cross-posted from: https://piefed.social/post/1116242
Woke ticks are out to turn the US South into soyboys
(did I do that right?)
Because people don’t read the source anymore:
that nickname is misleading, because alpha-gal syndrome can cause strong reactions to many products, beyond just red meat.
The alpha-gal sugar molecule exists in the tissues of most mammals, including cows, pigs, deer, and rabbits. But it’s absent in humans.
the allergy also can be set off by exposure to a range of other animal-based products, including dairy products, gelatin (think Jell-O or gummy bears), medications, and even some personal care items.
it’s possible to get over the allergy if you can modify your diet enough to avoid triggering another reaction for a few years and also avoid more tick bites.
Yes. Tl;dr: avoid (more) tick bites
I find it disturbing people have forgotten about parasites because we got rid of most of them. Ticks are not “just like mosquitos”, ticks have seriously dangerous pathogens, and even mosquitos transfer Malaria. Malaria. Which is - if I’m remembering correctly - killing more people in Africa per year than all other causes of death globally combined. That’s including coal mining deaths (deadliest job), human war and murder (second-deadliest “animal” for humans is ourselves) and attacks by wild/domesticated animals, and heart attacks and strokes (most common death for the elderly).
I’m going to have to admit I don’t know the death toll of Malaria for sure, but it IS or WAS the reason mosquitos are/were the deadliest predator for humans. Either way, I’d rather die than have my life turn into an episode of Monsters Inside Me.
Ahaha, Gaia hypothesis confirmed.
Want to reduce human impact on biosphere?
Make is so they can’t eat meat anymore. lol.When vegans took actions too seriously
The saying from Jurassic Park “Nature finds a way…”
You forgot the obligatory, “Uh”.
Also, these Lone Star Ticks have probably unironically had the most impact towards mitigating climate change than anything us humans have voluntarily tried so far.
Uh, it’s “Life, uh, finds a way” but yes, life will find a way to go on if we kill ourselves
Lol oh yeah you’re right. It’s “life” not “nature”
Living in the middle of Y’all Quaeda, I’d think the local cousin fuckers would be more riled up about this. Eating steak is a point of passion down here, second only to worshipping Trump.
For the most part it’s just ignored… I kinda anticipate a trend of folks acquiring the allergy, then literally killing themselves in denial.
RFK will save them…with leeches eheh. You vote for a snake oil salesman, you get witch doctors, have fun in the middle ages! :)
No, you’re thinking of the plot of Escape from L.A.. This is like Escape from L.A. except nobody was able to the discover the fact that Trump committed voter fraud until he activated his evil E.M.P. beam while gloating that he cheated to the doomed world.
I’m no vegan but isn’t this technically a good thing? Red meat has negative environmental impacts right?
My first thought reading the headline was ‘the Earth is healing,’ LOL
I can just imagine the coming conspiracy theories.
isn’t this technically a good thing?
Far from it. There shouldn’t be anywhere near this many ticks as there are now. It’s a sign that the climate is changing and that is getting warmer overall.
Where I live is considered to be the tick hotspot in all of Canada. 15 years ago it would be wildly rare to hear that someone had a tick on them. Now it’s rare to hear the opposite. Go for a hike in the trails nearby and you can easily walk out with at least a few dozen on you.
And it’s not just the temperature itself. It’s that the climate is affecting everything in the ecosystem.
We’re going to see crazy tropical infections and parasites migrating a bit more north every year, and we’re not ready for it.
Don’t worry, I’m sure the current administration will totally save us all from the inevitable screwworm plague about to rain on us.
Don’t worry, suicide is an easy way out! </sarcasm>
Except you can die if you accidentally eat a trace amount in something.
Even better for the environment!
😬
Probably. In some situations where there are no predators and you have semi-wild herbivores roam (usually goats, they are the least picky eaters) to eat forest fuel to prevent forest fires, it might be an ecological solution. But otherwise, yeah, red meat is something to reduce, not sure if this will be enough.
Not exactly goats, but kinda.
The same thing applies to roe deer in most of Europe. It has to be culled due to a lack of natural predators. They would eat everything, ruin the ecology and then be on the roads increasing crashes and human deaths.
And can’t really introduce wolf populations into populated European zones which haven’t had proper predators for ages.
