The Mysterious Case Of Alpha Gal

Serious XM podcasts. [MUSIC]

I wish that I could still eat anything.

[MUSIC] I feel like it's not good to have an allergy in the end.

“It's an extra worry that you should have to think about.”

[MUSIC] This is this pork full. It's not for foodies. It's for eaters. I'm Dan Passman.

Each week on our show, you obsess about food, so they're more about people. Today, we're bringing you the story of a friend of mine, Amy Pearl. Okay. Is your mic on?

Yeah, I'm getting my mic in nervous. Maybe I should get my epipen. Are you allergic to radio greatness? I don't know if I've been really exposed to it yet. Anyway, let's go.

Amy and I used to work together in New York Public Radio.

She had this really strange story that she wanted to share.

It's about her experience developing Alpha Gaal Syndrome. Over the past few years, positive cases of Alpha Gaal have risen dramatically across the U.S. And it's emerged as a major public health concern, despite the fact that many clinicians still haven't heard of it. When Amy's story began over a decade ago,

there was even less note about it than there is now. Her story was a medical mystery.

“We collaborated with the podcast Radio Lab to tell this story.”

See you'll hear Radio Lab's former co-host Robert Crawlwich and current co-host Lettiff Nasser a little later on. Anyway, let's get to Amy's story. Years ago, for any that's happened to you, just tell me what was your relationship with meat?

My relationship with meat. Yeah. Well, you know how when you're little and your mom is like, you could have any special dinner for your birthday. My dinner was meatballs and she was like,

"Except meatballs are so hard to make, so it was pot roast." And then Peter Lugino, Peter Lugard. Same as steak house in Brooklyn. Yeah. I used to go there quite often and I live there and I have a Peter Lugard credit card.

So... Are those hard to get? You know, I don't know how they give them up, but nobody seems to have one. I don't think they give them out anymore.

But I mean, I was very into Peter Lugard. I was living in Williamsburg. And it just opened up like one o'clock every day. And you could just walk in at one. They had an amazing bar.

There was no tablecloths on the table. These old German waiters.

“They bring out your porter house for three.”

They put a little plate upside down and then put the big platter on top. So it's tilted and all the juice runs to the end. And then they like have the special double spoon thing that they somehow like scoop juice onto your steak.

And... Oh, so good. And also like the smell of burning fat from a hamburger. What are the hot dogs? Oh my God.

I love hot dogs so much. When you bite into them and they're like collect and have like a snap. And like having a weenie roast out in the open air is just, it's like the, oh God, it's so good.

Anyway, I was always very intimate.

What changed? Oh my God, it was terrible. It was what happened was. I was having this beautiful, it was springtime. I was having a beautiful leg of lamb with some neighbors.

And we like put it on the grill. And it was just a delicious beautiful dinner. And I had served with it some ramps that I foraged in my mom's yard. So we had this delicious meal.

And then, you know, I went home and I was going to sleep at like midnight, like a few hours later. And I just felt weird. I was like, oh God, something's wrong. I feel like we're like anxious, like something's wrong with me.

And I went on the bathroom and I like looking the mirror. And my face was like, oh weird looking. And I was like, I kept laying down, be like, I'll just sleep it off whatever it is. But every time I lay down, I feel like I was going to faint.

So I was like, prop myself up. And I was like, oh God, I'm so terrible. Like, stomach cramps and just like a weird feeling of impending doom. You know, but just like anybody, I'm just like, just get a good night's sleep, this will pass.

I like splashed a little water on my face. I mean, I don't know what made me think this. But I thought like, maybe a snail, a tiny snail, was on one of the ramps that I ate. And it was like poisoning me somehow.

You know, snails, I mean, they probably poisonous. So I called my friends in the morning. I was like, hey, how you guys doing? How was dinner? And they were like, oh, so great.

I was like, really, so great. Nothing weird, like-- No horrific panic attacks. And they were like, and they were like, oh, that was so lovely. Thank you so much for doing it again, Barbara.

