Gwyneth Paltrow’s Latest Pseudoscientific Beauty Tip: Get Stung by Bees to Be Beautiful!

It’s probably fair to say that you shouldn’t take health advice from someone who advocates hormone-balancing vagina steam-cleanings. Or tips from someone who advertises the effectiveness of skincare products that have been meditated over and chanted to.

Still, Goop founder and actress Gwyneth Paltrow — who has advocated both — was asked to share her beauty tips in the New York Times. It went about as well as you’d expect.

Discussing how she’s “the guinea pig to try everything,” Paltrow threw out yet another unusual remedy:

But generally, I’m open to anything. I’ve been stung by bees. It’s a thousands of years old treatment called apitherapy. People use it to get rid of inflammation and scarring. It’s actually pretty incredible if you research it. But, man, it’s painful. I haven’t done cryotherapy yet, but I do want to try that.

Having grown up with beehives in the backyard, I can honestly say that I’m somewhat amazed that someone would voluntarily be stung. Talk about taking “beauty is pain” to heart…

Still, before you start making plans to sell your home for the fountain of youth bee farm of your dreams, it’s worth noting that this is really just a bunch of woo.

Multiple studies have tested the efficacy of this terrifying beauty treatment, but there’s insufficient scientific evidence that it actually works. Bruce Katz, the director of the Cosmetic Surgery & Laser Clinic at Mount Sinai Medical Center, warns against bee venom therapy.

“In fact, it can be dangerous,” he told Refinery29. “You can have an allergic reaction that causes swelling or worse, go into anaphylactic shock. This is not something you should apply to your skin.”

Dang it. Now I’m going to have to scratch “mass-murdering bees” from my daily beauty regimen.

(Image via Shutterstock. Hemant’s note: The picture has been corrected to show a bee. My fault. Since that’s all sorts of embarrassing, let’s all just assume my baby kept me sleep deprived.)