(Un)Well (2020) s01e06 Episode Script

1
The bees
they are just profoundly special beings.
They're my doctors,
'cause they're giving me the medicine.
With bee venom,
literally overnight,
people look so much younger.
There are so many
crazy natural treatments out there,
but very, very few have good evidence
that they work
and that they're safe.
Out of all the fringe treatments,
bee-venom therapy is among the most risky.
The obvious risk
is when you pass out
and your throat closes
When I first started,
it was painful.
I just had this tremendous fear
that I'm allergic.
I would not be here today
without the bees.
I think many people
who use bee venom,
they're being exploited
by the culture of belief.
The bee venom,
it is a toxin that cures.
It is a wonder cure.
Wellness.
A global industry
worth trillions of dollars.
Does it bring health and healing?
Or are we falling victim
to false promises?
Are we really getting well?
Am I going to look
ten years younger?
I think a bit more
than ten years younger
because you already look beautiful,
and I think
you're going to be
really, really pleased
because your skin just needs this.
I sometimes have to pinch myself
to see where I am now,
to how far I've come.
I didn't set out
to own a multimillion-pound
skincare company.
But then, obviously, it hit in the paper
with all of the celebrities using it,
and it was like, overnight the whole world
wanted bee venom.
So many people buzzing today
about a royal beauty secret
Bee venom
comes with a royal price tag
The treatment
that has the beauty industry
How far
Many celebs are turning
to bees to look younger.
Nature's natural Botox?
a toxic substance
is generating big buzz
It's bee venom.
Please join me in welcoming
the founder and CEO of Heaven Beauty,
- Ms. Deborah Mitchell.
- Thank you for inviting me!
Were you at the palace
the night before the wedding?
I can't say.
And this is the Bee Peel.
- Can you feel that tingling?
- Yeah. I can.
If it's good enough for Camilla,
it's good enough for me.
What made you think of bees?
It just came to me.
When I think of my products,
I literally dream my ideas.
The bee venom mask is
like any of the other products
I've developed.
So, this is my magic ingredient.
This is the apitoxin.
There's literally, like, a beehive,
but in one place.
All of the ingredients that are so
wonderful for health.
So, that'd cost probably about
three hundred pounds, or more.
You just
I just called it bee venom mask
because it's got bee venom in it
as one of the ingredients.
But I didn't tell people that
it's literally got real botulism toxin.
It's found within the honey particles.
When you apply it,
it literally looks like
you've had loads of injections,
like Botox, or other types of injections.
I know that sounds strange,
but when I first used it,
even on myself, I couldn't believe it.
I couldn't believe
how it changed immediately.
How my skin got softer, and the skin
goes younger straight away.
It's like having your picture taken
with a soft-focus lens.
And as you can see there,
you now
have completely the bee venom.
Exactly the same as in the container.
And if you wait a few seconds,
you start to see it developing
and plumping out.
Wow, wow, wow.
I feel as if I've had a nice day
in the garden, in the sunshine.
It feels all glowing
and all nice, yeah.
And I feel as though I've got rid
of some of these lines that
that were there, yeah. Really pleased.
What happened, obviously,
when my products went in the paper,
all of these companies decided to just
put a bit of bee venom into the cream.
Or some of them said it was bee venom
and didn't put it in.
Buyer beware.
We don't believe
- miracles exist in skincare.
- No.
The reality is,
skincare is like a marathon.
It's about consistency
and what you do long term.
Looking at the ingredient list
How much bee venom?
We do not know.
Yeah.
We would consider bee venom
an old trend
and that stemmed
from the Asia beauty market.
I always think that trend comes and goes
because I remember last time it was big,
it was probably around the time
that placenta was also a talking point
and, like, I was a kid.
Yeah, it's so: want to chase
the Holy Grail.
This, as far as a bee venom
formula goes, is a high-end serum.
$200 extreme performance serum
with melittin peptide.
With bee venom,
the typical claims that we see
are anti-wrinkle
and antimicrobial.
We are still, kind of, on the fence
because there's just
not a lot of data out there.
We don't know if bee venom
is something that should be replacing
all these other anti-wrinkle ingredients
like retinol and glycolic.
A lot of products do clinicals,
but they do small clinicals
to kind of just get a few claims.
If they say something like,
"Ninety percent of the women
feel more hydrated."
