The Tick That Changed Everything

Alpha-gal Syndrome Can be Deadly and like Lyme and Anaplasmosis is Tick Borne.

There’s a particular kind of medical mystery that begins not in a hospital or laboratory, but in the quiet moments after a summer barbecue or a holiday dinner. You’ve eaten a steak, perhaps, or a hamburger—foods you’ve consumed hundreds of times before without incident. Then, hours later, as you’re settling in for the evening or drifting off to sleep, your body begins to rebel in ways that seem utterly inexplicable.

This is how many people first encounter alpha-gal syndrome, a tick-borne condition so peculiar that it sounds almost fictional: a single bite from the wrong tick at the wrong time can reprogram your immune system to become violently allergic to red meat.

The story of alpha-gal syndrome is really the story of galactose-alpha-1,3-galactose, a sugar molecule that exists throughout the mammalian world—in beef, pork, lamb, venison, and other red meats, even in some dairy products. Humans don’t naturally produce this molecule, which makes it invisible to our immune systems under n…