FFOD329 : What Every Outdoorsman Should Know About Alpha-Gal Part 2

Last week’s conversation about Alpha-Gal syndrome generated a lot of interest.. so we’re back with Part 2. Once again, I’m joined by Dr. David Allen, a healthcare professional who has personally lived with Alpha-Gal for more than two decades.

In this episode, we dive deeper into the realities of living with Alpha-Gal, including common misconceptions, hidden triggers, long-term outlook, prevention strategies, and what every hunter and outdoor enthusiast should understand about tick-borne illnesses. We also discuss why cases continue to rise and what steps you can take to protect yourself and your family while enjoying the outdoors. If you spend any amount of time in the woods (or heck, outside) this is information worth knowing. 

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Transcript

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Welcome to Fistful of Dirt, the official podcast of Mossy Oak Properties. Whether you own a small farm, lease land, or just love hanging in your backyard. We're all about the outdoor lifestyle and how to get the most from your time in God's great outdoors. Now here's your host, Ronnie Cuz Strickland. Semi-Life from the Camel Cave. Semi-Life. We told you last time, part two. Alpha Gal with Dr. David Allen. Yep. The guy who helped me lose my weight and did more research on Alpha Gal than anybody ever seen. I kept those notes. Did you? Yeah, 15 pages. I kept them. Before we get started on that, part two, my buddy Jake Marcus sent this to me because he and I talk all the time. Yeah. Via text message or whatever. He's as he's as much of a turkey thug as there is anybody, but he's also in conservation and wildlife habitat and all that kind of stuff. He sent me this out of the blue, and uh it was from the Mississippi Department of Wildlife Fisheries and Parks, and it was in the I guess it was a press release. Mississippi Department of Wildlife Fisheries and Parks recorded a record breaking 17,907 turkeys harvested during the 2026 spring season through game check. I don't know how accurate that is, but anyway, that's a lot. Surpassing the previous record of 15,498 birds taken in 2024 and marking the highest reported harvest since mandatory harvest reporting began in 2019. Uh several wildlife management areas also recorded historic numbers with some setting all-time records and others reaching levels not seen in forty years. The reason I read that and is like Jake said, when he sent that, he said, and I answered, I said, Yes, people are still gonna be complaining. Where's all the turkeys? Where's all the turkeys? There's not enough turkeys, the population's down. Yeah, and he said he he had already found like five other states with the same kind of person. So um maybe all maybe everybody will quit complaining. I hope so. I hope so. It's in some people just in their nature to complain about this and that and this and that. I felt like turkey season was great. I bet you do. It was great. We had um yeah, and uh one of them guys talking about being in a co-op the other day, talking about the podcast, and there was a one of them guys said, Well, how many turkeys did you kill? And I said, None. And he said, What? I said, Dude, I ain't shot but one turkey in ten years. That was during COVID. But it's like, man, I was around 'em a lot. Florida, Texas, Tennessee, Nebraska, wherever. And it's like I told I I said this on the podcast, if it's an issue, we'll figure it out. Right. Hunters will do what it takes. Some people are gonna complain, some people gonna continue to kill one every chance they get, but so be it. Yeah. We'll figure this out together. That's pretty good news as far as I'm concerned. Hats off to the Mississippi Department of Wildlife Fishers and Parks are doing a good job and then putting that out there, whether you're a fan or not. I've always been proud of our guys. So with that said, we're gonna uh I'm gonna continue to bring Turkish stuff up from time to time. Sorry. I'm just gonna be guilty of that. But we are gonna finish part two of our our two-part series with Dr. David Allen talking about Alpha Gal. Not only is he done countless research about it, because he is a health guy. Right. And uh he also has it. Yeah. And he had it when they probably didn't know what it was. They weren't diagnosing it as frequently, and it was kind of a mystery when you just all of a sudden can't eat red meat without having a severe reaction. There wasn't a name for it twenty years ago. And Lauren went down a bunch of rabbit holes 92. You'll either hear hear it this week, I think, where he just kind of passed over, blew by a little bit. Yes. Uh acupuncture. And I can't tell you how many comments I got from people when I started posting we're gonna do this about hey, that's what that's what got me through it. And some people uh when you tell them, well, acupuncture fixed it, they'll look at you like you got a third eye. Sometimes you gotta think outside the box. I can promise you, them people making them comments, they were looking for some relief. And you'll get way outside of the box if you're medically miserable because of something that's going on. Absolutely. Well, good. Well, we're gonna finish it off and get some tips, and uh we're gonna go finish up with uh Dr. David Allen talking about Alpha Gal. AGS, Alpha Gal syndrome, or Alpha Gal allergy, it's sometimes called, or tick bite meat allergy, even red meat allergy. Have you ever heard of this? Got a new tick apparently that prevents you from eating meat. I wonder if the vegetarians bred that. Well, I think it's called the Lone Star Tick. We're seeing ticks in huge numbers this year, and it's got people thinking, what in the Bill Gates is going on here? The