Episode #55: Bee Venom Therapy with Ellie Lobel

Welcome to Better Health Guy Blogcasts Empowering your better health and now, here's Scott, your Better Health Guy. The content of this show is for informational purposes only and is not intended to diagnose, treat or cure any illness or medical condition. Nothing in today's discussion is meant to serve as medical advice or or as information to facilitate self treatment. As always, please discuss any potential health related decisions with your own personal medical authority.

Hello everybody and welcome to episode number 55 of the Better Health Guy Blogcast series. Today's guest is Ellie LaBelle and the topic of the show is Bee venom therapy. Elie LaBelle graduated from a gifted children's program at University College Kensington, London with with a PhD in nuclear physics and a Bachelor's in Engineering. At the tender age of 18, she has contracted for some of the top Fortune 500 corporations. She is a 15 year Lyme disease and Babesia sufferer who moved to California to live out her last few months of life. In June 2011, Ellie was attacked by a swarm of killer bees which changed everything. Ellie healed herself with bee venom and went on to create the protocol for bee venom therapy for Lyme disease. After hundreds of hours of research and much trial and error, she is a true pioneer of bee venom therapy for Lyme and got the research at University of New Haven in Connecticut. Off the ground with Dr. Eva Schopi, Ellie now travels the country teaching and educating about Lyme disease and its many co infections and bee venom therapy. Her BE bus mission has been traveling since March of 2015 and she's done all of this by donations and has helped hundreds of Lyme sufferers to date. And now my interview with Ellie Lobel. Ellie Lobel is well known in the Lyme disease community for being a catalyst who's really raised awareness about bee venom therapy and Lyme disease and how to best apply this tool to help aid people in the recovery from Lyme disease and all of the symptoms of Lyme disease. And so welcome to the show Ellie. It's an honor to have you here today.

Scott, thank you so much for having me.

Thanks. Let's buzz right in then. So tell us a little about your Lyme journey prior to starting your exploration. NTB Venom when did Lyme come into your life? Did you have a tick bite? How did it impact you? And then how long did you struggle with Lyme and how bad did it get?

Okay, well in brief, because we know these are long stories, I lived in New York, Westchester County, Hudson Valley, which is a hotbed of Lyme disease And ticks carrying Lyme. It was spring of 1996, and I was out in my front yard gardening. We just built our big, beautiful new home and we were all excited to get our plants going. And I never saw a ticket. Didn't know I had a tick on me. Within a couple of weeks, I ended up having a big bullseye rash on the inside of my thigh. It would start out as a little red dot, and it just kept getting bigger, you know, 1996, there was no information out there. No, no. I'd never heard about Lyme disease. Honestly, not once in my life had anyone ever said anything about Lyme. I wasn't a New Yorker, so, you know, didn't know about it. So I actually suffered for two years. I mean, I had a bull's eye rash. I had all the telltale symptoms of Borrelia burgdorferi. And I suffered for almost two years until I came across Dr. Cameron, who is a well known Lyme literate medical doctor. And it was quite easy to diagnose from there, knowing about the bullseye rash, which surprised me that the other doctors I had seen, no one said, did you ever have a rash? And we kept thinking it was just a spider bite. So it went undiagnosed for almost two years. I did the basic thing like everyone did then. You go on, you know, IV rocephin, lots of antibiotics. You know, I thought, great, we finally know what it is. Let's. Let's get it, you know, let's kill it and get it done and move on with life. Little did I know I would spend 15 years chasing treatment after treatment and going from know doctor to holistic doctor, to ND to herbs, to, you know, and I just kept getting worse. You know, I would see remissions in the beginning, and I thought to myself, wow, this is great. Okay, this treatment worked and I got it. I'm done moving on with life, right? And then it would come back, and it would always come back worse. Back then, they weren't aware of other infections you can also get with Lyme. So I also had Babesia, which, you know, nobody knew what Babesia was back then. So, yeah, I kind of Berlaea burgdorferi. You know, I showed positive on all the tests. I did three tests. Elisa, Stony Brook, and a western blot. And I came back highly positive on all three.

Wow. Wow.

Yeah, I'm one of the lucky ones. You know, those tests, as I found out later on, those tests are very specific to Borrelia burgdorferi. So I was one of the lucky ones who got that particular strain that showed with the bullseye rash that came up highly positive on all the tests.

So as I understand, you eventually moved to California with the idea that lyme disease was really going to take your life, and you had moved there to die, essentially. And in that process, you were attacked by bees. That really led to your recovery. Not only leading to your recovery, but led to you being really the catalyst for bee venom therapy within the Lyme disease community. So tell us a little about the bees that you encountered, how that impacted your health, and how that whole thing unfolded.

