IV Drips: Miracle Cure or Overhyped Trend? with Dr. Rachele Pojednic

Are you skeptical about IV micronutrient therapy but curious to learn more?

Many people dismiss IV nutrient treatments as unproven or unnecessary. But emerging research suggests they may offer unique benefits for health, performance and wellbeing.

In this eye-opening episode, you'll discover the science behind IV micronutrients and their potential applications from an expert researcher in the field.

BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL LEARN:

• How IV delivery of nutrients differs from oral supplements and may increase bioavailability
• Potential benefits for sleep, hydration, inflammation and women's health
• What to look for in terms of safety and accessibility when considering IV nutrient therapy

Dr. Rachel's balanced perspective as both a skeptical scientist and industry innovator offers valuable insights for anyone curious about this growing wellness trend.

CONNECT WITH DR. RACHELE POJEDNIC 

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Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to IV Micronutrient Therapy
• 6:37 Dr. Rachel's Journey into IV Research
• 14:26 Understanding IV Micronutrients and Bioavailability
• 21:07 Separating Facts from Marketing Hype
• 30:51 Performance Benefits and Sleep Improvement
• 32:44 Bridging Skepticism and Scientific Research
• 32:59 Safety and Accessibility Considerations
• 36:36 Women's Health and Self-Care Benefits

Transcript

Dr. Rachele: 0:00

How good is this stuff Like? How much is it actually helping? What is the effect size when we're looking at the data, and where do these claims start to fall short?

Dr. Tamar: 0:10

If you want to break the mold of traditional pharmacy and healthcare, you are in the right place. Welcome to the Pivoting Pharmacy with Nutrigenomics podcast, part of the Pharmacy Podcast Network. Here's a little truth bomb. We're all unique, down to our DNA, so it's no wonder we react differently to the same medications, foods and environment. Here's a million dollar question how can you discover exactly what your body needs, which medication, what foods or supplements and which exercises are right for you? How can you manage chronic conditions like diabetes without more medications? How can you lose weight and keep it off? How do you tap into your genetic blueprint so you can stop surviving and start thriving in health and life? That is the question, and this podcast will give you the answer. I'm your host, Dr Tamar, lawful doctor of pharmacy. Let's pivot into genomics and bring healthcare to higher levels.

Dr. Tamar: 1:15

Welcome back to Pivoting Pharmacy with Nutrig enomics. I'm your host, Dr Tamar, lawful doctor of pharmacy and certified nutritional genomics specialist. You know I'm so glad you're tuning in today because we're diving into a topic that's been sparking a lot of curiosity over the years and maybe even a little skepticism IV micronutrient therapy. Now you might be wondering are these IV drips really as miraculous as some claim, or are they just another passing trend? I totally get it. With all the wellness fads out there, it can be tough to distinguish between what's generally beneficial and what's merely hype, and I'm a tad bit curious myself. So that's why today, we're going to cut through the noise and get to the heart of the matter, with the help of an incredible guest.

Dr. Tamar: 2:02

Joining us is Dr. Rachele Pojednic, a true powerhouse in the fields of human performance and healthy aging. Dr. Pojednic is a director of scientific research at Restore Labs and Restore Hyper Wellness, and she holds a faculty appointment at Stanford University's program in human biology. She also wears many impressive hats, including director of education at Stanford Lifestyle Medicine and researcher at the Institute of Lifestyle Medicine at Harvard Medical School. She also wears many impressive hats, including Director of Education at Stanford Lifestyle Medicine and Research Affiliate at the Institute of Lifestyle Medicine at Harvard Medical School. With a PhD in Nutritional Biochemistry from Tufts University and a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard Medical School under her belt, she's dedicated her career to exploring nutrition supplementation and physical activity interventions. Dr. Pojednic's current research focuses on how these interventions can impact muscle physiology, human performance, longevity and women's health. And friend, she's not just a lab coat behind a microscope. She's a passionate science communicator who has been featured in outlets like NPR, new York Times, just to name a few.