And I was like, wow, I really had a rough night. And but I didn't think anything other than I went on with my life, you know, just like, whatever. And then, about a week or two later, I made some cheeseburgers. And I ate a cheeseburger.

really tear-jerking movie and a good book, too. And about a couple of hours after I ate, I was like, started to feel really weird. Again, I was like feeling like I was like, I had to stand up. I was like, I think I'm going to faint.

I feel really light head. I can't catch my breath. I feel like really woozy. But if any time I lay down, I really felt like I was going to faint. So I was like, trying to stay sitting upright.

And I was like, oh my God, this is very similar. I ran into the bathroom. And I was like, looking in the mirror and lo and behold, I had hives all over my stomach. And then they started coming out of my hands.

And I was like, oh my God, something's happening. And at one point, I did get up and unlock my door, because I did feel like I'm going to pass out, con ambulance, and then they're not going to be able to get in. So I mean, I was in a little bit afraid of what was happening.

And when I woke up in the morning, the first thing I did was

Google sudden meet allergy. Because I was like, this seems like an allergy.

“And the only thing that was the same was meat.”

And I'm going through like the second thing that came up was this article that was like, Florida Man has sudden meet allergy. I was like, oh my God, I think it's a possible I could have this. And so I made a poem with my doctor. I brought in the article.

I'm like, I'm going to be this person. But I can do it. And I had the article, my pocket. What would be what person? You know, the person that goes to their doctor was something I found

on the internet. So I brought the article. It was in my pocket. And like, I got through the whole like checkup. And I was too chicken.

I went when I was paying their receptionist. I pulled it out and gave it to their receptionist. And I was like, could you give this to the doctor? So that was like the best I could do. And then I did call my doctor and had a conversation with him on the phone,

asking him if I could get tested. And he was like, no, there's no such thing as a meat allergy, blah, blah, blah. This is where our friends Robert Krullwich and let's have an assert from radio lab come in.

“So some people think allergies are just like in your head.”

And people, this is science writer Peter Smith. We got in touch with him after we heard Amy story because Peter is an investigative many things including strange allergies. And people are like mushrooms hurt them. Or they think Wi-Fi hurts them.

Yeah, Wi-Fi hurts them. And I don't know. And when I produced her a lot of Nasser and I got into the studio, and we told him about Amy story, he said. Yeah, all right.

I know exactly who you need to talk to. Hello. Yeah, hi. Thomas Platt's Mills. This is Thomas Platt's Mills.

That's right. How are you? I'm very well. Dr. Platt's Mills is down at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. He's a professor and he works at an allergy clinic.

And an allergy clinic, we constantly sifting through stories, which not only you don't believe, but are actually nonsense simply. And he told us in the last 10 years or so, he started hearing lots of stories just like Amy. Right. Somebody shows up at the office convinced that they're allergic.

All of a sudden for no apparent reason to red meat.

The first time I heard it was probably as early as 2004.

And every single time he heard the story, he would tell the patient exactly what Amy's doctor told her. Now, no way. No, no, no. It's not possible.

Right. So what was wrong with these complaints in an orthodox medical way? Oh, everything. Adults don't become allergic to something they've eaten for 40 years out of the blue, and certainly not red meat.

So you're basically saying to these patients,

“"I think you must be making this up because I can't explain."”

Well, I don't use language like that. I said, "I said there there there." I was trying to give you your inner voice. Oh, you don't want to know what doctors are thinking in their end of voices. You know, you often think in the middle of interviews,

it's possible that he's got some ghastly disease. That gap. Yeah, you know. The point is that when he'd hear a story like Amy's, he just didn't believe it.

But then everything changed. Banks oddly enough, to a cancer drug. This new cancer drug called cetoximap. In New York today, Martha Stewart was indicted on criminal charges relating. This is the very drug that got Martha Stewart and all that trouble for insider trading.

