E9: Bee Venom Therapy with Brooke Geahan

Brooke Geahan, founder of the Heal Hive and Lyme warrior, joins me on the Heal Podcast this week to share how she cured her Lyme with bee venom therapy. She created the Heal Hive to educate others struggling with Lyme disease and give them the resources to heal.

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Transcript

Mimi (00:04):

Welcome to the Heal podcast for all things related to Lyme disease and other chronic illnesses. I'm Mimi McLean, mom of five, founder of Lyme 360, and a Lyme warrior. Tune in each week to hear from doctors, health, practitioners, and experts to hear about their treatments, struggles and triumphs to help you on your healing journey. I'm here to heal with you. Hi everyone. Welcome back to the Heal podcast. This is Mimi, and today we have Brook Geahan from the Heal Hive. Brooke, thank you so much for coming on today. I first read about Brooke in New York times article titled Living with Lyme Disease Stronger where she discusses her Lyme journey and how she healed herself through bee venom therapy. I think bee venom therapy is one of the only things I haven't tried. So I'm super excited to learn about this therapy.

Brooke (00:50):

Well, thank you for having me on, you know, anytime I could talk about bee venom therapy, I'm happy to, and also everything that I did to heal and to spread the word. Um, and just to talk with other Lyme warriors that you know, have been in my, in my same shoes and are inspiring others every day.

Mimi (01:08):

And just to give our listeners a little bit more background, you were bitten by a tick in 2011 and became chronically ill with tick born illnesses and challenging auto-immunity while balancing both skin and cervical cancer. And through your heroing experience over seven years, you lived a life very familiar to most of us listening here, battling Lyme, Lyme co-infections and co-factors and auto immune conditions, trying every experimental treatment promoted by medical doctors until finally discovering apitherapy and starting the Heal Hive. So, Brooke, welcome again. And we want to hear first and foremost about your journey to forming the Heal Hive. Tell us a little bit about your Lyme journey first, and then can you tell us a little bit more detail about when you were bitten by the tick and finding out when you had Lyme and then discussing some of the treatments you tried before a bee venom therapy?

Brooke (02:02):

Sure thing. So, um, the beginning of the worst of my journey began in 2011. I was bit by a tick that also carried the Babesia and Bartonella. And, um, I immediately saw the tick. I knew what to do. I went to, um, a doctor got on Doxycycline and within a few days. The day that I got bit by a tick. I was running a magazine in New York. I had had meetings all day. I drove myself four hours through traffic, all the way out to my house in Shelter Island. I then threw a dinner party. I also played two doubles games of tennis like a mini competition. And I ended up like dancing on tables at this lovely place called sunset beach, which is awesome and fantastic. But you know, as we know, Shelter Island is where Dr. Burgdorf founded basically Lyme disease. And that is why it's called a Barellia burgdorferi. And it was actually found on shelter Island. So I didn't know this when I was a resident of Shelter Island that it was, you know, we think of Lyme, Connecticut being the place epicenter of Lyme disease, but actually it was first discovered on Shelter Island. No surprise when you see the amount of deer, et cetera, et cetera. So anyways, I got bit and, you know, I knew what to do. I immediately got Doxycycline except I fell apart. So I had a full day the day before, um, and literally never went back to work, never cleared out my desk, never got out of bed. I was down for the count immediately. Why you could ask, I mean, was it so ineffective, the doxycycline. It was because about two years, yes. It was two years prior. I had actually gotten bit by a tick on Shelter Island. Again, I had not gone to a doctor. I called them up and they said, don't worry about it. The tick is barely been on you less than 24 hours. You know, look for some signs of fatigue, sickness, flu. And if you don't have them, no worries. So I didn't worry. I never sent the tick in and I didn't know what to do. I never got doxycycline after that. About three months in, I started having anxiety attacks for the first time I started having massive insomnia issues, six months into that, I got my first melanoma cancer. Um, after that I started getting ovarian cysts over and over the size of grapefruits. And I also started having this like roller coasters thing of sometimes fatigue, anxiety. At the same time, I also had night sweats. It was all chopped up to the fact my doctor said that I was stressed out. And then about eight months in, I started getting this really, really bad neck pain and migraines, and the migraines would go into ocular migraines. I would go blind in my left eye. I had all the classic Lyme symptoms, but because I was highly functional still, I was running a magazine. I was traveling. And because these symptoms really went in and out that I was just dismissed or, you know, told to just wait it out. And so what I now know is when I got bit again, that is why the doxycycline made me so sick. And that's why I fell apart because I already had Lyme. I was going through a massive Herx from the first day. And that's why when I also got bit again and it had the babesia and the babesios just went out of control and nearly killed me. I nearly died from the babesiosis at least one time, but then the Lyme itself started this massive auto immune dysfunction after that second bite in 2011. And, um, you know, as I said, um, from that bite on, I didn't clear out my desk. I never went back to work and my life just became this downward spiral to pretty quickly. I got bit, I believe it was the end of July, early August by September. I could barely stand up on my own. And by October I was crawling, um, by November I basically had what I considered dementia. I could barely remember my own name. My cognitive dysfunction was immense. And, um, you know, I felt like I was dying every day. And it was a very, very tumultuous next two years to tell you the truth. Um, I, back then 2011 doesn't seem like that long ago, but there was, there were very, very few resources. There were very, very few people speaking out about chronic Lyme and I felt completely lost.

