Yeah, my sister got it 25 years ago before anyone knew about it. She had an allergist tell her it was all in her head when she told him the hives showed up about 5 hours after eating meat. Most food allergies are pretty much instantaneous.
Man I don't get doctors that just dismiss something they've never heard of. They could be discovering a new condition and potentially pioneer helping millions of people if only they paid attention to their patients.
In 2018 & 2019 I got a couple of bad chest infections. Lost my smell then taste then they started coming back intermittently with odd metallic or rotting scents and weird tastes in food. Went to a neurologist who basically told me taste and smell don’t work the way I described. I’m sorry we all had to go through a pandemic and the outcome wasn’t worth the expense obviously, but regardless, the vindication I felt from the entire planet pointing out how very wrong that guy was gave me a small glimmer of satisfaction in those days.
I went to an ENT doctor and told him I had lost my sense of smell after Covid. He stood there and told me he had never heard of that as a result of Covid. I said, well, now you have, haven’t you? 😡
The brain’s a tricky thing and makes people experience somatic symptoms all the time. It’s always best practice to take a patient seriously of course but I imagine doctors encounter this kind of thing all the time and are used to referring people out to mental health care.
I expect for every discovery there'd be tens or hundreds of people claiming things that are unconnected, born by hypochondriac imagination, hallucinated, produced by delusions, faked as pranks or for some gains. Dismissing them is probably wrong but hoping to stick your name to a new disease is too optimistic.
I have a cousin who works as a biologist for the Florida Wildlife Commission and a huge percent of their field biologists have Alpha Gal because they work outside. It sucks. It definitely seems fake when you first hear about though.
My Realtor friends who show and sell land are susceptible to this. I know about 7 people with it. Some have reactions after eating it, but some can’t even be in the same room when it’s being cooked.
Mammalian meat is the same thing as red meat. People with alpha gal (when you get a red meat allergy after a tick bite) can't eat red meat, but can still eat chicken/turkey/other poultry.
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u/BlueShoeBrian 9h ago
One of my friends became allergic to any mammalian meat after a tick bite