If you’ve been following our blog for some time, you know that our goal is to help everyone find a solution to their pain problem. If you find something that works for you, then stick with it. That being said, not all alternative methods are created the same, and some can be downright dangerous.

That’s the lesson we learned when a 55-year-old woman recently died due to complications from apitherapy. For those of you who know your word origins, you might be able to figure out what apitherapy is – bee therapy. More specifically, apitherapy is known as live bee acupuncture.

Apitherapy Gone Wrong

We’re not saying the therapeutic technique is bonkers, because some people swear by it, and as is our motto, we want everyone to find a solution to their individual pain problem, so if it’s working for you, more power to you. That being said, even if it seems safe, it’s clear that we don’t know as much as we thought we did about the therapy technique.

According to the news reports, the 55-year-old woman had been undergoing apitherapy for more than two years without problems. However, during her most recent session, she developed a severe reaction and began wheezing, coughing, and suffering from shortness of breath. She eventually lost consciousness and was taken to an emergency facility. She died a couple weeks later of multiple organ failure. Medical researchers are saying it’s the first documented apitherapy death where the individual had previously been tolerant of the bee stings. Medical researchers who studied the woman’s case concluded that apitherapy is an “unsafe and unadvisable” treatment option.

Like a lot of things in this world, apitherapy has become more popular after being championed by an uninformed celebrity. In 2016, Gwyneth Paltrow touted the “thousands-of-years-old treatment” as something she tried for an old injury. Gerard Butler also said he received a bee sting injection in an attempt to calm inflammation from stunt work, but he ended up hospitalized after having a poor reaction to the injection. He said he felt like his heart might explode and it was as if he had ants crawling under his skin.

What Doctors Are Saying

The theory behind apitherapy is that bee stings cause inflammation, which in turns leads to an inflammatory response from your body. The hope is that the inflammatory response will address both the inflammation from the bee sting along with other local inflammation in the joints.

Doctors say patients considering the therapy should be fully informed of the dangers of apitherapy prior to treatment. They also recommend that measures be taken to identify if someone could have a bad reaction before receiving a full injection, and that practitioners should be trained in how to manage severe reactions and that they should have specific reaction medications on hand. There should also be a system where the patient can receive emergency response care in a quick manor if needed.

“The public need to be very aware of the unorthodox use of allergens such as bee venom,” said Amena Warner, Head of Clinical Services for Allergy UK. “This will come with risk and, in susceptible individuals, can lead to serious life threatening reactions.”