Then that's usually a sign
that it's, uh
not as robust of a claim.
So, for us, this is a really big mystery.
Uh do we
Would we recommend buying it?
Unfortunately, we wouldn't
'cause we just don't know.
I first become aware of bee venom
as a cosmetic
when Prince William and Kate got married.
Being a scientist, the first thing I did,
was to think, "I'm gonna test that,
see if it works."
Lo and behold, we did some trials,
and it does work.
And the way it works is you,
is you put the cream on,
and it creates a little bit of swelling,
and that fills in the wrinkles
and makes them effectively disappear.
And it lasts for maybe up to 12 hours.
So, unlike, say, Botox injections,
which last for months on end,
it lasts for a few hours.
So you'd have to put it on every day.
However, there are lots
of bee venom cosmetic products out there.
It's hard for the public to know
which is a good one.
The reason being, is that bee venom itself
as an ingredient, is very expensive.
It's very labor-intensive,
and you get very, very small amounts
when you try to collect it.
It's hundreds of dollars per gram.
Some people have even compared it
to the cost of cocaine.
And I know for a fact that a lot,
or most of the products out there,
don't have a high enough dose
to have an effect.
So, unfortunately,
people will be wasting their money.
But
bee venom's really interesting.
One percent of the population
are allergic to bee stings,
and they should not use
any bee venom product.
But it's been used medically
for thousands of years,
literally as bee stings,
where people sting arthritic joints
and get relief from their pain.
And it's making a bit of a comeback.
In theory, we know how it works.
So when a bee stings you,
you get the initial pain,
but you get local release
of the body's steroid after that.
And we know
that steroid produced by the body
gives long-acting relief
from inflammatory conditions,
joint problems, pain, that sort of thing.
So there's a good scientific rationale
as to why it works.
And there's a lot
of laboratory research
we've done in test tubes and Petri dishes.
And there were some good results.
But very, very few companies
invest in doing clinical trials.
They're expensive, they're time-consuming
and you might not get the answer
you want as well.
But people are wanting to take control
of their health
more and more these days.
They're doing their own research
and feel empowered
if they find a treatment
that wasn't necessarily
one that the doctor tells them to take.
Being chronically ill
and having to see
so many doctors over the years,
and being misdiagnosed
for most of my life
has definitely made me lose a lot of faith
in Western medicine.
I'm ready to put my trust into the bees.
My name is Kerri Ciullo. I am 24.
I wanted to
find an outlet of art that I could do
lying down, no matter how I was feeling.
This is what a lot of my embroidery
looks like.
There's a lot of colors,
a lot of botanicals,
and I always incorporate insects
just because
I've felt a connection with them
for most of my life.
And the bee over my heart
just seems extra appropriate.
- Who's having coffee?
- I'll have coffee.
What do you wanna eat?
I'm just making cereal.
Kerri and her brother
were born five weeks premature.
Back in kindergarten, first grade,
she started with stomach aches.
And then it started going into headaches.
All throughout her young age,
she had different symptoms
that, you know,
I I can look back now and say,
it's probably
a big piece of this puzzle.
I went to different doctors
and they were all kind of saying,
"We see nothing wrong.
There's nothing on any tests
that say that you're sick."
So, when I was about nine,
I started antidepressants,
and I started to not trust
my own feelings
because I had so many doctors
telling me that this was all in my head.
Most of these diagnoses, like,
we had to diagnose first.
And that makes you distrust every doctor.
Finally, when I was 19,
I started researching Lyme disease
because it's so prevalent where I live.
My doctor did some blood tests on me,
and they found out
that I was a pretty textbook case
of late-stage Lyme disease.
The longer you have the infection,
the more it spreads throughout the body.
So, by the time it was detected in me,
I had damage everywhere.
I have arthritis, I have organ damage.
Um I have a lot of neurological damage.
The doctor put me
on multiple antibiotics
which destroyed my digestive system.
So, then I had intravenous antibiotics.
I had a severe reaction
because my body
could no longer process them.
The more I read about Lyme disease,
the more destructive I knew it was,
and the more I kind of lost hope
that we had gotten it too late.
I didn't trust
my general practitioners anymore,
so I found a homeopathic doctor.
She put me on a pretty
drastic herbal regimen.
Just so many different supplements.
Some were anti-parasitic,
some antibacterial,
something that helps your immune system,
something that helps inflammation.
