Bee Venom Therapy (BVT)

I begin my journey with Bee Venom Therapy on February 19, 2018, in my 8th year of onset with Morgellons. Right now there are only a few people with Morgellon's that I know of using this treatment. BVT has been very successful for treating Lyme, which is why I am giving it a shot. This is my place to journal my experience. I will update this page with my progress periodically.

Bee Venom Therapy (BVT), has been used for thousands of years to treat illness. Treatment involves using live bees to sting the body strategically on either side of the spine, to get the venom get into the body. Ellie Lobel, a Lyme sufferer discovered this treatment by accident after she went to California with a prognosis of 4 to 6 months to live from advanced Lyme. She was attacked by killer bees and thought the end of her life had come sooner than expected. Lo and behold, after an intense herx she recovered. That's when she began researching BVT, formulating a protocol and getting the word out to the Lyme community.

The protocol in a nutshell, is to build up slowly to a tolerance of 10 stings each treatment. This is done 3 times a week for a total of 30 stings each week. If anyone is interested in the details of the protocol, you should join the Facebook group, search Bee Venom. Be sure to explore the 'Files' section. 

After the bee stings the recipient, their stinger and venom sac is left on the skin, to pump venom into the body over a period of 15 minutes--then sac and stinger are removed.

In recent years I have not been actively trying to kill my own infection(s), as I had no lasting success with either herbal or rife treatments and refused to compromise my gut with antibiotics. While I haven't relapsed with any of the major Morgellons symptoms, over time, I've increasingly felt exhausted and was aware of some low level sensation in my right jaw, ear and nasal cavity making itself known on and off. During the winter of 2018 I found myself immune compromised for about 1.5 months. I didn't get fully sick, but I always felt I was on the verge of a cold or flu and had a cough that wouldn't go away as well as a sore throat that came on every night. Test results showed I had reactivated Epstein Barr. I felt I needed to take action, and a friend with Lyme was treating with bee venom and having great results. This convinced me to try BVT.

Before beginning therapy, I got a prescription for an epinephrine injector. It is imperative to have one on hand with every stinging session in case of anaphylactic shock. The first test sting one does, is where the stinger and venom sac are left on the skin for 30 seconds, then removed to make sure the body will not have an allergic reaction. Mine went well. Two days later I did my first 'real' sting in which the sac was allowed to stay on the skin for 15 mins. The next day delivered a herxheimer from hell. It lasted 10 days and sent me reeling to a cardiologist to make sure I hadn't damaged my heart. For days I had nausea, queasiness, rolling sensations of needing to evacuate the bowels, exhaustion, brain fog and shakiness, plus soreness on my left side and around the heart. The moisture in my eyes felt like glue. 

I have many genes that are compromised for metabolism including MTHFR, so detoxing is a problem for me. When the body is overwhelmed with toxins caused by die off of bacteria, a herxheimer reaction will occur causing inflammation. Herxing can be very dangerous if it's too intense, but it's necessary, and even a welcome sign that die off is occuring. So learning one's tolerance and how to manage it, takes trial and error. Being attentive and moving slowly is so important.

After my intense reaction, I saw the need to back up and reapproach my first sting much more gradually. My next real sting was for three minutes only. Let that be a word to the wise. If you decide to attempt this therapy, GO IN SLOW and gradually build up tolerance. Believe me, at even 3 mins, I herxed enough to be leveled out. My next sting was for 5 mins. I continued to herx. but the severity of the episodes lessened over the first few weeks.

I see many people rushing to get their tolerance up to 10 stings per session quickly by often jumping ahead 2 stings at a time. If they don't herx up front and immediately the day after stinging, then eventually a serious herx is bound to catch them up. If you've ever seen the brakes put on a train running full speed ahead, you know it can't immediately be stopped. Same with an intense herxheimer reaction. It will have to play out it's course, even when you've pulled out of treatment. 

Some of the ways I've used to remove toxins from the body during herxheimer reactions are: sauna, charcoal pills, alka seltzer gold, apple cider vinegar, and yucca. Supporting the liver with dandelion or milk thistle is recommended and adrenal support of 3 mgs. of vitamin C per day is mandatory. 

Note that bee venom therapy is a longterm committent with treatment lasting approximately 2-3 years to totally rid oneself of infection.The venom appears to go after multiple bacterial infections as well as viral. It will kick up symptoms both physical and mental, and can be challenging as one cycles through die off reactions.
honeybeehealers.com/information-to-get-started-with-bee-venom-therapy-for-lyme-disease

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A note on epipens: after the pharmaceutical companies raked consumers over the coals by inflating epipen cost to more than $600, CVS came up with a cheaper version called The generic epinephrine auto-injector, or Epinephrine Adrenaclick 

https://www.cvs.com/content/epipen-alternative. One needs a doctor's prescripiton to get it, and the prescription needs to be worded as above. If the doctor uses the wording 'Epipen' in the prescription, the pharmacy will default to the expensive brand, so it's important your doctor get it right. In my case, the pharmacy had to be called by the doctor's office, as my doc didn't have a generic epinephrine in their database of prescriptions. If one is lucky, insurance will cover the cost, otherwise the least expensive is for $110 at CVS. 



