The world of medicine and health is constantly changing. It's not uncommon to see new developments that shake the foundations of medicine, open up new pathways for treatment, or address the causes of previously untreatable diseases. HIV used to be a death sentence, but the development of antiretroviral therapy has made it extremely manageable. Covid-19 was rapidly addressed with a new vaccine pathway using mRNA rather than the traditional vaccine mechanisms.
So, it's not unusual to see a new technology or mechanism for improving your health, and think it may be legitimate and effective. As we'll discuss throughout this post, however, that's not always the case. In fact, unscrupulous people frequently leverage this trust to promote dangerous and ineffective treatments.
Mobile IV vitamin and hydration therapies, also known as Myers' Cocktails or drip bars, have been growing in popularity in certain markets, and make many promises about wellness, immune boosting, and general health benefits. The question is, is there any merit to these claims, or are mobile IV vitamin therapies just another in a long line of medical scams?
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What is Mobile Vitamin IV Therapy?
First, let's start at the beginning: What are mobile vitamin IV therapies? Also known as IV hydration therapies or Myers' Cocktails, the simple answer is that these are injections using an intravenous method to deliver vitamin-infused liquid directly into your veins, as opposed to eating, drinking, or taking capsule-form medications.
Many decades ago, a doctor in Maryland named John Myers promoted the use of IV-delivered nutrient therapies. No records exist of what he put in his therapies, and he died in 1984. Since then, his colleagues – and later, many other practitioners around the world – have taken up the mechanism and started their own facilities, usually called IV clinics or health spas, to deliver these therapies.
What's in a mobile IV vitamin therapy? While the original recipes used by Myers were never recorded, some other early versions made by his successors were. The earliest known Myers' Cocktail consisted of IV magnesium, calcium, vitamin B varieties, and vitamin C. However, the exact ingredients in any given IV vitamin therapy can be different, as there is no standardization. Today, they include all manner of vitamins, minerals, and other ingredients, as put together by whoever is running the clinic.
What Are the Supposed Benefits of Mobile Vitamin IV Therapy?
Just about everything.
Depending on who you ask, IV vitamin therapies can supposedly:
- Boost hydration levels.
- Increase immune system response.
- Improve general wellness.
- Improve athletic recovery.
- Reduce the risk of heart attack.
- Reduce the risk or symptoms of multiple sclerosis.
- Treating the symptoms of migraines.
- Curing the common cold, flu, and other illnesses.
- Reduce the risk of cancer.
- Address low energy levels.
- Reduce or resolve chronic pain.
- Reduce or resolve chronic fatigue.
- Address the symptoms of fibromyalgia.
- Reducing the impact of a hangover.
- Much, much more.
To say that someone, somewhere, has claimed that IV vitamin therapies could cure anything that ails you would not be an exaggeration.
As for what these therapies actually do for you, that's another story entirely.
I've seen numerous influencers, including celebrities, health influencers, and even some medical practitioners – and many more who claim a "doctor" title but aren't specialized in medicine at all – promoting these IV therapies. If you know me, or you've watched anything on my YouTube channel, you know I like to dig deep into the research and learn about anything and everything before I even consider it. So, of course, I need to dive into the research and see what comes up.
The result will probably not surprise you.
As far as the science goes, there have not been any clinical trials that show any tangible benefits to IV vitamin therapies. Most, if not all, of the perceived benefit patients – or more accurately, customers – experience can be attributed simply to increased hydration. Chronic, low-level dehydration is extremely common, and putting water directly into the bloodstream is a fast (but not necessarily the most effective) way to rehydrate.
There's one situation where an IV infusion of vitamins can be beneficial, and I'll discuss that later.
Needless to say, the claims that an IV infusion of vitamins can prevent cancer, cure the common cold, solve chronic pain, and more are all nothing more than marketing. In fact, the Food and Drug Administration and the Federal Trade Commission have both stepped in to tell companies to cease making claims, particularly in regard to cancer, multiple sclerosis, and heart failure.
There's more to the story, and that's the dangers of IV vitamin therapy.
The Significant Drawbacks of Mobile Vitamin IV Therapy
At first glance, it might seem like putting vitamins directly into your bloodstream where your body can make use of them – bypassing the digestive processes that would slow down, destroy, or evacuate some portion of what you consumed – might seem like a good idea.
Well, that much is true: it can be a good idea in a medical context that is well-regulated. IVs are used every day in hospitals around the world, after all. So, what's the problem with IV vitamin therapy?
It's not regulated, so there's no consistency to what's in the cocktails you're given. Individual brands providing their own mixes may have consistency within their individual products, but if you go to a health spa and ask for an IV vitamin infusion, the specifics of what you get can be very different. Moreover, since these are unregulated products, you have to take their word for what's in them; you never know if they're exaggerating, providing less (or more) than they claim of various nutrients, or if there are unlisted ingredients as well. This is a common problem even within more regulated supplements, so an unregulated market is even worse.
The doses they give you of various vitamins are poorly balanced. For example, here's what's in a specific product by HydraMed:
- 1 Liter of fluid
- 1,000 mg of vitamin B12 (41,700% of your recommended daily value)
- 1 mL of b-complex (with specific vitamins and amounts unspecified)
- 1,000 mg of vitamin C (1,111% of your recommended daily value and half the tolerable upper limit)
- 200 mg of magnesium (48% of your daily value)
- 10 mg of zinc (91% of your daily value)
They also don't specify what the fluid carrier is; it's most likely saline, but if it's not specified, there's no way of knowing. Other formulas have been known to include nutrients like electrolytes, amino acids, and more.