Dr. Tamar: 3:16

In today's episode, Dr. Pojednic will share her balanced perspective as both a skeptical scientist and industry innovator, and by the time we're done, you're going to have a clearer understanding of how IV delivery of nutrients compares to oral supplements, potential benefits for sleep, hydration, inflammation and women's health, and what to look out for in terms of safety and accessibility if you're considering trying it out. So grab your favorite cup of tea, settle in and get ready for some enlightening insights that might just shift your perspective on wellness. Remember, you have the power to change your life, and today's episode is all about exploring the tools that might help you do just that. So listen in All right. Well, Dr. Rachele. Thank you so much for joining us on Pivoting Pharmacy with Nutrigenomics. Today, I'm excited to talk to you about our topic on IV micronutrients.

Dr. Rachele: 4:10

Dr Tamar, I am so grateful for being here and I'm thrilled with what you're doing with your podcast.

Dr. Tamar: 4:16

Oh, it's my pleasure. Thank you so much. Now could you tell the audience about yourself, Like, where'd you start and how did you get into focusing on IV micronutrients?

Dr. Rachele: 4:26

Yeah, so IV micronutrients is actually a really recent development for me. I am more of a classically trained scientist in the nutrition space. So I did my PhD at Tufts Friedman School in nutritional biochemistry, where I was looking at vitamin D and skeletal muscle specifically in the context of healthy aging and sort of like human performance. And then after that I pivoted a little bit into CBD research, which was really interesting but also quite challenging to study, and this is where things started to turn a little bit into this space that I found myself in now. So CBD has all kinds of really interesting regulations around it because there are intersections between both federal and state regulations that are quite complicated. And it was fascinating because when I was studying CBD you could ask people about it but you couldn't actually give it to them because it wasn't considered grass by the federal government. So grass is generally recognized as safe but you could buy it at every gas station and you know it was kind of in all these potions and pills and tinctures that you could get. So I really started to figure out how to get clever and creative about studying these tough to study interventions.

Dr. Rachele: 5:49

And that's when a dear friend of mine actually reached out from Restore who at the time was just starting out as the chief medical officer, and he said Rachel, you study supplements, you study longevity and human performance and you've also spent the last several years studying one particular supplement that's really challenging to study. Would you blow up your career and come and work in industry? At the time I was a tenure track faculty member. Would you come and work in industry to really start to put some teeth and understand what's going on with these IV micronutrients? And I was like what, to really start to put some teeth and understand what's going on with these IV micronutrients? And I was like, uh what?

Dr. Rachele: 6:29

But at the same time it was really a great time. It was just after COVID, my husband was taking a job on the West Coast, so it was a really good opportunity for me to sort of pivot into something new. So now I do all this research at Restore Hyper Wellness. I run up their Restore Labs division and we're doing all kinds of really interesting not just IV micronutrient interventions but also some of the complementary therapies that Restore also offers, so things like cryotherapy and red light therapy. And I have a faculty appointment at Stanford University as well, so I kind of use my academic Rolodex to start to think about how can we blend these wellness therapies and wellness utilizations of these therapies with the traditional and rigorous academic science. And so lots of twists and turns, but really good background in both spaces that have landed me where I am now.

Dr. Tamar: 7:28

Yeah, I love it. I love it. So explain this to those who may not. This may be the first time they're even hearing IV micronutrients. What are we talking about, Dr. Rachele?

Dr. Rachele: 7:37

Yeah, so you may or may not have seen these, you know, sort of drip rooms or whatever opening up around you.

Dr. Rachele: 7:44

These are typically complementary therapies that are taking an infusion, an IV, of either saline or lactated ringers, as you would get if you went to the hospital, and we're adding micronutrients to them.

Dr. Rachele: 7:58

And by micronutrients we mean vitamins, particularly the water-soluble vitamins, as well as minerals, and in some cases you can get some amino acids that we're also adding into these. And the theory is that if you deliver these IV micronutrients, vitamins, minerals, amino acids via an IV, they become quite available to your cells to use, where, if you take an oral supplement, for example, it's got to go through your stomach and through your digestive tract. It's very acidic, so there's a real pH consideration there as well as if you take supplements with food or not. That can also adjust the absorption of those micronutrients through your small intestines. In some cases you take things together that can compete with one another. For example, zinc and copper both use the same transporter in your GI tract, so if you take those together you might not end up with the total dose that you have seen in your pill inside your bloodstream. So the theory is that by increasing the bioavailability of these nutrients, that the cells are more able to get access to and use them for whatever they need to do.