Above: My lower back. Each sting session is alternated between the upper and lower section of the torso. 

June 4, 2018 I hit the goal of 10 stings per session. It took about 3.5 months to get there. For once, I took my time. My herxes were mostly early. I ran into breathing problems when I hit 5 stings. When I hit 8 stings, breathlessness with air hunger got more pronounced, so I dropped back down to 5 stings and held. Currently, I try not to take any unnecessay herbs that might interfere with the venom, but at the time I felt if I didn't do something, I wouldn't be able to continue long-term treatment. I resumed taking a cocktail of various powders that I had been consuming for some months before BVT and during the early stages of stinging. These were ashwaghanda, hawthorn, spirulina, nopal cactus, moringa and mangosteen. I had stopped taking them at some point while stinging because many of them work as anti inflammatories and interfere with BVT. But I remembered that I had no breathing issues while using those herbs, so I resumed taking them and breathing problems went away. Then I stopped the herbs after breathing felt better.

Symptoms along the way: When I went up to 2 stings, a patch of skin on my back got red and felt hot. For about an hour, I had the sensations of randomly being stung hard in that spot (even though I had never stung that spot. This alternated with the feeling that glass was being dragged across that section of skin. Another time, I had some burning on my lower buttocks and the feeling of pins being stuck in me. Most recently, I had a Bartonella rash appear on the skin. It lasted close to 3 hours before fading. I've also begun to have pain behind my eyes when in bright sunlight. I feel the therapy is kicking things up. 

Generally I've been feeling good. Stronger, more energetic. Even so, I often need to have a power nap in the afternoon. It's too soon to know what the long-term effects of the treatment will be.

Above: Unusual activity of blue particles rising to the surface of the skin during BVT treatment. These only appeared in one little patch on the face. Below: Enlargement of blue particles.

July 9: Started introducing Mimosa Pudica a parasite cleanse recommended by Dr. Klinghardt. In hindsight, I should have done a parasite cleanse before beginning bee venom therapy, but better late than never.

Studies on Bee Venom

Antifungal -- ‪https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29606818 

The the bee venom in its whole form delivered a significant level of inhibition and we concluded that the venom in separated forms are not effective. Moreover, BV based products may exert as potential antifungal therapeutics.

Antiparasite -- ‪https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23562368

Antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) are components of the innate immune response that represent desirable alternatives to conventional pharmaceuticals, as they have a fast mode of action, a low likelihood of resistance development and can act in conjunction with existing drug regimens. AMPs exhibit strong inhibitory activity against both Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria, fungi, viruses, metazoans and other parasites, such as the protozoan Leishmania. Melittin is a naturally occurring AMP, which comprises 40-50% of the dry weight of Apis mellifera venom. Our group has recently shown that crude A. mellifera venom is lethal to Trypanosoma cruzi, the Chagas disease etiologic agent, and generates a variety of cell death phenotypes among treated parasites. Here, we demonstrate that the melittin affected all of T. cruzi developmental forms, including the intracellular amastigotes. The ultrastructural changes induced by melittin suggested the occurrence of different programmed cell death pathways, as was observed in A. mellifera-treated parasites. Autophagic cell death appeared to be the main death mechanism in epimastigotes. In contrast, melittin-treated trypomastigotes appeared to be dying via an apoptotic mechanism. Our findings confirm the great potential of AMPs, including melittin, as a potential source of new drugs for the treatment of neglected diseases, such as Chagas disease.

Antiviral -- ‪https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27888461

BV is safe for human treatments dose dependently and proven to possess different healing properties including antibacterial and antiparasitidal properties. Nevertheless, antiviral properties of BV have not well investigated. Hence, we identified the potential antiviral properties of BV and its component against a broad panel of viruses.

Antibacterial and anti-biofilm -- ‪https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28943153

Melittin presents desirable effects in combating microorganisms studied both at your disposal, biofilm destruction and inhibition of the formation, and maybe used in future studies of new strategies to combat infections caused by these pathogens.

ALS -- ‪https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=melittin+ALS

melittin treatment reduced α-synuclein misfolding and restored the proteasomal activity in the brainstem and spinal cord of symptomatic hSOD1G93A transgenic mice. Our research suggests a potential functional link between melittin and the inhibition of neuroinflammation in an ALS animal model.

Above: The back is divided into upper and lower sections. Every time one stings they alternate between the upper and lower back thereby covering the entire spine with stings.