In the 1960s, a Baltimore physician named John Myers began giving patients a slow push of vitamins and minerals through a vein. He treated people this way for roughly two decades and never published his formula. After he died in 1984, another physician reconstructed it from patient records, adjusted the ratios, and named it after him.
Six decades later, the Myers cocktail is still the most widely used IV nutrient formula in the country — and the question we hear most often at our Scottsdale clinic is the simplest one. What's actually in it?
Fair question. Here's the ingredient list, the evidence behind it, and where it stops.
The Five Components, and What Each One Is Doing
The formula is short. That's part of its staying power — every ingredient has a specific job.
Magnesium. The workhorse. Magnesium relaxes smooth muscle, which is why the original clinical reports centered on migraines, muscle spasm, and asthma. It's also the ingredient you'll feel: a warm flush spreading through the chest as it goes in. That sensation is normal and fades within a minute or two if the drip is slowed.
Calcium. Paired deliberately with magnesium. The two minerals work as opposing partners in muscle contraction and relaxation, and the formula keeps them in balance rather than pushing one in isolation.
B-complex (B1, B2, B3, B5, B6). These are enzymatic cofactors — the molecules your body needs to convert carbohydrates into usable fuel. They're also the ingredient responsible for the odd metallic or vitamin-like taste people notice mid-infusion. Harmless, and a reliable sign the drip is flowing.
B12. Supports nerve function and red blood cell formation. Deficiency is common in vegetarians, adults over 50, and anyone on long-term metformin or acid-reducing medication.
Vitamin C. Included at a moderate dose here — not the high-dose oncology protocols you may have read about, which are a different treatment entirely.
Worth noting what isn't in it. A classic Myers cocktail contains no NAD+ and no glutathione. Those are separate additions with their own protocols, and we've covered both in depth — NAD+ IV therapy and glutathione IV therapy — if that's what brought you here.
What the Research Actually Supports
The foundational paper is Alan Gaby's 2002 review, Intravenous nutrient therapy: the Myers' cocktail, which laid out the rationale and documented clinical experience across asthma, migraine, fatigue, and fibromyalgia. It's the reference nearly every clinic cites.
It's also worth reading past the headline. A later placebo-controlled pilot study in fibromyalgia patients found that most participants improved compared with where they started — but the improvement wasn't statistically greater than placebo. That's an honest result, and we'd rather tell you about it than not.
Cleveland Clinic's functional medicine team makes a similar point about IV vitamin therapy generally: the mechanistic logic is sound, and large high-quality human trials are still thin on the ground.
So here's our position. A Myers cocktail is a well-tolerated way to replete nutrients in people who are genuinely depleted. It is not a treatment for disease, and anyone promising you it cures one is overselling. Where it earns its place is in the gap between "my labs are technically fine" and "I don't absorb what I swallow."
Who Tends to Benefit Most
The pattern isn't who feels worst. It's who has the hardest time getting nutrients in through the front door.
People with malabsorption — celiac disease, Crohn's, ulcerative colitis, or a history of bariatric surgery
Migraine-prone patients, where the magnesium component has the most clinical history behind it
Adults on medications that deplete specific nutrients: metformin, proton pump inhibitors, long-term diuretics
Anyone recovering from a viral illness who hasn't eaten properly in a week
Athletes deep in a heavy training block, where dietary intake lags behind output
Patients beginning a broader protocol who want a baseline repletion drip before layering in hyperbaric oxygen or PEMF
What to Do Before You Book
A Myers cocktail works best when it's aimed at something. A few things worth sorting out first:
Ask for RBC magnesium rather than serum magnesium. Serum levels stay normal until deficiency is advanced, which makes them a poor screening tool
Check B12 alongside methylmalonic acid. B12 alone can read normal while functional deficiency is already present
Get ferritin measured, not just hemoglobin — iron stores empty long before anemia shows up on a standard panel
Tell us about kidney disease, heart block, or any history of low blood pressure. Magnesium is the ingredient we adjust around all three
If you already know you'll want this regularly, our membership options work out considerably better than paying per visit
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: What is a Myers cocktail IV?
It's a specific intravenous formula of magnesium, calcium, B-complex vitamins, B12, and vitamin C, developed by Dr. John Myers and refined after his death. Unlike a custom drip built around your individual labs, the Myers cocktail is a defined recipe with decades of clinical use behind it.
Q: How often should you get a Myers cocktail?
For an acute situation — a migraine pattern, recovery from illness — weekly for four to six weeks is a common starting point. For general maintenance, most patients settle into once or twice a month. Frequency should come down as your underlying labs improve, not stay fixed forever.
Q: How long does a Myers cocktail last?
The infusion itself runs 30 to 60 minutes in our treatment rooms. As for effects, most people describe two to five days of steadier energy and, for migraine sufferers, a longer stretch between episodes. If you feel nothing at all after two or three sessions, that's useful information — it usually means depletion wasn't the problem, and we look elsewhere.
Start With What Your Body Is Actually Missing
The Myers cocktail has lasted sixty years because it's simple, well tolerated, and aimed at a real problem: nutrients that don't make it in through diet alone. It's not magic, and we won't pitch it that way.
At One Source Vitality in North Scottsdale, we look at your labs and your history before we recommend any formula — including this one. Sometimes a Myers cocktail is exactly right. Sometimes a customized IV drip makes more sense. We'll tell you which.
Ready to find out what you're actually short on? Schedule your visit today.