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Q. I'm a nurse in a rural hospital. Some of the mountain folk I care for tell me that a bee sting every two years or so will significantly decrease arthritis inflammation and pain. They attribute this remedy to the Chinese who came to this area a hundred years ago to work on the railroads and in the logging industry.
A. “Apitherapy,” or bee venom therapy, for arthritis goes way back in time. There are reports that it was used in ancient Egypt and China. Hippocrates (460-377 BC) is purported to have written about bee stings for painful joints.
Doctors in this country used bee venom therapy to treat arthritis during the first part of the 20th century. Hospital pharmacies even stocked venom for injections. After World War II, this approach fell out of favor because it was considered unscientific.
Proponents claim that honeybee stings can alleviate the pain of tendonitis, arthritis, multiple sclerosis and postherpetic neuralgia. This nerve pain lingers after a shingles attack and can be excruciating. The American Apitherapy Society can provide more information (www.apitherapy.org).
I was stung by a wasp at the base of my thumb,which completely relieved the arthritis pain I'd had there for years! The relief lasted for about 2 weeks. I had never heard of this before and wondered if any research had been done re bee venom and pain and swelling.
Yellowjacket stings in my legs seem to lessen pain in my knees for a long time. For my hands, just washing dishes works better than Aspirin or ibuprofen.
When I was about 10 years old I had severe pain in both knees. Doctors believed it to be arthritis (even in such a young child) and treated me with painkillers--without success. My parents, who were from Ukraine, took me to a beekeeper friend. Over two summers I was stung behind the knees several times during the course of each summer. The arthritis type pains were gone for many years and only started to come back in my mid-forties.
I'm seriously thinking of doing this again.
I was stung 6 times by yellow jackets - 5 times on my left leg. I have osteoarthritis in my left knee, and the pain has been gone since I was stung. I'm hoping that it will last! I would definitely choose bee stings over yellow jackets if I were to experiment - they are much less painful!
Read your column this morning regarding bee stings relieving arthritus pain. (Palm Beach Post July 30/08)
Thought I'd share our story.
On vacation one night while in the quaint fishing village of Parati, Brazil we 'over enjoyed' thier wonderful traditional drink Capahrina (a mixture of local sugar cane rum, sugar, lime and lots of ice). We awoke the next morning with the absolute worse hangovers we'd ever experienced. I'm not talking the little headache and upset tummy kind...I mean the sledgehammer head hitting and gonna barf kind. The kind you know is going to last ALL day...maybe 2 days. But we had early morning plans so left the hotel to find coffee at dawn.
No luck with coffee at that hour and we were heading back (stumbling back is more like it) to the hotel when we were suddenly attacked by a small swarm of bees. My husband was stung 12 times and I was stung 8. We finally evaded the swarm by running back into our hotel.
Back in our room we immediately decided to change our plans and leave the village as we were now afraid about walking around outside there. So we packed our bags and checked out. It was about an hour after we'd awakened at this point.
As we drove away from the hotel it hit us...our hangovers were GONE. Completely gone. Other then the pain of the bee stings we both felt GREAT. We thoroughly enjoyed the rest of our day...WITHOUT any Capahrinas (:
There was a show on Discovery Health (I think that's the channel) and a lady was nearly killed by a bee swarm attack on her farm. She was in the hospital for 3 weeks on kidney machines, breathing tube, etc. She was in her 60s, and said the only positive thing from the incident is that she's completely free of arthritis pain now, after suffering from that for years. She said jokingly that she doesn't recommend trying to be stung by a huge swarm just to cure arthritis though! I looked on the web and it seems apitherapy really does work, by injections, so luckily it doesn't require being stung directly by the bees.