Dr. Tamar: 9:10

Yes, that's, of course, because it's going directly into our bloodstream. Exactly so I think of when you were explaining this. I already knew. But my friends and I went on a girl's trip to Malibu and we rented a beach house and they were drinking a lot. I was okay and we realized like, oh, we should get some IV drips. So is that that's one circumstance where this type of IV micronutrient therapy would be beneficial, correct?

Dr. Rachele: 9:38

Yeah, and so you know it's funny I was actually quoted in an article about this the hydration is really going to be the main thing that's going to help you. After you've been drinking, you're really dehydrated, your cells are just totally parched, and so that's really going to be the benefit. But there's some theories again, and this is what my job is to test these theories. There are some theories that things like B vitamins can be really helpful to you know, help. A hangover or vitamin C is going to sort of reduce inflammation, and so you can also get drugs like Zofran in a drip right. That's going to take the edge off for you for sure, and so utilizing these therapies in a sort of a wellness standpoint is kind of where we start.

Dr. Rachele: 10:19

But it's really interesting, through these partnerships that I'm creating with partners like Stanford and Harvard and UCSF, we're looking at how we can use some of these therapies in a slightly more clinical use. So it would be more like symptom relief for things like, for example, we've got a study looking at patients with long COVID and these folks are suffering from things like migraines and nausea and all kinds of symptoms from dysautonomia, and so we're trying to understand if you increase electrolytes, things like magnesium. Is that helpful for symptom relief? Because folks like people that are suffering from long COVID, they don't have a lot of options to help, and so we're trying to sort of understand yes, of course, what are the sort of complementary wellness utilizations or use cases for these therapies, but also how can they go beyond that?

Dr. Tamar: 11:10

Yeah, definitely. So. What about this type of therapy with the IV micronutrients actually really captured your heart and mind? What about it really captured you?

Dr. Rachele: 11:20

So I think the first thing is I was just really intrigued by this delivery method, right. Like there is this claim that says, if you deliver via an IV, you now have 100% bioavailability, right, well, that makes sense, but is it the right thing or the right delivery mechanism? And in some cases we see that might not be the best way to deliver some micronutrients, for example, the fat-soluble vitamins Like, we need to be really careful about dose there, right? Which brings me to the second part. That really got me intrigued is the dosages themselves. So when we look at oral utilization of either food or supplements to get these nutrients into your body, we have our RDAs that say this is how much you need. This is how much 95% of the population needs, and for the most part, we're looking at dosages right around or just slightly higher than the RDA.

Dr. Rachele: 12:15

And I was curious to know okay, let's say, we give people these higher doses, does that have an effect? And then the other part for me that I just really started to pivot to, especially during COVID and emerging from COVID, is, like I said, I'm a classically trained scientist. Like I, randomized control trials show me the really well-designed study in a lab with everything controlled for. And I started to really think well, what's happening in the real world? Right, because we are hearing all these fascinating anecdotes of you know, I went with my girlfriends to the you know rented a beach house and we got these drips and we felt amazing, is that placebo or is that really helping people in the real world?

Dr. Rachele: 13:02

And it was an internal struggle for me. Where I was like, oh man, and you know, you know this from your training is when they say you leave academia, you can never come back, right, like God forbid, you go to industry. And I was just kind of like at a moment in my career where I was just thinking to myself somebody's got to do this work, right, somebody's got to get out there and investigate it. Because I mean, notwithstanding the current funding issues that we are currently experiencing, like right now in our world, it was already almost impossible to get funding and permission to do this kind of work. And so, after hearing no, no, no, no, no, you can't study that, you can't do it that way, you can't give it I found a place that said, yeah, you can do this, we're going to fund you, we're going to back you up and we're going to go with what your findings say.

Dr. Rachele: 13:52

That was the part for restore with me, that kind of like clinched the deal at the end is, I said, well, what if I find something that isn't what you want to hear? And they were like we don't really care, we want to know what the truth is and that, for me, is just such an honest way to run a business that I was like, okay, I will, with trepidation, leave my academic, my traditional academic tenure track job, and say, yeah, let's do this, let's do something different, let's figure it out.

Dr. Tamar: 14:22

And, along those lines of wanting to know what the truth is, I'm interested in knowing about potential myths that are out there. You know what are the biggest misconceptions you've encountered about IV micronutrients?