Because Lyme just destroys
so many areas of your body.
I have to take
most of these three times a day.
So, imagine being sick
and your brain isn't working properly
and having to sit and count out
each individual drop.
Each one of these bottles
is generally about anywhere from $60
to $80 a bottle.
And this isn't even acupuncture
or going to chiropractic.
The only thing that we get covered, maybe,
is we go to our primary care
for blood work.
But half the time you're doing all this,
and you don't see any results.
One day I was just venting
a little bit on Instagram,
and I wanted to know if anyone
had any answers or recommendations.
And then, one of my followers
told me about bee-venom therapy.
The idea came into my life
in a really dark time,
where I was just losing hope
and feeling like this might be
my existence for the rest of my life.
I carry this dread and this
sadness with me all the time
that she's just not going to get well.
But Kerri has always been drawn to bees
and loved bees,
so it's just bizarre.
I I I'm hoping that the universe
is reaching back to her
and giving back to her what she's lost.
I'm heading to the Heal Hive
bee venom retreat.
I'm really excited.
I'm a little bit nervous,
but I think it's going to be
a really great opportunity,
and I'm so excited to meet other people
who have been through the same thing.
So, between the travel expenses
and the cost of the retreat,
I've spent around $2,500.
But if this works,
that's such a small amount to pay,
especially compared
to the tens of thousands of dollars
that my parents have spent over the years.
I haven't told my doctor
about bee-venom therapy
because I kind of have my mind
set on this,
and I didn't want um
anyone to make me doubt that.
Thank you.
One, two, three.
Thank you.
The Heal Hive is an educational platform
focusing on the holistic modality
of bee-venom therapy.
I empower people to take their health
into their own hands.
Okay.
And so I'm not tough
because I enjoy it,
I'm tough because I want them to believe
what I believe.
It's about them owning their own health.
I'm not a doctor.
I only teach what I know.
And what I know is chronic Lyme disease
and how to heal yourself from it
through bee-venom therapy.
You guys wanna join me?
At the retreat, we have people
coming from all over the world.
It's all women, though
we welcome men.
None of them have had chronic Lyme
for less than at least a year or two.
Some of them for decades.
Hi!
I found Brooke on Instagram.
I kind of, can get a gut feeling
about people and
this just felt so right
with Brooke and the bees.
I'm not nervous at all
about the stinging.
I've been stung multiple times,
but I wouldn't be comfortable
just going up,
grabbing a bee and stinging myself.
That's why her, um retreat
stood out so much to me.
You're the only ones
who're gonna heal yourselves.
We're not gonna do it.
We're just going to provide tools
so that when you leave, you feel
that you are completely empowered
to take healing into your own hands.
And that you know as much as possible
that we can fit in
in two days, to get there.
My approach with the Heal Hive
is to use science as a friend
but bee venom as the medicine.
So we rely and we make it mandatory
to have, um blood work done
before you start
and every three months
while you're doing it.
And you have to make sure
that you have doctors on board
and people looking at your lab work
to make sure nothing else is going on.
The beauty about this is that the clients
are able to see their progression.
So, I hope to see some of your faces
at the next retreat
because we like to graduate you from
feeling unable to even function,
to wanting to work again.
I've been sick as long as I can remember,
since I was a kid.
But now, here I am,
organizing this for all of you guys.
It's it's really potent,
powerful medicine,
and, um I never thought
that in a four-month period
I'd be where I am.
I'm here to inspire you,
that however you're feeling now,
like, there's a light.
There is an end to bee-venom therapy.
When you're symptom-free
and your lab work comes back clear
of Lyme Borrelia
and other type of co-infections,
you can stop.
I used to be terrified of bees,
insanely terrified.
I think I'm going to go behind.
We give a little bit of smoke,
just to, kind of, calm the bees
and introduce ourselves, so to speak.
I've been known
to just tear out of the house,
put my hand through a plate glass window,
thinking that there's a bee around.
But it's been said
that the Chinese character for fear
is the same character as opportunity.
I'm an acupuncturist,
and I was the president
of the American Apitherapy Society.
I think everything about wellness
comes from nature,
including some of the drugs
that we use today.
So I say, look to nature first
and use it in its most pure form,
if you can.
I was raised in France,
and when I was little, my grandmother
would go out to the garden
and collect a couple honey bees,
bring them in,
and she would sting her knee
for arthritis.
