Costly intravenous vitamin cocktails — usually administered through at-home concierge services or in spalike "drip bars" — have gained steam in recent years, but experts say they offer no real benefit to most people, The Washington Post reported Feb. 24.
The hype surrounding concentrated vitamin infusions stem from a wide range of claims: from curing hangovers and preventing common colds to alleviating symptoms of heart disease.
Experts say the claims are unfounded and no IV vitamin therapy is FDA-approved.
"You want antioxidants? Have a cup of blueberries. You want glutathione? Have cruciferous vegetables like kale and broccoli. There's a lot we can do more naturally that can improve your health and won't require sticking a needle in you," said Zachary Mulvihill, MD, an integrative physician at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York City. He told the Post he doesn't recommend such infusions "to anyone unless there's a medical necessity — such as if someone has trouble with absorption from the stomach."
Vitamins are needed in small amounts for most people. Still, some drip bars recreationally administer doses of vitamin C, for example, as high as 25,000 mg. This has no longstanding benefit, since any excess of water-soluble vitamins will soon exit the body through urine.
"People need to realize that these massive doses are not stored in your body for prolonged immunity," said Ariel Igal, MD, PhD, a professor at the Institute of Human Nutrition at Columbia University in New York City. "Your body is just like a gas tank. When you pump in more than the tank can hold, it doesn't make the car work any better or faster — the extra gas just leaks out," he told the Post.
In fact, most large-scale trials have "repeatedly shown there is no evidence" to support the widely believed claim that vitamin C supplements prevent common colds and other infections, Dr. Igal said, adding that this thinking comes "mostly from deficiency studies."
"There is some literature showing associations between vitamin C deficiency and greater susceptibility to illness. People have extrapolated these data to believe that the opposite must also be true. But so far, that just hasn't been the case," Dr. Igal said.
Infection risk is also a concern, as the business of IV vitamin drip clinics is largely unregulated. Experts pointed out the importance of keeping the area where IV cocktails are mixed properly sanitized.
"We have absolutely no idea if these infusion suites are using sterile compounding and storage techniques before putting it into people's veins," Adina Hirsch, PharmD, a board-certified nutrition support pharmacist in Atlanta specializing in IV nutrition, told the news outlet.
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