My First Time: IV Vitamin Drip

In her new column for Just Bobbi, author, advisor and attorney Anjali Kumar is willing to try anything in the name of wellness (at least once).

It's 5:30 AM. I just got off a 15+ hour flight from Mumbai to NYC. In coach. Sitting by the bathrooms. Surrounded by people sneezing. Assaulted by 30 degree temperatures in the airport taxi line in Newark. Quite a homecoming.

This was after a whirlwind work trip through Mumbai and Ahmedabad visiting various international development projects (including SEWA and Gabriel Project Mumbai), eating all the delicious things offered to me (sorry Dr. Pratima), and traveling with friends battling various viruses (with varying levels of success). So to say I was dragging by the time I unlocked my front door in New York would be a bit of an understatement.

Luckily, I had the foresight to book an IV vitamin treatment from BeWell before I left for my trip. With a bunch of work waiting for me on my return, I wanted to recover quickly from jet lag and hit the ground running. Instead, I settled in for a “quick nap” and woke up with a jolt when the doorbell rang some three hours later. My attempts to beat jet lag were not off to a great start.

I stumbled over to the door to greet the BeWell team: Raj, a certified health coach (who also teaches at The Class by Taryn Toomey in Tribeca) and Katie, a certified nurse practitioner who would be administering my IV. I was scheduled for a home visit of the iv Jet Lag bag, a blend specially formulated by the BeWell team to help with jet-lag that includes magnesium, methyl B complex, B12 and a glutathione push.

Oh, did I mention I am scared of needles?

But I didn’t need to be. Katie is a skilled nurse who happens to be an IV nurse at a hospital when she isn’t visiting people like me in the need of a little boost. She quickly found a vein in my arm, I barely felt a pinch and we were off dripping.

The bag (filled with a liquid that looks like, well, pee) steadily emptied drip by drip into my body. In the meantime, Raj and Katie kept me entertained with stories of some of their clients and other wellness trends they love. A few minutes in, I felt the fog slowly lifting from my brain.

Was it psychosomatic? Perhaps. But the IV seemed to be doing the trick. Halfway through the bag, I felt more awake, and by the end of the 25 minutes or so it took for the IV bag to empty, I felt pretty good considering it was 3 AM Mumbai time.

Raj and Katie packed up their bags leaving me feeling nourished and clear headed. My skin looked clear and hydrated, not the usual dry and dingy post a flight of that length. I didn’t have much of an appetite the rest of the day (perhaps I had all the nutrients I needed from the IV?) and even managed to get a few hours of work done before my daughter returned from school... and then I crashed out again on the couch at 7:30 pm.

The Verdict: A vitamin indulgence that gives you a little boost of nutrition and hydration when you need it most, but won’t necessarily get you back on schedule after a long trip and bad jet lag (I still took a few days to recover fully). But it might cushion the blow as you fall asleep mid-sentence during a meeting. Plus your skin will be glowing.

BeWell iV, Eleven 11 Wellness Center, 32 W 22nd St #5, New York, NY 10010. Available in office or for house calls.