A

Hey there. You listen to this show because Gillian keeps it real and cuts through the noise, right? She asks the questions that you'd like to ask. She's always curious, always thought provoking. I'm Mike Baker, host of the President's Daily Brief. And every day the PDB reports on the key crises, the geopolitical concerns and national security matters that are happening around the globe. It's named for the brief that lands on the President's desk. And it runs every day, 20 minutes in the morning, 10 minutes in the afternoon. We give you the facts without opinion, tell you what's happening, you decide how to think about it. If you want it straight, follow the President's Daily Brief on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcast stuff.

B

So possibly we can use human engineering to make it the case that we're intolerant to certain kinds of meat.

C

Evidence regarding the full existence and funding of these laboratories had been knowingly withheld from you, the American people.

D

Which a tick, while it's biting you, it's putting an Alpha Gal with other sorts of immunostimulating chemicals resulting in those antibodies. The vaccines can do the same thing.

A

Argue that is morally obligatory to genetically engineer ticks to spread Alpha Gal syndrome, a permanent condition that makes you violently allergic to red meat.

D

A new CDC study just came out and found that 24% of adults have Alpha Gal antibodies.

E

You score scrolling through your feet and it's video after video about the tick that can give you a syndrome called Alpha Gal that makes you allergic to steak. And in one corner of the Internet, they're calling it the climate tick, a tiny weapon engineered by globalists, Bill Gates, the WEF and the UN to force us all off of red meat and into lab grown or plant based alternatives that are tied to their investments. And in another corner, it's a bioweapon gain of function gone rogue, with ticks as microscopic syringes delivering a slow motion food allergy that destroys your health and vitality. And in the darkest corners, people are whispering about helicopters over fields, boxes of ticks being dropped on farms and updated cold war plots. An Alpha Gal sequel to the plum island and Lyme disease lore. Now, after Covid, none of this sounds crazy anymore. And we've watched governments live, we've watched pharma profit off of crisis we know they created. We know the military has run experiments that later pretended never happened. So when you hear that one bite from a Lone star tick can make your body treat a ribeye like poison, your first thought isn't what A strange accident of nature. It's who did this and why. So today we're going to walk straight through the those theories, who's getting blamed and whether the evidence backs it up. And then I'm Gonna bring in Dr. Gabrielle Lyon for the practical part. How to lower your risk of a bite, how to spot the allergy if it's in your life, and what to do if the Lone Star tick has already found you. This is the story behind the story on Alpha Gal syndrome and the Lone Star Tick. Keeping it Real with Jillian Michaels. The Lone Star ticks. Its scientific name is Ablioma americanum. It's not new. It's been showing up in natural history records going back to the 1700s. And for over a century, it's been lurking in the woods and pastures of the southeastern United States. And for most of that time, we thought it was just another blood sucking nuisance on deer and livestock and anybody who spends time outdoors and hiking in the brush. Well, in the US The Lone Star tick is the primary cause of something called Alpha Gal syndrome, which is a bizarre delayed allergy that makes your immune system overreact to a sugar in red meat called Alpha Gal. So contrary to popular belief, Alpha Gal is not a toxin and it's not a lab made chemical. It is a naturally occurring sugar that's found in the tissues of most non primate mammals and in the saliva of the Lone Star ticks. So when the tick bites, it injects Alpha Gal wrapped in tick saliva proteins and other immune active compounds straight into your skin. And that package looks to your body like a parasite attack, which it is. And in some people, it convinces and trains their immune system that Alpha Gal is