Combating stress is one of the hardest things to do. Did you know there are IV drip therapies specifically formulated to address our stressed-out bodies and minds? Read on to learn how they work.
What is an IV Drip?
You’ve probably seen IV drips before. Even if you’ve never been in a hospital (lucky you!), you’d seen them on a hospital show. Do you know those bags hanging above a patient, connected to a tiny plastic tube that runs into an arm? That’s them! And that reason they’re set up that way is they provide a slow drip of hydration and/or medicine that runs right into a person’s veins.
IV drips work immediately because they bypass our digestive system and go straight into the bloodstream in order to start working immediately. You can get IV drips outside the hospital for anything from a hangover to a nutritional boost – and now they come in formulations that can help address our stress levels.
Do IV Drips Hurt?
IV drips don’t hurt. They do require one needle prick by a certified IV nurse provider to get the IV line started. But after that, you can lay back and relax. In fact, you can listen to music, chat with a friend, or scroll through your phone.
How Does IV Therapy Combat Stress
Stress is that feeling of being overwhelmed, even if there’s nothing bothering you at the moment. It interferes with our productivity, sleep, relationships, and can cause physical and mental health problems.
Our bodies are actually designed to have a physiological reaction (the “fight or flight” response) to threatening events. These reactions are controlled by our autonomic nervous system – and sometimes that system goes overboard.
Luckily, there are some vitamins and minerals that can help combat stress by creating chemical reactions that make your body and mind become more resilient to it. So while you might not be able to control the world around you, you can help control your body and mind’s reaction to it.
While we all know exercise, diet, and meditation have all been shown to help, they’re long-term projects. And let’s face it, sometimes we need a more immediate way to deal with the stress in our lives. That’s where IV therapies come in handy – they’re designed to work right away.
What's in a Stress-Relieving IV Drip?
There are many different IV solutions. IV drips for stress usually contain a mixture of saline, vitamins, and minerals. Let’s take a look at how they work on the body:
Saline
Saline is the base of just about any IV treatment. It’s a mixture of water and sodium chloride that’s designed to replenish the fluids in your body. This hydration is crucial to helping your body function properly.
It’s easy to overlook the importance of hydration. But dehydration can affect your mood and energy. So saline isn’t just a vehicle to help get vitamins and minerals into your body, it’s part of the treatment!
Magnesium
Magnesium is sometimes known as the “relaxation” mineral. It already exists in our bodies, but it’s easy to become deficient if you don’t eat the right foods (like seeds, nuts, and spinach). Magnesium deficiency has been connected to fatigue, depression, bone weakness, and poor blood sugar regulation and blood pressure.
Magnesium also plays a crucial role in the nervous system by helping to maintain healthy levels of a neurotransmitter called gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA). GABA helps us stay calm and helps us get a handle on things like anxiety, fear, irritability, and even poor sleep. But our bodies don’t always produce enough of it. GABA blocks certain brain signals that contribute to stress and helps decrease activity in the nervous system so we can relax with ease.
It’s not always easy for our bodies to fully absorb magnesium in pill or food form. But it’s absorbed immediately when delivered to the bloodstream via an IV. That’s why it plays a crucial role in an IV treatment for stress.
Taurine
Taurine is an amino acid. It also helps our brains produce that all-important GABA as well as an amino acid called glycine. Both of these help our bodies create feelings of calm.
Glycine also plays a role in stimulating the production of the feel-good hormone serotonin.
Taurine is what we call the “precursor” to many important reactions in the body that help regulate stress. It can even help improve cognition and memory.
Vitamins
An IV drip for stress will usually contain a multivitamin to replenish vitamins C, A, B, B1, B6, D3, E, and K1. It also contains more specific forms of vitamins, such as Niacinamide (a form of vitamin B3 that may help with anxiety) and Dexpanthol (a form of Vitamin B5 that helps your body convert food into energy more efficiently).
Some of the most crucial vitamins to help reduce stress are:
- Vitamin B comes in many different forms, most of which are necessary to help overall body function.
o For example, B6 (also called pyridoxine) may improve mood and promote brain health. It helps our brains produce calming neurotransmitters like serotonin and GABA.
- Vitamin C is normally known for boosting immunity, but it may also be able to reduce levels of stress hormones in the blood.
Reset IV's relaxation IV drip
If you’re weighing the benefits of an IV drip to help you cope with stress, check out Reset IV’s “Relaxation” IV treatment at resetiv.com/products/stress-relief.
A treatment costs $299 and allows you to de-stress in the comfort of your home. This safe and effective formula is administered by a certified nurse who will travel to you, and explain the procedure, and talk you through any concerns. It only takes 45 minutes to an hour and is designed to bust your anxieties and frustrations so you can stress less.