Alpha Gal Allergy: You Were Told Nothing Could Be Done, But the Published Evidence Says Otherwise

By Dr. Donald Liebell

A medically documented, neurologically based procedure exists, which could help your body naturally resolve the abnormal response behind alpha gal allergy. 

Managing reactions after they’ve already happened does not solve your problem. Correcting the underlying cause of abnormal immune system allergic response is the key.

Here’s the story:

In 2013, I began providing a U.S. patented, neurology-based, drug-free treatment called Soliman Auricular Allergy Treatment (SAAT). 

By 2019, I had successfully treated many people who had been suffering from the supposedly untreatable alpha gal (meat-related). 

How is it done?  

I identify patient-specific neurological points on the outer ear and place tiny, electrically conductive microfilaments at those locations. They remain comfortably secured in place for approximately three weeks and are then removed at home. It’s like finding loose wires that aren’t conducting electricity, and wiring them back together.

There is no allergy shot, no injected allergen, and no medication used to suppress your immune system. 

The purpose is to use the remarkable neurological access of the outer ear to help your nervous system correct the abnormal immune response that is driving the allergy, naturally.

In 2020, the American Journal of Biomedical and Life Sciences published my results with a whopping 155 cases, and an astonishing patient-reported success rate. 

It was the world’s first clinical investigation of successful treatment for people suffering from alpha gal allergy. 

A second published case series followed in 2021. Together, the two medical publications encompass 292 alpha gal patients.

Beyond documented academic medical reporting, thousands more have reported that they've gotten better through everyday clinical practice, sparked largely by word-of-mouth referrals from people who had already been treated. 

Despite this, the public continues to be told by supposedly trustworthy and respected institutions and individuals that “nothing can be done.” 

This is scandalous. It hurts people. It is a lie. It is unforgivable. 

The great news is that you don’t have to suffer when help is already available—even if your doctor doesn’t know it.

The public needed answers. 

The public needed the truth. 

Whether medical academics and uniformed doctors can handle it or not is another story.

That’s why I was asked to write the book. 

Biting Back: The Alpha Gal Allergy Solution explains the fascinating science behind the treatment and the patient success stories and a high success rate documented in medical journals.  

It also reveals the ugly history behind this medical condition. Biting Back exposes the scandal of how this dreaded condition has been mishandled and how documented progress continues to be ignored. 

However, you don’t need to read the book to get help right away! 

People travel from across the United States to the Liebell Clinic in Virginia Beach to overcome alpha gal allergy. Most do so because somebody they know and trust already came to see us, got well, and urged them to do the same.  Others seek the Liebell Clinic to overcome alpha gal allergy by referral from other healthcare professionals. 

I also humbly but proudly report that they do so because I launched the alpha gal SAAT treatment movement, performed and published the first clinical investigation of successful treatment, continued treating this patient population day after day for years, and eventually wrote the definitive book on the subject. 

Alpha gal allergy turns ordinary life into daily non-stop threat management. Alpha gal is much more than a meat allergy. Calling alpha gal a meat allergy is like calling a hurricane a few raindrops.

You read every label. 

You question medications, supplements, restaurants, cosmetics, household products, dairy, gelatin, carrageenan, cooking fumes, and cross-contamination. 

You may carry emergency medication everywhere while wondering whether the next exposure will be inconvenient, frightening, or dangerous.

Avoidance and rescue medications remain essential safety measures, but they do not correct the abnormal response. 

If you have been told that avoiding mammal products and preventing another tick bite are your only options, you were given an incomplete, unacceptable, and dangerously misleading account of the evidence.

Published clinical evidence documents successful treatment from SAAT at the Liebell Clinic. My 2020 case series and the second publication (Bernal/Soliman) in 2021 include 292 patients altogether. 

While this doesn’t guarantee your result, it establishes that improvement has been documented in peer-reviewed medical journals for a very substantial number of patients.  

This justifies realistic hope and expectations based on published clinical results. 

The treatment supports your nervous system so your body can naturally resolve the abnormal immune response. Children sometimes outgrow allergies because the body can stop producing that response. 

SAAT is a precise means of triggering that same type of natural correction in a matter of weeks through auricular cranial neuromodulation, meaning neurological treatment through the nerve supply of the outer ear.

