Sawbones: A Marital Tour of Misguided Medicine - Sawbones: IV Cocktails

Episode Date: January 24, 2020

Would it surprise you to learn that people with too much money are flocking to "IV bars" and paying hundreds of dollars for intravenous cocktails of vitamins that are supposed to treat every malady under the sun but do absolutely nothing except risk serious infection? ... It probably doesn't surprise you, does it? Yeah, us neither. God, that's depressing. Anyway, here's a podcast. Music: "Medicines" by The Taxpayers

Saw bones is a show about medical history, and nothing the hosts say should be taken as medical advice or opinion. It's for fun. Can't you just have fun for an hour and not try to diagnose your mystery boil? We think you've earned it. Just sit back, relax, and enjoy a moment of distraction from that weird growth. You're worth it. Alright, time is about to books. One, two, one, two, three, four. We came across a pharmacy with a toy and that's lost it out.

We saw through the broken glass and had ourselves a look around. Some medicines, some medicines that escalate my cop for the mouth. Oh, wow. Hello, everybody, and welcome to Saul Bones, Marble Tour of Miss Guided Medicine. I'm your co-host, Justin McAroy. And I'm Sydney McAroy. I'm feeling so relaxed, I'm excited. Are you?

Yes, we just had our first overnight away from our two children since the second one was born. That's right. We were not parenting for 36 hours. Oh boy, what a sweet, sweet 36 hours they were. It was nice. Our flight got delayed in the way home and I was like, oh no. No, I was. How could it be?

That's when I was getting very antsy. A whole line away from them. No, I got deeper in the island time the more we were delayed. But it was nice. It was nice to reconnect just the two of us to get to go out and talk to other adults. So we accidentally, we're in New York. We accidentally stayed at a, I guess you would describe described as a wellness centric hotel. It was like the anti-sauvones hotel. It was a lot of fun.

I didn't know that's what it was. Justin, full disclosure, Justin booked it. It was your fault, really. Yeah, I wasn't really paying attention. We were gonna want hotels in the area that we wouldn't need to be in. We were looking for proximity to the venue that we were going to be headed to. Yeah.

And then, like, I usually like if they have a bathtub. That's a big thing for me. Sydney likes bathtub. I never get to take baths and so if it's like a nice outing for the two of us, maybe there will be a bathtub but I can take a bath. So those are kind of our criteria. Only two things, right. But this place we checked in and they're like, hey, listen, I just want to let you know with your reservation, you can get 30 minutes in the IR sauna. That's infrared. Infrared sauna. Or three minutes in the cryo chamber. Yeah. And you can load whatever music you want and they can play. It's three minutes, you know, three minutes long sauna kick, you get you pumped up because it's pretty cold in there. Right. It's a cryo chain. And we're like, what in the living heck? We had no idea,

because at that point we didn't realize what we'd walked into and then we get to the room. And there's all these like, oh my god, there's instructions on how to go to sleep. There's like three pages on like how to go to sleep. There's like three pages on how to go to sleep. It's like first, do a tear open your, the complimentary, not complimentary, probably like eight dollars. AMT and then make sure you do five things about gratitude and then so just like, I can't just lay down and go to sleep.

I got a whole routine I have to go through. There were like detox things in the room that you could, I mean, everything was for a price. And of course, we did not use any of these things. Folks, I'm here to tell you, there was a yoga mat in the room for sale to buy. Just open this yoga mat and purchase. And a foam roller.

Yeah. We did not, again, we did not use any of these items. It was very nice hotel otherwise I shouldn't just be perund shade. I mean, it was very nice other than all of the fig medicine. But I think the strangest offering that I literally cannot make hence their tails of

was the IV cocktails. So this is an interesting thing to bring up. I have been receiving emails for a while now that I couldn't exactly parse it first what people were asking me because they were writing an end requesting that we talk about IV therapy. And I'm thinking, do you just mean like the history of the IV, like intravenous? Like the sailing and all that stuff. Like how did we come up with the equipment and to do that and the stuff that we put in,

like how do we figure that out? Is that what you mean? But it became clear to me pretty quickly from how many emails I was receiving and then the content that something is going on now with IV therapy that isn't strictly evidence based, I would say, or you could say not at all, evidence-based. And I want to talk about IV, you'll find it as like drip therapy, infusion therapy, there, or I would like to go to an IV bar. Some people will say, like, they're various names for it, but it's the idea that you're going to get something through the IV

