Nutritional IV Therapies

A tomato has a pittance of the nutritional value it had in the early 1900s.

In fact, much of what we eat doesn’t pack as much nutritional punch as it used to a hundred years ago.

Mineral deficiencies are epidemic now in developed countries, due to food processing and the gradual demineralization of the soil from modern agricultural practices. In the United States, the average woman does not consume the recommended dietary allowance of calcium, magnesium, iodine, iron, or zinc, and the diet of the average male is deficient in magnesium and zinc (USDA., 1997). Nutrient losses in some foods are up to 98.5%. In 1914 an apple contained almost half the minimum daily requirement of iron, but today you would have to eat 26 apples to get the same amount.¹

A classic work on the subject is Bernard Jensen’s Empty Harvest. Jensen said,

“All animals get their food directly or indirectly from plants, and all plants get their food from the soil. Therefore, mineral-deficient soil may be one of the greatest original sources of disease in the world today. According to D. W. Cavanaugh, M.D., of Cornell University, ‘There is only one major disease and that is malnutrition. All ailments and afflictions to which we may fall heir are directly traceable to this major disease.’ Simply stated, food crops grown on depleted soil produce malnourished bodies, and disease preys on malnourished bodies.”²

Why is there so much malnutrition in America? Depleted soils, combined with poor dietary choices, often create a nutritional wasteland.

Food advertising shapes how we view food and often dictates our food choices. The food industry spends more than $7 billion in advertising annually, amounting to nearly 10% of the total mass media advertising market. Nearly half of those advertising dollars go to promote prepared and convenience foods, candies, snacks, and soft drinks.³

The nutritional wasteland has one other element in it that depletes human health – toxicity from our environment. Many people have a chronic underlying low level toxicity because their body’s capacity for elimination and storage of toxins has been exceeded.

Think of the body as a sponge for a moment. A sponge can absorb only so much dirty water. Once the sponge is full, it drips its excess dirty water onto the floor. That is when a person shows symptoms.

The obvious thing to do with a sponge is to squeeze it to get rid of the excess water. We have no way to squeeze the body.

So lets say we put the sponge into a zip lock bag so the dirty water doesn’t noticeably drip on the floor. In a person, that is the equivalent of giving pharmaceutical medications to suppress the symptoms. Problem still there, but contained. Until a new toxin, perhaps a fungus, pokes a hole in the bag and the water leaks out.

The body’s innate wisdom knows that poisons cannot stay in the bloodstream or the body will die of poisoning. Thus the body looks for safer places to “park” toxins. Mercury (from vaccines, industrial chemicals in the water, air and food, fillings in our teeth) gets put into fatty tissues, which by the way includes the brain because it is 60% fatty tissue. Organophosphates (from insecticides) come in through the lungs and skin and are deposited into soft tissues (muscles, connective tissue and joints). The body will deposit lead in our bones. This is why blood tests for example cannot reveal the level of stored toxins in the body. So when you get blood tests back with the words, “You’re fine,” remember that blood work doesn’t tell the whole story, not by a long shot.

Our own staff members Alexis and Julie take an IV when they get run down.

For all of these reasons, bodies whose detox systems have been overwhelmed, need extra help. There are good ways to get rid of heavy metals through chelation therapies or DMPS, DMSA, penicilliamine and others.

Sometimes, if we can sufficiently improve the health of the body’s cellular metabolism, the body can deal with these toxins on its own. Then we may not have to use the chelating agents. Rather, we focus on strengthening the cellular metabolism.

Why do some people get sick when others do not? That can happen when a person is operating with very little reserve. One day, the person is exposed to an invader, a virus or bacteria, and the immune system doesn’t have enough soldiers to knock it out so the body succumbs to illness. (It doesn’t matter whether the lack of reserve comes from genetics or environmental toxicity.) On occasion, antibiotics are life saving. But repeated use of antibiotics will not improve the health of the person as a whole.

Giving IV nutritional therapies will put nutrients back into the body, and improve the health of cell membranes. IV nutritional therapies give the body the minerals and vitamins it needs to make enzymes to reduce its toxic load, create energy, to sop up free radials, and to produce and excrete waste.

IVs are conducted in a comfortable sunny room, in a lounge chair, and last 1-2 hours. The nutrients go in slowly because we don’t want to overwhelm the body – the body wants balance and therefore it needs time to absorb the IV and maintain homeostasis.

What is in a nutritional IV? It depends upon what is right for each person; each IV is made up for the individual needs.

Generally, nutritional IVs contain vitamins and minerals. High doses of vitamin C are very useful because C is anti-bacterial, anti-viral, and required for healing of tissues. Taking more than 10 grams of vitamin C orally would almost certainly cause significant diarrhea. We administer as much as 50 to 100 grams of vitamin C intravenously, bypassing the gut and making bowel intolerance a moot point. The IV approach delivers high levels of vitamin C directly to the cells in the space of 1-2 hours.

B vitamins are almost always included in the IV treatments, because all the vitamins and their mineral co-factors are used heavily when there is illness, to make enzymes.

A nutritional IV may also contain phospholipids to help cell membranes heal. Lipoic acid may be part of the mix because it is protective and healing to the liver; it is especially good for hepatitis.

During the time the IV is being administered, you can read or use a wireless network, or simply relax, take a nap, meditate….