|
Naples Daily News
May 12, 2003
Local residents receive bee sting therapy for lyme disease
By STEVE SCHMADEKE
There was a time in Tami Smith's life when she didn't invite people over to sting her and her husband with honeybees. But that was before the Naples resident and her spouse Jack were diagnosed with Lyme disease, before the days when the accompanying fatigue and joint pain became so severe she had trouble getting out of the bathtub.
"You feel like you're 70 years old," said Smith, who worked as a nurse before contracting the disease. "You feel like you have a hangover every day." The couple recently joined the thousands of people across the country who view bee venom as an effective treatment for ailments ranging from tennis elbow to arthritis to multiple sclerosis. Patients are stung with as many as 30 bees a session. On a recent Tuesday afternoon, Jack Smith straddles a piano bench and removes his shirt as apitherapist Amber Rose lays out the tools of her trade; a half dozen pairs of tweezers, an epinephrine injector (used in the rare cases if patients go into anaphylactic shock), two spray bottles containing water and an empty plastic bath salts container buzzing with honeybees.
"Do you have any pain today?" Rose asks. "No, no pain but I'm feeling terrible fatigue and the bees gave me so much energy the last time." replies Smith, who, as an amateur beekeeper, is supplying the bees, "Well, my gut tells me we should do an adrenal splurge," Rose says, picking up some acupuncture needles that she will insert before stinging Smith. Since she started practicing what she calls Bee Acupuncture Therapy a decade ago, Rose estimates that she has done more than 40,000 treatments. She favors silk robes and shiny gold slippers. Rose is the ultimate crusader for bee venom. "It's really a mission for me," she says. "But it's not about me, it's about the honeybees. What the bee stings do is wake up the body's inner physician. It may not be approved by the F.D.A, " she continues, "but it is approved by the G.O.D and that's good enough for me. We're all Dorothys and Totos, just trying to find our way home again. Our ruby red slippers are the bees; they help us to find our way home."
However, University of Florida pharmacy professor Dr. Paul Doering says components of bee venom do have analgesic and anti-inflammatory properties. It contains melittin, which has 100 times the potency of hydrocortisone, he said. "I think you would agree that this a strange way to deliver medicine," he said. "But we (the medical profession) are the ultimate snobs when it comes to that type of thing."
|
|