Remember that? I went to jail for six months? Yeah. Anyway, very promising, exciting new drug. But then, doctors were giving people this injection,

and it was just like, "End up on the floor of the doctor's office." In shock. Yeah, there would be an anaphylactic shock. Their hearts would start beating faster. They'd get short of breath and get stomach cramps.

Their immune system would start to overreact to something new and alien that came in with the drug.

Basically, a classic allergic reaction.

So the mystery lands on Thomas Plots Mills's desk. Yes. So we were asked to look at cetoximap to see if they could figure out what was causing the reaction. And he tests two groups of blood, a control sample, and then people that have this allergy.

It was part of the drug. This sugar.

Gallic toes, alpha-1-3 Gallic toes.

Or alpha-gall. Alpha-gall? Yeah. As in a particularly great lady? Yeah.

Better than the beta-organic out? It's like alpha male.

“Alpha female didn't quite have a ring to it.”

Absolutely, absolutely. Alpha male. Anyway, it seemed like alpha-gall was the culprit. Yeah. And if you'd tell me four years earlier that there's a whole lot of people out there who were

allergic to this sugar, I'd have thought you were smoking, you know, vaping again. Because not only does this sugar alpha-gall show up in the cancer drug, and this is where you get back to Amy, it also shows up in the blood of mammals. All non-primate mammals. So every time you eat lamb or beef goat, camel, even try four pigs' kidneys.

You're also eating alpha-gall. Some reading this article and it says like, it's the thing called alpha-gall lactase or alpha-gall or whatever. So it made no sense that someone like Amy who'd been eating meat all her life, would suddenly somehow be allergic to alpha-gall.

I just was like, this was so stupid. So one day. It's getting to be barbecue season. I usually have a couple of barbecues where I just do a whole pork butt and the brisket and like, hang out all day doing it and I was like, very wanted to do that.

And I was like, I'm just going to not eat meat and not even know.

“So I was like, forget it, my doctor will test me.”

I'm going to test myself. So I was like going to be very careful. I feel like I have a thing of Benadrill. And I was like, I'm not going to do it alone. I'll do it with my mom, my poor mom. And so I went up to my mom's and she's like really into food too.

So she was like, oh, this is so exciting. I got two porterhouse steaks on salad stews. Excuse, plain to her, what do you're testing? Yeah, I did because I had talked a little bit about it with there. So like fire up the grill, do the porterhouse.

I even think I like Instagram to does a joke. Like, ha ha ha ha. This might be the last time you hear for me. But so, you know, we're having a nice summer day. Just me and my mom having our steak. I only ate like a couple of bites because I was slightly nervous.

And I was like sitting in the grass with my dog and reading a book and trying to think, like, do I feel normal? Which try it folks, it's hard to figure out when you start asking yourself. Do I feel normal? Does this?

Am I breathing? Oh, it's my stomach hurt, something wrong. And I was like, after a while, I was like, oh, I feel pretty good. And the neighbor came over and was like, "Trading with us."

And it was in the middle of that conversation where I was like, I kind of feel like I have to go the bathroom. But maybe I just have to go the bathroom. So I went to the bathroom. I was sitting there and I was like, oh, God, something feels bad.

And then I was like, oh, God, I definitely, this is not right, something's wrong. And I went in to get the benedrel and I took the benedrel. And I went on my bed and I had the guest room at my mom's. And I was like, sitting on there and I was like, oh, I just feel right.

Maybe I just take a deep breath. I'll just stand up. Maybe I just put my hands over my head like this. Oh, that does feel slightly better. I think.

And then I was finally like, I think we should go the hospital.

And I went outside.

“I was like, mom, I think you have to drive me to the hospital.”

She was like, talk and do her neighbor like, what? Oh, my God, honey, what? Oh, let me go change my clothes. Change my clothes. Like, mom, you know, she's not wearing the hospital level clothes.