Mimi (06:34):

Oh, that's awful. That's awful story. So how did you, it's from reading about your story in the article? You tried everything pretty much. You had a port in, like I did, like I was reading your story. I'm like, okay, check, check. I did everything that she's done. Um, how did I actually have never heard of bee venom therapy until I read your article? So how did you learn to find out about bee venom therapy?

Brooke (06:59):

Um, so I was really going through a lot of my savings and I got into place before the port that I had. It's pretty much, I'd spent over $150,000 on line treatments, right. That doesn't include just living over the last two years. And I was single. I didn't come from a family of means. And so I just used, used basically my entire life savings. I was planning to use for a deposit on an apartment to save my life. Um, and what, by the time I got the port and the reason I got the port in is because I was completely reliant on IV therapy in order just to function and what I mean function in order to like, be able to take care of myself, go to the grocery store, not to actually have a life, not to go back to work, but just a bare minimum of functionality. And I had been on IVs for so long and so many strong ones like chelation IVs, ozone, autohemotherapy, and my veins completely gave up. Um, and I'd had really, really bad pots postural orthostatic syndrome, which can also lead to, you know, vassal dilation issues along with Raynaud's, which again is another vassal dilation issue. So I'd had a lot of vassal dilation issues on top of the actual, um, you know, Lyme issues that required all of the supportive therapies and also pathogenic killing therapies. So my veins had completely given out and I was terrified. And so I had no choice, but to put the port in. And at that time it felt like the end of days, because I'd spent two years and all my life savings. And I was, I felt like I was still, I was actually in decline in terms of I'd stabilize my health and to the fact that I wasn't in a hospital as much, but, um, I wasn't a functional human being about to go back to work. So right before I got the port put in, um, my parents came into town to help me that, and they were there for my recuperation after the port surgery. And we had gone to a restaurant a few days later, and it was the first time that I decided to hit my parents up for money. I hadn't actually asked them to support me because I'd had this life savings and my parents do not, you know, my mom has now died, but my parents are just very conservative in terms of fiscally and, um, you know, hitting them up for potential spending $5-10,000 a month on supplements and IV therapies to keep me alive was a very tough discussion. But I finally got up the nerve and, um, we were out to lunch and my father said, well, how much is it going to cost us? And I told him, it depends on the month. Some months will cost us $200-300. Other months can cost us $20,000. I was like, look, you know, there's this thing called STEM cell therapy. And he's like, how much is that? I was like $20,000-60,000. And anyway, he was just not having it at the moment was incredibly kismet. A nurse from the, um, the Lyme specialist office came in and she was having lunch. And I knew that she had had chronic Lyme. And we had been speaking over the last few months and she had told me how sick she was. So I went, I, I pointed her out to my father and I said, dad, look at her, she's back to work. She's a single mom of three kids. You know, if she can get better, we're using this therapy. So we just need a little bit more time. My father being the cynic said, I need to talk to her. I want to know what she did to get better. And I was just very nervous. I was like, no, no, dad, like, you don't need to talk to her. She's like, she works at my big clinic, everything I'm doing, she did. My father anyway, charged it up to her. He