And now, a word about the flu shot

OK, as promised, I’m going to share some thoughts on the flu vaccine. Since we live in a society that is obsessed with lists, I’m going to present my ideas in a “top five” format.

Without further ado, here are the top five reasons that patients give me for not getting the flu vaccine, and my response to them:

1) “I’ve gotten the flu shot before”

The flu virus is different every year and as a result each year a new flu vaccine comes out. If you haven’t had this year’s flu vaccine, you are not protected.

2) “I don’t want the flu shot because it gives you the flu”

Getting the flu vaccine WILL NOT give you the flu. Any vaccine can make you feel a bit under the weather for a day or two as your body reacts to the substances being injected, but this is not the same as having the flu. It is much better to have a sore arm and feel a bit sluggish for one day than it is to have the flu for a week or two.

3) “I’ve never had the flu before.”

This may be true, but it is of no help in predicting whether or not you will get the flu this year. If I had a dollar for every person who turned down the flu shot for this reason only to come back to me a few weeks later with a bad case of the flu, I’d finally be able to pay off all of my loans from medical school.

4) “The flu shot doesn’t even guarantee you won’t get the flu”

This is true. Some people who get the shot still get the flu, but they usually get a much milder version of it.

5) “I don’t believe in taking medicine unless you really need it.”

I agree with this statement. I’m a big believer in using diet, exercise, and common sense to stay healthy, and sparing medication only for people who really can’t get by without it. A lot of our CHRONIC diseases, such as diabetes and high blood pressure, are due to our modern diets and modern lifestyles and can be very effectively treated without medication for many people.

That said, the main way that people died, BY FAR, in pre-modern times was from infections of various sorts — including the flu. The age of modern sanitation, vaccines, and antibiotics has ushered in life expectancies that were unimaginable even a hundred years ago. Ignoring modern medicine’s advances in preventing and treating infections just because these remedies are not “natural” is throwing out the proverbial baby with the bathwater. Vaccines are one of modern medicine’s greatest triumphs, and despite the conspiracy theories one will find about them in the fever-swamps of the internet, they are safe, effective, and have collectively saved millions of lives.

There are a lot of areas of modern medicine in which we are far too quick to reach for a pill. This is not one of them.

Joshua Fischer, M.D. is a board-certified Internist and primary care doctor at Coastal Medical in East Providence, RI. You can follow more of his musings on health care at his personal blog.