But not medicine. Well, not because like a doctor said you needed it like you went to a place and paid somebody to do it Does that make sense? Yes, retail IV therapy Yikes, I mean like super yikes, right? Yes, yes, and thank you to everybody who emailed me about this for a while now. I can do that. There's, go ahead. Thanks. Lindsay Rebecca and Kena Melissa, Ari Kary and Amy, Brittany and Dia Alexander Drew, Alex

Brian and Zika Rina. Hannah and Anthony Mooney can say them some, and then Nelson Lexi Faith, Valerie Danielle. That's it. That's it. But those are all of the people. But thank you. I resolve the melody. I'm sorry. So from it, let's talk just a little bit about as a as a physician, as someone who attended a medical school and learned about IV therapy and now is responsible for, you know, prescribing it and deciding when it is necessary and whatnot. The very basic idea.

It means intravenous, so, in a vein. This would be, as opposed to what we would say, is PO. You get a medication IV in a vein or PO, which means by mouth. Or there's UB, up the butt. No, that's PR. It's bad PR in a lot of cases, depending on what's going up there. A lot of flammaries run a foul of that. PO is from the Latin for Puraus, by mouth, and Perrectum, PR.

Perrectum, Oho her fence up the butt, you mean in the butt. Professionals, honey. Why would we do this? Why would we put something in your vein instead of in your mouth? Well, I can guess taste bad. Ah, not typically,

usually it's not, no, that's not, it is never simply because it tastes bad. That is never the only reason. Perhaps it also tastes bad,, it is never simply because it tastes bad. That is never the only reason. Perhaps it also tastes bad, but that is never the reason. They have blood, and you're not even getting a blood transfusion. Like, no one's gonna be like, I'll just drink it. Well, that wouldn't work.

Because blood goes in the vascular space. Well, that's one example of something that like would not, maybe that's one reason, because it's like, it wouldn't be good to go through your digestive juices. Right, you would just digest it, and that would not help you. And you'd feel bad, you'd feel very bad.

But in terms of fluids that can hydrate you, that's one thing we might put through an IV, right? Here's some, we say IV fluids. Yeah. It's almost never water that would be very dangerous to just infuse straight up water into your veins It's usually mixed with electrolytes so like normal saline you'll hear Well, it's not gatorane. It's got electrolytes in it. There are various mixtures of electrolytes

And if somebody cannot take things by mouth if they cannot drink Then they may necessitate IV fluids. Or they don't want to. Or if they don't want to. It's boring. Well, if for whatever reason, they won't, can't don't drink. And they're at risk or becoming or are dehydrated, then that is a reason we would do something IV. You can request anything IV. Don't get bogged down in drinking. That's always the time. Just make them put it in. No, it would be, for some reason, it's not safe for you to swallow. You cannot swallow if you're vomiting everything up,

if you're unconscious, that kind of thing. Otherwise, we actually prefer drinking as the best route for hydration. We've all had a stomach bug. Well, except for Justin, somehow has maintained health. And it's hard to keep kids hydrated.

It was hard to keep myself hydrated. But I know that the best thing for me to do is to just keep trying little sips and try to maintain orally my hydration. It's better. It's better for your body. It's that there is no advantage of an IV to a healthy person. which is no inherent thing

unless you absolutely can't. I mean, in which case, yes, you need fluid. But if you can drink by mouth, you should. Well, I mean, there's like any time you're using a needle, right? You're risking, you know, infection or how small the risk may be or like weird reactions or whatever. And we'll get into that. I will get into the risks of this.

Other things you might need, I.V. Medications or vitamins. Again, most of those things are just if you can't take them by mouth. For some reason, a lot of medicines work very well by mouth. We have formulations of them that work just fine. Like they are made to take orally.