Dr. Rachele: 14:35

Yeah, I think the biggest one, honestly, is when, for the most part, we are making claims about these IV micronutrients. The majority of the claims are being made on oral supplementation data right. So if we think about the randomized control trials that have been done, they have been done for the vast majority of the research in oral supplements which is another reason why I wanted to do this because, like again, we have to figure out what's going on when we directly deliver it.

Dr. Rachele: 15:05

So I think that's the major one. The other that I think is a myth that we need to be really careful about is that these are vitamins and minerals. Right, they're not pharmaceuticals. They are not going to have the potency that a pharmaceutical is going to have.

Dr. Rachele: 15:22

I think about it a lot in the context of if I think about things in the nutrition part of my world is that there are all of these people that are selling supplements or saying that you can, you know, create recipes that are going to mimic a GLP-1, right, and a GLP-1 is something like Ozempic or Wagovi. There is no supplement, there is no food recipe that you can create that is going to have the potency and the standing power of a sub-Q delivered GLP-1, right, like, it's just not going to be the same. Glp-1 is definitely made internally. It's a little peptide hormone that is created in your system when you eat, but it is not going to be in the same amount that is released when you inject it and it's not going to stick around, right, it's got a very, very short life, yeah, and so these are the things that I want to really level set our people, our clients, people that are reading the literature.

Dr. Rachele: 16:21

Is there so much hyperbole, if you will, in a lot of these claims that I want and I know that my company and Restore and my academic partners want to know how good is this stuff Like? How much is it actually helping? What is the effect size when we're looking at the data? And where do these claims start to fall short?

Dr. Tamar: 16:43

Yeah, we definitely need to know the facts regarding that, and I'm seeing so many pop-ups now of ads on social media for these, like oral GLP ones and GL. I'm going to put air quotations.

Dr. Tamar: 16:58

Heavy air quotes. So, yeah, definitely know what is the effect. How factual is it when it comes to how these micronutrients really work? So I'm thankful that your team is actually trying to dig in and find the facts so that consumers are well-informed. Now, when it comes to how effective they are, my understanding is that they've been shown to perhaps help with human performance and women's health. So let me ask you about the human performance first. How do these IV micronutrients fit into the puzzle when it comes to human performance and impact it may have on that?

Dr. Rachele: 18:37

So this is a great question, and I'll start the answer to say I think that this applies to everybody is, when we look at the diet of most people in the United States, which is, you know, what these oral or IV supplements are designed to enhance, what we see is that we are really not eating the amount of micronutrients that we need to be eating from diet alone.

Dr. Rachele: 19:03

Right, and so for me as a nutrition person, that's automatically an issue, regardless of who you are, whether it's for an older adult, somebody looking for human performance or longevity, or you know somebody that is, you know, in the peri or postmenopausal states, right? So I think the first thing is that's really great about these nutrients is they can supplement what they are designed to do a diet that might otherwise be deficient. Right, I think about there are essentially four levers that we can pull that are really impactful, have a very high effect size on overall health and longevity, and that is eating a healthy diet, exercising, getting and staying at a healthy weight, and not smoking. Now I'm going to ask you, dr Tamar, do you have an idea of how many people, from a percentage standpoint, hit all four of these things regularly?

Dr. Tamar: 20:03

Regularly all four regularly. Regularly all for, I would say less than 20%, I really don't know.

Dr. Rachele: 20:11

It's less than 3%, less than 3%, less than 3%. 2.7% of the population eat a healthy diet, exercise, maintain a healthy weight and also they're not smoking, and so I look at that immediately and I say, okay, we likely have a nutrient deficiency issue in our population, and this is one of the ways that we can just make sure that things are topped off. When we start to look at things like performance, one of the areas that I do think that there is a significant amount of potential is in sleep. We're starting to see, with ingredients like magnesium, for example and we also just recently tested a niacin derivative, nicotinamide riboside, as well as one of our NAD products that showed that with continuous use and we'll be publishing this data that there was improvements in sleep, and so that's another lever that's not on the fore that I think this could potentially help with, in addition to just making sure that you have all of those building blocks in your system, and so I think there's a space there to start to think about how is this enhancing recovery, in the sense that it is helping with these other behaviors that we know are so important?

