Apitherapy :: Health Medicine Medical Healthy Essays

Apitherapy Medicine, like all other fields, is subject to trends. In recent years, trends towards "alternative healing" have emerged on top. They surface everywhere: gingko biloba tablets appear at the convenience store counter, and major beverage companies have introduced herbal iced teas with different supplements that are rumored to help with everything from memory to stress. There are are health food stores everywhere providing "all natural" alternatives for everything from caffeine to fertility drugs. Perhaps the reason for this trend is that medicine has failed to provide cures for so many afflictions without having unbearable side effects, or perhaps the reason is that medicine has advanced so much that attempts to create medicines that are less harmful than synthesized medicines have resulted in this natural trend. Whatever the reason, the fact remains that stores are being bombarded with vitamin supplements, herbal foods, and "natural" drugs claiming to do what modern medicine has found difficult to accomplish. One type of "alternative healing" is called Apitherapy, and is what I will be discussing in this paper. Apitherapy is defined as "the healing use of the products of the honeybee hive" (1). Much of apitherapy is based on the properties of bee venom, though there are other byproducts which have claimed to be benificial. The major reason this therapy has come to light is because bee venom is composed of 30 different components, many of which are peptides that should provide an anti-inflammatory affect, as well as other agents which stimulate the body's immune system. Pure bee venom (Apitox) has been tested and found to be safe in humans and animals by the International Pain Institute (2). As with many alternative therapies, apitherapy has not been extensively tested scientifically. There have been some. The American Apitherapy Society (AAS) has tested it in relation to treating osteoarthritis. There are many supporters of honeybee byproducts as a treatment, but overall most clinical testing has failed to prove that there is much medicinal value in apitherapy. The only proven treatment has been for desensitization for those with life-threatening bee sting allergies (3). The support for apitherapy is a function of two things: potential clinical efficacy and personal experience stories. The byproducts of honeybees seem to have a lot of potential for effective treatment of many medical conditions.