Harrods, Las Vegas and here: Region part of vitamin IV trend

It is a Kardashian favorite and a longstanding trend that you can join right here. IV vitamin drips at wellness businesses are enjoyed by many celebrities and dismissed by many doctors. At least two such businesses have opened locally in the last two years.

A Scranton location of the DRIPBaR chain opened last year. Elevation Wellness opened in Wilkes-Barre Twp. in 2022. Both say they are turning a profit.

What are the IVs for? Name it. At DRIPBaR in Scranton, IVs include the Time Machine, which is advertised to, among other things, remove heavy metals from the blood, and the Soother, both $189. At Elevation Wellness the menu includes the Slim Drip ($129) and the Beauty Bomb ($185). Similar shots, rather than drips, are also on the menu. None is covered by health insurance, although there are discounts for membership level customers.

It’s all “fairy tale nutrition, or, worse, voodoo nutrition,” said R. Ariel Igal, M.D., Ph.D., assistant professor of the Department of Pediatrics, in the division of Gastroenterology, Hepatology, and Nutrition, Columbia University, in New York City, by email.

Elevation Wellness founder and managing director Louie Helmecki calls wellness drip critics “pill pushers.”

At DRIPBaR's shiny, immaculate Adams Avenue storefront, owner Melissa Cianci said “proof is in the pudding. I have hundreds of people who come here who are having relief. They are feeling the benefits of it. They are reducing the inflation in the body.” She credits treatments with relieving her autoimmune issues. The drips have been helping people feel better since at least the 1970s, she said. Her degree is in behavioral psychology.

Like most other other vitamin supplements, wellness drips are not approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration as treatments and do not require a prescription. Cianci said customers have a virtual visit with a doctor to rule out disqualifying health conditions and medications. Helmecki said his nurses, including a nurse practitioner, take extensive health histories and a doctor is available for consultation.

He offers several kinds of wellness and aesthetic services at his pristine Mundy Street storefront, painted in soothing tones inside. IV drips are at the heart of his services. The logo on his nurses' scrubs is an IV bag.

Both businesses have nurses that hook up drips to clients sitting in recliners, either in a communal lounge or a more private space.

Dawn Shelley, a registered nurse from Clarks Green, has a monthly membership to DRiPBAR. She describes the atmosphere as part medical, with nurses checking vital signs; and part spa, because of its “very opulent” surroundings and relaxing effects. She uses drips to perk up after a night out or a tough workout, for headaches and to combat fatigue and heat sensitivity.

Getting hooked up to wellness IVs feels just like getting a medical IV, or a shot, Shelley said. After that, the only sensation is a slight taste as ingredients hit the bloodstream, she said, similar to Flintstones children's vitamins. Most take about 30 minutes, perhaps longer, between needle stick and little bandage. There have been times she has gone in with a headache and felt better by the time she stood up.

Helmecki makes no claims to prevent or cure disease. He does, however, promise a lot of benefits he said come from filling gaps in nutrition and hydration. His regulars seek “a “proactive preventative approach to their health and wellness, to make sure their vitamins and mineral levels are optimal for optimal performance.” Wellness businesses claim supplements are better absorbed by IV than by mouth.

Helmecki, who has a degree in business and works full-time as a medical device sales representative, got into the business after becoming a believer. One drip in particular, a supplement called NAD, gave such good results he was inspired to bring it to the area. The morning after the NAD drip, he noticed he had slept well. Then he observed the fall landscape as he drove. “Everything was brighter, clearer, sharper.” NAD is sometimes promoted as “anti-aging,” a term Helmecki said he rejects.

Wellness drips have been in the news. A May 4 article in The Washington Post noted its popularity in the travel industry, from the Hangover Heaven bus that cruises the Las Vegas strip to the Harrods Signature Wellness Therapy drip at the landmark London store. A similar travel feature ran in the Wall Street Journal in April. On May 14, the New York Times carried the headline: At-Home IV Drips Are the Latest Luxury Building Amenity.

But much of the medical establishment puts wellness drips on a spectrum of mostly useless to possibly harmful. Nutrition experts generally agree that with high doses of vitamins, some are flushed away in urine and some can build up to unsafe levels. In addition, any infusion carries the risk of infection.

Helmecki is well aware of criticism. He questions critics’ motives. “So l would respond to that respectfully, when they say it's bad. What’s worse for the patient, some of the pharmaceutical pills that you are just going to prescribe and write in your 7? minute consultation with them and you push them out of your office? Or taking water-soluble vitamins that 90 percent of Americans are deficient in anyway, because of lack of diet or supplementation, or even if they eat the best diet,” Helmecki said.

Igal, the Columbia doctor, said healthy people sometimes do need supplements, such as folate for pregnant women. Otherwise? He repeated an analogy he made in The Washington Post: pumping gas into a car until the tank overflows doesn’t make it go any faster.

There are two things IVs definitely can do, Igal said. They are hydrating and hydration is important. And choosing any service can activate a powerful placebo effect, he wrote. “If I am told that I am being treated for any given condition, and I actually see that I am being treated, then I will probably feel better even if the treatment is ineffective.”