dangerous. So they start making something called IGE antibodies. And that's the same type of allergy antibody that's involved in reactions to peanuts, pollen, pet dander. Specifically, though it reacts against this sugar. And this allergy can take weeks or months to show up. But when it does, here's what happens. You eat beef, pork, lamb, venison, and you feel perfectly fine. But several hours later, as the fat from that meat is being digested, an Alpha Gal from the meat enters your bloodstream. Those IgE antibodies spring into action and trigger your allergy cells to release histamines and other inflammatory chemicals. And that chemical blast is what causes the reaction. Rash, intense itching, stomach cramps, diarrhea, and in severe cases, a dangerous drop in blood pressure and difficulty breathing, or what's known as full blown anaphylaxis. And it's one of the only food allergies that routinely strikes three to six hours after eating, which is why so many people wake up in the middle of the night and they're covered in hives or they're struggling to breathe and they have no idea that it was dinner that was the cause. As a known and named condition, ags, or Alpha Gal syndrome, really comes into focus in the mid 2000s. So oncologists first noticed that patients were having odd delayed reactions to a cancer drug that was decorated with alpha Galaxy. And then allergists in the southeastern US started seeing nighttime anaphylaxis. And they made the correlation that it was happening in patients who had had red meat for dinner and had a history of tick bites. Blood tests showed IGE antibodies to Alpha Gal and then a pattern fully emerged. Since that time, through greater understanding and better surveillance, it's believed that hundreds of thousands of Americans may have Alpha Gal sensitization or full blown ags. And Alpha Gal isn't the only trick that the Lone Star tick has up its sleeve. This same species can transmit bacteria like Ehrlichia, which causes Ehrlichiosis, which is a flu like illness that has sudden fever, headaches, muscle aches, and if you miss it or you treat it late sometimes it can cause respiratory failure, organ damage, or even death. And it's also tied to emerging viruses like Heartland and Bourbon, which can bring high fevers, crushing fatigue, low white blood cell and platelet counts, and severe illness in older or immunocompromised patients. And it doesn't spread like Lyme disease. That's mostly the black legged or deer tick. But if you're keeping score, one creature can give you a serious bacterial infection, a dangerous viral infection, and a meat allergy that changes everything you eat. It's pretty scary stuff. So why does it feel like this exploded overnight if this tick has been around for centuries? Well, first the tick's territory changed. It used to live mostly in Texas, through the Carolinas, and over the last few decades, it's pushed north and west, and now it's established itself across most of the eastern half of the entire country, with populations reaching into the Midwest and parts of New England. And scientists are pointing to three drivers of this. So warmer winters and longer growing seasons are going to keep ticks alive longer and keep them more active. Then you have the white tailed deer populations, which have been exploding and moving into suburbs, which give ticks a mobile host that lives right on the edge of human life and fragmented forests. So this is the edge of land, where fields Meet woods and they create the perfect collision zone for deer ticks, pets and people. Second, exposure and awareness rose together. More people are living and working in tick country. More doctors now know how to test for ags. Because before there was a blood test for Alpha gal ige, these cases just got written off as idiopathic anaphylaxis, food allergies, Crohn's, ibs, stress. But once the test existed and the condition had a name, the diagnoses climbed fast. Not just because more people got bit, but because medicine finally had a name for what it was already seeing. So this is all naturally explained away or not? Is there more to it? Well, my team and I pulled apart each of the big theories that are swirling online and here's what we found. Starting with Bill Gates, who just put