Yeah. Truth is stranger than fiction, isn't it? I was living in Arizona at the time, and I had relapsed horribly. I was doing bicillin injections in my hips. I was doing everything I could to try to combat it, and nothing was working. I ended up in multiple organ failure. Now, I already had a severely damaged mitral valve, and I was going into congestive heart failure as well. But when the liver. When the liver and the kidneys started completely failing, I mean, I knew at that point there was just nothing, Nothing more I could do. So I actually moved to California with a good friend of mine who was going to be my caretaker in the last few months of my life. I mean, at that point, you kind of look at your labs, you know, I'm all about the science, right? So I've got to see what's really going on here. You look at your labs, you know what you've been through, and you know that this is the end. So I accepted that. That this was the end. And I had three to four months left to live. I did just stopped anything, did nothing. And I just wanted to live out the last few months of my life in peace and. And let go and get out of the suffering. After 15 years. Well, you know, fate had a different plan for me, and I moved to Cal. To Southern California on a Friday, and went straight to bed because just the travel from Phoenix to Temecula was exhausting. And so I went straight to bed. And on Sunday, I wanted to go outside for a little. A little scoot. I couldn't really walk. I had to kind of just scoot along like a. Because I didn't have very good use of my legs either. So on my little scoot, you know, I stood by this tree with this beautiful scenery and rolling hills of Southern California, and I was completely at peace. And then a bee starts hitting me in the head, just, you know, interrupting my peaceful moment, right? And I. And I just kind of went with my hand. Come on, you know, go away, leave me alone. I'm ready to go. And the next thing I know, I'm covered in bees and my friend, the caretaker is running because, you know, it's terrifying. I had heard about killer bees and I had heard that, you know, it's frightening and it can be deadly. You know, we'd heard about killer bee attacks and stuff, but to experience a killer bee attack is a whole new level of terrifying. You know, I can't run, I can't get away. All I can do is just stand there, put my hands over my face and say, well, I guess this is the way I'm gonna go. You know, I guess I'm gonna die from a killer bee attack. Wow. Yeah.

Where did these, where did these bees come from? Was somebody like raising bees nearby or they were just moving through or.

No, they're the. These bees are in the wild. These bees have moved up from. It's an. It's a lab experiment gone wrong in Brazil trying to. They were trying to cross breed the African bee, which is much more aggressive with a docile honeybee. It was genetics gone wrong and it turned these bees into just crazy aggressive bees that do not act like normal bees. So they're actually in the wild. They've moved up from Brazil all up through Mexico, and now they're in, you know, southern United States. So they're feral bees. They are in the wild and they were in a tree. They must have been in a tree that I was actually standing next to. You can't get anywhere close to their hive and breathe. You know, they attack everything that gets within, you know, 50ft of the hive or whatever.

So after you got attacked by these bees, and I assume stung by some of these bees, how long did it take you to realize that something potentially good was happening as a result of that experience?

Yeah, well, after the bee attack and I was literally, you know, just scraping bee stingers out of my head, I was expecting anaphylactic shock to happen because I was allergic to bees when I was 2. I went into anaphylaxis at 2 and was sent to the hospital and DOA and had to be brought back. And so I was expecting anaphylactic shock to happen. And it didn't happen. So kind of disappointing. It's like I thought I was going to get out of here quicker, right? Not have to linger around another three or four months. But the interesting thing was, is that I went into septic shock and I wasn't sure. If, you know, at that time when you're going, you know, I was getting paralyzed, stuck in the bathtub, and couldn't move my body at all. And at the time, I wasn't sure if it was just my body was overloaded with bee venom or if this was the worst hercs I've ever had in my entire life. And I couldn't make that discernment because, well, I've never been attacked by bees before. So after three and a half days of septic shock, when the shock started to finally detox out some and wear off, and my kidneys were killing me, my liver was hurting so bad, my brain came out of that fog. You know, Lyme people know the brain fog really well, right? You can't have a cognitive thought. You are 10 people removed from the actual situation going on. I call it a brown out. You're in like a half coma. Brownout.

Yeah.

Yeah. So I'd lived in that state for a very long time already, and, you know, it was just the way things were. But my brain came out of that fog. It was like someone had instantly tuned me into the universe again. Like I was present and I was aware, and I was aware that I was present. I didn't have that depersonalization thing going on. So it was interesting because I thought maybe, you know, this could be a fluke, right? This could just be some crazy weird side effect of all the adrenaline pumping from being attacked by bees going through septic shock. You know, at that time, I had to kind of look at everything with curiosity. You know, this could be a fluke, this could be nothing. But my brain has stayed out of that fog ever since that moment.

Wow.

Yeah. So it's pretty amazing to be able to think straight and to be able to see straight and be present and aware. So that kind of led me to, you know, I thought, you know, maybe this was going to end. You know, at some point this could just end. And I, you know, I had already accepted death. I knew I was dying, my organs were shutting down, There was nothing more to do. And then just something inside of me kept saying, you know what? Maybe you really want to look into this, start looking into this. Because what did it, you know, obviously a lot of inflammation in the brain. So I started researching bee venom. And you know, bee venom has been used for thousands of years. It's known as a major anti inflammatory. So I thought, okay, maybe that was just a coincidence. It was the inflammation that came down out of the brain enough to where I could think straight right but so I started researching and I started researching and it was so fun to be able to do that because I could think straight and I could remember what I just read instead of turning the page and it was all gone. I could actually remember everything I just read. So it was pretty fascinating. So I just kept researching out of curiosity.

So what are some of the symptoms that people with Lyme disease see either reduce or or resolve when they start incorporating bee venom therapy? And then are there some things that it doesn't seem to work well for?

Well, the interesting thing is that if you have Lyme disease, if you have a Borrelia bacteria and we're talking Borrelia, you're going to experience a Derrick's Herxheimer reaction. You're going to have that typical atypical Herxheimer reaction, which is a very specific set of symptoms. A lot of people in Lyme community confuse a jerk's Herxheimer for other things, symptoms getting worse symptoms. The jerk's Herxheimer is a very specific set of symptoms that you get when the Borrelia dies and lets off endotoxins in the bloodstream. So you can expect to have some hercs, some Herx reactions. The only thing is, is that a lot of Lyme people have a lot of other infections too. They have Babesia, Bartonella, erlichiosis, Rocky Mountain spotted fever, tick borne relapsing fever, anaplasmosis. The list is, you know, a mile long. So depending on that person's infections and how long they've been sick will depend on, you know, what other type of reactions they're going to have as well, along with the jerk's Herxheimer reaction. So with Lyme, the nice thing is with bee venom it's like I call it the perfect litmus test for Lyme because if you have Lyme and Borrelia in your body, bee venom meets meets the spirochete is going to kill it and let off the endotoxins. You will have a Herx. People who have been on years of antibiotics and then start bee venom therapy, it may take them a few weeks to actually get a Herx going to produce that Herxheimer reaction because the antibiotics has suppressed it, pushed a lot of it into cyst form. A lot of it's in the biofilms and hiding. So it's the mechanisms on why bee venom works so well with on Borrelia is just, it's incredible, it's amazing.

