there are lots of ways to make chicken, but half of them involve dairy :(

So, going into my third month of eating dairy and alpha-gal free, and I'm starting to try to prepare for the oncoming train of food allergy stuff that is Christmas. I love, love, love Christmas. It is by far my favorite season of the year, and one of my very favorite parts of it was eating. I love almost every traditional thing you eat (or drink, for that matter) at Christmas. This year, things will have to be different.

But, different doesn't have to equal bad! I'm finding more and more recipes of things that are "close" to what I've always enjoyed, just not exactly it. For instance, carrot cake! I found a great recipe on a website (which was copyrighted, so I won't be sharing the link, but you can do a google search for "dairy free carrot cake" and find it) for carrot cake!

I certainly don't have the skill to turn this blog into a recipe sort of website, since I honestly rely on my gracious wife to do most of the cooking, but the bigger picture is that there are alternatives out there. The secret is in not comparing them to what you used to have. Quite honestly, I suspect that the things I used to have, while certainly delicious, are probably not quite as delicious as I remember them being. We tend to remember things as either much better or far worse than they actually were. The bigger picture is health. I feel better when I don't eat these things, and that is verifiable by experience.

I learned the hard way last week that bread (of almost every variety) has milk in it. I would never have thought that, but I learned the hard way. Two days of missed work, missed class, and just being totally drained with big itchy hives taught me an important lesson: don't eat dairy. Ever.

So, my tip for the day? I'm sure people already know this, but application has proven it true for me. READ EVERY LABEL OF EVERY THING YOU BUY. There are things out there that you would never think you'd be allergic to that can be really, really bad. Like non-dairy powdered creamer for coffee, most of which contains some variety of milk in it. Or bread. Or a medium rare T-Bone. . . . ok, maybe not that one.

A funny thing happened on my way to being allergy free. . .

So, I've discovered a most interesting byproduct of having to eat well and read labels carefully (actually, more than one, but I have to save stuff to right about later): I'm losing weight. I'm generally a pretty fit guy, but as I have gotten older, I found it harder and harder to keep the pounds off. Now, since most everything I used to really love (and probably still would if given the chance) has a chance to send me into allergic shock, I have found lower calorie substitutes. Very quietly, and without making any other changes, I have lost 7 pounds. That is the light at the end of the tunnel!

The truth is that there are some really good tasting things out there that serve as great alternatives to the other really good tasting things I can't have. It's becoming less miserable every day (though Krispy Kreme doughnuts still break my heart), which is also a good thing. But my energy level and overall health are through the roof!

Still, a well cooked Porterhouse would be really awesome. . .

finally, no itching!

I think I may have successfully gone my first week without eating dairy: I don't itch. Dairy, unlike meat, just causes me to break out in hives so far, but every week I seemed to have missed something that had dairy in it, and by the end of the day my feet were all a mess of red bumps. It's crazy how hard it is to avoid dairy, especially if you've gone your whole life never having to avoid it.

I think I'm finally starting to get used to my new lifestyle. I found some Soy Ice Cream (which is really good, actually), rice cheese, and a dressing other than Ranch that I enjoy. I still miss the "bad stuff" but overall, it's growing on me. The biggest thing is how much better I feel. I can almost immediately tell when I'm exposed to allergens because, not only do I itch, but I feel like someone has just sucked the energy out of me. I definitely don't miss that, and that knowledge seems to make the food taste better!

Still miss doughnuts, but I think I may have found a place nearby that makes dairy free doughnuts!

weekends. . .

So, I've found that the weekends are definitely the hardest time to deal with all this. Before my allergy, my weekend menu would look something like this: dinner out with wife on Friday night, usually some variety of cooked animal, followed by ice cream or some other dessert while we're out and about town. Saturday morning would be cereal or breakfast of some kind, lunch would be hamburgers or hot dogs, or ham sandwiches, with a dinner of some mexican cheesy dish. Sunday I'd grab doughnuts for breakfast on the way to church, then fried chicken or the Golden Corral all you can eat buffet for dinner.