B

in about $7.2 million to research and modify tick.

A

Lone Star tick has spread to Martha's Vineyard and is making people go vegan.

E

Same people pushing the global warming agenda while simultaneously investing in the solutions for it are also pushing the agenda to

D

eat lab made and plant based meat.

E

So the story goes that he funded or created genetically engineered Lone Star ticks and he released them into the wild so that their bites would make people allergic to red meat, which forces them off of beef and pork and venison, et cetera, and steers them toward plant based or lab grown products that are tied to Gates backed companies. And the logic makes pretty good fricking sense. Gates is genuinely invested in alternative protein companies. He's publicly argued rich countries should move towards synthetic or plant based meat. He funds biotech and global health projects at massive scale. And people have watched Bill Gates push disruptive policy from the top down before. And they've watched pharma and tech cash in on solutions to crises those same players helped create. So when meat allergies explode and the same billionaire is investing in lab grown beef, the dots practically draw themselves. However, while the Gates foundation has funded tick research, it wasn't on the Lone Star ticker Alpha Gal. The grants that he funded went toward cattle ticks. I'm gonna butcher this. The rhypocephalous species of tick which devastates livestock herds in Africa and Latin America. And that includes a cattle tick vaccine consortium in 2015, and later, support for Oxitec's genetic control work on cattle ticks. All of which is about protecting cows in the developing world, not engineering human biting ticks in American forests. And that funding also started acting after Alpha Gal cases were already being reported and linked to the Lone Star ticks in the U.S. now, multiple investigations have also found no credible link between Gates funded tick projects and Alpha Gal Syndrome or the Lone Star ticks spread. So can you still argue that he has too much influence over food and climate policy? Yeah, that's a pretty fair fight. But on the specific claim that he engineered meat allergy ticks in US woods, the timeline and the grant records just don't support it. Now let's widen the net and you get the globalist version of this conspiracy theory. It's not just Gates. And in this telling, the UN and the World Economic Forum crowd are allegedly breeding and releasing Lone Star ticks as a population control lever and stealth climate policy. So it works as follows. Weaponize Alpha Gal, nudge people off of red meat, hit emissions targets and normalize lab grown or plant based diets, all without ever putting it to a vote. And you can see why that lands because climate policy really does target livestock emissions. UN reports have said bluntly that wealthy countries need to eat less red meat to hit climate goals. And FAO roadmaps talk about shifting diets toward more chicken and plants. WEF white papers and panels have openly promoted alternative proteins and reducing beef consumption. And a well known bioethicist even published a speculative piece of about human engineering to make people less tolerant of meat and literally pointed to the Lone Star tick as an example of the kind of thing biology could do. Now let's stack those receipts together and it feels less like paranoia and more like okay, they're saying the quiet part out loud, but here's where the wheels come off when you look at the details. Every one of those official documents and summits is about policy tools that we can actually see. Carbon pricing, subsidies, taxes, dietary guidelines, support for plant based products, investments in alternative proteins. They talk about nudging markets and regulations, they're showing us the mechanisms. And breeding ticks is not one. So if there really was a UN or WEF program where breeding and dispersing Lone Star ticks was the mechanism, it would be the most complex, leak prone, logistically insane way to do something they're already trying to do with taxes, labels and trade rules. And if we look at how climate diet politics are actually moving every real fight we can see, guys, whether it's over gas stoves, car standards or meat taxes, it comes through parliaments, regulatory agencies and as I mentioned, trade deals. These strategies are messy, they're public and often unpopular. But if elites wanted to crash red meat consumption, the straight line play is the one that they're already using. Make beef more expensive, subsidize alternatives, lean on guidelines, and then let the market do the rest. Rolling out a clandestine tick program that depends on deer ecology and bird migration and land use and random outdoor behavior would be the least controllable, the least targeted and the most lawsuit prone way to achieve the same goal. Now the next theory is that Alpha Gal itself is a bioweapon.

D

Did you just say that if you had some kind of vaccine you could

E

be now getting this?

D

It's not just Lone Star ticks. It actually appears that mass vaccination programs are likely contributing by some degree to the Alpha Gal syndrome.

E

A lab tuned gain of function project that turned an obscure sugar into a slow motion food weapon using tixis syringes to sabotage the food supply and our health. Now I get why this one lands. We've just spent years arguing about lab safety and gain of function research. We know that governments have run secret bioweapons programs before.

C

Evidence regarding the full existence and funding of these laboratories had been knowingly withheld from you, the American people. Many of these US government funded biolabs are currently or have previously engaged in research and using hazardous and highly contagious pathogens. Politicians and so called health professionals like Dr. Fauci, as well as entities within the Biden Administration's national security team lied repeatedly to the American people about the existence of US funded and supported bio labs.

E

If you've been sitting on a business idea, Shopify makes it easy to make it happen. So when my wife launched her storefront, what surprised me the most was was how much was already built in for her. She didn't have to figure out complicated systems or spend weeks piecing things together. Everything that she needed to know to start selling was right there from day one. And one thing that I noticed right away was how smooth the buying experience felt because I did send a few friends and family members over to buy some streetwear and when customers were ready to check out. The Shopify checkout helped make that process simple and fast because people were able to complete their purchases and returning customers could check out with their information already saved. I gotta tell you, this gives me a ton of confidence watching my wife's business flourish and recommending this product to you because I know that you can focus less on troubleshooting and more on serving your customers. So as her business grew, her attention was able to shift from setting things up to actually building the brand. Shopify handled the infrastructure which gave her all the time in the world to focus on products she was creating. Her Marketing and growing her business. Guys, with Shopify, nothing stands between your idea and a real business. So go and make it one. Start your free trial@shopify.com Jillian. That's shopify.com Jillian to start your free trial immediately. A tick that makes you allergic to meat sure feels engineered. It's distressing, it's disruptive, but it still behaves like a normal allergy pathway, not like a lab built weapon. And in addition, as I mentioned, Alpha Gal is a natural sugar. It's not a lab invented molecule. It's occurred in most non primate mammals and tick saliva for thousands and thousands of years. Guys. And there's no evidence whatsoever that it's been tinkered with or manipulated. Next we've got the military version of this theory. And this one takes the old Plum island story, which is the claim that US military bioweapons research with ticks leaked Lyme disease off of Long island and we updated it for the Lone Star era. Darpa, otherwise known as the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency or other defense programs, allegedly tinkered with ticks genetics or dispersal. And the Lone Star Ticks March north is either the spillover from a covert vector program gone wrong, or it's going exactly as planned.