So let's talk about that a little bit. So what is it in the venom that is beneficial for people with Lyme disease. What is Melittin and what does it do in the body?

Okay, well, Melittin, which is specific to bees, it's not found in wasp. I don't want people to go out and go, oh, can I use wasp or bumblebees or. Well, no, you have to use honeybees. Milittin compromises 50%, approximately 50% of the bee venom compounds. There's 36 different components in bee venom. My seems to be the killing agent. Actually, the wonderful thing about Melittin and why it's so much more effective than antibiotics is that when, when Melittin gets close to a Borrelia spirocheta paralyzes, renders it instantly immobile. So the, and it sits there while the, while the mulletin actually pokes holes in its three outer protective layers and then dismantles the bacteria. And that's really important to understand because when you're using antibiotics to treat, to treat late stage chronic Lyme antibiotics can kill a single spirochete while only while it's dividing. And while it's dividing, while it's killing that single spirochete, that spirochete has now let off 50 plus persister cells that will later grow into full blown spirochetes again. So you've killed one, potentially two, because it's dividing, but you've just created 50 more. So this is, hence, this is. It's really great to understand that because that explains just why we go into remission and then we relapse and then we go into remission and then we relapse. Antibiotics creates a stronger biofilm as well, is what we're discovering. Milittin on its own can actually penetrate biofilm and kill the borrelia within the biofilm. But when we, according to the research, this is when we were doing the research, according to the research, when we treated the Borrelia biofilms with full bee venom, all of its components, what we discovered is there's actually another component in bee venom that breaks up biofilms. So that's kind of exciting to watch this whole process. Very exciting. So basically we're killing the spirochetes and they're not going to grow back. So part of the research is the grow back factor, which is huge. So we, we did our negative controls with three different antibiotics and three antibiotics together, and the growback factor is quite high versus the growback factor for bee venom is zero. Wow, that's huge.

So I learned something new Already, Because I always had pronounced it melitin, but that sounds like it's Melittin.

Melittin. Melittin.

Okay.

You know, we're not sure exactly the pronunciation on that, so I say either one's right.

Okay, good. Then if I say it the way I've been saying it, I won't be too wrong.

Exactly. No, it's fine. So, I mean, we're in very exciting times as far as the research goes. And, you know, we're four years into research on this now. We had three years of research that just got published, which is very exciting.

Yeah, I know. I want to talk about that with you as well. So beyond Borrelia itself, the spirochete that you referred to, do we think that Melittin has some impact on other organisms that are involved in Lyme disease? So does it potentially help with Bartonella or Babesia or chronic viral issues like Epstein Barr or HHV6? Do we know if it goes beyond Borrelia?

Well, at this time, we don't have a scientific research on it. We have basically people like myself who had Babesia and Epstein Barr virus. So I, you know, Epstein Barr virus, I tested positive for 23 years. I got it when I was 20. You know, yuppie flu. Right. They called it. And I tested positive for 23 years. Even though I had no symptoms, I had nothing. It's just the virus that sits in your body. What was interesting is after bee venom therapy and getting myself well, I no longer had Babesia. Completely clear of Babesia, and I test negative for Epstein Barr virus.

Wow. So anecdotally, it sounds like there is some information, and just based on how people improve as they do be venom, we know that CO infections are a significant part of the symptoms of Lyme disease. So it sounds like there's reason to think that it may help in some way, either directly or indirectly, with these other Lyme CO infections.

Right. And that's why it's very exciting for us to have people who test positive for something before they start BVT and do nothing else but bvt and then they test negative after. So, you know, we've anchored anecdotally, we have. We have it in testing that it's been able to rid people of mycoplasma, which is. I see. I'm seeing it as becoming a very widespread infection.

Yeah, very common. I agree. So Dr. Eva Shopi recently published her research on bee venom therapy and Lyme, and the conclusion of her paper, and I'm going to read this was that the findings from this study showed that whole bee venom and Melittin were effective against all Borrelia burgdorferi morphological forms in vitro, including antibiotic resistant attached biofilms. That sounds really exciting. So maybe you can tell us a little bit more about that study. I understand you were involved in it in some way and what did it mean to you, you to have bee venom therapy further validated by this scientific research?

Well, it's very exciting because I am the one who actually contacted Dr. Eva Schappi and asked her if she would consider doing, based on my results, based on an old clinical I found from 1997 that had been performed by Rocky Mountain infectious disease lab Lubkengarin, showing the effects of, of bee venom on Borrelia. They've done a small study. I actually emailed her and asked her, would you consider, you know, doing, be studying bee venom, you know, based on this information that we have? And she said, you know, absolutely, let's, let's try it. I mean, what, what's the worst we could have? And we get nothing, right? You know, you go into that with your eyes wide open. You know, what you don't get as important as what you do get. And you have to have an open mind and you have to just say it's going to be what it's going to be. I wanted to make sure I wasn't just a, I wasn't just a person who got lucky. Do you know what I'm saying? So before I started spreading the word about bee venom therapy and getting other people to do this, I wanted to make sure we really had something here. So, you know, the research has been going on, like I said now, for four years. At every step of the way, I mean, I was actually supplying, I actually searched the world over for the purest collected bee venom I could find. Not all collected bee venoms are equal. You know, I've run them all through HPLC analysis to make sure that we had the purest bee venom that we could possibly get. Because we needed as close to the live bee venom as you can get, knowing that when bee venom hits oxygen, it actually, it actually the oxidization, unfortunately it loses some of its volatile properties.