And we thought that this was normal.
So when I came to this country,
I'm thinking, okay, everybody does this.
So pretty with the way it just
drizzles like that. Fran, look.
And then my husband
wanted to be a beekeeper.
He always wanted to do it as a hobby.
Look at that, wow.
Liquid sunshine, we call it.
Apitherapy has been widely used
on all the continents of the world.
It is the medicinal use,
or therapeutic use,
of all the gifts that the honey bee
has to offer.
So, it's raw honey, pollen,
propolis, royal jelly, bee venom, beeswax.
So, it's all the products of the hives.
Went to Acupuncture school
and then a light bulb went on again.
Wow, okay, the acupuncture points,
if you would do bee venom or bee sting
in those particular points,
you could really
intensify the treatment
and get better results quicker.
So tell me
about what you want to work on.
My thumb is feeling a lot better,
but I would like
to continue stinging this.
- Okay.
- And then my shoulder area
is is feeling great.
So I just wanna maintain that.
It's not locking up as much?
Nope. Feels great.
Perfect. Okay.
And then, whatever immune points,
just 'cause I've been really tired
and sluggish.
The conditions you can treat
with bee venom
run the whole gamut,
from, um osteoarthritis,
rheumatoid arthritis,
Lyme disease and its co-infections
um multiple sclerosis.
There is no cure for anything,
but it can really alleviate
a lot of the symptoms
and give people back
a certain quality of life.
You are so lively today.
I know, I know.
It's always good when you talk to them.
I remove one bee at a time
from the box,
and I hold her behind the head,
or by the torso,
try not to squish her,
and then I decide
where I'm going to sting.
If the person's in pain,
it could be a trigger point,
it could be a distal point.
Based on traditional Chinese medicine,
there's different strategies.
It's kind of exciting, 'cause each time
it's like, I'm gonna figure it out,
you know?
Put the bee
right next to the needle.
She stings spontaneously
upon contact with the skin.
- How's that feel?
- Feels good.
I leave the stinger in
five to ten minutes maximum
till it finishes pumping the venom.
Yeah, that's it.
There we go.
The best way to receive bee venom
is from a live bee.
But it can also be applied with a syringe,
and only physicians
are allowed to do that.
But it's a different animal,
so to speak.
A lot of the volatile substances are lost.
So, this'll stimulate
my immune system? Or
Yes.
Oh, wow.
It's one of the main
meeting points of yang in the body.
- Builds immune system.
- I feel it.
It's almost feels better than a flu shot.
Okay, gotcha.
I don't think I'm completely
desensitized of the fear.
- There, perfect. You got her.
- Okay, I feel it.
I think it's in the medicine
that I do now
that I've come to love
and respect the bees.
- Feel a rush upwards?
- Yeah.
When Frederique's
putting bee stinger in me,
it just feels intense and warmth.
I always recommend it.
And the reaction from people,
it's, just, uh
I don't want to say negative,
but it's kind of like, "what?"
You know, just surprised
that that's an actual therapy. Um..
And I think people have intense,
uh fear around bees
and the possibility
that they hold healing benefits.
Right, so bee venom
has 63 components.
Most of the stuff that's evolved
out there in the natural world
are there to kill you.
Nature doesn't care about people.
Bee venom is between 40 and 60%
of a protein called melittin.
It kind of looks like this.
There are problems
with mainstream medicine.
We're not doing everything perfectly.
But turning to an unproven therapy
isn't a solution.
I initially became interested
in bee-venom therapy
because of claims that it is a treatment
for multiple sclerosis.
That seemed highly implausible to me,
so I looked at the evidence.
What published studies are there?
There was just a handful, two or three
really small preliminary studies,
and the results were very unconvincing.
Bee venom is kind of a witches' brew
of toxins and chemicals.
They're all there
to cause you pain and harm.
So about half of the bee venom
by dry weight is the melittin,
which is the main protein.
This causes pain,
and it's also meant to destroy tissue.
The body, of course,
responds as it does to any trauma,
by trying to throw water on the fire.
So your body will produce cortisol
to counteract the inflammatory response
and it will secrete
analgesics to tamp down the pain.
So, there is research, for example,
looking at injecting bee venom
into the knees of people
who have rheumatoid arthritis.