C

Lyme disease is a highly likely militarily engineered bioweapon.

B

I probably did say that.

E

And the history that this theory leans on is genuinely dark. During the Cold War, the United States ran an offensive biological weapons program and openly explored entomological warfare using insects as delivery systems for germs. And declassified army reports and national security archive documents describe tests like Operation Big Buzz, Big Itch, Dropkick and others where uninfected mosquitoes or fleas were bred in large numbers and then released to see how well they spread and bit people. All as a feasibility study for insect based bioweapons. That's all real. And it shows that insects were absolutely on the menu for biowarfare planners. And now there are modern entomology programs that sound ominous if you only hear half the story. Units like the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research's entomology branches, they trap ticks and mosquitoes and sandflies in and around training areas for our military. And they identify which species are present, they test them for pathogens, and the stated mission is force protection. So historically, vector borne diseases have knocked out more of our soldiers in action than than bullets. So the military is tracking where those risks are and how to control them. Plum island is also very real. The Plum Island Animal Disease center is a high security federal lab off of the tip of Long island that has since the 1950s, worked on highly contagious livestock diseases under the army and later the USDA and the dhs. Its isolation, its Cold War origins, and and later moves to replace it with a new facility in Kansas have fed decades of speculation that more sinister work has been done there. Books, blogs, documentaries have taken that atmosphere and argued that tick experiments at Plum island created or released Lyme disease into nearby towns like Lyme, Connecticut. And that said, there is evidence showing that Lyme bacteria was circulating in North American wildlife before the lab on Plum island existed. So the jury is still out on that one. But if you put all of this together, okay, real Cold War insect experiments, a secretive island lab, and ongoing tick surveillance, it's pretty easy to see why people assume the same playbook is being used on Lone Star ticks and Alpha Gal syndrome. But when you map out what Alpha Gal shows, where it shows up where Lone Star ticks are spreading, the pattern still follows. Deer climb, climate and land use, not one plume from a single base or lab. And here's the final rumor that's spreading the fastest right now. Boxes of ticks being dropped on farms across the country.

D

The tick box. I'm not gonna touch it because there's ticks all over that thing. I know there is. Look at them crawling out of it. Millions of them.

E

You can see the tick farmers are supposedly finding boxes of ticks on their land. And the implication is, obviously somebody must be physically seeding ticks to spike disease, sell future vaccines, Porsche, meat allergies, all of the above, right? And tick seasons are getting worse. Farmers and hunters are pulling more ticks off of livestock and dogs and themselves than ever before. And there is a new Lyme vaccine in the pipeline right now. We've all watched the create the problem, sell the cure movie play out before, so this doesn't feel far fetched either. However, here's what has happened. When reporters and fact checkers actually went looking for those boxes of ticks, they found nothing. One of the most shared videos on the web is a video of a helicopter over a field. And it never mentions ticks in the original audio. That detail got added later by a different social media user, a holistic influencer who claimed to hear it directly from the farmers and but couldn't produce a single name, a single location, or a single photo when pressed. State health and agriculture departments in the states named in these clips have reported zero confirmed cases of boxes of ticks being found anywhere. Epidemiologists went on the record, and they said that they had no reason to believe the story. And tick experts pointed out that dropping boxed ticks into a field would be a, quote, crude, wildly inefficient way to spread the disease. And given how complicated tick life cycles actually are, they don't need any help. They're doing perfectly fine, infecting us just like this.

D

I'm certainly not aware of any boxes of tick.

E

That seems very unlikely, and it doesn't really make sense to me that that

D

would be the case.