They are metabolized appropriately and that work just fine. Like they are made to take orally, they are metabolized appropriately, and they work just fine. There is no inherent advantage to taking something that works by mouth in an IV, except in very specific cases when like we need it to work faster like anesthesia or a pain medication. Let's see if somebody comes in there with a fractured femur, you know, saying here's some oral pain medication

that'll kick in soon enough. Yeah, I need to be out now. You need something faster. And IV can work in some cases, can work faster. So that's one advantage. And antibiotics, sometimes in specific types of infections, like something we call a bacteremia, like an infection of the bloodstream,

bacteria actually growing in the bloodstream. In that case, IV antibiotics are superior to oral. Sometimes we can switch to oral eventually, but just suffice to say, there are very specific situations where a doctor would look at you and say, you can't take this medicine by mouth, you need to take it by IV. And when it comes to things like vitamins, this is almost never the case. I mean, we almost never need to replenish your vitamins quickly via IV. It's hard for me to, unless we're talking about ways to give you nutrients, replacing nutrients because you cannot take things by mouth.

So this is like a chronic thing where you were going to have to get your nutrients in another fashion. You don't have like an emergency vitamin C situation. No, there are, there are emergent situations where we give people magnesium, but this has nothing to do with just, oh, I'm feeling kind of fatigue today. I might need some emergency magnesium. It's more like, oh, I'm in a fatal arrhythmia called Torsads and I need magnesium right now or my heart will stop

and I'll die. So not some of you hear people say out loud a lot? Exactly. I mean, things that a doctor would tell you and you wouldn't be able to verbalize because you can't. Because of how bad your heart is doing. Yes. And also because I would need some sort of EKG telemetry some sort of machine to tell me that as well

I would not be able to tell you by looking at you So at this point you're in the hospital and a doctor has told you that so the point is the vast majority of things We need and certainly just regular nutrients food and fluids and all the things we get from them we get from Eating and drinking but as long as we can we get get from eating and drinking. But as long as we can, we get them from eating and drinking. But Sidney, I hear me saying, why are people putting the menitals there? So there are a couple of histories to discuss here. First, I wanted to just briefly mention the history of the IV because it is an interesting idea who came up with the first IV.

It's wild. It abstracted out. It is a pretty wild idea. The first, our first like kind of hints. The idea that someone would be like, hold a bag and like, here plug this in, I'm just gonna stand here and hold it. Cause you know, they didn't have a metal thing for it.

So it's like, I'll stand here and hold it and just let this bag drip in here. That was basically, well, initially the ideas were just for blood. Because we had no idea what else we'd be putting in people. So if you look back to like the early writings that reflect, even if they weren't trying it, but like the ideas that people were writing about what IVs might be in the states back to like the 1400s,

you have people writing about this idea that what if we could use like silver tubes to connect the vein of one person to the vein of another person. And the idea was very unscientific. Maybe an old person who's near death could be rejuvenated and revived if we give them a young person's blood. What a fun time to be a man. And again, this wasn't really done routinely, but a lot of people wrote about it and thought

about it. So like these ideas were there, but it was mainly in regards to blood. The first real work in this area was done in the 1600s. There's this story that supposedly inspired these at the time medical students who went on to become all kinds of different scientists, doctors, one guy was an architect. Anyway, they witnessed this case of a young woman

and green who was sentenced to death by hanging and managed to survive, although they didn't realize that. Like they brought her down from the gallows, thought she was dead, brought her back to... They were medical students, so I'm wondering if it wasn't like a rogue dissection that was about to have them. But one way or another, they realized she was still alive. So they did a lot of work to revive her after this she was pardoned. Really?

It's a weird, weird sad case, although she lived. She lived and was pardoned. But from this, these young students were inspired to work on IVs, so I don't know what exactly they did to her to revive her. Yeah. But that is the perhaps apocryphal, but that is the story that leads to a lot of these guys working on IVs.

