This thread has nothing to do with weight loss surgery. I just found it of interest this morning as I read through the internet posts.

I live in the woods and many times a year I find ticks crawling on me. I hate them. The large ones are easy to detect and remove. The smaller ones (deer ticks) are almost invisible. At the most these deer ticks might look like a freckle and until they begin to dissolve your flesh and dig into your body, you tend not to feel them. I guess there is another type of tick called a "lone star tick" that lives in the South. So fortunately I have not encountered this variety. These ticks have a single white star (more like a dot) in the middle of their body.

The bite from one of these lone star ticks can elicits an abnormal immune response that produces a type of antibody called IgE, which causes allergies to red meat. Because red meat also contains alpha-gal, people who have been sensitized to the carbohydrate from a tick bite can develop life-threatening anaphylaxis if they consume pork or beef.

If that wasn't bad enough, some vaccines can trigger this life-threatening anaphylaxis for those individuals that have been bitten by the lone star tick. I am a firm believer in vaccines. They help to keep many deadly diseases at bay. But there may be an exception. If you have been unfortunate enough to be bitten by a lone star tick and developed an allergy to red meat, then be careful when you get vaccinated. What you don't know can kill you.

http://acsh.org/news/2016/12/29/ticks-may-cause-allergic-reaction-red-meat-shingles-vaccine-10654

Not to mention, lymes disease.. which I have.