I provide treatment for people who have been diagnosed with, or have a history suggestive of, alpha gal allergy. However, I do not serve as your allergist. I do not provide allergy shots, prescribe allergy medication, diagnose emergencies, or manage anaphylaxis. Those responsibilities remain with your allergist, primary-care physician, or emergency medical team.

My role is to evaluate and treat your nervous system using the patented procedure. It is directed toward what the evidence suggests is a cranial nerve mechanism associated with allergy.

SAAT is not post-reaction symptom support. It is directed toward correcting the faulty neuro-immune response that produces future reactions. 

It is intended to support the nervous system so the body can naturally resolve the abnormal immune response that makes ordinary mammalian substances and chemically similar substances inappropriately register as threats.

I will advise you to continue carrying prescribed emergency medication and following your existing medical safety plan. Call 911 if you develop symptoms of a potentially life-threatening reaction.

Why Alpha Gal Patients Travel Across America to See Me

My work with chronic tick-borne illness began in 2008 after I was forced to search for answers for my wife (and Liebell Clinic office manager, Sheila Liebell), who was suffering from chronic Lyme disease.

I added SAAT to my practice in 2013. I did not enter alpha gal care after the condition became widely known. I was already treating it successfully before the public discussion exploded. I recognized that patients with tick-associated alpha gal allergy were responding in a way that deserved formal medical documentation.

I was horrified to learn how badly this allergy had been professionally handled, and equally frustrated that major research institutions I approached were not receptive to collaborating on formal studies that could bring this treatment to far more people.

My 2020 publication grew directly from that clinical work, which I conducted myself without institutional research funding or government funding. 

I became the first clinician to formally investigate and publish successful corrective outcomes for this condition.

Since then, I have continued caring for people with widely different reaction histories, exposure patterns, laboratory findings, and levels of sensitivity. I have now treated many thousands of people with SAAT.

That is why people come to the Liebell Clinic from across the United States. Experience with this procedure remains uneven, and the details matter:

• Providing SAAT since 2013
• Author of the first published alpha gal SAAT clinical investigation documenting successful treatment (2020)
• Thousands of patients treated with SAAT
• Licensed in acupuncture by the Virginia Board of Medicine
• In clinical practice since 1993
• Invited keynote speaker at the 2019 Virginia Tech Alpha Gal Symposium
• Author of Biting Back: The Alpha Gal Allergy Solution – Scandal, Science, Success Story (2026)

I’m proud that my Virginia Beach office has become a national destination for this depth of experience.

Calling alpha gal a red meat allergy makes a complicated condition sound deceptively simple.

The alpha gal carbohydrate is only part of the exposure picture. Patients may also react to mammalian meat proteins and to microscopic amounts of materials derived from cattle, pigs, sheep, goats, and other mammals. These substances can appear in foods, medications, supplements, personal-care products, household materials, and medical products.

Carrageenan adds another layer of complexity. This red-seaweed derivative appears in thousands of food and non-food products and can matter clinically for some patients. 

Gelatin, dairy, fumes from cooking, mammal-derived excipients, and ingredients hidden under unfamiliar names may also be relevant.

Each patient presents a different combination of triggers and reactions.

This is why my evaluation is not built around a single food, one laboratory number, or one identical procedure for everybody. 

It is about YOU.

One person may react to beef but tolerate dairy. Another may react severely to gelatin, struggle with airborne exposure, or remain sick from substances that were never recognized as mammalian or clinically related.

Alpha gal demands patient-specific reasoning.

The outer ear (auricle) is neurologically distinctive. 

It receives sensory input from several nerves, including the auricular branch of the vagus nerve, a cranial nerve that originates in the brain and participates in communication among the brain, immune system, digestive tract, heart, lungs, and other organs.

That direct cranial connection gives the outer ear exceptional neurological importance as a site for evaluation and treatment. The evidence and repeated clinical response suggest that alpha gal allergy can be understood as an electrical malfunction that produces a biochemical problem. 

The biochemical expression is the abnormal immune response and resulting allergic reactions. With SAAT, I look for patient-specific bioelectrical disconnections associated with the substances being evaluated.

I explain the ear treatment microfilaments as tiny wire connectors placed where the patient’s own wires are not connecting correctly. They bridge those abnormal connections, much as a broken wire must be reconnected or a tripped circuit reset before the system can function normally.

When the bioelectrical malfunction is corrected, the biochemical malfunction expressed as allergic reactivity may fade away naturally.