Dr. Rachele: 21:24

The next one, I think, is probably fairly obvious, and it kind of comes back to your story with your girls. You know, maybe having one or two more drinks than they probably should have is that when you go get a drip you are immediately hydrating yourself, right, and so I think people discount the impact of that on their system. We know from the human performance literature that if you are 2% dehydrated by weight so let's to keep the math easy, let's say you're a 100 pound person If you are two pounds light because you're dehydrated, that can result in upwards of 20% declines in both cognitive and physical performance. And so I think about, you know, just the average human. You get to two or three o'clock in the afternoon and you're just kind of like dragging right. What's the first thing that you reach for?

Dr. Tamar: 22:18

Coffee, which dehydrates you.

Dr. Rachele: 22:20

Indeed you reach for that coffee right.

Dr. Rachele: 22:23

And so the coffee is going to be a little bit of a diuretic. It's also going to be caffeine at two or three o'clock in the afternoon. That's going to linger and prevent you from falling asleep and getting these recovery strategy or these recovery you know physiology going in your system and so you know, just thinking about it from you, just you just got like a great hydration that you wouldn't have otherwise had. So I think there's there's a lot of things that we're investigating, that kind of layer on top of each other that can be really helpful for filling holes that people have they're not getting enough nutrients, they're not getting enough sleep, they're not getting enough water, and so it's more simple, I think, than people want to give it credit for. Like there's all these hype and you know marketing headlines and you know clickbait and all that, and I'm just kind of like, actually this is just helping us do what we need to do foundationally.

Dr. Tamar: 23:15

I agree. I agree 100%, Dr. Rachele. And now, from your research, have you found any unique benefits of IV micronutrients for women's health? You know we hear so much about various stages of a woman's life, so how can this therapy light the way for that when it comes to women's health?

Dr. Rachele: 23:34

Yeah, that's a great question, and actually I just got back from Southern California doing a tour with a bunch of amazing clinicians on women's health, specifically in that peri and menopausal stages and transitions, and you know, at the end of the day, what we see is that for this particular population, where your hormones are all over the place and declining over time and you've got all of these other symptoms that are going on, I honestly think one of the best parts of getting these IV micronutrients or IV drips, is actually the 45 minutes to 60 minutes that you have to just sit there and not have, you know, kids yapping in your ear and having to drive them all over the place and go to the grocery store and having to cook dinner. It's literally a moment in time where you can sit there, get hydrated, top off your nutrients and not have to serve anybody else. Right, Like it is the ultimate moment of self-care where you can let yourself have a break for a second and do that regularly, which we know is so important. And so from there, what we see again if you sort of have these combination ingredients things like vitamin C and glutathione potentially could be really helpful if you've got, you know, kind of a low-grade, chronic inflammation. They are very potent antioxidants. Theoretically, they could really help bring down that inflammation, and we had a study not looking just at women, looking at both men and women we called it the Health Span Project. This got published a couple of months ago. That did, in fact, show that we reduced inflammation over time with these ingredients.

Dr. Rachele: 25:15

Another one again. I'm just going to keep coming back to it, as magnesium is so wonderful. It's also in addition to helping you sleep. It's also very calming and relaxing. So you're sitting there getting your trip, nobody's bugging you and you're getting this relaxation effect. So I just think that those are really wonderful ways to help give yourself those moments to regenerate and recover during a time that's so stressful for women, from both a day-to-day perspective and all the responsibilities that you have. As well. As you know, your body is just going haywire, and if you can figure out how to momentarily calm yourself down and take yourself down a notch, that can also be super, super helpful yeah, the your description of just having to sit there and just be still.

Dr. Tamar: 26:07

It makes a huge difference to just be still and relax and not have to be physically in motion and your brain can just relax. We need that downtime, we need that reset. So I can definitely see how the process of getting the infusion promotes that for us.

Dr. Rachele: 26:23

And it's so funny. It's funny that you say that, dr Shemar, and I'm so glad that it resonated with you when we finished both of the events by just saying that, like, this is the therapy that you can use, that can just relax you, that you can spend some time alone. I yes, I can give myself permission to take this 45 minutes or 60 minutes for myself, to perk myself up, back up with some hydration, to give myself the nutrients that I know I'm probably not eating because I'm eating on the go constantly, you know, scraping up scraps after my kids are eating late or early or whatever, and it's just a really nice way to say this is my time and I'm going to do it for myself and for my body. And that really, really resonated with women.