So I'm like, okay, hurry up, mom, mom, are you ready, mom? And then I was like, while she was changing your clothes, I suddenly was like, oh my God, got my wallet out of my cell phone. And I was like, through it towards my mom's bedroom door. And I was like, here's my insurance card calling ambulance.

And I just like hit the floor. Eventually, the ambulance arrives. And I got stabilized. I was strapped to the thing. I was in the emergency room.

Like, they were shooting me full of, I don't know what, up in the front and adrenaline. And the little, like, 12-year-old emergency room, Dr. Rundsen. And he was like, I locked it up on the internet.

Alpha gal, fascinating. What? That's terrible.

I've never heard of that.

Could it be true? Yes, it's true. Like, they're having a discussion there. Then when I went back to my doctor after that, and I was like, hey, just get out of the emergency room,

because they tested me for alpha gal. And I'm allergic to meat. So this is an allergy. Yeah. So all of a sudden, you're looking at the quote, "Crazys."

And they're not so quote, "Crazy anymore."

We suddenly had a blood test.

“And of course, what turned out is all these patients who”

been telling us this story were allergic to alpha gal. But it's still like a mystery. Right. There are... Thomas Platt's mills couldn't figure out

why people like Amy who had lived for 40 years eating porterhouse steaks at Peter Lugers with a credit card. Why would she suddenly develop an allergy now? They would gotta be some kind of trigger. Yes.

So we were looking for anything that could explain it. It could be a mold, it could be a nematode, a worm, or a fungus. But then he looked again and noticed that all the people who had had bad reactions to the cancer drug,

they were in a particular area of the country. Was Virginia, North Carolina, Southern Missouri? Tennis, Arkansas? So cases in Salt Lake City, no cases in Denver, smattering's down the west.

“So he turned to his technician, Jake, and said,”

"I said, you've got a Google every map you can find and say, what matches that area? Creatures or diseases that appear wherever the allergy appears." So Jake starts Googling, Googling, and Googling, and Googling, and eventually he comes across a map that matches

where the cases are very beautifully. The maximum area for Rocky Mountain spotted fever. So he made this little map and it's like the shaded dark areas of the country or places with the Rocky Mountain spotted fever. And then there's like some stars where

you know, this allergy had appeared. Yeah. And they overlap. Ah, very interesting. And then all of a sudden, it clicks. Rocky Mountain spotted fever is a tick-borne disease.

This is the distribution of the lone stalk tick. And actually, just a little before this, it turns out, an allergist down in Australia, Cheryl Van Nune.

First name Cheryl, I say to y'all,

Van Nune and VAM and then N-U-N-N-N. And I'm from the tick-and-gist allergies research and awareness center in Sydney, Australia. She says she was now being visited by all kinds of people who claim suddenly to be allergic to meat.

And whenever I take a history, so for example, I'd ask them was there a family history of rhinitis, six-mer, asthma, steering insect allergy. And they say, they've all been bitten by ticks. When we started asking patients, we suddenly heard the stories

just out the Kazoo. But at this point, Dr. Platt's Mills, all he has is a map, some stories, and a hunch. Right, so. So what does he do?

He decides, well, maybe I'll just do this to myself. He does what? He decides to test it out himself. Oh my god. He sort of denies that he did it intentionally.

I know I had no intention.

“I mean, I think he also likes to walk in”

Campbell and think about things right. So he goes for a long walk along the Blue Ridge mountain. And I knew I wanted to be off trail, because I'm actually rather allergic to humans. So he's walking and walking and walking along the way.

He bumps into a whole bunch of ticks. And if you walk into a nest of those things, oh my god, this sounds like a nightmare. Yeah, absolutely. I got 200 seed ticks and then in November that year,

I was taken out to dinner and the lamb chops were particularly delicious and the French wine was delicious. And six hours later, I woke up covered in hives. He's got an allergy to read me. All just because of a tick bite, tick bite.

That's right. Coming up more of Amy's story and the tick story.

