The lone star tick can make you allergic to meat, and that’s not even the worst of it
The lone star tick is named for that little splotch in its back, which someone apparently thought looked like either a star or the shape of Texas. Flickr user Joshua Allen Ticks are horrifying, plain and simple. Even if they weren’t vectors for nasty infections, the fact that they swell up like tiny blood balloons and then burst if you don’t remove them properly is enough to make you never want to set foot in the woods again. And guess what: they can also make you allergic to hot dogs and hamburgers, which is pretty darn unpatriotic for a tick named Amblyomma americanum. It's a case of cruel irony indeed that a tick named after Texas can render you unable to eat red meat. If it’s sushi you crave, you’ll be just fine, but barbecue is out of the question. If you’re bitten by a lone star tick and get the short end of the stick, what you really become allergic to is a carbohydrate called galactose-alpha-1,3-galactose. Alpha-gal is in most mammalian cell membranes, so the allerg...