The Truth About Vaccines
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The Truth About Vaccines
Yesterday we asked your views on vaccines, and we got an interesting spread of answers. Of those who responded to the poll, most were in favour of vaccines. We got quite a lot of comments this time too; we can’t feature them all, but we’ll include extracts from a few in our article today, as they raised interesting points!
Vaccines contain dangerous ingredients that will harm us more than the disease would: True or False?
False, contextually.
Many people are very understandably wary of things they know full well to be toxic, being injected into them.
One subscriber who voted for “Vaccines are poison, and/or are some manner of conspiracy ” wrote:
❝I think vaccines from 50–60 years ago are true vaccines and were safer than vaccines today. I have not had a vaccine for many, many years, and I never plan to have any kind of vaccine/shot again.❞
They didn’t say why they personally felt this way, but the notion that “things were simpler back in the day” is a common (and often correct!) observation regards health, especially when it comes to unwanted additives and ultraprocessing of food.
Things like aluminum or mercury in vaccines are much like sodium and chlorine in table salt. Sodium and chlorine are indeed both toxic to us. But in the form of sodium chloride, it’s a normal part of our diet, provided we don’t overdo it.
Additionally, the amount of unwanted metals (e.g. aluminum, mercury) in vaccines is orders of magnitude smaller than the amount in dietary sources—even if you’re a baby and your “dietary sources” are breast milk and/or formula milk.
In the case of formaldehyde (an inactivating agent), it’s also the dose that makes the poison (and the quantity in vaccines is truly miniscule).
This academic paper alone cites more sources than we could here without making today’s newsletter longer than it already is:
Vaccine Safety: Myths and Misinformation
I have a perfectly good immune system, it can handle the disease: True or False?
True! Contingently.
In fact, our immune system is so good at defending against disease, that the best thing we can do to protect ourselves is show our immune system a dead or deactivated version of a pathogen, so that when the real pathogen comes along, our immune system knows exactly what it is and what to do about it.
In other words, a vaccine.
One subscriber who voted for “Vaccines are important but in some cases the side effects can be worse ” wrote:
❝In some ways I’m vacd out. I got COVid a few months ago and had no symptoms except a cough. I have asthma and it didn’t trigger a lot of congestion. No issues. I am fully vaccinated but not sure I’ll get one in fall.❞
We’re glad this subscriber didn’t get too ill! A testimony to their robust immune system doing what it’s supposed to, after being shown a recent-ish edition of the pathogen, in deactivated form.
It’s very reasonable to start wondering: “surely I’m vaccinated enough by now”
And, hopefully, you are! But, as any given pathogen mutates over time, we eventually need to show our immune system what the new version looks like, or else it won’t recognize it.
See also: Why Experts Think You’ll Need a COVID-19 Booster Shot in the Future
So why don’t we need booster shots for everything? Often, it’s because a pathogen has stopped mutating at any meaningful rate. Polio is an example of this—no booster is needed for most people in most places.
Others, like flu, require annual boosters to keep up with the pathogens.
Herd immunity will keep us safe: True or False?
True! Ish.
But it doesn’t mean what a lot of people think it means. For example, in the UK, “herd immunity” was the strategy promoted by Prime Minister of the hour, Boris Johnson. But he misunderstood what it meant:
- What he thought it meant: everyone gets the disease, then everyone who doesn’t die is now immune
- What it actually means: if most people are immune to the disease (for example: due to having been vaccinated), it can’t easily get to the people who aren’t immune
One subscriber who voted for “Vaccines are critical for our health; vax to the max! ” wrote:
❝I had a chiropractor a few years ago, who explained to me that if the general public took vaccines, then she would not have to vaccinate her children and take a risk of having side effects❞
Obviously, we can’t speak for this subscriber’s chiropractor’s children, but this raises a good example: some people can’t safely have a given vaccine, due to underlying medical conditions—or perhaps it is not available to them, for example if they are under a certain age.
In such cases, herd immunity—other people around having been vaccinated and thus not passing on the disease—is what will keep them safe.
Here’s a useful guide from the US Dept of Health and Human Services:
How does community immunity (a.k.a. herd immunity) work?
And, for those who are more visually inclined, here’s a graphical representation of a mathematical model of how herd immunity works (you can run a simulation)!
Stay safe!
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Fix Chronic Fatigue & Regain Your Energy, By Science
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Chronic fatigue is on the rise. A lot of it appears to be Long COVID-related, but whether that’s the case for you or not, one thing that will make a big difference to your energy levels is something that French biochemist Jessie Inchauspé is here to explain:
Mitochondrial management
Inchauspé explains it in terms of a steam train; to keep running, it must have coal burning in its furnace. However, if more coal is delivered to the engine room faster than it can be put in the furnace and burned, and the coal just keeps on coming, the worker there will soon be overwhelmed trying to find places to put it all; the engine room will be full of coal, and the furnace will sputter and go out because the worker can’t even reach it on account of being buried in coal.
