Curious About Vitamin IV Therapy? 6 Pros and Cons

Nursing a hangover? Battling a cold? Desperate for an energy boost? What began as a celeb fave in the 2010s has become a booming business. Search “vitamin infusions near me” and, depending on where you live, you’ll likely find several health clinics, spas, and primary care offices offering intravenous elixirs to fight everything from illness and dehydration to aging and infertility. 

But, as is the case with supplementation of any kind, there are pros and cons of vitamin IV therapy to consider before rolling up your sleeve.

About the Experts

David S. Seres, M.D., is the director of medical nutrition and professor of medicine at the Institute of Human Nutrition, Columbia University Medical Center, New York, NY.

​​David L. Katz, M.D., M.P.H., is the former director of Yale University Prevention Research Center, and a specialist in internal medicine, preventive medicine/public health, and lifestyle medicine, with particular expertise in nutrition.

Lingtak-Neander Chan, Pharm.D., is a board-certified nutrition support pharmacist, and a professor of pharmacy in the School of Pharmacy at the University of Washington, Seattle.

Melissa Iliakostas, R.N., a home infusion nurse for IVEE, a nutritional IV therapy company and partner of Hone Health. She has administered more than 1,500 infusions.

What Is Vitamin IV Therapy?

Vitamin intravenous (IV) therapy, also called intravenous micronutrient therapy, delivers fluids, vitamins, minerals, and sometimes prescription medications directly into the bloodstream through a drip infusion (1).

Hospitals have used it for decades to give fluids to people who can’t swallow, are severely dehydrated, or need to replenish electrolytes quickly. It’s an evidence-based practice (read: legit medical practice) with protocols that medical professionals follow closely (2, 3). 

Vitamin IV therapy, or “vitamin drips,” are available in wellness clinics or administered in your home and aren’t FDA-approved medical treatments. Instead, “dripping” is frequently used in integrative medicine for health optimization and wellness. 

Companies offering these services claim that IV vitamin infusions can:

• Treat dehydration 
• Support the immune system 
• Increase energy levels and reduce fatigue
• Help recover from jet lag 
• Relieve stress, anxiety, and depression
• Alleviate migraine and tension headaches

“I’ve seen two buckets of people, the optimizers and the problem solvers,” says home infusion nurse Melissa Iliakostas, R.N. 

The optimizers are those who like to get ahead of illness or jet lag, says Iliakostas. Or they may want an infusion before an endurance event to boost hydration. 

The problem solvers have an acute or chronic issue that they’re hoping infusions will help address, she adds. For example, if someone has a gnarly stomach bug and can’t keep down any fluids or nausea medicine, Iliakostas would administer saline and Zofran (an anti-nausea drug). 

Vitamin IV therapy typically combines one or more ingredients into a “cocktail.” The ingredients are similar to what you might find in popular sports drinks, dietary supplements, and over-the-counter medications. They can include:

• Hydration: IV fluids with electrolytes 
• Vitamins: B12, B-complex, C, D3, and NAD+ (Vitamin B3), Biotin (B7)
• Minerals: Calcium, magnesium, zinc 
• Amino Acids: Glutathione, L-carnitine, taurine
• Medications: Benadryl (allergic reactions), Toradol (pain relief), Pepcid (acid reflux), Zorfran (nausea and vomiting)

How Vitamin IV Therapy Works

You can get non-medical vitamin IV therapy at a clinic or med spa via mobile clinics, or have it administered directly at your home or hotel room.

Before getting started, a doctor needs to evaluate your health either virtually or in person, to make sure you’re a good candidate. For instance, someone with heart or kidney disease likely wouldn’t be able to tolerate treatment, says Iliakostas. The doctor should review any current and past health conditions, as well as any prescriptions and supplements you take. 

“We do a full set of vital signs before we even start the infusion and make sure that they’re within normal range,” Iliakostas says. 

People who are qualified to administer vitamin IV treatments include medical doctors (M.D.s/D.O.s), registered nurses (RNs), physician assistants (PAs), nurse practitioners (NPs), and licensed practical nurses (LPN) with special certification. Note: IV bags containing medications must be mixed by a licensed pharmacist. 

The rest of the treatment is pretty straightforward: A health professional will sanitize part of your arm and gently insert a needle into a vein. The needle connects to a drip line hooked up to an IV bag, and the fluids will flow down the drip line into your bloodstream for 30 to 60 minutes, though some treatments can take as long as two hours. After you’ve soaked up all the nutrients, the health pro will remove the needle and apply a bandage over the insertion site (1).

Pros of Vitamin IV Therapy

Although there is limited research supporting the benefits of vitamin IV therapy, anecdotal evidence suggests that it makes some people feel better, and people with certain conditions may benefit from it.

Rapid hydration

The common ingredient in all IV therapies is hydration fluid (aka saline). It makes sense that rehydrating can make you feel energized, since being even a little dehydrated can have negative health effects. 

“Dehydration can lead to fatigue, dizziness, electrolyte disorders, hypotension, and mental status changes,” says board-certified nutrition support pharmacist Lingtak-Neander Chan, Pharm.D. “In patients who are unable to tolerate drinking a lot of fluid by mouth, IV fluid becomes beneficial and sometimes life-saving.”

According to Chan, these are scenarios where fast fluids can make a big difference: 

• After intense exercise, like a marathon
• After overheating, like in hot, humid weather
• After drinking too much alcohol
• After illnesses that cause extensive vomiting or diarrhea 

There are also some chronic conditions where this kind of fast hydration may be impactful. A small observational study in 2017 found that intermittent IV infusions of saline dramatically reduced symptoms and improved quality of life in 56 patients suffering from postural tachycardia syndrome (POTS), a disorder that causes a rapid drop in blood volume to the heart upon standing up (4). 