One of them is Christopher Ren, who would go on to be a famous architect and design a bunch of churches. But at the time, he was working on connecting quills to pigsbladders as like a way, like you use the quill as the needle, and then the pigs bladder would hold the you feel to do that just be like I'm gonna be a famous doctor guy now and I think later I'm gonna be a famous architect guy

because it wasn't that much to learn because we didn't know anything you but I mastered that I mastered that it took three months we don't know anything I learned it all uh there's four books about medicine I read all them. I guess I'm a medical expert now. One of his contemporaries, Richard Lower, who was an anatomist, actually, he remained in medicine. It seems for his career, but he worked on a little underachiever. Animal to animal blood transfusions, as a result of this work. That was initially like with dogs. He would try to transfuse blood from one dog into another dog. That was what he started with. He would try to transfuse blood from one dog into another dog That was what he started with and then somewhere inspired by that to try animal to human transfusions

this At first I mean, so it's always the same with these stories you read that like it seemed to go okay at first And then it was disastrous It was very bad, which I would say it probably was disastrous from the jump you should not put Straight up animal blood into human. Well, what you should do first is put human blood in animal blood, see if they get our incredible powers of speech and thought. They were banned in France by 1668 because of this. And so then people started trying to in England and later that year they were banned there too. Yeah. Because of some, they tried some lamb to human transfusions.

They thought that specifically for cases of, I mean, probably what we would diagnose today, some sort of mental illness, some sort of like schizophrenia or something is what it sounds like they're trying to describe. They thought that lambs were calm, and so the blood of a lamb would calm you. I could go for a lamb to human PO translate her right now. That's a weird thing to say. It's like a weird way of saying eating lamb. And I don't actually like to eat lamb.

I don't know what I was doing there. I'm still just on crackers and toast right now. Yeah, it's rough, it's rough. The IV thing. I got the fup upstairs that I got for you yesterday. I will see. I will see, maybe later. The IV thing became popular again

when an American physician, Philip Singh, Physic. Either he either tried it or he wrote about it. Nobody's really sure. But he wrote in a way that people thought he had tried a human-to-human transfusion. And this inspired a British OB, Dr. James Blundel, to try it. And he came up with a bunch of devices.

I would not let someone name Dr. James Blundel to try it. And he came up with a bunch of devices. I would not let someone name Dr. James Blundel. What, so what are you gonna do? I'm gonna take your blood out and put it in the subway else. And what's your name? Dr. Blundel. Okay, I don't think so. I think I'm gonna wait for Dr. Steelyide, Big Larson, something like real solid, you know?

Real solid character. Miss Dr. Smith, I'll let him into the blood transfusion. Thank you, not Dr. Blondle. Oh, sorry, I got the needle in my nine-feet. Well, Dr. Blondle actually- I stepped in a fart. He did it. He was actually responsible for doing the first real series of successful human

to human transfusions. He had a couple different devices. Me and my quick leaps to judge, right? He had the impeller and the gravitateor. One worked by gravity. That's what that's all about. He's not going to name him the Blondle devices. And so that, that was really, but again, this is kind of limited because at this point,

we still don't know about blood types. So you're still, every time you're doing this, you're rolling the dice, right? Because a lot of times they would look for like a spouse to be a donor, which is like, I mean, you've got all these family members, and you could maybe, maybe you've got a little more chance, but then spouse is just, who knows knows so eventually people started to think you know

This is really cool for blood, but like is there other stuff? We could use these devices for you know at this point We have the early blueprints for syringes and you know IV not really catheters yet But needles that go in the vein and and bags to hold stuff So could we do other things and it was really cholera that was responsible for the development of those things. In the 1830s, there were cholera epidemics and people were dying in large scale. And a lot of it, they figured out,

was due to just the loss of bodily fluids and electrolytes so quickly. And so they developed an early form of IV saline solution to combat this. And this was the first thing we were gonna start putting in veins that wasn't blood, really. And throughout the late 1800s, this really inspired people to try other things.

Like, well, what about other, you know, things for malnourishment or chronic illness? Are there other things we could put in the IV that would help fix those things? And so you see all these different things. Like as early as 1876, is when Dr. Sidney Ringer, who anybody in medicine will know that,

where I'm going with that right now. You're giving me this look city that I couldn't parse in a thousand year. Should I just sort of tell you what you mean by that? He created a solution known as lactated ringers or ringers. They're killing me, kid, I don't know. I don't know.

It's still in use today, 1876. That's how old LR is. Anyway, it's still used for some patients today as an IV solution that is necessary with a certain blend of electrolytes and for very specific reasons, of course. We don't give them to everybody, it's in some patients. And then that's when they started using medications.

