She moved to California to die and then got attacked by bees. She was bedridden and couldn't move...and she was severely allergic to bee stings. She refused to go to the hospital - she stayed in her room and prepared to die. Instead she got betterBut back in the spring of 1996, Ellie didn’t know to look for the characteristic bullseye rash when she was bitten – she thought it was just a weird spider bite. Then came three months with flu-like symptoms and horrible pains that moved around the body. Ellie was a fit, active woman with three kids, but her body did not know how to handle this new invader. She was incapacitated. “It was all I could do to get my head up off the pillow,” Ellie remembers.
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“I just kept doing this treatment and that treatment,” says Ellie. Her condition was constantly worsening. She describes being stuck in bed or a wheelchair, not being able to think clearly, feeling like she’d lost her short-term memory and not feeling “smart” anymore. Ellie kept fighting, with every antibiotic, every pharmaceutical, every holistic treatment she could find. “With some things I would get better for a little while, and then I would just relapse right back into this horrible Lyme nightmare. And with every relapse it got worse.”
After fifteen years, she gave up.
It turns out that an important substance in bee venom called Melittin is a potent microbial
Melittin does not only cause pain. In the right doses, it punches holes in cells’ protective membranes, causing the cells to explode. At low doses, melittin associates with the membranes, activating lipid-cutting enzymes that mimic the inflammation caused by heat. But at higher concentrations, and under the right conditions, melittin molecules group together into rings creating large pores in membranes, weakening a cell’s protective barrier and causing the entire cell to swell and pop like a balloon
Because of this, melittin is a potent antimicrobial, fighting off a variety of bacteria and fungi with ease. And scientists are hoping to capitalize on this action to fight diseases like HIV, cancer, arthritis and multiple sclerosis.
For example, researchers at the Washington University School of Medicine in St Louis, Missouri, have found that melittin can tear open HIV’s protective cell membrane without harming human cells. This envelope-busting method also stops the virus from having a chance to evolve resistance.
She used apitherapy to conquer her Lyme disease and now runs a bee farm and is helping to fund research into bee venom's effects on Borrelia.
Read more: http://www.science20.com/science_in...an_sometimes_be_a_savior-155045#ixzz3YJwIxFzF