I’m against industrial meat farms, but not eating meat as a concept. There’s just no need for the type of animal torturing powerfarming that is so common in, like, the US. (Watch Clarkson’s farm for instance to see British farming.)
Industrial meat farms need to go, yes. Oddly, it is much more humane to completely automate slaughterhouses as long as regulations prevent cutting corners in designing systems or using “cheaper” (which I doubt actually is) methods. The process is like a purposefully-lethal lobotomy, which sounds awful but it means the death is quick and 100% painless for the poor animal.
That, and it has been shown through actual medical studies AND an actual child abuse case in the US that children cannot receive enough protien to live/grow only from soy and/or beans; you will starve a child if you do not feed them meat (assuming they’ve begun eating solids).
If there’s anything else to say, I do not condone eating veal or lamb. Seriously, it’s a baby animal. Just don’t.
Well, it’s not the slaughtering part that really bugs me.
Is that the animals live in super small spaces, anxious 100% of their lives.
I’m not as bothered by eating an animal that has been free for all it’s life and had the unfortunate pleasure of being the one culled, but I do mind eating a cow that’s been powerraped and milked for 5 years until exhaustion and then put to slaughter. Just tastes worse to begin with.
Same with lamb. I tried it once, but I’m pretty sure I could just taste the cruelty through and I’ve not had any since. Although it might be mutton shares the same taste but I’m not too bothered to find out as being allergic to cruelty sounds better than not enjoying mutton.
That’s true. Putting a cow in a cage it’s whole life is just cruel, I don’t know who’s doing it but it needs to stop if it is.
As for “if”, I’m not a denier, just subtly geographically separated. I’m pretty sure we don’t allow caging cows for years in Canada, but I might be wrong. If I am, count me an ally in making it stop.
So red meat prices are about to plummet right?
I need ox tail to be affordable again
Really shit short ribs are like 10 a pound right now at Walmart.
I second this. I discovered it right before it got insanely expensive and only made it like a couple times.
Rich people watching food network tv ruins affordable food options. It’s… evil.
Fun story: I once watched a lone star tick crawl into the headphone jack of my phone. After trying for hours to get it out, I did two google searches:
-
What eats ticks?
-
Guinea hen mating sounds.
Thirty seconds later, it crawled out.
Probably more effective than opossum noises
Hhhhhhhhhhh
-
My experience has been starkly different from Sterile_Techniques and I’m also living in what might be termed as “the middle of Ya’ll Quaeda” USA. So, it’s interesting to hear that there’s such a big difference in opinion / understanding on this topic.
For sure, 20 - 25 years ago it seemed like almost nobody had heard of it, and whenever someone said they were allergic to meat because of a tick bite, there was a lot of skepticism and denial.
However, these days, pretty much everybody knows someone who has this allergy, and that’s no exaggeration. Even the most backwoods, anti-science, do my own thing, fuck your feelings kind of people are telling others to check themselves for ticks and/or taking steps to keep ticks off them because they’re aware of all the risks from tick bites. Now, they might be claiming that it’s government bio-warfare, related to 5G and/or covid, or some other unnecessarily contrarian bullshit, but they do take it seriously from what I’ve experienced.
Also, the good news is (or bad news I guess depending on your perspective) is that a lot of people seem to experience improvement of symptoms in time, so it’s not necessarily a permanent thing for everybody. I don’t know if it’s just that some people continue to test the limits and end up inadvertently putting themselves through exposure therapy or if the immune response itself just naturally wanes over time, but several people I know who’ve had this for 5 - 10+ years say they can usually get away with a small amount of mammal meat, like maybe a hotdog now and then at a minimum, even though a small bite would have caused them a lot of trouble when they first developed the allergy.
Yes, but then there’s Measles. I cry internally for those kids who died (along with so many others such as in Palestine, but now I’m just being too sad).
You have to understand it to be able to be successful at stopping it every time. Ticks are easy to understand, and even after well over 50 years of sabotaging the education system, no culture completely forgets the discovery of the viruses/bacteria we can’t see without microscopes in just a few generations. When you tell someone “we found god’s definition of us inside our own bodies, and it really is unique per person”, religious zealots tend to care (even if it’s because they want to prevent someone else knowing things).
