John Grisham’s Allergy Mystery
I know we haven’t posted in a while, but we are keeping very busy researching alpha-gal. Here’s an interesting article from the April issue of Allergic Living on John Grisham’s meat allergy. Check it out!
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A Resource on the Mammalian Meat Allergy 
Thanks for the link to the article! Very interesting.
Dealing with this is a challenge. Even after being diagnosed with this by my allergist I have still dealt with naysayers. It is a mystery. Thank you for sharing your experiences.
My son was diagnosed but his symptoms are sever stomach cramps for hours at a time. No more red meat for our family either. Thanks to the UVA site we knew what kind of test to ask our allergist to run. We figured it out by researching online–no help from gastro doctor or ordinary allergy testing.–took close to a year to figure it out.
Debbie,
You probably aren’t following this, but here is my daughter’s story. We are desperate to find an answer. I wanted to know if your situation was similar.
We just found out that my 14-year old daughter is allergic to beef through the skin prick tests. Her doctor also did blood tests, and I requested an alpha-gal test. (However, the nurse at the allergy office stated that she had NEVER ordered this test before) We have not received these results yet. My daughter has never shown allergic reactions to beef before, and she has NO other allergies. (In December, her pediatrician did blood tests for the major food allergans, and all were negative. Last week, I decided to take her to an allergist to make absolutely sure.) She has been a very healthy child. Last summer she started having reflux, and by the end of November, she started to vomit about once a week. Her stomach pain symptoms got progressively worse, and now she has been diagnosed with gastroparesis via a stomach-emptying scan. While she has stomach pain and nausea, she only vomits about once a week. She has kept a food diary, and she has vomited every time she ate meat. (I don’t cook red meat very often.) Before we knew about the meat allergy, I fed her beef and about an hour later she vomited. We thought it was the gastroparesis. She did NOT exhibit any respiratory symptoms. I had been giving her gel capsules of Nexium and probiotics as well as gummy vitamins. Any time she drank a protein shake with whey protein (like Ensure, Boost, and Muscle Milk), she threw up about 20 minutes later. She would also throw up about 15-20 minutes after eating ice cream (which contains gelatin). (She did the tests and is not supposed to be lactose intolerant or allergic to milk.) The doctors have said that her gastroparesis is idiopathic, but it is so odd that she has all of a sudden developed an allergy to beef. Have you had any other patients with this issue?
Like many here, I ate red meat from fast food restos, grocery stores, etc… for years. Last year I started to experience severe pain under the left side of my rib cage. I of course contacted my doctor who referred me to have Xrays done and multiples test, fortunately nothing was found. I initiated an elimination diet, which found that not only red-meat causes my allergic symptoms, but also Egg yokes. I have since given up egg yoke and use the whites only. Interestingly, I can consume free range beef, store purchased (pork, lamb, chicken, fish) with no side-effects. Is it possible that these tick bites target something in corn-fed beef and liquid fed poultry?
I hope I never get this allergy because meat is one of the few things I can eat with no problems.
It is difficult to treat allergies but all natural means, usually, antihistamines are the only ones that relieve the symptoms of allergy. ‘:;:` Yours trully