Post: #1

http://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/health/...0793806548

Quote:NICOLE Lenoir-Jourdan is a vegetarian, so having an allergy to meat was the last thing she expected.
But the Pymble publicist knew something was very wrong. She was having allergic reactions to food she’d never had a problem with, like yoghurt, baked beans, and nuts. A few months before she’d been bitten by a tiny tick in her garden and had an extreme local reaction.
‘‘I tell you, I looked like the elephant man,” she says. “My whole head swelled up. It was not normal. I went to a number of doctors and they all went, ‘Oh yeah, you’ll be alright’.’’
None mentioned that a severe local reaction to a tick was a risk factor for developing mammalian meat allergy (MMA), an emerging allergy where the tick’s saliva changes a person’s immune system to start reacting to the meat of mammals — beef, pork, lamb and sometimes even dairy and gelatine.
What Lenoir-Jourdan eventually discovered was that she’d acquired mammalian meat allergy from the tick bite, and she was in the 10 per cent of those who are also allergic to mammalian meat derivatives, like dairy and gelatine.
“I found out that all the foods that were making me sick were either dairy or had meat derivatives in them. The nuts I was eating came from China, where they spray nuts with meat flavouring,” she says.
Having an allergy to mammalian meat caused by tick bite sounds absurd, but for a growing number of Sydneysiders there’s a lot of chicken and fish on the menu now.
If someone presents at Mona Vale hospital with a severe allergic reaction in the early hours of the morning the first thing doctors ask is if they’ve eaten meat for dinner. The second is when they were bitten by a tick.
Clinical Associate Professor Sheryl van Nunen discovered the link between anaphylaxis to mammalian meat and Australian paralysis tick bite in 2007. Back then it was a relatively rare occurrence but fast forward nearly 10 years and she diagnoses a new case of MMA daily at her Chatswood rooms.

It’s estimated there are well over 1000 cases on Sydney’s northern beaches alone. Numbers are so high on the north shore that a diagnosis of MMA in adults, commonly anaphylaxis, is as prevalent as the commonest food allergy in adults, peanut allergy.
Dr van Nunen says Mona Vale Hospital emergency department, which is in a hot spot for ticks, is well aware of the allergy.
“I’ve been saying for years … if you have someone who has a middle of the night anaphylaxis, the diagnosis is mammalian meat allergy after tick bite until proven otherwise,’’ she says.
Unlike traditional food allergies MMA has a delayed reaction of anywhere between two and 10 hours. Most reactions happen between four to six hours after ingestion. Allergic symptoms vary, from hives, to gastrointestinal pain and anaphylaxis.
It’s thought that there are many people who experience milder reactions, such as delayed stomach pain after eating meat, who are unaware they have MMA.
There is still ignorance in the medical community, too. Dr van Nunen says it can be a struggle for people to get diagnosed (which involves a simple blood test). “Yesterday I was seeing a lady who had to struggle for her diagnosis to be found and recognised and it’s difficult enough to have this problem without needing to push for your diagnosis.”
Jana Pearce was diagnosed with MMA in 2010, but not after a lot of blank looks from doctors.
“Unfortunately, the most difficult to convince have been the medical doctors and other health professionals,’’ she says.
“Because they didn’t learn it in medical school, it means it doesn’t exist. I often got the feeling I might as well be from another planet the way they were looking at me. I actually had one specialist say to me ‘Ticks are parasites. They don’t kill their host’.’’
Ticks are a problem on the whole of the eastern seaboard of Australia, which means there’s roughly 50 per cent of the population at risk of getting MMA. So, why is this allergy growing at such a rate and why are some places, like Sydney’s northern beaches such hot spots?
Dr van Nunen blames the proliferation of bandicoots. And this is where the allergy gets even stranger. When the tick feeds on a bandicoot or other small mammal, it picks up a small amount of alpha-gal from its blood, which is transmitted from the tick’s gut into the human when the tick is pulled off. It is this sugar that people with MMA become allergic to.
“What I often see is when people are starting to report bandicoot holes in their backyard, that’s when they start to get bitten by ticks,” Dr van Nunen says.
The other thing most people with MMA have in common is a large local reaction at the sight of a tick bite that proceeded becoming meat allergic.