And that's a good point because you couldn't do this and get the bees to sting the, the in vitro plates, right, that had the organisms in it. So you had to somehow isolate the bee venom in order for her to do the studies to see what effect it would have on Borrelia.

So it was very Important to know. I mean, there are people doing bee venom injections. Bee venom injections have been around for a while. I spoke with a lady who had been doing them for five years and even though it was helping with her symptoms, she still had Lyme. And I'm questioned, well, why? Lots of questions. We had tons of questions and no answers. And this research, just following it along the way has really answered a lot of our questions. So it's, so it's very exciting. We did do you know, I did, I found the highest quality bee venom you could get collected and I had it sent to the university to do the research study. So we use that and then we also use some low quality venom. We didn't get the same results. So the highest quality venom gave us great results. The lowest, lower quality venom was we didn't get the same results. So we kind of knew then that quality of the venom is very important. So, yeah, it's been very exciting to watch, you know, okay, can it kill Borrelia? Great. We've seen it, you know, be able to penetrate the bio, the outer three protective layers of the bacteria and dismantle the bacteria. But what about the CIS form, which the round body form, I think they're calling it now, what about the L form? What about all these other morphological stages of Borrelia? And when we're watching it kill each one of these different forms of the Borrelia, you know, it's quite amazing. You know, it's a, it's an interesting thing to watch, you know, okay, it can do this, but can it do this? And it can do that, but can it do this?

So until this research, everything had been done in vivo, meaning you're stinging yourself. With a bee, there is a biological system or organism, we know how it works in that case. But then what you had to do was figure out how do you do this in vitro in a dish since you couldn't have a bee sting a dish, for example. And so you had to figure out how to get specific venom that could be used outside of the body in the presence of borrelia to see how borrelia reacted to the bee venom.

Exactly, exactly. And were we going to get the same effect, you know, liquid bee venom right out of the stinger versus dried bee venom, you know, that's been hit with oxygen oxidized, you know, are we going to get the same, same results? Is it, you know, so all that was very curious going into this, you know, I mean, I knew I was. Well, it took me two and a Half years to get myself well. I made a lot of mistakes in the beginning, you know, stung myself too many times. Ended up on the floor in the fetal position crying. You know, I made a lot of mistakes, but, you know, because I was so sensitive, I was in kidney failure, liver failure, congestive heart failure. I was very sensitive. So I was very in tune with my body. So between doing it on myself, using myself as the guinea pig, and then doing the research to figure out, you know, how much bee venom can your kidney withstand before it shuts it down.

So in the study, my understanding is that they compared the Melittin to different antibiotics that also have been used in treating Lyme disease. And so how did those compare and were you ultimately pleased with the outcome of the study?

Well, what they did was they used three different types of antibiotics as our controls. We used three of them separately and all three together because, you know, I mean, I did a lot of antibiotics many at a time, together at the same time, and then individually as well, to use as our controls. And then we used full bee venom, you know, all the compounds of bee venom, and then we use just Melittin. So it was pretty amazing to see how even the difference between full bee venom and the difference between just Melittin, you know, melittin can kill the borrelia, the bacteria. It can, it can penetrate biofilms and it wipes it out. But whole bee venom, there was something in there that we discovered. We're not sure what it is yet. If an enzyme peptide, we're not, we don't know that actually busts up biofilms. But then we, we use that against the, the three different antibiotics. And the thing that, the thing that amazed me the most is that, okay, some antibiotics can kill single spirochetes while they're dividing. Great. But the thing that really got me was the grow back factor, you know, so we treated each one of these dishes with antibiotics. Three different types, three together, and bee venom, they were all treated and then. And then left to sit, you know, so we did the seven day recount. What's, what's in the dish, what's there, what is left is there. Berlase spirochetes left is there. You know, the growback factor for the antibiotics is just astonishing. I mean, you look at it and go, well, no wonder I didn't get well. You know, I killed single spirochetes. But the grow back, they grew back, you know, lots of them. So the growback factor for bee venom was zero.

Wow.

There was nothing left that is amazing. That is incredible. That is absolutely incredible. You know, we want to see good results. You know, whenever you are doing anything, you want to see good results, you want to hope that you are going to get good results. The results that we got completely far exceeded my expectations.

Yeah, that's awesome. So let's then talk a little about bee venom therapy. So let's say before someone even considers starting bee venom therapy, can they do it? If they're allergic to bees, do they have to do some kind of a sting to make sure that they don't have a strong reaction? A testing? I guess it would be. And Then is an EpiPen or similar, something that people who do bee venom therapy have in the event that they do have an allergic response?

Yeah. Well, approximately 3 to 4% of the entire population is actually allergic to bees. A lot of people mistake that. If, if they get stung on an extremity and it swells, that must be an allergic reaction. And it's not. The only actual allergic reaction is anaphylaxis, which can be deadly if you don't, if you don't have, if you're not prepared. So you want to make sure that you're not allergic, truly allergic, which is anaphylactic shock. Your throat and sinuses close and you cannot breathe. So it's very important for everyone to have an EpiPen. You know, you have to have an EpiPen on hand all times. No one can say, oh, well, I think I'm not allergic. No, don't do that to yourself. Make sure you have an EpiPen always. And we do a testing, you know, we have Benadryl on hand, the EpiPen on hand, you know, ice pack for the back of the neck in case someone starts to have anaphylaxis. And a charged cell phone in case you need to call for help, you know, and don't do this alone, you know, have someone there, you know, knock them. What? I haven't had to throw anybody in the back of my car and race them off to the hospital yet. But, you know, always be prepared.

