How a Tick Bite May Have Saved Our Lives

Many of you know, our family has been on quite a journey the past 9 months. A family member of ours was bitten by a tick in June of 2024. That tick bite completely turned our world upside down as he started having various, scary symptoms 10 days later. By the grace of God alone, we figured out he was having allergic reactions to beef and dairy as well as pork. After trying to convince multiple doctors at multiple hospitals to listen to us, we had labs called in from an integrative nurse practitioner and confirmed he has an allergy to all things mammal that has now commonly been called "alpha-gal".

This allergy is becoming an epidemic not only in Missouri but in various states. Many people go 7+ years without figuring out what in the world is going on with their bodies. It is called the midnight monster because reactions are delayed as your body doesn't react until it breaks down the protein/carbohydrate from whatever you've eaten earlier in the day. Nearly every doctor we came in contact with at the hospital acted like they "weren't familiar" with that and didn't want to discuss it at all. But we can't go a week without hearing from someone in passing, "Oh yeah, my family member has that." One of those things that makes you scratch your head and think, why aren't doctors recognizing and familiarizing themselves with this?

Anyway, I have spent hours and hours reading, researching, reaching out to other families who have navigated this infuriating situation. We have spent thousands trying to help his body recover and heal and, in an attempt to help even just one family save time and money, I'm putting together a list of things that have helped our journey.

If you or a loved one are dealing with this or any other chronic illness and have yet to find things that help, I hope you can gain some insight and tips to help on your journey.

Clean the tank, then the fish.
We as a society have been taught to treat the symptom and not look at the whole picture. Your environment has as much to do with your healing as anything else. If you had a fish in a filthy tank, you wouldn't just pump the fish with expensive antibiotics and let it keep swimming in a toxic environment, would you? Same goes for trying to heal someone who is sick. We are all "swimming" in EMF's from wi-fi and our phones, environmental pollutants from whatever it is they are spraying in the skies, and many of us are living in older homes that may have water damage, toxic paint, or carpet/flooring that is affecting us more than we know. We need to address environment at the beginning, not as the last resort. We purchased this ozone generator to help sterilize the air in our home and have noticed drastic improvements all around. https://amzn.to/3DXmpuW
We also use AirDoctor air purifiers in our son's bedroom but noticed more of a drastic improvement once we started running the ozone generator twice per week. We unplug our wi-fi every single night and try to get as many hours outdoors every day as possible. Make it a game, try to see if you can log more outside hours this week than you did last week, and keep building on that until you become addicted to the outdoors.
Let food be thy medicine.
I cannot stress this enough. What you put in your body or what you allow into your children's body will either make or break you/them. I am officially the mean mom who doesn't allow sugar. I slacked off last summer after we seemed to be able to handle sugary snacks loaded with dye and gluten and all sorts of other things that previously we knew we couldn't process well. Big mistake. I knew better and I still let them eat the garbage after ball games and at friend's parties. No more. I don't care how mean you think that is, I don't care what joy you think I'm robbing them of by not allowing it. When you have to see your child suffer and struggle because of the poison that is in our food system, then we can talk. Until then, I'll keep saying "No, that doesn't work for our family currently," and walking away. We have got to get back to eating REAL food, as in the only ingredient is the whole food itself. You cannot heal while eating processed, packaged "food-like" bio-engineered things. You can't.
Trying to get someone to eat salads is a challenge. Trying to get someone to hold still to have his blood drawn over and over while doctors run multiple tests is also a challenge, you decide which battle you'd rather face. Organic greens are your best friend when healing. Even if you can tolerate meat, it might be worth going off meat for 6 months while your body tries to gain some energy. A dear friend of mine healing her liver cancer has been so helpful and explained how much extra energy our bodies need to process meat, it makes sense to give our body a break and limit it while healing.
With all his reactions, our family member was to the point they couldn't even tolerate some real, whole foods like oranges and tomatoes. Their histamine responses were in overdrive. This protein powder recommended by a dear friend quickly became our family favorite. It has a great mixture of protein from various sources, not just pea protein as well as multiple nutrient dense plants for lots of vitamins all in one punch. https://amzn.to/4l4Rxt9
We mix it with oat milk or coconut milk. If we get to where we can try to introduce dairy, I would mix this with raw dairy milk and I'd also add in some colostrum, but we aren't to that point just yet with tolerance levels.
Everything goes back to your liver.
If you are struggling with your health, you have got to start supporting your liver NOW. Not when your doctor finally says you've got high cholesterol or fatty liver or anything else. You need to be supporting your digestive system and making sure you are eliminating all those toxins efficiently every single day. This is good to get your bowels working, my entire family uses this daily. https://www.earthley.com/products/gut-health-oil/?affiliateId=sarah.elliott
Even if you're not "struggling" with your health, ALL of us need to be supporting our liver now. We are doing some homeopathic drops for him called Pekana Big 3 which you can search and order here https://shop.drjabanmoore.com/collections/all?sca_ref=8090026.ZnXIljvGsb if you're interested.
As a family, the rest of us are using these drops https://earthley.com/products/liver-love-herbal-tincture/?affiliateId=sarah.elliott.
Another good tincture to have in your arensal to support your immune system and as an overall prevantative measure would be this one: https://www.earthley.com/products/adaptogenic-immunity/?affiliateId=sarah.elliott
Earthley does filter their water with bone char so unfortunately, our family member cannot use this product.
That brings me to the next point, you need to educate yourself on everything that could potentially contain mammal ingredients or byproducts. This book will save you hours of googling things. https://amzn.to/3Y34uJW
Gelatin in marshmallows, magnesium stearate or glycerin in medicines, Paint, detergent, filtered water, sugar filtered with bone char. It can be overwhelming at first, and you or your loved one may not react to any of the above. Or, they may react to all of the above and everything else under the sun like our family member. Alpha-gal is so complex and it affects everyone differently which is partly why some doctors don't take it seriously. They may have a family friend who only gets a bad stomach ache after eating 4 cheeseburgers. They haven't seen someone who can literally pass out just from smelling a steak on the grill. It is terrifying how severe a reaction can be at any given time and needs to be taken as seriously as any other allergy.
Do not stop begging until you get an epi-pen. The fact that I had to request it multiple times from multiple providers in and of itself should be a crime. But that's what happened and I didn't stop until I had it in my hand. Research things like Auvi-Q before you drop $300+ on the one your doctor may write the script for, yet another major purchase we could have possibly saved money on if we'd known more at the time.
Be prepared to be your/your child's own advocate.
I will keep this short to keep my blood pressure down. You will be gaslit and made to think this is simply anxiety or all in your head. You know your body or your child better than anyone. If your provider makes you feel any way other than safe & heard, FIRE THEM and move on to another. That's right, they work FOR YOU. You have every right to leave their office and find someone who treats you with compassion and who wants to help you heal. Integrative/functional medicine is where we have found the most help and I can give you my recommendations for that as well. We did drop thousands of dollars with a very nice Lyme literate specialist, but unfortunately his approach only put a band-aid on our son's issues. There are providers out there who are truly wanting to help others and not just make thousands off your desperation to heal. Don't stop searching until you find one.
Find a certified chiropractor who has year of experience, and do muscle testing to see what exactly you are reacting to or what is keeping your body inflamed. This was originally my number 1 tip, but I realize many will quit reading if you mention this approach. We were extremely hesitant to do this as we didn't want it giving a false sense of protection, but our family member was to the point they couldn't handle eating hardly anything and every smell was triggering them. If you feel comfortable moving forward with that chiropractor, do acupuncture to try and get your body to stop overreacting to said triggers. Multiple friends told us to try this right when we found out it was alpha-gal and we kept putting it off. I wish we'd immediately made the appointment and went, it may have saved us multiple reactions and ER visits. If you need the name of a practitioner, reach out to me. You do not want to just go to someone who claims they can do this, if they do not know what they are doing they could potentially make you more reactive causing more harm than good. That is why we were hesitant to try it but we trust the chiropractor we have found and are so glad we are now in the process of doing it.
Invest in good tick/insect repellant
There are multiple species of ticks than can cause alpha-gal, Lyme, and other co-infections. We live in the woods in Missouri, it is not uncommon for all of us to get 10+ tick bites each summer, which is why I didn't really worry too much when we pulled the tick off our son this past summer. He's been bitten before. My husband will sometimes walk through our property and have tons of seed ticks all over his socks. But now, we don't go out without some sort of repellant on. There is this spray that will adhere to your clothing and is good for so many washes before you have to reapply. You have to really douse the clothing and let them air dry for the recommended hours before wearing for it to be effective. https://amzn.to/43WwYJ9 We also use various other sprays when we are running out the door and haven't prepared the clothing the night before. Many practitioners say to put the tick in a ziploc bag once you remove in order to be able to send it off for testing. It may also help you "prove" to skeptical doctors that you were indeed bitten by a tick. If our bodies are healthy then in theory they should be able to process out and fight off whatever these ticks are infecting us with but it may not hurt to keep it just in case you have symptoms appear. If at all possible, I'd try to get on doxycycline for a minimum of 2 weeks if you know you've been bitten. You may have a hard time convincing your primary care doctor to do that but I would fight for it to try and get ahead of anything that could come up. You'll want to get on a good spore-forming probiotic while taking any antibiotics to keep your gut health as in check as possible.

