have a nice steak for dinner,
Speaker 1: your immune system may clock the alpha gel that you
Speaker 1: ingested and release antibodies that trigger the release of histamines
Speaker 1: to fight off the sugar, which it doesn't understand is harmless.
Speaker 1: One unusual thing about an alpha gel allergy is that
Speaker 1: the allergic reaction might not pick in for three to
Speaker 1: four hours after eating red meat, so it can be
Speaker 1: one of the more difficult allergies to trace to the source.
Speaker 1: As always with tick born conditions, prevention is the best
Speaker 1: policy if you're going outdoors in a place where ticks
Speaker 1: are known to live, and especially into what an area
Speaker 1: is there where long sleeved shirts and pants and apply
Speaker 1: insect repellent. Today's episode is based on the article Alpa
Speaker 1: gal syndro the meat allergy Caused by a tick on
Speaker 1: houseworks dot com, written by Jesselyn Shield. The brain stuff
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Speaker 1: works dot com, and it's produced by Tyler Clang. For
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