Apitherapy: Benefits From Bee Products & Venom

[Yithian]

Bee venom therapy
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Bee venom therapy is the therapeutical use of bee stings. Although poorly researched, it is claimed to be of use in arthritis, bursitis, tendonitis, dissolving scar tissue (e.g. keloids), etc. The bee venom may also be administered by injection, rather than by stings.

Recently, research into the use of bee venom in treating multiple sclerosis brought some hope to the sufferers of the disease.

The active component of the venom is melittin, which has a powerful anti-inflammatory action. It is said to be 100 times more potent than hydrocortisone.

Possible side effects include anaphylactic shock and death, in patients allergic to honey bee stings.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bee_venom_therapy

:shock:

 

[mindalai]

I remember watching a program about bee-sting therapy. The woman using it had MS, and she was actually having the bees sting her directly, not having an injection. There was a nurse picking the bees up in a pair of forceps and holding them onto her skin till they stung her. I think she had about 20 stings a day, but she said it helped her MS more than anything else.

 

[TheQuixote]

I saw it being used in a live demonstration on Richard & Judy awhile ago. IIRC the woman used on her arthritic hands and had some movement/flexibility after the treatment which she didn't appear to have prior to it.

Apitherapy links from the R&J archives:

http://freespace.virgin.net/peter.pebad ... /frame.htm

http://www.beelief.com/

 

[rynner2]

MS sufferer treated with bee stings
A multiple sclerosis sufferer has treated her debilitating condition with a course of 1,500 bee stings.
Published: 10:00AM BST 05 Apr 2010

Sami Chugg, 45, was diagnosed with MS in 1998 and it slowly began to attack her ability to move.

The incurable disease stops the body's nerve cells communicating and she was soon so ill she was permanently bed ridden.

Sami, a charity worker from Bristol, was plagued by numbness and she could barely walk or leave her room.

But she is now back on her feet after trying a treatment called Bee Venom Therapy (BVT).

The treatment involves holding a bee in a pair of tweezers and deliberately stinging an area of skin on the patient's body.

Experts believe the venom in the sting helps ease the pain of MS symptoms and also stimulates the body to fight back.

Sami says she was stung around 1,500 in eighteen months and says it has given her her mobility back.

She said: ''When I started the BVT I couldn't get out of bed or get out of my room - it was really grim.

''Most people would be terrified by the prospect of being stung by a bee. But when you have a condition like MS, that involves the numbing of the body, any kind of sensation is welcome - even if it's from a bee sting.

''You use a pair of tweezers and get hold of a single bee. Then you gradually desensitise your body to the sting by injecting it in and out of your skin a few times.

''You have to build it up slowly - you start with two, then four, then six. Ten to 14 was my average for each session.

''It had an immediate effect because it has a kind of psychological, mental effect. I used to feel elated for about two hours after the treatment.''

Bee Venom Therapy, or Apitherapy, uses the stings of live bees to relieve symptoms of MS such as pain, loss of coordination, and muscle weakness.

Researchers suggest that certain compounds in bee venom reduce inflammation and pain and a combination of all its ingredients helps the body to release natural healing compounds.

The alternative treatment remains unproven by evidence-based medicine but it has been used to treat other wasting diseases and arthritis.

The therapy begins gradually as the body needs to be desensitised to the stings, but eventually multiple bees are used at one time and are left in the skin for up to 20 minutes.

Sami was treated twice a week and was stung at least 1,500 during her 18-month course of the treatment.

She said: ''There are three locations we used for the stings, above the shoulders, the middle back, and then the lumbar area. It's all centred around your spine.

''It's changed my life and my approach to life. It is manna from heaven.''

Multiple Sclerosis is a disease in which the fatty myelin 'sheaths' around nerve cells are progressively damaged leading to a variety of symptoms including pain and physical and mental disability.

Sami now campaigns for the ''Safe Land for Bees'' project working to raise awareness of the decline in bee populations.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healt ... tings.html

 

[Mythopoeika]

A multiple sclerosis sufferer has treated her debilitating condition with a course of 1,500 bee stings.

When a bee stings, there is a fairly predictable chance that the bee will die. So approx 1500 bees died for that one person's therapy?

No wonder the little beasties are disappearing.

 

[EnolaGaia]

(I could have sworn I'd posted about this before, but I can't find any trace of it ... )

My grandfather lived next door and kept a sizable number (12 - 20) of beehives throughout my childhood / teen / young adult years.