So it is with our glucose metabolism also. If we get spikes of glucose faster than our body can deal with them, it will overload the body’s ability to process that energy at all. Just like the steam train worker, our body will try! It’ll stuff that extra glucose wherever it can (storing as glycogen in the liver is a readily available option that’s easy to do and/but also gives you non-alcoholic fatty liver disease and isn’t quickly broken down into useable energy), and meanwhile, your actual mitochondria aren’t getting what they need (which is: a reliable, but gentle, influx of glucose).
You can imagine that the situation we described in the steam train isn’t good for the engine’s longevity, and the corresponding situation in the human body isn’t good for our mitochondria either (or our pancreas, or our liver, or… the list goes on). Indeed, damaged mitochondria affect exercise capacity and stress resilience—as well as being a long-term driver of cancer.
The remedy, of course, is blood sugar management. Specifically, avoiding glucose spikes. She has a list of 10 ways to do this (small changes to how we eat; what things to eat with what, in which order, etc) that make a huge measurable difference. For your convenience, we’ve linked those ten ways below; first though, if you’d like to hear it from Inchauspé directly (her style is very pleasant), enjoy:
Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!
Want to learn more?
You might also like to read:
- 10 Ways To Balance Your Blood Sugars ← this is the longer list she’s referring to in the video!
- How To Unfatty A Fatty Liver ← also relevant
Take care!
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Kumquat vs Persimmon – Which is Healthier?
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Our Verdict
When comparing kumquat to persimmon, we picked the kumquat.
Why?
In terms of macros, kumquats have more protein, though like most fruits, it’s unlike anybody’s eating them for the protein content. More importantly, they have a lot more fiber, for less than half the carbs. It bears mentioning though that (again, like most fruits) persimmon isn’t bad for this either, and both fruits are low glycemic index foods.
When it comes to vitamins, it’s not close: kumquats have more of vitamins A, B1, B2, B3, B5, B6, B9, E, and choline, while persimmon has more vitamin C. It’s worth noting that kumquats are already a very good source of vitamin C though; persimmon just has more.
In the category of minerals, kumquats again lead with more calcium, copper, magnesium, manganese, and zinc, while persimmon has more iron, phosphorus, and potassium.
In short, enjoy both, and/or whatever fruit you enjoy the most, but if looking for nutritional density, kumquats are bringing it.
Want to learn more?
You might like to read:
Why You’re Probably Not Getting Enough Fiber (And How To Fix It)
Take care!
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Top 10 Causes Of High Blood Pressure
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As Dr. Frita Fisher explains, these are actually the top 10 known causes of high blood pressure. Number zero on the list would be “primary hypertension”, which means high blood pressure with no clear underlying cause.
Superficially, this feels a little like the sometime practice of writing the catch-all “heart failure” as the cause of death on a death certificate, because yes, that heart sure did stop beating. But in reality, primary hypertension is most likely often caused by such things as unmanaged chronic stress—something that doesn’t show up on most health screenings.
Dr. Fisher’s Top 10
- Thyroid disease: both hyperthyroidism and hypothyroidism can cause high blood pressure.
- Obstructive sleep apnea: characterized by snoring, daytime sleepiness, and headaches, this condition can lead to hypertension.
- Chronic kidney disease: diseases ranging from diabetic nephropathy to renal vascular disease can cause high blood pressure.
- Elevated cortisol levels: conditions like Cushing’s syndrome or disease, which involve high cortisol levels, can lead to hypertension—as can a lifestyle with a lot of chronic stress, but that’s less readily diagnosed as such than something one can tell from a blood test.
- Elevated aldosterone levels: excess aldosterone from the adrenal glands causes the body to retain salt and water, increasing blood pressure, because more stuff = more pressure.
- Brain tumor: tumors that increase intracranial pressure can cause a rise in blood pressure to ensure adequate brain perfusion. In these cases, the hypertension is keeping you alive—unless it kills you first. If this seems like a strange bodily response, remember that our bodily response to an infection is often fever, to kill off the infection which can’t survive at such high temperatures (but neither can we, so it becomes a game of chicken with our life on the line), so sometimes our body does kill us with one thing while trying to save us from another.
- Coarctation of the aorta: this congenital heart defect results in narrowing of the aorta, leading to hypertension, especially in the upper body.
- Pregnancy: pregnancy can either induce or worsen existing hypertension.
- Obesity: excess weight increases blood flow and pressure on arteries, raising the risk of hypertension and associated conditions, e.g. diabetes etc.
- Drugs: certain medications and recreational drugs (including, counterintuitively, alcohol!) can elevate blood pressure.
For more information on each of these, enjoy:
Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!
Want to learn more?
You might also like to read:
Hypertension: Factors Far More Relevant Than Salt
Take care!