has no fear. And he was just like, I'm Brooke's dad. I don't like how much money she's spending at this place. And like, she's not getting any better. You know, she just got a port put in, like, what did you do to make yourself feel better? Like, she's, she says, you're all healthy. And the nurse got really quiet. And she said, I am healthy again. And my dad's like, but not from this clinic. Right. He could tell like, just from the way she responded and she said, no, she's like, I don't want to lose my job. I'm a single mom this pays my health insurance. And my dad said, Oh, I'm going to make sure that that job is not there. If you don't tell me exactly how you healed yourself. And she, I mean, my father, as I said, you know, hadn't when he was facing a hundred thousand dollars of potential debt in front of him to save his daughter's life, he was going to do whatever it took, not to spend that money. And I'm so thankful for how cheap my father is because it saved my life. So basically my father was able to weed out of her that she had used bee venom therapy to completely eradicate her Lyme disease. And we got some, cause she was a nurse. She had, you know, some of the facts about how it worked. And my father said, you're going to teach my daughter how to do this. And she was like, ah, and she acquiesced and it's true. I be upstairs during the day, getting these Lyme treatments, you know, for IV Myers cocktails to ozone, to chelation, et cetera. And then I would go back downstairs and she would, you know, and middle of the night, not middle of the night, but like after work hours sting me and this lasted for about three weeks. I immediately felt a change probably in the first week. Um, it was subtle, but it felt like there was something shifting. And I immediately, I just don't know how to describe it. I immediately knew it was going to work. Um, I wasn't convinced like it was gonna work forever. I wasn't convinced it was the answer for sure, but I knew it was gonna work to get me out of there. And I just knew, I don't know how still. Um, and so within about a month and a half, about a month on Friday, I forget it's all very hazy. I was still very cognitively dysfunctional, but, um, I felt strong enough to move back to New York. And I just got out of there. You know, I was living in the middle of New Mexico with no friends around in a motel. I'd had it, I'd been there for about six months and it was just so lonely and isolated and I just want to get back to my friends. So, um, I took off and she gave me some nominal, you know, instructions about bees. And I got back to New York and I didn't even know how to find bees in the New York city. So there was a bit of a learning curve, but within a month I was living back. I was, you know, had no money left. I was staying at a friend's house, living in her walk-in closet. It was a big walk-in closet. Mind you, but it was still a walking closet. And, um, learning how sting myself with these bees to eradicate the Lyme disease. And also not put me into so much of Herx cause I was so used to with every other Lyme modality, this idea that no pain, no gain, you know, unless you're really hurting, it's not doing anything. And my apitherapist, which is a term for someone who uses bee medicine in any way, whether they're using it for like pollen or propolis or a bee venom therapy itself. My therapist, the nurse had basically said to me with the venom therapy, you do not have to feel worse to feel better. And so I remember that and I just slowly started, you know, inching up that mountain. Um, and it didn't feel so Sisyphean in terms of one step forward, two steps back, it all of a sudden felt like I was actually getting somewhere.

Mimi (14:17):

I think many of us can relate to this story. Um, now can you also talk about exactly what the process is for bee venom therapy? I think it's very new for a lot of us.

Brooke (14:29):

