• I was having frequent bouts of what I thought was food poisoning.
• A blood test revealed that I had alpha-gal syndrome, which causes an allergic reaction to meat.
• The condition, often caused by a tick bite, has caused me to change my routines drastically.

When I broke out in hives on a Friday afternoon, I didn’t know what was going on inside my body. This wasn’t the first time something like this happened, so I knew all the questions the doctor would ask: New detergent? No. New lotion? No. New soap? No. New food? No.

When it came to new foods, I had consciously decided to stay away them in recent months. This restriction came about because I kept being jolted awake in the middle of the night with what I thought was food poisoning.

These frequent sicknesses made me start to worry about food safety. When I did eat out, I always made sure the meat was fully cooked before taking a bite (which is especially challenging because I am colorblind). At home, I religiously used a meat thermometer when cooking to make sure the meat was cooked through. I always wash my hands after touching meat, and I never let food sit out for longer than two hours. No matter the steps I took, I was still getting sick.

With the arrival of hives, I was determined to figure out what was going on. After sending in pictures of my stomach full of hives to my dermatologist’s office, I was ordered to take a blood test. After that, I finally got my diagnosis: alpha-gal syndrome.

What is alpha-gal syndrome?

Alpha-gal syndrome is a meat allergy often caused by being bitten by a lone star tick. I live in Tennessee, where getting tick bites has been common my whole life. This tick bite likely happened when I was cutting my grass.

Unlike other food allergies, people with alpha-gal often do not have a reaction until several hours later, when food is being digested. That delayed reaction is why it is so hard to diagnose alpha-gal without a blood test. Looking back on that afternoon when I developed hives, I remember having had a burger for lunch. By the time I got home for work that day, the allergy had set in, and hives were appearing on my skin.

This syndrome is becoming more common

I was so happy to have a name for what was happening to me and I’ve learned that am not alone in experiencing these symptoms. According to the CDC, as many as 450,000 Americans might have alpha-gal, with many people not realizing they have it.

The number of cases is expected to continue to rise as more people become aware of alpha-gal and lone star ticks spread across more parts of the United States. At the end of May, the Department of Health and Human Services announced its intention to focus on reducing tick-borne illnesses, such as alpha-gal and Lyme disease.

What it’s like to live with alpha-gal

Compared to others with alph-gal syndrome, I have it pretty easy. Some people are extremely sensitive to any type of mammalian byproduct, such as gelatin or milk. For me, I can still drink milk, eat ice cream, and be exposed to those byproducts.

I’m also lucky that when I have an allergic reaction, it just feels like I have food poisoning. While it is extremely uncomfortable, I have not experienced any type of anaphylaxis. However, that is always a risk every time I ingest my allergen, so I’ve been told to carry an EpiPen. I was diagnosed about 18 months ago, and I’m still getting used to keeping it with me. I’m trying to do a better job of remembering to bring it whenever I leave the house.

I no longer get hives when symptoms occur; now I just feel like I have food poisoning, which I treat with rest and hydration. After 24 to 48 hours, I am usually back to normal.

I rarely eat outside of my home now

The hardest part of living with this diagnosis has been my inability to eat outside my home.

I have learned the hard way about the potential for cross-contamination at restaurants. There are now only a handful of places I order food from, and most of those are fast-food places. Fast food places usually cook the food the same way across their locations, so it’s easier to find out if the air fryer they use is also being used for any type of red meat. Fast food places also do a great job with their allergen menus that you can easily find online.

In some ways, being diagnosed with alpha-gal has made my life better. I was forced to create new routines at home to drastically increase the number of homemade meals and reduce eating out. Creating new routines is something I especially struggle with. It takes a great deal of executive function and self-regulation to both plan ahead and follow through. I had told my wife for years that I would overhaul how we plan and make dinner, but I never did. As someone who studies executive function for a living, I knew that getting a new routine started would make my life easier in the end. Being forced to do it was the push that I desperately needed. It gave me the motivation to finally create a system.

