What Happens Inside Your Body When You Get Flu Shot - And How to Boost Your Immune System In Fall/Winter

I got a flu shot today, as I do every year.  You should, too.

Some folks are afraid of side-effects.  The CDC reports that 90+% of the side-effects are rashes or swellings at the injection site.  So let’s all take a deep breath together.  I get a rash if I wear wool.  My husband was stung by a yellow-jacket while gardening last weekend and had a rash and a swelling.  The rashes and swelling with shots of all kinds go down in 24 hours, as his bee sting did.  Not exactly a major medical emergency. 

My sister swears that the one time she got a flu shot, she came down with flu, so therefore the flu shot must have given her flu.  Lots of people think this.  Reality: dead viruses can’t hurt you, and the viruses being injected into you are DEAD.  Sis is falling into the “if two things happen together, one thing must have caused another” fallacy.  Two things happening is a correlation; they happen together.  But correlation is not causality.  I sneezed just as I switched on my TV and the tube blew out, so I was convinced that sneezing caused the blow out.  [I was very young.  Have compassion.]  That’s ridiculous, yes, but so is dead viruses making you sick.

Truth is, there is a danger involved in flu shots, but it’s not the danger Sis is worrying about.  The real danger is that injecting dead viruses into my body gets my body focused on fighting this collection of three dead invaders [the most likely influenza variants to crop up this season] AT THE EXACT SAME TIME that there is a high probability that other viruses and bacteria – the whole soup of bugs that are circulating during the winter “flu season” – are also attacking you.  If the timing is just right, your immune system is focusing on building protection against a future invasion by the three deadly flus and another bug just happens to invade when your protection squad is not paying attention.  It can waltz in without being detected until it’s too late!  Now if you are used to thinking logically, you will ask: what is the mathematical probability that the timing will be exactly right to allow that second bug to invade just when your immune system is focusing on preparing its defense against the deadlier potential threat?  Not very high.  But you roll the dice every year over the span of a long life, and the probability that it will happen eventually gets high.  And unlikely events DO happen.  Sis won the virus jackpot on her very first outing.  But she’s still making a foolish choice. 

So, how about some basic info on how your immune system works?  Sounds good to me!

Your “immune system” is a collection of systems and processes that are all focused on 1) detecting, and then 2) fighting off, invasions of your body.  Your mouth, nose, eyes, lungs, digestive system and urinary/vaginal/anal openings are the most likely entry points, so you have the most defenders there.  Your “detection” defense consists of sentinel B and T cells who are constantly patrolling these high-risk areas, as well as all through the rest of your body, in case some miscreant gets past the border sentinels.  One type of T sentinel, the NK cells, also check your own cells for problems, eliminating most cancers before they are larger than a few cells.  [When they get confused and decide that your own body organ is an invader, you get auto-immune diseases.]  Detection is the weakest part of the system.  Far too many invaders manage to fake out or elude the sentinel B and T’s and establish a beachhead.  If you are a military history fan, you know that the first 24 hours of D-Day were critical.  Once the Allies had a beachhead and could land tanks and artillery, the war’s outcome was not in doubt.  In the same way, you want your sentinel cells to be numerous enough and smart enough to smash all the invaders before they start to settle in and proliferate.  [My programs use hypnotherapy, reiki and other tools to help your sentinels to keep their numbers up AND to be smart about taking out cancer and leaving healthy tissue alone.  Call or email for a FREE Getting Unstuck session.]

When a sentinel cell detects an invader, it alerts the major ground forces, the attack cells.  B sentinels alert their own B attack cells, who inform the T sentinel and attack cells.  At this point, a major reproductive move starts, as your major ground forces attempt to assemble an army large enough to take the invaders out.  BUT – this takes too much time, usually!  If the bug makes a beachhead, you are going to get sick.  If your attack cells can reproduce fast enough, it will be a quick, light illness.  [If they nip it before it even gets started, you won’t even know you were invaded.  Maybe you’re tired for 24 hours but don’t know why.  Now you know why.]  If your attack cells don’t get alerted soon enough or they are vastly outnumbered by the invaders, you’ll be down for the count.  Four days or four weeks sicker than a hound-dog in July. 

