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13 min read<\/p>\n13 min read<\/p>\n
FOR 18 MONTHS, Kate Hinkens\u2019s mornings began with the same ritual. Every other day, the now 32-year-old would use a mirror to carefully position up to 10 bees on her back with tweezers, then let them sting her, one by one. After that, she would pull the stingers out of her body, bury the bees in her backyard among the flowers, and thank them with a prayer.<\/p>\n
The practice, known as bee venom therapy (which falls under the larger practice of apitherapy), was not recommended by a doctor but something Hinkens discovered online to treat the brain fog and fatigue that had bothered her for years. She would sleep for 18 hours a day, couldn\u2019t walk more than 10 or 15 feet at a time, and had trouble completing sentences. She was diagnosed with Lyme disease in 2019, and though this is the kind of illness that is usually knocked out with a round of antibiotics, she says her symptoms persisted.<\/p>\n
Hinkens never planned to self-administer bee venom to treat her illness, which she refers to as \u201cchronic Lyme,\u201d but over time, she got desperate\u2014and then she got creative. \u201cWhen you are dealing with chronic illness, especially chronic illness that isn\u2019t widely understood by the Western medical community, you start to dig,\u201d she says. \u201cAnd you end up on weird corners of the Internet.\u201d<\/p>\n
Finding those corners involved searching Instagram hashtags, Reddit threads, Facebook groups, and PubMed, where Hinkens says she read about bee venom\u2019s potential in treating conditions such as multiple sclerosis, arthritis, and even Alzheimer\u2019s. And, to be fair, Hinkens\u2019s diagnosis is considered controversial by both the Western medical community and the general public. In fact, most doctors wouldn\u2019t call her condition \u201cchronic Lyme\u201d\u2014they prefer the term \u201cpost-treatment Lyme disease syndrome.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s one of the frustrating things for patients, and frankly, for many health care providers.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the U.S., Lyme disease<\/a> is an infectious illness generally caused by the bacterium Borrelia burgdorferi. The bacterium is found in ticks and transmitted via tick bites. When Lyme is diagnosed early, it is treated with a multiweek course of oral antibiotics. Late-stage Lyme is often treated with IV antibiotics. One round of antibiotics should be enough to wipe out the pathogen, says Stephen J. Gluckman, MD<\/a>, an infectious disease physician and professor at the University of Pennsylvania\u2019s Perelman School of Medicine. But for some, like Hinkens, the symptoms persist after treatment.<\/p>\n Dr. Gluckman says the symptoms are real and should be taken seriously\u2014but they\u2019re not caused by the original bacteria (because those bacteria are wiped out by a round of antibiotics). And they don\u2019t present in a standard way. Where Hinkens had brain fog and fatigue, someone else may have body aches and dizziness. The abnormalities won\u2019t show up in testing. \u201cTests are routinely normal,\u201d Dr. Gluckman says. \u201cThat\u2019s one of the frustrating things for patients, and frankly, for many health care providers.\u201d<\/p>\n Without a clear-cut diagnosis, treatment turns into symptom management, which can be disheartening for patients who just want answers\u2014and relief. This was the case for Hinkens, who found bee venom therapy after years of pursuing both traditional and naturopathic advice.<\/p>\n Hinkens is convinced that bee venom therapy rid her of her symptoms. Because as she underwent it, her migraines, joint pain, and nerve pain started to go away. Today she considers herself cured. She no longer stings herself with bees\u2014except to treat occasional acute illnesses.<\/p>\n Dr. Gluckman, for his part, says he would never tell a patient not to pursue a reasonable treatment they felt strongly about, but that bee venom therapy is \u201cfar from established.\u201d There isn\u2019t solid scientific evidence for it or an established treatment dosage, which is especially important for something that\u2019s going to cost thousands of dollars out of pocket. (Hinkens estimates that the setup cost for bee venom therapy is about $200. The bees cost around $1 per insect, plus shipping. For an advanced user like Hinkens, who stung herself 10 times per session, at three sessions a week for a year, the treatment could cost upwards of $2,000.)<\/p>\n Dan Saelinger\/Trunk Archive<\/p>\n The research on this therapy is also limited. Several in vitro studies (as in, done in a test tube and not in humans or animals) suggest that bee venom has effects on Borrelia burgdorferi, though again, that bacterium shouldn\u2019t be present anymore following antibiotic treatment. And aside from the pain of bees attacking you (Hinkens says it absolutely hurts and doesn\u2019t stop hurting, no matter how long you\u2019ve been stinging), there\u2019s also the safety factor. The most significant risk, says Dr. Gluckman, is the obvious one: an allergic reaction.