Right.

That moment you're not prepared is when something's going to go sideways on you. So we do a testing. You know, one sting right on the back by the shoulder, one testing. We leave it in 20 seconds, take it out, wait 10, 15 minutes. Anaphylaxis usually happens pretty fast. So if you start to feel things closing, you know, some people get scratchy throats. That's just normal when they have Lyme and co infections to Get a little bit of a scratchy throat. But closing up is what we're looking for. So if it starts closing up, you know, Benadryl, down the Benadryl. If you can't breathe, you get hit with the EpiPen and then off to the hospital for emergency treatment. But that's very rare. It actually. It's a very rare thing. But better to be safe.

Absolutely. So one of the issues in many people with lyme disease, and it's been talked about a lot more this year or last year, actually, is mast cell activation syndrome and people who have increased levels of histamine. And so can people with mast cell activation syndrome use v venom therapy? Is it any different than what you just talked about with doing the testing? And then are there any cases where we know specific contraindications where certain people be venom therapy is just not even a possibility?

Yeah, well, mast cell syndrome, mast cell disease, mast cell. I mean, this is kind of a new thing that came around the last year or so. We all had it before. We just didn't have a name for it. So we know that the mast cells are behaving badly. Be Venom contains a peptide 401 that is a mast cell degranulator. So what it will actually do is it actually degranulates those mast cells that are holding on to all the histamine in our environment that causes us to become allergic to everything. I became allergic to everything. Food, tea, you name it. Paradise. Yeah. So basically what happens is, as this peptide 401 is degranulating these mast cells, people do experience a big histamine dump in the beginning. So that's why we go slow, we ramp up very slow. It takes, you know, we get up to 10 stings, but that could take between three and five months, depending on how sick that person is, their bacterial load, their mast cell problem, issues, low histamine diets. I mean, there are all these things we can do to help people get through that initial histamine dump.

Okay.

Will happen. Yeah.

And how about people on beta blockers, other medications, any other contraindications for those interested?

Beta blockers. You know, we want to make sure that. That they're not on a beta blocker that is using the same receptors as epinephrine. And this is a safety precaution, because if you do have anaphylactic shock at any point, Listen, we've had people drink an entire pot of coffee and do their stings immediately after and have an anaphylactic reaction. Then two days later, Sting. And they're fine. But, you know, people make mistake, they drink some alcohol. Sting anaphylaxis. So if you're on a beta blocker that's using the same receptors as the epinephrine, it'll render your epipen useless. So we want to make sure that you're not on a beta blocker. Some people are on heart medications that are also beta blockers. We want to make sure that they speak with their doctor and get on a heart med that's comparable, that does the same thing, but doesn't use those receptors. So there are ways that we can make sure someone is safe.

So tell us a little about the protocol then. So what is the bee venom therapy protocol for Lyme? How often does someone sting themselves? Where on the body are they doing the stings? And then how long is it before they start to see something that just makes them feel like, ah, this is actually working. I'm seeing some improvement. Something's getting better.

Okay, well, this is a very frustrating journey to wellness. So this is kind of how it goes. You start, you know, you make sure you have your detox plan in place. You make sure you have your proper supplements in place. You make sure you've looked over the condor indications list. We have a list of things you can't do while on bee venom. Not to say we know everything. This is still quite new. I'm only six and a half years now doing this, researching and all this. But we do know there are certain things you can do. So we have a condor indications list. So you just get yourself prepared. You know, I think knowledge is power. You know, if you know what you're doing and you're prepared, you've got your tools ready, you've got your bees, you've done your testing, and you know you're not allergic. You just start slow. Each person is going to be different. Their bacterial loads are lower. Higher. Three different infections. Five different infections. So we start out with one bee sting. We do the testing, and then we start out with one bee sting. We do that for a week, three days a week. So we pick a schedule. Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, we take two days off. Trial and error. I learned all this. Bee venom stays in the body for 48 hours. We learned that bee venom travels the nerve stems. So we do sting along the spine, one inch either side of the spine, you know, and the venom actually gets to the nerve stems. The histamine in the venom is neurotransmitting as well. So it actually helps the venom Travel the nerve stems. So that's the thing, why, that's one of the reasons why bee venom is so effective is that it goes right into the tissue first before it gets absorbed into the bloodstream, and then filters out through the kidneys, the liver, and it takes Lyme out of the kidneys along with it. So we sting along the spine, along at the hit in the main nerve stems. These are our largest points of our nerve stems. This where the nerves start in the body. The venom can travel through the entire body by using these nerve stems. It's kind of like an Internet, the Internet highway, so to speak. So we can actually treat the entire body using the spinal nerve stems. So it's interesting because you can ramp up according to how you're feeling. I tell people if, you know, if you have a high bacterial load, you're going to hurt like crazy. So go slow. People can go, you know, one sting for a week, Monday, Wednesday, Friday. And then I always tell them, you know, do another week and then try to ramp up on Fridays and take two days off.

So they start with one sting three times a week and work up to a total of 10 stings per session. Right. So they can get up to 30 stings a week is kind of the.

Exactly. That's the goal.

And then they generally do this for a couple of years, as I understand. Right.

This can be a two to three year protocol. I tell everybody just we've had people who were well in nine months, but they weren't sick for very long.