Well, as I said, the reason that my bee venom therapy, um, journey wasn't so clear cut, and I just didn't reach the apex really fast is because along the way, I had to learn how much lifestyle diet controlling mass cell dysfunction auto-immunity that can be caused from pathogenic infections, um, dealing with the trauma and the grief of your loss of what you, who you were firmly formerly and who you are now, along with just the, the deep trauma of being scared of being outside to just, you know, the kind of reliance on supplements. And, you know, sometimes we do more harm than we do good in terms of just throwing spaghetti at the wall. So I had to really, really kind of peel back the onion very slowly, make a lot of mistakes along the way, and really, really teach myself and educate myself on a three 60 degree level of healing because I, this is what I always say, bees are medicine, but like medicine, if you take the wrong amount, if you take it too fast, if you take it too slow, um, if you take it the wrong time of day, if you take it with food, all these different things can change how medicine works. And I absolutely believe bee venom therapy is our future, especially with Lyme disease because of the fact that it is in itself 360 degrees. Um, it has this really amazing aspect called Meliton, which has been really, really well researched. In fact, there's a study done by Eva Sapi, um, in which she compared bee venom in a Petri dish to actual, um, antibiotic therapies, um, antibiotics mixed with other, other antibiotics, like, you know, multiple antibiotics and as well with antibiotics and herbals and bee venom eradicated the Lyme Borrelia spirit heat, um, way faster and with more, um, I think efficacy. So the research is there in terms of whether bee venom actually works. But when, I mean the 360 degree aspect is that it also has something called mast cell degranulation peptide. If anyone is listening here, I can pretty much guarantee if you've been fighting chronic Lyme, you have mast cell dysfunction, whether it's showing, showing up as mast cell activation syndrome or whether it's showing up as mast cell activation disorder, it doesn't matter your either your mast cells are either taking in too much histamine. And that regulation of histamine regulation going in and out of the mast cells is either screwed up or else your body's building too many mass cells and you are overly hypersensitive and we all are. There's not a single person I work with that does not have some sort of mast cell dysfunction. And the problem is so much of antibiotic therapy actually increases mast cell dysfunction. So much of the modalities that are there, even the ones that are being now well studied, like Dapsone and you know, all the new kind of fangled ones, none of them are actually addressing the mast cell disorder. And until we address the mast cell disorder, you can absolutely potentially eradicate the pathogens, but the body's still not balanced because once that mast cell dysfunction happens, it's a domino effect. And especially with women. So I say this because, you know, as we know, women are much more effected by, or it seems right, symptomatically at least much more affected by Lyme disease than men. The reason I believe is because of our estrogen, because estrogen builds histamine. It basically what happens is estrogen encourages aluminizing hormone that encourages histamine buildup. And then the more histamine you have, the more estrogen you create. So it becomes a domino effect you add in mast cells. Well guess what mass cells are regulated through estrogen and histamine. So women become these kind of domino effect affected, you know, histamine, mast cell dysfunctional bodies. And it doesn't matter what we do. We become more hypersensitive. We become more unable to take in foods, our food allergies mount, our mold sensitivities mount, our sensitivities to volatile organic compounds mount. And the problem is is that no other modality addresses this and all you can do right now in terms of allopathic medicine to address mast cell dysfunction is by putting bandaids on it, by taking things like Chromelin or high doses of anti-histamines, nothing actually breaks open these rogue mast cells and actually balances the mast cell issue except for bee venom therapy. Bee venom therapy itself has this peptide called Mast cell granulating peptide, peptide 401, it literally goes after the rogue mast cells. And it goes after how many mast cells you have. So by using bee venom therapy, you're not only eradicating the pathogenic bacteria, you are also rebalancing your mast cell disorder and that is why people feel better.

Mimi (19:26):

That's amazing. Um, so like say if I wanted to work with you today, how does that work?

Brooke (19:34):

So at the Heal Hive, um, I started working with clients in the beginning one-on-one and I realized that there was no way even just one on one. I was going to be able to distill all of the research I had, you know, brought together over four to five years into a few conversations. Or even if we talked every week, it just wasn't, it wasn't going to be effective. So I created what I call the Heal Hive Academy. And what we do is that we have a few aspects of it. But the first one is we have bee venom therapy prep, and it's like a preparatory course. Um, it lasts 12 weeks and we have a nurse, ER nurse that's on our staff. We have a dietician and we have a Yogi who also specializes in trauma release, which is, as you all know, very important and breath work. And so I combined all these practitioners and we create this 360 degree prep to prep the body before we do BVT. And that is because even though, bee venom has mast cell degranulating peptide, which is such an important aspect to healing the body from chronic pathogenic infections, it can also create too much of mast cell degranulation if it's not right and not done in the right circumstances. So what we do is we prep your body on a super, super stringent diet. We prep your body in terms of dealing with trauma. We prep your body in terms of movement. Um, and we do really comprehensive testings, many of the times, much more comprehensive than I've seen most Lyme doctors do to ensure that there's not latent issues that could get in the way and become roadblocks. And we kind of go through every aspect of healing in this really deep dive way, um, of weekly webinars, um, digital drop-ins, which you can drop into the nurse or to me, and discuss one-on-one and question, answer sessions. And we have homework and presentations. It is really a bootcamp, but it is the best way for me to distill all that. I've learned into something that is effective and creates a system for people to be able to use because bee venom therapy is not a one month or two month journey. It is usually for most people two year journey. So in order to keep up the accountability, people need a system, they needed a system that is easy. They needed a system that they can follow in a system that works for a lifestyle, whether you are still bedridden or whether you are a busy mom trying just to make it all work and you know, you still need to heal. So we make it as user friendly as possible. Um, and within that, you know, we, we just basically tick every box off in terms of what you need to fully heal. And so it's not just about bee venom, you know, as I say, bees are the medicine.

