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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How does the drug abemaciclib treat breast cancer?
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The anti-cancer drug abemaciclib (also known as Vernezio) has this month been added to the Australian Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) to treat certain types of breast cancer.
This significantly reduces the cost of the drug. A patient can now expect to pay A$31.60 for a 28-day supply ($7.70 with a health care concession card). The price of abemaciclib without government subsidy is $4,250.
So what is abemaciclib, and how did we get to this point?
It stops cells dividing
Researchers at the pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly developed abemaciclib and published the first study on the drug (then known as LY2835219) in 2014.
Abemaciclib is a type of drug known as a “cyclin-dependent kinase inhibitor”. It’s taken as a pill twice a day.
To maintain our health, many of the cells in our bodies need to grow and divide to produce new cells. Cancers develop when cells grow and divide out of control. Therefore, stopping cells from dividing into new cells is one way that cancer can be fought.
When cells divide, they have to make a copy of their DNA to pass onto the new cell. “Cyclin-dependent kinases” (CDKs for short) are essential for this process. So, if you stop the CDKs, you stop the DNA copying, you stop cells dividing, and you fight the cancer.
However, there are different types of CDKs, and not all cancers need them all to grow. Abemaciclib specifically targets CDK4 and CDK6. Thankfully, a lot of cancers do need these CDKs, including some breast cancers.
The drug targets CDK4 and CDK6. Photoroyalty/Shutterstock But abemaciclib will only be effective against cancers that rely on CDK4 and CDK6 for continued growth. This specificity also means abemaciclib is fairly unique, so it can’t easily be replaced with a different drug.
Two other CDK4/6 inhibitors were developed around the same time as abemaciclib, and are called ribociclib and palbociclib. Both of these drugs are also on the PBS for specific types of breast cancer. As the drugs differ in their chemical structures, they have slight differences in the way they are taken up and processed by the body. The preferred drug given to a breast cancer patient will depend on their unique circumstances.
What are the side effects?
Research is still ongoing into the differences between each of these CDK4/6 inhibitors, but it is known that the side effects are largely similar, but can differ in severity.
The most common side effects of abemaciclib are fatigue, diarrhoea and neutropenia (reduced white blood cells). The gastrointestinal issues are generally more severe with abemaciclib.
If these side effects are too severe, abemaciclib treatment can be stopped.
What types of cancer has abemaciclib been approved for?
In 2017, the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved abemaciclib for the treatment of patients with metastatic HR+/HER2- (hormone receptor-positive and human epidermal growth factor receptor 2-negative) breast cancer who did not respond to standard endocrine therapy.
Australia’s Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) similarly approved abemaciclib in 2022 as an “adjuvant” therapy (after the initial surgery to remove the tumour) for patients with HR+/HER2- invasive early breast cancer which had spread to lymph nodes and was at high risk of returning.
The drug is approved for people with early breast cancer which is at high risk of returning. PeopleImages.com – Yuri A/Shutterstock As of May 1 2024, the PBS covers this use of abemaciclib in combination with endocrine therapy such as fulvestrant, which is also listed on the PBS. Endocrine therapy, also known as hormonal therapy, blocks hormone receptor positive (HR+) cancers from receiving the hormones they need to survive.
Could abemaciclib be used for other cancers in the future?
Abemaciclib is of great interest to scientists and medical practitioners, and testing is ongoing to assess the effectiveness of abemaciclib in treating a range of other cancers, including gastrointestinal cancers and blood cancers.
Abemaciclib may even be usable in brain cancers, as it has long been known to be capable of crossing the blood-brain barrier, a common stumbling block for potential anti-cancer drugs.
Time will tell whether the role of abemaciclib in health care will be expanded. But for now, its inclusion on the PBS is sure to bring some relief to breast cancer patients nationwide.
Sarah Diepstraten, Senior Research Officer, Blood Cells and Blood Cancer Division, Walter and Eliza Hall Institute and John (Eddie) La Marca, Senior Resarch Officer, Walter and Eliza Hall Institute
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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How To Plan For The Unplannable
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How To Always Follow Through
❝Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference:
Now my socks are wet.❞~ with apologies to Robert Frost
The thing is, much like a different Robert wrote, “The best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men gang aft agley”, and when we have a plan and the unexpected occurs, we often find ourselves in a position of “well then, now what?”
This goes for New Year’s Resolutions that lasted until around January the 4th, and it goes for “xyz in a month” plans of diet, exercise, or so forth.
We’ve written before on bolstering flagging motivation when all is as expected but we just need an extra boost:
How To Keep On Keeping On… Long Term!
…but what about when the unexpected happens?