So how, you know, and this is interesting because I've known a number of people that have done bee venom therapy. And so I know how they get these, and I was kind of surprised. But tell us, how do people get the bees themselves? Like, do they come in the mail? Do they have to go somewhere to a farm and get them? Like, what happens?

Well, there are several options depending on where you live. You know, the climate has a lot to do with that. People who are living in colder climates will get them delivered in the mail. We have, we have a couple of bee suppliers here in the United States that actually send bees in the mail. So people in colder climates have to get them delivered in the mail through the winter months. In the spring and summer, they might have a local beekeeper that they're getting, that's, that's giving them bees. A lot of people, as they're getting better, are, are creating their own hives. They're getting their own hives. So they'll get their hive, they'll get Their bees from their own hives. So there are several options. You know, most people. Most Lyme people who get to be venom therapy now, you know, it sounds crazy, so you have to be pretty desperate. You know, it's kind of this, do this or die, or you're like, okay, I'm tired of being sick. Right. So there are several options for them, but usually they're too sick to tend to a hive or, you know, so they get the bees right in the mail. I actually have my bees sitting here. I don't know if you can. I haven't far enough away, Hope from the microphone. Hopefully you don't hear them buzzing. But we actually have special bee houses that we keep our bees in. If you can see that.

Awesome.

And these little crates in here, this is. They come in the mail in those little crates.

Yeah, that's the ones I've seen, actually. Is the little crates like that. Yeah. And then it's cool. This is where you actually have the fake queen kind of thing. Right. Where there's something in there that makes the them feel like there is actually a queen as part of this community. Yeah.

And these. And we get bees that are in their last stage of life. I know it's something I get asked all the time, and I want people to understand, you know, bees are in decline. There's a serious decline in the bee population, and it is a serious problem. So we want people to understand that we are using bees in their last stage of life. They're the foragers. A bee's entire lifespan is six to eight weeks. So we're getting the bees at the very end of their life. So we don't want to take from the population. I even made my notes. It takes approximately 3,500 bees to save a person's life.

But then if people are also then turning around and actually having their own hives and doing other things, then that's actually a benefit to the community. Right.

So, absolutely. I mean, 3,500 bees over two and a half to three years, when at any moment, bees have 30 to 50,000 bees in the hive at any moment. So what we're taking at the bees at the end of their life is so minute that the hive doesn't even notice. You know, more bees than that die every day out of the hive. So.

So when someone's doing bee venom therapy and they have a significant Herxheimer reaction, what are some of the things they can do to mitigate or minimize those reactions? What do you recommend as part of the bee venom Program for supporting Herxheimer reactions.

Right. Well, number one, I say ramp up slow according to how much you are having a Herx. You know, if you got to stay at one bee sting for two weeks and to be stings for two or three weeks, then do that because you can bring the bacterial load down. As the bacterial load comes down, your Herx reaction is not going to be as intense. So, you know, ramp up slow and then make sure you're taking. You know, we have a whole list of supplements and different things people can use for detoxing. We keep it simple, we keep it basic. We don't want to overload the body. We don't want the body having to process too many things at once. So, you know, charcoal is always good. Some people do really well with yucca, some people change it up. Charcoal this week, yucca next week, apple cider vinegar. Alka Seltzer Gold.

That's a great win for anyone with a Herxheimer reaction. I love.

Right. Alka Seltzer Gold became my best friend. Thank you, Dr. H. For that little.

I used it too, with my Lyme journey, for sure.

Yeah. I mean that is. That is the best thing I. So yeah, Alka Seltzer Gold. Saunas, you know, infrared saunas. If someone can, can have access to an infrared sauna or just hot, you know, a dry sauna, Epsom salt baths, you know, to ease the muscle pain to, you know, taking your magnesium. You know, we just, we want to stay away from harsh binders like, like clay, which pulls everything out of the body. So we want to be careful that we're not pulling nutrients out, you know, as well. And I tell everybody, keep it simple. Take only the things your body can use and utilize to heal and to help your body flush out the toxins. You know, the pecan, a big three. That picana is amazing stuff in small doses.

I agree.

Very potent. Right. But yeah, you know, keep the lymphs open, keep the liver and the kidneys, you know, detoxing out. If people are having kidney issues, you know, a little UVA Ursi goes a long way, you know.

So supplement wise, are there some things that are really kind of complementary or synergistic? Like. I understand one of the things is vitamin C potentially. Is there some reason why vitamin C is actually helpful in the be venom protocol or.

Yeah, it's a. Vitamin C is an absolute must. So if you're not taking anything else at all before you start be venom therapy, I say you have to be on a high dose, a higher dose of vitamin c. Vitamin C is an absolute must. The bee venom really kicks the adrenals into overdrive and creating a lot of cortisol, and we really need to support that. And the best way to do that is with the vitamin C. There are lots of brands out on the market. Some people can't tolerate buffered circles or ester C. There's liposomal C. There is vitamin C from other sources, like camu. Camu. So it's very important. It's an absolute must. The vitamin C is the must with bee venom therapy.

Talk to us a little bit about the emotional process of going through bee venom therapy. So does bee venom therapy itself bring up emotions? And then is it actually helping us to be able to process prior emotional traumas and conflicts and things of that nature?

You know, I wish I had the scientific explanation for what was going on with that, and I just don't at this point. But what I discovered, and I have seen it with everyone else doing this, is that your body is going to do an emotional dump as well. You're getting rid of the infections. The be venom is trying to help heal the body and bring things back into balance. It's an immune system modulator, hormone balancer. You know, it crosses the blood brain barrier. It's getting the lyme out of the brain. But what I've noticed is people will go through some pretty crazy emotional, emotional times. You know, I mean, myself, I spent two months crying. I just, you know, and I'm a pretty tough. I'm a pretty tough gal, but I literally spent two months crying. The waterworks just wouldn't stop. And I thought, you know, I'm sitting here as a scientist looking at it with curiosity, what's going on? You know, why is this happening?

