[Issue]IVNT(Intravenous Nutrition Therapy) for Inner Beauty III

Application of the IVNT to aesthetic medicine has brought about alpha-lipoic acid injection, also known as ‘Cinderella injection’, and glutathione injection, nicknamed ‘white jade injection’. The IVNT has recently been recognized for its potential benefit as an aesthetic treatment and became popular among patients and doctors. However, controversy exists over its efficacy due to lack of clinical data. A specialist who uses IVNT frequently shares his experience of applying the intravenous injection to aesthetic medicine.

Dr. Se-hwan Choi, President of Korean Medical Society for Intravenous Nutrition Therapy

Interview

The Korean Medical Society for Intravenous Nutrition Therapy (www.kmint.org), established in March, 2014, has received much attention from the academia and grown rapidly during the 2 years of its existence. The Society has organized three conferences and two intensive courses so far and continue to strive toward establishing correct use of the IVNT. The employee training provided as part of the intensive course has gained favorable reviews.

Dr. Se-hwan Choi, President of Korean Medical Society for Intravenous Nutrition Therapy (Seoul St. Mary’s Neurosurgery) describes IVNT as “a treatment that accurately and rapidly provides customized nutrition such as vitamins, antioxidatns, nutrients and minerals, etc. to the cells for each patient’s health conditions and corrects the nutritional imbalance.”

“The biochemical imbalance of the body causes cellular dysfunction and even serious diseases. Functional medicine not only improves the symptoms of the disease but helps restore the natural healing ability by identifying fundamental causes and mechanisms. This is the philosophy the Korean Medical Society for Intravenous Nutrition Therapy is based on.”

Korean Medical Society for Intravenous Nutrition Therapy began as a small academic club that shared research efforts with Japan’s infusion therapy society. Doctors who saw in their practice that infusing nutrients directly into blood vessels more effectively delivers necessary nutrition to cells than oral intake came together and formed the academic conference.

“The fact that the Society grew from a small club to a large academic association shows that the paradigm of modern medicine is shifting toward functional medicine.”

Dr. Choi says the Korean Medical Society for Intravenous Nutrition Therapy will work toward enabling scientific research of IVNT.

“A large part of the IVNT consists of subjective impressions of the doctor and patient. This is why the controversy over its efficacy continues. Extensive research on Vitamin C is being done. As various concoctions of ingredients are used in IVNT, clinical research has to consider too many factors. Biochemical conditions differ widely among patients, which also complicates scientific research. We believe that our role is to overcome these difficulties and conduct a well-designed clinical study on IVNT. We intend to actively support research efforts of our members.”

The Korean Medical Society for Intravenous Nutrition Therapy is also working towards establishing treatment protocols for the IVNT.

“Prescriptions of the IVNT vary greatly depending on the doctor’s knowhow and patient conditions and it is difficult to establish a standard protocol. However, we are working on establishing the most basic concoction recipes to provide guidance to our members.”