Pneumonia vaccine cuts heart attack rate IN HALF....

Today's post: Friday, 10-10-2008

The NewsMax.com Health Alerts email I got on Tuesday, 10-7, earlier this week had that this was the case in a study they reported.

A large hospital-based study found that people who were at high risk of heart attack had only half as many heart attacks in the next 2 years after getting the pneumonia vaccine as people who were not vaccinated.

They also found that this effect seemed to get stronger and the benefit appeared to increase with time after getting the vaccine.

They quote a Dr. Mohammad Madjid from the Texas Heart Institute who hypothesized that the pneumonia vaccine protects against heart attacks because it prevents pneumonia which has apparently been reported to trigger heart attacks. They also said there is evidence that flu and other and kinds of infections are associated with heart attacks.

So, the bottom line is that getting your flu shot each fall and getting the pneumonia vaccine when you get your flu shot this fall if you haven’t already had it not only may keep you from being sick or even dying of the flu or pneumonia, it also may spare you a heart attack.

Many locations that give the flu shot also have the pneumonia vaccine, so you can often get both shots at the same time.

(The pneumonia vaccine prevents something like 90% of the kinds of bacterial pneumonia & is thought to last at least 10 years. So, unlike the flu shot, you only have to get it occasionally.)

You can also do several other things to avoid the flu, pneumonia, and colds.

Here’s a repeat from an earlier post with that info. (Most of the things that prevent pneumonia also help prevent colds and flu.)

From our post on Thursday, 12-20-2007 on how to almost totally prevent pneumonia.:

1. Start by cutting your risk over 60 percent by getting by getting the pneumonia vaccine.

This one is the most important since, it cuts your risk so much. In addition, by adding the other five steps to getting the pneumonia vaccine, you begin to approach 100 percent protection.

If your body reacts properly to it, you actually get closer to 85 to 90 percent protection from the vaccine alone. But some of the people over 60 who need the protection most have less response to it.

The clear implication is that the younger you are when you get your first shot, the better your protection is likely to be.

So, if you haven’t gotten yours yet, our suggestion is to get it soon !!

If your holiday schedule gives you some extra time off, get it before the end of the year. And, if your holiday schedule is already over-filled, get it by mid-January for sure.

Since it takes 2 or 3 weeks after you get it to protect you, you want to have that protection BEFORE you get the flu or are exposed to pneumonia. So, again, soon is best.

2. You tend to get fewer infections of all kinds if you get enough vitamin C. It apparently acts as an immune system booster. So if you get between 500 mg & 2,000 mg a day, your pneumonia vaccine is more likely to work. And, your chances of getting a strain of pneumonia that the vaccine doesn’t cover, also drop.

Oranges, bananas, berries, kiwi fruit, & other fruits also have many other valuable micronutrients besides vitamin C, so eating many whole fruits or drinking some real fruit juice each week is protective. They also have fiber which has many other health benefits. Lastly, they taste good !!

I personally eat two or three servings of fruit a day & drink grape juice. AND I take 1,050 mg of vitamin C each day. (My vitamin C supplement has 500; my B Complex Plus C Stress Formula from Solgar has 500; & my multivitamin- mineral tablet has 50.)

Since my vitamin C from what I eat & drink is less than 500 mg a day, I think taking this extra vitamin C is important.

3. Take 2,000 iu a day of vitamin D. Recent studies show that getting enough vitamin D is even more effective at boosting your immune system than almost anything else you can do. There is even some evidence enough vitamin D boosts your immune system so well it prevents many cancers.

It’s also been shown to help prevent getting tuberculosis, another very nasty lung disease.

Because most of us no longer work outside all day; & it’s now winter time, very few of us get enough vitamin D from sun exposure this time of year. Many of us work inside all day even in the summer now as well.

So recent research has shown that taking this much vitamin D is quite important.

The even better news is that vitamin D in the 1,000 iu per capsule size is really
inexpensive.

Since I learned this, I’ve taken more than 2,000 iu a day of vitamin D myself.

So if you get take 2,000 iu of vitamin D a day, your pneumonia vaccine is much more likely to work. And, your chances of getting a strain of pneumonia that the vaccine doesn’t cover, also drop dramatically.

4. And, there’s even more protection from pneumonia available.

Thanks to an email from Dr Al Sears that I got today, I found out that people who take enough of the mineral zinc, about 30 to 50 mg a day total, are both much less likely to get pneumonia AND to recover from it easily if they do still get it.

To put it mildly, very few of the people who get enough zinc die from getting pneumonia. The data Dr Sears found had that info also.

Even better, taking that amount of zinc also tends to raise your blood level of the protective HDL cholesterol. Does it work? Yes, the data do show a lower rate of heart attack in people who get enough zinc.

This effect may also be in part because getting that much zinc each day helps your body process sugars properly instead of you getting type II diabetes which sharply increases your heart attack risk.

Because taking that much zinc tends to lower high blood pressure, that may also help create the heart attack protection it provides.

And, there’s even more benefits to taking that much zinc. It helps prevent prostate problems & prostate cancer. (I suspect it may also help prevent breast & ovarian cancers in women as well.)

Important Notes: Unless you react badly to copper, it’s important in order to not have too little to take 2 or 3 mg a day of copper when you take this much zinc. Also, more zinc is NOT better, taking much more than 50 mg a day for more than a couple of days tends to REVERSE the effect. So do NOT do that.

5 & 6. Pneumonia is often a secondary infection that you get after coming down with a bad cold or the flu.

So, # 5. is to always get your flu shot.

That way you don’t get cases of the flu that might have triggered pneumonia. And, if you do get the flu, the chances are it will be mild enough, it won’t be able to trigger pneumonia.

But what if you do get the flu or a bad cold anyway?

That’s where # 6. comes in to protect you.

6. If you do get the flu or a bad cold, eat spicy hot foods or add some red cayenne pepper to your chicken soup every day that you are sick. Studies show this prevents bronchitis & excessive chest congestion.

When you eat the Chinese dishes like, Mongolian Beef or Kung Pao Chicken or you eat a spicy hot Mexican food or salsa, you break into a bit of a sweat on your forehead & your nose runs slightly.

That effect also happens in your lungs so you don’t get the build up of excess mucus to get infected.

You feel better when you prevent that. But even better, since you prevent it, there’s often not enough build up for bacterial pneumonia to grow well. So you are much less likely to get it.

Drinking a few extra glasses of water each day you are sick also helps to do this. It’s one of the reasons doctors say to do that. But few doctors explain how incredibly important & protective it is to do that.

Bottom line, if you take all these 6 steps, your chances of getting pneumonia approach zero. And, your chances of dying from it drop even more.

Most of them are pretty easy. Why not do them all?