What are bee pollen's therapeutic uses?

Overview

Bee pollen is the pollen collected by bees as they gather nectar from flowers for making honey. Like honey, bee pollen is used as a food by the hive. The pollen granules are stored in pollen sacs on the bees’ hind legs. Beekeepers who wish to collect bee pollen place a screen over the hive with openings just large enough for the bees to pass through. As the bees enter the hive, the screen compresses their pollen sacs, squeezing the pollen from them. The beekeepers can then collect the pollen from the screen.

Bee pollen is very high in protein and carbohydrates, and it contains trace amounts of minerals and vitamins. It is used in a number of traditional Chinese herbal formulas and is sold as a nutritional supplement in the United States and other countries. Although it has been recommended for a variety of uses, particularly for improving sports performance and relieving allergies, little to no scientific evidence backs up any of the claims about the therapeutic value of bee pollen.

Requirements and Sources

Bee pollen is not typically found in a person’s everyday diet, unless the person regularly eats the snack bars that include it. Tablets and some snack products containing bee pollen are available in pharmacies and health food stores.

Therapeutic Dosages

Athletes using bee pollen report consuming five to ten tablets per day. Tablets can contain variable amounts of bee pollen, usually from 200 to 500 milligrams. The manufacturer’s recommendations may provide more guidance.

Therapeutic Uses

Bee pollen has been touted as an energy enhancer and is sometimes used by athletes in the belief that it will enhance performance during competitions. However, there is no real evidence that bee pollen is effective and some evidence that it is not.

Bee pollen is also commonly taken to try to prevent hay fever on
the theory that eating pollens will help persons build up resistance to them. When
used for this purpose, locally grown bee pollen is usually recommended; however,
it is possible to have a severe allergic reaction to the bee pollen itself. Other
proposed uses of bee pollen include combating age-related memory loss and other
effects of aging, as well as treating respiratory infections, endocrine
disorders, and colitis. No scientific evidence
supports any of these uses.

Scientific Evidence

A few clinical trials have tested bee pollen’s ability to increase energy, such as in sports performance, or to improve memory.

Sports performance. According to a 1977 article in The New York Times, two studies on the use of bee pollen to improve sports performance found it to be of no significant benefit. Both trials were said to be double-blind and placebo-controlled. The first, performed in 1975, involved thirty members of a university swim team. Participants were divided into three groups and given a daily dose of either ten tablets of bee pollen, ten placebo tablets, or five bee pollen and five placebo tablets. In 1976, the same experimental protocol was used, but this time with sixty participants: thirty swimmers, and thirty long-distance runners. Bee pollen did not significantly improve performance in either trial. A third study on bee pollen’s effects on sports performance, also difficult to obtain, reportedly found that breathing, heart rate, and perspiration returned to normal levels more quickly in track team members taking pollen than in those taking a placebo. However, reviewers criticized the methods used in this study. The runners may have known who was taking placebo and who was taking pollen, and this could have influenced the results.

Memory. The effects of pure bee pollen on memory have not been investigated, but clinical trials of a Chinese herbal medicine containing bee pollen have been conducted in China and Denmark. The improvements in memory seen in the Chinese study were not significant, and in the more recent double-blind, placebo-controlled crossover study in Denmark, no improvements were found. The formula tested was only 14 percent bee pollen, so the results may not reveal very much about bee pollen’s effectiveness.

Safety Issues

Several cases of serious allergic reactions to bee pollen, including
anaphylaxis, an acute allergic response that can be
life-threatening, have been reported in the medical literature. The anaphylactic
reactions occurred within twenty to thirty minutes of ingesting fairly small
amounts of bee pollen—in one case, less than a teaspoon. The majority of these
case reports involved people with known allergies to pollen.

Bibliography

Blustein, P. “Pollinated Presidents Aside, Experts Doubt Value of Bee Pick-me-up.” Wall Street Journal, February 12, 1981.

Cohen, S. H., et al. “Acute Allergic Reaction After Composite Pollen Ingestion.” Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology 64 (1979): 270-274.

Geyman, J. P. “Anaphylactic Reaction After Ingestion of Bee Pollen.” Journal of the American Board of Family Practice 7 (1994): 250-252.

Iverson, T., et al. “The Effect of NaO Li Su on Memory Functions and Blood Chemistry in Elderly People.” Journal of Ethnopharmacology 56 (1997): 109-116.

Montgomery, P. L. “Bee Pollen: Wonder Drug or Humbug?” The New York Times, February 6, 1977, pp. 1, 7.