E

So on this one, the fear is real, the anger is real, but the boxes themselves look like a ghost story that has been laid on top of a genuine ecological crisis. Gates funding tick work, the military studying vectors, climate policy pushing diet change, a genuine explosion in ticks and Alpha Gal cases. Those realities absolutely justify asking the hard questions. But when you follow the evidence all the way upstream on every single theory, the trail keeps leading back to something far less cinematic and far harder to fix. A native tick described centuries ago, a changing climate and a landscape that now favors ticks. A strange but explainable allergic pathway involving a common mammalian sugar and an overreactive human immune system. A medical system that was slow to recognize the pattern but has caught up fast. And underneath all of this, a deep, justified reservoir of distrust towards elites and globalists. The kind that makes almost any new threat feel. Feel like it must have been planned. That distrust is not the enemy. It's part of how a healthy public keeps powerful institutions honest. But the real risk here is that letting that distrust get hijacked by stories that don't fit the facts, while the actual ecological and public health crisis in front of us keeps getting worse. That's a problem. Lone Star tics and Alpha Gal syndrome don't need Bill Gates or DARPA or boxes of ticks to be terrifying. They already are. So our job now is learning how to prevent this, how to identify it if you've already got it, and how to treat it if you do. So let's bring in Dr. Gabrielle Lyon to walk us through exactly that. You ever get tired? By 2pm you feel that dull headache? Your workouts are harder than they should be. Well, I promise you it's not a caffeine problem. It's likely a hydration problem. And drinking water is great, but it isn't always the answer, because your body needs electrolytes to actually absorb the water and use it properly. And that's where Relight from Redmond comes in. It's made with unrefined real salt. That's Sourced from an ancient seabed in Utah, it contains 60 plus trace minerals that the majority of electrolyte brands do not have. And their ingredients are clean. There's no sugar, no artificial sweeteners, no colors, no. No flavors, no chemical preservatives. And you guys know I wouldn't stand for anything less than that as an advertiser on my show. So whether you're working out, you're traveling, you're fasting, you're spending time outside, or you need steady energy without the afternoon crash, you're going to feel the difference with Relight. And the taste is fantastic. My favorite is the strawberry lemonade. I use it every single day. And in case you don't know, I live at a high altitude, so it makes a real difference for me. And if you're ready to give Relight a try, go to Redmond Life Jillian and use the Code Jillian to get 15% off your first order. That's Redmond Life Jillian with code Jillian for 15% off your first order. Or you can click the link in the video description or scan the QR code on your screen. Dr. Lyon, welcome to the show. How are you?

B

I'm doing great. So fun to be here yet again.

E

That's kind of darker subject matter, I'm afraid, and I'm so grateful you're coming on to talk to us about it. Obviously, people are freaking out about this. Conspiracy theories are swirling, and the ramifications of getting bit by this thing are pretty significant and terrifying. So I was gonna start by establishing, like, what is this? How do you identify it? And you told me there's something that we need to start with off the top, which is a story. So I'm just gonna hand you the ball here. Go.

C

Yeah.

B

Well, first of all, I want to tell people why I agreed to do this. I saw Alpha Gal 10 years ago, and when I saw it, I missed it. I had a patient who came in. He was a bodybuilder. This was in New York City. I had a practice right off of Fifth Avenue. And this guy came in and came in with his jug of water. Jillian, you know what this looks like? So, sweatpants, tank top. And he's like, doc, I can't eat meat. I can't eat meat. I can't eat, you know, venison. I can't eat really whey protein. And I thought to myself, I'm like, okay, you're having anxiety about this upcoming competition. There's no way that this is possible. And I missed it. And as a physician, if you miss something you know, we got him better, which we're going to get to at the end, but we actually got him better by using the same principles that one would use with an elimination diet. But the reality is it's much more common than we think and I don't want anyone else to miss it. So let me tell you a little story about Alpha Gal, shall I?

E

Okay, now I'm ready.

