IV.4. HONEY BEE PHARMACY AND HUMAN CELL

Thanks to the extremely wide range of the substances they contain the bee products can compete with the best stocked pharmacy, but they certainly will overcome it. This one statement is not an exaggeration. If only it is about their listing, it would require more space and time than we can indulge in a work like the present one. If anyone would assume the task not only to list all the substances in the bee products, but also that to describe them scientifically, as well as to provide the medical effects of each one, it would be necessary a period of many years of effort, completed in a treaty that would include a large number of volumes.

If we put face to face the bee pharmacy and the pharmacochemical pharmacy, we have to do at least some clarifications. A huge number of substances produced by the pharmaceutical chemistry, with exactly the same name in the treaties of pharmacology (to remember that we are talking about the substance itself, not the trade name of the drug) may be found out in the bee products. Here, however, there are at least two key differences. The synthetic drugs, some of which absolutely necessary in extreme situations, are always accompanied by brochures that highlight the contraindications and side effects. There are no few cases where these side effects,  not always known, cause iatrogenic diseases - diseases caused by the substances contained in the given drug. This is a kind of perpetual motion therapy: the number of the drugs taken for the primary disease shall increases with the ones given for the iatrogenic diseases.

 In the bee pharmacy - name that includes all the therapeutic substances contained in the offer that the bee makes to mankind, there are only substances which give life and maintain it. They are gathered from the nature and processed in the hive according to an unwritten science, following some combinations or selections adapted to the perfection by millennia of survival to the bee colony needs. No substance is lacking, no substance is in addition. Quantitatively, all the substances are dosed so as to serve the growth of the vigorous bee brood, the nutrition and bees family health insurance and especially the fertility and multiplication. It is no less true, there are bee substances that, inappropriately administered, can have side effects, such as those iatrogenic. Because this issue is of a major importance in the apitherapy, we will return to it at the rightful place.

No pharmacologist can equate a pharmacochemical synthesis substance that structurally mimics, with the intention of identity, a substance of the human body and the same substance taken from the bee products. The biocompatibility of the bee substance with the one synthesized by the human body is always superior to the chemioprepared substance. It is, among many others, to give just one example, the case of substitution hormones.

There are in the bee products - and this is of great importance, which should draw the attention of the pharmacology - substances that can not be replicated in laboratories.

Beyond any doubt, the bee products make the human being to be within reach of many substances with a completely defined structure, many of which being able to be utilized by the human body without its own processing. At the same time, they provide the substances of which, by its own metabolism, the human body synthesizes what is needed to it. And actually crucial, the bee offers a huge number of biomolecules which are biocompatible to the identity with the human ones, but which the pharmacochemistry will never succeed to reproduce.

No food, no medicine can replace the value and complexity of the biochemical offer of the bee which includes:

- all essential and non-essential amino acids of the structure of all the proteins - as the holoproteins and heteroprotein MEC - as well as the biomolecules and holoproteins necessary for the cell and also to the intracellular biosynthese, directly usable, without any treatment, which is of exceptional importance for the human metabolic deficiencies (Arnold, 1978; Battagliani et al, 1969. Bonagia, 1983 Andriţoiu, 2006);

- fats: under the most diverse forms: fatty acids, glycerides, phosphooglicerides, sphyingolipides, steroids compounds supporting the formation of the lipids (including cholesterol, bile acids, terpenes, higher aliphatic acids, the carotenoids, etc.); some lipids are offered as biomolecules directly usable by the body without any treatment; esters (Cotrutz et al, 2011;. Capolongo, 1997; Mateescu, 2005; Andriţoiu, 2006); the lipids are the master piece of plasmalemma, ensuring its structural integrity. The lipids are also the biochemical barrier that separates the extracellular space to the interior of the cell (Cotrutz et al, 2011.)

- carbohydrates directly assimilable, all those who have a role at the cellular and extracellular levels, including the ones included in the structure of the glycolipids, glycoproteins, proteoglycans (Alphandéry 1989; Andriţoiu, 2004, 2005, 2006);

- vitamins: all which are known as such – directly usable and all the precursors substances necessary for the biosynthese of the human body (. Crane, 1978; Gonnet et al, 1989; Andriţoiu, 2004, 2006);

- vitamin-like factors or substances in their structure: choline (amine - C5H15O2N acting as vitamin), carnitine (also called vitamin T) myoinositol (considered a member of the vitamin B), ubiquinone (coenzyme acting as vitamin, the best known being the Coenzyme Q10: CaQ10) inclusively the bioflavonoids playing a role of vitamins (such as flavanone, flavones, flavonols, etc. flavins.)

- insulin-like factors or insulin-like action: IGF-I, an insulin-like peptide, the B8, E, C; minerals Se, Zn, Vn, Cr, Ca; the proteins - albumin within ​​homeostasyc values and so on;

- minerals: all known to play a role in the human metabolism, as such, including ionized, but also in the structure of certain biomolecules - metalloproteins, metalloenzymes, metallocorticoids, etc.. (Propolis, 1979 Alles et al, 1989;. Andriţoiu, 2006);

- enzymes and coenzymes as directly usable biomolecules and their precursors, too: the wealth in enzymes of the bee products is certainly unsurpassed, as the only partially identified enzymes amount to 800 (Crane, 1978);

- antioxidants - all that are known in the medical sciences (Andriţoiu, 2006);

- organic acids: some are of exceptional importance in the treatment of cancers, including 10-hydroxy-2-decenoid or 9-hydroxy-decenoid, and also the acids DNA and RNA;

- substances needed for the human cells, most of which directly usable, regardless the metabolic status of each patient, starting with the ones falling in the primary structure of the human cell - C, H, O, N P (Gonnet et al 1989, Kimura et al, 2003; Nagaya et al, 2004, ... Andriţoiu, 2006);

- biomolecules directly usable by the human body, enjoying a diversity and efficiency that should be the subject of a broad level of basic and clinical studies (Klein et al, 1969; Andriţoiu, 1999, 2006, 2009, 2010.).