Multiple Ways to Take Your Vitamins
Most people grew up hearing that they should take their vitamins. These essential nutrients contribute in countless ways to an individual’s overall health. Everything from metabolism to circulation relies on nutrient absorption. Health benefits include a stronger immune system, faster healing wounds, and clear, healthy skin.
While it is usually always best to consume your vitamins in food form (by way of eating nutritious and well-balanced meals), taking vitamin supplements or undergoing vitamin therapy may be ideal for your lifestyle. For example, having limited accessibility to certain nutrients in your culture’s diet may mean that taking the vitamins in pill form is better than none.
Intravenous vitamin therapy is an increasingly popular health application, and involves delivering vitamins and minerals to the bloodstream through an IV drip. It is used to treat conditions like cancer, high blood pressure, fatigue, depression, and even jetlag. Physicians try to formulate a personalized blend to improve energy, boost immunity and fight insomnia.
What Exactly Is Vitamin Therapy?
Vitamin therapy, or vitamin infusions, is gaining popularity in the media, and is beloved by many celebrities. Some individuals call it a “hangover cure” and use a vitamin-infused drip directly into their veins the day after a long night of drinking. Because the nutrients from the vitamins are sent directly into one’s bloodstream, the effects can take place faster than if one ingested the vitamins through their gastrointestinal tract.
Physicians prescribe vitamin therapy to treat a wide range of diseases by rapidly replacing key nutrients in the body. Vitamin therapy may be used during times the body requires additional nutrients, like pregnancy and breast feeding.
Who Are Candidates for IV Vitamin Therapy?
While many celebrities have touted the benefits of intravenous vitamin therapy, it’s definitely not a procedure that should be prescribed carelessly. The benefits of vitamins can easily be obtained by proper nutrition, or taking supplements in pill or capsule form. While the ingestion of vitamins via these methods are slow acting, they are simply more convenient for the everyday individual. After all, proper IV therapy requires the use of a trained professional who can expertly handle needles without harming the patient, and it’s much easier to go into a grocery store and shop for vitamin-enriched foods than it is to make a doctor’s appointment and schedule a vitamin drip.
That being said, there are certain candidates for which undergoing an IV vitamin therapy procedure would be especially advantageous.
- Individuals who are sick and already take dozens of medications for their illness daily may want to cut down the number of pills by using a vitamin-enriched IV drip, so they do not need to ingest vitamin supplements alongside their medication.
- Those suffering from substance abuse withdrawals may find faster relief from IV vitamin therapy.
- Individuals who suffer from issues with digestion and/or their gastrointestinal tract, and need an alternative method for absorbing nutrients.
- Magnesium treatment has been shown to be helpful for those suffering from severe acute asthma.
The majority of the population can and will benefit by taking vitamins daily, and it is definitely more convenient and recommended to take them the old fashioned way – that is, by adopting a well-balanced diet full of nutritious and healthy meals. It is no secret that vitamins are known to help your body with the tools it needs to combat illnesses and stay healthy.
Are Vitamins Good Medicine?
Your body is continually renewing itself. Bone is living tissue that continually rebuilds. Your skin produces fresh cells and sheds the old ones. Blood cells serve out their lifetime and die, to be replaced by new ones that nourish nerves, tissues and organs. Hormone and neurochemical production are also ongoing processes.
In order to constantly create these new materials, your body needs basic nutritional building blocks. There are at least 30 vitamins and minerals your body cannot make on its own, and must receive from an outside source.
Doctors recognize the benefits of vitamins and anti-oxidants for a wide range of diseases, either in conjunction with other treatment or on their own.
Ailments Treated
When individuals have a nutritional deficiency, the lack of micronutrients often results in disease. Primary vitamin deficiencies occur when people don’t get the necessary nutrients from their diet, and must be treated by supplements or making dietary changes.
Secondary deficiencies result from either disease or lifestyle choices. For example, smoking robs the body of vitamin C, so even if they consume the daily requirement, smokers can become deficient. People who spend all their time indoors may not absorb enough sunlight to produce vitamin D, a nutrient necessary for calcium absorption.
Low fat diets make it harder for the body to absorb vitamin E. Alcohol consumption affects folic acid levels and can result in anemia. Certain medications and antibiotics can also keep the body from absorbing nutrients. Left untreated, vitamin deficiency can result in serious disease. Here are four of the most common:
- Scurvy – Vitamin C deficiency results in tooth loss, dental decay, slowly healing wounds and fatigue. Left untreated, scurvy can be fatal.
- Rickets – The United States began fortifying milk with vitamin D in the 1930s because the lack of this critical nutrient resulted in soft, weak bones, skeletal deformities and fractures.
- Beriberi – When the body lacks vitamin B1, the resulting nerve and brain dysfunction causes numbness, memory loss, troubled respiration, confusion and difficulty speaking. Heavy drinking can exacerbate problems in those who are deficient.
- Pellagra – Malnutrition creates severe deficiencies that cause the appearance of red, blotchy spots all over the body along with constipation, vomiting and mouth sores.
Vitamin therapy is often helpful for people recovering from the effects of alcohol and dehydration, because it addresses the damage alcohol has done to body systems and helps restore balance. It can help with the anxiety, depression and dehydration that often occur during detox.
Essential Nutrients
Some of the most important vitamins are water-soluble. They are contained in food and absorbed into the bloodstream as the body digests meals or supplements. Because much of your body is water, these vitamins circulate easily throughout, and then your body releases what it doesn’t use in waste. Because they are continually shed, they must be continually replaced. Most vitamins only stay in the body a few days. These vitamins are water soluble:
- Vitamin B7 (Biotin)
- Folic Acid
- Niacin
- Pantothenic acid
- Riboflavin
- Thiamin
- Vitamin B6
- Vitamin B12
- Vitamin C
Fat soluble vitamins enter the blood through your lymphatic system and can only be absorbed in the intestines. Vitamins A, D, E, and K keep your eyes, nervous, skeletal and digestive system functioning properly.
The body also needs a number of minerals. Magnesium helps with energy production and bone development. Calcium contributes to healthy teeth and bones. Potassium contributes to a range of body processes.
Potential Dangers and Drawbacks
While vitamins and minerals are fundamental to overall health, you can have too much of a good thing. One controversial treatment associated with IV vitamin therapy involves megavitamin therapy, in which people take doses much higher than the recommended dietary allowance. Taking too much of some nutrients can result in toxicity.
You can still take a healthy and beneficial amount of vitamins without having to undergo the vitamin transfusion process. For example, if you are eating an ample amount of nutritious and well-balanced meals regularly, you are most likely not a candidate for vitamin therapy.
Extremely high doses of vitamin C over time can cause intestinal irritation, kidney stones and interference with other mineral absorption, so injecting vitamin C should only occur under the supervision of a medical professional. A high dose of B6 can damage nerves and weaken muscles. Mega-doses of vitamin E can elevate blood fat, interfere with clotting and damage muscles.
Before individuals consider vitamin therapy to treat or prevent disease, it’s always important to consult with a doctor.
About Reflections Recovery Center
Reflections Recovery Center in Prescott, AZ helps men recover from drug and alcohol addiction. Our holistic recovery programs help in addiction treatment and assist individuals in staying sober after detox.