There could be some local
anti-inflammatory reaction,
but it's a pretty clumsy way
to provoke
a local anti-inflammatory reaction.
We're going to inject
this mix of 63 different chemicals
that are meant to be destructive
and pain-causing,
just to provoke the body's response.
That's, you know,
that's a pretty dodgy approach
because you could
just inject the cortisol into the knee.
I don't know why you wouldn't do that.
There is a standard in healthcare,
and it exists for a reason.
It's so that we don't exploit
desperate patients
by offering them treatments
which really don't have
a reasonable chance of working.
But they'll pay for
out of their desperation.
Just because of my past experiences,
I'm a little bit nervous
that maybe no, it won't work.
But I'm trying to go in with as positive
of a mindset that I can have
because I think that's also a factor.
I'm just allowing myself to believe
that this could be the answer.
Why is bee venom so powerful?
It is a known antibacterial.
It is a known antiviral.
It is a known anti-parasitical.
On top of that
it is a powerful anti-inflammatory.
You might be asking yourself,
if it's this amazing
why isn't bee-venom therapy better known
and better studied?
Bee venom
is a mixture of complex peptides.
They still do not know
exactly what they do.
There are elements
that we do know about.
The one in particular
that we're so excited about
and has been studied
regarding Lyme is melittin.
It is our secret weapon.
Research has already shown that melittin
pokes holes in weak cell walls.
Bacteria, like Lyme Borrelia,
they are compromised already,
and this allows the melittin to come in,
and the contents of the cell
basically explode out.
Your healthy cells
are not affected by this.
Um I don't promise a cure
but I think, um it's very clear
that, um it was my cure.
This lighting it's gorgeous.
I won't lie.
This is not the profession
I necessarily set out to do.
Does the sting on my eye show?
It was based off of necessity.
Because my histamine modulation
is perfect.
Instagram started
right when I got sick with Lyme disease.
One of my first posts
was a picture of all the chemicals
and prescriptions
and supplements they put me on.
And my post says,
"Guys, I have Lyme disease.
See you next month."
I wasn't able to update that with health
and wellness for another four years.
If you're bitten by a tick
and the tick has Lyme Borrelia,
you can get on antibiotics,
and most healthy people will be fine.
The problem is that chronic Lyme
is controversial
because of the fact that many times
the Lyme bacteria
cannot be found in the body.
Lyme Borrelia can go into dormant forms.
It can burrow into bone,
into brain, into lymph.
And it can lie both in dormancy,
and also keep coming into the acute phase,
and reinfecting patients over and over.
So, you can get a cold, a flu,
and get stressed
and all of a sudden, Lyme bacteria
will become unleashed again.
And because doctors
don't know how to help you,
the people that love you most,
many times, they can't face it either.
And so it becomes even more
of a social prison
as much as it is a physical prison.
I discovered bee-venom therapy
um after about two and a half years
of trying everything.
When I say there was
a cocktail of modalities I tried,
it was truly an encyclopedia.
All that happened was that
I was about $160,000 poorer.
I literally had nothing left.
And my parents said,
"You've been at this for two-plus years.
Nothing's working."
Right then, a nurse from the clinic
walked in.
I knew she'd had really bad Lyme disease,
chronic Lyme disease.
So I quickly scrambled
to say to my father,
"Look, this is the nurse at the clinic.
Um she's better."
He goes marching to her.
He asked her, "How did you get better?
You were sick."
And she finally admitted,
it was through bee-venom therapy.
He asked how much it cost,
and she said, "Well, you know,
bees are free."
My father looked at me and said,
"That's what you're doing, kid."
I had a tick crawling on me
and then a bee.
I feel very fortunate
that I was taught by a nurse.
She taught me how to do it safely
and effectively.
And my response
was nothing short of a miracle.
I went from being in a wheelchair,
unable to remember my own birthday,
to literally three months later
dancing on a table at Sunset Beach.
But I was not attracted to
advocating for bee-venom therapy.
And even though I was 100% better,
I was living in fear
that it would come back.
I didn't want to be another person
advocating a treatment,
to say, "Gosh, guys,"
six months later, "Sorry, didn't work."
I started a Paleo bakery business,
making birthday cakes and cupcakes,
and Pop-Tarts.
I wasn't in the sick world.
I was in the healthy world,
and it felt great.
