> The sting stimulates the body to produce its own cortisone

In truth, it's a whole lot more nuanced than that. Your body has an immune response to the sting. If you have built up an immunity to the venom, then you'll have specific antibodies of the IgG type that immediately respond. If you haven't, then the response is driven by IgE, which is associated with allergy. That difference explains the full spectrum of response to a bee sting, from virtually no swelling (no to few unrecognized proteins) to a hypersensitivity/anaphylactic response (HELP! I don't know what to do with this!). One presumes, in the case of your elbow, that the immune response generated by the sting promoted a controlled type 1 response, which would entail additional antigen presenting cells sampling the proteins causing your inflamed elbow. They would then shop those proteins to T and then B cells, the latter of which produce specific autoantibodies to those proteins. Then, when that same damage showed up in the future, you'd get a controlled response to the injury rather than the chronic inflammation that you had previously experienced.

S

Skillman, NJ

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