Now, we eat almost exclusively at home. This allows me to control all the ingredients we’re consuming. I’ve become great at reading food labels. I already had practice because our kids have dealt with food allergies, but I’ve really had to pay attention to ingredients because red meat is not required to be listed as an allergen on packaging. Sometimes lard is in refried beans, tortillas, and pie crusts. So I am always on the lookout for ingredients that might trigger a reaction.

I’ve stepped up my cooking and baking game. For cooking, we strive to keep the freezer stocked with precooked chicken and ground turkey that can be easily added to a bowl with rice and vegetables. So when those times come when we would have ordered out, I can quickly defrost the meat and have a meal ready for my wife and me.

This has been the most helpful as dinner time is always chaotic with two little kids running around. Now that I can no longer eat ground beef or pork, we get all of our protein from chicken or turkey. When we’re looking for a burger, we eat turkey or chicken burgers. We quickly learned that imitation burgers do not taste good to us.

My life is different, but not bad

What started out as a huge inconvenience, and it still is, has led to some changes in my life that I’m proud of. Creating new routines is hard, especially while raising young children. It takes a while from starting a new routine to making the routine stick. But these new routines have made a huge difference in my life.

Thanks to the steps I have taken, I have not had an alpha-gal episode in 6 months. I’ve continued to learn about this disease, and I’m told that there’s a chance that my allergy will go away over time. If it does ever go my way, I don’t think I would change the good habits I have created.

• Apollo’s chief economist said there’s “zero evidence of AI-related job losses.”
• A parade of tech leaders celebrated that take over the weekend.
• At least a dozen major companies, meanwhile, have cited AI in their decision to lay off workers this year.

Anyone worried that AI will replace them should take a deep breath, at least according to Apollo Global Management’s chief economist.

In a blog post on Friday, Torsten Sløk said there is “zero evidence of job losses because of AI,” citing the ADP National Employment Report. Instead, he said, companies are hiring candidates who have AI skills.

“Many firms are hiring AI implementation experts, and the data center buildout is putting upward pressure on salaries for AI experts and on prices of semiconductors, equipment, and energy,” Sløk said. “The bottom line is that the AI spending boom is stoking both employment and inflation.”

Sløk echoed that sentiment in an April blog post, writing that “cheaper inputs don’t shrink industries. Instead, AI is going to increase both productivity and employment.”

The latest ADP report found that private companies added almost 110,000 more people to their payrolls in April.

Anxiety that AI will eradicate the average job is everywhere, stoked in part by those behind the technology. While Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman have recently changed their tune as they gear up for their respective IPOs, they have both warned for years that AI could upend entire job categories. Amodei famously said last year that AI could wipe out half of all entry-level white-collar jobs.

Sløk’s analysis resonated with some figures in the AI industry, including Box CEO Aaron Levie, Dell CEO Michael Dell, and White House AI and Crypto Czar David Sacks, who all agreed with his view in X posts over the weekend. David Solomon, CEO of Goldman Sachs, also made a similar argument last week in a New York Times opinion piece.

An EY survey of 240 financial service CEOs, meanwhile, found that about 60% thought investing in AI would maintain or increase their staff head count in 2026.

These optimistic takes, however, seem to clash with recent reality. At least a dozen major companies have cited AI as a factor in staff layoffs this year. In February, Block CEO Jack Dorsey said the company was slashing its workforce from over 10,000 to under 6,000.

“We’re already seeing that the intelligence tools we’re creating and using, paired with smaller and flatter teams, are enabling a new way of working which fundamentally changes what it means to build and run a company,” Dorsey said in a memo shared to X. “i had two options: cut gradually over months or years as this shift plays out, or be honest about where we are and act on it now.”

Cisco, Atlassian, Cloudflare, Coinbase, IBM, and Snap are also among the companies that have cited AI as a reason for layoffs.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, one of the pillars of the AI industry, has criticized companies that blame AI for layoffs. “I think the narrative that connects AI to job loss for many of the CEOs that are doing it is just too lazy,” Huang told a media outlet in Singapore last week.

