by Joseph Mercola
As we approach the darkest and shortest days of the year, this article by Dr. Joseph Mercola is noteworthy:
Dr. Donald Miller, author of the very popular User Friendly Vaccination Schedule, offers superb advice when he says to avoid the flu shot and take vitamin D instead. Getting appropriate amounts of sunshine, or taking vitamin D supplements when you can’t get healthy amounts of sun exposure, is one of my key preventive strategies against colds and the flu, as the vitamin has such a strengthening effect on your immune system.
Less than optimal vitamin D levels significantly impair your immune response and make you far more susceptible to contracting colds, influenza and other respiratory infections.
Dr. John Cannell and his colleagues hypothesize that influenza is merely a symptom of vitamin D deficiency. Their theory was further proven in a recent Virology Journal where researchers suggest that influenza epidemics are a result of a dormant disease, which becomes active in response to vitamin D deficiency. This makes perfect sense considering that flu season in the United States occurs in the winter when it is hard for most people to get adequate sunlight to produce vitamin D.
Unfortunately, rather than urge people to get adequate sun exposure or take a high-quality vitamin D supplement, which costs about $22 a year, health officials suggest preventing the flu with what is largely an ineffective and dangerous shot.
There is a lot of deception and misinformation going around when it comes to the flu and flu shots, and I’d like to set some records straight here.
Very Few Americans Actually Die From the Flu
U.S. public health officials are moving full-speed ahead with their national campaign to promote and publicize the flu shot. If you listen to the hype, it sounds as though every man, woman and child should hurry out to the nearest pharmacy or health clinic and demand to be vaccinated against this “deadly” health epidemic.
Please understand that it is just that: HYPE. The truth is, the flu can be deadly, but most of the time it is not.
Health officials like to alarm you by saying that 36,000 people die from the flu every year. This is simply not true. Reports from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that only 1,138 deaths are caused by the flu each year. The other 34,000-plus are caused by pneumonic and cardiovascular deaths.
But let’s say, for argument’s sake, that you’re thinking of getting the flu shot because you want to save yourself the hassle of being sick for a week or two. Well, the flu shot probably won’t help you there either.
New Studies Show the Flu Shot Does Not Work
A recent study published in the October issue of the Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine finds that vaccinating young children against the flu had no impact on flu-related hospitalizations or doctor visits during two recent flu seasons. Another large-scale, systematic review of 51 studies, published in the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews in 2006, also finds no evidence the flu vaccine is any more effective for children than a placebo.
Additionally, no studies conclusively prove that flu shots prevent flu-related deaths among the elderly, even though this is one of the key groups to which the shots are pushed.
Even if the flu vaccine does work, you should know that it is simply an educated guessing game as to whether or not this year’s vaccine will protect against the strains in your area. The flu virus mutates so rapidly that the vaccine must be updated every year to include the new, most common strains. Yet, sometimes scientists are way off.
There have been several examples in past years of government health officials choosing the incorrect influenza strains for that year’s vaccine. In 2004, the National Vaccine Information Center described how CDC officials told everyone to line up for a flu shot that didn't even contain the influenza strain causing most of the flu that year.
As the CDC states:
“In some years when vaccine and circulating strains were not well-matched, no vaccine effectiveness can be demonstrated in some studies, even in healthy adults. It is not possible in advance of the influenza season to predict how well the vaccine and circulating strains will be matched and how that match may affect the degree of vaccine effectiveness.”
Let’s sum things up. When you get the flu shot, it may or may not protect you against the flu. Further, recent studies suggest the shot is largely ineffective for two of the key populations to which it’s pushed: children and the elderly.
Flu Shot Additives are Well-Known Toxins
What you can be sure of when you get a flu shot is that you’ll be injected with a laundry list of hazardous ingredients, which are included as additives to the vaccines.
Two-thirds of the vaccines made for the current flu season contain full-dose thimerosal, which is 49 percent mercury by weight, according to Miller. Mercury is a neurotoxin with toxicity level 1,000 times that of lead.
Still, each flu shot contains 25 micrograms of mercury, which amounts to a mercury content of 50,000 parts per billion — 250 times more than the Environmental Protection Agency’s safety limit.
Miller also points out other substances in flu shots, all of which are known to be harmful to health — especially a child’s health:
• Formaldehyde, a known cancer-causing agent, is used to inactivate the virus.
• Aluminum, added to promote an antibody response, is a neurotoxin that may play a role in Alzheimer’s disease.
• Triton X-100 (a detergent)
• Polysorbate 80
• Carbolic acid
• Ethylene glycol (antifreeze)
• Gelatin
• Various antibiotics, such as neomycin, streptomycin and gentamicin, which can cause allergic reactions.
Why expose yourself or your child to these toxins to take a flu shot that likely doesn’t even work, especially when there is such a better option?
The Natural Way to Prevent and Treat the Flu
One of the absolute best ways to prevent the flu is simply to optimize your vitamin D levels. Ideally you would do this by getting out in the sun, but for most of you reading this it is “vitamin D winter,” which means there simply isn’t enough sunshine to make significant amounts of the vitamin. So, you will need to use a safe tanning bed or take oral supplements.
Although supplements are clearly inferior to sunlight or safe tanning beds, I am becoming more convinced of the value of vitamin D supplements, as they are potentially less toxic than my initial impression, and they are certainly more convenient and less expensive than a tanning bed.
In order to prevent the flu, children need 2,000 IU a day of vitamin D, while adults need anywhere between 4,000 to 5,000 IU per day. The key is to make sure you monitor your vitamin D levels by blood testing — making sure your levels are therapeutic and not toxic.
Besides tanning beds and Vitamin D supplements, fish oil is a good source of vitamin D. A typical recommended daily dose of one tablespoon of cod liver oil contains nearly 1,400 IU of vitamin D.
It will be very rare for you to come down with the flu if you’re taking the vitamin D doses I recommended above, but if you do happen to contract the flu, you can use vitamin D to treat it as well.
The therapeutic dose of vitamin D is 2,000 units per kilogram of body weight. One pound is equal to 0.45 kilograms. The dose is taken once a day for three days. This could be a very large dose if you are very heavy — as high as 200,000 to 300,000 units per day.
This is the dose that Dr. John Cannell, founder of the Vitamin D Council, has been using very successfully for a number of years. If you start this program early in the illness, it should be able to completely wipe out the flu in short order.
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© Copyright 2008 Dr. Joseph Mercola. All rights reserved. Manufactured from 100 percent recycled electrons. Website: www.mercola.com
Disclaimer: The entire contents of this article are based upon the opinions of Dr. Joseph Mercola, unless otherwise noted. The information in this article is not intended to replace a one-on-one relationship with a qualified health care professional and is not intended as medical advice. It is intended as a sharing of knowledge and information from the research and experience of Dr. Mercola and his community. Dr. Mercola encourages you to make your own health care decisions based upon your research and in partnership with a qualified health care professional.
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