2007-08-25, Bee Therapy 蜂针疗法

Today in Taiwan, people from all walks of life are choosing to be stung by bees, often dozens of times in one sitting. Shourang Chen is battling multiple sclerosis , a disease which slowly causes the body's nerve to deteriorate 1.

For six months, I was bedridden, I could not move, I would have symptoms of tingling 2 and numbness 3 in my hands. It was a excruciating pain.

Then Shourang heard about beesting therapy. For help, she turned to Mr. Chenyi Chen, beesting therapy master, a trained master who has practiced beesting therapy for 12 years. Every week, Mr. Chen and his assistants treat 200 patients and sacrifice 6,000 honey bees. The result, he says, can be astounding 4.

After 600 bees, you will look 5 years younger than your contemporaries.

But can beestings really help Shourang fight multiple sclerosis? She began an intensive force of therapy, receiving over 200 stings a week for months on end. Honey bees only sting once, and they die soon after. But even separated from the bee, the stinger continues to inject venom 5 into its victim. The body responds with a flood of histamines and white blood cells and soon the area becomes hot, red, swollen 6 and itchy.

He gives me one sting. I don’t even have time to feel the pain before he stings me again, and the pain lasts for one hour. Many think it is based on the 5000-year-old practice of acupuncture 7, a proven treatment for pain. Although today Mr. Chen sees bee acupuncture as a labour of love, even he once considered it a taboo 8. In fact, like most of us, he was afraid of bees. 30 years ago, Mr. Chen was an executive for a textiles company. Then his wife began to suffer from arthritic 9 pain, so severe she couldn’t cook or even stand up straight. Western medicines didn’t do much good. But when she told her husband she wanted to get stung by bees, he thought the idea was ridiculous.

Naturally, as an educated man, I was against it, we just did not understand bees.

But Mr. Chen completely changed his mind when he saw his wife’s sudden improvement.

After 3 months, her red blood cell count increased. Her headache disappeared. I was so surprised, I decided 10 to dive into this mysterious treatment and I collected all the information that I could.

Mr. Chen vowed 11 to devote his life to bringing beesting therapy to others. After 6 months of beesting therapy, Shourang Chen has seen a dramatic change. She insists the therapy has relieved her multiple sclerosis and given her a new lease on life. While most western trained doctors would likely say her illness is in reignition, Shourang is convinced the stings have helped her walk again. It will take years of study before we will know whether beestings can relieve arthritis 12, or mutiple sclerosis or even the common cold. But whether Shourang's recovery is in her head, or her hands and feet, for the first time in more than a year, she feels she can resume living. A therapy most of us would find taboo, is allowing her to face the future with renewed hope.