Oh, wait, lactated ringers. Don't make fun of me. And then this is the first time we started putting medicines in the IV2, things like opiates were the first thing we tried. And the equipment got better after that. We switched to rubber eventually and then plastic. We started to develop what would become the mainstay and what's still in use today is the idea of having a needle with a catheter, a thin flexible tube over it.

So you would use the needle to insert the IV and then withdraw the needle. So all that's left in your arm is the thin plastic. Do you want to have a needle? I didn't know that was a thing. Yeah. Really? Yeah, that's what's in there.

I didn't know. It's not a needle. Didn't know that. No, it was just this exact, it's huge advantageous because as you can imagine, if a needle's in there. I didn't know. It's not a needle. Didn't know that. No, it would just this exact socket. It's hugely advantageous because as you can imagine, if a needle's in your arm, you kind of got to hold it still. Whereas once you can withdraw the needle, it's just that thin flexible tube, it gives you a lot more. Did not know that till this exact second 39 years old. Yep. So that is what is in the modern IV. And we developed that vacuum sealed containers to hold whatever we were putting in the IV

so that you could reduce contaminants and infectious agents and that kind of thing. And eventually also, this was all the realm of physicians. It wasn't until the 1970s when the first nurse at Mass Gen Aida Plummer inserted, was taught and inserted the first IV. And after that, it quickly became the domain of the nursing profession. It's something that I have inserted IVs because I was required to do so in medical school.

But I did not, like that is not something routinely that you find physicians doing anymore. It's really, whenever, whenever a patient says that about a shot or an IV or anything, like, well, will you do it for me? I always say you don't want me to You want the nurse to do it. Yeah, I will not do as good a job sit IV sounds great and it sounds like Very good and it's good. We did it and I can't think of any way that we would ever miss use it Well, of course we found a way to miss use it just and of course we we did. As long as there's money to be made, but before we do that, speaking of money. Let's make our money.

We'll make our money. We'll go to the building department. Let's go. The medicines, the medicines that ask you let my God before the mouth. You know, travel is always stressful, especially when you're traveling with as many kids as we do. And we look for anything that can make it just a little bit easier.

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solbones. That's join honey.com slash solbones. All right, Justin, where did I'll go wrong? Where did that all go wrong? As far as I can tell, it starts with a physician that was practicing in Baltimore in the 60s named John Myers. And it's hard for me to find a lot of information about Dr. John Myers other than this specific part of his life. What other wonderful attributes he may have, I do not know. Or terrible.

Or terrible, I don't know. Who knows? Is it your monster? Is that after or not, like let's not see that. I'm not sure he wasn't, but I'm saying, we have no idea. I do not know. What I know is that. No, I'm not sure he wasn't, but I'm saying we have no idea. I don't know. What I know is that after he passed away in 1984, his patients went looking for new doctors.

And I have been on the, that, this end of things where a patient will come to me and say, hey, I'm new to you. My old doctor used to do whatever this thing is. Could you just do this? And I will think, oh, that's think, oh, that's not a thing. Oh, no, why did they do that? And that's, it's hard. It's hard for the patient who loved their previous physician

and had a trust in them. And it's hard for me, as their new doctor, trying to develop that relationship to say, ah, I can't, I mean, this is something that really stretches the bounds of what's safe and what's evidence-based and scientific and I might harm you and that, obviously, I don't want to do. And that's a tough position to be in. But these patients went out looking for new doctors and a lot of them started asking their

doctors for a vitamin solution that Dr. Myers used to give them. Now, whatever Myers original formula was, no matter what anyone tells you, we don't really know. We have an idea of what was in it, we think, but mostly based on what patients told other doctors. We don't have anyone who says that they have the original Myers formula. No, you have what you think might be. I don't know if it matters or not though,

because he was apparently using this for patients with lots of stuff, chronic pain, heart conditions, things like depression or anxiety, fatigue. It's getting to be a lot of things said. And if they didn't get these regularly, the patient said that whatever their symptoms were would come back.

And so he would give them regular, and these were more injections as opposed to, they were IV injections, not necessarily hook you up to an IV. But he used something that combined magnesium, calcium, thiamine, vitamin B6, B12, calcium, vitamin B complex, vitamin C, and some hydrochloric acid. Something to that effect. Okay, wow, it's quite a blend. Now other docs heard about this, and I imagine there were quite a few like me who were like, I've not, that's not, I can't, that's not, there's nothing there, that's not real.

