What To Do After a Tick Bite + Can You Reverse Alpha-Gal? | Dr. Will Cole

Opening a conversation about tick-borne illness with a single, startling fact: infections like alpha-gal syndrome, which can make a person suddenly allergic to red meat and dairy, have increased a hundredfold since the early 2000s. Dr. Will Cole, a functional medicine practitioner, joins Alex Clark to explain that this rise is not a simple story of more ticks. It is a convergence of ecological shifts, declining human resilience, and a medical system that often dismisses the very conditions it should be treating.

The Perfect Storm Behind Tick-Borne Illnesses

The surge in alpha-gal syndrome and chronic Lyme disease cannot be pinned on one cause. Dr. Cole describes it as a "perfect storm" with several overlapping factors. First, there are ecological changes: suburban sprawl puts humans and deer in closer contact, and milder winters fail to kill off tick populations. Second, he points to a broader "epigenetic-genetic mismatch." Modern human genomes have not changed in thousands of years, but the environment has. Our bodies are now burdened by microplastics, forever chemicals, chronic stress, and a diet of ultra-processed foods. This leaves the immune system in a state of hypervigilance. A tick bite, in this context, is often not the root cause but "the straw that broke the camel’s back"—the tipping point that overwhelms an already compromised system. Dr. Cole also notes that,