digestive health

Digestive Health Conditions: The #1 Way to Treat Them Quickly

Category: Blog

Efficient Treatments for Digestive Health Concerns

Nutrient IV’s are a great treatment option when we are dealing with severe digestive health conditions.

Severe digestive health conditions can include:

  • Crohn’s disease
  • Celiac’s disease
  • Diverticulitis
  • IBS/ IBD
  • SIBO
  • Candida
  • Food sensitivities
  • Post-surgery
  • Severe viral infections

Symptoms Related to Digestive Health

We refer to these digestive health conditions as potentially severe due to the symptoms that they present with. Symptoms such as:

  • Diarrhea
  • Constipation
  • Abdominal pain, cramping
  • Bloating and distention
  • Skin rashes
  • Excess gas or belching
  • Heartburn, GERD
  • Headache, brain fog

When these symptoms are occurring in the presence of a digestive health condition or diagnosis, we can tell that the body is not getting the nutrients that it needs. It is also obvious that the body is trying to tell us something. For example, when a patient presents with severe, chronic diarrhea, we can be sure that they are not absorbing the nutrients that they are consuming. Diarrhea leads to water loss and dehydration, so we may see signs of this as well.

Treating Digestive Health

When patients present with these severe cases, one of our best treatment options for digestive health improvement is the nutrient IV. 

Nutrient IV’s are the best way for us to efficiently and quickly raise the nutrient status of a sick person. The way a nutrient IV works, is by directly administering the nutrients to the blood. This allows us to bypass the digestive system, and achieve 100% bioavailability of those nutrients.

When Digestive Health Goes Wrong

Typically when we eat food, or take medication or supplements by mouth, they must begin to be digested in the mouth. Chemical digestion takes place, along with physical digestion (chewing) in the mouth before food even reaches the stomach. Once in the stomach, anything consumed is further broken down by the stomach acid and the churning of the stomach. From there food must pass into the small intestine, where more enzymes are released from the pancreas and gallbladder.

Food is continuously broken down to its smallest form, a single sugar or amino acid before it is absorbed into the blood and used by the cells of the body.

As you can see this is a complex process and any number of things can go wrong along the way. Often, we see that a foods transit time is too fast, resulting in diarrhea, loose stool or stool with undigested food in it – all of which tell us something is wrong with the digestive health, and the nutrients are not being absorbed and assimilated.

We can utilize nutrient IV’s to increase the nutrient status, give the body the tools and ingredients that it needs to heal itself, while we work on removing the barriers to heal.

What Else Can Nutrient IV’s Be Used For?

Although nutrient IV’s can be used for simple goals like boosting the immune system, increasing energy and dealing with stress, was can also make tailored IV’s to very specific conditions such as these:

Athletes:

• Rehydrate
• Replenish lost vitamins and nutrients in sweat during exercise
• Reduce recovery time by adding in amino acids
• Enhance endurance by optimizing your vitamin status

Breastfeeding women:

• Maintain proper hydration
• Support energy with B vitamins
• Acquire nutrients lost to breastmilk

Patients with digestive health conditions:

• Absorb vitamins and minerals that are being lost to maldigestion
• Support energy by increasing nutrient status
• Replenish any lost fluids

Before and after travel:

• Support your immune system to avoid getting sick while traveling on planes
• Begin your trip with higher energy
• Recover from traveling faster
These are just a few of the conditions that we can treat using IV therapy and there are many more.

What is the Meyer’s Cocktail?

One of the most common nutrient IV’s is called the Meyer’s cocktail, which was developed by Dr. Meyer’s. There is little evidence as to which nutrients and how much of each nutrient that he added to his solution, however there is much documented evidence of the improvement of his patients. Dr. Meyer typically administered his IV’s as IV pushes, which are a smaller volume than IV’s and pushed in by the physician manually. We can administer nutrients by IV or IV push, however, IV’s are typically more comfortable than IV pushes.

Nutrients that we can add to IV’s are as follows:

  • • Ascorbic acid (vitamin C)
    • Thiamin (vitamin B1)
    • Dexpanthenol (vitamin B5)
    • Pyridoxine (vitamin B6)
    • Hydroxycobalamin (vitamin B12)
    • B complex
    • Lysine
    • Selenium
    • Zinc
    • Calcium
    • Magnesium
    • L-carnitine
    • Taurine
    • Arginine
  • • MIC (methionine, inositol, choline)

Based on the goal of the treatment we will increase particular nutrients in the IV solution. For example, if we are treating a cold or flu, we will increase the amount of anti-virals in the solution such as ascorbic acid and lysine.

We can also create injections with these nutrients rather than IV’s for a faster (although much smaller) delivery. Most people are familiar with methylcobalamin injections (vitamin B12), which are commonly used to supplement a vegetarian or vegan diet.

The Safety of Nutrient IV’s

There are few side effects to nutrient IV’s, however, you may feel light headed during the administration, notice a funny taste in your mouth or develop a small bruise at the injection site. As with any injection or puncture of the skin, infections are also possible, although unlikely.