One day I was shopping at Whole Foods
and a girl tapped me on the shoulder.
And she said, "Are you Everyday Expert?"
Which is my Instagram handle.
I could tell she was very compromised
and very sick.
I said, "Do you have Lyme disease?"
She said, "Yes, I do. Nothing's working.
I want you to teach me
how to sting myself with bees."
Oh, my gosh, that looks great.
Our hive vibes are strong.
So strong.
After some insistence,
I acquiesced to say, "Well, let me see
if I can help you."
Uh amazing. Magic Hour.
She came over. I taught her the basics.
Word started spreading.
I got flooded with hundreds
of direct messages from people
saying, "Please help me. I'm a single mom.
I can't take care of my kids."
"Please help me.
I am 30 years old.
I have not dated.
I've not gone to college.
I've
barely graduated from high school."
And it was my now-husband he said,
"You can save a lot of people's lives
by sharing what you know.
You're not going to save anyone's life
with Paleo brownies."
If you were just to take one of these
And so I realized
that it was my duty
to try and bring it to others.
You know, doctors,
they're taught that if they can't prove it
or it's not proven yet
beyond a reasonable doubt,
it shouldn't be applied.
It's not their fault.
That's how they're taught.
I try not to blame the doctors
because we can't do bee-venom therapy
safely without doctors.
We just have to help educate them.
And we're in it together, right?
Because it is a holistic modality,
many doctors would not even consider it.
But worldwide, it's now being embraced,
um for many, many different reasons.
Some arthritic,
but mostly chronic illness.
Here in the Gaza Strip,
the economic situation
for people is quite bad.
The queen is there.
This is a really good one.
Sometimes,
their ability to buy medicine
can be quite limited.
There are verses in the Qur'an
suggesting that bees
receive divine messages from God.
It also suggests
that bees have healing powers.
Every day, around 200 patients
visit our apitherapy center.
We treat many diseases.
Osteoarthritis of the knee,
sight issues,
psoriasis,
asthma,
migraines,
and many immune diseases.
After three months of treatment
for multiple sclerosis,
I was able to lift my leg
and able to walk.
That was due to bee therapy.
I was driven to open an apitherapy clinic
by the people's need
for this kind of treatment.
I found there were many illnesses
that weren't addressed
by conventional medicine.
Come on, sweetie,
we'll eat lunch, then go get stung.
I tried modern medicine and suffered.
You try treatments
and when they don't work,
you feel like a lab rat.
In 2007, I suffered a compression
of my fourth and fifth vertebrae.
I went to doctors.
They all told me I needed to have surgery.
I asked a lot of people
who had disc hernia surgeries.
Of the 30 to 40 people I asked,
only one or two
said that they had improved.
So, I wouldn't let anyone touch me
with a scalpel.
I wanted to try something else.
When I went for bee-sting therapy,
it completely changed my life.
Let me tell you, it was like magic.
After a week,
I stopped needing painkillers,
all injections,
medical and chemical treatment.
Thank God.
I was the first person
in my family to go through treatment.
Do you see any difference in your hair
from your baby pictures?
Yes, I do.
Around the 2012 offensive,
my daughter Razan,
either from fear or something else,
suddenly lost about 70% of her hair.
It is difficult in Gaza.
Thank you.
Some medications
can't be found at all in Gaza
unless someone outside of Gaza
brings it in,
or someone traveling abroad
can get it for you.
I took her to doctors,
and we tried prescription medicine.
I paid so much for her treatment,
more than 2,000 dollars.
Bee-sting treatment costs a tiny fraction
of the cost of a doctor's visit.
See? Remember the first time
we went to a bee sting session?
You used to be afraid of the stings
and say, "Dad, I want to go home!
I don't want to stay.
I want to go home, Dad."
What about now?
Do you like going to sessions with me?
I like going.
Each week, I go
on Saturday, Monday and Wednesday.
The bees helped my hair grow back.
And Mohammed couldn't hear well.
When my dad used to call him to come,
Mohammed would say,
"What did you say, Dad? I can't hear you."
After the bee stings, he got better.
Come on, sweetie. Let's go.
- Good afternoon.
- How are you?
What grade are you now?
- First grade.
- First grade?
Who's better, you or Razan?
I am.
You're a good boy.
Give me a five.
In the name of God.
It didn't sting you yet.
- It hurts!
- Move your hand!