B

Alpha Gal. Every other mammal on the planet makes Alpha Gal. So it's a sugar. Cows, pigs, dogs, mice, they all have this sugar molecule sitting on the surface of their cells, which is one of the things that our bodies react to. But they have it. It's kind of like this little tiny flag that's outside of every cell. And about 25 million years ago, our ancestors had it too. What? So what happened? You're not going to believe this. And again, I had to double check this in scientific databases because it was just so surprising. There was a plague. A massive, devastating viral epidemic that swept through the primate population living in Africa and Eurasia. When the virus infected the primate, it replicated inside the cells and it wiped these groups out. Those cells were covered in Alpha Gal and the new virus, the copies that came out were able to cloak themselves like Alpha Gal. It's almost as if you, I don't know, go and you take someone's jacket by random chance, again, I wasn't there. But by random chance, a handful of the primates were born with a mutation, a typo essentially in their DNA. And their cells could not make Alpha Gal. So all these primates were dying because they had Alpha galaxies. A mutation happens and again, under a normal circumstance, no one would notice. But those primates, those are the primates that survived. These mutant primates that didn't have Alpha Gal on their own cells, their immune systems saw Alpha Gal as something foreign and dangerous and were able to destroy it. And they survived. Everybody else died. Alpha Gal is a syndrome. Basically what happens, and this is very ironic and I think that we see this in random times in history, but the Alpha Gal syndrome was discovered or began to have its history brought to light was actually in 2007 there was an allergist that he was one of the world leading experts of ige, an IGE mediated disease. So basically when something foreign gets introduced, your body creates this massive reaction. So it's the type of antibodies that are already produced by your immune system and they're meant to protect you from foreign invaders. It's what's behind, say an allergic reaction. So this allergist goes hiking he goes off the trail for four hours, guy was probably lost, gets home and he's got 200 black dots all over him. And he's got the larvae of a lone star tick. Over the next three months, as an allergist, I mean, it's so crazy how this works. As an allergist, he starts to have his blood drawn Weekly and his IgE antibodies to a sugar called Alpha Gal kept going up. And as I just mentioned, all the mammals stopped carrying the sugar a long time ago. Okay, here's the kicker. Sits down for dinner, has three lamb chops, two glasses of wine, feels fine, goes to bed, wakes up and he's covered in hives. He doesn't have throat swelling, but he is covered in hives, covered with an allergic reaction. And that is how we now have come to understand Alpha Gal. So this tick that bit him, this larvae, introduced Alpha gal, this sugar, and then he sat down, ate a bunch of meat, had some wine and boom.

E

So now let's talk a little bit

D

about

E

what this does to the body. Can you get rid of this? I mean, you are the queen of like, we need muscle. We need muscle for metabolism, we need muscle for longevity, we need protein. I mean, how bad is this? And subsequently, can you get rid of this?

B

Number one, I think that this is terrible for a number of reasons, because imagine if you are a person who is having red meat and also gelatin and maybe even armor thyroid, which there's synthetic thyroid and armor thyroid, or maybe you're on heparin, which is made from bovine. So heparin is also an animal product. It's something that's utilized for blood clots. So imagine you don't know or you get an MMR vaccine, you get bit by a tick, all of a sudden you're reacting. So it's not just the red meat. And what we're also seeing is that an increase in tallow use. So the higher the fat content, it seems as if it's getting into the lymphatic system. And then hours later there's this relationship between the high fat meal that's from an animal based product and the severity of symptoms. For example, cooking biscuits in lard, pork casings, or even dairy. So ice cream. And again, we treat this in our practice. Who takes care of this? Allergist can take care of this. Also. Gastroenterologists can take care of this. But as a family physician, we also take care of this. And you said, how bad is it? It's really bad. Because if you don't know you have it. There is no predictability, and that becomes very difficult for people. Can you imagine sitting in a boardroom meeting and then all of a sudden, I don't know, you have to go to the bathroom or you've broken out in hives. So it's just very concerning. So that's number one, and number two is.

E

Yeah, wait, Doc, wait one second, one second. Just give me one second. I thought you couldn't eat meat. Now you're telling me it's like anything derived from an animal.

B

Remember there was this. All this conversation about additives in food. So it's not just red meat. And I think that that is a mistake that people make. Puddings have it, gelatin is a big source of it, and so marshmallows or gummy bears, if you're into that kind of thing. And there's just hidden sources. So think about that. You know, in the south, you know, southern cooking, I live in Texas. This can be a real problem. And there's a couple more things that I haven't seen really discussed so much in the. In the public sphere is that depending on the level of allergy, so. So the level of response, you could walk by a grill, and if you are someone who has Alpha Gal, if it is in the air, you can become affected. And another thing is these ticks are aggressive. They hunt. These ticks hunt. And I know that you had mentioned conspiracy theorists. Whereas the other ticks that transmit Lyme disease, they're not hunting. They're kind of, you walk by the bush and. And something else. But they're not hunters. These ticks are hunters.

E

Okay, hold on. So let's back up for just a second. This sounds like a horror film. I know, being dramatic. The audience is gonna be like, Jillian's reaction is so dramatic. But you're talking to me about an insect that hunts you and could literally just ruin your entire life by completely destroying your health.

