
Using Bee Stings to Treat Lyme Disease - merrier
https://www.texasmonthly.com/articles/can-bee-stings-treat-lyme-disease/
======
stevebmark
The only two relevant paragraphs in the article:

> In the years that followed, an increasing number of Lyme sufferers started
> using Lobel’s technique, with good outcomes. Not only did they say they felt
> better, they said that it saved their lives. Wanting to combine Lobel’s
> protocol with a more holistic approach, Dolan started a Facebook group of
> her own called “Healing Lyme With Bee Venom,” where more than 5,500 members
> post their questions and testimonials. “Year 1 was rough on my husband,”
> wrote the spouse of one Lyme sufferer who used the bee therapy. “Yesterday
> he walked seven miles hiking thru a state park.” “I was bedridden when I
> first started and I more or less lead a normal life now,” said another group
> member.

> It is possible—some would say probable—that these individuals are promoting
> a technique whose success is based more on psychology than pharmacology.
> There is little science to substantiate a cure by stinging. There have been
> two clinical studies investigating the link between bee venom and Lyme, and
> though they are compelling, they are confined to petri dishes. A 1997 study
> and a 2017 study showed the interaction of bee venom’s primary component,
> melittin, and the Lyme bacteria, Borrelia burgdorferi. Melittin, which is a
> helical peptide consisting of 26 amino acids, tends to bore a hole in the
> outer membrane of the larger, spiral-shaped Borrelia burgdorferi, releasing
> the inner contents of the bacteria just as a corkscrew would slice open a
> water balloon.

~~~
ALee
Dunno if this could be probiotics or it could be quack science. I think it's
important that it warrants investigation (a double-blind RCT) - I always
harbored hope that experiment.com could be able to create crowd-funded
research for populations who are going to great lengths and using lots of
resources for these cures.

Also, you're forgetting about the two following paragraphs after your quotes
(which I just think is interesting to test in general):

> Perhaps, instead of destroying the bacteria directly, the venom’s effect is
> indirect, kick-starting the immune system. Bee venom studies have shown
> promise in combating symptoms for autoimmune diseases such as multiple
> sclerosis and rheumatoid arthritis. According to Justin Schmidt, an insect
> venom expert at the Southwestern Biological Institute, in Tucson, it’s
> possible that when the immune system begins attacking itself, an injection
> of bee venom may help by providing an alternate target—“something to chew
> on,” he said, “and this tends to regulate the immune system so it does what
> it’s supposed to be doing, which is attack toxins that are getting into your
> body.” While Lyme is a bacterial infection, it sometimes mimics autoimmune
> disorders, and so maybe, somehow, similar rules apply.

> It’s also possible that the pain of the stings plays a role. “Maybe the
> venom is doing something to kick off pain receptors,” he said. Anecdotal
> evidence suggests that other types of venom may also work this way. A brief
> article in the Lancet, from 1983, described a 43-year-old woman in Arizona
> who had MS and went into remission for two months following a scorpion sting
> on her right foot. An immunologist in Houston told me she was contacted by a
> physician experiencing progressive MS who said he’d been stung by a sea
> anemone and went into temporary remission.

------
exabrial
Weird thing: my dad got into beekeeping. He takes an occasional sting, but he
says while the sting is temporary, it relieves some of his arthritis in joints
near the sting.

~~~
muzika
This is well known among beekeepers (my dad is one).

------
PragmaticPulp
I spent some time in the Lyme disease communities after I tested positive for
Lyme disease under the official two-test CDC criteria. The pop-culture version
of Lyme disease discussed on the Internet has almost no resemblance to the
actual medical science. There are a lot of people genuinely suffering
unexplained symptoms, real pain, who are drawn into the seductive explanations
of the “chronic Lyme” communities online.

Quackery like this is commonplace. Usually there’s a thread of potential
science buried somewhere in the treatments, like the idea of bee stings
triggering a beneficial immune response. However, the common theme is always a
complete lack of actual research and total hit or miss response rate among
people who try these experiments on themselves.