new version of COVID is here. I'm sure you have all seen the recent news of the new Lone Star Tick outbreak. And if you didn't know, it's a common and aggressive species of hard tick. The spread has been one of the craziest things to see unfold. The question is, my friends, is the spread of ticks across the country that we are seeing intentional, manufactured, or just coincidence. What I will say is, it is very difficult sometimes. You have a guy associated with the World Economic Forum saying we should induce allergies into humans so they can no longer eat red meat. You then have a massive explosion in this particular ticket population that makes people allergic to red meat. And at the same time, you have investment into lab-grown meat. And it's possible to engineer that lab-grown meat to have no alpha gal molecule, meaning if you become allergic to red meat, you'll always be able to buy their lab-grown alternatives. Now I will say this. I don't know if there's any kind of real conspiracy. I mean, certainly these people's interests are aligned in this direction. The production of lab-grown meat and the questions over whether we eat too much are born from the same reality. These Malthusian climate change, whatever you want to call it, individuals, Malthusian, of course, meaning they finish too many people, are both at the same time advocating we stop eating meat and trying to develop alternatives to you know, raising cattle. I know there's hikers and campers and all that, but hunters, they stay in the woods. I th I, you know, I don't have a study to show this, but I can tell you this. But I can tell you this, people who are outdoors are gonna be more susceptible to it. And hunters are outdoors as much or more than anybody, especially if you're a bow hunter, because you know, you bow hunt and there's there's still ticks all around. They're not out in the winter so much. You get them occasionally, but you know, you're out in there, and when we're getting deer fields, and we start planting our green fields, that's when we get busted so many times because you got the high grass out there and the ticks hang out on the high grass waiting for somebody to walk by and walk by and they jump on your they grab onto your pants leg and they you know they move real slow and they gotta work themselves around until they can get attached somewhere. But you know, so you you start going out to the camp hanging cameras, you know, in July. Yep. Right? And then you start bush hogging and filling feeders, and then you start disking your green fields, and so yeah, you're at a way more risk to have it just because you're out there. Now, certainly campers, uh hikers and all that, they're more likely to have it. But um when I've hiked before, I've hiked mainly on trails and not through big broomsage fields, like we're you know, we're walking through fields to pick up put a camera down. Um so yeah, I think hunters definitely if uh if somebody thinks they got it, did you say there's a test? They can go to their GP or whoever and say, test me. There is, I will tell you this, and this is not um I I would go to a uh a doctor who is familiar with it. Yeah. And this is not a slam on any doctor, but a lot of doctors may not have ever seen this. Yeah. Okay. And just like Dr. Collins is brilliant. Uh doctor, he's head of the facility out at Mississippi State. He knew immediately it was a food allergy, but heck, he or nobody else knew what AlphaGuy was at the time. Um and so a lot of times if you um and if you go in there and you don't know um for sure that you know that you ate beef or anything like that, there's just so much going on. But there is uh a a titer where they draw your blood and they measure the IgE antibodies in there, and if it's elevated, that is one of the things uh that is diagnostic. IgE, remember that. Tell them tell them to test my IgE. IgE, exactly right. Um the funny thing, you know, you're talking about what what's giving us this one of the hallmarks of uh Alpha Gael syndrome, and this is coming straight from the literature, it is consistently inconsistent. Okay, meaning you can eat some beef products, maybe like cheese, and not react to it, or dairy products, but I drink milk and I do react to it. Some like the ribbeye, you're more likely to react to that than you might be another cut of meat. You might get a piece of meat that just didn't have that much in it. Uh pork, same way. Okay. So you may uh and it but it's uh literally that's what it is, but it is that and that's a word they use consistently inconsistent. It's like talking to a wild you ask a wildlife biologist a question about you know, a long question you thought out really well. And you know, does this, does this, does this happen? And they always look at it and you say, Well, it depends. It depends, exactly. It depends on the individual and all that stuff. I would try to find I mean, if you really felt like you had this, I mean you can you can do a little you can do it like I did, you know. I didn't know any better, and I just ate the meat and it was trial and error and I figured it out real quick. Keep a diary. Didn't have a name, but it was easier for me because I didn't eat beef that much. You know, I've I I ate chicken a lot anyway. And uh so literally, I mean, in that week I had beef on Sunday, and I didn't have it again at all until the next Sunday, and I didn't have it again at all for two weeks, so it was easier for me. If you're one of these people that eats some kind of beef product every day, uh maybe a little harder for you, but yeah, you can go get a titer. Um, you know, they do a blood test and do a titer, but one of the best things is you're you're eating beef and you're reacting to it, or you're eating deer or anything like