Right.

So. So I don't know if it's. If it's actually dumping all this emotion from a cellular level, our bodies holding on to trauma. Yeah, I've seen people. People go through all the emotional dump of past relationships and divorces and. And children or whatever it was that they went through while they had Lyme or even before they had Lyme. I've seen people just dumping. Dumping it all, dump it in also. I say keep a journal, you know, write it all out. It's very important to dissipate the emotions attached to the thoughts.

Absolutely.

Writing things out.

Are there specific therapies that really should not be combined with bee venom? So, for example, can I be on antibiotics? Can I do ozone? Can I do herbs? Or are some of these things potentially going to make the bee venom therapy less effective or not lead to the same optimal outcome.

You know, we're learning as we go, and I'm learning as I go. And the one thing I know is that B venom works perfectly fine on its own. I'm the kind of person, like, why mess with a good thing if you know, okay, you did this, and this works, and you tried everything else didn't work. People do do antibiotics while they're on be venom therapy. They start out, they were already on antibiotics. They're afraid to let them go. I understand that. I'm not one to say, here, let me. Let me take your crutch away from you or whatever it is, you know, you're emotionally attached to or whatever, should you be doing them? You know, I mean, if you look at the facts, I like facts. I'm a facts person. We don't know everything, but I do like facts. Would you want to take something that keeps creating more borrelia for the bee venom to have to keep killing, or would you want to let it go? So you so let the bee venom kill what you've got left, you know? So can you take antibiotics? Well, yes, you can. Is it gonna hurt it. Is it gonna hurt, you know, whatever it's doing to your organs or whatever, you know, side effects you might be having? Sure. We've had people started start b venom therapy while on antibiotics, and they were just fine. And eventually they realized, okay, it was time to let them go. So you can really get into the fight here and get over it.

And is the same true of, like, ozone therapy as well?

No, no, that's what I'm saying. I wanted to make. Make that clear, that you can start BBT while antibiotics. It's not a good idea, and I wouldn't recommend it. Yeah, but some people have to have to have that. Okay. You know, I'm going to. Who am I to take it away from you? It's not the same as doing something like ozone.

Okay.

You know, ozone creates way too much oxidative stress on the body. Ozone can potentially cancel out some of the B venom in the bloodstream. We don't know that for a fact, and I don't have that scientific information yet, but I have a really good feeling. Okay, so there are things you don't want to do. I don't recommend stacking protocols. We don't know how some of these herbs affect bee venom. We don't know how bee venom affects some of these herbs. Not everything makes good bedfellows. Not everything works synergistically positively in the body. There are a lot of things we say. You don't want to take turmeric. Turmeric cancels, negates bee venom. It cancels bee venom. I get an accidental sting on my eye out playing in a hive. I'm going to smack turmeric, you know, slap some turmeric on it. It'll cancel that out so fast so my eye won't look like this. So we don't want to be popping a bunch of turmeric pills. You know, a little bit in your food on occasion is fine. There are things you don't want to do that we know for certain you just do not want to do.

Yeah. And in the show notes, we'll put the link to the Facebook group that has all of this information and has a really detail protocol document that I know is a work in progress and you guys keep adding to, but for people that are really interested, we'll make sure that that's available. What are your thoughts on using bees for the bee venom versus injectable bee venom? So we know in the study you did, you were able to get some bee venom that showed in a petri dish that there was some benefit. Does injectable venom potentially work in people as well? And how is it different from live beef?

Well, I think there's a big difference between live bee venom versus collected bee venom and even between the collected bee venoms themselves. So, you know, we've seen, we've seen the effect that the purest bee venom you can find on the planet can do in the vitro in the petri dish. We've also seen where injections just don't seem to be effective enough to help eradicate it out of the body. It can help with symptoms, but hasn't quite gotten anyone lime free. Okay, so. So live. So at this point, I truly can say live bee venom is the best way to go.

Perfect. And what about other products? I've seen bee venom creams and ointments and bee venom powder and so on. Do any of those. Do you find they're helpful or. Not so much.

Not with lime. You know, bee venom creams we see for anti aging stuff, you know, arthritic ointments are being made with Bebenham creams. Can they really get through the epidermis enough, you know, to joints? Not really. So it's still in its infancy.

So do you think that at some point there will be potentially an oral form of melittin that could then be helpful to get this substance into the body? As an antimicrobial for dealing with systemic.

Lyme, you know, everything is possible. And I'm sure, you know, there are researchers right now who are trying to synthetically recreate Melittin. You know, it can go many directions. I hope at some point in the future we have a very easy way to administer bee venom into the body. What I've seen, you know, full bee venom do for the entire bodily system versus just Melittin. I hope that we can somehow be able to utilize all those components that actually work to heal the body. You know, we really do hope that at some point it's going to be a lot easier to do this. I mean, no one really wants to get stung with a bee.

Yeah. And unfortunately, the challenge is nature in its wisdom, has so many compounds and things and even in herbal medicines. Right. That it's. It's very difficult to get the same result with a synthetic compound.

Absolutely, absolutely. It just doesn't quite have the same effect on the body. Plus, you know, with Lyme, we need whatever it is that we're using to try to treat Lyme. We need it to get into the tissue.

Tell us a little bit about your Bee Bus Mission and what did you do during that time. What are the goals of that outreach?

