Who Is Alpha Celiac Gal? My 10-Year Journey with Celiac Disease + Alpha Gal Syndrome

If you found this page because you just got an Alpha Gal diagnosis and you are standing in your kitchen at 11pm reading food labels and wondering how any of this is going to work, then this post is for you. If you found this page because you have had Celiac Disease for years and you are still trying to figure out how to eat well when you travel, this post is also for you. If you found this page because you just typed “Alpha Gal AND Celiac Disease” into a search bar and nothing useful came up, you are in exactly the right place. Welcome.

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The short version.

Hi there, I’m Nichole. I live in southwest Arkansas, am in my early-forties. I have two kids (that I homeschool), a serious love of travel, and two of the most complicated dietary conditions you can have at the same time: Alpha Gal Syndrome and Celiac Disease. Talk about tricky business when it comes to travel!

Alpha Gal is a tick-bite-triggered allergy to mammalian meat and byproducts. Beef, pork, lamb, venison, and many dairy products are off the table. Literally and figuratively. Celiac Disease is an autoimmune condition in which gluten destroys the small intestine. The overlap between “can contain gluten” and “can contain mammal products” covers roughly ninety percent of what the average American eats without thinking about it. Then, add in the bonus food allergies I developed and it’s a whole barrel of fun.

I have been navigating this combination for over a decade. Through it all, I have learned that with the right preparation, the right questions, and the right mindset, and the right amount of flexibility, you can eat extraordinarily well.

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The longer version.

I was a competitive swimmer and a scholarship collegiate athlete. I ate everything, because I trained hard enough to need to, and food was fuel and nothing more complicated than that. Zero food allergies for the first twenty six years of my life.

My husband and I went backpacking in Arkansas (we lived in Iowa) when I was seven months pregnant. I got a tick bite. We brushed it off because that is what you do when you are the kind of people who think backpacking while seven months pregnant is completely reasonable. My son was born healthy and wonderful. I didn’t think about that tick again.

A few weeks after he arrived, I started getting sick after eating pork. Chills, sweating, what felt like full flu symptoms. It took me longer than I would like to admit to connect “ate pork” to “feel like death,” because that is not a sentence any previously healthy adult expects to say. I cut out pork. Then beef started doing the same thing. Then we moved fourteen hours from Iowa to southwest Arkansas, and right after my daughter was born, everything escalated. Avocados. Bananas. Mushrooms. Lettuce. Eggs. One by one, more foods joined the list.

I also started having episodes of crushing abdominal pain, and I went to a doctor hoping for answers. What I got instead was the “three F’s.” Fat, fertile, female. That was his clinical assessment of why I probably needed my gallbladder out. I was thirty-two and not obese. Several expensive tests later, it was not my gallbladder.

Finding answers.

I eventually flew to Phoenix to see a naturopathic physician, out of pocket, because I had run out of answers closer to home. She took one look at my symptom history and said the thing no one had thought to say: let’s test you for Celiac. The blood test came back positive. An endoscopy confirmed it and I was set on a path to find clarity and answers, so I followed up with more tests. The official Alpha Gal Syndrome diagnosis came right after, via another blood test.

Here is the part that still gets me about the Celiac diagnosis: I had no obvious reaction to wheat. No bloating, no immediate symptoms. Atypical presentation. My body was taking damage for years while I had zero idea.

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The choice.

After the diagnoses, I had a decision to make. I had always traveled. It was part of who I was, who we were as a family. We were now living in southwest Arkansas, which is genuinely beautiful, but not exactly a metropolitan food allergy hub. My local options for safe eating were limited. I could let that shrink my world. Or I could figure it out.

I chose to figure it out. I kept traveling with my kids, learning as I went. I got good at calling ahead, at reading menus like legal documents, at having the kitchen conversation without making it a whole thing. Eventually, I figured out which questions to ask and how to figure out the puzzle.

Ten years later, I have eaten my way through some extraordinary places. Safely, deliciously, and without apology. Chefs have come out to my table and I have had meals in restaurants that I will remember for the rest of my life, despite the restrictions, or maybe, it’s actually because of them.

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What this blog is.

Alpha Celiac Gal is a travel and lifestyle blog for women who eat differently and refuse to stay home. It’s adventure travel, luxury travel, and all things in between. It’s a resource for people with food allergies, but most specifically it’s a lifestyle, travel blog for Alpha Gal and a lifestyle, travel blog for Celiac Disease.

It is not survival-mode content. It is not a list of the five safe snacks to pack in your carry-on (though I will tell you those too). It is the restaurant in a unique place where the chef spent twenty minutes with me to make sure every course was safe. It is the hotel that actually got it right. It is the solo trip I almost did not take and going was absolutely worth it.

I am in my early-forties. My kids are growing up and I refuse to slow down. If anything, the adventure is just getting started.

If you have Celiac, Alpha Gal, or both, you have just found your person. If you are newly diagnosed and terrified about what travel even looks like now, you have really just found your person.