Then Amy goes back to the doctor a year after her first diagnosis

to find out if she's still allergic. Stick around. And now, a delicious word from our sponsors. Welcome back to this pork full. I'm Dan Paschman and heads up Boston.

Take us to selling fast for our show there on May 1st. What a guest lineup we have for you. Reporter Matt, who is our number one most requested Boston guest and a couple more all stars. Irene Chang Lee, co-founder of Mae Mae Dumplings.

And Ian Cost creator of the podcast The Big Day. He's going to share a very interesting story about monkfish. That's May 1st at WBUR Cityspace. Get tickets for more of their gone. Go to sportfull.com/live.

Alright, back now to my friend Amy's story. Like before, you're going to hear radio labs, Robert Crawlwich, and left if Nasser taking the lead some parts of the show.

A tick bite? Hang on a second, because like a few weeks before

all the started happening, as I said, I was foraging for ramps and my mom's backyard. And I had a tick on my arm. Now it turns out that not only was that tick bite a terrible thing for Amy, it was a kind of double tragedy. Hidden from view amongst the trees and in the undergrowth.

“And I think it's only right at this point to back up.”

It's a fascinating world of wonders. And consider the story from a tick's point of view. Okay, so I'm Graham Hickling. I'm a wildlife diseaseologist at the University of Tennessee. So I was wondering if you could help us tell the story of, in this case, the loon start tick, that bit Amy. Oh, yeah sure. So they start off in this little pile of eggs, perhaps a massive 2,000 eggs under the leaves.

The proud mom would just give birth at that point. She's just a kind of a withered husk. Meaning dead. But anyway, a few weeks later, those eggs are hatched and this massive 2,000 baby ticks emerge from under the leaves. And could I see them with my naked eye? If you ran into a mass of them all up together, you would feel like you've got all smudged of dirt and then the dirt starts walking. And so they'll just climb up and they'll potentially

“all be on the same leaf or the same twig looking for something to feed on.”

Now, one teeny little tiny problem for these teeny little tiny ticks is that they dry out. So when they come up from under the leaves, they come up briefly and then they go back down. Get a little water, come back up, get thirsty, go back down and rehydrate. So they like commute exactly. And we refer to the behavior as question. Oh, that's interesting. So if you were one of these little baby ticks up,

question for food while you're up there, you are essentially Velcro. Because on each one of your little legs, you have little kind of hot like structures. And so you're flat against the leaf sort of sniffing in the air with your two little front legs. The can detect the CO2 heat movement. So let's say one day you're sitting there on your leaf and you pick up the scent of a nearby mouse. My so the potato chips of the ecosystem,

everything needs them. You might be about to have your very first meal.

So you basically stand up, stretch out all your little legs, and do a tick dance. And so it's kind of interpretive dance. Like movements. While you're waiting for that mouse to come just close enough that you can grab onto it. So you're dancing and you're waiting and you're dancing and you're waiting and you're dancing and you're waiting. To be honest, you are probably going to wait your entire life and die

unfulfilled because there are 2,000 of you starting off and a stable tick population. There's only going to be two of you that survive. Oh my god. So 1,998 little baby ticks are born and then that's it for them. But let's say that you're one of the lucky ones. And one sunny day, there you are hanging out on your little leaf when you detects two incoming mammals. One is a 40-year-old hominid. The other is her dog. So you perk up,

who thrust your legs out, wave, do the tick dance. And say that you're waving and you're dancing and you're hoping and you're waving and you're waving and you're dancing and you're hoping and you're waving and you're dancing and you're hoping and you're slowly the dog getting closer and closer and you reach out with one of your tiny little thumbs up you'll get a... Grab them and eat and survive. But the reason that tick ended up on me was I slept in bed with

my dog naked. I mean, she's always naked but I was also naked. I mean, that's not gross.

“I don't, I mean, does that sound weird? No. But how do you know that's when it happened?”