B

Well, the first thing is understanding that you have it. And if you have a clinical suspicion, it's not difficult to do a blood test. An IGE blood test allergist could do it. GI doctor can do it. Your family physician can do it. Number one. That's the first thing is understanding, are you someone that has it? Number two, which is, again, we were able to get our first patient that we ever saw with Alpha Gal better because we used an elimination diet. We were very close to monitoring, really, all their symptoms. It was a very high touch point. We'd never seen it. You remove the exposure. It's also like A gluten allergy. It's Alpha Gal syndrome, a syndrome this can get better, you remove it. Also, there's a few ways in which we stabilize the immune system. There's some data to support something called quercetin, which again, obviously I'm not people's doctors, this is for educational purposes, but 2 grams of quercetin, which is a bioflavonoid, and also antihistamines to help, also pepcid things to help stabilize what we would think of as allergies and allergic reactions, help stabilize these symptoms. Alpha Gal, from my clinical experience, is very tricky because someone could have very low levels of these IGEs, you know, this IGE response and have massive responses from eating or from having a supplement with a gelatin cap. And other people can maybe eat a little bit of red meat, but then too much pushes them over the edge. And this is the trick here is that it's not like, do you have it or do you not have it? It's where is the spectrum? Where is the continuum as to what we are dealing with?

E

Ah, okay, so hold on. So you can manage it, is what you're saying, with certain medications that can help regulate your immune system and after identification, teaching people how to avoid it is what you're saying. But you can never completely get rid of this once you have it, as

C

far as we know.

B

Okay, so now you are getting into some things that I think are really important that are surprising. It's a dynamic condition. Over time it can go away, it can resolve spontaneously. But here is the thing. If you get bit by an additional tick, doesn't matter what kind of tick you, it seems as if these levels maintain. And again, I am not expert in alpha gal. There's very few experts in Alpha Gal specifically. Yeah, but very few. Well, there's one, there's, there's, there's a few, but it's not a, you know, I mean, it's not like the most popular thing. It's, it's not like muscle building or menopause. It's. There's so much to say about this. Very obscure, it's somewhat obscure. And there's, and I asked, and I'll come back to this, as to where, how do we transmit it and what makes it worse. But if someone gets bigger it by an additional tick, even if it's not a lone star, it seems to continue the syndrome. So making sure that you protect yourself is hugely important. And unfortunately it's protecting yourself with clothes and chemicals. But you do not want to get reoccurring tick bites, which is challenging because if you are someone who loves the outdoors and maybe that's how you got it in the first place. And there's another thing here that's specific to you, Jillian. What makes it worse? You're not going to like this, but you, I think, I think you're very focused on transparent conversations. What makes this worse? Exercise can make this worse. Because exercise can increase intestinal permeability, meaning the alpha gal, the things that generate antigens. Alpha gal can cross out of the gut into the systemic blood system.

E

Wow, this is a nightmare.

B

I wish I had better news for you.

E

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B

Is that normal ticks do not traditionally hunt, but this kind of tick, the Lone Star tick, seems to be a tick that hunts and looks for, you know, is drawn to movement, whether it's carbon dioxide or heat, body heat.

E

Is this only in America? I actually didn't check that.

B

So it's not just in the US and it's not. And I say this Cautiously, it's not just the Lone Star tick that seems to sensitize people, which was shocking. So one of the other things that we do in our clinic is we treat people for helmets. Helmets are worms. There are large worms. They're hookworms. There are whip worms. And the body's response to a parasite. I'm going to be the most unpopular guest talking about ticks and worms. Listen, I promise, we talk about muscle, about all these other things, but as a practicing physician, we don't just talk about muscle and just talk about, you know, we talk about things that affects people's lives. And so in our practice, very early on with my work with the military, when I started out, is we would see a lot of GI symptoms. And so Alpha GAL syndrome creates a lot of GI symptoms. However, there are other parasites like the roundworm and other worms that also upregulate the body's immune system that also create this IGE response. But I'm going somewhere with this. And it seems as if this one worm can also sensitize people. It is. And again, I don't want people to come away from this being terrified, but it does seem that there is also.

E

Sure, I kind of do. I kind of do. Because really, I mean, I would want them to be so proactive on the prevention piece because it's. I mean, it's gonna ruin your life. So looking really quickly at these worms you're talking about, how does one catch those?

B

Again, this is a very tricky subject because it's very easy to pick up parasites from food, from animals, a dog licking your face, they're all over. It's very pervasive. But the question is not if you get it. The question is, is it a problem for you and for many people, picking up a parasite like these roundworms or whipworm, they're not inherently problematic. Can the body get rid of it? It depends. But in other parts of the world, they're major problems. The challenge is if you are now having compounding infections or syndromes, you've got a parasitic infection that's already affecting your gut and maybe making your gut more permeable. And then you get bit by Lone Star tick. Now you've got a more robust response, and there's a level of layering here that it's challenging. It's challenging.