If you are dealing with alpha-gal or any other chronic issues, change your mindset and welcome this wake-up call to take back your health and start making better decisions. Symptoms are your body's alert system saying HELP before everything goes haywire. That's why I titled this post in this way. Is this a journey we wanted to be on? No. Would I wish this situation on my worst enemy? Absolutely not. This has been the most terrifying, hardest 9 months of our entire lives seeing our child suffer and having very little help from doctors in the most prestigious hospitals around.

None of us want to give up Friday Night Pizza Night. None of us want to admit that what we are eating, watching, exposing ourselves to is killing us, but it is. If you can hardwire your wi-fi into your tv/computer, do it. If not, at least unplug it at night. Our wi-fi comes into our house at one of our kid's rooms. That child would have night terrors and could never sleep through the night. If you think the frequencies aren't affecting you/your family, you're wrong.

If you can make smoothies with hemp hearts and moringa powder, do it. If not, at least give up processed/packaged foods for a bit and see if you feel better.
If you can, try to consciously see how you feel while you're watching that Netflix thriller. Is your heart rate up? Are you unknowingly putting your body in fight or flight mode right before you try to go to bed? If so, turn it off and read a book, or better yet, the Bible.

There are so many swaps you can easily make. It doesn't have to be overwhelming. It doesn't have to cost you thousands like it has us while trying to chase down this monster and help our child heal. But ultimately, I have learned so much about true health and had my eyes opened wide to the unfortunate "death-care" system that just wants to treat symptoms with pharma-funded prescriptions and invasive procedures. The sooner we realize that we are accountable for every decision we make with our health, the quicker we can take helpful actions to bettering ourselves and our children's lives.❤

This post contains affiliate links. While I do believe it is usually best to order straight from the manufacturer, I am trying to find ways to bring in a small amount of income to help pay for top quality ingredients to help my son heal his body. Any links you order from on this page will provide a small amount of commission to me. None of this is medical advice, just things we have found that worked for us in our experience.