Vaccines are used to boost your immune system and prevent serious, life-threatening diseases. They expose you to a very small, safe amount of viruses or bacteria that have been weakened or killed. Vaccines "teach" your body how to defend itself when germs, such as viruses or bacteria, invade it. Your immune system then learns to recognize and attack the infection if you are exposed to it later in life. As a result, you will not become ill, or you may have a milder infection. This is a natural way to deal with infectious diseases.
Unless a person's immune system is weakened, it is unlikely that a vaccine will give the person the infection. Persons with weakened immune systems should not receive these live vaccines. In addition, to avoid harm to the baby, pregnant women should not receive any of these vaccines. The health care provider can tell you the right time to get these vaccines.
There are four types of vaccines:
Why we need vaccines
For a few weeks after birth, babies have some protection from germs that cause diseases. This protection is passed from their mothers through the placenta before birth. After a short period, this natural protection goes away.
Vaccines help protect against many diseases that used to be much more common. Examples include tetanus, diphtheria, mumps, measles, pertussis (whooping cough), meningitis and polio. Many of these infections can cause serious or life-threatening illnesses and may lead to lifelong health problems. Because of vaccines, many of these illnesses are now rare. Vaccination proponents believe that immunization is modern medicine’s greatest achievement.
Controversy over safety
Some people worry that vaccines are not safe and may be harmful, especially for children. They may ask their health care provider to wait or even choose not to have the vaccine. These are concerned parents and professionals who believe there are some flaws with both the theory and the application of the vaccine policy. They claim that vaccines are dangerous and may not want to comply with the government’s policy of vaccinating all children.
The goal of the governmental vaccination policy is 100 percent compliance for vaccinations for children. Today every child is expected to be inoculated with about 30 vaccines by the age of 18 months. By age five, children of compliant parents have been given up to 38 shots.
The American Academy of Pediatrics, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Institute of Medicine all conclude that the benefits of vaccines outweigh their risks. Allergic reactions are rare and are usually to some component of the vaccine, but as long as there is a single death or an incident of contracting the disease being immunized for, the controversy will rage on.
Immunization of any type is a personal decision. Regardless of that decision, the desire to remain healthy and disease-free is universal and unanimous. Living mindfully by eating nutritious food, drinking clean water and taking the appropriate dietary supplements is not only a matter of common sense, but also necessary to maintain health.
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