I literaly can't have any of those things in their old form anymore. So, what do I do for weekends now? Well, dinner last night was a chicken sandwich on whole wheat bread with lettuce and tomato from a new deli in town, breakfast this morning was two pieces of toast with homemade strawberry jam, and lunch will probably be something similar to dinner last night. The only meal I'm stressing about this weekend is dinner tonight; my aunt and uncle, who live on a farm in SC, are coming up to visit, and my parents are taking all of us out. We are going to a mom and pop restaurant in a small town up here, where everything is cooked together and fried. So, I expect wierd looks when I order the garden salad. But, at the end of the day, I'll take wierd looks over a hospital visit.

wish me luck!

you're allergic to what? I've never heard of that. . .

So, the number one thing I've learned so far about being allergic to mammalian meats: outside of the medical world, and in some cases even inside the medical world, no one has ever heard of this allergy.

Every time I have tried to explain my condition to someone to date, I either get 1. puzzled stare 2. that they've never heard of such a thing or 3. that they aren't sure my allergist knows what she's talking about. After that, it's usually "I don't think I could deal with that allergy" or something to that effect. More about that in a later blog.

So, do people think you're crazy, or don't know what you're talking about? Do they ask you questions about this allergy that you may not totally know the answers to? I am including some links at the bottom of pages that were helpful to me in explaining what's going on in my world.

http://www.foodallergybuzz.com/2009/05/connection-between-ticks-and-red-meat.html
http://www.thetimesnews.com/articles/reaction-33637-fall-allergic.html
http://www.jacionline.org/article/S0091-6749%2809%2901268-8/abstract

hope these help! The last one is a brief article written by Scott P. Commins, who has pioneered the research on this particular allergy. There's still a lot of unanswered questions about our condition, but we are farther along now than we were even a year ago. All these are definitely worthy reads; enjoy!

what a crazy allergy

Welcome to my blog! I am hoping to have a place to express frustration and discovery as I walk through what it's like to live day to day allergic to mammalian meats. I found out about a month ago that a tick bite caused me to be allergic to a sugar called alpha-gal, which apparently is only in the meat of mammals such as cows, pigs and sheep. I had 7 anyphalactic reactions before I decided that it might be time to go to the allergist (two of those reactions sent me to the ER, and I honestly thought one of them would kill me). My allergist performed a blood test, and told me that I had this allergy. I have also been advised to avoid dairy, which honestly has been harder than meat (I love Ice Cream)!

So, what was it like to have these reactions? Maybe you're in the same boat, and need to talk to a doctor to perform the tests I had done to see if you share a similar malady. It always started after I had gone to bed (this allergy can take as long as 6 hours to react after eating beef.). I would wake up in the middle of the night with the upset stomach feeling, both nausea and diarrhea. After that, the itching started. I always have this one place in the back of my leg that became swollen and started itching. Then the insides of my ears, my waistline, and along my spine developed welts and itched beyond belief. After that, my lips went numb, my blood pressure dropped, and I became almost incoherent. This all takes place within 5 to 15 minutes of the start of symptoms. I would take two or three times the recommended dosage of liquid Benadryl, at the ER I would get an i v, and things would begin to subside, sometimes within ten minutes, sometimes up to an hour later. The final things was a total body exhaustion; I would just be completely spent.

These are all symptoms of allergic reactions, what was difference is how much time there is between food consumption and shock in our cases. Ultimately, if I were to continue eating mammalian meat, I could have an episode that kills me. So I decided it was time for a change (obviously). Part of that is creating a group where we can share ideas and learn from each other. Tomorrow, or later today if I get the time, I will post some links to articles to help you learn more about what's going on, there is more and more out there about this allergy. I hope to share tips, ideas, and maybe even recipes that help make this more pleasant than it is. I'm looking forward to it!