But said it in hopefully a nice way, although I have found usually people get frustrated with you and leave and don't go back. But you try, you do your best, you do your best. But there were some docs who said, hey, well, maybe old Doc Myers was on something. Sure. I'll cook one up. Sure, we can get you a blend here.

I'm going to start up with my blender, a blend tech. So a lot of these docs started cooking up their own Myers cocktails, Myers formulas, Myers, whatever you wanna call them, protocols, and they changed them around a bit. Like the hydrochloric acid was gotten rid of pretty quickly. Some things were up to like the doses that were reported of things like magnesium were so low that they could not possibly be doing anything

physiologically. They were like, it was like homeopathy. And so they, so a lot of the doctors would like up the things to a dose that might actually do something. Maybe cut back the hydrochloric acid maybe. Yeah, that was cut out. Yeah. Yeah, that was out. And then they started giving their patients, the ones who adopted this, Myers cocktails for anything. You find doctors claiming that it helps with asthma attacks, acute migraines, fatigued and chronic fatigue syndrome, both just acute and chronic fatigue.

Fibromyalgia, muscle spasms, upper respiratory tract infections, chronic sinusitis, seasonal allergic rhinitis. Some patients would improve if they had congestive heart failure or angina or hyperthyroidism or dysmenorrhea, painful periods. Yeah, this feels like, it feels like the kind of thing where like,

if Dean Martin had to do a show that night, but he was really sick, this sounds like the thing that, like the weird smoking doctor who he travels with would give him, like let me me just whip him up one of these cocktails that always perks him right up. It reminds me of that there's an episode of Mad Men where they do that. Do you remember that where they invited everybody into the office because they've got some doc there who's going to give everybody an energy shot. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

And you have to assume it had some sort of emphetamine in it or something because they're all running around afterwards. Anyway, yeah, I mean, it really, it speaks of that, except as far as I can tell, there weren't any, everything in it is either like a vitamin or an electrolyte or something like that. Like it's not, I don't know of any like you, where you actually put some sort of drug in it or something.

There's like a sub logical fallacy with these where it's like, it's not, I mean a sub category of logical fallacy where it's like, if you get a lot of things that won't have an impact but mix them together, it sounds like a really potent cocktail of like, wow, that's a lot of different things you've put in there. You can also play on like, and we've talked about this

on the show before, people seem to fall for vitamin C a lot. I mean, not that vitamin C isn't important that you have an appropriate amount of it, but super therapeutic doses, massive doses of vitamin C has never been proven to do any extra thing other than make you pee vitamin C. But there's that. And then like B12, I find that's a common misconception that taking B12 will give you energy when the reality is that that's only true if you're deficient in B12. If you're not deficient in B12, getting extra B12 doesn't do anything.

So I mean, certainly if you have a B12 deficiency, you should take B12, but otherwise, you're not, that's nothing. But that's a common misconception. And so from these early kind of reinventions of the Myers cocktail, you saw this spread to beyond just individual doctors, although there are still doctors doing this, probably for cash cash because I can't imagine what you would build an insurance company that would get this covered. But it's also done by like some chiropractors, some naturopaths. And then there are these IV therapy bars that have sprung up. And this is a place where they're probably they probably have to have a doctor, I would say, on staff or at least by name. Crossless street. There is a, they usually claim a doctor affiliated with it somehow, but they, this isn't the same as having something prescribed to you individually as a doctor,

because they've gone far beyond the Myers cocktail. Most of these places still do offer what they call the original Myers cocktail, although as we've said, who knows what it was. It's pretty bad you can't even get the, it's like a fake version of the fake medicine. That's a fake thing. It's like the guy in multiple places. And they have infusions for everything now. So initially, I guess they were mainly targeted at people for hangovers and jet lag. Those were like the two things that these cropped up for. And you can even find them like at music festivals. And they would come to your house like if you were really

rich, you could pay them to come to your house. And they'd like help you recuperate after a rough night of partying. Or if you just had to fly from coast to coast and you had to, you know, I don't know, film something. No, it was very popular with celebrities and just swimming the bases, saline, right? That's mixed in with other things mixed into it, right? Yes. Simibly.

