Vitamin IVs catching on as health trend
Dripping nutrients into your arm appeals to many at $100 per bag
The bright yellow concoction dripping into my veins looks alarmingly like lemon Kool-Aid.
As I sit attached to an intravenous pole at Toronto’s Adelaide Health Clinic, however, what’s actually pumping into my body are liquid vitamins from an IV bag.
Forty years after John Myers, a Baltimore physician, began injecting vitamins and minerals into patients, “intravenous micro-nutrient therapy” is all the rage in natural health care — buoyed by celebrity endorsements and “Mainline your multi” headlines that tout vitamin drips as a cure-all for the stressed, the anxious, the depressed, the dehydrated, the immune-weakened and the overweight.
Proponents say IV vitamin therapy, which costs about $100 or more per drip, depending on the formulation, delivers a high concentration of vitamins, minerals and amino acids directly to the body’s cells, bypassing the digestive system to allow more rapid and effective absorption of nutrients than could be achieved by swallowing them.
To hook up to a drip line, customers in the U.S. and U.K. visit a specialized clinic or a spa, where the IV treatment is now reportedly offered alongside Botox.
In Canada, IV therapy has become among the most popular services advertised by naturopaths, say University of Alberta researchers.
At the Adelaide clinic in Toronto’s high-powered financial district, one room is dedicated to an IV lounge, where people can choose from a menu of injections, from “diet and detox” to drips for improved sports recovery and performance.
In Vancouver, the vitamin lounge at The IV Wellness Boutique features reclining leather massage chairs, two private theatres, wireless headphones and a huge bay window looking out into Yaletown.
“People sit in the chair for about 45 minutes and receive their drip,” says co-owner Heidi Rootes, a naturopathic doctor who started incorporating IV vitamin therapy into her practice after she tried it on patients and was “astounded by the effects that I got from it.”
Critics, however, remain unconvinced, arguing there is no evidence from properly controlled trials that vitamin infusions do anything to improve the health of people who don’t suffer true vitamin deficiencies.
“I don’t know of the scientific basis for it — it certainly hasn’t blossomed in the main medical literature as a cure for ‘whatever,’ ” says renowned nutrition expert Dr. David Jenkins, a professor in nutritional sciences at the University of Toronto and a scientist at the Li Ka Shing Knowledge Institute at St. Michael’s Hospital.
“We have not seen that it’s improved concentration. Nor has one seen athletes that claim that it’s taken three seconds off their mile. All of these things would be tremendously important. In the absence of that, what are we left with?”
The answer, Jenkins and other experts would argue, is almost blind faith in the power of vitamin supplements and the belief if a little is good, more — and injected quickly — must be better.
IV vitamin therapy “has this veneer of scientific legitimacy,” adds Tim Caulfield, Canada Research Chair in health law and policy at the University of Alberta.
“There are legitimate situations where you would give vitamins in- travenously, when people are severely sick and they can’t absorb vitamins properly. This is not the kind of situation they’re talking about here.”
But vitamin injections tie into “the overall ‘wellness’ idea,” Caulfield says.
Frank Stillo, founder and chief executive officer at four-year-old Vitamindrip, an Ontario-based company that bills itself as the Canadian leader in intravenous micronutrient formulations, says IV therapy is mainly gaining popularity among “elite executives” and “weekend warriors who train hard and play hard.”
The company is also seeing an increase in working mothers.
Vitamindrip’s “diet and detox” injection, a mixture of vitamins C and B, and amino acids, which it says can burn body fat and reduce hunger pangs, is among the moms’ most requested treatments.
At The IV Wellness Boutique, a hydrating IV called The Hangover is a winner on Sunday mornings, Rootes says. “Some people have Crohn’s or chronic stress or chronic anxiety, and they really need to be built up again.”
The hazards are few, say medical doctors. But because the infusions are administered with a needle, there is a small, but not non-existent risk of infection. In addition, some Scandinavian studies have linked large amounts of folic acid and vitamin B12, taken over long periods, with a possible increased risk of certain cancers.
But Stillo says his company, which has expanded into the U.S. and Britain, uses only pharmaceuticalgrade, water-soluble vitamins.
“There is nothing high-risk here,” he says. “We don’t infuse anything that could reach toxicity levels quickly.”
Since the nutrients used in vitamin injections are water-soluble, Christopher Labos, a McGill University cardiologist and epidemiologist, says “once you use up the amount you need, the rest end up getting filtered by the kidneys, and peed out in urine.”
That doesn’t mean he recommends the treatment.
“This notion of ‘If you’re rundown and tired, come and get an IV infusion of water-soluble vitamins’ makes no medical sense whatsoever,’ ” says Labos.
“If you go into it thinking, ‘I’m willing to spend $100 and I know it won’t make me any healthier,’ fine. But I think most people think it is making them healthier.”
I wasn’t sure what to expect when Vitamindrip and the Adelaide clinic invited the National Post to try a free treatment. Naturopathic doctor Connie Pugliese administered a careful physical examination and medical history. Then, after a brief moment of nervous clamminess, the needle was inserted into my arm.
After my “rejuvenation” infusion, I don’t feel anything at first. Then, on the streetcar home, I started to experience fleeting moments of lightheadedness, which I later learned was likely the result of the magnesium, which helps people relax.
My sleep that night was deeper, less fitful than normal.
But I didn’t feel more energetic than usual the next day, though at a family dinner two nights later, I was told my skin was “glowing.”
Vitamindrip recommends infusions once a week for four to six weeks, what Stillo describes as a “loading phase,” followed by a maintenance phase of less frequent injections.
But Jenkins says the research really isn’t there to prove any phase of treatment works.
“Where is the clinical trial, and where are the data? Has anyone said, ‘we’ll give you saline or we’ll give you a drip, and let’s see what the difference is?’” he asks.
What he recommends for anyone trying to get a vitamin fix: a healthy diet.
Needles and drips “shouldn’t be a substitute for not having your fruits and vegetables.”
I don’t know of the scientific basis for it — it certainly hasn’t blossomed in the main medical literature as a cure for ‘whatever.’