Altman has called the practice of blaming AI to reduce staff “AI washing.”

In his blog post on Friday, Sløk said that, in his view, the current employment climate is an example of the “Jevons paradox,” an economic theory that says as new technology increases the efficiency of a resource, the more that resource is consumed.

In this case, that resource would be human workers.

“It is Jevons paradox playing out in real time: cheaper technology is creating more demand and more jobs,” Sløk wrote.

• Erin Vlack was 280 pounds overweight and resolved to get in shape and change her lifestyle.
• She took things further when she moved from North Carolina to Spain to be closer to her son.
• The single mom told Business Insider that she is much happier and healthier after the switch.

This story is based on an interview with Erin Vlack, 48, a pharmaceutical supply chain consultant living in Valencia, Spain. It has been edited for length and clarity.

In April last year, two months after leaving my steady job in pharmaceuticals, I was in discussion with another company about a full-time position.

It was tempting to accept the senior directorship they offered, but I dismissed the idea at the last minute.

My 25-year-old son, Gavin, was studying medicine in Spain, and I missed him so much. “What if I moved to Europe to be with him?” I asked myself.

I spoke to immigration lawyers

I reached out to immigration lawyers that very afternoon. I’m a great believer in striking when the iron is hot, before excuses creep in.

Now, just over 12 months later, I’m renting a three-bedroom house less than 20 minutes away from Gavin in Valencia, the happiest and healthiest I’ve ever been.

Still, I’m no stranger to reinvention. A decade ago, at 5ft 5in, I weighed 430 pounds — 280 pounds overweight for my height — and wore size 28 clothing. I struggled to catch my breath when I did anything active, like taking my kid to the park.

Both my parents died within a year of each other, and I binged and comfort ate out of grief. I was a single mom, and there were financial issues that left me unable to afford fresh food all the time.

I’d buy things from Walmart and the Dollar Store, which weren’t very healthy. Before long, I looked in the mirror and thought, “Oh my God, what have you done to your body?”

I had a mastectomy

The shock was enough to make me follow the Keto diet and start exercising. I lost 172 pounds before having gastric bypass surgery in 2022, which helped me get down to 140 pounds and size six jeans.

In 2024, I had a bilateral mastectomy and reconstruction because breast cancer runs in both sides of my family.

But the biggest change by far was selling my home near Raleigh, North Carolina, donating my property to charity, and arriving at the airport in Madrid with three suitcases.

I quickly found my bearings and my house with Gavin’s assistance. I traveled on a so-called “non-lucrative visa,” which means you come to Spain with only your passive income and savings.

Now, I’m waiting to convert to a highly qualified, high-value immigrant status that will allow me to be a digital nomad.

I’m fluent in Spanish now

As soon as I get my new visa, I’ll plow my energy into the clinical trials supply company I founded. It feels exciting to be working for myself.

I’m in it for the duration and plan to stay in Spain, where I’m fluent in the language, until I can apply for long-term residency. The only things I really miss about the US are my friends and my sports car.

It’s great to be so close to Gavin again. Although he’s busy with his studies, we make time for meals and hugs.

We recently returned from a weekend trip when we talked, cooked, and enjoyed a couple of glasses of wine.

Food here is healthy

Everything is easygoing here. You’ll walk through a plaza where a group of kids is playing while parents enjoy a coffee and casually kick the ball back to them.

The produce is fresh, and people walk everywhere. I look after my health by going to the gym six times a week and doing yoga outside on my terrace.

Every morning, I wake to the magnificent views of the mountains near the city. I’ve never felt more content and settled in my life.

• Many of my favorite hair, skin, and hygiene products are from Trader Joe’s and cost less than $10.
• I use Trader Joe’s fluoride-free toothpaste and lemongrass-coconut body oil every day.
• The best Trader Joe’s beauty products include Enrich moisturizing face lotion and hair oil.

I used to think I had to spend a lot on beauty products if I wanted quality, but Trader Joe’s has completely changed my mind.