Because I know that like I did a good tick check on myself and I took a shower and everything and then in the middle of the night I woke up with a itching sensation and I went to the bathroom and I couldn't really see what was on like something was on the back of my arm and it was a tick. So as the tick is biting into Amy, what is it giving Amy that's going to make her allergic to me? Well, actually I need to stop you there Robert. Do you feel what one Robert?

I don't know the answer to that. That's Peter Smith and we're joining us as Cheryl Vanden in the scientist. It's all up for speculation. We don't really know. But here's the theory. So normally when you eat a piece of meat you put alphagal in your stomach and your stomach digest it and it's in your body and it's not what we do. But the tick, cunningly, will drill into you,

Text spit into that's victims straight into its victim's largest organ for skin.

“And ticks but it has an anti-clotting factor, nanosthetic, anti-inflammatory compounds.”

And we think the alphagal. Now Peter says the thing about the skin is the skin is like this

enormous like surveillance system. It's always on the lookout for invaders. So when the alphagal

comes through your skin covered by all that bad, bad, tick-spits stuff, that's going to really like set off your immune system. The immune system freaks out like, oh, uh, in the alphagal, covered now in bad spit. Almost sort of by mistake gets labeled bad. And now it's on the bad guy watch list. So therefore the next time you eat meat the meat comes in and then the body unleashes wave upon wave upon wave of chemical attacks to do battle against this alphagal. And this reaction

gets way out of hand. You've got so many antibodies multiplying, multiplying, multiplying,

“multiplying, making you rather than this case Amy feel just horrible. Right. I mean,”

it's very weird. It sounds like a science fiction movie. It sounds like the beginning of a science

fiction at least kids book. Let's not go to movie, but like it's, it's just strange. Which all goes to say that this really is a kind of double tragedy for Amy and her tech. Yeah, because it takes an involved by humans. Right. We're a mistake. Like we have a possible thumbs. We're either going to pull them off. I actually woke my mom up and she helped get it off. Or if they drop off, they're going to drop off in an airport terminal or a Walmart car park or something like

a bag carpet or a bag carpet indoors and and they're doomed. And for us, well, we lose something that historically anyway is a big part of who we are. Yeah, because we have we we adapted in the grand evolutionary scheme of things to like eat flesh to eat meat. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I'm actually sitting here picturing a steak, but actually the thing, I mean hot dogs, like wrap ramps around a weenie and roast y'all in the sense to go my mouth's watering.

Weenie, weenies and ramps. Yeah. But I am going my allergis tomorrow, because I did, you know,

I was reading about this allergy a lot when I first got it and I read that for some people,

the allergy can fade away. So I'm going to get a blood test to see what my blood level of alpha gal is. So I'm a little bit-- So what are you hoping for tomorrow? I want to be normal again. Coming up, Amy gets the results of her test. Stick around. Hope you are hungry because it's time for some ads. Welcome back to this pork full. I'm Dan Pashman.

From here, Robert Crawl looks a radio that picks up the story. He met up with Amy, after she got her test results. So I actually did get an appointment with my allergis, Dr. Corn. It was Dr. Corn. She's really nice. So I got the diploma, I got the blood draw, whatever. And a few days later, my doctor called me and she said that my numbers were still really high. And I was like, well, how high are they? And she was like three. And I was like three. That's

a high. And she was like, they're supposed to be like one or something. So they had gone down, but they were still, you know, many times more than they should be. So when you left and you were

“waiting for the call, were you waiting with the hope that you would soon be eating a bit of hotdog?”

I mean, honestly, I was hoping no. No. No. I don't-- Wait, the great-- you-- You know, I was afraid that she would be like, oh my god, your numbers are so low. I think you could probably eat meat. Let's do a food challenge. I would be like, ah, because like, that's such a scary memory. Yeah, I don't-- you know, actually just the other night, I was eating in an Indian place. And I was eating vegetarian, but like, I felt something and I pulled it out. And in the dim light of

an Indian restaurant, I was like, was this big? And I suddenly, you know, like, you just get this drop in your stomach. And I'm like, what time is it? Four hours from now if I-- you know, because there's something about it being delayed. That makes it so difficult, it just is like-- I guess it's been smoothie with you. It's like it could happen in the next three hours. Or maybe not. I don't know. I mean, honestly, the only thing that the real reason I want to be able to eat meat is so that

X, and I was like, what happens if I get to try it out here? And like, what if I have to hunt?