that. Well, that's coming from somebody that's had it. How long do you say you think you've had it? Twenty years. Twenty years. And there wasn't a name for it. Twenty-two years. My wi my daughter is thirty-eight. And she was sixteen years old when we had that um when we were in Hattersburg, we were playing uh select soccer, and we had that Hatterburg tournament. So that's how I know that. She was 16 years old. So that's and it happened to me that summer for the first time. Now, when I you know, when I called you, Nancy and Lauren's like, man, nobody better to talk about this than than Dr. David Allen. We walked in here and you said, I want to read you this. And we're not going down rabbit holes or anything else, but I'm just telling you, he had an amazing thing. I'm not gonna get you to read the whole thing, but I want you to read that that you read to me when I came in here because my jaw hit the ground. And I'm you know, I'm a little smarter than everybody thinks. I do a lot of reading and research, but every time I'll hear something like that and go, holy cow. Yep, you got you gotta pay attention, you gotta dig deep and see what's going on. Am I a conspiracy theorist? No. I can't say that about Laureen. She'll she'll get way deeper in a rabbit hole than I will. But just read that to me, just the front part of it. There's rabbit holes out there and they're on everything, and um conspiracy theories, you know, uh a bunch of conspiracy theories in politics. You see all these guys saying, well, we need to come up with some new conspiracy theories because all of mine have come true about what y'all did. Ain't that the truth? Don't give me started. But this was a paper because there are conspiracy theories that people uh in high places who uh uh are overly concerned about global warming or too many people on the planet or whatever. Um But this is not a conspiracy theory. No, this isn't that I mean there there's conspiracy theories on this. But this was published in the Journal of Bioethics, okay? It is a refereed index journal. It was published in July of 2025, so that was last year. Yeah. It's not even a year old yet. Okay. And it was the name of the paper was Beneficial Bloodsucking, and it was written by two professors at Western Michigan un uh uh Western Michigan University. Smart guys, real people. So now these two ethicists from Western Michigan floated the possibility of deliberately infecting people with a tick-borne condition. Alpha Gal is one, making them allergic to meat. That is Alpha Gal. Okay. Thereby reducing carbon emissions generated by agri uh animal agriculture. They went on, and their argument is that people with Alpha Gal syndrome would switch to more climate-friendly protein sources. The researchers framed it as a form of moral bioenhancement. They said it would help the public to satisfy their obligation to not eat meat. Now, I don't understand an obligation to not eat meat. I mean, there is none, but that this was published in in the Journal of Bioethics. Now, since they've been busted on this and come out, they're coming back and saying, oh no, this was theoretical. No, it wasn't theoretical at all. Okay. This has been this has been pushed by several people. Are there people out there um pushing that? Uh maybe, I don't know. Whoever's making the fake meat, I guarantee you they all up on top of this. Absolutely. And also, um uh are there people out there who I think would go to extreme lengths to um stop people from eating meat from, you know, because I mean a lot of animal rights activists uh um they don't want you to eat meat at all, you know. Yeah, they don't want you to go to the rodeo, they don't want you to go to the circus. That's right. So I ain't listening to that. A lot of them might be thinking that. I'm not putting it on them or anything like that, but I'm saying, yeah, there's certainly people out there I think that would think this was a good idea. And has that happened? Uh I I don't know. I can't say. All I can say is I got it from somewhere. And they've had it. They've had it for 22 years. 22 years. Yep. It's uh it's it's crazy to think people think like that, but nothing surprises me anymore. Once again, I'm just that's just a study that was published in the Journal of Bioethics last year. So Well, I know you can't pick up your phone. I don't care where you go right now, TikTok, Instagram, you can't scroll for 60 seconds without seeing something about Alpha Gal, or you know, there's videos of people dropping ticks in boxes and all that kind of stuff, and you start. You gotta you don't need to get your medical advice or your news from TikTok, but if you'll do a little research and you'll go, Oh my goodness, here's a real paper, there's some real research going on in this. And uh you know, you can get ideas from that, and um I'm either blessed or cursed with the need to know. I always have been. And if you see something like that, I just look it up. Yeah. And sometimes it doesn't have to be, sometimes it's not even crazy. Sometimes it's something that sounds 100% plausible, and I I'll just look it up. And sometimes it's true, and sometimes it's a it's a load. Do the research. That's right. Just look it up. Alpha Gal syndrome was something that was once extremely rare in this country, that is a fact, but it is becoming more and more common as more people develop an allergy to red meat after getting bitten by a lone star tick, which is the tick you see with the white dot on its back. And over the last several years, cases of Alpha Gal syndrome have skyrocketed by almost 10,000 percent. And now, headline after headline, all asking the same question: how could a tick-borne illness suddenly be impacting so many people, not just people living in rural America, but in suburban