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“Red meat allergy” from tick bites is spreading both in US and globally
(arstechnica.com)
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this post was submitted on 05 Aug 2025
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I'm all for eating less red meat, but I'd rather do it myself than rely on an deadly autoimmune response that might also kill me if I have a slice of buttered toast (or anything made from mammal proteins, for that matter), or carageenan, a seaweed-derived thickener.
Edit: also, fuck ticks in particular. They also can carry Lyme which is hard to diagnose and, for many, forever life-changing, and Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, which can outright kill you.
Two time Lyme winner here and they have gotten better at diagnosis of it, if they get it early enough they have decent treatment. AMA
Edit: yes fuck ticks. Especially that one that bit me in the middle of the night while I was peeing
Treatment, as in cure? Or treatment as in lifelong medication?
Treatment as in what I would call partial cure. As far as I can tell I'm fine. It's difficult for me to determine if something has to do with my age or not or other issues, like arthritis or fallout from Lyme
Blood tests indicate the past infection from a year ago but Negative on an acute infection.
Edit: realized I didn't answer your question. No on lifetime meds. Course of antibiotics cleared things up
I know someone who apparently didn't catch it in time because they now have to avoid red meat. That's great that antibiotics worked for you, even if it's only partially. Avoiding meat products because it will send you into shock is no fun.
Apologies, realized this was about the meat allergies version. I didn't get that, I got "just plain old Lyme" (which still sucks)
chronic lyme isnt a real disease, its been coined as such because communities/forums believe in pseudoscience part of it that is incurable and theres a whole industry built around it. an acute infection left untreated can lead to long term neurological disease though.
Your logic is a bit faulty. Lyme disease is really hard to catch, that's why it turns into the "left untreated" part. What we name it makes no difference. It comes from people getting lyme and then being chronically ill afterwards. I wish you guys would troll people who aren't sick.
i mentioning the people who are mentioning chronic lyme as an actual disease, not the sequelae of the lyme infection. they believe its an uncurable disease, that causes symptoms all the time. its all pseudoscience. the actual lyme infection is not.
Lyme disease can be cured with antibiotics. The disease can, however, do damage to your nervous system that doesn't automatically go away cause the thing that caused the damage goes away.
In some people, it can trigger auto-immune responses, which similarly don't go away just cause the bacteria that caused it is gone.
This is complicated by the fact that there's a whole fake medicine ecosystem built on preying on those people and telling them that they have "chronic lyme" and that they need to undergo a whole range of unscientific "treatments" like continuous antibiotics usage, or random woo. This is enhance by the fact that there are MD/DOs willing to write scripts for these treatments as a cash cow, and the names of these Dr.s are shared online by the large community of fake science people.
The proper name for the lingering aftereffects is "post-treatment lyme disease syndrome". It seems like a pedantic difference but it's important.
It's like if a raccoon got into your house and tore everything up. If you get rid of the raccoon, you no longer have a "raccoon problem", and setting a whole bunch of traps won't clean your house up.
they call it chronic lyme, and they call these people LLMDs, plus naturopaths also are getting into the industry. its total pseudoscience, ive been in a forum and disputed the disease, and i was stalked out of the forum and hounded for even suggesting it, and most of the people allegeding they are suffering from symptoms, seem to be suffering from another condition altogether. they even use unsanctioned tests like igenex to reel people into the scam, its kinda sad. many people said they know loved ones spent 10s of thousands on the treatments with no alleviation in symptoms, its all side effects of Plant chemicals they are suffering from, plus antibiotics which cause nerve damage from long term use. i once fell into the rabbit hole once, later realized the PN i was suffering from is still an undiagnosed cervical/spine issue.
there seems to be similar than with shingles too, but not to the extent of lyme, at least on reddit, they are attributing every rash, or blister to a new shingles infection, when in fact its most likely contact dermatitis, and hsv1 reactivation. I had shingles myself and the symptoms were unpleasant, but its very uncommon to hav it more than once.
I understand that people don't like being told "you no longer have lyme disease" when they are still experiencing symptoms, because it can feel dismissive, but no one is ever saying that the only way to experience symptoms is an active infection.
Everyone has had bronchitis or something where you still feel cruddy after the disease is gone, and it takes a while to get back to 100%, but somehow, with Lyme, people don't understand that.
Especially with covid, lots of people still had lingering symptoms like a cough that took a while to go away well after they started testing negative.
i think the fact that believe in chronic lyme is because they are being told its a possibility, if they have any symptoms, when it doesnt even fit symptoms of lyme. from those communities in different forums. one of the favorite things they like to do is, attributing any rash that looks like a bullseyes rash of lyme, or a neurological issue they attributed to it, when they were never near lyme infested woods before, also the type of ticks doesnt fit either.
the LLMD reels them in by other bunch of unsanctioned tests, so they keep coming back to them.
alright but I'm pretty sure the little fella is gonna look at me like I owe him an explanation afterwards
that doesn't sound like the right grindset 😤
oh that would be great but not many people seem interested in changing their daily habits, or recognizing the harm they are helping to perpetuate. people making that choice might just save the climate yet.
Yeah I got bit by a tick years ago right above my belt while hiking and even though the ring rash started to develop my doctor said it was a belt allergy and prescribed me topical steroids. Thankfully I basically demanded a Lyme test and even though they’re not super accurate mine came back positive and I got ahead of it.
It can really fuck up life for people, so I recommend that anyone who spends time outdoors in areas where ticks could be remain super vigilant. On doing checks after returning from the outdoors and immediately going to seek medical attention if you see any symptoms of tick bites.
Climate change is making the decision for us.
If we all had to give up animal products it would suck, but probably hasten the development of cultured meats designed specifically to not set off allergies, or at the very least restore funding to American's science and medicine organizations.
If we get through the next century with meat product allergies as our biggest threat to life, we're going to be soooo fucking lucky.
Alpha-gal is also found in medications and skincare products. This is dangerous, and not easily solved by simply going vegan.
Having food allergies is exhausting and anxiety-inducing. Deep diving into every single label, fearing cross contamination and being on edge upon stepping outside your bubble or risking a slip up sucks.
Can we go back to guilting people into more sustainable habits instead of celebrating the increased risk of anaphylaxis?
We'll go back to guilting when y'all start caring about the animal that had its life taken for your pleasure.
Edit: Your downvotes are meaningless; I've seen what you upvote.