<\/p>\n In 2018, a 55-year-old woman in Spain who was using bee venom therapy to treat muscle issues experienced anaphylaxis before slipping into a coma and dying. It wasn\u2019t her first time getting stung. She had been going to apitherapy sessions every four weeks for two years, according to a study<\/a> in the Journal of Investigational Allergology and Clinical Immunology. \u201cPrevious tolerance to beestings does not prevent hypersensitivity; however, repeated exposure favors a higher risk of sensitization.\u2026 Practitioners should be trained in managing severe reactions,\u201d the authors wrote.<\/p>\n But turning to bee venom therapy is only one example of people\u2014particularly women\u2014starting to DIY their health care. We\u2019re increasingly getting health information from influencers and deep corners of the Internet rather than doctors. And we\u2019re not just reading about these approaches; we\u2019re actually doing them at home. This is happening at the same time that physician appointments have gotten shorter, meaning that more people are seeing their health as something in their own hands (and something perhaps they alone can fix). This vacuum allows alternative treatments to thrive, even in the most extreme situations.<\/p>\n Will the DIY way finally lead to something better for patients, or are we driving ourselves back to the Dark Ages?<\/p>\n Hinkens is one of the many voices online encouraging the pursuit of alternative treatments. It\u2019s partly a story about being let down by the traditional medical system and partly one about seeking health at any cost. \u201cIt became this real obsession for me because of how deeply I wanted to get better and how disappointed and disillusioned I was by what was available to me from the credible professionals in this space,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n At-home treatments promoted online often exist in the world of chronic illness, says Navya Mysore, MD<\/a>, a primary care physician and Women\u2019s Health advisory board member. Issues such as migraines, polyendocrine metabolic ovarian syndrome, or PMOS<\/a> (formerly known as PCOS), endometriosis, fibromyalgia, and post-treatment Lyme disease syndrome don\u2019t have standard treatment protocols, which results in varied care and outcomes. And, ultimately, exasperation for patients. \u201cIt can definitely lead to frustration,\u201d Dr. Mysore says.<\/p>\n Unfortunately, doctors sometimes don\u2019t have the tools\u2014or time\u2014to adequately guide patients through complex symptoms. As a result, patients sometimes turn to less regulated means. Hinkens says her experience with bee venom therapy taught her that she is the driver of her own health. (She now teaches others how to do bee venom therapy full-time, selling a $950 course.)<\/p>\n \u201c[Influencers] have become authority figures.\u201d<\/p>\n Alternative health and wellness culture isn\u2019t new, but it\u2019s become much more mainstream, thanks to the Internet. \u201cThe influencer and wellness industries have been co-collaborative in their growth over the last decade,\u201d says Mariah L. Wellman, PhD<\/a>, a researcher and the author of In Search of Wellness: How Social Media Influencers Transformed an Industry<\/a>. In 2025, wellness was a $500 billion industry in the United States, per McKinsey & Company<\/a>, a management and consulting firm. Globally, it was worth $2 trillion.<\/p>\n Lifestyle and wellness influencers are disseminating the bulk of their information online, fact-checked or not. \u201cThey have become authority figures for [certain groups of people],\u201d Wellman says. She attributes this partly to the growing distrust of academic, scientific, and cultural experts after the COVID-19 pandemic and to the rise of the Make America Healthy Again<\/a> movement. But also because medical doctors don\u2019t always lend themselves to good content.<\/p>\n Online, black-and-white, hard-line stances tend to make for grabbier videos. \u201cThe Internet and social media don\u2019t like nuance,\u201d Wellman says. Doctors, on the other hand, are trained to live in the gray areas. Where an influencer may tell you about the new supplement or treatment that changed their life, a doctor might refer you to studies\u2014or the lack thereof\u2014and tell you it may help but there\u2019s no evidence. It\u2019s not satisfying, but it\u2019s accurate\u2026and a lot less compelling.<\/p>\n Levi Brown\/Trunk Archive<\/p>\n Instead of expertise, influencers tend to rely solely on personal narrative. Through these hyperindividual experiences, followers can glean new techniques, protocols, and regimens to try. And in a country where three-quarters of adults are living with a chronic condition, narratives about finally finding relief can feel hopeful\u2014and helpful.