The study researchers noted that this could be a tool for severely symptomatic patients, but that further research was needed to understand its efficacy. “It’s not a cure-all or a one-time fix,” says Iliakostas, who says many of her clients have POTS. It complements a doctor-prescribed regimen. 

Increased absorption 

There’s a lot of buzz in the supplement world around nutritional deficiencies. Getting vitamins and minerals delivered via IV does deliver them into your bloodstream faster. But the human body has adapted to get nutrients via the gastrointestinal (GI) tract, explains ​​David L. Katz, M.D., a specialist in internal medicine with expertise in nutrition. In most cases, your nutrition should come primarily from foods. 

That said, the most clear and compelling cases for vitamin IV therapy are instances where a person’s GI tract is impaired, interfering with macronutrient absorption (5). In these situations, delivering nutrients directly to the bloodstream may be not merely appropriate, but essential, says Katz.  

Diseases and treatments that can cause absorption issues include (5): 

• Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), including ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease
• Bariatric surgery
• Celiac disease
• Inflammatory diseases such as acute pancreatitis, pancreatic disease, or liver and biliary disease
• Short bowel syndrome
• Bowel obstructions 
• Cancer treatments

Placebo effect

If you know someone—or maybe you are that someone—who swears by IV vitamin therapy, that might have as much to do with your brain as your body. 

In what experts call the “placebo effect,” some people perceive benefits from treatments that have no known physical effects. The placebo effect is also something researchers use to explain an observation that doesn’t have a direct physiologic cause. In other words, people do feel better, we just can’t necessarily say why.

The crux of this phenomenon is a person’s belief that the treatment they are receiving is effective, says Katz. He cites the example of a 2009 controlled pilot study on fibromyalgia patients in which his team found no statistically significant difference between participants who got IV micronutrient therapy and a control group that got placebo infusions (6). 

The power of the placebo effect tends to vary based on how a treatment is administered, Katz says. “An intravenous treatment is regarded as more potent than an oral one, and thus IV placebo effects are stronger.” 

Cons of Vitamin IV Therapy

While there isn’t a ton of evidence to back the benefits of commercial IV therapy, the risks are clearly understood. 

Cost

Prices for these elective treatments vary nationwide, but it’s safe to say they’re not cheap. While many vitamin IV treatments start around $100–200 per infusion, some clinics offer packages that cost $1,500–2,000. 

Keep in mind that health insurance typically does not cover IV vitamin therapy, and only some plans will allow you to spend FSA and HSA dollars on the treatment. 

Lack of evidence

Very few studies have tested the effectiveness of high-dose IV vitamin therapy in people who do not have a vitamin or mineral deficiency. The few studies that have been done were small, did not include a placebo group, or showed that the infusions weren’t more effective than placebo. 

There’s also currently no published evidence that shows IV vitamin therapy is effective for any serious illness or chronic disease. 

Columbia University Director of Medical Nutrition David S. Seres, M.D., is concerned that the claims made by some vitamin infusion companies are a “solution looking for a problem.” 

In fact, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission recently charged a company selling IV vitamin and mineral infusions with making “deceptive and unsupported health claims” about the ability of these infusions to treat such diseases as cancer, multiple sclerosis, diabetes, fibromyalgia, and heart failure. The ruling argued that these claims were not supported by competent and reliable scientific evidence; it also prohibits the company from claiming its cocktails produce fast, lasting results. 

Potential health risks

When vitamins are delivered via IV, they bypass the body’s natural gatekeeper—the intestine and its helpful filtering feature (7). Nutrients given through an IV are nearly 100 percent bioavailable, meaning they’re highly absorbable in the bloodstream, Chan points out. With the wrong ingredients or in inappropriate amounts, this can quickly lead to toxicity (8). 

“There is no substance on Earth that doesn’t have toxicity if given at high enough doses,” Seres says. “If someone gives one gram of vitamin C intravenously, you’ll get more into your bloodstream than if you take it by mouth.” The question then becomes, is it safe to get extremely high doses of nutrients if you don’t have a deficiency?

Exposing the liver and kidneys to large quantities of vitamins can place them under significant stress. A high dose of vitamin C, for example, can increase your risk of developing kidney stones, according to Chen. Toxic levels of vitamin A can cause vision changes. (Current clinical guidelines for vitamin C and vitamin A dosing via IV therapy are 800–1100 mg and 100–200 mg per day, respectively (7).) Adding too much potassium too quickly into an IV bag could potentially lead to a heart attack, he adds. 

Even simple overhydration has risks and can result in nausea, headaches, and confusion. Some vitamins can interfere with or inhibit the effect of prescription medications. Other nutrients (like iron) should not be given via IV unless they’re closely monitored by blood work because it could increase the risk of toxicity, says Chan. 

Beyond risks from the contents of the IV vitamin therapy itself, There’s also the possibility of complications any time you insert an IV, including pain or infection at the insertion site, vein inflammation, fluid leakage in the body, fluid overload in the body, and air bubbles causing vein blockage. 

So, Should You Try It? 

It’s a good rule of thumb to speak to your doctor before trying any supplementation, including intravenous ones. Depending on your symptoms, she may suggest lifestyle tweaks before, instead of, or alongside vitamin IV therapy.

If you get the green light for infusions but your doctor doesn’t refer you to a specific company, Iliakostas suggests steering clear of companies that sell proprietary blends. “There are some companies out there who only offer cocktails of vitamins and they will not fully disclose what’s in their infusions,” Iliakostas says (she notes IVEE bags are mixed in front of you by a clinician). 

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