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Blind Spots – by Dr. Marty Makary
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From the time the US recommended not giving peanuts to infants for the first three years of life “in order to avoid peanut allergies” (whereupon non-exposure to peanuts early in life led to, instead, an increase in peanut allergies and anaphylactic incidents), to the time the US recommended not taking HRT on the strength of the claim that “HRT causes breast cancer” (whereupon the reduced popularity of HRT led to, instead, an increase in breast cancer incidence and mortality), to many other such incidents of very bad public advice being given on the strength of a single badly-misrepresented study (for each respective thing), Dr. Makary puts the spotlight on what went wrong.
This is important, because this is not just a book of outrage, exclaiming “how could this happen?!”, but rather instead, is a book of inquisition, asking “how did this happen?”, in such a way that we the reader can spot similar patterns going forwards.
Oftentimes, this is a simple matter of having a basic understanding of statistics, and checking sources to see if the dataset really supports what the headlines are claiming—and indeed, whether sometimes it suggests rather the opposite.
The style is a little on the sensationalist side, but it’s well-supported with sound arguments, good science, and clear mathematics.
Bottom line: if you’d like to improve your scientific literacy, this book is an excellent illustrative guide.
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Knit for Health & Wellness – by Betsan Corkhill
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Betsan Corkhill, a physiotherapist, has more than just physiotherapy in mind when it comes to the therapeutic potential of knitting (although yes, also physiotherapy!), and much of this book is about the more psychological benefits that go way beyond “it’s a relaxing pastime”.
She makes the case for how knitting (much like good mental health) requires planning, action, organization, persistence, focus, problem-solving, and flexibility—and thus the hobby develops and maintains all the appropriate faculties for those things, which will then be things you get to keep in the rest of your life, too.
Fun fact: knitting, along with other similar needlecrafts, was the forerunner technology for modern computer programming! And indeed, early computers, the kind with hole-punch data streams, used very similar pattern-storing methods to knitting patterns.
So, for something often thought of as a fairly mindless activity for those not in the know, knitting has a lot to offer for what’s between your ears, as well as potentially something for keeping your ears warm later.
One thing this book’s not, by the way: a “how to” guide for learning to knit. It assumes you either have that knowledge already, or will gain it elsewhere (there are many tutorials online).
Bottom line: if you’re in the market for a new hobby that’s good for your brain, this book will give you great motivation to give knitting a go!
Click here to check out Knit For Health & Wellness, and get knitting!
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Acorns vs Chestnuts – Which is Healthier?
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Our Verdict
When comparing acorns to chestnuts, we picked the acorns.
Why?
In terms of macros, chestnuts are mostly water, so it’s not surprising that acorns have a lot more carbs, fat, protein, and fiber. Thus, unless you have personal reasons for any of those to be a problem, acorns are the better choice, offering a lot more nutritional value.
In the category of vitamins, acorns lead with a lot more of vitamins A, B2, B3, B5, B6, and B9, while chestnuts have more of vitamins B1 and C. However, that vitamin C is useless to us, because it is destroyed in the cooking process (by boiling or roasting), and both of these nuts can be harmful if consumed raw, so that cooking does need to be done. That leaves acorns with a 6:1 lead.
When it comes to minerals, things are more even; acorns have more copper, magnesium, manganese, and zinc, while chestnuts have more calcium, iron, phosphorus, and potassium. Thus, a 4:4 tie (and yes, the margins of difference are approximately equal too).
We mentioned “both of these nuts can be harmful if consumed raw”, so a note on that: it’s because, while both contain an assortment of beneficial phytochemicals, they also both contain tannins that, if consumed raw, chelate with iron, essentially taking it out of our diet and potentially creating an iron deficiency. Cooking tannins stops this from being an issue, and the same cooking process renders the tannins actively beneficial to the health, for their antioxidant powers.
You may have heard that acorns are poisonous; that’s not strictly speaking true, except insofar as anything could be deemed poisonous in excess (including such things as water, and oxygen). Rather, it’s simply the above-described matter of the uncooked tannins and iron chelation. Even then, you’re unlikely to suffer ill effects unless you consume them raw in a fair quantity. While acorns have fallen from popular favor sufficient that one doesn’t see them in supermarkets, the fact is they’ve been enjoyed as an important traditional part of the diet by various indigenous peoples of N. America for centuries*, and provided they are cooked first, they are a good healthy food for most people.
*(going so far as to cultivate natural oak savannah areas, by burning out young oaks to leave the old ones to flourish without competition, to maximize acorn production, and then store dried acorns in bulk sufficient to cover the next year or so in case of a bad harvest later—so these was not just an incidental food, but very important “our life may depend on this” food. Much like grain in many places—and yes, acorns can be ground into flour and used to make bread etc too)
Do note: they are both still tree nuts though, so if you have a tree nut allergy, these ones aren’t for you.
Otherwise, enjoy both; just cook them first!
Want to learn more?
You might like to read:
Why You Should Diversify Your Nuts
Take care!
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