<\/p>\n \u201cIf we have these stories of people who have taken their health into their own hands, have done one very particular thing that has changed their life, that feels like something that is desirable for the people who are still floating and grasping and trying to find something,\u201d Wellman says. Pursuing self-healing is also a version of a story that Americans are comfortable and familiar with. \u201cWellness is positioned as a personal process\u2014rather than a public good\u2014requiring constant pursuit of self-improvement, with the idea that every individual has the opportunity to improve themselves, and at the end of the day, their health is their responsibility, rather than the responsibility of the government.\u201d<\/p>\n At the same time, this type of self-improvement comes at a cost. There\u2019s the price of the supplement or online course linked in the influencer\u2019s bio. There\u2019s the time it takes to manage an alternative treatment. And in extreme cases, there\u2019s the risk of delaying necessary, vetted help. Influencers are able to thrive because they can sell options that will purportedly improve (or optimize) a person\u2019s health without their ever needing to check in at the doctor\u2019s office. Instead, they can just \u201cdo their own research.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThis rhetoric of doing your own research puts individuals in control of their own life, and for some people, that\u2019s all they\u2019re looking for,\u201d Wellman says. \u201cThey think they\u2019re looking for answers. They think they\u2019re looking for their problems to be solved, but they also want to be able to do it themselves because they have grown distrustful of different systems.\u201d<\/p>\n Another aspect of online DIY persuasion is the food factor\u2014as in, instead of going to the doctor for meds, just change what you eat, and maybe add some supplements. But while whole foods and supplements have garnered a health halo among many for being safer and more \u201cnatural\u201d than something you\u2019d need a prescription for, that\u2019s a misconception.<\/p>\n Adjusting your diet and taking supplements have a time and place, but they shouldn\u2019t be conflated with treatment. \u201cIt\u2019s scientifically incorrect to say that dietary changes can completely manage health and wellness and risks of disease, because it\u2019s just untrue,\u201d says Jennifer Reich, PhD<\/a>, a sociologist who studies health and health care.<\/p>\n The fix-it-with-food-and-supplements idea has actually been around for a long time, but the Internet has given it new platforms on which to proliferate. Around 1928, a German doctor named Max Gerson began treating cancer patients with a \u201ctherapy\u201d he named after himself. Gerson therapy<\/a> involves following a strict plant-based diet, juicing, and having multiple daily enemas meant to address the \u201ctoxins\u201d and sodium and potassium imbalances that followers believe cause cancer. It posits that people can cure cancer on their own, mostly through their diet. But cancer and most other serious health conditions don\u2019t work that way, experts say.<\/p>\n \u201cThis rhetoric of doing your own research puts individuals in control of their own life, and for some people, that\u2019s all they\u2019re looking for.\u201d There is no credible evidence supporting Gerson therapy as a treatment for cancer, says Madhur K. Garg, MD<\/a>, clinical director of the department of radiation oncology with Montefiore Einstein Comprehensive Cancer Center. There are, however, many risks, including malnutrition, colon inflammation, infections, and electrolyte imbalances. Besides those, there\u2019s also the fact that Gerson therapy is presented as something people should choose instead of traditional cancer care. \u201cPatients might miss out on getting a proven treatment in a timely manner, resulting in progression of cancer,\u201d Dr. Garg says.<\/p>\n In 2024, a Cambridge University graduate named Paloma Shemirani was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin\u2019s lymphoma, a type of cancer that her doctors told her has an 80 percent survival rate when treated with chemotherapy. Instead, over the course of seven months, she opted to treat her cancer with Gerson therapy. Shemirani\u2019s mother, Kate, is an anti-medicine conspiracy theorist who lost her nursing license in 2021. Online, Kate calls herself a \u201cnatural nurse in a toxic world.\u201d Months into undergoing Gerson therapy, Paloma died at 23 of cardiac arrest caused by a tumor in her chest and neck. Her brothers told the BBC<\/a> that they believe she died as a result of their mother encouraging alternative treatments instead of the recommended course of chemotherapy.