We have been hearing a lot about IV hydration and vitamin therapy over the last five years or so. In fact, the therapy has become so popular and widespread that you can find walk-in IV therapy clinics in just about every major city. Here is the big question: does the therapy really work?
The answer depends on how you define ‘really working’ as measured against its purpose. For example, hospitals have been using IV treatments successfully for decades. If intravenous therapy didn’t work, hospitals wouldn’t keep doing it.
However, there is a difference between what hospitals do and what walk-in IV therapy clinics do. These strip mall clinics claim everything from increasing energy to relieving the symptoms of a hangover to boosting the immune system.
The IV Concept Is Simple Enough
The IV concept is simple enough to understand. In a hospital setting, medical staff introduce water, saline, vitamins and minerals, and even drugs through a tube and needle. The needle is inserted directly into the patient’s vein. Whatever is being given to the patient is introduced directly into the bloodstream. It doesn’t have to go through any other systems.
It is the same principle leveraged by retail IV therapy clinics. Saline and a concoction of vitamins and minerals are introduced to the body through intravenous means. In theory, this means 100% bioavailability. A patient would expect to experience a lower bioavailability if the same cocktail were taken orally. At least that’s the thinking.
The Therapy in a Hospital Setting
IV hydration and vitamin therapy in a hospital setting is normally utilized to treat dehydration and nutrient absorption disorders. You might have a patient visiting the ER while suffering heatstroke. One of the first things the staff does is get him hooked up to on IV with a mixture of saline and electrolytes. The purpose is to rehydrate the patient.
In the case of a nutrient absorption disorder, the patient’s body is struggling to absorb nutrients from daily food. IV therapy bypasses the normal absorption process by introducing vitamins and minerals directly to the bloodstream.
Of course, the standard IV can be used to introduce all sorts of substances. From vitamins and minerals to pain medication to supplemental blood, the IV is a proven technology with a long history behind it.
The Therapy in a Retail Setting
In a retail setting, IV hydration and vitamin therapy are promoted as a way to improve health and wellbeing by administering a cocktail of vitamins, minerals, and fluids. It is a therapy offered by Lone Star Pain Medicine in Weatherford, TX.
Lone Star says that the therapy’s development is credited to the late John Meyers, MD, a Baltimore physician who believed in the therapeutic benefits of introducing a vitamin and mineral cocktail via IV. What has since been called Myers’ cocktail is considered the gold standard of IV hydration and vitamin therapy.
The trouble is that no one knows exactly what Myers put in his cocktail. An educated guess based on the small amount of information he did write down seems to suggest vitamins C, B6, B12 and B complex, along with calcium gluconate and magnesium chloride.
Plenty of Skeptics
Does the cocktail, administered intravenously, do what retail clinics claim it does? The clinics themselves say it does. Likewise, there are patients who swear by it. Yet all of medical science is not satisfied. There are plenty of skeptics who believe patients derive just as much benefit from taking vitamins and minerals orally along with a healthy dose of water. At the very least, IV hydration and vitamin therapy shouldn’t harm you.