America as well? And then we heard from Dr. Matthew Lau at the World Science Festival ten years ago. And if they were to cut down on their consumption of meat, then they would uh it would actually really help the planet. There's this thing called the long star tick, where if it bites you, you'll become allergic to meat. Uh, I can sort of describe the mechanism. So that's something that we can do through human engineering. We can kind of uh possibly address really big world problems through human engineering. Oh, okay. And then you start to connect the dots even more, and you find out that Bill Gates and the Gates Foundation spent millions of dollars funding genetically engineered ticks, and that Bill Gates is also a major investor in lab-grown meat, and now we've got almost 500,000 Americans living with a rare tick-borne illness that makes people allergic to meat, but not the lab-grown meat that Bill Gates has invested again. You think maybe this is not a coincidence after all? You know, old timer builds knives with durability in mind. They also want it to be a tool that is comfortable enough to work with day after day. Since the beginning, old timer has made knives for those who don't rely on others to get the job done. I love that. Old timer built for generations. You know, there's nothing I love more than teaching my grandkids how to be better woodsmen. The Onex app helps me do that in a way that makes sense to them. They're all about apps and that phone. Using Onex to set optimal wind on stands that should or shouldn't be hunted on certain winds makes it easy for them to understand that, hey, a north wind blows from the north, not to the north. Using that little slope angle layer when teaching them how to read topographical maps, but the color-coded shading makes it a lot easier to explain to them what tightly stacked tofo lines mean. Bottom line, Onex Hunt makes learning fun for those young ones. It still helps me find success in the field. It's an easy-to-use platform. Hey, even I can do it. I suggest it for any age outdoorsman. You're listening to Festful of Dirt with Cut Strickland. Presented by Mozzio Properties. I appreciate you taking all them notes and doing that, but it's a very popular subject, and it was just divine intervention because Lauren's like, you know, David Allen has it. I said, Yeah, yeah, he does. He won't eat me anytime. So that's right. And then she said, Why aren't you and him putting in for those L permits in Kentucky? I want to do that, to be quite honest. I just don't put in, I just don't feel like I've never been put in for a draw of anything, but I don't know. I just feel like I wouldn't get it, so I just don't go to the I don't go to the bother of doing it. You remember how long I don't know Lauren may remember this is even before her, but when they released the Elk in Kentucky, I don't know how many years ago it was, I was there filming that. We showed that on TNN when they first released the Elk. I remember that. So anyway, when they they they came up with uh whatever it was, a lottery put in for the time. I put everybody. And when I say everybody, I mean everybody, Lauren, Pam, Amy, everybody's husband, and all that. And Kevin, Amy's husband, on the first try drew a male elk tag to Kentucky. That's awesome. And I've been drawing, I've been putting it in ever since I don't ever get one because I look the last time I brought that elk home when I shut the ice chest down after four days out there, parking at that trail here. I'm like, I'm done. See it for me. I might go if I had like ten cowboys with me with horses and ropes, but we're just gonna have to start eating more chicken you are, or pork or whatever. I love chicken. I love chicken. Chicken, you know, on the other side of the elk draw tag, you know how I am about work. I'd be afraid I would draw the tag and have to take a week off work to go to go harvest an elk. Yeah, it's hard to get David to take a day off of work because he is a I ain't saying he's a one-man show, but when the doc ain't in the office, the office ain't working. So we we do most of our stuff on the weekend. So uh yeah, the first time you told me about the red meat thing, I went, nah, he he ain't got anything like that because he's just a healthy guy. And uh I got it. You got it. So look, I appreciate you digging deep with that. And uh and anyway, look, a fistful of dirt, you gotta be careful. That fistful of dirt may have a tick in it. The last thing you want to have is a red meat allergy. Let me ask you about the food products. Okay. Anything else other than just pure red meat, fatty red meat, anything else that that might trigger somebody's got it. And they just they they're trying to avoid everything. You know, it's it's a lot of crazy stuff. Um, you know, beef tallow, uh the gelatin products, because I'm getting some of that too. Just about any um a lot of processed foods. Um may have casein in them. Uh there's um and don't tell me I can't have a slim gem or a Vienna sausage. I'm fixing a picture of fit. A lot of people are cooking in uh beef tallow and stuff like that, cooking oil. This can get uh really disheartening and in detail because you don't know if you're gonna get it from this, but I'm just gonna read off of list. You know, when we start manufacturing food products or even, you know, cosmetics, a lot of them are using animal products. Okay? Really? Now I'm gonna go through a list of things that are they're not guaranteed, but they are things that science is interested in and they've either had some problems with or they are potential problems, and it'll kind of blow your mind. Um What are they? Uh beef tallow. You know, people are finally caught on. I've been talking about staying away from all oils, you know, all seed oils for