E

I see. Okay, so it can be a compounding issue, is what you're saying, and it's complex. All right, so question for you. We've all. I won't say we've all, but I'm guessing that many of us have seen some sort of ad on social media or have some sort of new age doctor that has suggested a parasite cleanse.

B

We don't.

E

I've never, you know, I. Okay, right. It's a scam, right? Don't do that stuff, please.

B

Just please don't. Please don't. Yeah, listen, the reality is people probably have had and will be exposed to multiple parasites over their life. How about this? Let's just agree that if something says that it's a cleanse, we just automatically take it off the table. No matter what it is, if it has the word cleanse in it, maybe we consider that we just take it off the table. Again, I'm always interested in is there an alternative way for treatment, but particularly with helmets, which is again, a worm, like a round worm. I don't recommend natural treatment. I mean, just why? We know that there are treatments that work. Just why.

E

Got it. I get it. Right. Don't take matters into your own hand. Don't go experimenting with stuff and taking the. Yep, that makes perfect sense. Okay, so Doc, last, last thought on this. If I'm experiencing some sort of GI symptom, there are so many different things that can be responsible for this. As you've said, a food allergy. This. This worm you're talking about. Potentially I've been bit by this tick. I mean, all I know is I don't feel well, my stomach's upset. What is the first thing that I do? I go see a gastroenterologist and an internist, an allergist. Like, what are we telling people to do if they suspect that they've got some of these symptoms right off the top?

B

The first thing that I recommend people do is start to collect their own data. What is it that you're ingesting? How are you feeling? People are so busy and so distracted that they are moving through life incredibly fast and they're not noticing that, hey, after I take this, I don't feel well. Really. Just spend two weeks paying attention to the things. Are your symptoms related to food? Are your symptoms not related to food? Right. If your symptoms are not related to food and it's happening and you're having certain symptoms, then again, the more data that you can collect for a physician that sees this type of exposure, the better off you're going to be. Because oftentimes, and especially with Alpha gal, this is something that's been missed. I mean, I remember reading some data that it was something like 40% of healthcare providers hadn't been familiarized with it. So they wouldn't even know what they're looking for. Again, if you're going to an allergist now, a gastroenterologist more savvy to these things. Yes. So to answer your question, okay, pay attention first and foremost to what you are eating and those exposures. That's the first thing. And listen, if people are really struggling and they can't get better, they can always reach out to our clinic and we can help vet depending on the area because, you know, at the end of the day you don't want people just suffering from this.

E

How would somebody reach you if they. If they wanted your help?

B

Yeah, well, thank you for asking. We have, if they go to my website, all the information is on our website. We have both a full telemedicine clinic and that's strong medical. And then we also have a brick and mortar in Long island and I will put a link to that. So that would be available to everyone.

D

Yeah.

E

And you know, just for, just for the typical audience that does not have Alpha Gal, you know, you and I know each other because you are one of the most well respected doctors in health, wellness, hormone stabilization, weight loss, muscle maintenance. I mean you work with all the big people in my world. What books Just for general well being and optimized health and longevity. What books of yours also would you recommend for people?

B

Man, you are just so generous teeing this up. So I have on one side Forever Strong. I really appreciate it. Forever Strong, which is really the manifesto is understanding foundations. That muscle is really the organ of longevity. And then the Forever Strong playbook which is on over my other shoulder, is protocol based. And also I don't know when this is coming out. I highly doubt it's coming out before July 6th.

E

Wednesday, Doc.

B

So we actually are taking people through a foundation challenge. The Forever strong Foundation Challenge. July 6th is when that kicks off. Maybe we'll leave it open. We'll leave it open for your community. My team's going to kill me. We'll leave it open for your, your community. And it will take people four weeks through everything. And then one more thing. So it's the Forever Strong center in Seville, New York. And I'll give you all the links

E

and they sign up for the. You'll give me the links to sign up for this challenge as well. So all of this is going to be in the show notes.

B

I will, I will. And I want to go on record as saying we're leaving it open for you.

E

Thank you. You're amazing. I know you have a bunch of other press hits today. I really appreciate you taking the time. All of this will be in the show notes. Get going. Go save the world. And hopefully I'll be in your text messages, I'm sure, this week. But outside of that, thank you for showing up on the show.

B

You got it. Anytime, anytime.

E

Thank you so much for watching. If you enjoyed the podcast, please, like, comment, subscribe and share. And make sure to let me know what guests you want to see on in the future.