Typically, I stick to food when I shop at the grocery chain, but on one trip, a $6 hair oil caught my eye. Although I follow a tight budget, it felt like a great price, and I decided to try it.

I couldn’t believe how much it seemed to improve the health of my hair after just one use.

After that, I became hooked on trying Trader Joe’s hair, skin, and hygiene products. Fortunately, many of them are under $10.

There have been a few misses, but here are the ones I’ve loved enough to make part of my daily and weekly routines.

Trader Joe’s hair oil is a key part of my morning routine.

Each morning, I massage a drop of this oil throughout my hair. It makes it look so shiny in between washes, rather than greasy.

The moisturizing mix of ingredients, including argan oil, moringa seed oil, chia seed oil, and vitamin E, has also been helping my hair recover from when I ironed it daily while I was teaching.

Speaking of ironing, the oil is also designed to help protect hair against heat damage up to 450°F.

Some beauty fans even say this is comparable to the popular Ouai hair oil that costs about $30 for 1.5 ounces. Meanwhile, a 1-ounce bottle of Trader Joe’s costs $6.

The Enrich moisturizing face lotion doesn’t break me out.

At just $4 for a 4-ounce bottle, I was skeptical about Trader Joe’s Enrich face lotion.

However, I’ve lived in Florida my entire life and have never found a facial moisturizer with SPF that doesn’t break me out — until this one.

In addition to SPF 15, the fragrance-free lotion also contains vitamins A, C, and E.

I’ve been using Enrich under my makeup in the morning, and since it’s so inexpensive, I don’t feel bad applying it to my arms as well for some extra TLC.

Trader Joe’s lemongrass-coconut body oil doesn’t leave me feeling greasy.

I’ve been on the hunt for the perfect body oil to apply after the shower when my skin is damp. This is the first one I’ve tried that leaves me feeling moisturized, not like a layer of grease is sitting on top of my skin.

It’s made with lemongrass oil, virgin coconut oil, sweet almond oil, jojoba oil, and olive oil, and I appreciate the natural ingredients.

The scent feels cheery and uplifting, and many consider lemongrass oil to be a natural mosquito repellent. With summer around the corner, that’s a real perk.

Best of all, Trader Joe’s body oil feels super affordable at $4 for a 4.8-ounce bottle.

I use Trader Joe’s bonding shampoo and conditioners for a salon-level wash.

This shampoo and conditioner duo from Trader Joe’s leaves my hair feeling utterly healed from that aforementioned heat damage.

I wash my scalp first with a gentle dandruff shampoo, then shampoo and condition with Trader Joe’s bonding set. This is a strategy my dermatologist told me to try — the medicated shampoo cleans my scalp, while the regular shampoo nourishes my hair.

This routine makes my hair feel and look like I got a salon wash and blowout when it’s dry. It may be because these products contain ingredients like hydrolyzed keratin and silk, which can help strengthen hair and make it shine.

At $8 per 12-ounce bottle, this duo cost me $16 total, but the quality reminds me of the expensive salon sets I’ve bought from my hairdresser in the past.

Some shoppers even swear these are dupes for more expensive bonding shampoos, which can cost twice (or even three times) as much.

I’ve been using this $1 find as a luxurious hand soap.

I couldn’t believe how luxurious Trader Joe’s Next to Godliness oatmeal-and-honey vegetable soap feels when I wash my hands with it. After all, I paid only $1 for a 4-ounce bar.

Since I’ve started using this as a hand soap, I haven’t had to use as much hand lotion — it’s that moisturizing. I love the lather, too, but it’s the scent that stole my heart. This soap smells like oatmeal-spiced cookies right from the oven.

If I ever see this on shelves again, I’m stocking up.

This Trader Joe’s fluoride-free toothpaste feels like a treat that’s good for my teeth.

I’ve been looking for an affordable fluoride-free toothpaste that leaves my mouth feeling just as clean as its fluoride counterparts for some time — and this one from Trader Joe’s has been a winner for me.

