Your Child’s Immunity
This series is about the questions parents ask themselves regarding the best way to raise children “naturally”. Biogetica takes the middle path and wants to tell the truth. Our doctors prepared these posts to answer the most pressing questions parents have today about raising healthy children. Our first post comes from Dr. Gauri Mane discusses Immunity and Misconceptions about Vaccines.
Myths and misconceptions surround the topic of vaccination. Each parent wants their child to develop the strongest immunity possible. For decades, many misconceptions about vaccinations have been perpetuated due to a lack of understanding of the process of vaccination.
Combination Vaccines
Most people believe that multiple vaccinations can “overload” the immune system of a child. The concern began to surface when the childhood immunization program expanded to include additional vaccines and some vaccines were combined to form a single injection. Studies have shown that the combination of recommended vaccines is not more likely to result in adverse reactions than if they were administered separately.
Statistical Effectiveness
Unvaccinated individuals are not the only ones who can be at risk when a rare disease, like measles in a particular area, is on the rise. Some vaccinated people will also get sick because no vaccination is 100 percent effective. In an outbreak of disease, vaccinated people are more likely to get sick than unvaccinated. It is not that vaccines are ineffective but rather because so few people avoid vaccination.
As an Example, Chickenpox
Some diseases can be reduced by improving hygiene and nutrition. The sharp decline in disease and mortality rates can be attributed to vaccines and not nutrition and hygiene. If hygiene and nutrition were sufficient to prevent infectious disease, the chickenpox rate would have declined long before the advent of the varicella vaccination, which wasn’t available until the middle 1990s.
Need for Caution
Also, it is advised that you should not administer a live vaccination if your child has weakened immunity. Live vaccines contain the virus or bacteria that they are supposed to protect you against but in a weakened or inactivated form.
Your child should not receive live vaccines such as (tuberculosis) and (MMR) if you:
- Your child may be taking steroid tablets at high doses, or in lower doses with other drugs.
- Your child is currently receiving chemotherapy, or radiation therapy for cancer treatment or has received these treatments in the past six months.
- Your child is taking immunosuppressive drugs after an organ transplant
- Your child has undergone a marrow transplant and completed all immunosuppressive treatment within the past 12 months
The Writer
Dr.GauriMane holds a B.H.M.S. degree from Maharashtra University of Health Sciences in Mumbai. She graduated Magna Cum Laude and was the top student in her class. She is a licensed Homeopath with more than 4 years of clinical experience, both in Homeopathy and Allopathy.
She also has experience as a research coordinator for several clinical studies. She also holds a Post Graduate Diploma in Hospital and Healthcare Management (PGDHHM), obtained from the Symbiosis Institute of Pune. She is also certified as a Nutritionist and Dietitian.
The following parts of this series explore the effects of vaccines as well as how to boost immunity naturally in children.