First rule: wear a belt and suspenders
Not literally, unless that’s your thing. But you might have heard this phrase from the business world, and it applies to healthful practices too:
If your primary plan fails, you need a second one already in place.
In business, we see this as “business continuity management”. For example, your writer here, I have backups for every important piece of tech I own, Internet connections from two different companies in case one goes down, and if there’s a power cut, I have everything accessible and sync’d on a fully-charged tablet so I can complete my work there if necessary. And yes, I have low-tech coffee-brewing equipment too.
In health, we should be as serious. We all learned back in 2020 that grocery stores and supply chains can fail; how do we eat healthily when all that is on sale is an assortment of random odds and ends? The answer, as we now know because hindsight really is 2020 in this case, is to keep a well-stocked pantry of healthy things with a long shelf life. Also a good stock of whatever supplements we take, and medicines, and water. And maintain them and rotate the stock!
And what of exercise? We must not rely on gyms, we can use and enjoy them sure, but we should have at least one good go-to routine for which we need nothing more than a bit of floorspace at home.
If you’re unsure where to start with that one, we strongly recommend this book that we reviewed recently:
Science of Pilates: Understand the Anatomy and Physiology to Perfect Your Practice – by Tracy Ward
Second rule: troubleshoot up front
With any given intended diet or exercise regime or other endeavor, we must ask ourselves: what could prevent me from doing this? Set a timer for at least 10 minutes, and write down as many things as possible. Then plan for those.
You can read a bit more about some of this here, the below article was written about facing depression and anxiety, but if you can enact your plans when unmotivated and fearful, then you will surely be able to enact them when not, so this information is good anyway:
When You Know What You “Should” Do (But Knowing Isn’t The Problem)
Third rule: don’t err the same way twice
We all screw up sometimes. To err is, indeed, human. So to errantly eat the wrong food, or do so at the wrong time, or miss a day’s exercise session etc, these things happen.
Just, don’t let it happen twice.
Once is an outlier; twice is starting to look like a pattern.
How To Break Out Of Cycles Of Self-Sabotage, And Stop Making The Same Mistakes
Enjoy!
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What Happened to You? – by Dr. Bruce Perry and Oprah Winfrey
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The very title “What Happened To You?” starts with an assumption that the reader has suffered trauma. This is not just a sample bias of “a person who picks up a book about healing from trauma has probably suffered trauma”, but is also a statistically safe assumption. Around 60% of adults report having suffered some kind of serious trauma.
The authors examine, as the subtitle suggests, these matters in three parts:
- Trauma
- Resilience
- Healing
Trauma can take many forms; sometimes it is a very obvious dramatic traumatic event; sometimes less so. Sometimes it can be a mountain of small things that eroded our strength leaving us broken. But what then, of resilience?
Resilience (in psychology, anyway) is not imperviousness; it is the ability to suffer and recover from things.
Healing is the tail-end part of that. When we have undergone trauma, displayed whatever amount of resilience we could at the time, and now have outgrown our coping strategies and looking to genuinely heal.
The authors present many personal stories and case studies to illustrate different kinds of trauma and resilience, and then go on to outline what we can do to grow from there.
Bottom line: if you or a loved one has suffered trauma, this book may help a lot in understanding and processing that, and finding a way forwards from it.
Click here to check out “What Happened To You?” and give yourself what you deserve.
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How To Stop Binge-Eating: Flip This Switch!
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“The Big Eating Therapist” Sarah Dosanjh has insights from both personal and professional experience:
No “Tough Love” Necessary
Eating certain foods is often socially shamed, and it’s easy to internalize that, and feel guilty. While often guilt is considered a pro-social emotion that helps people to avoid erring in a way that will get us excluded from the tribe (bearing in mind that for most of our evolutionary history, exile would mean near-certain death), it is not good at behavior modification when it comes to addictions or anything similar to addictions.
The reason for this is that if we indulge in a pleasure we feel we “shouldn’t” and expect we’d be shamed for, we then feel bad, and we immediately want something to make us feel better. Guess what that something will be. That’s right: the very same thing we literally just felt ashamed about.
So guilt is not helpful when it comes to (for example) avoiding binge-eating.
Instead, Dosanjh points us to a study whereby dieters ate a donut and drank water, before being given candy for taste testing. The control group proceeded without intervention, while the experimental group had a self-compassion intervention between the donut and the candy. This meant that researchers told the participants not to feel bad about eating the donut, emphasizing self-kindness, mindfulness, and common humanity. The study found that those who received the intervention, ate significantly less candy.