Medical science has not yet mapped exactly how this neurological disruption develops or every biological step by which the correction occurs. That is a research question, not a unique shortcoming of SAAT. Medicine has often used effective medications and procedures before mechanisms were fully understood. For example, aspirin entered widespread medical use around the turn of the twentieth century, yet its prostaglandin mechanism was not established until decades later. Clinical use came first. Mechanistic understanding followed.

The same principle matters here: clinical benefit can precede complete mechanistic explanation. Additional clinical trials would strengthen the evidence, refine patient selection, and help more people gain access. They are not what transforms an already observed clinical result into reality. The absence of a complete mechanistic explanation does not erase documented outcomes. It identifies the next questions serious researchers should investigate.

SAAT is Soliman Auricular Allergy Treatment, a U.S. patented procedure developed by Nader Soliman, MD.

Your appointment takes approximately one hour and begins with something medicine too often rushes past: your actual story.

• How long have you had problems? 
• What are your symptoms? 
• What happens when you react? 
• How sensitive or easily affected are you?
• What foods, medications, fumes, supplements, or other exposures have caused trouble? 
• How many doctors did you see before being correctly diagnosed? 
• What have you been told, read, or seen in the media about alpha gal? 
• What have you been told about your alpha gal-specific IgE blood test result?

By the way, there is no such thing as one set of “alpha gal symptoms.” There are only YOUR symptoms. 

Everyone is different. 

My evaluation is detailed, patient-specific, and condition-specific. I typically identify and address approximately six to eight pinpoint areas associated with the individual patient’s response pattern. 

The substances addressed include components associated with the alpha gal carbohydrate, specific mammalian meat proteins, mammal-derived materials encountered in everyday products, carrageenan, and other substances relevant to your history.

I use specialized clinical methods and electrical detection to determine precisely where each patient’s abnormal responses appear in the outer ear. The locations can differ from person to person and from substance to substance.

At the identified locations, I insert sterile Seirin Spinex semi-permanent ear acupuncture needles. These are the stainless steel treatment microfilaments, the tiny wire connectors (see above photos).

However, this is not Chinese acupuncture, and you'll notice I am not referring to it as acupuncture or ear acupuncture. Auricular therapy, meaning treatment through the outer ear, is not an offshoot of traditional Chinese medicine.

The French physician Nogier (who introduced auricular therapy in the 1950s) figured out that acupuncture needles would be the perfect electrically conductive material to address the body through its complex and extraordinary neurologic connections of the ear.  

You're not leaving the Liebell Clinic with knitting needles sticking out of your ears! The microfilaments are hair-thin and approximately 3 millimeters long. They lie flat beneath the surface of the ear and are secured with overlapping layers of specialized protective tape bonded with medical adhesive. Unless someone is looking very closely, nobody will see them (See closeup photo below).

Most patients describe little to nothing felt during insertion, or only a brief pinch. The microfilaments continuously bridge the precisely identified neuro-electrical disconnections for the required three weeks. 

That means the treatment goes home with you. You do not have to return for daily or weekly treatments, which is one reason I am able to treat people who travel to Virginia Beach from across the country.

Patients normally continue their daily routines while the microfilaments remain covered and in place. When the treatment period is complete, they are removed at home as instructed.

Most Liebell Clinic alpha gal patients have needed only one visit. Follow-up or additional treatment for the same condition is rarely necessary.

To be crystal clear, we do not instruct patients to intentionally reintroduce foods or purposely test exposure. Accidental exposure happens enough on its own. 

Auricular therapy is an internationally-recognized medical discipline with decades of published research. 

Modern auricular therapy was developed by French physician Paul Nogier, MD (1908-1996), beginning in 1956. His work established the outer ear as a clinically useful neurological bridge to treatment throughout the body and launched a medical specialty that has since generated a substantial body of published research.

Dr. Nogier’s background in electrical engineering and physics strongly influenced the way he approached the ear. He reasoned that electrically conductive material could be used therapeutically in areas demonstrating abnormal electrical conductivity. 

His development of semi-permanent ear acupuncture needles grew from that work and from his interest in acupuncture and other non-drug medical disciplines.

The history is particularly interesting because the direction of influence is often misunderstood. Chinese acupuncturists did not originally teach modern auricular therapy to Dr. Nogier. Rather, after Nogier published his ear map and treatment concepts in the 1950s, his work was rapidly studied and incorporated into Chinese acupuncture practice.

