

Ronald Sherman, an internal medicine physician and director of the BioTherapeutics, Education and Research Foundation in Irvine, California, a nonprofit organization that promotes the use of live animals to diagnose and treat illness. (Image credit: valeriiaarnaud/)Ĭompared to other treatments described in this article, maggot therapy is fairly new, having been used for only about 100 years, said Dr. These days, bee venom therapy is more commonly used in Asia, Eastern Europe and South America than in the U.S., where it is considered an alternative medical therapy.
#OBSIDIAN SCALPEL MADE BY PATIENT SKIN#
Risks can range from minor skin reactions and pain at the sites of the stings to life-threatening anaphylaxis reactions in people who may be allergic to the venom, according to the study.

Not only is there limited research of its benefits, but the treatment itself may be harmful to some people: A review study by researchers in South Korea published in 2015 in the journal PLOS ONE concluded that people frequently get adverse reactions to bee venom therapy. The reason it may help is because bee venom contains melittin, a chemical thought to have anti-inflammatory properties, according to a 2016 study published in the journal Molecules.Īlthough bee sting therapy is promoted for relieving the pain and swelling of arthritis and for preventing relapses, fatigue and disability in people with multiple sclerosis, there is a lack of scientific evidence of its effectiveness for these two conditions, and it is not approved by the Food and Drug Administration for this use.

(Apitherapy refers to all medical-related therapies that are based on bee products, including bee venom, honey or pollen.) Brian Stauffer)īee venom therapy - which involves being willingly stung by a live honeybee, or injected with bee venom - dates back to the time of ancient Greece, when Hippocrates purportedly believed in the medicinal value of bee venom to ease arthritis and other joint problems, according to the American Apitherapy Society. Iron and magnesium typically give the obsidian a dark green to brown to black color.New research indicates that individual honey bees differ in personality traits such as novelty-seeking. While pure obsidian is always dark in appearance, the color varies depending on the presence of impurities. Tektites were once thought by many to be obsidian produced by lunar volcanic eruptions, though few scientists now agree with this theory. The breakdown of obsidian is accelerated by the presence of water. It is sometimes classified as a Mineraloid because obsidian is metastable at the earth's surface (over time the glass becomes fine-grained mineral crystals). Its composition is very similar to that of granite and rhyolite.

Obsidian is mineral-like, but not a true mineral because it is not crystalline. While a rock like basalt is dark because of ferromagnesian enrichment, obsidian consists mainly of silicon dioxide, usually 70% or more. Because of the lack of crystal structure, obsidian blade edges can reach almost molecular thinness, leading to its ancient use as arrowheads and its modern use as surgical scalpel blades. It is commonly found within the margins of felsic lava flows, where cooling is more rapid. Obsidian is a rock which is a type of naturally occurring glass, produced by volcanoes (igneous origin) when a felsic lava cools rapidly and freezes without sufficient time for crystal growth.
