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Vitamin Injection Therapy for weight loss

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Vitamin Injection Therapy is the injection of nutrients directly into the body. We use it frequently to help support patients trying to lose weight.

But how does it help, and how are its effects unique from say regular oral supplementation?

Let’s find out.

What is Vitamin Injection Therapy

Vitamin Injection Therapy is the injection of certain vitamins, minerals, and amino acids for therapeutic benefits.

The therapeutic nutrients are often injected into muscle or fat. Nutrients can also be injected into the vein directly, although this is known as intravenous or IV therapy.

We use the term Vitamin Injection Therapy (also known as VIT) for a simple injection or shot into the muscle or fat, and IV therapy for any intravenous injection into the vein.

Benefits over oral therapy

Regardless of how these nutrients are injected, (whether it be in the muscle, fat, or vein), the most significant benefit they have over simply consuming them, is that injection can achieve a much higher, and more accurate level of these therapeutic nutrients in the bloodstream.

When you eat a nutrient, it has to be absorbed through your gut. The gut does not simply allow anything through it, since it also acts as a barrier, preventing nasty things from getting into your bloodstream.

Rather, a meshwork of specific channels and receptors lining your gut, then determine The amount of nutrients that can be absorbed and released into your bloodstream.

These channels and receptors have a limit to the speed they can absorb nutrients, meaning that there is only so much you can absorb from a consumed nutrient, and increasing the oral dose further won’t increase the amount absorbed much more.

Let’s take Vitamin C as an example. If you were to take a moderate dose of 100 mg, about 80% of it is absorbed into your bloodstream.

However, if you were to take a dose of say 12 times that, around 1200 mg, less than 50% of that is actually absorbed.

As you continue to take more orally, a smaller and smaller percentage of that Vitamin C dose ends up absorbed, and a larger and larger amount ends up in your poop, to the point where eating large doses of Vitamin C supplements is known to cause diarrhea due to the huge amount of Vitamin C left in the stools.

When you inject a nutrient, it bypasses these limitations, and essentially 100% of the nutrient is absorbed into the bloodstream.

This way you can get therapeutic doses in the blood far beyond what is possible orally.

There are more complexities to this comparison between injecting nutrients and orally supplementing them, but we wont go into more details for the sake of keeping this video to the point.

How does it work?

We use Vitamin Injection Therapy for a number of reasons to support those on weight loss diets.

1.) Support fat burning

First, it can help stimulate and support lipolysis. Lipolysis is the process by which your body releases the fat from your body, and burns it as energy.

Certain nutrients, such as Vitamin B12, when injected at therapeutic doses, help to promote and support this whole process.

These nutrients are known as lipotropics.

As your body burns more fat, it will take steps to slow down this process by lowering your basal metabolic rate, in other words by reducing your day-to-day energy consumption, kinda like turning down a thermostat in a house to save electricity.

It does this because as you lose more weight, your body recognizes its precious stores of energy and fat are being depleted.

It’s a natural reaction for your body to resist this depletion and this can cause your body to slow lipolysis down, leading to stalls or plateaus in your weight loss.

Lipotropic injections can help encourage continued lipolysis, and reduce stalling during your weight loss journey.

2.) Improve metabolism

Second, it can help improve and support proper energy metabolism.

If your diet relies on restricting carbohydrate and consuming a substantial amount of protein or fat, like in a low-carbohydrate or ketogenic diet, your body will need additional nutrients to break down the food you eat, to properly use as energy in your body.

This is because protein and fat use different metabolic pathways than carbohydrate to break down into energy, and these different metabolic pathways require certain nutrients to work properly.

Injecting these nutrients can help promote these pathways and ensure the pathways are breaking down the food you eat, to provide the energy you need.

3.) Boost energy and reduce hunger

Third, it can help boost energy and reduce hunger. As you implement a dietary weight loss protocol, it’s not uncommon to feel extra fatigued or hungry, especially as you first start out.

Nutritional deficiencies from dieting is a common cause of excessive fatigue and hunger.

A rapid infusion of nutrients, like Vitamin Injection Therapy, can quickly reverse these deficiencies, and sometimes provide a quick and temporary boost in energy and reduction in hunger.

Whats inside?

Vitamin Injection Therapy protocols use only different types of vitamins, minerals, and amino acids. No medications or drugs are used. The specifics depends on the individual and what medical conditions, challenges, or goals they may have.

But in general, I’ll combine lipotropic nutrients with other supporting nutrients to achieve three major points: to stimulate lipolysis, to support energy metabolism, and to help improve energy and reduce hunger.

Side effects

As with any injection, there is a possibility of soreness, bruising, and bleeding near the injection site. There is also a risk of redness, swelling, or tenderness if the injection site was not cleaned properly. Much rarer risks include abscesses, septicaemia and nerve damage.

Generally, these nutrients are relatively safe to use in most people, however the high therapeutic dose used for some of these nutrients can make it unsuitable for some individuals.

We thoroughly screen our patients for safety before starting Vitamin Injection Therapy, and if you decide to start Vitamin Injection Therapy or IV therapy, it will be very important to be screened by a clinician.

Should you try Vitamin Injection Therapy?

It depends on what kinds of issues you experience while on your weight loss diet.

1.) Frequent weight plateaus

If you find that your weight loss frequently stalls, and your body struggles to burn fat continually, Vitamin injection therapy may help stimulate increased lipolysis, and sometimes help kickstart weight loss.

2.) Following a strict diet

If the dietary protocol youve chosen is more restrictive or tends towards an extreme, like you might see in a vegan diet, which is no animal products, a ketogenic diet, which is high fat, or in the Atkins diet which is high protein and fat, VIT helps ensure your body is able to function well, and properly metabolise the food you eat.

3.) Fatigued and hungry

If you’re feeling fatigued and hungry on your weight loss protocol, it may help to give you a temporary boost of energy, although I would recommend you implement the injections with lifestyle and dietary changes to help manage hunger more permanently.

As with any weight loss aid, it should always be used as a part of a proper weight loss protocol, to utilize the best effects of vitamin injection therapy.

Learn more about

Citations

Long-term Metformin Use and Vitamin B12 Deficiency in the Diabetes Prevention Program Outcomes Study https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4880159/

Padayatty SJ, Levine M. New insights into the physiology and pharmacology of vitamin C. CMAJ 2001;164:353-5.

Attributions

“Improving Human Intestinal Health” by Pacific Northwest National Laboratory – PNNL is licensed with CC BY-NC-SA 2.0. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/

“Normal Small Intestine Mucosa” by euthman is licensed with CC BY 2.0. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

“Studying the Human Intestine on a Chip: Research Launching to the Space Station” by NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center is licensed with CC BY-NC 2.0. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/


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