Pearce didn’t even know she had tick bites when her legs swelled up.
“I was walking through bushland in Sydney’s Lane Cove National Park and was bitten by ticks so tiny you practically need a magnifying glass to see them. I had the world’s itchiest rash on both legs from knee to hip and had no idea at the time that these itchy lumps were burrowing ticks,’’ she said.
Ten days later she was hospitalised with anaphylaxis six hours after eating red meat.
“I’ve had two life-threatening anaphylaxis episodes and had to be ‘brought back’ from both. I felt I’d lost control of my fate. I could eat something accidentally and just stop breathing. I was lucky both times that I was not on my own. It left me afraid to be on my own as I would not have time to administer Epipens, and phone an ambulance for help,’’ she says.
It’s a huge lifestyle change and Dr van Nunen says she sees many of her patients go through a grieving period as they accept their diagnosis.
“I had fear of outdoor activities that involved grass, shrubs, undergrowth,” says Pearce. “I still walk in the centre of tracks or footpath, well away from shrubs on which there may be a tick.”
And it’s the end of casually eating out at restaurants. Many are so sensitive, they can have an allergic reaction to a food that is cross contaminated with red meat during preparation or serving.
Lenoir-Jourdan only eats at vegan restaurants now, but says she misses the freedom she used to have. “I’d like to go to a restaurant with my family and know I’m not going to die.”
If someone who is meat allergic accidentally eats meat, apart from their allergic reaction, Dr van Nunen describes a strange thing happening.
“Often when they accidentally eat meat they report that the site they’ve been bitten by the tick lights up with swelling,’’ she says.
And yet some people are bitten by hundreds of ticks in their lifetime and don’t get MMA. Dr van Nunen believes they are immune and hold the key to perhaps curing the allergy one day.
Meanwhile, prevention is the best cure. Dr van Nunen advises using an ether-containing spray such as Wart-Off to freeze and kill the tick in situ and letting it drop off rather than pull it out.
This prevents the tick transmitting alpha-gal, and might just mean meat is still on the menu.

Here's the thing, though: Aboriginals have been here as long as the bandicoots have (bandicoots being an animal native to Australia): 40,000 years or so. Ticks have been around pretty much forever. Additionally, Western Europeans have been in the same space as ticks and bandicoots for two hundred years, and fuck knows hygiene was a lot lower back then. No death-causing allergies to meat or milk recorded back then or even until now.

So where the fuck is this coming from? My guess is that the allergies are being caused by some new combination of chemicals in our bloodstream that reacts to the tick's bite ... if this is not just a lot of horseshit and this vegetarian clown is allergic because her body doesn't get enough meat.

On top of that, I've bolded the biological cause together so you can ask hipsters who say they're allergic to meat in the years ahead whether they've been sleeping in tick-infested sheets or walking in the outdoors too much.

I say it's a masculinity killer because it stops people eating meat. Which deprives human beings of their best and most available source of protein, which builds not only muscle but every other body part.

God save us from people who mean well. -storm

Post: #2

Having been a vegetarian for many many years with not shortage of muscle this notion that vegetarian = masculinity killer is just total nonsense. I speak from my own direct experience.

Post: #3

Quote:It’s estimated there are well over 1000 cases on Sydney’s northern beaches alone.

In other news, this epidemic has also been localised to the hipster epicentres of Bondi Beach and Newtown.

Post: #4

(06-13-2016 10:50 PM)BassPlayaYo Wrote:  Having been a vegetarian for many many years with not shortage of muscle this notion that vegetarian = masculinity killer is just total nonsense. I speak from my own direct experience.

Great, so you're an outlier. Hats off to you. And speaking from my personal experience, every vegetarian and vegan I know is frail and sickly.