Dr. Tamar: 27:12

Indeed, indeed, because we're so busy doing everything and taking care of everyone and we need that time Now. How readily accessible is this? Yeah?

Dr. Rachele: 27:22

So this is something that I actually would love for people to really pay attention to in their spaces, right? So, for the most part, our supply chain in the ingredients is going to come from compounding pharmacies, and there are really, really, really, really good compounding pharmacies and there are some that kind of give compounding pharmacies a bad name. And so one of the things when we think about accessibility it's just the first thing is you know what's going on around you and how many of these shops are open? And I would say one of the things that we are really, really focused on hyper-focused on, if you will, at Restore Hyper Wellness is safety and making sure that our ingredients are sourced really appropriately from compounding pharmacies that are sterile, compounding pharmacies that are going to be regulated by the state pharmacy boards, compounding pharmacies that are going through the rigorous testing, and making sure that we are sure that the supply is clean. So when we think about accessibility, I think the first thing is yeah, there's probably a lot of places around you that are opening right now, but going in and really making sure that their supply is safe and that they're sourcing from reputable pharmacies is number one, really important. And then the other piece just to layer on top of that is to make sure that anybody that's administering these IVs to you has proper training, right? So all of our studios are staffed with nurses and you are cleared by our team of nurse practitioners and medical doctors. So making sure that there's oversight and that they are tracking you and making sure, if there's any adverse experiences or anything's going on, that you've got a really trusted resource that can come back and help you out.

Dr. Rachele: 29:08

And then I think the third part which is a challenge for you know, the entire industry right now as far as accessibility is concerned is these trips are really pricey, really, really expensive, and one of my missions, with a team that I'm working on at Mass General at Harvard, is to figure out do these therapies work in populations that might be excessively stressed, right? So, is there a benefit? We've got one study right now with Dr Simi Foster, and she's looking at a group of low-income Black men that have indications for mild dementia or depression, and so what we're trying to do is figure out do these drips improve quality of life? First and foremost? Right, and from there the goal is then to say, okay, if these work in this population, how do we get insurance reimbursement for it. How do we get healthcare to say this is a cheap and easy way to make sure that quality of life is improved, or maybe even there's clinical outcomes? That will be the next step of this study, and we start to reduce the price so that it is more accessible to a larger population, because hopefully it will show benefits.

Dr. Tamar: 30:24

I love that. I love that to take it to a place where insurance will cover it, because, unfortunately, there are so many therapies out here that are beneficial for the population that are not covered by insurance. So, um, I'm happy that they're taking steps to study so that we can they can look at, take it to insurance companies and say, hey, this is beneficial, can you cover it?

Dr. Rachele: 30:48

and that's the part that's the part that's, you know, just so that's so important is that you can't take it to insurance companies and say, hey, this is beneficial, can you cover it? And that's the part that's so important is that you can't just go and ask them without data right. You have to petition for it with really well done, well designed, rigorous trials. And that is really what we're trying to do, because the other part of this is who is lobbying?

Dr. Rachele: 31:07

These third-party payers are these very, very large pharmaceutical companies that are funding a ton of really important, really great research, but what's not going to be on their list is IV vitamin C or magnesium. It's just not going to have the margin, it's not patentable, just not going to have the margin. It's not patentable. And so if we want to do this and we want to show benefit or, you know, look for benefit then we're going to have to do it in an alternative way. And that's what we're trying to do is figure out who does it work for, what is the total effect size, like I said, and then if we can demonstrate that it is helpful, or a specific ingredient or, you know, some combination is helpful, then hopefully we can get some reimbursement for it and start to lower costs.

Dr. Tamar: 31:51

Yeah, yeah, I hope that works out. Now my final question for you, Dr. Rachele, is imagine you're talking to someone who's skeptic. They're a skeptic on IV micronutrient therapy. Maybe they're curious about it, but very skeptical. What would you say to ease their worries and maybe even pique their interest, so that gap between doubt and possibility can be bridged? What would you say?

Dr. Rachele: 32:16

I adore this question because I will put my hand up and say I am also a skeptic, right? That's what a good scientist is. Is you go into trying to test something, basically by trying to disprove yourself and your hypothesis, right? That's how science works. And so I would say I'm with you if you are a skeptic, right, like that is why I have a job, it's why I'm doing what I'm doing.