Unfortunately, somehow “It’s just Measles” became a thing, as if the Human Rhinovirus (Common Cold “Nose Virus” that lives in your sinuses 24/7/365) they’re mistaking it for can’t kill someone with a weakened immune system.
Transition to eating the rich.
isn’t that red meat though?
Is lard red meat?
As someone currently with higher-than-average body fat who isn’t worth billions, I lol’d.
Þat’s þe winning strategy: be unappetizing and too poor to benefit society by being eaten.
Nah most of them are white.
I assume there’s a reason the euphemism for human meat is ‘long pork,’ not ‘long beef.’
Humans, pigs and naked mole rats are the only mammals which never have fur. The mole rats are incidentally NOT found in African diets (afaik), but wild boars and (disturbingly) humans (mind you, there is a nuance) have.
The nuance is the source. Many cultures around the world consumed their dead but are not killers. They had no choice sometimes, every scrap of food had to be conserved.
Also, it was rare but a few cultures ate those they killed in battle, which is far less understandable, but not the same thing as “savages who eat other people” which is not just insulting but factually wrong. If you want to criticize the many, many peoples of Africa over that kind of awfulness, point to 20th and 21st Century genocides between tribes during the attempts to create modern nations, not to cultures that were - yes - often oppressed by European overlords and vilified to oppress them. We don’t know enough to say that it was voluntary, famines and droughts and poor hunting seasons happened over history across the world.
The other nuance is, if you ever end up like the Donner Party, DO NOT EAT THEIR BRAIN. That’s how you get Kuru. Nasty stuff, it’s a genetic illness that can be acquired by eating other people’s brains (hence why nobody eats brains except the zombies in memes). Trust me, you’d prefer to starve to death even considering it’s already like Soylent Green in that hypothetical.
I’m just going to say it, I never implied that cannibalism is commonplace in modern Africa and my point - if hard to convey - is that even something like eating human flesh can be part of a respectable tradition, even if the actual meat should be substituted symbolically with beef or pork for health reasons.
I’m truly sorry it came across as disrespectful, I was not intending to demonize anyone so much as point out that Africa is an entire continent and many cultures live there. Being strange is not wrong, even if that includes eating the deceased at the funeral. Killing others is, but I fully acknowledge that that is not the same thing and that it is something every culture has done regardless of where in the world you look or what color their skin is.
Pork is red meat
Mmmm porky pig.
Ah yes, globally, but also in the US
You have a lot more pretentiousness than knowledge, my friend. The density of cases is much higher in the US than any other country, by nearly an order of magnitude. Besides, don’t people like you get happy when something is worse in the US?
You’re reading an awful lot into a cheap joke.
Let him have his little pleasure while his country collapses.
by nearly an order of magnitude
Was this in the article? They barely mentioned anything about it spreading globally and no actual* numbers on the cases or spread outside of the US.
Idk if I’m allergic to red meat, but I do know that my body has a really hard time digesting it. It just sits in my stomach for an absurd amount of time and makes me feel so nauseated.
Haven’t eaten any red meat in years because of it.
It just sits in my stomach for an absurd amount of time and makes me feel so nauseated.
I sort of thought that everyone experienced that.
I don’t think that’s what should happen lol
But that’s what eating red meat does. There’s no fiber so there’s nothing for your muscles to push against.
Carnivores have normal, regular, and unremarkable poops.
Red Meat is almost totally absorbed in the stomach. If there is a issue with bloating or nausea there may be a gall bladder or bile issue that a doctor may be able to help with (perhaps prescribing ox bile).
I don’t have a gallbladder anymore.
If you want to improve your ability to process fatty meat, I can find the literature on the upregulating protocol for stomach bile production. It is possible. Not sure if it is important for your diet goals.
I appreciate the offer, but I’m doing pretty well digestion-wise. I finally found a good diet that I am sticking to without too much trouble
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I mean, I can see old fashioned doctors saying to have a lil more red meat if she’s anemic. My mom grew up eating a lot of red meat for her anemia. There’s medicine for anemia now, however.
My stepfather is one of those people who wants meat and potatoes at every meal. I moved out of their place 3 years ago and I’m still not able to eat regular potatoes in any form because I ate so many while with my parents. Sometimes just looking at potatoes makes me mad.
My stepfather was told that he’s at risk of a heart attack and/or stroke. He also has anger issues and smokes. Had his first heart attack in his 30s. Hasn’t had any others yet, but yet is the keyword.