For decades, auricular therapy has been practiced throughout the world using several forms of stimulation, including manual pressure, pellets, magnets, lasers, electrical methods, and semi-permanent devices.

Dr. Nader Soliman (an anesthesiologist) advanced Nogier’s work by investigating the neurological basis of allergy and developing the procedure now known as SAAT. His method was granted U.S. Patent No. 10,596,065 for the treatment of allergies and autoimmune diseases.

I began training in auricular therapy with Dr. Soliman in 2007, and he taught me SAAT in 2013. The procedure is designed to maintain a precise electrical bridge continuously for approximately three weeks, long enough for the body to reorganize its abnormal response.

In 2020, I published Effect of Soliman Auricular Allergy Treatment on IgE-Mediated Reactions Due to Exposure to Mammalian Meat Oligosaccharide, Galactose-alpha-1,3-Galactose in the American Journal of Biomedical and Life Sciences.

Among 155 Liebell Clinic patients providing follow-up information, 94.8 percent reported resolved or appreciably diminished sensitivity following SAAT.

In 2021, Bernal, Soliman and colleagues published a second retrospective case series in Medical Acupuncture. It included 137 patients treated at two clinical sites, including Dr. Soliman’s. Follow-up outcome data were available for 126 patients, and 121 reported symptom remission following SAAT.

Together, the two published case series encompass 292 patients. Case series are not randomized controlled trials, and self-reported outcomes have recognized limitations. However, the sheer number of patients getting better was extraordinary and impossible to ignore.

My everyday practice experience since 2013 has remained consistent with that favorable pattern. I estimate that approximately 80 percent of the alpha gal patients who now come to me were referred by someone they know and trust who credits my treatment with helping that person overcome the problem. That referral pattern is not a university study, but in my patients' opinions, it's the most meaningful real-world evidence accumulated over many years.

No responsible doctor can promise your result. You can, however, weigh published case-series evidence, continuing clinical experience, and a practice sustained primarily by direct personal referrals. That is a sound basis for calling the clinic and finding out whether SAAT may be appropriate for you.

SAAT is not a drug or injection, and there is no pharmaceutical product to sell. That reality also helps explain why funding for large clinical trials and widespread mainstream medical interest has been poor.

I have published the research, written the book, sent my research and Biting Back: The Alpha Gal Allergy Solution to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and delivered the keynote address at the 2019 Virginia Tech Alpha Gal Symposium. I have done what one individual doctor or scientist can reasonably do to place the evidence before medicine and the public.

You do not have to keep suffering while institutions decline to seriously investigate a published treatment approach.

Misinformation and repetition of the statement that “nothing can be done” do not cancel the evidence.

Call 757-631-9799 to See If SAAT May Be Appropriate for You

There is no advantage in spending another six months doing exactly what you have already been doing while wondering whether SAAT could help you. If alpha gal has narrowed your diet, complicated medications and everyday products, interfered with restaurants and travel, or left you wondering what the next accidental exposure might do, you already know what this condition can take from you:

• It takes freedom.
• It takes spontaneity.
• It can turn an ordinary meal, a medication, a restaurant, or even the smell of food cooking into something you have to think about.
• You have already learned how to try to avoid mammal ingredients.
• You have already learned how to read labels.
• You have already learned how to carry emergency medication and prepare for the possibility of another reaction.

The question now is whether you want to do something more than manage the problem.

• Not whether you believe every word on this page.
  
• Not whether every detail of the neurological mechanism has already been mapped.
  
• Simply whether the published evidence and clinical experience are strong enough for you to find out whether SAAT may help you get your ordinary life back. 

SAAT is not a guarantee, and no responsible doctor should ever tell you otherwise.

What I can offer you is a patient-specific neurological treatment I have provided since 2013, backed by published clinical outcomes, years of continuing experience, and the real-world referrals that have brought people to the Liebell Clinic from across the country.

For most alpha gal patients, the process begins and ends with one approximately one-hour appointment. For patients traveling to Virginia Beach, this is not a weekly treatment program. The treatment remains with you for approximately three weeks after you leave the office.

That is the decision in front of you.

You are not being asked to gamble your health, stop your medications, abandon your allergist, or intentionally expose yourself to anything. 

You are being asked to make a phone call and find out whether one appointment might help you stop organizing your life around alpha gal.

Calling the Liebell Clinic does not commit you to treatment. Speak with Sheila or Barbara, ask your questions, explain your situation, and find out whether scheduling makes sense for you.