Dr. Rachele: 32:44

The other part that I would say is based on all of our data. This information, or these interventions, are safe. We have formulated them in a way that you can go in and you can talk to the nurse and you can work with somebody in a very safe way. And I would say try it, try it. It's going to be a long time before we have really good, solid data across the board in this IV administration, with every single one of our nutrients. I think we have a. You know, we have really good, solid data across the board in this IV administration, with every single one of our nutrients. I think we have a, you know, we have a list of, you know, 40 different nutrients.

Dr. Rachele: 33:14

Right, it's going to take some time, but I would say you know, even if you're skeptical of the ingredients themselves, like is vitamin C? Is glutathione, is magnesium going to really work? For me, the benefit of going to sit and be cared for for 45 minutes, 60 minutes, while you get this drip, the benefit of the hydration, is certainly well documented. I would say try it, see how you feel, do your own N of one experiment and go from there, because we know that it's safe, we know that it's potentially beneficial and you're the one that really knows your body the best, so see if it works for you's safe. We know that it's potentially beneficial and you're the one that really knows your body the best, so see if it works for you Great advice.

Dr. Tamar: 33:52

You know, something I think I didn't touch on was how often would they need the therapy?

Dr. Rachele: 33:58

It's a great question and it's also something that we're trying to figure out. As far as dose is concerned, the interesting thing about dose is actually not limited by the nutrients themselves. It's limited by the amount of fluid that you can get in a week, so it's really more of a clinical calculation as to how much saline or lactated ringers that you can get on board. That's safe, more so than the nutrients themselves. If you got a drip somewhere between once a week and once a month, that's probably accurate and appropriate, depending on what your need is. So if you have weekly migraines, it might be helpful for you to go and get a drip every week, Right, If you're somebody that's like I just want to make sure that I'm topped off for you know, whatever nutrient or I'm you know I'm traveling, for example maybe you just schedule that around once a month, or you know around your travel times and just think about what your needs are. But I would say somewhere between once a week and once a month is probably pretty adequate.

Dr. Tamar: 34:58

Not too bad at all. Well, thank you, Dr. Rachele, it's been a pleasure. Thank you for sharing your insights on this IV micronutrient therapy and being the first to even bring this topic to the podcast. I absolutely love that.

Dr. Rachele: 35:12

So thank you, my absolute pleasure. Thank you so much for having me, and I'll have to come back when we have more data.

Dr. Tamar: 35:18

Yes, indeed, looking forward to it. Well, friend, that brings us to the end of another inspiring and eye-opening episode. I hope you're feeling as enlightened and empowered as I am after our conversation with Dr. Rachele Pojednic. There's something so refreshing about diving into these topics, and I truly believe our chats help illuminate new ways to approach our health and wellness journeys. So let's take a moment to think back on what we've learned today.

Dr. Tamar: 35:44

Iv micronutrient therapy might seem like a complex topic, but Dr. Rachele did a fantastic job breaking it down for us. Right From understanding the enhanced body availability of nutrients delivered directly into the bloodstream to exploring potential benefits for sleep, hydration, inflammation and women's health, we've gained valuable insights that could help guide our decisions. Remember, wellness is a journey, your journey. It's about finding what works best for you, exploring new ideas with an open mind and never giving up on the search for optimal health. Whether it's giving IV therapy a try or sticking with what you know, it's all about making informed decisions, informed choices that resonate with your body and your lifestyle.

Dr. Tamar: 36:32

Before we wrap up, I have a little favor to ask you If you enjoyed today's episode. Please subscribe, rate and leave a review on your favorite podcast platform. It's a simple step that makes a big difference, helping others discover the podcast and join in our journey towards holistic wellness, and if you've got any questions, stories or thoughts to share, I'd absolutely love to hear them. You can find me on social media at Dr Tamar Lawful, or drop me an email. Let's keep this conversation going and continue empowering each other to make the best choices for our health and wellbeing. Next week on the show, we're talking about how functional medicine and a holistic approach can help you take control of your health journey so you can address chronic issues at their root without relying solely on medications. Talk to you next Friday. Until then, always remember to raise the script on health, because together we can bring healthcare to higher levels.