Intravenous Therapies
At Webster Family Physicians, we are pleased to offer the following intravenous treatments:
Chelation Therapy
In our polluted world, the human body is constantly exposed to many potentially harmful substances. Heavy metals like lead, mercury, aluminum and cadmium, can be harmful when they build up in the body above safe levels and contribute to chronic ill health. Health problems associated with heavy metal toxicity are low immunity, chronic candidiasis or yeast infection, cognitive difficulties, chronic fatigue and cardiovascular disease. Once heavy metals enter the human body, they are stored in a variety of tissues, like fat, bone, brain, liver, heart muscle and kidney, and remain there for decades. At this point, they often no longer show up as elevated blood levels. Chelation therapy uses special medicines to draw the harmful substances out of the tissues and allows them to be excreted through the kidneys. Measuring urinary excretion before and after a chelation treatment shows the total body burden of heavy metals stored away in the various tissues. Chelating agents most commonly used are EDTA (Ethylene Diamine Tetraacetic Acid), DMPS (2,3,-Dimercapto-1-Propanesulfonic Acid) and DMSA (Dimercaptosuccinic Acid). Patients need to receive supportive nutritional supplementation during a course of chelation treatment.
Dr. Wessling is certified in Chelation therapy by the American College for Advancement in Medicine.
Intravenous Vitamin C
Over the last decades, intravenous Vitamin C, or ascorbic acid, has become increasingly recognized as a useful tool to help cancer patients at various stages of their illness. Vitamin C, while generally beneficial to the body and its tissues as a whole, becomes toxic specifically to cancer cells. Cancer cells are known to have a special attraction for glucose, which it accumulates in higher concentration that the surrounding tissues. This effect is used during PET scan imaging which uses radioactively tagged glucose to show the extent to which a cancer has spread. Vitamin C follows the same path as glucose into the cancer cell and will disrupt cell growth there if offered in high enough concentrations in the surrounding fluids. The high levels required for this can only be reached through intravenous, but not oral administration.
In administering intravenous Vitamin C, our office follows the protocols established by the Riordan Clinic in Wichita, Kansas and Jeanne Drisko, M.D. at University of Kansas Medical Center. The usual frequency of treatments is twice weekly. Many studies have confirmed that intravenous Vitamin C, whether given alone or in combination with surgery, radiation or chemotherapy, can slow cancer growth while affording a better quality of life with lessened disease symptoms like pain or weakness, and reduced medication side effects. Our experience has been that cancer patients who receive intravenous Vitamin C treatments can lead richer and fuller lives because of it.
Nutritional IVs
We offer nutritional IVs which supply the added dose of Vitamins C, B1, B2, B5 and B6, as well as Calcium and Magnesium that are needed to assist recovery in acute and chronic illnesses.