One common theme in the chronic Lyme communities is that people who go into
remission tend to attribute their response to whatever technique, supplement,
or medication they were trying at the time. These people are desperate for
relief, so they’re often cycling through 10s of supplements or quack
treatments at a time. If they spontaneously go into remission, they’ll swear
it was due to the supplements. Yet others fail to have the same success with
the same supplements. You end up with long lists of “things that might help”
according to anecdotal reports, and the desperate sufferers start trying them
one by one until something changes. When they exhaust the basic supplements
they move on to more exotic treatments like bee stings.

The sad part is that these people really are suffering, but they’ve become so
militantly attached to the disproven chronic Lyme infection hypothesis that
they’re stuck in a research wasteland. Self-diagnosed Chronic Lyme patients
have gone so far as to harass researchers who publish results that disagree
with their theories. It’s such a delicate topic that researchers and doctors
don’t even want to touch the subject these days. It took me 2 weeks of calling
infectious disease specialists and screening my positive test results before
someone would let me step foot in their office. Apparently they’re buried
under self-diagnosed “chronic Lyme” patients who order questionable self tests
on the Internet.

As for Lyme disease: The actual infection can be treated with a standard
course of antibiotics. The infection does not persist indefinitely, although
some people experience long-lasting effects after the infection is gone. This
is what “chronic Lyme” refers to, assuming the patients had legitimate
infections in the first place. Many of these patients are self-diagnosing
based on vague symptoms alone, or ordering quack tests from Lyme labs that
will give anyone a positive result as long as they’re willing to pay for it.

~~~
moxie
> As for Lyme disease: The actual infection can be treated with a standard
> course of antibiotics. The infection does not persist indefinitely, although
> some people experience long-lasting effects after the infection is gone.

I don't think it's possible to make an absolute statement like this with 100%
certainty given the current state of the art. Lyme is a spirochete, and there
also seems to be real research suggesting it can grow biofilm to make it
antibiotic resistant or resurgent.

There are patients who test positive under CDC criteria, take antibiotics, and
never see a transition from IgM to IgG.

There are also patients who test postive under CDC criteria, take antibiotics,
see a transition, but still experience symptoms (what you would call 'long-
lasting effects'). In some cases patients in that situation have extreme gland
swelling that when biopsied, seem to contain Lyme.

Like all of medicine, I think it's squishier than what you're describing.
There is also a lot of crazy shit on the internet, but like you say, that's
because people are genuinely suffering and have no alternatives.

~~~
PragmaticPulp
> I don't think it's possible to make an absolute statement like this with
> 100% certainty

100% certainty is an impossibly high bar in any hard science

This is the problem with chronic Lyme communities: They fixate on the "what
if", no matter how small the probabilities. Many of these patients might very
well have entirely treatable yet unrelated disorders, but their fixation on
the chronic lyme infection theories keeps them focused on the wrong
treatments. Many doctors have tried endless treatments with high-dose
antibiotics, but the clinical studies consistently show no difference vs.
placebo. We all need to move on from the chronic lyme infection theory
unless/until someone provides real evidence to the contrary.

> There are patients who test positive under CDC criteria, take antibiotics,
> and never see a transition from IgM to IgG.