“But I can't even eat meat out. I have to hunt fish. But then when the lake freezes over, what would I eat?”

I can't survive. Something's wrong with me. I feel evolutionary challenged. This is what I think about before I go to bed every night. What I'd be able to survive if I had just what's on me right now, a pan, underwear, my dog. And so, yeah, I mean, that's a real issue. It's like, it's not a real issue.

Obviously, it's never going to happen. I live in Brooklyn. But I do for some reason. I always think

like, I want to be prepared in case. But yeah, you know, I don't think I would go back to eating meat necessarily. Like, you are still more, more frightened than game. So to speak. Well, also like, I wish I could be a vegetarian for ethical reasons, because it's not so much just the eating meat, but just like, you know, the the factory farming and that kind of stuff. So I feel like morally superior now. I can be like, well, I don't eat red meat. Of course, I'm forced to not eat

it, but at the same time, I would if I had the if I had the willpower, I'd probably go that way anyway.

“And then also, I think it's great. It's like we're all evolving to be on this planet, which is”

getting harder to be on. And we know that meat takes a lot of resources. And like, now I don't

now I'm not doing that. So like, the tick is helping me evolve until a better human being. Like, so one could, instead of thinking of the tick, as your teeny, rainy, irritating enemy, you could think of it as a guiding light, making the world safer to share with your fellow Earthlings. Yeah. So you may have lost a relationship with meat, but at least you have your moral superiority. Yeah, I mean, I am super happy. So that was Amy and me with Robert Crowwich and lots of

not certain from radio lab. As you heard, Amy got tested to see if she was still allergic to meat. And even though her alpha gal number had come down a lot, it was still too high. She was still

positive for the allergy. But a year later, Amy decided to go back and try again.

Just one hitch. Since that last test, she had gotten bitten by another tick. The research shows that could make her allergy worse. But as she headed to the doctor, she was still hopeful. I guess I feel like the numbers went down so much. And it's not like I would go back to eating meat, but I do want to know so that I won't be worried. I don't want to worry. Worrying is such a burden. It's like praying for something bad to happen all the time.

Anyway. So no, I don't want to go to, I love Dr. Cornel, but I don't want to go. I hate the doctor. But you're going. Yeah, I'm going right now. It's so hard to get this appointment. You're like forcing yourself to do something you don't want to do. Yes, Dan, that's being an adult. You'll get there, but you're like, no, I just, I mean, did you read? There is a great recipe in the times for steak tartar.

And it was like rustic steak tartar. And I like the image that that brings up of like a raw egg. I got a bunch of raw meat sitting outside somewhere in the south of France. I can't afford it. Yeah, but it takes around. Yes, so I would love to be able to be like, oh, I want to express who I am by eating steak tartar. But maybe that in itself is just pathetic way to look at eating,

which is really just feeling, but that's not true. I mean, I don't think it's a pathetic way to look at eating, but I do wonder whether that's really who you are now.

“Am I steak tartar? Or am I kabocha steamed with brown rice?”

I don't know. All right, Amy. Good luck at your doctor's appointment. Thanks, Dan. Bye. A few days later, Amy got a voice mail from her doctor with the results. We went into the studio together so I could hear it. I hope it's either conclusively lower or conclusively higher. Why would you want it to be conclusively higher?

Because I wanted clarity. It's responding to the fact that I got bitten by a tick and going up. That means it's a real thing. That's like scientific and not some kind of space-age, weird, spiritual issue that's making me not eat meat. Sometimes it just feels like, "Why is this happening to me?" Right. So if it actually responds to science, then I feel like it's science.