He repeatedly commented that the reason he wasn't as afflicted with arthritis as other friends and family members of similar vintage was the bee venom he inevitably received from occasional stings.

There was another (non-relative) older gentleman in the community who had noticeably distorted hands owing to arthritis. He'd drop by my grandfather's home every so often, bringing a glass Mason jar. Granddad would go out to the hives and gather a dozen or so bees into the jar along with some honeycomb. The visitor told me recurrently that he kept the bees at his home and bothered them into stinging him whenever his arthritis was acting up. He swore this helped, and even claimed it was the only therapeutic relief that worked for him. This went on for years ...

 

[Mythopoeika]

(I could have sworn I'd posted about this before, but I can't find any trace of it ... )

My grandfather lived next door and kept a sizable number (12 - 20) of beehives throughout my childhood / teen / young adult years.

He repeatedly commented that the reason he wasn't as afflicted with arthritis as other friends and family members of similar vintage was the bee venom he inevitably received from occasional stings.

There was another (non-relative) older gentleman in the community who had noticeably distorted hands owing to arthritis. He'd drop by my grandfather's home every so often, bringing a glass Mason jar. Granddad would go out to the hives and gather a dozen or so bees into the jar along with some honeycomb. The visitor told me recurrently that he kept the bees at his home and bothered them into stinging him whenever his arthritis was acting up. He swore this helped, and even claimed it was the only therapeutic relief that worked for him. This went on for years ...

Unfortunate for the bees, though.

 

[EnolaGaia]

New research demonstrates a peptide molecule in honeybee venom seems to be very effective in counteracting and destroying certain aggressive cancer cells.

A Molecule in Honeybee Venom Destroys Breast Cancer Cells in The Lab, Study Shows

... A new lab study shows that a molecule found in bee venom can suppress the growth of particularly nasty cancer cells. ...

The study focussed on certain subtypes of breast cancer, including triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC), which is an extremely aggressive condition with limited treatment options.

TNBC accounts for up to 15 percent of all breast cancers. In many cases, its cells produce more of a molecule called EGFR than seen in normal cells. Previous attempts to develop treatments that specifically target this molecule have not worked, because they would also negatively affect healthy cells.

Honeybee (Apis mellifera) venom has shown potential in other medical therapies such as treating eczema, and has been known to have anti-tumour properties for some time now, including melanoma. But how it works against tumours at a molecular level isn't fully understood. Now, we've taken a huge step closer to the answer.

Bees actually use melittin - the molecule that makes up half of their venom and makes their stings really hecking painful - to fight off their own pathogens. ...

"The venom was extremely potent," said medical researcher Ciara Duffy from The Harry Perkins Institute of Medical Research. "We found that melittin can completely destroy cancer cell membranes within 60 minutes." ...

The best part: melittin had little impact on normal cells, specifically targeting cells that produced a lot of EGFR and HER2 (another molecule excessively produced by some breast cancer types); it even messed with the cancer cells' ability to replicate. ...

Of course, plenty of things can kill a cancer cell in a petri dish, and the researchers caution that there's still a long way to go before this bee venom molecule could potentially be used as a treatment in humans.

"Future studies to formally assess toxicities and maximum tolerated doses of these peptides will be required prior to human trials," they wrote in their paper. ...

FULL STORY:
https://www.sciencealert.com/bees-f...-successfully-target-aggressive-breast-cancer

PUBLISHED RESEARCH REPORT:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41698-020-00129-0

 

[Min Bannister]

On a more trivial note, I took out a monthly box subscription a wee while ago as a treat to myself with beauty products. I have had all sorts of weird and winderful things. One of them was a face wash, apparently containing bee venom. The bee venom face wash did indeed wash my face. I elected not to pay £65 for the full sized product though.

 

[IamSundog]

This subject is interesting to me because:
About 20 years ago we were out hiking in the woods, and my then-young son wandered off the path and onto a yellow jackets’ nest. I ran in to rescue him and we both got stung about 8 or 10 times.
Hours later that evening I had the most wonderful enlivening physical and mental buzz from the venom. It was like an electric rush all through my body, a great sensation. At the time I hadn’t heard about the supposed benefits of bee venom but I started to wonder about it.

 

[Victory]

I once met an apiarist who told me he cured someone's ulcerated stomach by feeding them honey daily.

 

[Mythopoeika]

I once met an apiarist who told me he cured someone's ulcerated stomach by feeding them honey daily.

Honey does have antiseptic and emollient properties, so it's not unlikely.