Mimi (22:23):

So wait after the three months, then once you complete the bootcamp, you would be begin stinging with live bees? And then how often, like, I want to go into that, like how, how much does it hurt? I mean like how many bees are you letting them stay in your back? And is it every day, like, well, you know, it's like jumping off of a bridge. I don't know. Like it just hurts so much.

Brooke (22:43):

First of all, it's all very individual. So it depends on, you know, if someone's living in a, just got out of a moldy house and they have massive mast cekk dysfunction and they have hypersensitivities and they have, you know, gut issues that are really complex. They might need to go slower. If someone has just found out that they were sick, six months ago, wanted to, you know, avoid going the allopathic path wanted to go a more holistic route and didn't have, you know, mounting autoimmunity. They did not have all of these issues that I talk about that are so common, like pots and mast cell dysfunction and food allergies, et cetera, et cetera, then they can go a little bit faster. So we really individualize it for the person. We don't see venom therapy as a situation that is a one size fits all in any way. Um, the beauty about bees though, is that we're you to empower yourself that as long as you actually know how bee venom works, the science behind it, and all that goes into healing, healing, the gut healing the mind, then you are pretty much able to work with your own body. And our whole, our whole mantra is low and slow is functionality over dysfunction. So the minute you start to lose functionality, unable to work on able to think on able to go to the grocery store, you need to pull back. And that is really how we feel about it. And we take a much more scientific approach than you'd find on most, um, in most forums. But, um, in terms of, for people to start, it all depends on what's going on in their body. So we look at your comprehensive test, we look at what's going on with you nutritionally. And, um, we start low and slow and we go by there. So it's just a slow buildup. Um, we have some clients that are able to get to five stings. And the first two months we have other clients that six months, seven months in, they're just getting to three stings. Um, doesn't mean that they're not even doing better than the ones that went faster. Um, you know, the beauty about being in therapy as much, it's much of it as cumulative. So, um, most other modalities, they work by suppression, antibiotics, antivirals, they all, they all hope that they, we all hope that they suppress the infection to allow the immune system to come on board. The problem when you're so sick with any type of these pathogenic infections, your immune system just isn't strong enough. So you just keep taking these antibiotics. You keep creating more muscle dysfunction. You keep getting sicker. And I think is that you're pushing the Lyme bacteria deeper into brain, deeper into bone, deeper into lymph. What we're doing with the bee venom is it actually makes it acute. It doesn't push it away. What we've been able to see scientifically is the bacteria cannot morph into the dormant form. And in fact, they don't recognize, um, the bee venom like they do recognize the antibiotic, um, because of the bee venom, the Meliton actually pokes these microscopic holes into the fossil lipid layer of the bacteria. The bacteria has no natural defense against this kind of poking that basically makes the bacteria explode. So the bacteria just come out of hiding. So what happens is that as you decrease, as you start your bees, start to give yourself live bee stings and decrease your pathogenic load more and more of the dormant bacteria come out of the dormant form and the bacteria that's burrowed into lymph and your bone and to brain comes out. So we're actually making the infections acute in order to heal instead of suppression, instead of suppressing them. And in terms of how hard, like how much of bee sting hurts, I'm not going to lie to you. It hurts the closer you are to your period and hurts the more sensitive you are to pain. There's some people I know that they were so scared, but after the pain that they've been through, they get themselves to bees and they're like, Oh, that was nothing. It depends on how much histamine you have in your body. Um, you know, the more histamine you have it, the more the bee sting can affect you. And also depends if you eat things like spicy foods the night before, so there's ways to mitigate the pain. Um, you might be surprised that, you know, after the first month most people report that the bee stings is the easiest part. It's sticking to all of our systems and making sure you're detoxing properly, making sure you're doing the hard trauma work and the grief work. That's the hard part. The bee stings will take you about one minute every other day. And you're done. It is probably the easiest modality out there.

