Читать книгу Honey For Dummies - Howland Blackiston - Страница 41

My first experience with apitherapy was at an American Apitherapy Society conference. I had always been interested in alternative medicine and wanted to learn more about how honey and bee venom were applied as a therapeutic treatment. So I signed myself up for the CMAC (Charles Mraz Apitherapy Course) certification course (see the following figure for a photo of Charles Mraz). It was three days of talks and workshops in the largely unknown world of honey-bee medicine. During one lecture we were told that after a short coffee break we would watch a live stinging demonstration by a trained apitherapist, Dr. Theo Cherbuliz, and a willing volunteer. I could not imagine how a bee could be forced to sting someone on purpose. Would the speaker release a handful of live honey bees into the room with hopes they would only sting the volunteer? I would quickly learn that bee stings are administered by a controlled procedure that requires specialized training and the use of a tool similar to a tweezer to direct the bee. A micro-sting would be given to the patient in a precise area on the body along a meridian similar to acupuncture points as a test. Later, I learned that the volunteer was not so random and had been receiving bee venom therapy (BVT) for pain. The conference ended with audience members sharing their personal stories about how they found relief in bee venom when traditional medicine had failed them. That’s when I became teary eyed with a new appreciation of honey bees.

As early as 350 BC, Hippocrates, the Greek physician known as the “Father of Medicine,” began using bee venom therapy to relieve joint pain and arthritis in his patients with some success. He also clearly understood the value of honey related to health and well-being and prescribed simple mixtures of honey and vinegar (oxymel) for pain and honey and water (hydromel) for fevers. He was a firm believer in the importance of honey’s nutrition value to prevent or cure diseases and he is remembered for his famous quote “Our food should be our medicine and medicine be our food.” During his work as a physician, he often prescribed honey internally and externally, as a contraceptive, laxative, or cough and sore throat reliever.

In this chapter, I discuss products of the beehive and how they have been used for health and healing.