you've known me forever, for 20 years, and you know, that's kind of now caught on. Well, you know, I've been pushing just olive oil and coconut oil um uh for years and stay away from the other. Well, that's catching on. So now you're seeing a lot of restaurants that are saying and they're they're backing off a lot of this problem with uh saturated fats. All right. Well, now a lot of restaurants are advertising that they're gonna cook all their fried foods in beef tallow. Yep. Saw one the other day. Guess what? That's beef fat. And guess what? If you got alpha gal, you better start asking. I I tell I think I told you that a few weeks ago. I said, this beef tallow thing, I better watch out. I just, I mean, uh if I go to a place, I just better not eat a fried food. Unless, you know, uh I can ask a meal. Most of them might be going to worry about McDonald's using that, I don't think. But uh uh beef tallow is a is a possibility. There's some other hidden ingredients that that uh uh uh can be bad, arachidonic acid. Um there's um something called uh some of these words are hard to say. Uh archrid archidol propionate. Proprionate's not hard to do. What's that in? It's wax made from animal fat. Yes. So if they you got different waxes, uh biotin is uh is an animal product. Uh there's something called castorium, which is used in perfumes, Lauren. That's right. And it comes from Beaver's uh uh castor sac, and that can have it's a mammal, and that can have the alpha glactose molecule in it. Glycerin, you see glycerin in all sorts of things. Lauren, this is you, lanolin. All beauty products have lanolin in them. I ain't seen nothing on that list that scared me yet. Yeah, the only thing that scared you so far is just beef, a hamburger. No water burgers, no water burgers. Um, but laminin comes, lanolin comes from sheep oil glands, and lots of lotion is made with that latex, you know, use latex gloves. That could have it in it. All the milk proteins. Now, this is where you get in a lot of processed foods, protein bars. You know, I'm a big fan of protein bars. Milk proteins, casein, caseinate, whey. I mean, heck, protein. That's all the protein bars are whey protein. Oh, they got casein. Um called steric acid, oleic acid. These are uh fatty acids that uh uh oleic acid, and you hear that in a lot of products they're putting it in. It comes mostly from inedible beef fat. It can be plant-based, so you just gotta think about this stuff if you've got it. Um there's a product called keraginin that can be found in toothpaste, beer, shampoo, or personal hygiene products. Uh gelatin. Okay. Marshmallows have gelatin in them. Jelly beans, puddings. You said you didn't hear anything that's gonna make you scared. Yeah. You've had me off of that for decades. Stocks, gravies, bullion cubes, and all kinds of gravies. Oh, yeah, man. I am a gravy guy. Can have that. So, and once again, uh I think these those things like that are responsible for giving me um my wife will say, you know, why are you scratching? I said, because I mentioned you didn't have any beef, did you? I said, No, I didn't have any beef, but I guarantee I come in contact with this stuff pretty frequently. Yeah. And I've never really said, okay, well, I can only cut so much, I'm not gonna cut out my whey protein bars. But that probably has a lot to do with it. And once again, uh consistently inconsistent. So not all whey protein bars would have enough of that in there to cause a reaction, nor not all lanolin products might have enough in there, but some of them will. So that's what can be so aggravating about it. You you use a product like that and you don't even know you did it. Well, this is not necessarily a question design for you, but and I'm gonna tell you something, and Lauren probably don't know this. You know how long I've been in the outdoors, as a pro, whatever, filming. I've been, you know, I'm fixing to be 72. I've been doing this a long time. Full time. You know how many ticks I've gotten off of me in my life? One. And it was in South Dakota. That is really weird. So I'm gonna I'm gonna do I I gotta find out somebody knows there's some people whose skin is like so acidic or whatever's wrong with me that a tick's like, nah, I'm not stopping on. I'm passing on this big boy. It's like one tick. And it was in South Dakota, and it was about 20 years, and never had one. Well, that's why you don't have Alpha Gail. Apparently. Hey, God he gave me a shill so I could keep going to the What or knocking on wood. When uh uh yeah, when you find that out, let me know because I've got the opposite. I've got the the tick sweetener or something, I guess. But um probably because you're way more healthy than I am. They click on me and go, uh, this big boy needs to change his ways. Well, you remember that zombie movie with Brad with Brad Pitt when they had the real bad zombies, but uh they saw the kid there. I guess they were in uh Jerusalem. They had the sit the wall around the city, and there was this kid in there, and Brad Pitt saw him and he thought the zombies were gonna get him because he was only about four or five years old, and they all just ran around him and didn't bother him and come to find out he was sick. Yeah. And the zombies wouldn't eat sick people, so that might be that might be it. It may be one tick in 72 years. That's I'm telling you, and I remember where I was like, man, that's gross. Tick ticks are about the closest thing we got to zombies right now, anyway. It is, and boy, they are getting popular. If you do um get it, yeah, I I asked you, was there a cure? And you said not right now, but is there treatments? Is there something you can take? There is, and I recommend you keep them on hand. I do this myself. You know, if you do have a reaction, uh oral