Foods that maximize vaccination benefits.
“Nobody ever thanks you for saving them from the disease they didn’t know they were going to get.”
– William Foege, lead strategist for global smallpox eradication.
There have never been more vaccinations available to help human immune systems. From our first moments of life, we are able to access vaccines that lessen the risk of our succumbing to a widening range of health risks, from influenza to an increasing number of cancers. At the same time, however, voices against the use of vaccines have grown from fringe groups to community organizations, and government officials.
For those choosing vaccinations, recent studies are focusing on how our diets can increase their efficacy.
How Vaccines Work.
“A vaccine introduces a small amount or a tempered version of the virus into the body—just enough so that the body is able to recognize it and deal with it when it encounters it again in the future.”
– Eula Biss, author of On Immunity.
Vaccine antigens (the whole or parts of a virus) and adjuvants (substances added to other substances to boost their effect) ar e taken up by our cells, and macrophages (a white blood cell that performs “clean up” tasks in the bloodstream (finding, engulfing, and destroying harmful pathogens, cellular debris, and dead cells), produce proteins used by the immune system to respond.
Adjuvants prolong antigen presence, target lymph nodes, and fine-tune activation, tailoring the immune response to the type of vaccine it recognizes.
Repeat doses of vaccine often increase the immune response.
Can Diet Change the Efficacy of Vaccines?
“What most people don’t realize is that food is not just calories; it’s information. It actually contains messages that connect to every cell in the body.”
– Dr. Mark Hyman, a leader in the field of functional medicine
Early childhood vaccinations remain those most often administered, followed by vaccines for influenza and covid 19. Others that are becoming more popular include HPV (to minimize the risk of cervical cancer) and malaria.
Let’s start at the beginning…
Diet, Nutrition, and Early Childhood Vaccination Efficacy
Studies in this area have focused on bow the malnutrition of pregnant and nursing mothers can affect the efficacy of the vaccines their babies receive. The consensus is that these can vary from minimal to material, depending on the level and type of malnutrition and the vaccines involved.
For example, five to six years after receiving a routine yellow fever vaccination over 25 percent of Kenyan children—based on antibody concentrations in their body—were found to no longer be protected. Further, low intake of vitamins A, E, K, calcium, potassium, and low dietary diversity correlated with poorer antibody response to the pneumococcal conjugate vaccine, while higher fiber, vitamin B1, zinc, iron, and magnesium intake and greeater dietary diversity correlated with better responses.
Similarly, the pooled results of studies involving more than 150,000 children in India showed a 30 percent increase in vaccine efficacy among those who were treated with vitamin supplements..
The fact that malnourished mothers disadvantage the immune systems of their offspring is beyond dispute. However, as studies discovered a causal link between diet and vaccine efficacy, researchers have begun to look at how this link might be maintained later in llfe.
Diet, Nutrition, and Adult Vaccination Efficacy
The science of how our our immunobiota (the relationship between the microbiome and the immune system) is related to nutrition is a new area of science thaqt has recently come to be known as “immunonutrition.”
Probiotics, prebiotics, or both could improve vaccine efficacy by appropriately stimulating the immune system through an adjuvant effect. Several studies have measured antibody titers post-administration of certain probiotics or prebiotics, but the results have varied widely, possiblt because of differences in the type and dose of probiotic/prebiotic administered, the characteristics of the population studied (such as ethnicity, age of participants, socio-economic status), duration of the interventions, type of vaccine analyzed (injected vs. oral), or other differences in the vaccine schedules.
Vaccines are known to less efficacious when the recipient is overweight or obese, and the efficacy decreases as the level of obesity rises.
Similarly, deficiencies in vitamins and minerals have correlated to a reduction in the efficacy of some vaccinations. Levels of zinc and vitamin D, for example, have been shown to relate to the efficacy of all common covid 19 vaccinations. Similar efficacy correlations were shown between general nutrition levels and measles vaccines.
Vaccines and Antibiotics
Antibiotic treatment changes the gut microbiome, which is closely linked to how the immune system responds to vaccines. But the effect is not uniform: it depends on age, timing, vaccine type, baseline immunity, and how heavily the microbiome is disrupted.
In children, the gut microbiome evolves from within the womb. As their circumstances and nutrition sources evolve quickly, so does their microbiome, and vaccines are affected by those changes in gut microbiome, including the administration of antibiotics.
In adults, the picture is more complex. In one major randomized controlled trial, healthy adults did not see any material change in vaccine efficacy following the administration of antibiotics despite a material reduction in their antibody counts. In the same trial, however, those with pre -existing poor antibody levels saw a marked reduction in vaccine efficacy with antibiotic treatment. Again, the existing microbiome is shown to have a material influence on vaccine efficacy.
Conclusion
Vaccines are a personal health decision that we make with our health care professional. The evidence shows that a healthy gut microbiome and good general health work to maximize vaccine efficacy.
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