Yes, so save that for the really necessary cases

Even if the person has nausea, they can drink a bit at a time

> Second, she says, is to resist the temptation to drink at a normal rate—let alone chugging the stuff. An ounce at a time every few minutes decreases the odds that the liquid will, um, return from whence it came.

> Even if the person has nausea, they can drink a bit at a time.

Not necessarily. Sometimes the nausea is so severe that even a teaspoon of water gets sent back the way it came in… a most unpleasant feeling when the body refuses to take anything and ends up vomiting fluids beyond the stomach—e.g. bile.

Yes, my phrase is missing "in some cases"

Yes, that is precisely what the article says: use the cheaper less invasive treatment if you can, save the IV bag for when you can’t

That is done already.

Thanks to some bad luck my father has been in the hospital more than half a dozen times in the last couple of years. He has always been given IV fluids. This week he went in for pneumonia, just coughing and shortness of breath, and they put him on an IV. I never thought twice about it until today.

Having a needle in your arm for hours is not pleasant. My dad doesn't heal so quickly these days, so he's going to have bruising and tenderness for a week where they put the needle in. Watching my dad go through this, and my girlfriend's brother who has mental disabilities a couple of years ago, and now realizing it would have been a lot more comfortable for them if they'd just let them sip on some Gatorade seriously pisses me off.

Yup, and those who are unconscious.

And babies.

And hung-over medical personnel..

> And hung-over medical personnel

You're being down-voted, but I know a number of military medics and hospital employees who do this after heavy drinking. Seems to work like a charm.

When I was in the army we did this regularly. My barracks roommate was our platoon medic and would stockpile as many IV bags as he could without causing suspicion. Anytime we had a late night of heavy drinking, before morning PT he’d hook up a bag and 20 minutes later we’d be feeling great and good to go,.

Wasn't there a scene in Hangover (the movie) where this was offered as service in Las Vegas?

There appears to be a scene in reality where someone is doing this, too: https://www.theivdoc.com/ ("Food Poisoning Relief")

The salts work great for normal hangovers though.

It's offered as a service in Denver - IIRC the ads are focused on helping you feel better when you're low on energy or whatever, but I know people who have gone for hangovers.

Which makes me always wonder: IV carries always the risk of thrombosis so I'd expect especially medical personnel staying away from it. But maybe they take also good dose of Warfarin with it...

IVs don't really carry a meaningful risk of systemic thrombosis, so taking warfarin would not put you in a good place on the cost/benefit axis.

Good friend of mine was a psych nurse. Can confirm from his stories.

...who have nausea.

I can confirm. When I had food poisoning, I couldn’t drink any amount of water without vomiting immediately after. After 8 hours, I went to the ER and got 2 IV bags, and immediately stopped throwing up.