<\/p>\n And when it comes to supplements, they are only partly regulated by the FDA, unlike the medicines they often replace, so there\u2019s no consistent testing of their safety, ingredients, or efficacy. In this instance, \u201cat-home\u201d doesn\u2019t necessarily mean better; really, it means having less oversight. \u201cSupplements are not natural,\u201d Dr. Mysore adds. \u201cThey\u2019re not fully derived from our body. They\u2019re made in a lab or a facility.\u201d<\/p>\n When Tiffany Paltauf, then 26, was 12 weeks pregnant with her first child, she switched from a traditional ob-gyn to a midwife. Paltauf felt that her ob-gyn showed no human connection, and she couldn\u2019t ask any questions. \u201cAs a first-time mom, I wanted to talk about my feelings, giving birth, and what my options are.\u201d<\/p>\n Paltauf describes herself as \u201ccrunchy.\u201d When she had a headache, she\u2019d reach for water or a green juice first instead of over-the-counter meds. Paltauf says that prior to giving birth, she took comfort in the fact that her body was made for this and \u201cknew\u201d what to do. \u201cI started to do a little bit more research on my own, reading books and listening to podcasts,\u201d she says. \u201cI listened to these beautiful home birth stories, and I was like, \u2018Wow, this sounds really nice.\u2019\u200a\u201d<\/p>\n Paltauf lives on a farm, and the idea of giving birth at home, 45 minutes from the nearest hospital, and not needing to line up care for her 70-plus animals seemed like a \u201cluxury,\u201d she says. Her prenatal visits to the midwife felt like going to the spa and made her idea of home birth seem more appealing. You\u2019re in the comfort of your own house, and your midwife is more hands-on and available.<\/p>\n \u201cI remember asking, \u2018How do you know everything\u2019s going to go okay? What if something is wrong?\u2019\u200a\u201d Paltauf says. \u201cI\u2019ll never forget\u2014I remember them saying there are things that [would] happen before something goes wrong, or we can take proper precautions, whether that be transferring to the hospital, calling an ambulance, doing this or that.\u201d<\/p>\n Unfortunately, her home birth experience didn\u2019t match what she found online. When Paltauf was trying to deliver at home, her midwives periodically checked her baby\u2019s heartbeat until, suddenly, it wasn\u2019t there. She and the midwives initially thought the Doppler machine was faulty, before deciding to go to a hospital.<\/p>\n There, Paltauf learned that her daughter, Bella, had a hypercoiled cord, leading to eight more hours of labor before she delivered her baby stillborn.<\/p>\n While home births account for less than 2 percent of births in the United States, the proportion is rising, according to CDC data<\/a>. A two-year study<\/a> covering all Oregon births found that for every 1,000 home births, 3.9 perinatal deaths occurred\u2014twice the rate of hospital births. But there are challenges with hospital births in the United States, too. The U.S. has one of the highest rates of maternal mortality compared to other high-income nations, with even worse outcomes for Black women.<\/p>\n Yet despite all the content she absorbed, Paltauf feels she wasn\u2019t properly educated about what could go wrong with a home birth. Now she\u2019s on the other side of the screen, posting videos about her experience and living with grief.<\/p>\n When she was the one scrolling, she felt confident and wasn\u2019t very worried about the risks. \u201cI was so in tune with my body, and young and healthy, that I was just like, \u2018Yeah, I\u2019m a great candidate. Why wouldn\u2019t I want to do this at home?\u2019\u200a\u201d she says.<\/p>\n People like Hinkens and Paltauf are increasingly influenced by what they see online. And in this messy, no-rules wild west of do-it-yourself health care, one thing is clear: Patients want to play a more active role in their health. They want solutions and a doctor who will listen, and they\u2019re not afraid to think outside the box.<\/p>\n The problem? Many doctors simply don\u2019t have the time\u2014or the training\u2014to meet patients where they are. Much of their day is spent doing paperwork for insurance companies\u2014time they could be spending with patients, says Reich. The system we have clearly isn\u2019t working optimally for providers or patients.<\/p>\n![\"Pez](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/77e53e7e-ee39-4230-b717-b3a6ec2663d1.jpg\" "\\"Pez")
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Trend Drivers <\/p>\n![\"Colorful](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/3fac0b4a-bb2d-48c1-941b-ec60db987a53.jpg\" "\\"Colorful")
<\/p>\nHealing at Home <\/p>\n
\u2014Mariah L. Wellman, PhD<\/p>\n\u201cWhy Wouldn\u2019t I Do This at Home?\u201d<\/p>\nFinding Our Way Back <\/p>\n
![\"Toy](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/5f248b1f-a2a5-4dde-af0e-003d9b00e919.jpg\" "\\"Toy")
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