Top Bar Beekeeping Forum

[Rivermom]

I was twenty five years old when i was daignosed with M.S. I'm Lucky. I have only mild symptoms, and it is not the kind of M.S. that gets worse until it kill you. It's is just the kind that puts paid to an active and adventurous lifestyle. Well, that's what they told me, and then proposed treating me with toxic levels of steroids.
Well, I'm one of these wierd people who researches any drugs that anyone wants me to take, and I was a little worried that one of the side effects of using steriods is that it can make you psychotic. Like I needed any more psychosis! So I said no thanks to the drugs, and settled down to learn to live with the problem.
Then I had a serendipidous accident; a cobra bit me. Thankfully there was a hospital nearby with antivenon. But when all the fuss had died down, and I was able to leave hospital, I stood up and walked out without needing my stick. Very interesting.
The M.S. stayed in remission for about three years, but then it came back. Since I was no longer living in India, and since I had reacted so badly to the first bite, I did not consider going out and finding a cobra to annoy. But I had done some research on venom, and had discovered that a beesting is a true venom. I heard some reports about treating M.S. with beestings, and the results were interesting. And I have never heard of beestings causing psychosis. So I decided to give it a try.
The first thing I needed to do was find out if I am allergic to beestings. This is done by getting a bee to sting you, while your best friend stands by with the engine running to take you to the emergency room if necessary.
Well, the first sting had no adverse effects, and a followup test in fourteen days had no adverse effects. Then I waited a month and went for it, with the same friend on standby. I covered my face and hands, and bared my arm, and kicked the hive. In no time at all the bees obligingly gave me a thereputic dose of fifteen stings, after which I brushed them off and covered my arm, and ran like billyo to the blackcurrant bush to hide.
The result was almost instantaneous. In the first place, I felt as high as a kite, but that was probably just an adrenelin rush. But the weakness in my arms and legs subsided, and my vision cleared. My sense of balance returned and, for the first time in months, I felt as if I was in communication with my own body.
So now I kick the hive whenever the M.S. comes back. And then I spend the next three to five years in wonderful health. I will never be completely as strong and agile as I was before. But, thanks to the bees, I can live a full life.
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Don't push the River. It flows by itself.

[cvirtue]

Wow, that is really fascinating! Thank you for telling us the story!

[biobee]

Thanks for sharing your story. I have read about apitherapy being used for MS with some success, but that really puts it in perspective. Of course, there is too much money in selling steroids for this ever to be accepted by mainstream medicine, so until they can synthesize bee venom (and thereby, no doubt, reduce its effectiveness and introduce side-effects) we won't see any progress in the treatment of MS.

I wonder if your 'hive kicking' dose is better than a lower-level, maintenance dose of a couple of stings every few weeks?

[Ivan]

A bit of cynicism about medicine is a healthy thing (Boom Boom)

By all means kick a hive and if it works for you all's well and good. But please do not interpret the outcome as proof of the effectiveness of bee venom in treating MS

[Norm]

Rivermom thanks for sharing your wholesome story.

I heard about a guy with MS (IIRC) that taught his son to pick up bees and position them along his verterbrae to sting him at certain points down his back. He reckoned it has changed his life. I wish I could remember where I had seen it.
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Feral bees are natures survivors and have, by the survival of the fittest principle, overcome disease and mite problems without mans intervention.

[biobee]

http://health.discovery.com/centers/althealth/beetherapy/bkgsclerosis.html

For centuries, honey, bee pollen, and bee venom have been used to treat a number of ailments that vary between chronic pain to skin conditions. Apitherapy, or the medical use of honeybee products that range from royal jelly to bee venom, was used by the ancient Egyptians as a homeopathic remedy for arthritis. Today, bee venom therapy, or bee sting therapy, has captured the attention of medical science as a potential homeopathic remedy for multiple sclerosis (MS) symptoms.

Bee venom therapy (BVT), or apitherapy, uses the stings of live bees to relieve symptoms of MS such as pain, loss of coordination, and muscle weakness. Stinging is not limited to any specific area of the body, as stings in different places seem to produce different results. Apitherapy researchers suggest that certain compounds in bee venom, namely melittin and adolapin, help reduce inflammation and pain, and that the combination of all the "ingredients" in bee venom somehow helps the body to release natural healing compounds in its own defense.

Given the fact that no major studies on BVT have been done so far, it is estimated that only about 50 U.S. physicians use it to treat MS or other diseases. And the evidence that BVT helps MS patients, although encouraging, remains anecdotal. Despite this, of the more than 250,000 cases of multiple sclerosis nationwide, thousands of patients are said to use bee venom as an alternative approach to the interferon, corticosteroids, and other drugs typically used. Word on BVT has spread to where the American Apitherapy Society says there are about 10,000 people providing this therapy — apitherapists, beekeepers, and acupuncturists, as well as those with no health background. Some patients even treat themselves. But the lack of medical training among most practitioners and the risk of dangerous allergic reactions to the treatment have raised concerns about BVT among the medical establishment.

