Pathologist 'deeply saddened' at distrust of vaccines
Researcher says she had a hard time convincing her own mother
It's beginning to look a lot like flu season in Toronto.
And despite the fact the flu arrives reliably at this time of year, every year, some two-thirds of Canadians don't get the flu shot.
The multitude of reasons people give to avoid the shot — they're healthy enough, they don't believe in vaccines, for instance — don't compare to risks of getting the flu, according to new research out of McMaster University.
Dawn Bowdish, a professor of pathology at McMaster University, heads the lab which is doing the research into what can actually spiral out of getting the flu — including dementia and other chronic diseases. Read about her research here.
Despite that research, though, a majority of people don't get shots of any type. Many doubt the effectiveness of vaccinations.
"I'm deeply saddened there's so much distrust for immunization. It really is the best tool we have," Bodwish said on Metro Morning on Thursday..
"I'm sympathetic. I have a hard time even getting my own mother to immunized for influenza."
She said the best way to convince Canadians to get immunized is to find good, scientific information on the subject.
She recommended calling the Canadian Lung Association or finding other "good, trusted, reliable" sources of information, and "not the first site that comes up on Google."
The case for pneumococcal vaccination
Bowdish also suggested that people should get a pneumococcal vaccination in addition to the flu shot. Even fewer people get that immunization than the flu shot.
Studies show that having the flu — or pneumonia that results from the flu — can increase your chances of contracting other inflammatory diseases later in life, including chronic diseases like dementia.
"[The flu and pneumonia] often go hand-in-hand. Often it's not the influenza that sends you to the hospital, it's the pneumonia you get after," she said.
After you get pneumonia, there's an inflammatory response from the body, she said. Chronic diseases like dementia, Type II diabetes and many others, share inflammation as their root cause.
And so if those levels of inflammation don't go away, she said, you can get other inflammatory diseases faster.
"We need to have as much prevention as we can," she said.
That prevention, according to the research, starts at a very young age.
"Children tend to be the ones who give their grandparents or even parents influenza and pneumonia. So having kids vaccinated for influenza can actually protect the whole family," she said.
The pneumococcal vaccination is available to everyone over 65, and also to everyone with other chronic conditions, such as asthma, at age 50. Smoking and other variables put people higher at risk for developing pneumonia and other chronic conditions, and are recommended to get the shot at an earlier age.