Post: #5

(06-13-2016 10:36 PM)Paracelsus Wrote:  Here's the thing, though: Aboriginals have been here as long as the bandicoots have (bandicoots being an animal native to Australia): 40,000 years or so. Ticks have been around pretty much forever. Additionally, Western Europeans have been in the same space as ticks and bandicoots for two hundred years, and fuck knows hygiene was a lot lower back then. No death-causing allergies to meat or milk recorded back then or even until now.

So where the fuck is this coming from? My guess is that the allergies are being caused by some new combination of chemicals in our bloodstream that reacts to the tick's bite ... if this is not just a lot of horseshit and this vegetarian clown is allergic because her body doesn't get enough meat.

On top of that, I've bolded the biological cause together so you can ask hipsters who say they're allergic to meat in the years ahead whether they've been sleeping in tick-infested sheets or walking in the outdoors too much.

I say it's a masculinity killer because it stops people eating meat. Which deprives human beings of their best and most available source of protein, which builds not only muscle but every other body part.

On one hand, I'd put it down to people just being 'weaker' than in generations past.
Too much exposure to too much soy, plastics & pesticides.

Then there's the other factor where-by, people with some sort of severe allergy (such as a peanut allergy) would have died off so much sooner back in 1860.
There being far less viable medical care.

We're the most advanced humans we know of.
Yet that very advancement fosters hoards of weak individuals...

Post: #6

This is real.

Its related to tick borne diseases. I met a logger here in TN that has this disease. He breaks out in a rash if he eats pork or beef, fish or chicken are fine. It took him about a year to figure out what the hell was going on and began when he was around 28. He had gotten lymes disease a few years before that while working in the woods.

edit: I forgot to add that this guy looks like your typical redneck, not some 'no gluten' hippie. He said he loves steak, ribs and bbq and is not happy with his situation.

Post: #7

You are what your food eats.

Post: #8

If I meet someone who looks me in the eye and tells me they have celiac disease I generally try to kill him, if a stranger.

Post: #9

Lyme disease is a terrible, life long disease, especially if not caught early.

Alpha-gal allergy is a real disease which would really suck to have...no beef or pork?

I don't understand the masculinity killer part? Celiac and gluten sensitivity is way over blown based on statistical studies. Maybe this will become another over blown disease. But who cares.

There's always fads...diets, workouts, diseases, etc. Oh well.

Regarding celiac / gluten sensitive movement:
- I usually treat people with a "oh, so they scoped down your throat and through your stomach into your small intestine...I heard that's a really terrible procedure"...99% of the time they haven't, so they really don't know. Even if the small intestine is inflamed, it doesn't prove gluten sensitivity, but a scope at least proves the person *has something* for which they needed to change the diet.
- I'm fine if someone says they try to avoid gluten because it makes them feel better, and drop a self-effacing "yeah I'm one of those people but it works" comment. Also, I think the gluten movement has at the very least amplified the anti-carb and anti-refined carb movement, which is a good thing.
- Celiac disease is a terrible thing. Anyone who says they have gluten sensitivity should read up on it, so they can be thankful they don't have actual Celiac disease.

Post: #10

(06-14-2016 07:49 AM)heavy Wrote:  Regarding celiac / gluten sensitive movement:
- I usually treat people with a "oh, so they scoped down your throat and through your stomach into your small intestine...I heard that's a really terrible procedure"...99% of the time they haven't, so they really don't know. Even if the small intestine is inflamed, it doesn't prove gluten sensitivity, but a scope at least proves the person *has something* for which they needed to change the diet.
- I'm fine if someone says they try to avoid gluten because it makes them feel better, and drop a self-effacing "yeah I'm one of those people but it works" comment. Also, I think the gluten movement has at the very least amplified the anti-carb and anti-refined carb movement, which is a good thing.
- Celiac disease is a terrible thing. Anyone who says they have gluten sensitivity should read up on it, so they can be thankful they don't have actual Celiac disease.