antihistamines, you know, something like Benadryl or something like that, can help reduce the reaction. Okay. Um if you get I don't have the GI symptoms, okay? Um my wife says I've got a iron gut because nothing really bothers my stomach. You said you hadn't been bitten about one time since it ticked and whatever. Um I've been married for thirty-nine years and I know I have never thrown up since we've been married. So I've got an iron gut, but there is a product called chromolin that is used for GI symptoms that your doctor would have. Uh if you got a bad reaction, oral corticosteroids, like a dose pack of steroids that your doctor could give you, would be beneficial in quelling, and these quell any like uh antihistamine or rash reaction, okay? Anything that's true. Yeah. Um and what's what's crazy is uh metformin, which is a drug for diabetes. Uh some people who are on metformin uh are millions are millions and millions. Exactly right. Saying that actually helps. Uh a couple of other things. There was a couple of other really weird things they're studying, and they're saying it's a possibility, something to think about. Uh a lot of people take pancreatic enzymes they can't digest properly. This is a popular item that you see in a health food store. If people have problems digesting food, they'll take pancreatic enzymes or other enzymes to help them digest. Well, they come from animal products. Okay. They they they get them from a lot of times from pork. Um thyroid hormones. How many people got low thyroid and they give you thyroid hormones? So if you had alpha gal syndrome and you weren't using a thin synthetic, one of the thyroid hormones is called um armor. It's it's pig thyroid. All right. So if you had alpha gal, that's a possibility. And then some of the off in the deep deep holes, you know, when you get heart valve replacements, they normally use cows or pigs. And if you had alpha gal, that's something, and these are things that doctors are look researchers are looking at. Are we having any problems with this? But you know, that kind of makes you think that ain't going away if you get a if you get a veil, if you get a blood vein made from a pig and you're allergic to pork, you're in trouble. So there's so many things out there, that's why I call you all the time. And you gotta be careful getting your uh your health advice from TikTok. Here's the deal if you're seeing somebody on on Instagram or wherever it is, and they're telling you what's wrong with this and that and this and that, watch it to the end because probably they're selling something. Yeah, that's right. It's a super vitamin or whatever it is, you gotta be careful, you gotta do some research. Yep. That's why I wanted you to talk about AlphaCal, because you'll you'll read all the data and get everything, and uh apparently it's a big deal all of a sudden now. Like you said, it could be because we just have access to so much information now. That's right. You know, everything's on your phone, you read about it, but man, it's weird. It's like every other month there's something new. Now it's Alpha Gal. And uh, but anyway, that's the skinny from Dr. David Allen, who's had it for 22 years, and he has it, so uh nothing to panic about. I would be panicking way more than him. I don't know if a panic would be the right word if I couldn't whoop into the Whataburger. I think I would just be depressed. I'd probably have to get on some kind of antidepressant then. I uh I laugh a lot of times. People tell me, well, I tell them I got it I'm allergic to beef, and they go, uh-uh. He goes, I just have to itch. I'm gonna eat the beef. I said, let me tell you something. You got this reaction a few times, you you change your tune real quick. I said, it is not worth the beef. I said, especially since there are some really good substitutes. You know, there are some companies now. Uh Bulldog Burger here in town makes a turkey burger that's just amazing. So, and a lot of people are offering that. So there's other options to get you around all that stuff. Well, here's hoping you don't ever have to try one for any reason whatsoever. I've already eaten them. I'm talking to the listeners. Oh, the listeners, there you go. You're a different kind of cat. Yeah, as long as it's healthy, you're in. So And last thing I would say on as far as treatments, uh anaphylactic reactions can be deadly. And um I'm not going overboard here, but if you know you've got it, it would not be a terrible idea to have an epipen. Uh, you know, keep with you. I was allergic to bees. I got stung on the neck by a bee when I was um 26 and uh had an anaphylactic reaction, went to the hospital, and they said, you know, you're either allergic to bees or it was just a type of bee and it was location. I got stung on the neck by a hornet. By a hornet. By a hornet. Now since then I've been stung probably um I don't know, ten or twelve times, not above the shoulders. Anytime you get a bee sting above the shoulders, it's bad. Um but I've been stung multiple times since then. Had a worse local reaction, but never had another reaction to it. But I carried an epipen for years because of that. Now the problem is epipens about 10 or 15 years ago, they went from like 60 bucks to six hundred bucks. Yeah. And they run out in a year. And I said, I can't keep I said, I can't keep keeping these things. You've ever seen an EpiPen, it's about as big as a daggum $20 cigar. I mean, it's like that thick and that long. And uh it's got directions on there. It says, in case you're stung, twist the end, and you can look through it, it's kind of clear, and you see this big horse needle in there. Twist the end and slam it on your leg and it'll inject it and then go to the hospital. And uh, I'm looking at that. I'm a needle