The 6-ounce bottle of peppermint toothpaste costs $4, and I appreciate that it has calcium hydroxyapatite, which some studies suggest can help protect teeth from erosion, cavities, and decay.

My favorite part is that it tastes like York Peppermint Pattie filling, but leaves my teeth feeling clean all day long.

Keep reading Trader Joe’s diaries to see what other must-haves shoppers have in their carts.

• Environmental activist Erin Brockovich has adopted a new cause: the impact of data centers.
• She said residents are especially angry about NDAs between developers and local leaders.
• That lack of transparency, she said, is fueling anger among residents who feel ignored.

Big Tech is expanding into communities across the country — and they aren’t all that happy about it.

Many residents in cities and towns where tech companies are looking to build large data centers to power their AI products are mobilizing against them, concerned about a possible drain on water supplies, a surge in electricity costs, and a decline in their overall quality of life.

Now, legendary environmental activist Erin Brockovich, famously played by Julia Roberts in the 2000 film about her work, has joined the fight.

Brockovich said on a recent episode of “The Jim Acosta Show” that communities are angry because they feel shut out of the decisions being made in their own backyards — and that the projects are being “shoved down their throat in secrecy.”

Brockovich said that residents learn about projects in the proposal stage, only to find that local officials are limited in what they can say because of nondisclosure agreements. In other cases, she said, projects are presented as warehouses rather than data centers.

“There’s a lot of secrecy and NDAs at a very proposal stage,” Brockovich said.

That lack of transparency, she said, is fueling anger among residents who believe their concerns are being ignored.

High-profile data center projects have faced backlash in recent months. A massive data center project in Utah backed by “Shark Tank” investor Kevin O’Leary has sparked statewide opposition, for example, leading Utah Gov. Spencer Cox to unveil a new “framework” for data center development on Friday that addresses many of the community’s concerns.

“Utahns deserve confidence that water resources, air quality, utility rates, wildlife, and quality of life will be protected. This framework helps ensure that data center development aligns with Utah’s long-term interests and reflects Utah values,” Cox wrote in an X post.

Microsoft, which once relied on NDAs in the early stages of data center development, said earlier this year that it would stop requesting them after local opposition.

“We’ve made the decision that being transparent with the communities where we operate or seek to operate is paramount,” the company said. “This shift is about strengthening public trust, enabling better dialogue, and ensuring that our growth is matched by meaningful engagement.”

Microsoft has adopted its own framework for building data centers called the “Community-First AI Infrastructure Plan.” It promises to pay for its own electricity, minimize water usage, and create local jobs, among other things.

Brockovich, who has spent decades working with communities on environmental fights, said residents are not opposed to hearing difficult information. What they object to, she said, is being excluded from the process.

“I’ve worked in communities for 30 years,” she said. “They handle the truth.”

• Lori Bufka, 64, cares for her aging mother in Arizona due to high assisted living costs.
• Bufka’s mother lives in a nearby trailer, reducing care costs and enabling family support.
• Tech aids Bufka in remotely monitoring her mother, enhancing her caregiving abilities.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Lori Bufka, 64, who is caring for her mother with dementia in Arizona. Assisted living became too expensive for her mother, so Bufka moved her into a trailer next to their home, where her mother would have enough space and safety. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

I was a college professor and retired from a community college in Florida. I raised two boys, both of whom are married, and I have five grandchildren. I had retired to do van life with my partner, who has been with me for seven years. I realized, though, that you can only do so much van life before you need a place to come home to. So we bought a tiny house in Arizona.

I’m an only child, and my mom was in assisted living in California. When she went into assisted living, her veteran benefits and Social Security were enough to cover the cost of her care. She was in assisted living for over seven years, and she had sold her house and had some savings. The rate kept going up and up, and it was draining her savings.

The cost was about $4,700 a month, and it was about to go up to $5,200, which was a couple of thousand dollars more than what she earned.