I have the same but only with beef. Pork and lamb are fine.
I think with the allergy it’s the myoglobin which content defines what is a Red meat. (edit: it’s not the myoglobin, it’s a specific sugar structure, reading the article mightve helped) My issues to digest beef is more likely related to the structure itself, the “long fibres”, because minced beef is completely fine.
Beef also contains a lot of protein, which upsets some people’s stomachs. There’s only so much protein you can digest at once, or so I read.
I can eat small amounts of pork. I haven’t had lamb in like 20 years so idk how I’d digest it. Beef is my biggest issue. I’m essentially a pescatarian but have chicken every once in a while. My main sources of protein are fish and tofu and beans. My mom is wonderful enough to cook a separate meal for me when I come over for dinner and they’re having beef there. Other members of my family and my friends just alter what they’re making when they know I’m going to visit.
Your mom is much better at “momming” than mine. Since the day I went vegetarian, she said, “You have to cook everything for yourself now.” So I learned how to cook before I got into high school (which I can’t really complain about. It’s better than never learning how to cook at all.)
The weird thing is, she still thinks it’s the 90s or something. Prior to every family event, she tells me to eat something before going because “there will be nothing” for me. Yet every family event in the past decade (or more), I have been far from the only vegetarian there. My siblings, cousins, and their spouses have a completely different attitude than the one my mom has - they think, “If I’m throwing an event, I want everyone to be able to eat.” They’re aware of dietary differences, whether it’s veganism or a peanut allergy, and they care enough about their guests to make sure they don’t go hungry. Even though I’ve never asked for any special treatment, they always consider me when they plan food options. It makes me feel included and loved.
That simple concept doesn’t seem to enter my mom’s brain. Despite me being well-fed at recent family parties, she still not only thinks nobody would care enough about me to consider me when food planning (which really says a lot on its own), but also that having dietary restrictions is some super rare thing. Oh yeah, and she thinks she still has to warn me at all. I’m in my mid-30s and haven’t changed this aspect of my diet in over 20 years, ffs. Perhaps I’d know a wee bit more about all this than she would?
My mom wasn’t always good at it. She was very abusive for most of my childhood. She was having seizures constantly and it fucked with her behavior super bad. We didn’t know about the seizures for years because they don’t present like you’d imagine a seizure presenting. Once she got them under control, we worked together to repair our relationship. It wasn’t easy, especially because her seizures cause memory lapses. She legit didn’t remember a lot of the stuff she’d done. I actually had to bring in folks we know as witnesses to help her realize what she put me through.
I’m so sorry your mom is shitty. I hope some day she’ll be able to change.
Reading this comment thread makes me feel grateful my mom and I (well, both my parents, actually) actually care and were the one part of my life that hasn’t caused me mental trauma.
If you have “passable” parents, anyone, treasure them.
I’m so glad you’ve had great parents. It’s a rare thing, it seems
Thanks. I hope you’re alright.
Nice.
Going to heal the world.
Hopefully, beef cultivation has destroyed almost all of the American Wests Riparian environments.
I think its crazy how many people get ticks where they go unnoticed long enough for it to bury and reach your blood. I wanna say it’s a full 24 hours before that happens and even then idk how much it takes before this will effect you since even things like limes disease means it needs to be in you for even longer.
Idk about others, but I have had my fair share of ticks, but thankfully, never one go unnoticed long enough that it broke through. People really should check more. Showering is a great time to discover if you may have one on you.
I’ve been bitten by ticks many times, sometimes at once (from playing with a family friend’s dog). They’re surprisingly light for such a large creature.
You haven’t lived somewhere the ticks are really bad then.
There is a point especially with ticks too small to see with a negative eye that you will simply not catch them all even if you catch 99% of them.
I honestly am not sure if I live in a bad area or not. During peak times, spring and fall, I will find several on me and the kids per year and a bunch more in the house, which were most likely dragged in by our dog. I feel like it’s a lot more than some people, but it could be worse. I have never seen any that are that small, thankfully.
Nope, you don’t.
In southern new england US, walking 100 feet from my car to the door of my mom’s house you can reliably get a tick from close mowed grass. Granted the area is coastal wetlands, but the density of ticks is incomprehensible.