weenie anyway. I hate needles. That's probably one of the reasons I'm a chiropractor. Uh but um I told my wife, I said, baby, if you ever see me laid out in the backyard and you walk out there and I got to have a pen in my hand, I said, Go ahead and hit me because I was too scared to stick myself and I passed out. Hit me with I'd rather go to the mercy room than do a whole that wouldn't be a terrible idea uh if they weren't so stinking expensive. I've only had the anaphylactic reaction once. And um not not from Alpha Gal. No, from Alpha Gal that first time. My face was swelling, yeah, and my lips were swelling, and uh that is the beginning of anaphylaxis. Well, there's your uh health podcasts. How many have we done? We've done three or four. Yeah, we've done three of them. Yeah, we've yeah. My favorite one was What Can I Eat from the Gas Station? I still get comments about that. Which that list was very short. Yeah. But anyway, I I appreciate you. And what are one of the things you can eat at the gas station I said you can eat at the gas station that I can't have? Beef jerky. Beef jerky. That's exactly right. Beef jerky. I bought you some the other day just because I wanted to buy some beef jerky. Just get it out of your system. Just here, I got some beef jerky. I can't eat it because we enjoy it. Well, Dr. David Allen, I appreciate you, my brother. I'm looking forward to our next round of golf or hanging in a tree at some point. So let's uh let's let's keep that thought in mind. Thank you. The pleasure is all mine. From the bunkhouse XL to the lodge package, Basecamp Home Series delivers modular, high-quality homes designed for outdoor enthusiasts. Large kitchens, multiple bathrooms, gear storage, or scenic outdoor living sections. All customizable to your lifestyle. It's comfort without boundaries. Visit BasecampHomeseries.com for more information. If you enjoy listening to Fistful of Dirt Podcast, then you've probably heard. Give us a rating, leave us a review if you like it. Well, if you like it, here's what you can do. Open your iTunes Podcast app available in the app store if you don't already have it on your phone and type in Fist Full of Dirt. Make sure you're following us. Scroll down through the episodes until you see ratings and reviews. Have the stars to rate the show and click write a review if you'd like to leave us a comment. The good ratings help us out and ensure that more people will be able to discover the podcast. Thanks for listening. We'll see you in seven days. This is Kevin Van Dam, and you're listening to A Fistful of Dirt with Cuz Strickland. He's not much of a fisherman, but he knows some people. Approved by anglers, hunters, food plotters, and mobs everywhere. It's KVD approved. Well, you warn me he would have a lot of notes. I learned some stuff in that one that I had no idea. You know, and I said it in the uh I think I told him when uh I first noticed he didn't eat red meat, and he told me he had it, and I was like, nah, he he's just not eating red meat because he's a health nut. And he is in good shape. He's 65, looks like he's 50. That's a real thing. It is a real thing. You know what brought my attention to it, and I know you can't don't believe everything you see on the internet. Good gracious. But you know, there was videos of people finding boxes of ticks and all this kind of stuff, and then you go down the the people that are making uh fake meat or paying for research and dumping ticks, and I was like, surely that ain't happening. There is some evil in the world. Yeah. There's if you just type in bioengineered, it it it's startling and you hope it's not true, but then you just look at the absolute surge of these cases. There's just no way that that's like how do how does something go up? And and I know we've not always been checking for it, but if you look if you start reading about it, people have had it. Right. In different countries even to go up three hundred percent in seven years. And uh you know, I was biting my tongue so hard I about bit a hole through it when he was reading that article. That's an actual medical journal where these doctors and scientists are talking about the benefits of if people experience this disease, this tick-borne illness, that it's gonna alleviate a lot of problems on the economy and global warming because the cows are farting. Yeah. That is the most insane thing I've ever heard in my life. And but there's people that think like that. Well, if you follow like it, I don't care what rabbit hole you're down, if you just follow the money and see who's funding the study. When you're reading the study, you're like, oh no, they're saying that's healthy, that's okay, that's normal. Please check your sources and find out who funded the study. Because a lot of times they have a lot to gain. Whether it's a vaccine for Lyme disease or whether it's meatless meat that's grown in a lab, just know that that there's some nefarious people out there. Yeah, well, I sent that article to Uncle Ted Mugent. I'm sure that went over well. Yeah, he's gonna I hope we get him on it. But look, neither one of us, me or Laureen, are up here with tinfoil hats on. And I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but I'm telling you, there's something going on. Nothing increases that much in seven years. That's been out there forever. And Doc had a great point. He I said, Why is it so prevalent now? And he's like, Well, we you know, our phone has everything in the world on it, so you get to see more. True. But, you know, there were still records going back to where it was kind of an ideal. I never heard of anybody when I was growing up that couldn't eat red meat. Right. Real prevalent in Virginia and Montana. Well, guess where them studies were going