Swelling at the site of the injection just means that your sentinel cells noticed that your body has been invaded by the dead flu viruses, it alerted the B and T attack cells, who are starting to mount a defense.  This is a good thing!  Swelling, redness, fever and pain are the “cardinal signs” that your attack cells are fighting off an invasion, and many doctors are now suggesting that adults allow a moderate fever to remain.  [Virus replication is inhibited at higher temperatures.  If you fight your immune system and bring a low-moderate fever down, you are helping the invader and foiling your body’s defense strategy.] 

The sentinels tell the attack cells exactly what to look for.  The attack cells kill all the invading dead viruses AND manufacture memory cells who remember the exact configuration of the proteins that define those invading viruses.  This is why vaccination protected George Washington’s army from being decimated by smallpox, and it protects you and your children from death as well.  Those memory sentinels ID the invaders immediately and marshal a very strong defense from the attack cells.  With a vaccine, you have a massive army on your side in hours instead of the usual days.  Your attack cells have an excellent chance of wiping out the invasion before you even know it’s under way.  That 24 hours of tired and you dodged the measles, meningitis or pertussis bullet. 

It also explains why your baby and child needs as much protection as possible, as soon as possible, because their sentinel cells are not very clever yet.  Those sentinel cells can easily detect and the attack cells can do their thing, and create lifetime immunity [or long-term, as the case may be] memory cells for several diseases at once.  Sure they can.  

You wouldn’t want to be vaccinating your kid against pertussis when they are actively fighting off a measles invasion, but if everyone vaccinates, then there IS no measles virus floating around.  And keeping our herd immunity high is a matter of life and death – literally – for the adults and children with compromised immune systems who lack sufficient sentinels and attack cells and whose B and T’s can’t even handle the invasion of dead viruses and bacteria very well.  To protect them, we all have to make sure that we eradicate the childhood killer diseases, by not allowing them any hosts to take over.  I am old enough to know the terror my parents had to endure, because the killing and crippling diseases had no cure and, most importantly, no prevention.  

I deeply, passionately, don’t want us to return to those dreadful days.  I just returned from a vacation in Alaska and was reminded that the first Iditarod was literally a race against death.  Diphtheria had hit Nome and if treatment wasn’t received in 10 days, the whole town would be infected and most would die.  Death had Nome in its sights.  The serum did arrive in time, everyone was treated and the death rate was low.  But other towns that did not have the Alaska railroad and dedicated teams of dogs just died. 

Can you imagine that?  Because of modern vaccination, we are not a nation of sobbing parents, burying child after child, utterly helpless to prevent death.  Children aren’t growing up without their parents, who also died in droves of what is now preventable through vaccination.

Flu does kill, but not as many as diphtheria, pertussis or measles.  But I want to give my immune system every advantage, so I am building memory cells as I write this, and they will circulate at a high level for 3 months, protecting me for the start of the season.  I hope that you will give your hard-working sentinels the leg up that they need as well.

And what else can you do to help boost the number of sentinels circulating in your major entry points? 

Ø  Sleep.  The more you sleep, the more B and T cells you have.  Forget taking a supplement.  Sleep.

Ø  Reduce stress.  Take breath breaks.  Learn and practice Reiki and/or tapping (EFT).  Meditate.  Get out of your car and take transit, so you can snooze, do stress reduction and read calming philosophical literature or watch cute kitten videos.  I know someone who reads her Bible every day on the bus.  Someone else reiki’s and snoozes for his 2-hours-each-way commute.  Exercise every day.  You can do it.

Stress lowers your number of B and T sentinels, so you lose that precious time to zap the invaders before they get a beachhead.  It lowers the numbers of your B and T attack cells so you have less of an army to throw at the invaders when you finally detect them.  Take one of my serious stress zapping classes. 

And for heaven’s sake, don’t be a selfish schmuck and come to work sick and spread your damn germs to everyone else!  Stay in bed, give your attack team a chance to win the war quickly.  Why do you think you have all those fancy e-gadgets anyway?  If you aren’t allowed to work from home, take 7 hours of intense stress reduction and see how quickly you get better, and how much smarter you are when you DO go back.  My immune system has a lot to deal with during flu season.  I don’t need you adding millions of viral particles into our shared air with every sneeze, no matter how well covered. 

So:  get a flu shot.  Start reducing stress to as low as possible.  You’ll be reducing your chances of illness as well!

And call or email victoria.leo.reiki@gmail.com for a FREE Getting Unstuck session to get you started... www.soaringdragon.biz