Bill "do trigger the immune system"
Bee stings do nothing for my arthritis. X-rays show both calcium deposits and broken chips in joints.
On the other hand, my father 'fixed' his finger with an unexpected bee sting. From the time I was young, he had a damaged finger that wouldn't bend at the first joint - until he got stung on that finger. He was about 40, bee was on tractor steering wheel. He had an immediate, severe, localized reaction - swelled up to his arm pit, got epi shot at ER. When the swelling went down, the finger joint had freed. He spent the remainder of his years 82 with a working finger. Of course, he had a huge immune system trigger event that freed the frozen joint.
As per other meds and bee stings, due to my worn out joints and disintegrated disks, I practically eat Ibuprofen. Aspirin is too hard on my stomach, and Tylenol does nothing. When the Ibuprofen isn't up to the task, I go get a steroid shot in the joint(s).
I've suffered from allergies all my life - although the 5 years of desensitizing shots as a kid helped a lot. Surprisingly, so far, I'm not allergic to bee stings - but I make sure to get stung every so often.
On top of all of this, I've Hashimoto's hypthyrodism, an auto-immune disease that results in my body trying to kill my thyroid.
Finally, I've known of a few beekeepers and researchers who never reacted much to bee stings - years, and then out of the blue, had a passing out, race to the ER event.
***********************************************
The BEE-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software. For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html
|