That was me. I tested positive under the CDC criteria, but followup IgG tests
were negative. I lucked into a very astute infectious disease specialist who
was as up-to-date on the research as I could have hoped for, and she even took
the time to walk me through the various theories and studies.

~~~
Alex3917
> This is the problem with chronic Lyme communities: They fixate on the "what
> if", no matter how small the probabilities.

The chronic lyme people (e.g. ILADS) are often making recommendations that
aren't based on solid evidence, but the reason they exist in the first place
is because the CDC recommendations are also bullshit and the CDC isn't doing
nearly enough to stem the epidemic.

------
mrtnmcc
I once thought I had chronic Lyme but eventually concluded it was overactive
immune system related.

The value of intentional bee stings is still plausible here as there seems to
value in giving the immune system 'something else to work on'.

One example is the intentional infection by intestinal tapeworm to alleviate
allergies
[https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2010/may/23/parasit...](https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2010/may/23/parasitic-
hookworm-jasper-lawrence-tim-adams)

I thought it was interesting in the article that she was 'misdiagnosed as
autoimmune arthritis'. I think it's reasonable that these autoimmune reactions
could be triggered by Lyme or other factors. Curious that all the symptoms
associated with Lyme are immune related (rashes, presence of antibody levels
in the blood).

The clue that an overactive immune system was causing my issues came from
23andme genetic testing show many genes associated with immune disorders. Also
I found that Poison Oak / Ivy would trigger many of the issues including full
body reactions for months.

------
Vomzor
The gold standard in microbiology for diagnosing an infectious disease has
always been to culture the organism alive. Despite notorious difficulties in
culturing Borrelia burgdorferi, in about 30 studies this organism has been
cultured alive from patients despite at least standard antibiotic therapy, and
in many cases after antibiotics far in excess of what is deemed curative by
IDSA and CDC. If the pathogen that causes a disease is still present in
conjunction with symptoms compatible with that infection, it would appear to
me that the fundamental questions about the cause of long term symptoms should
have been answered a very long time ago. To add insult to injury, recent
studies from Tulane, Johns Hopkins, and Northeastern University all
demonstrate that we can’t even kill Borrelia in the test tube with the
currently recommended antibiotics. What are the chances that a second disease
of mysterious etiology but with the same symptoms as the first disease, would
come and replace the first disease when there is published evidence that the
pathogen which causes the first disease persists despite both short and long-
term antibiotics? There are numerous chronic bacterial infections which
require long-term combination antibiotic therapies: Tuberculosis, leprosy,
coxiella endcocarditis, brucellosis, Whipple’s. Why should Lyme be different?

>In 2016, Venkata Raveendra Pothineni and colleagues at Stanford reported on
new drug candidates against Borrelia burgdorferi using a technique known as
high-throughput screening. They ranked disulfiram as number one in activity
against Bb among their top 20 hits. [https://www.lymedisease.org/disulfiram-
kinderlehrer/](https://www.lymedisease.org/disulfiram-kinderlehrer/)

>Dr. Kenneth Liegner has had the longest experience treating tick-borne
infections with disulfiram. He is seeing sustained remissions of six months or
more after completing treatment in many patients. Dr. Liegner’s first patient
had been on triple antibiotic treatment for eight years for Lyme disease and
babesiosis, and could not stop his treatment regimen without suffering a
relapse. He took disulfiram for four months and has now been off all treatment
for almost two and a half years, feeling better than ever.
[https://www.lymedisease.org/disulfiram-
kinderlehrer-2/](https://www.lymedisease.org/disulfiram-kinderlehrer-2/)

Disulfiram is a gamechanger. People on reddit, on facebook and in the
casestudy of Dokter Kenneth Liegner[0], people who were still sick after they
were on antibiotics for years, are suddenly seeing amazing improvements after
only a short time on Disulfiram.

Strange isn't it that an antimicrobial has such amazing results for a disease
that supposedly is psychological or autoimmune...

[0]
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31151194](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31151194)

~~~
gerbilly
This should be the top comment.

I'm a bit disappointed in HN.

So many of the comments here are focused on doubting the victims and
ridiculing them for their irrational beliefs.

The irony is that it's those very critics that aren't being rational.

They have the causality backwards and seem to be assuming that if antibiotics
didn't eliminate the symptoms then that means the disease can't be real.

Wouldn't it be more rational to conclude that maybe the antibiotic isn't
killing the pathogen?

------
muzika
People raised in US are more skeptical to this than those raised in other
countries, because in the US, patentable treatments are generally preferred.
Everything that is not patentable (or isn’t an expensive procedure like a
surgery) is “alternative medicine”, even if it’s valid but isn’t profitable.
Very few studies are conducted in the field of natural remedies simply because
there is no money in it. Often third world countries are the ones who do more
research than us in these areas.

