Dr. John Ennen

Media hysteria and panicking public reaction is not the best way to protect ourselves — choosing a healthy immune system is more important.

Each year people ask me if I’m getting a flu shot. Each year my answer is that I’m not. Should you get one? I don’t know the answer to that because I don’t know you. Neither do the politicians who make the recommendations for flu shots. This year’s hot item is the H1N1 (swine) flu. We’ve had bird flu, Hong Kong flu and many others that come and go, and have for centuries if not millions of years. In fact, each year there are 200 or more types of flu viruses around us.

Avoiding the Flu

Why don’t I get a flu shot? The answer is simple: because I’m healthy. The best defense against the flu, or any other infection or illness, is having a healthy immune system. Being healthy not only significantly reduces your risk of getting the flu, but, if you do get sick it can reduce the severity. A healthy immune system can even save your life. Being healthy means you eat very well (all the time), exercise properly (not too much or too little), properly control stress (the physical, chemical and mental ones) and other factors. The ways to develop a healthy immune system is a big issue and not the reason for this article – ask Dr. Ennen about factors that keep your health optimal.

It’s well known that vitamin D is important for the immune system. As such, vitamin D can offer significant resistance against the flu. The vitamin D factor may answer one key question about flu seasons, which come at the time of year when vitamin D levels and sunshine is lowest and quickly disappear when longer sunny days return. In addition, low vitamin D levels may be closely associated with other respiratory infections, including tuberculosis.

Natural vs. Artificial Immunity

A flu shot does not make you healthy. Too many people are confused about this issue. It

provides you with artificial immunity. Even if this protects you against a particular strain of flu there may be another 200 viruses out there during any given flu season which you won’t be protected against. Flu vaccines and inoculations are known to have many toxins which in turn can be immunosuppressive. Ever know anyone who has gotten sick from a flu shot – it happens more than you think.

The best defense is you body’s natural immunity

In some cases, one way of knowing whether your immune system is healthy in relation to a particular infectious illness is to perform a blood test. Normally, if we are exposed to a virus (or bacteria), our body makes substances called antibodies. These are specific for each potentially infectious condition we’re exposed to. The presence of these antibodies infers we have natural immunity against that virus or bacteria. If this test indicates natural immunity, then artificial immunity (through a flu shot) would probably not help an already healthy immune system. But if you don’t show natural immunity because your blood test does not show the presence of antibodies, it may mean you probably were never exposed, you lost your natural immunity or you don’t have it. You still may have a healthy immune system and therefore able to avoid getting sick if exposed to a virus.

A flu shot, however, can sometimes hurt a healthy immune system. This occurs when mercury based chemical preservatives are used in the vaccine.

If you are at high risk, have poor immune function and don’t have natural immunity, a vaccine against a particular virus might be a consideration because it would at least provide you with artificial immunity. But that’s assuming the theory that artificial immunity against the flu means you’re more protected.

Dr. Tom Jefferson of the Cochrane Collaboration, an international not-for-profit network aimed at promoting evidence-based health care, has seen all the research and concludes that the supposed benefits to the flu vaccine are not justified. Jefferson, an expert in this field who has been published in the Lancet, the British Medical Journal and other scientific journals, reviewed all the studies on flu vaccines and concluded that the supposed benefits are “wildly overestimated.”

Obama officially declared the swine flu a national emergency. The H1N1 death rate just recently surpassed 1,000 in the U.S. and 5,000 worldwide. The regular flu kills approximately 36,000 Americans ever year, on average, and between 250-500,000 worldwide. ** The CDC estimates that “many millions” of Americans have had the swine flu so far, yet only 1,000 have died. So we are at around 2-3 % of the annual flu death rate and a fraction of a fraction of those who are dying from the swine flu. Panic!? 100 times more Americans (100,000) die every year from negative effects of prescription drugs and more than double that number die each year from unnecessary surgery, hospital error and hospital infections, yet many take multiple drugs everyday. Those numbers are shocking to me.

Who’s at Risk?

In most cases, those at highest risk are those who are the least healthy. This includes people

with a history of frequent colds, infections, allergies, asthma and other conditions associated with reduced immune function. Those with chronic illnesses, such as inflammatory conditions associated with arthritis or colitis, heart disease or cancer are at higher risk. And, those who are generally run down and just don’t feel well all the time. As most of these conditions are preventable, it means the individual has not chosen a healthy path. For older people, age does not automatically place you at risk – being older and unhealthy does. This is the idea of optimal health in my office; most of my patients know a lot about how they need to stay at their optimum or close to it. If not, please see me and I will explain.

Oddly enough, it’s those who are most healthy who are the ones most likely to choose to get

vaccinated. This makes studying the benefits of the vaccine more subjective because those who need it most — the poor, and those with other illnesses — get immunized less often.

An exception would be babies, whose immune systems have not fully developed yet. While most of them have natural immunity against most childhood diseases, not so for certain strains of flu. In the case of the swine flu, the last time it appeared was in 1957. So those individuals who were alive then may have antibodies against this flu today.

Making the choice to get a flu shot is your choice — not the government’s or your insurance company, and it should be based on your doctor’s input following a proper history and exam, and considering your risk of infection and potential exposure to infected individuals. No one should be required — forced — to have a flu shot (something that is being done with health care workers in New York ). There are many doctors and health care professionals that choose not to have a flu shot because they know the risks of having a flu shot.

Don’t act emotionally and get caught up in the media hysteria. Make logical decisions based on good information you receive (pro and con) from objective health care practitioners. If your doctor is recommending everyone get a flu shot – that is not objective information. As a doctor, I would not routinely recommend any specific treatment for an entire population. Treating people as individuals is the best approach — that’s not some philosophy, but common sense. A “shotgun” approach lowers the treatment standard for all patients involved. In this scenario, some people would benefit from the treatment, some would not respond, and others would get adverse side effects.

Having a naturally healthy immune system offers more than just reducing your risk of the flu. It helps prevent and postpone many illnesses, from cancer and heart disease to most chronic conditions. It adds quality of life to the end of your life. Artificial immunity can’t do that.           

My recommendations? Decide you’re going to be proactive with your health — rather than

reactive to the next flu that comes along — by starting to improve the health of your immune system now; by eating well all the time, getting adequate and good quailty vitamin D and other factors that improve not just immune function but overall health as well. Vaccines clearly give many people a false sense of security. If you are unsure about what to do, please ask Dr. Ennen what you or any loved one can do to battle or prevent the flu.

* It is a major goal of mine to educate as many people as possible about real health and the work that I do. If you know someone who wants optimal health or help with any illness, please help me inform them