Take out the stinger, out!
- Now the other side.
- Come on, the other side.
- Come on.
- Wait a minute.
It stung.
- Did it sting?
- Yes.
It is over, sweetie.
I love you. I love you.
He's a big boy.
Thank you very much.
Thank God.
Our brother
Rateb Sammour and his bee-sting treatment
has improved my life and how I live it.
In the past, I wasn't able
to carry my children.
Today, I lift them up and down,
I hold them in my arms.
I want to serve my country and my people
through this therapy.
Apitherapy is
the future therapy for humanity.
Do no harm.
And so it's ironic that bee venom would
have these incredibly powerful properties
when bee venom is just
a defense mechanism for honey-bees.
But I have a lot of patients
who suffer from chronic pain,
and I'm desperate for solutions
that don't include, um opiates.
And I was shocked to find
that there were thousands of citations
for this modality.
And I started thumbing through them,
and I saw that a lot of them
were reporting positive results
in all sorts of areas
including chronic Lyme disease.
And so that got my attention.
I'm Brooke's doctor.
If you looked at my resume, you would see
that I have no business being here.
Um In terms of my training,
I'm about as Western-trained as they get.
But, I don't know.
I've been around a long time,
and I see things that
I can't always explain, but they work.
I mean, I'm here to learn.
Um 'cause,
first of all, bees freak me out.
But, um I'm going to put that aside
because I'm very curious,
because there is something
incredibly powerful
about what honey-bees
are apparently able to do,
and I think that
that's worth learning about.
As a physician,
the important thing for me is,
it really starts with safety.
All right, you're about to start stinging.
EpiPen next to you with the safety off.
You take it off.
If you are having anaphylactic reaction,
you will feel like you can't breathe
in about five seconds, three seconds?
- Pretty fast.
- Pretty fast.
All you have to do
Bam.
Goes through clothes,
it goes through skin.
It's going to inject epinephrine.
It's going to stop
Doctor, why does it stop this response?
It helps
maintain your blood pressure
and your circulation, even if you have had
a massive release of histamine.
You'll be gasping.
You use epinephrine
you a dose of Benadryl,
and then you go straight to the hospital.
The obvious risk is anaphylaxis,
which is when you pass out
from a bee sting, and your throat closes.
Want to wait or you ready to go?
- I'm ready to go.
- Okay.
You know me, no hesitation.
- You're so used to these by now.
- I am.
You don't react at all.
Everybody's got a different reaction
on a spectrum.
Where some people do not react at all
and then some people react to the point
where, wow,
they're getting close to, maybe it's not
an appropriate treatment for them.
Okay, here we go.
And it could happen to somebody
you've been stinging for a long time.
It's happened to me where I've gone
to that extreme, personally.
For me, it was a delayed reaction.
I was in the back of my car
and brushing away my hair like this,
and I kept thinking there was a hair.
And it turned out
that my eyes were closing.
So, this can happen anytime.
I'd been stung hundreds of times by then.
You need a certain periodic
exposure to the allergen
to become allergic to something.
Eventually, if we take the risk
enough times, it will happen.
Around 2016, I was working in Ramon
y Cajal University Hospital in Madrid,
and we received the case
of a 55-year-old lady
that had been admitted
into the Intensive Therapy Unit
after a severe anaphylactic shock.
When the patient arrived into
the hospital, she was already in a coma.
We learned that this patient
had been undergoing
live bee apitherapy
for the last two years.
When you have a severe
allergic reaction, one of the consequences
is that your blood pressure
drops really fast.
So, you can have a stroke
because there's not enough blood pressure
pushing your blood to the brain.
The practitioner, she tried to treat her.
She gave her a shot of cortical steroids,
but that's pointless.
What she needed was epinephrine,
which they didn't have in the center.
It's a very, very sad case, really.
It's a woman who otherwise was healthy
who was trying to improve
her quality of life
but because of misinformation
on the risks of this therapy,
she ended up dying.
I have my phone ready.
I have my EpiPen.
I'm taking off the safety,
and I have my Benadryl with me.
With bee-venom therapy,
after the bee stings you, it does die.
That has been, kind of, the hardest part
for me to accept
just because
I'm such a fan of bees and
I Part of me just feels bad.
Um, I'm not one to even kill a spider
if I see it.