on. Exactly. And uh the line how's a lone star tech get in Virginia and Montana anyway? That's a good question. Yeah. Well, anyway, again, not gonna put a tinfoil hat on. I'm hey, we're just keeping you all aware because that's a big deal for hunters. Yeah. You know, especially turkey hunters who sit on the ground all the time. And and you know, and I caught myself, I'm not that careful with it because I'm telling you, I don't I can't hardly ever remember getting a tick off of me. They just don't do it. Yeah. I'm not so lucky with mosquitoes and bull mats and stuff like that, but I just don't get bit by ticks that much. But anyway, I guess take precaution because uh, you know, if there's more now all of a sudden than it was, you know, wear them long pants, tuck them in socks. spray your pants with uh permethrin or whatever it is. Yeah. I got a big can in the shop now and I'm gonna start treating everybody's pants and stuff with it. But good Lord, what's next? I know. I also read a thing that I was like, I kind of want to share that with our listeners. And it I trusted the source when I was getting this this was a medical doctor that was saying that when you there's a lot of old wives tales about stick a match into it or put rub and alcohol on it. And it said when you do that it stresses the tick out and it empties its gut. Like it panics. It's kind of like us it'll panic and it'll actually release all that bacteria at once. If you freak it out and it stresses out before you pull it off. And they said you're better to just get it right there by the head and pull right out. And then keep that area clean and soapy and clean it with alcohol after you remove it. And it said your body will kind of push out and exhale anything that you didn't get, you're better off letting your body push it out than to dig in there with tweezers or a needle or something. And then it said to take the tick you pull it off and put it on a little index card with a piece of tape and stick it in the freezer and just like put the date on it. That way if you should start exhibiting symptoms of your concern you've got the tick and they say it makes it so much easier to get a diagnosis about oh that's like Rocky Mountain spotted fever that's this or that Yeah there's there's a lot of stuff just coming to light now about Lyme disease which is worse. And it's like And we've been hearing about that for a while but this new uh and they say the long story tick has a white spot and a little bit too bad. Anyway What's next? I don't know I do want to read this. We uh we did the podcast last week and uh with uh Scott and boy we got a lot so many good comments I'm gonna read his email and I don't have his formation but this guy's name's Drew Donald And he just the subject matter of his email is like the benefits of the Festival of Dirt podcast and he just he just starts out and he says we're in the same age age range and so much I relate to and appreciate about y'all's efforts. Today's guest Scott Bronco just another and a long line of very genuine contributors his testimony and t-shirt and unapologetic and commitment to this says so much and especially in light in light that this is gonna be Memorial Day. I grew up in the home of a Baptist preacher that committed special time for us in the woods and made real sacrifices for us to be together. His priority stuck with me and helped me make a similar decision to be with my two sons as much as possible outdoors. Our time together outdoors taught me inva invaluable lessons and kept our relationship growing over the years. They are now forty and thirty eight and bless us with four grandkids from fifth to first grade. So now the circle just keeps on growing please keep sharing your efforts with family. Thank you for your efforts. It's just it's it's humbling and I don't ever think like that. I really don't and you're constantly forward forwarding me notes and stuff like that but uh you know somebody's like they sent me one last week man that's the best one ever thank you it's just like a little devotional and it's good and uh one guy said that's what we need this is what we're searching for. So anyway I don't want to get too deep but anyway we're not gonna uh change our path we're gonna keep doing what we're doing. Throw little deer hunting stuff in there complaining about the rain or no rain, pigs or ticks. We're gonna sit on the outdoor range and see what's see what they're gonna throw what throw at us next. But anyway big weeks pass, Matt's out of high school cranky's fixing to start summer football. Walker everybody's working this summer but it is different. It's good for your boy Matt. It is good for him it just it makes you feel like you're not getting to spend as much time with him. Welcome to the real world I guess that's kind of like a good buffer between high school and college as we had a summer where he's working more hours and it it's like easing us into that not seeing him as much. Yeah well to each his own I'm pulling for him so but anyway hope you didn't get too uh too far down the rabbit holes with me and Laura and I uh look I keep a rope around her I had to pull her up out of one all the time but we do not have with ten foil hats on and we are not conspiracy theorists we're just realists I'm telling you I need new conspiracy theories because all my other ones have come true pop that's right they're not theories anyway I'm telling you they've all come true yeah go listen to Uncle Ted Nugent he has no governor I appreciate him I I love it so much we have to call him visit and get him on here again so anyway with that said from me and Laureen up in the camo cave from Mossy Oak Mossy Oak Properties God bless you all we'll see in seven days your favorite place visit mossyok properties dot coming