I surrender to you, flu shot

By Alex P. Vidal

“Misinformation or distrust of vaccines can be like a contagion that can spread as fast as measles.”—Theresa Tam

AT past 11 o’clock in the morning on December 26, I finally yielded to the much-heralded flu shot (Influenza Virus Vaccine)—after two cancellations in November and in the first week of December and a repeated hedging and temporizing.

The turok or tuslok (pricking) ceremony, which lasted for six seconds, occurred at the Walgreens in Elmhurst, Queens.

Albert, the pharmacist/nurse, injected Fluarix PF 2023-24 0.5ML into my left muscle.

There will be no refills, according to my RX#2462176-01616.

My receipt showed I was supposed to pay a “retail price” of $58.99 (P3,250) but my insurance, EmblemHealth, “saved you.”

A 2021 study from researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found that adults who got vaccinated were 26 percent less likely to be admitted to the intensive care unit and 31 percent less likely to die from the flu compared to those who were unvaccinated. There seems to be protection from illness even when vaccines aren’t perfectly matched to the strain of flu virus circulating (which happens because the shot is formulated months in advance).

Here are four unexpected ways a flu vaccine can benefit the body and the brain, according to AARP’s Beth Howard.

1. A boost for the brain? Previous research has suggested that flu vaccines may protect the brain from dementia, and an August 2022 study from the McGovern Medical School at UTHealth in Houston makes the case even stronger.

This study, published in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease, compared more than 47,000 people age 65 and older who were vaccinated against flu to a similar group of nearly 80,000 people who were not vaccinated. The findings: Those who got a flu shot were 40 percent less likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease over a four-year period.

-o0o-

“We weren’t actually expecting it to be that high,” says study coauthor Avram S. Bukhbinder, M.D., now a neurologist at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.

Bukhbinder has several theories for the vaccination’s potential effects on the brain. Perhaps by preventing the flu, the shot quells inflammation that can lead to harmful brain changes.

His most intriguing hypothesis is that vaccines alter the brain’s overall defenses.

2. The shot is linked to a stronger heart. A history of heart disease or a stroke can make flu more likely and more dangerous. In addition, flu can be a trigger for heart attacks and strokes in people at high risk for them.

According to a 2018 Canadian study, people who got the flu were six times more likely to have a heart attack within a week of getting the diagnosis. And Columbia University researchers saw a significant jump in strokes in the month after flu cases, according to July 2022 research published in the American Heart Association’s journal Stroke.

A flu shot can also spare you the potential heart harms. A 2022 study led by the University of Toronto that incorporated six previous studies covering more than 9,000 patients showed that people who received a flu vaccine had a 34 percent lower risk of a major cardiovascular event in the 12 months following vaccination. Higher-risk vaccinated individuals with acute coronary syndrome—a group of conditions that abruptly stop blood flow to the heart—had a 45 percent risk reduction of major cardiovascular event, and a 56 percent reduced risk of dying from heart disease in the year after they got the shot, according to the findings, which appear in JAMA Network Open.

3. It could curb complications from other chronic conditions. Like heart disease, some chronic health conditions make you more prone to flu and its harmful effects. For people with diabetes or chronic lung diseases, like chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), an annual flu shot is one of the best ways to avoid aggravating these underlying health problems.

-o0o-

Evidence comes from researchers at the University of Minnesota Medical School and the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Minneapolis who followed people age 65 and older in a large health plan who had respiratory diseases over three flu seasons. Their findings, published in Annals of Internal Medicine, show that patients who got vaccinated were 52 percent less likely to be hospitalized for pneumonia or flu and 70 percent less likely to die from these diseases during that period.

Similarly, a UK study showed that when people with diabetes got the jab, it reduced their chances of being hospitalized by almost 80 percent during the two flu seasons that were studied.

4. It may make for a longer life. The flu shot might even increase your life span. The evidence: In a recent study out of Toronto, researchers looked at more than 54,000 people age 65 and older who had been tested for the flu between 2010 and 2016. They found that those who received the flu shot were less likely to die from any cause over the multiyear period.

“In large databases from Ontario, we found that influenza vaccines may reduce the chances of older adults dying by as much as 34 percent,” says study author Jeff Kwong, M.D., associate director of the Centre for Vaccine Preventable Diseases at the University of Toronto.

Flu shots likely protect older adults from dying simply by preventing the infection in the first place and by preventing those who do get infected from getting very sick from the virus, Kwong says.

-o0o-

SAVING OUR PLANET. Let’s get behind glass by not throwing away glass jars–let’s use them TO STORE FOOD in our home and to keep things airtight. Let’s recycle both the glass jars and the metal lids when we can no longer use them.

A BETTER BEDTIME. Let’s resolve to help our kid clock more quality snooze time. It could benefit our child’s mood in a big way: In a recent Columbia University Medical Center study, teenagers whose parents let them stay up until midnight or later were 24 percent more likely to be depressed and 20 percent more likely to have suicidal thoughts than kids who hit the sack at 10 P.M. or earlier.

TIP-OFF TO A THREAT. If a stranger stops us on the street, let’s watch his feet: Normal–his torso points toward us, but his feet angle the way he’d been walking. Aggressive–he faces us dead-on, with one foot behind the other–a fighter’s stance. Source: “What everybody is saying” author Joe Navarro.

(The author, who is now based in New York City, used to be the editor of two daily newspapers in Iloilo.—Ed)