The Bee Bus Mission was created three years ago in March. I actually decided, when I was completely well and I was helping a lot of other people in my area in Arizona, I actually decided that it was time to actually go out and help the people. You know, how are you going to reach the most people besides by going out and teaching and training and educating? So the Be Bus Mission was created to actually to go on the. I was on the road for two years, driving around the country in my little old truck with my be aware for lime symbols and the Be Bus Mission. And I actually drove around the country just doing small, small meetups and talks and just educating people on bee venom therapy and showing people how to do this. What I had learned is that if you show someone how to do this, it makes it a lot easier. It's done in a very controlled environment. You're not jumping into a hive. You're not trying to get killer bees to attack you. This is done in a very controlled environment, and it's a very simple treatment you can do at home. It's very inexpensive. You can do this at home for yourself. You don't have to, you know, go broke, you know, doing B venom therapy or, you know, so I. So I just found that it was. So the Be Bus Mission was created. And what I did was I spent two years on the road educating people, showing people how to do this, explaining how this was done, and it was the most amazing two years. It's been an incredible journey. I've now been settled and I'm working on the book. I'm working on a book. Bee Venom Therapy for Lyme disease. My website is getting ready to launch here shortly as well. We have the Bee Venom Therapy for Lyme group on Facebook that is 5,800 members and growing. We've doubled in. In the last year. What better to hear. What better to hear about how well a treatment is working than from other Lyme people?

Yes, I'm excited about the book as well. I think that's fantastic. I'll definitely be interested in reading it as well. Any hints on when it might be available?

You know, I'm working with my editor now, and we're right to the end. So we have. We're going back in and doing some reworking and doing a little bit more editing. And I, you know, awesome. It's going to be done when it's perfect. As perfect as I can possibly get it right. So I'm looking at maybe a few months.

Oh, no. Not another person with Lyme disease that was a perfectionist. Like, seems like all of us were a little ocd. Exactly.

Yeah. So, you know, the be bus mission is continuing. I'm actually, what I do is I'm, you know, I'm helping people get the supplies that they need and the supplements they need. And. And we just did. We just did a big Christmas drive. So we got a lot of lame people gifts and. And a lot of people got electric blankets who were on the east coast. So the donations for the B bus mission are still going towards helping people get started with bvt, you know, lifting spirits and making a difference, you know, where we can.

One of the questions that I always ask my guests is what are some of the key things that you do on a daily basis in support of your own health? So with you, maybe that's besides bee venom therapy, but what are some of the other things you do to feel as good as you're feeling today?

And this is where you guys are not going to like me very much. I haven't done bee venom therapy now in three and a half years or. Yeah, over three years. I only sting on occasion. Like, if I am doing something and I hurt my knee, I'll sting my knee. I sting occasionally, not very often. So there's no maintenance after when you're well, you're just. Well, I try to remember to take my multivitamin. You know, I don't always. I'm not good at it. When you're really sick with Lyme and you're on 50, 60 different things a day and you have to constantly do things to try to maintain some form of normalcy at all, when you don't have to do that anymore, you can get used to being well really fast, and you can get used to being, oh, I don't have to take this. I don't have to take that. I mean, I took thyroid medication for 12 years. I haven't taken it now in six. No thyroid medication? No, I don't. You know, I try to exercise, you know, because we had holidays. I ate a lot of chocolate and a lot of really great food. I don't have any food intolerances anymore, which, you know, I was down to really sucking on spinach leaves and eating organic soup because everything else, I paid a price for. And now I can eat everything. Bacon, you know, meat. I love bread. I do love bread.

Wow, this is really exciting. I'm impressed. I didn't know that you were already done with stinging and don't need to do that anymore.

Oh, yeah. I'm completely over it, and I. You know, it's such a blessing to wake up every day and just feel good in your own body and know that you can depend on your body to get you through that day with no issues. I do. You know, I mean, tore up the cartilage in my knees, so I can't run. I can't run. I used to run. Be an avid runner before Lyme, but I can ride my bike. I can do yoga. I just got a rebounder. I'm going to start doing some rebounding for fun.

Great.

So there's no maintenance after that, you know, Take good care of your body when you recover your health. As easy as it is to want to just eat everything inside, because you can have pizza, burgers, chips without paying any type of price for it. Well, you'll gain weight, right?

Bee venom doesn't take care of that, huh?

No, it doesn't. No, it does not. So I feel very blessed that live a normal life.

This has really been amazing from where you were to where you are now. I mean, what a phenomenal story. And I think it's really exciting that you've been able to help so many other people that you're coming out with the book. I would say that this has been a beautiful conversation, but that might be but it has, it's actually been fantastic. And so I think this is a really exciting option for those people that are dealing with Lyme disease. We will, in the show notes, put the link to the Facebook group and to your website that will be launching at the same time as the book. And so I just thank you so much for being here, appreciate all that you're doing and appreciate your time today. To learn more about Today's guests, visit bvt4lime.com that's bvtbvenom therapy for F O R lyme.com bvt4lyme.com which is coming soon. You can also learn more at the Facebook group Bee Venom Therapy for Lyme Disease that's Bee Venom therapy for Lyme Disease thanks for your interest in today's show. If you'd like to follow me on Facebook or Twitter, you can find me there as Better HealthGuy to support the show, please visit betterhealthguy.com donate if you'd like to be added to my newsletter, visit betterhealthguy.com newsletters and this and other shows can be found on YouTube, iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, and Spotify.

Thanks for listening to this Better Health Guy blogcast with Scott, your Better Health Guy. To check out additional shows and learn more about Scott's personal journey to better health, please visit betterhealthguy. Com.