Nonetheless, bee venom therapy has generated enough "buzz" that Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., has begun a one-year preliminary study, funded by the Multiple Sclerosis Association of America, to research apitherapy as a potential treatment. In the end, researchers hope to settle the debate whether bee venom should be considered a serious treatment for MS.
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The Barefoot Beekeeper www.biobees.com

[GarlyDog]

That is wonderful that you get relief from the bee stings. For sure I would rather get stung by a bee than get bitten by a cobra!
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Gary

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[Ivan]

Thanks for that link Phil

Things are not quite as reported:

[biobee]

I have no doubt that some trials may prove inconclusive or may find a negative result, but you can't argue against actual sufferers who say their symptoms go into remission for years at a time.

Are you a medic, by the way, Ivan? You could be a useful resource, if so, for people who want to know about sting reactions.
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The Barefoot Beekeeper www.biobees.com

[Tavascarow]

[Ivan]

[Rivermom]

Well, Ivan, it is good to hear from someone with a medical background. And I hear you loud and clear about the dangers of promoting an unproven therepy.
I would not have tried bee venom if I had not experienced the results of the snakebite, and researched the subject well. I am a scientist, Microbiology.
All I am prepared to say is that it works for me. And it sure beats the hell out of the toxic prophalaxys of Betaferon, which can neither cure the condition nor allieviate the symptoms.
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Don't push the River. It flows by itself.

[FollowMeChaps]

Many thanks Rivermom and other contributors. I've only just come across this thread and am captivated as my wife has severe MS (secondary progressive) - she describes herself a quadriplegic with slight movement in one hand. She went from initial diagnosis to her current position needind 24/7 care and confined to an electric chair in 15 years.

If anyone has ANY additional hard information on this subject please PM or email me.

There are times in life where you have to clutch at starws to stay afloat.

Robin

[solarguy]

I'm a little bit medical, aka eye doctor. So I deal a modest amount with allergic issues and problems. I am all for experimenting at home and have learned a good deal over the years. You have to keep in mind that small sample groups can lead to conclusions that are, well, just wrong. But if you do an experiment a number of times and a bunch of your friends do it as well, and you pay attention to how you design the experiment, the results may very well be MORE legitimate than many funded "scientific" studies that I have seen over the years. You have to be very very sophisticated to catch these people at their tricks. For example, they may fund and perform ten studies using different protocols on their product. 9 of the studies may show it to be junk, but the tenth one generates "good" data, so that's the one that gets submitted and published and the other 9 never see the light of day. It's dishonest and hard to detect. But you are correct to mistrust many of the so-called studies out there.

One or two more notes about experimenting on one's self with bee venom.

Your immune system is a funny thing. The last time you got stung, you might just have had some local erethema and edema, that's fancy for redness and swelling. Oh yeah, and some pain. No big deal right?

Then your immune system decides (for reasons that are not well understood) that it really doesn't like this bee venom stuff, and makes a few billion new antibodies for it.

The next time you get stung, you go into anaphalactic shock and stop breathing in 4 minutes.

So, that wouldn't really help "our" cause as interested bee keepers, and it certainly wouldn't help your cause since you would now be dead. What to do? Talk to your medical doctor and tell them you had a moderately severe reaction to a bee sting, swelled up a lot in your face and neck and were wheezing a lot, and there is a good chance you could get stung again and you want an "epi-pen" so you can breathe for the forseeable future. Your doctor should happily prescribe the magic pen.

OK, with epi-pen (which injects epinephrine or adrenaline) in your possession, and a trusted friend by your side to whisk you to the ER if needed, you can try a single sting every few weeks for a couple of months to see if your reaction gets worse. You should still have access to emergency care if something goes horribly wrong, so don't do this three hours away from the nearest hospital emergency room . If you make it through 3 months and 6 individual stings, it is much less likely that you will develop a profound allergy to bee venom. I'm just making those numbers up, since there is no way to precisely calculate the number of stings it takes to "prove" that you, with your particular immune system, are safe. But you get the idea.

OK, obligatory legal stuff:

If you kill yourself despite all these precautions, you may not hold me or anyone else liable or responsible for actions which led to your demise. This information is presented purely for educational and theoretical purposes. People die every year from bee stings. This could happen to you. Do not fool around with this unless you understand the risks and take every possible precaution to prevent serious injury or death. Your health and safety are your responsibility and you should do further research before you undertake experiments of this nature.

OK, any questions??

Please carry on.

Finest regards,

troy

[GarlyDog]

Welcome SolarGuy. Thank you for lending your expertise to the forum. I often worry that I am running up to my bee sting limit. It seems like they get a little worse each time. I have gone to the full bee suit for fear that your worst case is just around the corner for me.
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Gary

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