Mimi (27:17):

This sounds so interesting. I would also like to talk a little bit about your website. There are so many great resources on there. Is there anything specific that you'd like to highlight to our listeners about the Heal Hive?

Brooke (27:30):

Um, I just say, you know, at the Heal Hive, we're an open book and we really want to share the science on holistic healing. Um, it's so important to us that I think that as we get sick and as the system, the medical system, whether it's allopathic or holistic has failed us has cost us a lot of money. It costs us so much time. We start to question medicine, right? Um, or science and at the Heal Hive, we're really science-based cause we don't think science data lies. We think that people do. So for us, we want you to question us, we want you to look at our research, at the research we've compiled. We want you to do your own research into bee venom, to see exactly how it works and then come to us after you've been educated and ask us the questions. Because as I said, we're an open book. One of the most extraordinary things about the Heal Hive, and you can see it in on our Instagram is how many nurses and medical practitioners and doctors follow us as well as our members. Right now we have in our last Academy, six members that are nurses, working nurses. Our last one, we had four and overall we have over 20 nurses that are clients and they are happy clients and they continue to be clients. And that says a lot because when you can convince people that are firmly based in medical science to take on a therapy, like bee venom, they have to be convinced of its efficacy and they have to be convinced that it's working for them. And we show that every day.

Mimi (29:01):

That's great. That's great. So I have to applaud you that you were featured in the New York times because I feel like Lyme disease is not recognized by the medical community, by the government, by insurance companies. It has a really, really bad PR.

Brooke (29:16):

Um, whoever's the head of PR for Lyme disease needs...

Mimi (29:19):

Well, that's my point. You don't read anything about it. If you do read anything about it, it was like last summer, his New York times article about how the editors, that her son got bit by a tick and that Lyme and that that disease doesn't work. Like it doesn't exist chronic.

Brooke (29:35):

Wasn't that, wasn't that amazing. Oh, my son was sick for a month and then he got scared. I was going amazing as a son one, he have estrogen, two he's a child three. He just got bit, uh, I had words for that.

Mimi (29:49):

Right? Exactly. A lot of people did. So that's why when I saw your article, I was like, wow. Like the fact that she was featured and was telling the truth, like how did you do that?

Brooke (29:59):

