Back to Body Basics

By MATTHEW MEYER | Reporter

I’m not particularly fond of needles, but here I am, about to submit myself to two of them.

They come in the form of a Vitamin B-Complex injection and an “Immune Shot,” chock full of Vitamin C.

Why am I here voluntarily, putting on a brave face?

Because when the third day of a nasty cold coincides with an interview with Palisadian Dr. Van Nguyen, you can be persuaded to try new things, even ones that involve needles.

Nguyen is the founder and medical director of Holistica Center on Via De La Paz.

The center offers patients holistic therapies that range from vitamin shots and IV drips to guidelines on healthier eating and living. While Nguyen also practices conventional medicine, she’s most passionate about the potential of these alternative practices.

“‘What does your body need?’ It’s such a simple question,” Nguyen said of her guiding query.

Rather than waiting for illnesses to creep up and then treating them with a menagerie of medications, Nguyen believes the future of healthcare lies in a return to the basics: the physiological “root causes” of sickness and disease.

For many people, she explained, these root causes are nutritional insufficiencies.

That’s where the focus on vitamins comes in.

IV drip treatments first grabbed popular notice as a luxury, is-this-really-happening hangover cure, especially in Las Vegas. But doctors like Nguyen have long understood the preventative health benefits and healing potential that finely tuned vitamin treatment can provide.

Nguyen breaks the drips that her center offers into two categories.

Popular Drips can be administered to anyone on their first visit. They range from the Rejuvenate Drip (this is the famous “Hangover Drip,” but you don’t need to be coming of a night of too much tequila to benefit from its high dose of multivitamins) to the Basic Immune Drip (similar to my shot).

Casual visitors love the drips as a way to recharge. The high dose of nutrients is delivered straight to the body’s cells and tissues—no pit stops in the gut, where you lose lots of the good stuff on the absorption process—and many patients experience increased energy, a lift in their mood, a sped up metabolism and a slew of other benefits to their body’s inner workings.

While the Popular Drips are a fitting introduction, Nguyen is truly galvanized by the potential of her carefully tailored Medical IV Vitamin Protocols.

This second category is reserved for patients who the doctor consults on a regular basis. Nguyen runs blood and nutritional tests and then pours over the lab results with her patient, noting insufficiencies.

She then tailors a set of routine IV sessions, providing the patient with a regular dose of what they need most to treat the misery of a range of ailments, from migraines to fibromyalgia.

Nguyen said that clinical trials—and her patients’ own results—have proven that, with consistency, these protocols lead to significant improvement in the symptoms of many of those suffering from chronic, incurable diseases.

Nguyen said that while the goal isn’t to replace these patients’ need for any particular medication, the patients’ bodies lead the way. Over time, improved symptoms demonstrate which insufficiencies were most detrimental to their health, and which symptoms are improving so much that they can curb or end reliance on a particular drug.

That’s good news in Nguyen’s book. While she’s careful not to cast aspersions on pharmacology wholesale, she believes Western medicine’s “pharmacology over physiology” emphasis is a failure to patients.

She’s also frustrated by the dearth of well-funded, large-scale clinical trials on alternative treatments. She views the state of medical research as a disheartening cycle: Without the allure of a potential patent, she said, there’s nothing to encourage drug companies to invest in proving the practices’ efficacy, and there’s plenty of reasons to oppose their proliferation.

Without large-scale clinical trials, the practices’ potential can’t be fully explored.

Despite these frustrations, Nguyen will keep encouraging others to follow her approach—introducing all options to patients and supplementing conventional care with a heavy dose of holistic medicine.

In the end, it’s about helping patients seize back control of their bodies.

“It’s very empowering,” Nguyen said, eyes aglow. “They take back their physiology. Which is the way it should be. Putting physiology back into medicine.”