Generally, it can be useful to take vitamins and minerals orally, and we recommend that when appropriate. However, if vitamins and minerals are not adequately absorbed into the body, they are useless. Frequently, due to certain disease states that create intestinal imbalance and malabsorption, patients do not adequately absorb vitamins and nutrients they need through the gut or gastrointestinal tract. In some cases, our patients need higher concentration of vitamins and minerals than the GI tract can absorb without complications. We would like to share some of these cases with you.
Case #1 – Patient presented to the clinic for initial evaluation and management of leaky gut and other GI issues. Patient noted that her symptoms started a year ago after a period of high stress. In the past year, her symptoms had been progressively getting worse. She noted always feeling hungry, fatigue, nausea, vomiting, heart burn, bowel movement irregularities and general abdominal pain. After removing food sensitivities she felt less nauseated and had less heart burn and bowel irregularities. However continued to feel hungry and fatigue and had general abdominal pain and constipation. She started getting a Multi-vitamin nutritional IV once per week and after 4 weeks reported improvement in her energy, appetite, mood and fatigue. She continued to have abdominal discomfort. She was then taken off her iron supplementation and was given 4 Iron Infusions alongside her multivitamin IV. After 4 IVs and at her 3 month follow up since her first visit, she reported significant improvement in her energy, wellbeing, abdominal pain, bowel movements and nausea. It has been almost 3 years since her initial appointment. Patient continues to get multi-vitamin IVs, once every 3-4 weeks as well as iron infusions as needed. Reports “feeling like her old, younger self again.”
Case#2 – Patient initially presented with abdominal pain, low appetite, weight loss, painful and irregular bowel movements, nausea/vomiting, significant gas and bloating, depressed mood and anxiety. Her symptoms were aggravated by lactose and alcohol. She had a extensive history of antibiotic use. Her treatment plan included probiotics, massage, elimination of her food sensitivities and digestive tonics. In the following 6 months, she showed improvement in her digestive complaints, nausea, anxiety and depressed mood. However there was still more work to be done. She started custom made nutritional IVs and decreased some of her oral medication and supplementations. After 4 rounds of nutritional IV bags, she reported significant improvement in her overall health, mood, energy and appetite. She started to gain weight again and was able to return to work after taking a full year off. She continued to get nutritional IV bags at rate of once every 6 week until she moved away due to a promotion from her work.
In conclusion, these patients found IV therapy to be significantly more beneficial than oral rout, because the nutritional IVs allowed them to get higher concentrations of vitamins and menials, allowed them to have better compliance with one IV per week versus taking multiple pills, several times per day and it decreased the work load on the GI tract, allowing it to rest and heal.