At all times, Man has been concerned about his health, using the means available to him depending on his stage of evolution and resources at its disposal. Therapists have specialized in various health disciplines, giving them a regional, continental or sometimes planetary identity. Certain disciplines, completely developed and accepted in some parts of the world do not find any recognition or remain “alternative” in other areas. But all have the same objective: helping man to remain in good health, to learn more about his health, or to cure illnesses that he contracts. They all represent complementary facets of “Medicine”.
If sometimes certain health specialists put their discipline in competition with others, the good practitioners always retain what Paracelse (alchemists and Swiss Doctor, 1483-1541) said regarding therapeutic methods: “Everything is good, nothing is good, only the way of using it matters”.
If the term apitherapy is associated by certain protagonists to the treatment alone of various illnesses using the venom of bees, its scope is in fact much broader. It was scientifically demonstrated that all the products of the hive can prove very useful for man’s health. The therapeutic use of honey and of the propolis for example goes back to the mists of time. The use of wax is as ancient as pharmacology and cosmology. Pollen, royal jelly, and the venom from bees have all showed their therapeutic effectiveness.
The Apimondia Apitherapy Commission proposes the following definition:
The Apitherapy is a medical concept, based on scientific foundations corroborating traditional knowledge, including:
> bee production procedures aimed at medical concept,
> transformation of hive products, alone, or in association with medicinal plants and their derivatives (api-Pharmacopeia)
> clinical protocols incorporating the use of the api-Pharmacopeia and/or of the bees (api-medicine)
To the products of the hive, we immediately propose an association with the apitherapy vegetal essential oils, in order to give them then dimension of an overall health concept.
The properties of the aromatic parts were studied at length. These flavours give the double characteristic on the one hand to be already very present in the products of the hive, and on the other hand, to have the same origin, namely certain subtle elements of vegetal essential oils. They are thus directly complementary to the products of the hive and enhance the development of a broad and effective api-Pharmacopeia.
Apitherapy can be regarded as a health concept that puts Man back in symbiosis with Nature. It incorporates so-called preventive medicine, what which consists of avoiding the illness. But we will hastily add that it is just as effective against numerous acute or chronic illnesses, either on their own, or in association with other medications.
Developing Dr. Donadieu’s vision, one of the fathers of science, we affirm that Apitherapy integrates into a number of rules that we consider to be the essential and fundamental:
> To ensure that Man’s environment can resist as much as possible the multiple threats likely to jeopardize his efficiency, his balance and his existence.
> If the threat, for whatever reason, manages nonetheless to create a state of imbalance generating illnesses, being able to use or practice, whenever it is possible, a natural gentle therapy free of toxic properties, and therefore to dispose of a broad and complete array of possibilities in this field.
> If the soft therapies prove not to bring the results expected, one could seek more active therapeutic chemicals, even aggressive with respect to the pathogenic agent, but of natural origin, which falls under symbiosis with nature, with no iatrogenic effects.
> Lastly, as a last resort and in an emergency, to call for certain chemical therapeutics, which can contain toxic properties, and that could possibly have side effects, but which make it possible to surmount a vitally critical obstacle.
With the exception of bee venom (which involves extremely precise usage rules), the products of Apitherapy are generally void of toxicity, of side effects, of counter-indications and incompatibilities. It follows the golden rule allotted to Hippocrates but that could originate from Hermes Trismegist: “Firstly, do not harm”.
Taken from the Apimondia CD about Apitherapy.