------
cpncrunch
There is a lot of quackery surrounding lyme disease, and patients who think
they might have lyme can easily end up spending a fortune on dubious
treatments and unproven tests.

~~~
magic_beans
That's certainly true, but what other option do you have? When you have Lyme,
you are an explorer in an alien landscape. Medicine has not caught up to the
incidence of the disease, and people with Lyme must do _something_. They can't
all just wait around in pain and misery for the FDA to approve a treatment.

~~~
ammon
Lyme disease is easily curable with a large course of antibiotics. Now, there
can be complications that persist after the infection is cured (arthritis,
cardiac issues, and - controversially - fatigue and post-treatment Lyme
syndrome). But the infection itself is curable today.

~~~
chefandy
You are technically right, but I find this pedantry counterproductive. When
someone is simply frustrated by their lack of options to alleviate their
suffering, inserting yourself solely to make sure they're using the rightest
possible terminology while ignoring their actual point a) doesn't add anything
of value to the discussion, unless the distinctions between any of these terms
can materially advance the discussion, b) is plainly dismissive of people's
distress, and c) probably incorrectly assumes that they don't actually know
what they're talking about when many people who are experiencing the alleged
long-term side effects of Lyme, such as my wife, use that word as colloquial
umbrella term to describe their symptoms. They've probably read more about it
than you have, but writing out "fatigue and post-treatment Lyme syndrome" gets
old.

~~~
cpncrunch
The problem is that most of these people who are diagnosed by "chronic lyme"
actually have CFS (according to multiple studies). So, it's unlikely that any
lyme treatments will work for these patients.

As for CFS, many people do fully recover from that (I have myself, for
example). But going down the chronic lyme rabbit hole is unlikely to bring any
kind of relief.

~~~
pkaye
What exactly is CFS?

~~~
cpncrunch
Chronic fatigue syndrome.

------
cjbprime
The story reminds me of the people doing intentional helminth infestation
(e.g. hookworm) as a treatment for issues like asthma and IBD. My sense was
that helminth treatments are on pretty solid scientific ground -- of the kind
where we don't have large N studies but that's only because it would be hard
to get approval for them -- but maybe that's not true? Reading this article
has me wondering if it's all just placebo and eventual recovery.

~~~
ALee
Also, the one about patients doing gut-transfers to help with their very
difficult gut flora issues.

------
faitswulff
r/medicine: "Chronic Lyme Disease doesn't exist"

[https://www.reddit.com/r/medicine/comments/cpji9c/chronic_ly...](https://www.reddit.com/r/medicine/comments/cpji9c/chronic_lyme_disease_doesnt_exist/)

~~~
mysticlabs
Anyone in the medical profession who denies the existence of biofilms, and
their capacity to harbor antibiotic resistant infections is an idiot.

There's plenty of research to explain how late stage Lyme disease can evade
antibiotics, and cause a longterm chronic infection.

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6287027/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6287027/)

[https://rawlsmd.com/health-articles/understanding-
biofilm](https://rawlsmd.com/health-articles/understanding-biofilm)

The science is clear that the spirochetes that cause Lyme disease can and do
hide within biofilms and evade antibiotics.

As someone who has Lyme disease, and who has undergone multiple therapies to
overcome it I can tell you that biofilms and persister cells are the reason
for chronic Lyme disease. It is very real, perfectly logical, and the science
on how Lyme disease becomes chronic is overwhelming and supported by medical
research.

~~~
aitchnyu
> Oxygen and nitric oxide penetrating into the biofilm can help degrade the
> biofilm.

I once read an article how sunlight produces nitric oxide which loosens
arteries and reduces blood pressure. Will sun therapy help biofilm disorders?

~~~
mysticlabs
Not sure.

Wouldn’t classify biofilms as a disorder, it’s how many bacterial, parasitic,
and fungal infections work. It’s a mechanism for survival for these pathogens.
Just because pharma companies and our corrupt medical system ignorantly
ignored them doesn’t mean they haven’t been an ongoing health issue for all
mammals on this planet forever basically.