She’s 88, and I wanted to keep her there as long as she could. When I got the notice that the rate was going up again, and that they were going to raise her quality of care cost because her dementia was getting worse, her savings were down to almost nothing. They said that she would be moved to a dementia unit with four other people, and I didn’t want that to happen to her.

Additionally, as her dementia got worse, she would get so many scam calls. She was savvy her whole life and worked as a lead for a law firm and a real estate agent, but it came to a point where I had to turn off her phone.

It was cheaper to take care of Mom at home

My partner and I decided that we could probably take care of her. It would be a lot cheaper. We started making the moves to bring her here so that I could take care of her. I brought my mom in to live by us in November.

There wasn’t going to be room for her and my partner, so I had to give her a little model home in the same trailer park. Hers is about 700 square feet and is about a minute’s walk from me. There are a lot of older people here, and the owner keeps a good eye on everyone. I knew that she wasn’t going to be with me, but she needed care as if she were.

The trailer was in the low five figures, and we bought it using two-thirds of her savings and one-third of my savings. The rent for the space a little over $500 monthly. It’s so much cheaper this way because my partner and I split the caregiving. Her utility bills run about $200 monthly in the winter and $70 in the summer. Caring for her started to become a little much for me, but because we’re in the mountains, there aren’t many home health organizations here, and none take her insurance.

She went into hospice care, and we hired someone to come for a few hours a week. It was supposed to be $37 for two hours, but when I got the bill, they tacked on mileage, so it became $92. We figured it wasn’t worth it, so now hospice volunteers visit every now and then, and hospice covers medically necessary appointments. We know we’re probably going to take care of her until she dies, unless she gets to a point where I can’t take care of her.

It was a huge change in our lifestyle

We haven’t been traveling since November, and I haven’t been away from her for more than three hours at a time. My mom is deaf, and it would’ve been challenging to deal with that from afar.

My mom is somewhat independent still. She can dress herself and go about her day. I wake up every morning and make sure she’s still in bed, then I turn on her coffee maker. I bring her breakfast over and leave notes about what she should do, like how to use the microwave. I check on her every half hour until she finally gets up. I come over before lunch to give her pills, eat lunch with her, and then sit with her until the afternoon, when she watches TV by herself. She can’t cook dinner, so my partner cooks all her meals, and we bring them over.

The trailer has a bedroom at the back, then a small bathroom, kitchen, and living room. The rooms are big enough for her to guide her walker through, and because of how narrow it is, it lessens the fall risk. They had an old-fashioned bathtub that you had to step over to get in, but the woman who owns the trailer park hired a guy to lower the height. We also had to install railings on the porch. The kitchen has an electric stove, which is great because a gas stove isn’t good when someone has dementia, because they can accidentally light a fire.

Tech has helped me take care of her remotely

One of the biggest nightmares is that people with dementia can’t work the TV and telephone. She got to the point where she could barely use the remote, and she would start pushing buttons and would not stop.

I had come across JubileeTV, a TV system that lets you change channels remotely. The price wasn’t prohibitive for us. The Jubilee remote replaced the Roku remote and came with a cover, so the buttons she can actually press are limited to volume and channels. If I’m out at the store, I can use the telescope function to see what she’s done with the TV and get it back to what she wants to watch.

I often call her, so it comes up on the TV, and she uses closed captioning so she can read what I’m saying. The app has an automatic connect function because my mom wouldn’t be able to answer a call or find the buttons to do so. The communication function also allows my sons to call her, and her hospice nurses can do the same.

I have used the app’s drop-in function to look in and see if she’s OK. I use that in conjunction with Blink cameras to make sure she doesn’t fall. Those have been important because my mom has fallen a lot since she moved here. I probably check on her three or four times during the night and frequently during the day. One time, she put Dawn dishwashing soap in her glass of water because she wanted to add flavor, so I’ve had to stop her from doing unsafe things a few times.

I also have smart plugs from Alexa that let her control her radiator heater and other electronics. She has a cheap laptop that I put the Google Live Transcribe app on.

Tech has helped me in so many ways, and seeing her age at home has been somewhat stress-relieving.