Lorena Oberg (pictured) swears by vitamin drips and says they make her feel like a different womanLorena Oberg lies down on the clinical white bed and clenches her fist in preparation for the needle and cannula being inserted into a vein in her arm.While it might appear that the 47-year-old is receiving urgent medical treatment she is, in fact, paying hundreds of pounds for the privilege of having a cocktail of vitamins and minerals pumped directly into her bloodstream via a drip.Lorena insists that it is worth every penny, and that the discomfort of being fed through an intravenous drip for up to four hours is just the price you pay for looking ten years younger and buzzing with the energy of a 20-year-old.Vitamin drips have been dubbed ‘party drips’ because of their popularity as a hangover cure among celebrities. Underwear model Poppy Delevingne was the latest to post a picture of herself on Twitter hooked-up to one a few weeks ago. Her sister, Cara, did the exact same thing a year earlier.
Yet Lorena is no A-list model. She’s a working mother-of-two who sees her £500-a-month drip ‘habit’ as money well spent as an antidote to her busy life.And there seems to be a growing set of women who, like her, are willing to pay hundreds at a time for a ‘mother’s little helper’ — a combination of vitamins and minerals that could include anything from vitamin C to the minerals magnesium and potassium and glutathione, an antioxidant.Additionally, there is a new supplement that many women — like Lorena — add to the cocktail. It’s called NAD+, or nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide, and is a co-enzyme responsible for repairing cells. However, as we age our NAD+ levels fall, and a diet low in nutrients and high in alcohol can deplete us yet further.‘I had my children quite late in life in my mid-30s and am also very busy running two beauty clinics, so I worried that they were missing out on having a mum with enough energy to do the things they love,’ says Lorena, from Caterham, Surrey.‘
Since I started having drips a year ago I’m like a different woman. I can go to bed at 1am and still be up early and fresh for work. What’s more, I still have energy at weekends to go roller-skating and dry-slope skiing with my children.’Yet doctors are dubious about the benefits of taking extra nutrients this way, and say it could actually do you harm.Dr Adam Cunliffe, principal lecturer in nutrition at London’s South Bank University, says there is no solid proof that vitamin infusions have any real health benefits.Likewise, there is not enough clinical evidence to prove the benefits of NAD+ injections.‘The benefits for people who are ostensibly well, who just want to gain some kind of advantage in how they feel or to recover from a misspent weekend, are not clear,’ he says. ‘I can’t look up research papers to see how beneficial this is, because it’s largely anecdotal. The procedure involves having a cocktail of vitamins and minerals pumped directly into your bloodstream via a drip (pictured)‘Celebrity endorsement makes lots of people want to try it.
If somebody is deficient in a nutrient, the drip will help them return to normal levels. The problem is that most people who go for these things are not tested to see if they are low in anything.’This concern is shared by Dr Sarah Tonks, who runs the Omniya Clinic in Knightsbridge, London. She says blood tests for deficiencies ramp up the cost of treatment and — unlike her clinic — not all practitioners insist on them.‘It’s pointless giving people vitamins they may not need,’ she says. ‘But worse than that, it could be dangerous because too much magnesium or potassium could, in people with a pre-existing weakness, cause a heart attack.’Incorrect dosing could also harm the kidneys and liver if they are unable to process the excess minerals. Very high sodium levels can even cause seizures and coma and in rare cases the drips could trigger a fatal allergic reaction. John Gillen, director of the Bionad clinic in London, introduced the NAD+ drips to the UK two years ago.
There is currently not enough clinical evidence to prove the benefits of NAD+ injectionsHowever, Dr Tonks says, many people with a range of conditions — including asthma, auto-immune diseases and chronic fatigue syndrome — do report improvements.‘A friend of mine who is a professor of neurology in the States prescribes IV magnesium for people with migraines as many sufferers are deficient in this,’ says Dr Tonks.John Gillen, director of the Bionad clinic in London, introduced NAD+ drips to the UK two years ago and has seen their popularity rocket.As well as the scores of clients who come to the clinic, a nurse also does around ten visits each week to ‘high-end celebrities and VIPs’ who prefer to be treated in the comfort of their own home.Due to demand, Bionad is extending its London clinic and plans to open a second in Saudi Arabia this year. So why do so many consider this extreme technique a better way to get their nutrients than through food or vitamin pills? The vitamin injections have attracted a large celebrity following, Poppy Delevingne recently shared a photo on Instagram (above) where she was also using the vitamin injections
The answer is that it’s administered in larger amounts and fed directly into the blood stream.According to John, the bulk of his clients are middle-aged, middle-class career women, desperate for an boost to cope with their busy lives.‘This is the same social group that is also seeing an increase in alcoholism,’ says John. ‘And what some of these women have discovered is that NAD+ is the first thing to be depleted when the body is trying to detoxify itself of alcohol. By replenishing it you can stem the damage to cells, as well as minimising the symptoms of a hangover.‘We also have party people who come to us every Monday morning after drinking from Thursday night to the early hours of Monday morning. We of course counsel them that this is not good practice and over time they report that they are drinking less.’ As well as clients coming in to the clinic the nurses also does around ten home visits each week to ‘high-end celebrities and VIPs’Karen Lovell, 56, paid an extra £1,200 for a full blood test before beginning her vitamin therapy at the Omniya Clinic — and discovered she had B12 deficiency, anaemia and was low in vitamin D.Karen, a divorced mother of two grown-up sons
, with a demanding career as a business development manager and a commute into London from Buckinghamshire, says life had been overwhelming her.‘I leave home at 6.30am and am rarely back before 7.30pm,’ she says. ‘I live the life of someone 20 years younger than me and it was really taking its toll. I’d crawl into bed exhausted every night.’She made numerous visits to her GP complaining of a lack of energy and an inability to sleep, and at one point even thought she was depressed.‘Until last summer I had no energy, I couldn’t drag myself to the gym nor could I face meeting friends for dinner,’ says Karen. ‘I’d also put on more than a stone.‘But since I’ve been having drips every two months, I’ve got bags of energy.‘The drips have given me my life back and although, at £500 a session it’s expensive, I earn the money so I deserve to spend it on making myself feel better.’Robyn Puglia is another convert. She is convinced that vitamin drips helped her overcome a severe episode of coeliac disease — an auto-immune condition that flared up after she was given pasta containing gluten.
Robyn, 34, a nutritionist who lives in London with her physicist husband Stephen, felt ill for three months — exhausted and with inflamed skin — until she booked into IV Boost UK in London.She now visits the clinic twice a month — forking out £150 a time.‘I remembered hearing about vitamin drips in the States studying and, when my symptoms persisted, I decided it was worth a go,’ says Robyn. ‘I felt better after the first treatment. Lorena (pictured) uses the vitamin £500 a month vitamin injections as a way of dealing with her busy life as a working mother-of-two‘I have a good diet but I lead a busy life, so fortnightly visits to the clinic give me an extra boost.‘Why stop something that’s obviously helping me?’ she adds.However, Dr Joshua Berkowitz, a specialist at IV Boost UK, says the real question to ask is whether the benefits to vitamin drips are, in fact, all in the mind.‘Is there any hard science that can prove it works? Not that I have read,’ he says.