That's a good question, Mimi. And no one's asked me that yet. If you look at our press, you'll kind of be surprised of how positive it is. Do you remember that last New York magazine article that came out? Yeah, yeah. In which they gave the balanced blonde, a lot of grief and such, they had asked me to be part of it. I interviewed the journalist and realized it was a takedown piece. And I declined. I declined a lot of media when I understand that they don't have the right perspective. Um, see, this is the thing, I was a trained PR um, media person. I did PR for some really, really huge people back in York. And I also ran my own PR company. So I understand how to vet journalists. And I also understand how to ensure that they have the right point of view. The problem with journalism nowadays is that it's kind of, there's some amazing journalism. The problem is that it can be lazy. And a lot of journalists are really overwhelmed by science. So what they'll do is that they'll just do cursory, Google searches on things like Lyme disease, and then read backwards, you know, articles that are not getting the right facts about Lyme disease are not getting the right facts from, you know, doctors that are really in the know that are truly studying this. And then they just look up the people, the doctors that are aligned deniers or have different agendas, they look up their name and they reach out to them. They're just not doing their homework to look for a, a broader representation in terms of the medical community and by doctors who know. And then secondly, a lot of Lyme doctors out there are in a really, really bad Pavlovian response that they have patients in a disease that doesn't have a cure and no one is really getting it together in terms of research and organizing it. So the doctors just throw spaghetti at the wall on patients, and they do a lot of dangerous things to patients and put them through dangerous, expensive modalities. And it's really easy for a journalist to pick apart these doctors that are truly greedy and taking advantage of the chronically sick. And then you have the chronically sick that are so desperate and they're believing the stuff that these gritty doctors and practitioners are selling them. And then they allow themselves without actually being PR trained to talk to these journalists who then pick them apart like crows with, you know, some, a carcass like it is so sad. And I really think that, you know, none of the larger Lyme organizations really understand PR and they do not understand how to become like the equivalent of the American Heart Association or, you know, American cancer society. Um, Lyme diseases we know is only growing. Um, the BMC Tufts study showed that 1.9 million people in America in 2020 alone will be, um, you know, struggling with post treatment, Lyme disease. We are not a small group of people. We just have a PR problem. And I'm hoping that because at the Heal Hive, we are making change for people and we're transforming people's lives and we're doing it based on science that we will be in a better position as our hundreds of people that are going through our Academy. This last year, we'll have been improving that we'll be able to show that there's hope and whether there's hope you can actually convince journalists to pay attention. So, um, and on top of that is that we make everything so affordable and bee venom in itself will cost someone, you know, minimally, you know, about $60 to $90 a month at most with supplements included that I think we'll be able to change how journalists perceive, um, people with struggling with Lyme, because you don't seem so crazy when you have science backing what you're doing, and it's not costing a fortune and you're not getting anywhere. The problem is that so many people are throwing spaghetti at the wall spending hundreds of thousands of dollars, and they're still sick years later. So we make, you know, easy pluckings for these journalists and at the Heal Hive changing that every single member we have, we're changing that day by day.

Mimi (34:15):

That's great. Great. Um, okay. So I think, is there anything else that you would like to tell our listeners that you think we haven't covered that's important at all covered?

Brooke (34:32):

Well, you know, I think I just want to leave everyone with this, that, you know, whether you choose bee venom therapy or not, always question what you're being sold, because I wasted, as I said, hundreds of thousands of dollars. When I add up all the years I lost and all the income I lost and I was thrown really crazy things like muscle therapy, sorry, muscle testing. And I had, you know, blast scope microscopy. Everyone told me I had a parasite. Now I know that all there's so much pseudoscience in Lyme disease. I just ask you, I beg all of you out there listening question, the authority, even it comes from an MD question, their motives, do your own research. If they want to put you on a supplement, ask why ask, you know, how it affects other things I've, I've worked with so many clients that have never actually really truly been screened for an autoimmune disease. I've worked with clients that are put on that. You know, it takes a cursory look on Google to see that the herbal supplement they were also given, um, is actually, you know, shouldn't be taken together. These doctors, they don't talk, they don't talk to each other. They don't really specialize. You can get lost in the system really quickly. And you have to treat this no matter how tired you are as your full time job, because the longer it goes on the sicker you're going to get. So take advantage of your brain, do your research, and empower yourself to see through the nonsense and to work with doctors who use proper laboratory testing and are not getting kickbacks.

Mimi (36:17):

That's good advice. That's great. Thank you so much for coming on today, Brooke. That was amazing.

Brooke (36:22):

You're so welcome.

Mimi (36:23):

And I'd also like to add for those looking for more information about Brooke or bee venom therapy, please visit her website at thehealhive.com.

Brooke (36:33):

My Instagram @everydayexpert, where I share a lot more fun things and things you guys can try once you're healed like a lot of organic wine and yummy foods that you can't probably eat now.

Mimi (36:45):

Again, Brooke, thank you so much for coming on. I really appreciate your time.

Brooke (36:49):

Bye everyone. I had a great time talking to you all.

Mimi (36:56):

Each week, or we'll bring you different voices from their wellness community so that they can share how they help their clients heal. You will come away with tips and strategies to help you get your life back. Thank you so much for coming on and I'm so happy you are here. You can also join our community of Lyme 360 warriors on Facebook and let's heal together. Thank you.