Intravenous (IV) Therapy

Just as some medications are infused directly into the blood, various nutrients including vitamins, minerals, amino acids, and other nutritional agents can be infused directly through an IV for therapeutic purposes. This is known as intravenous infusion therapy (IVIT) or IV therapy.

IV Therapy has distinct advantages over taking a nutrient by mouth:

1. It bypasses digestion, which is where many nutrients “get stuck” by saturating our bodies’ intestinal transporters and thus don’t get absorbed into the blood. IVIT bypasses this mechanism by delivering nutrients directly into the blood.

2. Oral nutrients may absorb but often fail to reach the tissues we want to treat such as the brain or the joints – this is known as bioavailability. IVIT allows for greater bioavailability of nutrients so we can deliver what we need to the tissues we need it in.

3. IV therapy allows for the possibility for and safety of the administration of higher dosages of nutritional medicines. Vitamin C is a great example of this – Oral limits of vitamin C vary but will generally max out around 2-3g a day before it causes bowel upset (diarrhea). With IV therapy we can safely administer doses up to 50g of vitamin c. (Note: this type of therapy is carefully initiated and only in certain cases)