On top of that, others may include actual medications as well, such as Zofran, Toradol, and NSAIDs. They aren't necessarily well labeled, either; a Hangover Rescue infusion contains 15 mg of "headache and pain medication" and 8 mg of "stomach pain medication" but does not specify what those are.
I've talked before about the perils of megadosing on vitamins. Your body wants to remain in balance with the nutrients you consume. Some, when consumed in much higher amounts, can have significant adverse effects. You can end up with deficiencies in other nutrients as well. Others do nothing and are simply eliminated, which may sound harmless, but when you're paying for something that is effectively useless, it's worse on the balance.
The people providing the therapies often do so in unsanitary conditions. One of the most dangerous risks of IV vitamin therapy isn't even the contents of the cocktails themselves; it's the fact that they are often not compounded or administered in sanitary conditions. When you're in a hospital, doctors and nurses practice rigorous hand washing, wear gloves, sterilize the area before an injection, and much more behind the scenes. Medications are compounded – that is, measured appropriately in dose and put in a form to be administered – in sterile environments.
All of this is extremely important to prevent things like infections. Your skin is a significant barrier between you and harmful organisms, and when you pierce it with an IV, you risk letting those harmful organisms into your bloodstream. It's even worse if the liquid you're putting into yourself is itself contaminated.
This isn't theoretical. There are several recorded cases of infections caused by, or potentially attributed to, vitamin infusion therapies.
- A 52-year-old woman developed an infection of Pseudomonas fluorescens, which is not commonly found in humans but can infect transfusions.
- A woman in Texas died of sudden cardiac death after an IV infusion, and while the infusion was not deemed to be a definitive cause, neither was it ruled out as a factor. Given that a common ingredient in vitamin infusions, potassium chloride, can cause cardiac arrest in concentrated doses, there's a link.
State regulators investigating one company's compounding lab, where they made IV infusion therapy products, observed numerous violations of sanitary conditions, including workers in street clothes, handling drug products with ungloved hands, not sanitizing after touching face masks or trash cans, using discolored and damaged HEPA filters, performed compounding on non-sterile surfaces, and much more.
For obvious reasons, you don't want something produced in conditions like that being pumped into your bloodstream. My next point is the main reason why.
IV application bypasses natural filters and protections. Your skin is an important barrier, but so too is your digestive system. Many pathogens have a difficult time surviving stomach acid or gut bacteria and can be destroyed before they are picked up by the body. There are many biological processes involved in digestion that help process and filter the nutrients you consume.
Additionally, digestion isn't just about transferring nutrients from your food to your blood. Many nutrients, as they are when you eat them, need to be processed through enzymatic reactions into forms that can be used. Putting those nutrients directly into your blood means you may be getting the wrong form of the nutrient, and your body won't be able to use it properly.
It can cause allergic reactions, low blood pressure, and other adverse effects. Even if infection doesn't occur, there's always a possibility of an allergic reaction to some element of the cocktail. Diluting your blood with fluid can lead to low blood pressure. There have even been examples of exacerbating existing illnesses, such as the case of a 47-year-old man with glucose 6-phosphate dehydrogenase (G6PD), an illness that causes red blood cells to break down faster than they are replaced. An IV vitamin infusion further diluted and caused red blood cell breakdown, leaving him in a potentially fatal condition.
They're very expensive. While your wallet is secondary to your life, it's still not great that these infusions can drain it. IV vitamin infusions often cost anywhere from $100 to $600 and are not covered by insurance, as they aren't certified medical procedures.
Are IV Vitamins Ever a Good Idea?
At the start, I mentioned that there is one situation where IV vitamin infusions are a good idea. That is: when you have a clinical deficiency in a vitamin, mineral, or nutrient, and you need a rapid increase in your levels of that nutrient. In cases where a deficiency has reached severe, life-threatening levels, using an IV to deliver that specific nutrient quickly can be life-saving.
This is, it should be noted, very different from a cocktail of various megadoses of vitamins and medications. It's extremely rare that even an emergency room would make up a "cocktail" of multiple nutrients for a patient, and they would only do so if medical circumstances warranted it. It very much would not be used for something like a hangover remedy.
At the end of the day, IVs should be limited to regulated medical use. If you need more vitamins, minerals, or hydration, there are better, natural ways to get them through diet, and you won't be spending hundreds of dollars an hour for them.
Sources:
- ConsumerLab – Are intravenous (IV) vitamin infusions safe and effective? https://www.consumerlab.com/answers/are-iv-vitamin-infusions-safe-and-beneficial/iv-vitamin-infusion/
- ACCP Position Statement on Hydration and Vitamin Infusion Clinics: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37792799/
- A Nearly Fatal Case of Pseudomonas fluorescens Bacteremia Secondary to a Naturopathic Intravenous Vitamin Infusion: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34291692/
- FDA highlights concerns with compounding of drug products by medical offices and clinics under insanitary conditions: https://www.fda.gov/drugs/human-drug-compounding/fda-highlights-concerns-compounding-drug-products-medical-offices-and-clinics-under-insanitary
- Department Offers Important Safety Tips for IV Clinic Consumers: https://www.floridahealth.gov/_documents/newsroom/press-releases/2015/11/111215-iv-clinics.pdf
- If Vitamins Could Kill: Massive Hemolysis Following Naturopathic Vitamin Infusion: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3550205/
- Poison Control – Can a Myers' Cocktail Help Me? https://www.poison.org/articles/can-a-myers-cocktail-help-me
- Pfizer Labeling – Potassium Chloride solution: https://labeling.pfizer.com/ShowLabeling.aspx?id=4580
