Woman lets hundreds of BEES sting her – says their venom cured her Lyme disease
A California woman claims she is in remission from chronic Lyme disease after being stung by bees thousands of times over the past two and a half years.
Prezleigh Colburn’s health began to deteriorate dramatically at the age of 16, to the point where she suffered daily seizures, hallucinations, speech problems, uncontrollable laughter and body cramps.
She visited numerous doctors and received various diagnoses from them. It wasn’t until Ms. Colburn visited a naturopathic doctor that she was finally diagnosed with Lyme disease, a bacterial infection spread to humans by infected ticks.
When typical treatments didn’t work, Mrs. Colburn and her husband, Joshua Colburn, in desperation, turned to bee venom therapy, or apitherapy, and were soon getting deliveries of 40 bees a week for $15.
The couple now has three beehives.
‘You hear the bees buzzing (in the box). It’s very loud,” she told PA Real Life. “It must be very scary for the postal people when your mail buzzes.”
Ms Colburn has dubbed her bee sting sessions ‘sting along’ and often takes videos and photos of herself to post to her social media followers.
Despite the 29-year-old’s claims that the bee stings cured her chronic illness, experts warn while there is evidence that bee venom ingredients have an anti-inflammatory effect, the stings ‘could potentially be extremely dangerous’ due to allergic reactions. stings can cause tissue damage.
Prezleigh Colburn, 29, suffered about 30 bee stings a week for two and a half years. She and her husband Joshua, 43, now own three beehives
Ms. Colburn claims her symptoms have disappeared, and since she stopped therapy in June, they have not returned
Armed with EpiPens, Colburn, 43, applied the bees along his wife’s spine 10 times a session, three times a week, so the insects would sting her.
Ms Colburn said the experience was the ‘most painful thing I have ever experienced in my life.’
“You take a pair of tweezers and very quickly open the door (of the hive), reach in and grab the bee by the leg because you don’t want to squish the bee,” Mr Colburn said.
Two and a half years later, Ms. Colburn says she no longer experiences symptoms of Lyme disease.
She began experiencing worrisome and rapidly progressive symptoms at age 16.
“By the time I got to college, I was dealing with some horrible physical symptoms… I started having tremors and severe leg and joint pain, like my fingers were curling up and… I was throwing up every day , and I was in a lot of pain.” of gastrointestinal problems,” she said.
‘I had difficulty speaking and swallowing. That was the scariest (symptom). That was really strange. It felt like you were between being awake and sleeping.
‘I went through a period where I couldn’t stop laughing, which might not be too bad, but it’s quite awkward to have a serious conversation and I can’t stop laughing to the point where I cry. -laughing.’
Her debilitating symptoms forced her to move back in with her parents, and her mental health deteriorated.
“When I was really in the thick of it, I just didn’t want to be here anymore,” she said.
Doctors first diagnosed her with fibromyalgia, a chronic disease that causes pain and tenderness, sleep problems and memory and mood problems, which Ms. Colburn “wasn’t willing to accept… because it just didn’t make sense.”
Armed with EpiPens, Mr. Colburn used the bees to sting his wife along her spine 10 times per session, three times a week, which Ms. Colburn said was the “most painful thing I have ever experienced in my life.”
Mrs Colburn believes bee venom therapy saved her life. “I really couldn’t function normally, but now we run multiple businesses, have a family together and I really have my life back,” she said
Unwilling to give up and accept the diagnosis that she felt did not match her symptoms, in 2019 she visited a naturopathic doctor, a doctor who focuses on natural remedies to treat diseases, who administered a test for the disease Lyme through a company called iGenex. which focuses on the research and development of diagnostic tests for tick-borne diseases.
“When it came back, I was positive with two variants of Lyme disease. That was it. It just made so much sense. There was a huge relief to be seen,” she said.
However, the typical treatment for Lyme disease, intravenous therapy, took its toll on Ms. Colburn’s liver and kidneys, and the antibiotics she needed became difficult to obtain when the Covid pandemic hit.
“This was really scary because at this point my doctor was very concerned that if it wasn’t Lyme disease that was going to end my life, it would be the treatment and my white blood cell count and Covid,” she said. .
In 2020, she met a local retailer who said her Lyme disease went into remission after trying bee venom therapy. Once Ms. Colburn started therapy, she began to experience “pockets of normality.”
“After we made it, probably the first year I felt like I had kind of reached a higher level,” she said.
“I started to feel less weighed down by all my symptoms, and I started to feel a little more clear-headed.”
The couple stopped bee venom therapy in June because Mrs. Colburn no longer had symptoms.
She said: ‘I really couldn’t function normally, but now we have multiple businesses, we have a family together and I really have my life back.’
Bee venom therapy dates back thousands of years, but there is no hard evidence to suggest that it relieves symptoms of chronic Lyme disease.
Dr. Crystal Wyllie, a GP in Britain, said: ‘Although there are some well-documented benefits of bee venom ingredients as an anti-inflammatory, bee sting therapy is potentially extremely dangerous as it can cause severe allergic reactions, including anaphylaxis. in individuals with bee venom allergies.
‘Repeated stings can cause local tissue damage and increase the risk of infection.
‘Finally, I would strongly recommend avoiding bee venom therapy (during) pregnancy, as high doses of bee venom can increase the release of a chemical called histamine, which can cause the uterus to contract and possibly cause miscarriages or premature birth. ‘
Lyme disease does transmitted by black-legged ticks that carry the bacterium Borrelia burgdorferi or, more rarely, Borrelia mayonii.
Ticks carrying this bacteria live in most U.S. states, but are most common in the upper Midwest, Northeast and Mid-Atlantic states, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
It is the most common vector-borne disease – a disease caused by blood-feeding organisms such as ticks, mosquitoes and fleas – in the US.
A study published in the journal earlier this year BMJ Global Health found that 14 percent of the world’s population could be infected with the disease.
There are 35,000 cases reported annually in the US. However, the CDC estimates that the actual number could be closer to 476,000.
A bullseye-shaped rash, also known as erythema migrans (EM) rash, at the site of the tick bite is a characteristic sign of the disease.
As it grows larger, the mark can extend to 12 inches or more. It rarely itches or hurts, but it may feel warm to the touch.
This rash can last three to thirty days and occurs in 70 to 80 percent of patients with Lyme disease.
Other early symptoms include fever, headache, extreme fatigue, joint stiffness, muscle pain and swollen lymph nodes, according to the Mayo Clinic.
If the condition worsens, it can cause a rash all over the body, neck pain or stiffness, muscle weakness, irregular heartbeat, pain or numbness in the hands or feet, swelling in the tissues of the eye or eyelid, and vision loss.
About one in 10 people with the condition develop Lyme arthritis, which happens when the disease gets into the connective tissue in the joints, leading to symptoms similar to arthritis, including swollen joints that feel warm to the touch.
a recent survey of more than 3,000 chronic Lyme patients found that patients have a worse quality of life than patients with other chronic diseases, including congestive heart failure, diabetes, multiple sclerosis and arthritis.
In addition, more than 70 percent of patients with chronic Lyme disease reported fair or poor health.