Morning everyone! 

Welcome to another edition of the Doctor’s Note, where we talk about what’s on our minds when it comes to your health. 

This week we’re going to talk about IV Therapy and Oxygen treatments. 

If I’m feeling under the weather, or have some jet lag, one of the first things I do is get an IV treatment. 

If I didn’t sleep well the night before, or recently had a heavy therapeutic massage, or just drained for some reason, I will get an IV. 

One thing I want to do this week is explain how easy it is to get it, and what some of the options are.

IV Therapy is a wonderful treatment to rejuvenate you. I also get a Methyl B12 (active, potent form of B12) shot every week for rejuvenation. 

I usually get a Myers’ Cocktail, which only takes between 30-45 minutes to get in and is painless. 

It gives me a good chance to relax. 

 

Oxygen Therapy

 

Sometimes another cool thing I will do is get oxygen through a nasal cannula while I’m getting an IV. I do this a lot for my patients who are serious cyclists and other athletes.  

Oxygen is also a wonderful thing for rejuvenation. This is another great thing you can do if you’re tired. What you’re doing is breathing in pure oxygen through a nasal cannula. There are no tanks involved. Unlike when you have tanks, you can simply plug the Oxygen machine we have at Performance Medicine into the wall. You can use it for 24 hours if you need to. 

We use Oxygen often to break up a migraine headache, especially a cluster headache. A cluster headache is another variety of vascular headache. It’s really awful. They come in clusters, usually over a 7 day period. They’re actually more common in men, while migraines are normally more common in women.

At least half of the time Oxygen will abort the headache, especially if it is in fact a cluster headache. 

As you can see, we like to think outside of the box. Your typical family doctor is not going to have these things in their offices. Believe me, I didn’t use to. 

Last time I had an Oxygen treatment and an IV, I came into the office really dragging. And afterwards I felt great.

 

IV Cocktails at Performance Medicine 

 

We do several different IV Cocktails at Performance Medicine. Some of the most common are: 

 

Myers’ Cocktail – This is a rejuvenation IV. Here’s what’s in it. 

  • 8,000-10,000MG of Vitamin C
  • Magnesium
  • All your B-Vitamins
  • Zinc

 

Normal Saline for rehydration. We do a lot of these for athletes, especially those who have been cramping. We also use it on people who are just dehydrated. Dehydration is common, and it’s a common cause of a routine headache. 

 

Higher Dose Vitamin C – We use this IV for various reasons: Chronic fatigue, Epstein Barr, Fibromyalgia. Sometimes for people who have undergone cancer. 

Note: You don’t want to do a Vitamin C IV while getting chemotherapy. Before and after is ideal. 

If you do high dose Vitamin C in the correct form, it won’t cause GI problems that it otherwise would. 

When you take oral Vitamin C, you only absorb about 20% of the nutrient that gets into the cell. 

With an IV, 100% of the nutrient gets into your cells. 

For high dose IV Vitamin C, we usually start off with 25,000MG directly into your vein. 

To give you an idea of how much that is, when you take Vitamin C orally, you get 1,000MG once or twice a day. Of which only 20% is absorbed. 

High Dose IV Vitamin C is a much more effective treatment. 

It actually turns into hydrogen peroxide, which has a lot of benefits to it. 

Getting this cocktail actually energizes you, and relaxes you at the same time. 

 

Get Your Energy Back 

 

Life is about energy. You want to be energized. In today’s hectic lifestyle, you need stuff like this. 

I’m a self diagnosed workaholic. When I’m not seeing patients, I’m researching, writing, or podcasting. And I’m constantly bombarded with patient requests. 

There’s a lot of stress, and I’ve had to learn how to relax. And you need to as well. 

I like riding my bike to de-stress, or work out. I love going into an infrared sauna, which is a great way to start sweating and detox. 

As we get older, we need things like this to help us out. 

Eat right. Get a good night’s sleep. Keep your stress levels down. Move everyday. Balance your hormones. Detoxify. 

If you feel run down or have chronic illness, you might want to ask us about our IV Therapy or Oxygen treatments.