IV therapy comes to Montreal

“Intravenous vitamin therapy” is now available in Montreal, as evidenced by the advertisements and posts you may have seen on social media this summer. The concept ? An infusion of vitamins, minerals and amino acids. Useful ? Scientists see “no medical use” in it.

Catherine Handfield
The Press

“After the calmest weekend of my summer (thank god), I start my week in private clinic with an IV drip filled with vitamins and minerals. Hydration, immune system, sleep. »

This is how Olivier Dion described Monday on Instagram his visit to the Go rapid test (GTR) clinic in Montreal. In the video (since removed from the social network), the singer is seated comfortably on a couch, with in his forearm a needle connected to a bag of yellow liquid.

The GTR clinic has been offering IV therapy, or drip therapy, for six weeks. On its website, the company claims that this therapy — offered at $250 — allows you to “feel hydrated and improve immune function”.

Olivier Dion did not want to talk about his experience at The Pressbut the CEO and co-founder of the GTR Clinic, entrepreneur Daniel Selcer, called us back.

“We try to be always on the lookout,” he explains, pointing out that his company was the first in the country to offer a testing center for COVID-19 at the car. IV therapy is widely accepted in the United States, but for some reason it was very, very limited available in Canada. »

The Press counted seven other companies offering this service in Greater Montreal, including Montreal’s IV clinic, which is also active on social networks. On one of its posts, Montreal’s IV clinic uses quotes from American stars Hailey Bieber and Kendall Jenner, who both received IV therapy in a recent episode of the series. The Kardashians. The company did not call back The Press.

The Clinique Nord, in Laval, is the first medical clinic to have offered IV therapy in Quebec, in June 2021, according to its general manager, nurse Chems Diouri. The clinic, she says, welcomes two types of clients: those who take care of their health and who want a ” boost supplement”, and those who, prescription in hand, come for a particular element, such as iron and vitamin C. “Everyone is different and everyone needs to be assessed and treated differently and appropriately says Chems Diouri.

The Drip Bar Mtl clinic, for its part, is located within the clinic of plastic surgeon Arthur Swift, in Westmount. According to nurse Stephanie Ozcanian, the clientele consists of pre- and post-operative patients, “to heal faster and give energy”, but also people with health problems and athletes.

In these three clinics, it was indicated to The Press that nurses take care of the infusions and that a doctor is involved in the prescriptions.

Lack of data

These vitamin infusions are credited to American physician John Myers in the 1960s. In the past decade, Hollywood stars have embraced IV therapy (such as Gwyneth Paltrow and Chrissy Teigen) and its popularity has skyrocketed.

In the United States as in Canada, scientists deplore the lack of scientific data surrounding these therapies. Companies use vague terms to describe its benefits, such as “sleep”, “energy”, “detoxification”, “immunity”, “hydration”, “mood”, “recovery”, etc.

In 2009, researchers studied the effect of the “Myers’ cocktail” on patients with fibromyalgia. They revealed an improvement, yes, but this improvement was comparable to that observed in the placebo group.

Entrepreneur Daniel Selcer of the GTR Clinic argues that it is difficult to scientifically study a person’s mood after therapy given all the factors that can come into play. therapy, of course, and I can tell you that it gives me a extra hop in my step [du pep dans le soulier] he says.

The nurse Chems Diouri, from the Clinique Nord, indicates for her part that “the scientific literature is contradictory and has always been so”. “There are practitioners and studies that support IV therapies, and some that don’t,” she says.

” Useless ”

Director of the Molecular Physiology Research Unit at the Montreal Clinical Research Institute, researcher Mathieu Ferron has scoured the literature, including that cited on the websites of these companies. He found dated articles, and several dealing with the effect of a specific micronutrient applied for a specific pathology.

“These companies may well cite articles, but for what they offer, these articles are not relevant,” sums up Mathieu Ferron.

Since these fluids are not considered drugs, but rather supplements, the manufacturer does not have to demonstrate their medical effectiveness for treating a specific disease, points out Mathieu Ferron.

Cardiologist and epidemiologist Christopher Labos wrote a column on IV therapy in The Gazette in 2015 when it began to be offered in Ontario. “The medical consensus on the subject is that intravenous vitamins do not cure anything, except for very, very specific patients for very, very specific reasons”, summarizes the D^r Labs, which gives the example of a patient with a specific vitamin deficiency who cannot be fed by mouth.

What’s more, he says, if you eat fruits and vegetables regularly, you don’t have to worry about vitamin deficiency.

“A lot of people believe that if it’s good to take a little vitamin, it’s even better to take more,” says D^r Labs. But the reality is that when the human body has enough vitamins to do its biological functions, it excretes the water-soluble vitamins (like B and C) in the urine. »

Professor John White of the Department of Physiology at McGill University believes that, “for a normal, healthy person”, these intravenous therapies are “completely unnecessary”.

“We evolved to absorb vitamins in our diet,” says John White. It’s cheaper and much easier than going to one of those fancy shops. »

What regulations?

What regulates these vitamin “formulas”? At Health Canada, it is indicated that “it is not yet possible to determine whether these activities fall within the scope of practice of pharmacies or if they would fall under the definition of a drug”. Health Canada has also received complaints about Canadian clinics and “follow-ups are underway”. If the activities were within the scope of practice of medicine or pharmacy, they would fall under provincial and territorial oversight.

Vitamindrip, which supplies Montreal companies, is a Canadian pharmaceutical company. In an email, Vitamindrip indicated that its compounds fall into a “new product category” and that they “meet specifications” of the Ontario College of Pharmacists, the National Association of regulations of pharmacy and the United States Pharmacopoeia.

At the College of Physicians, the population is invited to act with “great caution” and to discuss it first with a doctor, if necessary. “The College is not a learned society, but this treatment is not based on solid scientific data,” says Leslie Labranche, senior media relations advisor.

As there is no study on the effect that the combination of all these micronutrients could have, and as we do not know the precise quantity of vitamins that these products contain, the researcher Mathieu Ferron advocates the precautionary principle. “I find it absurd that it is not regulated more than that,” he said.