 In the beginning, Aristotle defined two forms of life on planet Earth, plants and animals. 2,000 years later, the light microscope was invented and we discovered tiny one-celled organisms like amoebas. Then the electron microscope was invented and we were better able to characterize bacteria. Finally, in 1969, biologists recognized fungi as a separate category and we've had at least five kingdoms of life ever since. In my video, higher quality may mean higher risk. I talk about the potential downsides of consuming proteins from within our own kingdom, because the impact our fellow animal proteins can have on boosting our liver's production of a cancer-promoting hormone called IGF-1. In eating outside our kingdom, I talked about other potential advantages of preferably dipping into the plant and mushroom kingdoms for dinner, not only from a food safety perspective, we're more likely to get infected by animal pathogens than Dutch Elm disease, but because the potential for cross-reactivity between animal and human proteins, our immune system is more likely to get confused between this and this, rather than this and that. And so there may be less potential to trigger an autoimmune reaction, like the degenerative brain disease I talked about in that other video. Same concept with animal proteins triggering inflammatory arthritis in attacking some foreign animal meat proteins. Some of our own similarly composed tissues may get caught in the crossfire. And it's not just proteins. If you remember the new 5GC store, there's this sialic acid in other animals that may cause inflammation in our arteries and help breast tumors and other human cancers grow, well now there's a new twist has been added to the story. The reason new GC triggers inflammation is because humans lost the ability to make it 2 million years ago. And so when our body is exposed to it through animal products, it's treated as a foreign invader. Well, there's another oligosaccharide called alpha-gal that we chimps and apes lost the ability to make 20 million years ago. But it's still made by a variety of animals, including many animals we eat. Antigal antibodies may be involved in a number of detrimental processes, which may result in allergic autoimmune and autoimmune-like diseases, such as autoimmune thyroid disorders. You can see higher levels in Crohn's disease victims. They react against about half of human breast tumors. And you can even find antibodies this stuff in atherosclerotic plaques in people's necks. But those are all mostly speculative risks. We do know alpha-gal is a major obstacle to transplanting pig organs into people like kidneys, because our bodies reject alpha-gal as foreign. It's considered the major target for human anti-pig antibodies. It's interesting. If you look at those who abstain from pork for whatever reason, they have fewer swine-specific white cells in their bloodstream, speculating that oral intake of pork could ferry swine molecules into the bloodstream via gut-infiltrating lymphocytes to prime the immune response. So we can have an allergic reaction to eating the kidneys, too, but such severe meat allergies were considered rare, until an unusual report surfaced. First described in 2009, the report included details on 24 cases of meat allergies triggered by tick bites. Within a year was obvious that the cases should be counted in the hundreds rather than dozens. By 2012 was clear that there are thousands of cases across a large area, the Southern and Eastern US, and now present in several countries around the world. The Lone Star Tick So-called because females have a white spot on their back, they're famous for causing master's disease, a Lyme disease like syndrome, also known as STARI, Southern Tick-associated rash illness. But thanks to the Lone Star Tick steadily expanding its range, it's not necessarily just so Southern anymore. Okay, but what is the relevance of tick bites to the production of anti-meat antibodies to alpha-gal, these allergic antibodies? Good question. What we know is you get bit by one of these ticks, and you can develop an allergy to meat. This appears to be the first example of a response to an external parasite giving rise to an important form of food allergy, either because there's something in the ticks saliva that is cross-reacting with the alpha-gal, or because the tick is like injecting you with animal allergens from its last meal.