Other practitioners treat high blood pressure, asthma, hearing loss and even premenstrual syndrome with bee venom. According to Christopher Kim, medical director of the Monmouth Pain Institute in Red Bank, New Jersey, bee venom therapy has been around for thousands of years. Reference to the treatment can be found in ancient Egypt and Greek medical writings. Also known as apitherapy, the technique is more widely used in Eastern Europe, Asia and South America. Treatments supposedly started after beekeepers, who were stung many times, noticed their arthritis pains were relieved.
Some practitioners still use live bee stings to deliver the venom.
Most got better Kim, who has administered apitherapy to 3,000 people, published a two-year study on 108 rheumatoid and osteoarthritis patients who had not responded to convention treatments. Starting with twice-weekly injections, he gradually increased the number of shots until the patients improved significantly. Most subjects showed improvement after an average of 12 injections. In his article, printed in the March 1989 issue of the German journal, Rheumatologie, Kim concluded that apitherapy was safe, effective and free of serious side effects. But evaluations of most U.S. medical treatments are based on double-blind studies where neither the subject nor researcher knows who is getting the real medicine or a placebo.