As I understand it, it's an immune system response rather than an allergen: your body sees the alpha-gal proteins as an invader, and develops an immune-system r

As I understand it, it's an immune system response rather than an allergen: your body sees the alpha-gal proteins as an invader, and develops an immune-system response to kill them off. So if you don't stimulate antigen production for a while, your body "forgets" and stops reacting to it. The problem is that that timetable for "forgetting" is different for everyone—some people get over it fast, some people it fades, and some people it never changes and no one yet seems to understand why. The allergist that treated me is one of the docs on several of the principal studies about it, and he's been seeing patients with this for the last 15-20 years. He said he's seen people that would react when Wendy's contaminated their fryer oil with a dropped hamburger, and one guy who's a dairy farmer that wouldn't react to his own cattle's products but would react to anything else. It's truly a weird reaction!