Yeah. That would work for the hangover, right? Like you would at least feel, but not you at least feel better in part, but that also it's a misunderstanding. And we talked about this on the hangover episode. A hangover isn't simply dehydration. Yes, you are probably somewhat dehydrated, and yes, part of the recovery from a hangover is to drink fluids.

But one, I have no data that says giving them to you IV is going to rejuvenate you, make you feel better from a hangover faster than just drinking. And two, there's also other stuff that makes you feel bad from a hangover faster than just drinking. And two, there's also other stuff that makes you feel bad from a hangover that... The toxins in there. Yeah, that saline isn't gonna fix. Got it. But yeah, that was kind of where they started, but then they blossomed from there. You can find a lot of these different places now, mainly in big cities, but they're spreading.

They're spreading. I think that I saw that there was one in Ohio that we could probably get to if we ever decided to abandon science altogether. They will provide you with all kinds of different cocktails. And that's really how a lot of the websites call them menus. And so you can peruse their menu for the cocktail you prefer. And they have names like libido and immune booster,

diet and detox detox pain blaster liver cleanse the performance nirvana and brain focus. And you can you there's a wide variety of costs the original Myers from this one website and from most that I was looking at the original Myers is like your base it's like 99 bucks hundred dollars something like that at most places original Myers is like your base. It's like $99 bucks, $100, something like that at most places. But you can spend a lot more. They're usually in the mid-hundreds to low 200s. And then I found one called a hydrostim,

which is for chronic pain, joint injuries, and tendonitis, which is $4,000. Which made me wonder if it had stem cells in it, which is a whole other thing. But I couldn't find, that's the other tricky thing about this. So I looked through a lot of these websites and some of them list what they call the key ingredients.

But it was very difficult for me to find any complete list of components anywhere and some of these websites had none. They just said vague things like a mixture of vitamins and amino acids. Yeah, said vague things like a mixture of vitamins and amino acids. Yeah, hard past. No, thank you.

Like you're just going to, oh, by yield us inject that into me. Okay, perfect. Excellent. I emailed one of the websites and said, could I just know what your, like, what are the components of these cocktails? Is there a place where I can research this, where I can look to a list?

And I never heard back from them? Of course, this same website, they had a doctor who wrote one article, they had a blog, and there was a doctor who put one article on the blog like a testing to how good and true all of this is. And so I kind of dug into this doctor to try to figure out who they were. And it was, as far as I can tell, there is a real physician attached to the name. I think if it is the right person, but the photo on the website that is next to the doctor's name, I reverse image searched it. It's a stock photo. So that's weird.

That's weird. Yeah. But it's very weird. I don't know. So I don't know if that was really the doctor, the name I found, was really a doctor or whatever, who knows. But all of it is sketchy because, I mean, if it's really something that truly works, you should just be able to tell people what's in it, and they can make a decision talking to an actual doctor. Preparatory blend or something like that. Of course, if you want a list of the most fashionable chic spa-like experiences you can

get, check Goop out. Sure. You have course. You know, going with pal troze into this. It's expensive. It's prohibitively expensive. End of all. And it does nothing.

Of course, she's going to be in on it. And so you're probably wondering is there evidence for this? Well, obviously for the IV administration of medications and fluids in appropriate medical situations, well, yes, obviously we know that. We do that every day in the hospital. When I am working in the hospital, I am ordering IV medications for my patients

every single day. Very good. Yes, because that is science, and we have evidence and studies that say that this works. But as far as evidence for the Myers, there's just collections of anecdotes. There is no, there is no solid research that the, whatever you want to call the Myers, whatever various cocktail you want to say is the original. None of it does anything beyond placebo. They did a study with no control group at all in like a handful of fibromyalgia patients and it showed short-term, some improvement,

long-term no improvement. They did another study that actually did have control in a placebo group and in all that with fibromyalgia patients again and there was no difference between the placebo group and the Myers group, and moreover, they noticed an exaggerated placebo response within the study, which is probably because we know that the placebo response is higher when you get an IV than a pill.

It seems like very intense medicine. Yeah. The idea that this is based on is that we absorb essential vitamins and nutrients better through the IV. And so this is just inherently a better, like, because this isn't just for if you're sick. I mean, they will take your money if you're sick and are looking and like desperate and looking for hope.

