It started with a bug bite.

At least, that's where I think it started.

In October 2025, Chappy had this tiny irritated spot on his skin. When I say tiny, I mean tiny. I couldn't tell what I was looking at, so I did what we all do now.

I took a picture with my phone and enlarged it.

Still couldn't really see anything.

So I messed with the site, and took another picture.

And this time...

there was a little leg sticking out.

Yep.

Something was attached to him.

At the time, though, we didn't think much about it. We couldn't see enough of the body to identify what it was. It was so ridiculously small that there wasn't much to see.

We certainly didn't look at each other and think, This is about to change our lives.

So life went on.

Then December came.

Chappy started having an extreme rash.

Then headaches.

Then increasing GI problems.

The headaches really bothered me because headaches are my thing. Chappy doesn't get headaches.

He already sees an allergist because, as we like to say around here, he's allergic to anything that grows.

At one point, people started suggesting it might be our lavender.

OUR lavender.

There was just one little problem with that theory.

It was December.

The lavender was dormant.

Still, when someone you love is miserable, hurting, and confused—and nobody seems to know why—you start questioning everything.

So we did.

Contact dermatitis. Okay... contact with what?

Eventually Chappy had a punch biopsy.

The result came back as contact dermatitis.

That gave the rash a name, but it didn’t answer the question that kept bothering us:

Contact with what?

And it certainly didn’t seem to explain everything else that was happening.

His symptoms continued.

His stomach problems got worse.

The palms of his hands became so irritated that the skin cracked.

At one point we started wondering if he’d suddenly become lactose intolerant.

There seemed to be an explanation for every individual piece.

But nothing seemed to explain all the pieces together.

And then May happened.

This time, I knew it was a tick.

In May 2026, I found a very large Lone Star tick attached to Chappy.

This wasn’t like that microscopic little October bug.

I could see this one.

I removed it.

And suddenly a bell went off in my head.

Alpha-Gal.

I’d heard about the connection between Lone Star tick bites and Alpha-Gal Syndrome. In the United States, the Lone Star tick is the tick most commonly associated with AGS.

And suddenly I had a question I couldn’t let go.

Could this be what has been happening to Chappy?

So I asked him to go see our nurse practitioner.

I specifically asked about Alpha-Gal testing.

She didn’t think that was what it was.

But she ordered the test anyway.

And I’m grateful that she did.

June 3, 2026

His blood was drawn on June 3.

The Alpha-Gal panel came back with an alpha-gal-specific IgE of 0.58 kU/L, above the laboratory reference value of <0.10.

Beef IgE was 0.29 and flagged as high.

Lamb was 0.14 and flagged high.

Pork was still <0.10 at that time.

And there it was.

After months of Chappy being miserable, hurting, and confused, we finally had information that might help explain what was happening.

Which brings me to what still irritates me.

The phone call that never came.

His nurse practitioner never called us.

Chappy wasn’t someone who felt perfectly fine and then got an odd result on routine bloodwork.

He was miserable.

He had been dealing with this for months.

His skin hurt.

His hands were cracking.

His stomach was giving him problems.

He was getting headaches that weren’t normal for him.

And we’d been trying to figure out what was happening to his body.

Now we’d finally found something.

I didn’t expect someone to magically fix him.

I didn’t expect anyone to have all the answers.

But I expected someone to talk to us.

What does this mean?

What should we be looking for?

What happens next?

Who should he see?

What do we do if he has a serious reaction?

Eventually, his provider’s secretary confirmed the result for us.

And we were left with a whole lot of questions.

That experience is one of the main reasons Chappy has a new nurse practitioner today.

Thankfully, that part of the story has improved a lot.

And then we started researching.

Once Alpha-Gal entered our vocabulary, we started looking at things differently.

Food labels weren’t just food labels anymore.

Ingredients weren’t just ingredients.

Chappy started using the FIG app to help us investigate products and ingredients.

And we started checking everything.

One of the stranger things we learned is that alpha-gal isn't necessarily just a question of hamburgers.

CDC says alpha-gal can be present in mammalian meat and other mammal-derived products. It also identifies certain non-food ingredients—including gelatin and potentially mammal-derived glycerin and magnesium stearate—as ingredients people with AGS may need to investigate. Importantly, not everyone with AGS reacts to every potential exposure.

That sent us down rabbit hole after rabbit hole.

And eventually, we started looking at personal care.

And then I had a terrible thought.

Wait.

What about MY products?

Because I’m not just Chappy's wife.

I make body-care products.

Suddenly, I wasn’t looking at an ingredient list because I wanted to know whether a cream would feel good or whether a wash would lather.

I was looking at it thinking:

Where did THAT come from?

Glycerin.

Stearic acid.

Emulsifiers.

Oils.

Preservatives.

Everything.

And that’s when all those boring documents I’ve been saving with my raw materials suddenly became very interesting.

Certificates of Analysis.

Safety Data Sheets.

Allergen statements.

Lot numbers.

Supplier documentation.

I started pulling them out and reading.

And I found something I desperately needed after months of finding things that made life more complicated.

I found something good.

There it was in the documentation.

Kosher Vegetable Glycerin.

Coconut-derived cleanser.

Plant-derived cleanser.

Sunflower oil.

Coconut oil.

Palm-derived ingredients.

Plant oils.

I didn't suddenly select these ingredients because Chappy developed Alpha-Gal.

I’d chosen these bases before we knew any of this.

I chose them because I liked them.

And now I was looking at those same choices through completely different eyes.

But I also found ingredients where the name alone wasn’t enough for me anymore.

And that’s when something changed.

I don't just want to know what it is.

I want to know where it came from.

Take glycerin.

Seeing glycerin on an ingredient label doesn’t necessarily tell you where it comes from.

That’s a distinction I never thought much about before.

Now I do.

And that question has become bigger than glycerin.

When an ingredient’s origin matters, I want documentation.

I want to ask the supplier.

I want to know what they know.

And when they don’t know, I want to tell you that, too.

Because Alpha-Gal taught us something I don’t think either of us will ever forget:

Sometimes the ingredient name is only the beginning of the question.

And that realization is why you’re reading the first article in a brand-new section of our blog.

Behind the Label

This isn’t a medical blog.

I’m certainly not going to diagnose anyone.

And I’m not going to promise that one of our products is “safe” for every person with Alpha-Gal—or anyone else.

That’s not a promise I can responsibly make.

Instead, Behind the Label will be about questions.

What is this ingredient?

Where can it come from?

Where does ours come from?

What documentation do we have?

What does the research actually say?

And sometimes:

What don’t we know yet?

Because I’m learning that saying “I don’t know, but I’m going to find out” is a whole lot more valuable than pretending to have an answer.

This wasn’t a product idea I went looking for.

It started because something happened to someone I love.

But maybe something useful can come from everything we’ve learned.

Maybe someone will pick up one of our products someday and wonder:

Where did this ingredient come from?

And instead of making them hunt for the answer...

we’ll have already asked.

We’ll document it.

And we’ll tell you what we found.

Welcome to Behind the Label.

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Our family’s experience is shared here for informational purposes only and is not medical advice. Alpha-Gal Syndrome can cause serious and potentially life-threatening allergic reactions. If you think you may have AGS or are experiencing allergic reactions, please speak with a qualified healthcare professional. Severe allergic reactions require emergency medical care.

Continue reading: Alpha-Gal: What We Learned When We Started Doing the Research → coming next