It is one of the reasons I moved away, ANYTHING you do outside you immediately have to take a thorough shower if it is in nature (wait what is the point of being outside without nature? I know). That means you have to compartmentalize your outdoor work/play so it only happens in one chunk that you can then decontaminate yourself from with a shower and tick check after.
Even still though, you can’t be perfect with it and if you have outdoor pets you are fucked too.
I am not joking, I have pulled countless ticks off me and gotten lyme disease several times along with everyone else I know from that area. You get very very very good at tick checking and mitigating ticks getting on you (at this point I know the feeling of a tick crawlng across my leg hair and can catch them just by the feeling of them crawling up my leg when I am lucky), but you just can’t be perfect.
If this sounds disgusting and ridiculous, yes, yes it is.
I am not talking about the ocassional tick, I am talking about EVERY time you go into the woods you come back COVERED in ticks. This isn’t hyperbole, they genuinely get this bad in certain areas especially in the vicinity of wetlands.
Jesus Christ this sounds awful. How long is tick season?
I got a tick bite. And I didn’t even notice it. It was right on my arm. So it’s not like I’ve just been sitting around feeding the fucker for the fun of it.
As the doctor told me. They can be very tiny, they latch on, and then you accidentally rub it off, never knowing it was there. And during that, it regurgitated and that’s why you see the giant tick bite mark.
The real question. Is why people see a giant hollow red circle and just ignore it. It’s a very distinctive mark, I don’t know how you could miss it, unless it’s on the back of your thigh or back. Go to the doctor, get penicillin. That’s it.
And these days, if you know you live in a high risk area, you can get vaccinated.
I never saw any distinctive skin signs after being bitten.
Then you probably removed it without making regurgitate. Which is good. Point is. If you see the bullseye. You need penicillin.
So that’s how you tell. Well, that’s good to know.
I’ll tell you why. Because it’s fucking expensive.
I had what looked like a classic “bullseye” tick bite (several, actually). People told me “run, don’t walk, to the ER”. So I did.
The ER doc told me it was probably fine but I should see my doctor. $600. They had the gall to bill me $600 for telling me to go see a doctor. And that’s with “good” insurance.
I still have no idea what caused those marks.
I’m not gonna justify a $600 bill for a doctor to prescribe penicillin. But $600 less in your wallet is far better than borreliosis.
And what kind of doc saw your bullseye mark and said “it’s probably fine”. That’s just incompetence. If you have the bullseye mark, you’re not fine. You need penicillin or you risk borreliosis.
Anyhow. My bill was $20 for the visit and about $12 for penicillin, 3 grams a day for 10 days.
If you have the bullseye mark, you’re not fine. You need penicillin or you risk borreliosis.
Yeah, I was pretty freaked out. But on that part, I assume they just knew better than I did. To me it looked a lot like tick bite pictures I found on the internet, but I’m certainly no expert. I saw my GP ASAP after that and he didn’t think it was from ticks either. Maybe it was some other kind of bug bite, or an allergic reaction to some other woodsy thing. No way to know, since it all went away on its own in the end.
I’d advocate for erring on the side of caution, but I totally understand why people instead err on the side of not getting fucked over by medical bills.
As a kid, I had a ticket on the top of my head just a bit back of center. Couldn’t see it in a mirror, didn’t feel anything weird right away. My mom noticed it at some point, but we had no idea how long it had been on there at that point. I was between 6-8 IIRC.
I always figured it’s a sensory thing, different levels of skin sensitivity. I’m highly sensitive, so I imagine there are people who are much less sensitive. For me, I get tickled very easily (and I absolutely hate it.) Any light touch can trigger it. A gentle caress by someone’s fingertips makes me want to jump out of my skin. Lately my skin’s even become more sensitive to chemical irritants. I can’t use the bandaids my boyfriend bought (which are pretty average and of a standard brand) because the glue in it now gives me a rash.
But the benefit of this sensitivity (and, I suspect, the reason this hyper-sensitivity was maintained in humans at all) is that I can feel ticks and most other bugs almost immediately. I’m not perfectly immune - they are sneaky little fuckers. Sometimes a lucky one is able to sneak onto my scalp undetected for a bit. I became aware of that after the last time it happened, so now I brush my hair and feel around my scalp as part of my “tick check” routine.
