I thought I kept getting food poisoning. It turned out, a tick bite changed how my body reacts to red meat and pork.

When I broke out in hives on a Friday afternoon, I didn’t know what was going on inside my body. This wasn’t the first time something like this happened, so I knew all the questions the doctor would ask: New detergent? No. New lotion? No. New soap? No. New food? No.

When it came to new foods, I had consciously decided to stay away them in recent months. This restriction came about because I kept being jolted awake in the middle of the night with what I thought was food poisoning.

These frequent sicknesses made me start to worry about food safety. When I did eat out, I always made sure the meat was fully cooked before taking a bite (which is especially challenging because I am colorblind). At home, I religiously used a meat thermometer when cooking to make sure the meat was cooked through. I always wash my hands after touching meat, and I never let food sit out for longer than two hours. No matter the steps I took, I was still getting sick.

With the arrival of hives, I was determined to figure out what was going on. After sending in pictures of my stomach full of hives to my dermatologist’s office, I was ordered to take a blood test. After that, I finally got my diagnosis: alpha-gal syndrome.

What is alpha-gal syndrome?

Alpha-gal syndrome is a meat allergy often caused by being bitten by a lone star tick. I live in Tennessee, where getting tick bites has been common my whole life. This tick bite likely happened when I was cutting my grass.

Unlike other food allergies, people with alpha-gal often do not have a reaction until several hours later, when food is being digested. That delayed reaction is why it is so hard to diagnose alpha-gal without a blood test. Looking back on that afternoon when I developed hives, I remember having had a burger for lunch. By the time I got home for work that day, the allergy had set in, and hives were appearing on my skin.

This syndrome is becoming more common

I was so happy to have a name for what was happening to me and I’ve learned that am not alone in experiencing these symptoms. According to the CDC, as many as 450,000 Americans might have alpha-gal, with many people not realizing they have it.

The number of cases is expected to continue to rise as more people become aware of alpha-gal and lone star ticks spread across more parts of the United States. At the end of May, the Department of Health and Human Services announced its intention to focus on reducing tick-borne illnesses, such as alpha-gal and Lyme disease.

What it’s like to live with alpha-gal

Compared to others with alph-gal syndrome, I have it pretty easy. Some people are extremely sensitive to any type of mammalian byproduct, such as gelatin or milk. For me, I can still drink milk, eat ice cream, and be exposed to those byproducts.

I’m also lucky that when I have an allergic reaction, it just feels like I have food poisoning. While it is extremely uncomfortable, I have not experienced any type of anaphylaxis. However, that is always a risk every time I ingest my allergen, so I’ve been told to carry an EpiPen. I was diagnosed about 18 months ago, and I’m still getting used to keeping it with me. I’m trying to do a better job of remembering to bring it whenever I leave the house.

I no longer get hives when symptoms occur; now I just feel like I have food poisoning, which I treat with rest and hydration. After 24 to 48 hours, I am usually back to normal.

I rarely eat outside of my home now

The hardest part of living with this diagnosis has been my inability to eat outside my home.

I have learned the hard way about the potential for cross-contamination at restaurants. There are now only a handful of places I order food from, and most of those are fast-food places. Fast food places usually cook the food the same way across their locations, so it’s easier to find out if the air fryer they use is also being used for any type of red meat. Fast food places also do a great job with their allergen menus that you can easily find online.

In some ways, being diagnosed with alpha-gal has made my life better. I was forced to create new routines at home to drastically increase the number of homemade meals and reduce eating out. Creating new routines is something I especially struggle with. It takes a great deal of executive function and self-regulation to both plan ahead and follow through. I had told my wife for years that I would overhaul how we plan and make dinner, but I never did. As someone who studies executive function for a living, I knew that getting a new routine started would make my life easier in the end. Being forced to do it was the push that I desperately needed. It gave me the motivation to finally create a system.

Now, we eat almost exclusively at home. This allows me to control all the ingredients we’re consuming. I’ve become great at reading food labels. I already had practice because our kids have dealt with food allergies, but I’ve really had to pay attention to ingredients because red meat is not required to be listed as an allergen on packaging. Sometimes lard is in refried beans, tortillas, and pie crusts. So I am always on the lookout for ingredients that might trigger a reaction.

I’ve stepped up my cooking and baking game. For cooking, we strive to keep the freezer stocked with precooked chicken and ground turkey that can be easily added to a bowl with rice and vegetables. So when those times come when we would have ordered out, I can quickly defrost the meat and have a meal ready for my wife and me.

This has been the most helpful as dinner time is always chaotic with two little kids running around. Now that I can no longer eat ground beef or pork, we get all of our protein from chicken or turkey. When we’re looking for a burger, we eat turkey or chicken burgers. We quickly learned that imitation burgers do not taste good to us.

My life is different, but not bad

What started out as a huge inconvenience, and it still is, has led to some changes in my life that I’m proud of. Creating new routines is hard, especially while raising young children. It takes a while from starting a new routine to making the routine stick. But these new routines have made a huge difference in my life.

Thanks to the steps I have taken, I have not had an alpha-gal episode in 6 months. I’ve continued to learn about this disease, and I’m told that there’s a chance that my allergy will go away over time. If it does ever go my way, I don’t think I would change the good habits I have created.