What we can learn from this is: we must be kind to ourselves. Allowing ourselves, consciously and mindfully, “a little treat”, secures its status as being “little”, and “a treat”. Then we smile, thinking “yes, that was a nice little thing to do for myself”, and proceed with our day.
This kind of self-compassion helps avoid the “meta-binge” process, where guilt from one thing leads to immediately reaching for another.
For more on this, plus a link to the study she mentioned, enjoy:
Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!
Want to learn more?
You might also like to read:
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Healthiest-Three-Nut Butter
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We’re often telling you to “diversify your nuts”, so here’s a great way to get in three at once with no added sugar, palm oil, or preservatives, and only the salt you choose to put in. We’ve picked three of the healthiest nuts around, but if you happen to be allergic, don’t worry, we’ve got you covered too.
You will need
- 1 cup almonds (if allergic, substitute a seed, e.g. chia, and make it ½ cup)
- 1 cup walnuts (if allergic, substitute a seed, e.g. pumpkin, and make it ½ cup)
- 1 cup pistachios (if allergic, substitute a seed, e.g. poppy, and make it ½ cup)
- 1 tbsp almond oil (if allergic, substitute extra virgin olive oil) (if you prefer sweet nut butter, substitute 1 tbsp maple syrup; the role here is to emulsify the nuts, and this will do the same job)
- Optional: ¼ tsp MSG or ½ tsp low-sodium salt
Method
(we suggest you read everything at least once before doing anything)
1a) If using nuts, heat your oven to 350℉ / 180℃. Place the nuts on a baking tray lined with baking paper, and bake/roast for about 10 minutes, but keep an eye on it to ensure the nuts don’t burn, and jiggle them if necessary to ensure they toast evenly. Once done, allow to cool.
1b) If using seeds, you can either omit that step, or do the same for 5 minutes if you want to, but really it’s not necessary.
2) Blend all ingredients (nuts/seeds, oil, MSG/salt) in a high-speed blender. Note: this will take about 10 minutes in total, and we recommend you do it in 30-second bursts so as to not overheat the motor. You also may need to periodically scrape the mixture down the side of the blender, to ensure a smooth consistency.
3) Transfer to a clean jar, and enjoy at your leisure:
Enjoy!
Want to learn more?
For those interested in some of the science of what we have going on today:
- Why You Should Diversify Your Nuts!
- Sesame Seeds vs Poppy Seeds – Which is Healthier?
- If You’re Not Taking Chia, You’re Missing Out
- Sea Salt vs MSG – Which is Healthier?
Take care!
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Five Advance Warnings of Multiple Sclerosis
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Five Advance Warnings of Multiple Sclerosis
First things first, a quick check-in with regard to how much you know about multiple sclerosis (MS):
- Do you know what causes it?
- Do you know how it happens?
- Do you know how it can be fixed?
If your answer to the above questions is “no”, then take solace in the fact that modern science doesn’t know either.
What we do know is that it’s an autoimmune condition, and that it results in the degradation of myelin, the “insulator” of nerves, in the central nervous system.
- How exactly this is brought about remains unclear, though there are several leading hypotheses including autoimmune attack of myelin itself, or disruption to the production of myelin.
- Treatments look to reduce/mitigate inflammation, and/or treat other symptoms (which are many and various) on an as-needed basis.
If you’re wondering about the prognosis after diagnosis, the scientific consensus on that is also “we don’t know”:
Read: Personalized medicine in multiple sclerosis: hope or reality?
this paper, like every other one we considered putting in that spot, concludes with basically begging for research to be done to identify biomarkers in a useful fashion that could help classify many distinct forms of MS, rather than the current “you have MS, but who knows what that will mean for you personally because it’s so varied” approach.
The Five Advance Warning Signs
Something we do know! First, we’ll quote directly the researchers’ conclusion:
❝We identified 5 health conditions associated with subsequent MS diagnosis, which may be considered not only prodromal but also early-stage symptoms.
However, these health conditions overlap with prodrome of two other autoimmune diseases, hence they lack specificity to MS.❞
So, these things are a warning, five alarm bells, but not necessarily diagnostic criteria.
Without further ado, the five things are:
- depression
- sexual disorders
- constipation
- cystitis
- urinary tract infections
❝This association was sufficiently robust at the statistical level for us to state that these are early clinical warning signs, probably related to damage to the nervous system, in patients who will later be diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.
The overrepresentation of these symptoms persisted and even increased over the five years after diagnosis.❞
Read the paper for yourself:
Hot off the press! Published only yesterday!
Want to know more about MS?
Here’s a very comprehensive guide:
National clinical guideline for diagnosis and management of multiple sclerosis
Take care!
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