one of the easiest, most effective and safest ways to stay healthy is rarely mentioned: vaccination
Some healthy people think they don’t need a vaccine
But your immune system needs more than just a healthy lifestyle to protect your body when vaccine-preventable diseases come knocking on the door
Vaccines expose your immune cells to inactivated versions of a pathogen, providing them with practice sessions to recognize and combat the real threat with speed and precision
Vaccines ensure that your immune cells are at their peak performance when faced with the actual infection
If a person is unvaccinated and exposed to a disease they haven’t encountered before, their immune cells are unprepared and must play catch-up to fight the pathogen. This leaves your body vulnerable to severe disease
Take the story of Austin Booth, a healthy and athletic 17-year-old who was not vaccinated for influenza. Just days after he started to feel ill, he died of the disease
For healthy people, vaccination can reduce the risk of death from influenza by two-thirds