But they'll also take your money if you're just like a healthy person who wants to feel that unattainable better that everyone wants to feel. They will take your money and tell you that this is for wellness, this is just for a boost, this is to give you a glow, whatever, something like that. Because you can't get all the stuff you need from food and drink the way we can.

Well, if that were true, we wouldn't be designed to eat and drink. If you have a functioning GI tract, you absorb everything you need from it. Now, obviously, there are people out there who have, for various reasons, various illnesses, don't have a GI tract that functions in that way, and do need assistance getting the nutrients and essential vitamins and things They need but that is something that's very individual and it's something that a doctor should help you with diagnosing and treating and you know managing Checking levels of things because there are risks to this. They're absolutely risk of course. You're letting some like

just person Who is at a place, put a needle in you. The risk. Well, and I, we've accepted, like, I feel like it's such a, it's so hypocritical. At the same time, I feel like some of these wellness people, like, we keep hitting on Gwyneth Paltrow,

but there are a lot of them out there. But they will tell you at the same time that the problem with doctors is that they won't give you individual treatment, that they have these one-size-fits-all solutions with their drugs and their pills and whatever. If this isn't the essence of that, a one-size-fits-all here, we have these IV cocktails that fix everything. So you have a problem come here, give us 175 bucks and we'll give you a solution.

And if you don't feel better, it's because you need to come back again. I mean, it's obvious snake oil. It's not needed. It's not proven to work. And there are risks as you have alluded to. There are risks. When someone is going to stick something into your vein, they need to be using proper sterile technique, whether it is in the hospital, under my supervision, or in whatever IV bar that Goop told you about. And if they don't, they could cause an infection, they could cause inflammation of those blood vessels, which can be very painful. They could easily give you too much of something.

Because from what I've read, some of these places will take your blood and have you talk to a doctor first, but not all necessarily have a regimented process. Because none of this is FDA regulated by the way. They all have that thing on the bottom. Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, this is not intended to cure or treat anything.

None of this is regulated, so they could hurt you by doing the IV, and they could also give you toxic doses of whatever they're... You can get too much of some vitamins, and you could cause liver failure, kidney failure. I mean, who knows what you could do, electrolyte disturbances, and if your electrolytes get out of whack, your heart can stop beating as we've already covered. So I would recommend against any of these, I think that what they're doing has no evidence.

They, while most people are just gonna be out a bunch of money, and probably not harmed by this, there are going to be people harmed by this, for sure. And celebrities are using this, it's very popular among, like, people on Instagram and that kind of thing. I read an article where suppose I don't know if this is true, but they were reporting that Kindle Jenner had this done and then had to be hospitalized afterwards for a reaction. And I would say that that is likely going to happen more and more often

the more and more people who use this therapy. So do, do not do it. There is no benefit. If you think you have a problem, go talk to your doctor. Your doctor is best suited to tell you what you need, whether it be by mouth or by IV. Don't do it. Folks, thank you so much for listening to our show.

Just wanna let you know that we're gonna be appearing with my brother, my brother and me. February 19th, Cincinnati, Ohio, the Taft Theater. If you go to bit.ly-20funny, you can see that and see where else we're gonna be touring around this year. But there's not a lot of dates up there right now, but there will be very soon from what I understand. We got a book that we wrote.

It's called The Soppin's Book. That is what it's called. So that Amazon are like bookstores. Rather than spend $175 on that, go buy 10 copies of our book, give it away to friends. You'll do a lot more good. Or just one. For us.

While they're spending $175 to burn anyways, they might as well spend it on us. Don't do that. Don't do that. Save your money. Or give5 to burn anyways, they might as well spend it on us. That's all I'm saying. Don't do that. Save your money. Or give it to a charity, whatever. Fine. Thanks to the taxpayers for the use of their song medicines

as the intro and outro of our program. And next week. Next week. You've all been emailing and I am listening. We will talk about coronavirus next week. So since there's a lot of concern. Get there. Yes. That's going to do it for us though for this week. So until next time,

my name is Justin McRoy. I'm Sydney McRoy. There's always don't drill a hole in your head. All right. Alright!