When I eat a large amount of wheat (bread, pasta,...) I always get the shits so I simply avoid it. I don't go around proclaiming that I'm gluten sensitive or whatever, I just eat meat, fat, vegetables, oats. As a bonus I stay lean without even trying.

I don't get where all the shitting on people who avoid gluten comes from on this forum. For years people who actually understand nutrition have been saying that humans should not consume the amount of grains in the average western diet. If some people actually listen (and get leaner and healthier as a result) that's a good thing to me.

Is it because the average person who avoids gluten in the US is the holier than thou hippie? Or because they constantly need to mention that they are gluten sensitive?
(I often do my groceries at a bio-organic supermarket and most people doing their shopping there are indeed the type that I want to punch in the face.)

Post: #11

(06-14-2016 09:51 AM)PhDre Wrote:  When I eat a large amount of wheat (bread, pasta,...) I always get the shits so I simply avoid it. I don't go around proclaiming that I'm gluten sensitive or whatever, I just eat meat, fat, vegetables, oats. As a bonus I stay lean without even trying

Have you considered that the reason you were getting the shits was a lack of fiber?

9 times out of 10 it's a lack of fiber causing GI distress. Source: gastroentinologists I know.

Post: #12

^I doubt it, I can eat a meal consisting of nothing but meat and fat (no fiber whatsoever) without getting the shits.
I eat something with wheat and a couple of hours later I'm shitting liquid. This doesn't happen with oats, quinoa,...

Anyway, I don't walk around proclaiming that I'm gluten sensitive. If I go somewhere and they offer me a bread or pasta dish, I'll still eat it with taste.

I just don't buy anything wheat based or don't order it in a restaurant.

Post: #13

(06-13-2016 11:13 PM)Patriarch Wrote:  

(06-13-2016 10:50 PM)BassPlayaYo Wrote:  Having been a vegetarian for many many years with not shortage of muscle this notion that vegetarian = masculinity killer is just total nonsense. I speak from my own direct experience.

Great, so you're an outlier. Hats off to you. And speaking from my personal experience, every vegetarian and vegan I know is frail and sickly.

There is a difference between being fit and healthy. Not all those who are fit are healthy. Not all who are healthy are fit. Often fit people die early while those who look frail as you say tend to live long healthy lives. The first man over 100 years of age to complete a full marathon was a vegetarian his whole life. At 98 pounds he may have looked frail but he is still around even today at 104 years old.

When a person quits eating meat, the body goes through a fairly big change until one finds the right foods one needs. In that period of adjustment, the body detoxifies and can gain weight or lose weight and may or may not look frail.

It has nothing to do with one's masculinity.

Most herbivore animals have large muscle mass while meat eating animals have little muscle mass. The idea that the body needs protein from meat to maintain muscle is incorrect information.

Most herbivore animals also have long lives in comparison to carnivores. The average life span of an elephant in the wild is 60 years - while lions tend to live 10 -15 years.

The most powerful animals in strength, agility and stamina are the herbivores.

Post: #14

(06-14-2016 09:51 AM)PhDre Wrote:  I don't get where all the shitting on people who avoid gluten comes from on this forum. For years people who actually understand nutrition have been saying that humans should not consume the amount of grains in the average western diet. If some people actually listen (and get leaner and healthier as a result) that's a good thing to me.

+1

This is not rocket science, folks.

Humans have been "human" (homo sapiens) for somewhere between 100,000-200,000 years now.

For almost the entirety of our existence as a species, we've hunted animals/caught fish for meat and scavenged for fruits/vegetables/tubers/nuts.

That's it.

~12,000 years ago, someone realized we could (barely) digest grass (wheat/barley/oats/etc). This may have been one of the worst things to ever happen to humankind, both in a societal/egalitarian as well as a physiological sense.

Our bodies are not designed to eat grass. While we have continued to adapt to various niches and environments since our exodus from Africa, human bodies simply function best when fueled by meat/fish/fowl/eggs/fruits/vegetables/nuts/tubers. We simply don't run very well on grass.

