Why get flu & pneumonia vaccines....

Today's Post: Monday, 12-5-2011

One of the health information emails I get had a question from another reader.

It seems that his employer asked that all employees get the flu shot. He asked if the doctor who writes that newsletter recommended he do so.

That doctor said no he did not.

1. He said that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention claims for deaths from getting the flu each year were about ten to one or more overstated.

Based on what he said, it may be that for people who have no chronic health conditions and don’t get something else when they are sick with the flu, he may be correct.

I thought that was a very weak reason indeed. Even he acknowledged that having the flu does have a death rate although a small one. I prefer to avoid such things when I can!

You may have type 2 diabetes and not know it yet or you might come down with the flu and a bad cold or pneumonia at the same time. If so, your risk would be a lot higher if you got the flu.

He also apparently is OK with people getting horribly sick, feeling horrible, and maybe missing work for several days to a week or more. I prefer to avoid such things when I can!

So his first reason I thought was far too weak to back his recommendation. In fact, this part of his answer to me SUPPORTS getting the flu shot!

2. He said that some flu vaccines have mercury in them. That reason has more merit.

However, apparently the amount of mercury in one flu shot is quite small and once a year is a very small multiplier.

The amount of mercury some people get from ingesting high fructose corn syrup over 20 times every week or get from eating too much tuna per month that is high in mercury IS dangerous.

Except for people with the gene to not get rid of mercury, however, it may well not be a problem to get this exposure once a year from your flu shot.

But there is better news. You can get the flu shot at many locations. And, at some of them, the vaccine comes in a single use container. Our HMO had those this year. And, there is no mercury I found out in the single use container.

3. But his strongest argument was that he stated that “flu vaccine is not very effective.”
That would be a problem if it was true.

However, this one is not quite accurate which considerably weakens his case against getting a flu shot.

The average person getting one flu shot for the first time I read recently will escape 57% of the risk of getting the flu.

Given how horrible the flu is to have, escaping over half the risk sounds great to me!

But, besides that, there are two ways to make the flu shot more effective.

He suggests getting an optimum amount of vitamin D3 to make getting the flu less likely without the shot. That much D3 we now know does make your immune system much more effective. So he is correct that by itself taking enough D3 will help prevent the flu.

But getting enough D3 makes the vaccine more effective too!

If two or three weeks or more before you get your flu shot, you begin taking that much D3, the flu shot will give you closer to 60 to 95% protection!

To do this you need to take at least 2,000 iu a day of vitamin D3 and 4,000 to 8,000 iu is better some research suggests, for you in many ways and likely more effective.

Secondly, flu vaccine immunity does drop off somewhat unless it’s renewed. But if you are exposed to a strain not in this year’s shot but which WAS in the flu shot last year or the year before AND you get the flu shot every year, you have a shot at escaping that flu even if it wasn’t in this year’s shot. Or you may get a mild case instead of a bad case of that flu.

To me, this set of things completely destroys his best argument to pass on getting the flu shot.

Take vitamin D3 each day and get the flu shot each year and you WILL escape cases of the flu you otherwise would not. I think that’s effective enough to be worth doing.

5. Then there is the reason his employer wants people to get the flu shot. This doctor said nothing about that.

Sure, it benefits the employer if their employees are sick or absent less time from getting the flu.

But that’s not all.

If you get the flu shot and take vitamin D3, you not only will avoid the flu; but some of your coworkers who would have caught it from you will avoid it too.

And, the reverse is true. If your co-workers get the flu shot and escape it, they may very well avoid giving it to you!

6. One of the ways the flu can kill you is if you get pneumonia when the flu has weakened your immune system. And, regardless of how you get it, pneumonia has a higher death rate than the flu.

But there’s excellent news. You can get the pneumonia vaccine too.

Research found that for people who get enough vitamin D3 the pneumonia vaccine is effective. Better yet, you only need to get it about once each ten years.

To me that’s a lot of protection for not very much effort.

So, I completely disagree with this doctor about flu vaccines although I like some of his other work.

For the reasons I’ve described here, I believe in getting the flu shot each year as early in the season as I can. I take 8200 iu a day now of vitamin D3. And, I’ve had my pneumonia vaccine and will renew it once it has been 7 or 8 years.

If you hate having your life threatened and being sick as much as I do, consider doing the same!