Plasma EMF therapy is something I’ve tried but it requires proximity and a
frequency generator tuned to specific frequencies to target biofilms. While
the sun is the largest emitter of plasma available we can’t exactly tune it to
a specific frequency, you get what you get depending on UV and weather
conditions that day. I can tell you sun light is a disinfectant for some
pathogens but for Lyme disease biofilms I can’t tell you.

Hyperbaric oxygen chambers work because they’re pressurized. The medication
Alinia also has action against biofilms and cyst forms of Lyme disease
although more research is needed.

------
magic_beans
This sounds a lot like the Amazonian medicine Kambo, which is tree frog
poison. The practitioner burns a small hole on the top layer of the
recipient's skin, rubs off the burnt layer, and applies a drop of frog poison
mixed with the saliva. The poison almost immediately causes an extreme
lymphatic reaction that is thought to clear toxins from the body. Kambo is
called the vaccine of the Amazon.

The bee sting mechanism seems much the same. Poisoning the body in order to
stimulate the immune system.

~~~
kylek
Came here to mention Kambo as it was my first thought too. (Kambo has been
used to treat lyme disease, as well. I doubt there have been any official
studies unfortunately).

Also, one doesn't _need_ to use saliva, that's usually only done due to lack
of clean water in the amazon (Source: am an IAKP certified practitioner)

~~~
magic_beans
I've been told by a practitioner that saliva activates the kambo better than
plain water, but who knows.

I've been trying kambo for ulcerative colitis over the past year. My
gastroenterologist is perfectly happy to have me take a variety of medications
_for the rest of my life_ , whose safety has only been studied over a six-
month period.

Western medicine gets the job done, it's true, but it's time to open our minds
to Eastern medicine and so-called "folk medicine." Many of these treatments
can complement Western medicine.

In my case, Traditional Chinese medicinal herbs have been clinically proven to
enhance the efficacy of drugs used to treat Ulcerative Colitis

~~~
refurb
Western medicine is just defined as medicine that has been through a rigorous
clinical trial process that actually proves it works.

Until these Eastern medicine have gone through the same process, it’s just
anecdotal evidence.

~~~
dwiel
That definition practically speaking though also has other implications.
Primarily that the only medicine that even gets the opportunity to go through
a clinical trial process. Some medicines are so abundant that it's hard to
profit from discoveries about them.

~~~
refurb
It’s true there isn’t a financial motivation, but there are plenty of trials
run with government grants.

Fact is, if they really are beneficial, physicians want to know and are
willing to spend time and money to collect data.

------
newnewpdro
Someone on another HN thread about Lyme disease described curing their
persistent treatment-resistant infection with a long fast.

I wonder if these folks who are stinging themselves have already tried
something like that.

If memory serves it was a fast long enough to significantly weaken the immune
system, to the point that the person said they were the sickest and weakest
they had ever been in their life. Then when they resumed feeding, their immune
system went into overdrive and cleared the infection.

Edit:

Found the comment

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20494464](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20494464)

Their linked writeup seems to be down, archive.org:

[http://web.archive.org/web/20190820205143/http://www.smashco...](http://web.archive.org/web/20190820205143/http://www.smashcompany.com/philosophy/how-
i-recovered-from-lyme-disease)

------
pkaye
What are the chances if I search for "apple cider vinegar" and lyme disease
that a few will suggest ACV as the cure?

~~~
gerbilly
I don't know, but the probability that an HN article discussing a
misunderstood chronic disease is 100% likely to attract at least one snarky
dismissive comment such as your's.

A better use of your time might be to thank god/providence that you haven't
been cursed with such a condition.

~~~
pkaye
I've have my own chronic health issues. Perhaps people should not post these
fake untested approaches as if they are real so we can focus on the real ones.
They just clutter up the searches. How can ACV be the treatment for hundreds
of ailments?