You got the results. Before we play them, just remind us what your numbers were.

If you're first huge incident when you were rushed to the hospital and almost died,

what was your alpha-gal number? I think after the first incident, my number was like in the 40s or something. Okay, and then last year, a year ago, you had it tested and what was it? 3.1. What is normal? How low would it have to be if you could be able to go back to eating meat? I think 0.3. So at your worst, you were in the 40s. You got down to 3 something, but to be able to

“eat meat again, you have to get down to 0.3. Yeah. All right. Can I play the voicemail?”

Okay. It's Dr. Corn. Just calling to let you know that the alpha-gal actually came back at 11. So it's still positive. That's a bottom line. And I wouldn't worry about the fact that it went out.

The bottom line is it's still positive. And that's what we are really looking for if it's

positive or negative. Okay. I will actually put it in the mail and send it to you. Thank you. Bye bye. Yeah. How are you feeling about that result, Amy? Actually, you know, in terms of, like, chaos in order, I thought it was good, because it definitely went way up. And so I feel like, fine, I don't have to think, like, oh, it's slightly lower. Maybe I should try a food challenge. Oh,

maybe it will. I just feel like I couldn't go for a year without getting exposed to a tick. So I'm not going to get my hopes up again. And I feel like, I mean, scientifically speaking, I, in my obsessive reading about this, I did read that if you are re-exposed, it's much less likely than it will ever fade away. So I kind of feel like I lost that window. But Amy, one option for you would be, you could say, I'm not going to go to the outdoors, I'm not going to go camping, I'm not

going to go into tall grass for five years. And I'm going to see if the number goes down. And then then I will eat hot dogs and and stakes at Peter Luger again. I mean, I don't know. I love, I love

being outside. I would never be terrible. Like, I don't want to think that I, no, I would never

“stop going out. Do you remember the first time that you, that you might never be able to eat”

another steak in your life? I have this favorite really nice roasting pan. I used to make pot roast in it all the time. I do remember the time when I was like, you know what, I'm going to store this on top of the fridge now. When I retired that pot, I was like, wow, never going to really use this pot again. That my friends is the inimitable Amy Pearl. These days, she's a producer on the New York Times

podcast, Modern Love. Next week on the show, I'm going to Disney World. I've always been curious about how entire worlds are created at Disney theme parks. I got special access inside Disney World to talk to the people behind the scenes, some of the rides, and food at Disney. From the Star Wars Cantina, Jitiana's Bayou Adventure, I get a peek behind the curtain.

“That's next week. Why wait for that one? Check out last week's show. It's a salad spinner with”

Kenji Lopez Alt and Judy Gold. This one was live on stage at the Bellhouse in Brooklyn and it got rockets. Also don't forget, we have a live show coming up in Boston, tickets and more at sportfull.com/live. And hey, Judy, you can listen to the sportfull in the serious XM app. Yes, the serious XM app has all your favorite podcasts. Plus over 200 ad free music channels curated by genre and era. Plus live sports covers. Your podcasting app have that and there's interviews with a list

stars and so much more. It's everything you want in a podcast app and music app all rolled into one. Right now, sportfull listeners can get three months free of the serious XM app by going to series XM.com/sportfull. This show is originally produced by me along with Anne Sanney, Shoshana Gold and Dan Charles. The new version of this episode was produced by me along with managing producer and a Morgan Stern senior producer, Andre Sajara. It was mixed by Jared O'Connell,

our intern is India Rice, music help from black label music. Sportfull is a production of serious XM, our executive producers can be outstanding. Thanks to Robert Crawlwood, Soran Wheeler, Jamie York, left if Nasser, Aryan, Wack, and all of our friends at radio lab. Until next time, I'm Dan Pashm. And I'm Ari Strauss from Washington, DC. And I'm Christina from London, England. And I'm Randall Cooper of Nashville, Tennessee,

reminding you to eat more. Eat better. And eat more better.