Okay, this is an example
No, you don't want to ever hold
You don't ever want to hold her
because she'll sting your hands.
I think she has.
Oh, she stung her finger. Oh, my God!
You didn't even react!
We don't want your hands stung
because of the fact that we don't want
the small blood vessels
getting all that histamine.
Sorry.
It's okay.
No, no, no.
This is where you keep going wrong.
You're going to keep stinging
your fingers over and over
if you grab like that.
So we're going to learn
not to have this reaction. Let it go.
It's okay.
That's great. Okay, now
an inch from your spine. Hold it.
It's actually much harder
than I thought it was gonna be.
They're constantly moving and curling in.
There's definitely some finesse needed.
Now
remember, always reset.
Another reset.
Exactly, now you got it.
There you go.
One, two, three,
four, five, six,
seven, eight, nine, ten.
Yay!
Nice job.
Sorry.
No, don't Don't apologize.
She wants you to get better.
I promise you that.
- I'm a mush. Sorry.
- Come here, honey.
Come here. I'll hug you.
I've been emotional all day today, too.
Let's go on a little walk.
All right. Get them all back.
She kept moving because
she clearly didn't want to sting me.
But it's nothing
compared to antibiotics, so
I just feel bad, um
that the bee has to die.
out of your mind, the thoughts
and into your body,
just sigh out.
I think many people
who undergo apitherapy,
they're being exploited
by the culture of belief.
Take the breath in.
Let it affirm this life in your body.
Oftentimes, these things
take on a life of their own.
Why are they using it?
They're using it 'cause someone
told them that it was helpful.
And so then they become a believer,
and they tell the next person
that it worked for them.
But when you look carefully
at these stories,
at these anecdotes, you find
there's so many other variables
that could be at work.
Was that really the only treatment
you were taking,
or were there other treatments as well?
And also keep in mind that this
has been researched for decades, at least,
and we're not getting anywhere.
We're still stuck in this, sort of,
early preliminary research.
It's not hasn't led to any
a single proven treatment.
I'm also not seeing a lot of
pharmaceutical industry interest in this.
So, I don't really hold out
a lot of expectation
that there's going to be
a revolutionary drug in bee venom.
But sure, if somebody could find it
in there, great.
However, I draw the distinction
between offering hope
and offering false hope.
I've justified this treatment
because I've tried everything.
Um I've wasted so much of my life.
Doing my first sting session
was definitely a big deal for me.
The pain was bearable,
but I definitely felt
my rheumatoid arthritis
starting to flare, and now I'm just
feeling drained and fatigued.
I'm just going to be open to it
and hope and pray
that this is the answer
that I've been looking for.
What is stuck in your bones,
what is stuck in your brain,
is going to take
a really long time to get to.
Some of you might be stinging for
two years and be fine.
Others might be stinging for four years.
We can't promise anything.
But what I can say is that
if you use bee venom correctly,
you should be able to restore yourself
to where you were,
pre-tick bite.
That is my goal for you.
The bees I purchased online,
they just delivered, like,
dropped it off in the driveway.
A And on the top, there's, like, a big
sticker that says, "Warning: Live bees."
So I was a little intimidated,
but it was exciting.
I'm just glad they're calm.
Yeah.
We've both been so sad
and so scared for so many years,
that I'm really grateful
that I see that hope in her eyes.
I think she really feels like these
little guys are gonna help her.
And I'm trying I'm trying
to have that faith,
but I don't wanna be let down again.
I don't want her to be let down.
- Okay, I have my bee.
- Okay.
Now, I'm going to need you to help me
help guide my hand.
Okay, I'm gonna help you. Okay, careful.
Is the bee's butt hitting me?
He's just about. It's the angle,
though. The angle is hard to get.
Okay, you're on it, you're holding
his head now, so
hold on.
Okay, he's down. He's off.
Hold on. Hold on.
Let me see if I can grab him.
Here, you wanna try? Here, he's down here.
We'll get it, it's just
getting used to working with
- A live creature.
- a live creature.
- Okay.
- All right.
And he stung.
- He did? Amazing. Okay.
- Yeah, he stung Yes.
- Now I count to 30.
- Yeah.
One, two, three,
four, five, six,
seven, eight, nine, ten,
11, 12, 13, 14,
15, 16, 17,
18, 19,
20, 21,
22, 23, 24,
25, 26,
27, 28, 29, 30.