Most don't people don't want to hear this. I believe it's because

1) they love bread and pasta and pastries, and can't handle the cognitive dissonance of discovering the things they've enjoyed eating their entire lives are actually bad for them, and

2) they don't want to associate themselves with the hipster faggots and tatted-up landwhales who claim they're being healthy because their cupcake is made from rice flour instead of wheat.

(06-14-2016 10:46 AM)tanner Wrote:  The idea that the body needs protein from meat to maintain muscle is incorrect information.

Sure, your body doesn't need meat protein. You can do just fine with eggs, Greek yogurt, hemp, etc.

But that doesn't mean meat is bad for you, or that grains are good. The human body will always run better on a pound of wild salmon or grass-fed beef than on a loaf of bread or a bowl of oatmeal. Anyone who tells you different is probably selling you something.

Post: #15

(06-14-2016 01:08 PM)Isaac Jordan Wrote:  Humans have been "human" (homo sapiens) for somewhere between 100,000-200,000 years now.

I consider myself a hetero sapien, living on a balanced diet of vagina, whiskey, and steaks.

Post: #16

(06-14-2016 01:08 PM)Isaac Jordan Wrote:  Our bodies are not designed to eat grass. While we have continued to adapt to various niches and environments since our exodus from Africa, human bodies simply function best when fueled by meat/fish/fowl/eggs/fruits/vegetables/nuts/tubers. We simply don't run very well on grass.

You do know, the mutation for lactose tolerance is only 5000 years old? You do know, the mutation for whiteness in europeans is roughly the same time?

Evolution moves a lot faster than you think.

Post: #17

I think it's neat how a tick bite can create an allergy to meat.
Is it from the immune system not being able to tell the proteins apart? Or is it a form of system shock, where this protein (from tick bite) caused this damage to the body, so now all foreign protein is suspect?

Post: #18

(06-14-2016 02:07 PM)Tresdus Wrote:  

(06-14-2016 01:08 PM)Isaac Jordan Wrote:  Our bodies are not designed to eat grass. While we have continued to adapt to various niches and environments since our exodus from Africa, human bodies simply function best when fueled by meat/fish/fowl/eggs/fruits/vegetables/nuts/tubers. We simply don't run very well on grass.

You do know, the mutation for lactose tolerance is only 5000 years old? You do know, the mutation for whiteness in europeans is roughly the same time?

Evolution moves a lot faster than you think.

Hence the bolded section above. I just finished Nicholas Wade's A Troublesome Inheritance, so I'm right there with you.

But my point still stands. Sure, we may have become marginally better at digesting grass than we were 12,000 years ago. Doesn't mean it's suddenly good for us.

Post: #19

(06-13-2016 11:13 PM)Patriarch Wrote:  

(06-13-2016 10:50 PM)BassPlayaYo Wrote:  Having been a vegetarian for many many years with not shortage of muscle this notion that vegetarian = masculinity killer is just total nonsense. I speak from my own direct experience.

Great, so you're an outlier. Hats off to you. And speaking from my personal experience, every vegetarian and vegan I know is frail and sickly.

There's also this guy:

Post: #20

My prediction for the next new breaking study: Men Who Are Allergic To Pussy.

I would hate to not be able to eat meet...

Post: #21

If you get pussy allergy, break out the salad tongs.

Post: #22

I knew it was going to be the bandicoots. Always the damn bandicoots.

Post: #23

(06-15-2016 03:12 AM)RawGod Wrote:  I knew it was going to be the bandicoots. Always the damn bandicoots.

If the fucking sharks, snakes, spiders or drop bears don't get you, the diseases you get from the ticks and the bandicoots will. It's why we don't spend much on defence. It's because we don't have to.

God save us from people who mean well. -storm

Post: #24

(06-14-2016 11:21 PM)BassPlayaYo Wrote:  There's also this guy:

*snip*

Can't have been too good for him - caused his penis to retreat back into the body under the skin. How's he gonna fuck bitches now?

   

G

Post: #25

The problem is that vegetarianism increases your risk of homosexuality by a factor of forfty percent.