Scorpion Stings, Bee Stings, and the Umami Hypothesis
Someone who lives in the southwestern US posted this on a helmenthic therapy forum:
One [scorpion keeper] reported how a pain in his leg from a motorcycle accident that had been with him for years spontaneously resolved after getting stung by some fairly nasty [scorpion] . . . . It’s fairly well-known that beekeepers don’t face the same risk from arthritis as the general public.
I haven’t managed to find support for this “fairly well-known” idea. But it’s quite plausible because bee stings are used to treat arthritis and multiple sclerosis. In this video, an Indonesian therapist says that 85 out of 100 sufferers are “cured” by the treatment.
“A therapy most of us would find taboo,” says the narrator of this video. I wonder. Here’s what Wikipedia says:
There is no known cure for [multiple sclerosis]. . . MS medications can have adverse effects or be poorly tolerated, and many patients pursue alternative treatments, despite the lack of supporting scientific study.
Multiple sclerosis and some forms of arthritis are autoimmune disorders. My “umami hypothesis” says that autoimmune disorders and other immune disorders, such as allergies, are deficiency diseases. They are caused by not enough immune-system stimulation — stimulation that long ago we got from bacteria-laden food. This suggests a new interpretation of what’s going on with bee-sting therapy. Their healing properties have been attributed, at least in these videos, to special properties of the venom. The umami hypothesis suggests that the foreign proteins in venom calm the immune system and that quite different foreign substances would do just as well. I don’t know of anyone treating arthritis or MS with fermented food — but before the Shangri-La Diet, I didn’t know of anyone drinking sugar water to lose weight. The fact that such hugely different agents as hookworms, bee stings, and fermented foods have similar effects is considerable support for the hypothesis. Without the hypothesis, no one would have grouped them together.
Now I wonder about acupuncture: Could it work, at least some of the time, because it injects foreign substances? Surely acupuncture needles put plenty of bacteria into the body. This line of thought explains why stabbing a knee with a scapel apparently helps arthritis (and involves a lot less hand-waving than calling that result a placebo effect). Keep in mind that this is the hallmark of deficiency diseases: They get a lot better, almost miraculously and without side effects, if you supply even a little of what’s missing. The cure rate can be very high.
June 21st, 2009 at 10:55 pm
I know in Yunnan province scorpion bites are part of Chinese medicine - but I can’t recall what for [and a quick Google doesn’t help].
I’d ask around some of your local friends, if you’re still in China.
June 22nd, 2009 at 6:58 am
Technically that would be scorpion stings. As far as I know scorpions don’t bite (with mouth parts) except when they are eating small insect (which of course they have to bite in order to eat). But the sting (at the end of their tail) can be nasty. During my teenage years, I was stung by a scorpion at a boy scout camping trip. It hurt but I had no other reactions. I’ve been stung by bees innumerable times throughout my childhood and a wasp once or twice.
June 22nd, 2009 at 9:09 am
Wow! That is a really interesting idea. If accupuncture is just a special case of hormesis, that implies accupuncturists who do an especially good job maintaining a sterile environment could easily have *worse* results than those who are less careful. It gives us a non-woo hypothesis to explain why one particular accupuncturist might have great results in his office which can’t be reproduced by other accupuncturists or via the same interventions performed in a carefully controlled laboratory experiment somewhere else.
June 22nd, 2009 at 7:13 pm
I’m from China, scorpion is one of the Chinese Medicines which can be used to treat the arthritis and pains such as side-headache, you can get some infomation from this url: http://bbs.gltcm.cn/thread-44779-1-1.html (in Chinese:)
June 23rd, 2009 at 12:59 am
The only “conventional” treatment for MS that I’m aware of is LDN (Low Dose Naltroxene). It’s conventional in the sense that it’s artificially manufactured. But despite showing great promise, it’s not in the focus of any conventional research.
July 15th, 2009 at 8:53 pm
[…] Is this another example of foreign substances reducing arthritis? (Not to mention other immune disorders.) Or something different? I don’t know but it’s really interesting. […]
August 28th, 2009 at 3:49 am
[…] This is also a reason that theory is important. John Tukey, the statistician, spoke of “gathering strength” when analyzing data. It is rare that a single body of data tells you how to analyze it, he said. (For example, what transformation to use.) You should use similar data sets to help decide. Scientific theory has the same effect. Before I started drinking kombucha, I didn’t have obvious digestive problems (unlike a friend) and my immune system seemed to work well. So it wasn’t easy to measure its effect. Yet I drink it and am untroubled by the evidence that worries RVM because I have a theory: the umami hypothesis (that we need a steady intake of bacteria to be healthy). This allows me to assess the effect of kombucha — whether it is likely to be good or bad — with the help of evidence from other bacteria-rich food (yogurt, natto, etc.) and much different data (the effect of bee stings on arthritis, hormesis, epidemiology, the effects of turmeric, etc.). Because the umami hypothesis appears to be true, apparently bacteria intake is beneficial — and kombucha has lots of bacteria. […]
June 22nd, 2010 at 6:35 pm
Wow! This finding was interesting! If bee sting can treat arthritis then it has its advantage. Thanks for posting this very relevant blog.